Hi all,

Firstly, the expansion pack is a good solid adventure in the poisonous, ghost-haunted resort/city of Serria Madre with the level cap to 35 and new and exciting things to do.

Unfortunately, the new and exciting things are mostly running for your life while jury-rigging makeshift spears to kill zombie-like chemsuited apperitions, but it gets better.

Before you hit the stinkhole of doom, get to level 30, make sure you've got some skills in melee weapons and if you're good, have the perk "Jury Rig" as it will save your ass. I didn't have melee ("why bother, I have a gun") and believe me, you'll feel very hurt if you don't.
Also, a good medicine skill, Lockpicks to 100 and science to ~ 75+ are also recommended. (Ie: vital.) Perception 6 is good for quite a few interactions as well.

A reminder; It's NOT a cakewalk.
I'm not even going to say how awful it would be on hardcore.

SPOILER TIME

Ignore this if you want the surprise - and there's a few. None of them really good....











Ok, you've picked up the radio message from the abandoned BoS bunker near Camp Forlorn Hope, traipsed over there and killed any pesky legion/Battle bears about the place. Enter the Bunker and, oh, hey, there's a radio over...Gas? Wait, why am I feeling groggy when I'm wearing the rebreather...damn you programmed triggered cutscene.....



You wake up, cold, alone and dressed in a stylish (50% condition) jumpsuit (+5 to repair.) with matching explosive collar, courtesy of the smug bastard in the fountain there.
The holographic display is of good old Elder Elijah (He who couldn't get Helios up and running in time) and time hasn't been good to him.
More than a little embittered, he's using the BoS bunker to capture candidates to accomplish opening the Serria Madre Casino, something that WAS going to happen but was delayed due to golbal nuclear holocaust. After a long-winded and informative rant, he'll allow you to ask questions which is a GOOD THING as he's helpful...a little. He'll also give you a "holorifle" in dreary condition and about 5 shots for it.

Now, off you go minion, you need to find the 3 other saps who'll assist you in opening this treasure-trove. Right. And the 200K worth of energy weapons and specialised ammo I had on me is worth...what?
Asshole.
And yes, you'll be saying that a LOT about him.

Very soon, you'll be introduced to the biggest dangers of this delightful place; the Cloud, the Ghost People & Elijah's lack of sensible skills.

1: The Collars: Elijah's repair skills aren't the best and these collars aren't designed to filter out white noise too well. Did we mention that they're Radio-detonated? So, speakers, radios (CB and normal) will kill you. If your collar's bleeping, back it up. Save. Run forward and then try and avoid the source. Some speakers can be shot, do so. Some speakers are shielded (have a large red square light at the base of the speaker) and these must be shut off of otherwise avoided. Christine will help with this later. And every time that thing beeps, spare a kind word for Elijah.

2: The Cloud. Toxic, corrosive and obscuring, it acts as an area-denial effect and source of handy "accumulated cloud residue" - a substance that when applied to the eyes give you low-light (Ghost) vision, can be used to make quite deadly posions (Survival 75+) and later on, makes a great little pick-me-up. While wearing that rag of a repair overall, you'll die FAST unless you're running in and out. Avoid until you've got Domino or a Lot of stimpacks. Did I mention all your gear is gone? Fun, that.

3: Ghost-people. These suited freaks are the wildboys of the town, likely to be thousands of them underneath in the sewers and ventilation services. They're also adept at simple, non-explosive traps (deadfalls, bear traps - you're going to level disarming beartraps alone, I swear).
What they love though is to stagger about the place like Keith Moon after a concert and then go all batshit whack-a-mole on you, trying to crack you open and feast on the sweet innards, or drag you into the cloud. And that really sucks. Due to their headwear, their perception seems..off. Sneak killing doesn't work too well (unless you leet ninja) but they seem to have trouble seeing you more than 60 feet away. There are different types:

Ghost Harvester: They leap about like experimental Rhesus monkeys that can understand what the Doctor's about to do to them. Armed with Stabbing spears and throwing versions of same. Only start leaping when in close combat. Reasonable shots with their spears. They go down like Brittany after a kegger if you've any sort of melee weapon and the beef to use it. Adept at "shamming" underneath a pile of bodies of their bretheren.
Note: After level 30, you'll also have Harvesters that toss gas bombs (Wide AOE fire damage over time). Kill from afar or fast enough so that they can't get the bomb off. Those gas bombs work GREAT against the Ghosts as well, think napalm landmines. Can clean out the entire courtyard from the belltower in the Gala Event that way - saves a lot of ammo.

Ghost Trapper: Have a fist-mounted bear trap (!) as a punching weapon. Does a ton of damage, don't know if it bypassed armour, after the first encounter I killed them from a distance. Bigger than the Harvesters, they tend to lope about, rather than race after you. Melee only in an emergency or when "making sure"

For any Ghost, when you see one, kill it by being smarter, better-armed or plain nastier. Oh, and make sure that after it's "down" [Ghost Person is Unconcious] you jump on that mofo like Gollum on a Hobbit and get stabby.
In fact, there's a Weird West with one of your companions after he downs one of these freaks and makes us giggle uncontrolably, it doesss.... If you don't, they get right on back up, often looting fallen bretheren for something worse to hit you with along the way. Kill them dead and be safe.

4: Supplies - there's none. Sure, later on you'll have the option to hit up the spiffy automatic vendor machines with Casino chips but when you start, you're going to scavenge EVERYthing and hope to find a repair bench soon. Once there, store EVERYTHING you don't need and repeat until you've got enough to supply a factory of hurt. Because that's what you'll need. The only reloading station is in the Police Station - you'll find losts of hulls but I've found precious little powder.


Some Hints:
Lockpick 100
Science 75
Barter/social skills 30+
Perception 6+
Melee: you need it
Energy: Also needed.
Guns: Yep, lots
Cosmic Knife + Abraxo Cleaner = Instagib stabby. (Clean Cosmic Knife, bonus to crits on crits! In this craphole town, it's the only friend you can trust.)
3 x Clean Cosmic Knives, Ducttape, a Spear and 3x more Cleaner = Clean Spear. This is your best friend for downing pretty much anything that can be downed. Give to Christine (along with any sort of thrown explosive) for fast kills. She's a demon with that thing.

Dog: Good at hitting stuff. Try not to talk to him, it's depressing as hell.
God: Wonderfully genre-savvy. Has issues. ("In his footsteps" companion perk is like the "light step" feat.) Great listening to him and Domino argue.
Dom Domino: This ghoulish entertainer has secrets on secrets on secrets, but he can get you through the clouds reasonably safely and is a dab hand with a pistol. Get him into some Serria armour stat, that Tux has seen better days. Has own agenda.
Christine: The most human of all companions so far, and the most compassionate. God, poor little jigsaw girl is excellent at energy weapons, melee, explosives and wears armour. If you're playing a female character you can get some...interesting...conversation choices from her. Just don't be judgemental, she's gone through a lot and doesn't need any of your redneck wastelander bullcrap:) Also, she can kick your ass good.

found 1 x tales of a junktown book
1 x chinese special ops book (in the switchstation, the 2nd large room, on a dead-end catwalk

New Feats!:
Get Back - shotgun can knock opponets back and away from you. (this will be awesome when I've got my combat shotgun again! Great with Shotgun Surgeon)
...uhm, forgot the rest.

That's all for the moment - I shall post more if there's interest and time:)

-Tir

Didn't read the spoilers... Broadly speaking, what sort of an add-on is it? Role-playing? Run-and-gun? Exploration?

Survival, role-playing, heist.

After reading the online wiki, which has a lot better summary of various pain as opposed to my sleep-deprived self, I should really delete a few chunks of the above rant-o-fun.

In the main, it's very much a survivalist-story driven DLC, the fact that guns are limited in usefulness and the frequent spawning of the opposing force means you'll be skulking about a LOT. Oh, and forget trying to hide, the Ghost People have perception 10...they just don't react like the normal "gonna kill you" AI.

Oh, and "junk rounds" are a bloody useless perk, kicking myselft I didn't get the Light-armour master one (5% chance to crit while wearing light armour, 25% chance the enemy will critically miss) - that can get your crit to some scary levels if you build someone that way...

The recipies are pretty much "useful when specific to the DLC", but as I collect umpteen fission battries, I'll be rolling in the chips forever - free weapon repair kits and cheap stims! Woo!

The DLc is really ramping up the storyline, with lots of little findables and misc notes. And do get Elijah to talk, there's a lot of dish there.

Another note: Unless you can successfully clip your drop into the area that's cut off by the forcefields and/or make a ton of Turbo, forget carrying those 30 or so bars of gold (valued at 10K each) Made me cry, it did.

Tir.

37 I believe. This easiest way is to drop them through the forcefield and then make your run. Although there are tricks involving explosives to knock you through.