While I fully enjoy the base game and the previous DLC, I find myself unable to recommend this particular dlc.

While the addition of more dungeons and more exploration is a good addition, the new mechanics take away from the experience. The main quest for this Dlc involces you developing a settlement for the region, managing some basic resources for the town. This would normally be a nice project to work on while exploring as well as a nice money sink for the end game (where normally, you'd be overflowing in gold) but instead becomes a roadblock, a chore and can detract from the exploration of the new area.

What happens is in the second half of building your city, including for what (as far as I know are required Buildings, i.e., the City Hall) you need to get a specific resource. This resource is mined from a few areas on the map and is randomly generated out of a few possible drops. At first, gathering such materials is fun as you go out and explore the world and start working through new dungeons, but with some mediocre to bad Rng, you might well have to spend hours grinding these new dungeonss and areas in hopes of getting the correct drop. By the end, you're just going through the same dungeons again and again hoping for a better drop just to progress in the main quest.

While the main game and previous dlc have the flaw that 'once you have done a dungeon - all enemies are the same forevermore' - you also never have to go back into these dungeons again unless a main quest directs you to go there for a specific reason, meaning you can move onto somewhere new to explore. This area instead just makes you do the same grind again until you find a required item drop.

This wouldn't be such a big issue if I was after some amazing optional end game gear, but this is required to progress the main quest in the dlc.

In my case, I was after one specific item needed for the City Hall. Asking in the Discord for the game if I was missing some easier way to aquire the item, I was told to grind more, cheat it in or trade in multiplayer (which I think is the same as cheating really). This is where my interest stopped - as I've already spent hours grinding for it - and cheating in items (outside of bug fixing) always removes my motivation to continue playing a game.

As such, I can only recommend this dlc for people who like grinding.

Secondly, one of Outwards strengths is making an aesthetically interesting areas and this is something this dlc falls on as well - in that it's terrain and detail is very bland. The other area's of the game have far better themes and architecture, with interesting visual themes and visual lore. While one might consider this blandness appropriate for a volcanic region, it is still really uninspired, especially if you compare this region to say, what the Elder Scrolls Online did with the Morrowind areas. And this second point just exasperates the previous issue with the dlc.

When you compare this dlc with the amazing The Soroboreans, where exploration and design was pleasing, and all grinding was optional, this one is very much a disappointment.