Dying Light – Hellraid — Is It Worth It?

Even though developer Techland has been working tirelessly on Dying Light 2 for years, they’ve continued to support the first game. Despite that, it’s been a long while since they put out a substantial piece of DLC. Hellraid was a game they were working on that got put on indefinite hiatus. Instead of leaving those ideas to rot, they’ve decided to release a short piece of content in Dying Light inspired by that game. As of today, you can purchase the Hellraid DLC for $9.99. But the question stands: is it worth it?

Thy Dungeonman

Hellraid doesn’t have any flashy intro or big quest show up in the main game. Once you’ve got the DLC installed, you’ll simply see it in the quest window under the Bozak Horde. Selecting it will give you a quest marker leading to The Tower in Harran, where a mysterious arcade machine is now present right behind the Bozak poster. Interacting with the machine will transport you to a dungeon. You simply pull a lever to open a grate in the floor and then drop down.

Your goal here is simple. You want to find the three Clavis Stones and place them at the end of the dungeon to unlock the treasure vault. You’ll need to battle your way through three floors in order to get to them. The enemies consist of re-skinned zombies, including the regular ones, virals, and those big guys that knock you over when they hit you. These behave just like they do in the main game. Then you’ve got skeletons, which appear to use the human AI.

Some zombies and skeletons have mage variants that throw various spells at you, such as fire and acid. You’ll be fighting them with a few new weapons, although these are very similar to what you’re familiar with. There are couple of swords, a couple of blunt weapons, and a small and giant ax. Zombies naturally don’t carry weapons, but the skeletons do, so you’ll never be hurting for weaponry in Hellraid.

You can finally get Ye Flask

You’ll still be looting enemies and chests, although they’re the old-timey dungeon chests now. You can find throwing stars and flasks with various elemental properties. These are also in line with craftables in the main game. You can find explosive flasks, acid flasks, and shock flasks. Instead of medkits you have health potions. Directions are North, South, East, and Dennis.

The environment is a generic medieval dungeon, but it looks good. Different types of lighting illuminate the areas in colorful ways and there’s a lot of unique geometry. The geometry is so unique that enemies often have a ton of trouble hitting you if you’re standing on it. I felt it necessary to do this to get a breather at times, as Hellraid throws an absolute ton of foes at you and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

You’re going to want to avoid that, as this DLC only gives you three lives. Lose ’em all, and you go back to the start. At least it throws health potions at you in massive quantities. At any rate, you’re not going to want to go in here at low levels, as your abilities do mostly carry over. You also lose survivor points whenever you lose a life, which is fun. The DLC culminates in you fighting a bunch of enemy waves followed by a boss battle and likely won’t take most people more than an hour or so. It’s pretty darn short.

So, is it?

Annoyingly, when you do go back to Harran, everything in your inventory will be moved to a chest. But there are a few reasons to pop back in to the Hellraid DLC. For one, you accrue experience and can increase your Hellraid level, which will grant you new items in the starting chest. This doesn’t really matter much, though, as weapons are insanely easy to come by. You can also unlock a new outfit by getting to max level.

As for it being worth it, it depends. I love Dying Light, but $9.99 seems pricey for just an hour of content. Personally, I’d wait for a sale. But it’s very enjoyable all the same as long as you make sure to keep your lives intact. That final section isn’t hard to get to at all, but it’ll overwhelm you if you’re not paying attention.