The open world itself is very fun to explore and looks extremely cool, but it's mostly empty and has items that can range from a string or a smithing stone tier 1 to 10 great ghost gloveworts and ancient dragon smithing stones, the new weapons and armors are extremely cool and probably the only thing worth getting.
The biggest problem of the dlc is the bossfights, every single boss has 500k hp, the optimisation makes every particle effect kill the framerate, and there's just too much visual clutter, the final boss straight up has multiple shockwaves on every single attack making the framerate drop and also making every attack boring to dodge, combined with the fact that they added an item you gotta find in the dlc to increase the damage you deal in the dlc itself makes every boss last way too long. The movesets themselves are fine but being unable to see half the time, the framedrops and the hundreds of thousands of hp on everyone makes the experience pretty frustrating, imagine if Gael or Orphan of Kos just had a lingering hitbox shockwave on every attack in phase 2 and had 20 times the hp they actually have, you could beat them yes, but it'd take extremely long and getting hit by a secondary shockwave is just frustrating.
This is probably because the game seems to want you to use Spirit Ashes throughout the dlc, because it spams great ghost gloveworth everywhere and has a collectable to find multiple times throughout the dlc that increases the overall effectiveness of this summons in the dlc itself.
It's sad seeing how everyone that says anything bad about the dlc gets seen as someone who is either a scrub or just yapping, these people just can't see things objectively, the dlc is not terrible but has many issues that in my personal experience made exploring unrewarding and fights sluggish. For who wonders, i was a strenght build with 80 strenght.

The open world itself is very fun to explore and looks extremely cool, but it's mostly empty and has items that can range from a string or a smithing stone tier 1 to 10 great ghost gloveworts and ancient dragon smithing stones, the new weapons and armors are extremely cool and probably the only thing worth getting. The biggest problem of the dlc is the bossfights, every single boss has 500k hp, the optimisation makes every particle effect kill the framerate, and there's just too much visual clutter, the final boss straight up has multiple shockwaves on every single attack making the framerate drop and also making every attack boring to dodge, combined with the fact that they added an item you gotta find in the dlc to increase the damage you deal in the dlc itself makes every boss last way too long. The movesets themselves are fine but being unable to see half the time, the framedrops and the hundreds of thousands of hp on everyone makes the experience pretty frustrating, imagine if Gael or Orphan of Kos just had a lingering hitbox shockwave on every attack in phase 2 and had 20 times the hp they actually have, you could beat them yes, but it'd take extremely long and getting hit by a secondary shockwave is just frustrating. This is probably because the game seems to want you to use Spirit Ashes throughout the dlc, because it spams great ghost gloveworth everywhere and has a collectable to find multiple times throughout the dlc that increases the overall effectiveness of this summons in the dlc itself. It's sad seeing how everyone that says anything bad about the dlc gets seen as someone who is either a scrub or just yapping, these people just can't see things objectively, the dlc is not terrible but has many issues that in my personal experience made exploring unrewarding and fights sluggish. For who wonders, i was a strenght build with 80 strenght.