Quote Originally Posted by Techwarrior View Post
Which DLC are worth getting?
My opinion:

Synthetic Dawn and Utopia are the top picks. They both add new kinds of empires, and while I think machine intelligences are more fun than hive minds, ascension perks and megastructures put Utopia slightly ahead.

Distant Stars, Leviathans and Megacorp are second tier. Distant Stars adds a lot of new anomalies, which are fun but often don't show up, and the L-Cluster, which I generally find somewhat underwhelming. Leviathans' titular feature is pretty good, and the enclaves are always useful, but there's nothing amazing in there. Megacorp adds ecumenopoleis and a bunch of new megastructures, which are amazing and nice respectively, but the rest of the content is not that good and I only think it's worth full price because of how incredible the 2.2 free patch is (or has come to be, at least).

Apocalypse is bottom tier, only worth getting if it's at least half off. Now that ambitions are part of the base game, it just doesn't add enough content to justify the price, and most of the content is mediocre. Titans take far too long to build and tend to die fairly quickly, colossi are only worthwhile because they give access to total war (unless you're a driven assimilator). The marauders are probably the best part, and they only really serve as an incentive to build up your fleet to a certain level by the time the Khan could appear - but Stellaris wasn't exactly lacking reasons to build a strong fleet.

The species packs are purely cosmetic, so only buy them if you think you like the looks of the things they add. I haven't bought either one, so I can't really say how worthwhile they may be.