The opening area alone *easily* has 10+ hours worth of content, people rushing to the end like this is race and missing half the game in the process, sounds retarded as fuck. Found so many cool things, explore explore explore. Like Limegrave in the base game, I'm sure when I revisit this area I'll find a bunch of stuff I missed despite being thorough, visit again and find even more, and again, and again...
Took down one of the Flame Giants too, not particularly hard just lots of kiting with your mount, timing jumps to avoid it's attacks, staying away from the arms. Hitting legs when they are charging up with a powerful attack can stagger and drop it for a crit on it's head, position it fell here was unfortunate but it was already on the brink, got it done, don't know how pure melee build will fare though: