I'm still in lockdown mode so not really reading the thread yet. I did get the DLC and started my adventures like I imagine most did, fighting the asshole phantom with the machinegun crossbow. Did take me a few tries since the fucker was two shoting me with ease and sometimes one shoting but ol "leaping double collosal greatswords" did the job eventually thanks to staggering him. Than I just fucked around and noticed the wicker man who politely informed me with a warm hug that I wasn't ready. I then found another field boss! and it was a fucking dragon... killed the damn thing, kept exploring trying to go off the beaten path and I reached a beautiful valley of blue flowers! And oh shit! another field boss!!! Oh, it's a dragon... though this one has necromancy to spice things up. After getting my ass handed a few times between the dragon and it's skeleton posy I kept exploring and found a gigantic crater thing where I could go down and saw a barrier set up by the little faggot Twink Miquella, this seems like it would be the arena of the final boss or something like that, so for now, mark it as "point of interest"
I kept looking around and found fingerbang gorge. There seemed to be a huge setpiece waiting for me but I seem to not "have the right" yet and a message said something about heading north. With no clear direction, I tried to see if I could go to the right side chasm thing that my map showed, but didn't see any clear path, so decided to go to one of the proper "dungeons" and ended up going to the right one. Since I was already level 3 of the shadow shards or whatever and I started this area after the latest patch, nothing felt particularly difficult to be honest, Then I stumbled into Rellana (long lost sister trope, meh) who proceeded to ruin my shit for more than an hour. Reading some comments about her I got the impression that between me exploring and the patch update, I made out like a bandit since I wasn't getting two shot, but I was having problems getting used to dodging all of her double layered strikes. I went with a greatshield approach and it makes her a joke in phase 1, but phase 2 with all the magic and fire flaying around suddenly ruins it. Went back to good ol collosals plus jumping and learned that the jump immunity from leaping and specially landing, allowed me to dodge an insane amount of her attacks during recovery. She was still kicking my ass but I was getting better at dealing with phase 1. 2 was still a nightmare since I didn't reach it that many times and her 5 moon slashes in a row I was unable to dodge outside of having houndstep (buts I got is the first 2 could be dodged by just running, but the horizontal ones I was unclear, probably jumping instead of panic dodging... Jumping in general is a lot more useful than it seems defensively).
Anyway, keep trying till... well, I staggered her in a certain point where it kind of fucked with her AI so instead of going into phase 2 when I got her under 50 with the visceral, she stayed normal, which let me land 3 more leaping hits before phase transition and since the damage she takes during transition isn't lowered, I blitzed her during the transition and she didn't have time to unleash anything. After that tried to help others to kill her a few times and it was a disaster for the most part, I did learn to dodge the triple moon kaboom (just jump 3 times) and saw some weird setup which I swear is the lightning perfume doing insane damage (though when I tried it, my numbers were nothing insane).
Speaking of weapons, lots of neat stuff, though I always go to the watchdog and Malekith's sword when shit gets rough, I have liked the novelty of the perfumes, the lightning axe pair that I got from the only copy paste dungeon I found (I fucking hate the stone gremlins that use their weapon like a pogo stick...) after killing some dood that was a bodyguard of Godwyn or some shit. Hoping I can get a fist and fuck around soon. I also found the giant put dungeon and get the greatest helmet,but really need to get into the groove of crafting and using pots if I want to get any use out of it. I always have the same issue in these games where I "don't want to waste resources" and don't experiment enough, saw a video on youtube with how much shit you can get away with by just jumping or by throwing a certain elemental pot into something's face.
As of now, the vistas are fantastic, exploring is fun, but already having run into 2 dragons was a let down. Rellana is a cool boss, though I think I kind of "stole her" from myself by taking the glitched win since she seemed very killable with some more practice. Will forge her swords next time and start fucking around with those as well. Though me playing post patch probably is a factor, with golden vow up, each leaping double strike was around 2100 damage.and I could tank like 4 sword strikes in a row as long as they weren't infused with magic or fire. Very different to how much damage the phantom with the crossbow was doing (speaking of him, love his sword too) to me, so I can only think that anybody that is just smashing into a brick wall and not looking for more shadow shards is just asking to suffer, though again, don't know how bad it was with Rellana prepatch.
