new map and location,well written and separate storyline. skills are reset but easily earned, weapons can be unlocked by finding them on the map. upgradeable camp wich you need to defend during nighttime (starts on the players say so), so far very enjoyable. this is what a proper dlc should be like.

and for those who havent figured it out: copy the dlc key from steam and redeem it in the reedeem product option in uplay do get it to work;)

A decent expansion to Far Cry 4, Valley of the Yetis has plenty to offer.

Taking place in a hostile valley, the player is trapped with absolutely no allied support. This means there are no friendly NPCs, and only one safe haven, which is a rutty old waystation. Stepping out of your front door exposes you to everything that wants to kill you. No outposts to capture to create more safezones, no hope for help, the entire valley is deep enemy territory. The safe haven itself isn't even entirely safe, as after one or two story missions the area will fall under siege from waves of enemy troops. Throughout Valley of the Yetis you can upgrade your safehouse defences to include traps, mounted guns and further fortifications to turn the odds to your favor.
The nightly defence feature is pretty fun, with enemy waves that become more intense, attacking from more directions at once causing you to think on your feet and set your priorities. Even though I say it's "nightly", don't worry, you don't have to run back and defend the outpost when the sun sets, as the passing of time is fortunately paused over the course of the expansion. Meaning that it will become night when you go to the outpost and start the mission to defend your turf.

The new location is pretty well-made, being entirely set at a higher altitude than the rest of Kyrat the area is permanently covered in snow, which to a winter-blooded Canadian like myself makes me feel right at home. Exploration of the valley is a key note in the expansions design, with weapons and materials scattered throughout the valley that you can find and collect at your leisure.
The main problem though is a complete reset of your skills and weapon loadouts from the main game, causing you to start entirely from scratch with bareboned weapons and no skills or upgraded gear to be found. Instead of hunting for skins to craft upgraded holsters, there are "skin chests" which contain the skins requried to upgrade, which I feel is a pretty smart choice since I sure didn't feel like re-hunting all those animals to be able to hold four weapons. The skill reset, however, is a different matter entirely. It's frustrating to grind up your skills all-over again, even though you gain more XP upon completing a mission it still isn't fun to be thrown right back to square one.

The eerie and spiritual setting of Valley of the Yetis complements the story's theme perfectly, being both intruiging and unsettling while also not being too far off the mark for the main game, fitting with the theme. The story itself lacks a few points and is easily forgettable, but it's all subjective, so you'll have to play it for yourself and form your own opinion about it, but suffice it to say that it didn't really leave much of an impact with me (except for the ending, which I implore all who played this expansion not to spoil for anyone for any reason).

Now let's talk about the Yeti's themselves: Yes, Yetis are real in the Far Cry lore now, giant bipedal apes with the strength to transform your entire skeletal system into a pile of jelly. At first the Yetis are interesting to fight, forcing you to consider new approaches to fighting these brutes since they can take a wild beating before you can even think of finishing them off with a takedown. However, I managed to find the Buzzsaw LMG in the valley which can be used to effortlessly turn a Yeti into a fine snortable powder. With the proper loadouts the Yetis become painfully easy to fight, but for the first half of the game they are an absolute terror.
A negative point with the Yetis is their spawn behavior, which is to say absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes when you down a Yeti another one will spawn roughly 20 feet away, which will proceed to charge at you. This is especially troublesome earlier on when you don't have the proper loadouts to deal with them yet.

With plenty of exploration options, new challenges and obstatcles and of course the titular enemy, Valley of the Yetis is a decently good expansion. The challenge curve tends to dipsy-doodle depending, and with the right loadout the Yetis are a joke. But all things considered I'd definitely recommend this one. It's well enough made to merit some positive feedback.

Alright, I'm writing this to help the masses of gamers that have had a hard time trying to access the DLC for Far Cry 4, e.g., Valley of the Yetis and Escape from whatever-that-prison-is. I purchased the additional content because I enjoy the FC franchise and am not disappointed in the least, but to access the DLC has been kind of tough to figure out. First, given that you have the PC version of Far Cry 4 and given you have purchased the additional DLC and it appears in that nice little dialog box under the "Play" button that you click to launch the Far Cry 4 game, go to the this link in your favorite browser: https://support.ubi.com/en-US/FAQ/9/4277/pc-how-to-redeem-extra-content/kA030000000eis2CAA. This link tells you to Open the UPlay GUI interface/console. In the upper right, click on the "Options" icon that looks like a huge asterisk. The first option is "Activate product." Click on this link which in turn will open another dialog box that will allow you to enter a product key. Leave that dialog box open and go back to your Steam/Library tab/Far Cry 4 pre-launch page (where you see the "Play" button and the listing under this button will have the different DLC titles). Look just to the right of this area and you will see a separate column with links that say something like, "CD Key", "DLC", etc., etc. Click "CD Key" and another dialog box will appear with the different Activation Product Keys for the DLC. Highlight each of them and click the "Copy to Clipboard" button. Now go back to the UPlay screen dialog box you left open earlier and paste that Activation Product Key copied earlier into the field that says, "Please enter your CD Key or Activation Code here." Repeat this process until all your activation codes are entered. Click "OK." If you have the game running already in the background, exit to the desktop and restart Far Cry 4. When you go back in, you will see your additional Down Loaded Content on the right of the screen with the ability to play it online, offline, blah blah blah. I know this sounds overly simplistic and everything is spoon-fed on how to do this, but this Systems Engineer deals with software all day long on the job and knows how even the most simple things can be so confusing...and should not be. I enjoy making people's lives better...not more complicated. I just hope this helps someone else.

Ubisoft has really outdone themselves, both with this DLC and Escape from Durgesh Prison. They took the Farcy series, that we all know and love, and not only added a much needed co-operative mode, but they designed two fantastic DLC game modes that offer nearly infinite solo and co-op replayability. I've never seen this from Ubisoft before and it makes me so happy to see the company evolve and try new things, especially when their attempts at originality are successful. I'm insanely happy that Ubisoft has finally gotten out of the dry spell that was plaguing them for so long and eagerly waiting to see what they do next!

*make sure you get farcry4 and the dlc both on steam

Easily the best dlc i have ever played. fairly weak story but the yetis are so much fun. 4-5h of playtime. I actually had more fun in this than far cry 4.

Just in case you don't know, you have to copy and paste the DLC key into the Uplay DRM feature, just like you did when you originally installed the game. The DLC key is located within your Steam account.

Otherwise, this DLC is pretty good. It is pretty stupid to have to rebuild all your skills and acquire all your weapons again, but other than that, its pretty decent.

While I really wanted to like this DLC, for $17 I'm disappointed in the lack of content on offer, considering it's not a standalone expansion, and I also had the same problem with the Hurk's Redemption DLC too. That's me done for buying DLC for FC4.

Pretty much all you get for your money is 6 story missions, 5 defend-the-base missions, and a dozen side missions. The side missions are only there to upgrade your base for the 5 defensive missions; you may find guns and pelts along the way to upgrade your equipment (which gets totally reset from the main FC4 campaign), but that's about all it offers.

There's no quick travel. However, the map is tiny compared to the FC4 main game so it's only a 10 minute hike to get where you need to be at any time.

There's no Karma at all, nor any elephants. There ARE yetis though, and they're tough SOB's whose corpses vaporise after 10 seconds while you're trying to get the "hold X to skin" button to work. Manage to nab a yeti heart in time and it's a sweet 93,000 in the bank though.

Overall, this could have been a fleshed out standalone game, where the (bizarre) ending could have been the start of a great spinoff creation. It was done with Blood Dragon - why not again? I would have bought it...

5/10

Far better than the main game, Valley of the Yetis delivers the single-player coop experience I was looking for, in what appears to be northern Skyrim.

The tone of this DLC is very different from Kyrat. There's no music and very few other people. You are in the mountains, away from radio stations, clean roads and golden path NPC's. This is about survival. You are hunted by crazed cultists, very reminiscent of the ganado from RE4.

I wish they had modeled the main game of Valley of the Yetis design. I missed the feeling of being rambo, deep in enemy territory and on my own which you even got in Far Cry 3 with the pirates, and lost with the Golden Path spawning in Royal Army territory.

PROS:
+ Icy mountain environment
+ Immersive setting
+ Rambo style isolation
+ Finding all the weapons
+ Abandonned settlements/ temples
+ RE4 cultists
+ More weapon choice from the start
+ Upgrading your base/ surviving at night
+ Very few friendly NPC's. Many enemy NPC's

CONS:
- The Sherpa is here for some reason
- Ubisoft hand holding minimap
- You are forced to take the wingsuit at one point
- Valley itself a little small for 15 EUR. Could have been a bit bigger.
- No snow storms (that I have seen yet)

This is closer to the Far Cry series true potential, but Ubisoft still has a ways to go. We will see were user mods take this in the future, but VotY is worth several playthroughs already.

Pros:
New map
Yetis
New story
Snowmobiles are fun
Base upgrades
Base defense

Cons:
Map is dull
Yetis are annoying but don't add much
Story is lazy and uninteresting
No new weapons
Gear upgrades are a pain in the ♥♥♥ (Since only a fraction of animals from the base game make an appearence, you have to loot skins from chests instead of hunting. The skins are random.)
Extremely short
Fast Travel has been removed.
No new skill/fewer skills than base game

Conclusion: The only thing I liked about this DLC was the base defense. It does not justify the price tag though.

This dlc and Escape from Durgesh Prison are not worth it in my opinion. They are incorporated into the main game and cannot be acessed from the game map. You start them off with none of your skills unlocked or any of your weapons. Both of these could have been and probably were part of the original game and the content was ripped and tweaked to make dlc's.