Just finished (obv. minus the optional community milestones which aren’t done yet).
I have to admit, while the staff and ship are great rewards, the expedition itself was, IMO, the weakest one yet for old-timers.
That’s not really a surprise–this whole expedition is a marketing vehicle to pull in new players and is really a tutorial for a lot of the game mechanics–but it was still a little disappointing. I’m kinda glad that, unlike past expeditions where I’ve tended to take my time, I just powered through this one.
I’d be very curious to hear the thoughts of any newcomers, though!
As one parting thought, the very fact this was basically an extended tutorial tells me HG has plans for additional content, and the fears of the use of the term “omega” were unfounded. You don’t try to draw new players into a game you plan to EOL.
Your point about grinding is a good one. I think it was the last expedition (?) that had milestones like “discover a hot-blooded animal” which required just jumping around and and randomly searching, and eventually I just looked up a spoiler because I couldn’t be bothered with that grind.
Certainly I made things a little easier for myself by loading up on various resources from my main save, but doing it from scratch would’ve been pretty painless.