A nice addition that conversely to the previous DLC The Pale Reach feels like it's made more for endgame.

Unlike Pale Reach, I didn't blast through the entire DLC because I had endgame equipment. It took me roughly 5-6 hours to 100%, though I was trying to clean up the fishing catalog during the DLC story and not saving it for the end. It retroactively made the Pale Reach's reward (an anchor that you can throw in the ocean to make a two way portal) much more worthwhile especially since The Iron Rig takes you across the whole map (sans Pale Reach).

Mechanically it is still pretty simple, every time you finish a major part of the DLC's main quest cracks begin to form beneath the ocean releasing an oily substance into the waters of one of the areas from the base game. And you are being sent out to survey the area and collect samples of both the fish and the strange substance bubbling to the surface. Outside a special trawl that sucks up the goo you aren't doing too much different from the base game. While within the oil, you are slowed slightly and at lower sanity levels gain some unwanted attention from the monsters. Though even with the slowed speed I still didn't have much trouble avoiding the monsters with vanilla endgame equipment.

The Iron Rig does add some neat little toys. Mostly just some fishing rod upgrades to let you fish in the polluted waters and some consumables for repairing your hull/net/pots/sanity that I never really felt the need to use. They even added a trawler and pot that picks up materials instead of fish, which honestly is a nice passive way to get materials for the crafting they added for most of this stuff. You can also upgrade your lights, horn, and spyglass. The lights were probably brighter and sanity saving but I never really noticed, the horn did an excellent job of showing me things I could already see, and the spyglass was a legitimately nice QoL improvement. They even added some 1x1 passive stat improving items that work so long as they are somewhere in your cargo with improvements like less heat generation from Haste, faster fishing/dredging speed, faster turning and reversing, and better trawl odds. Useful for those corner slots in your cargo that you can't squeeze things into. Lastly and probably most useful for players that haven't caught every fish yet are the 3 new baits. Aberrated Bait, which will always give you an aberration appropriate to whatever biome you're in and whatever rods you have equipped. Insta-Crab Bait, which acts as an instant crab pot on demand, which for me personally came far too late to be of any use. Lastly is the Exotic Bait, which is used to recapture the exotic quest fish. I guess I should mention that you can upgrade to a Tier 5 hull and while the space is nice (I can finally have all the aberration fishing equipment equipped at the same time now), it isn't super useful since I get to use it for a grand total of one area before I have nothing I need to stuff in my ship anymore.

As always the new aberration art is appropriately grotesque and disconcerting as it should be, and the DLC even adds aberrations for Exotic fish (just use Exotic Bait in whatever biome you found them in the first place while holding a rod that could catch them and use Atrophy on the temporary fishing spot) as well as a new aberration only fish (must finish the scientist quest line, use Aberrated Bait directly beneath the rig's drill, may take a few attempts and you may need to finish the main DLC quest first).

A nice addition that conversely to the previous DLC The Pale Reach feels like it's made more for endgame. Unlike Pale Reach, I didn't blast through the entire DLC because I had endgame equipment. It took me roughly 5-6 hours to 100%, though I was trying to clean up the fishing catalog during the DLC story and not saving it for the end. It retroactively made the Pale Reach's reward [spoiler](an anchor that you can throw in the ocean to make a two way portal)[/spoiler] much more worthwhile especially since The Iron Rig takes you across the whole map (sans Pale Reach). Mechanically it is still pretty simple, every time you finish a major part of the DLC's main quest cracks begin to form beneath the ocean releasing an oily substance into the waters of one of the areas from the base game. And you are being sent out to survey the area and collect samples of both the fish and the strange substance bubbling to the surface. Outside a special trawl that sucks up the goo you aren't doing too much different from the base game. While within the oil, you are slowed slightly and at lower sanity levels gain some unwanted attention from the monsters. Though even with the slowed speed I still didn't have much trouble avoiding the monsters with vanilla endgame equipment. The Iron Rig does add some neat little toys. Mostly just some fishing rod upgrades to let you fish in the polluted waters and some consumables for repairing your hull/net/pots/sanity that I never really felt the need to use. They even added a trawler and pot that picks up materials instead of fish, which honestly is a nice passive way to get materials for the crafting they added for most of this stuff. You can also upgrade your lights, horn, and spyglass. The lights were probably brighter and sanity saving but I never really noticed, the horn did an excellent job of showing me things I could already see, and the spyglass was a legitimately nice QoL improvement. They even added some 1x1 passive stat improving items that work so long as they are somewhere in your cargo with improvements like less heat generation from Haste, faster fishing/dredging speed, faster turning and reversing, and better trawl odds. Useful for those corner slots in your cargo that you can't squeeze things into. Lastly and probably most useful for players that haven't caught every fish yet are the 3 new baits. Aberrated Bait, which will always give you an aberration appropriate to whatever biome you're in and whatever rods you have equipped. Insta-Crab Bait, which acts as an instant crab pot on demand, which for me personally came far too late to be of any use. Lastly is the Exotic Bait, which is used to recapture the exotic quest fish. I guess I should mention that you can upgrade to a Tier 5 hull and while the space is nice (I can finally have all the aberration fishing equipment equipped at the same time now), it isn't super useful since I get to use it for a grand total of one area before I have nothing I need to stuff in my ship anymore. As always the new aberration art is appropriately grotesque and disconcerting as it should be, and the DLC even adds aberrations for Exotic fish [spoiler](just use Exotic Bait in whatever biome you found them in the first place while holding a rod that could catch them and use Atrophy on the temporary fishing spot)[/spoiler] as well as a new aberration only fish [spoiler](must finish the scientist quest line, use Aberrated Bait directly beneath the rig's drill, may take a few attempts and you may need to finish the main DLC quest first).[/spoiler]