So I opted into experimental, and took my hardened squad down SE. The eight primary members of the squad had no difficulty whatsoever when I unintentionally walked into Ark. I was unprepared for the fourteen new recruits I ended up with via liberal application of lockpicking on the slave cages.
While attempting to move further south I quickly came to the conclusion that having 22 people, most of whom had poor stats/skills is extremely unwieldy for a single squad. I ran out to greenbeach hoping to buy myself some breathing room and reorganize. This turned out to be a massive mistake, as I had my first encounter with crab raiders right there on that moonlit night. I fought for DAYS against raiders and crabs, my inventory was quickly overloaded with meat, all of my new recruits had full standard or high grade crab armor.
I finally managed to disengage, thankfully avoiding any deaths, but heading back north would mean walking through reaver infested lands, so I turned west. This was also a monumentally bad idea. The early part of this leg was fairly calm, a few pitched battles (costing one of my recruits an arm) and we were clear of the heaviest resistance. After making my way to the Flats Lagoon I decided to head SW to Catun, this is where things went extremely bad. The bonefields are a horrific nightmare place, where the most evil creature I have thus far encountered walks, the dread Elder Beak Thing. One, alone, managed to crush my army (now thirty strong with some additional freed slave stragglers who had decided to join and a stylin' crab purchased from the crab raiders) as well as a tech hunter patrol, and two full size hive trade caravans. If not for my core elites the adventure would have ended right there, thankfully Ruka, Bard, and Glain (not a special recruit, just a long-time member of my faction) were able to kite the damned monster away from my downed recruits and gave me time to bandage them, then the damned thing walked right back over, and got KOed by my main, Intess (I immediately took the creature's leather, killing it).
Catun itself was a bit of a let-down. Interesting place, but the Scrapmasters were underwhelming, if I wanted huge piled of Catun grade 1-3 I'd grind up some additional smiths, Intess makes Edge 3 in bulk. After that weak diversion I had to fight my way south towards The Hook, this was time consuming but not difficult once there I was home free.
The trek back to Blacksite Omega was boring and tedious, and nothing interesting happened at all.