Yeah definitely get the Atomic Bonds expansion. The competitive basegame is ridiculously broken. For example there are quests that send your all over the map. But the silly thing is if a quests needs to be “picked up” in one location and “turned in” in another then once it is picked up ANY player can just snipe the rewards if they’re close to the destination. Also many exploration options are hillariously random. This makes the competitive version little more than a crapshoot. It’s frankly mindboggling how anyone actually greenlit that design.

In coop all that is still the case but instead of being frustrated when another player gets an extremely lucky pull in the exploration, you cheer each other on. Sniping different quest stages between multiple players becomes a cool strategy instead of a braindead design choice. Most of these anoyances fall away and you can revel in the setting of the game.