Short of finally going ahead and kicking off New Game+, or going back in to get the two optional bosses (that I’m aware of) I’ve skipped — I’m done with Shadow of the Erdtree.
Phewph.
Even spread over several months, it was quite an intense journey.
Before I start down this path though — know that this post will be spoiler-free. Or as spoiler-free as possible, in any event. If you wish to take the entire game blind; well, I’d be surprised if you even clicked through to read this.
I will be talking about the mechanics of the expansion, and there will be screenshots of areas (not late game, and not bosses). I will not, however, name the areas shown, any bosses encountered or otherwise provide context to screenshots which may then make them spoilers. I will also steer clear of discussing my understanding of the story.
Alright, still with me?
Let’s go.
Difficulty and Blessings
Even if you held little interest in Shadow of the Erdtree, there’s a passing fair chance you heard that even Souls-like adherents were finding the expansion… challenging.
To such an extent that FromSoft made two fairly major and unusual (for them) concessions.
- They offered total transparency and clarity on what the Blessings did.
- They increased how powerful the early Scadutree Blessing levels were.
They all but begged players to go after and use the Scadutree Blessings, as the difficulty of the expansion is much more heavily determined by the level of your blessings than it is your standard ‘rune level’. Scadutree Blessings increase both your damage and your damage mitigation. You collect them as fragments, and need higher numbers of these fragments to further in levels you go.
There are also Revered Spirit Ash Blessing fragments and these level up your Spirit Ashes (summons) in the same way as the Scadutree blessing does for yourself.
I understand why the Blessing system was conceived and implemented. It was to answer the question of, ‘How do we balance the difficulty, and provide a degree of progression within the expansion itself when the gulf between player levels entering the expansion can be so wide?’
Even so — understanding the reasoning for it didn’t mean I had to like it. And going in, I didn’t.
For me? It didn’t end up being a problem, and I think it dealt with the progression problem well. The key bit there, though, is ‘for me’. As someone who knew there was essentially zero chance of progressing far enough through a NG+ run to play the DLC, so I kept my main playthrough in that first world despite being ‘done’.
So I also entered Shadow of the Erdtree in that first-run state.
This was still no cakewalk. I was smacked around like an over-loved chew toy early on, or any time I ventured further than was probably wise for my Scadutree Blessing level.
The big flaw in this design though, as alluded to, was for players who could be well into a seventh, eighth, or even higher NG+ run when they started.
The expansion assumes you’ve had a chance to level your Blessings from each of those run-throughs; but of course, that was impossible for runs completed before the release of the expansion.
You can get up to 20 levels per run. Do the math on that, and you can perhaps start to see why these players were being one-shot by the most basic of enemies should they so much as a sideways glance.
Area Design and Scope
Let’s start with the question of scope first. You may have noticed that generally, I’m referring to Shadow of the Erdtree as an ‘expansion’ rather than a ‘DLC’. That is quite intentional.
How Long to Beat suggests 26 hours is the average length to complete… if you’re only going for the main storyline. I spent close to 50 hours, and this appears to be average for more completionist runs. Fifty hours is not too far off half of what I spent on the base game.
This is an expansion without a doubt.
More doesn’t always mean better though.
And you know what? Getting started in the very first area of the expansion — I did wonder if perhaps things weren’t quite up to scratch. That sensation didn’t last for long though, and any shadow (hah) of a doubt was gone in fairly short order after that.
Variety of areas? Amazing.
Surprising linkages between some of them? Present.
Improvements to the base game formula? Yup.
And on that last one — perhaps the best example of this comes in the form of the ‘side dungeons’.
You know the ones — often tombs, but sometimes caves or other things entirely, but whatever the trappings were, reused bosses and did, unfortunately, start to feel a bit ‘samey’. The other key feature of them being a singular point of grace, meaning there was only so far ‘away’ from that starting point they could go without feeling punishing.
The ‘side dungeons’ in Shadow of the Erdtree barely feel like side dungeons at all. They carry the identity of a bigger ‘Legacy’ dungeon in many cases, and like the legacy dungeons — share the ability to contain multiple sites of grace.
This allows the dungeons to feel far-reaching. You get the sense of a true ‘journey’, an adventure that most of the base game side games couldn’t come close to.
Technical State and (Spoiler Free) Conclusion
Elden Ring launched in a less-than-ideal technical state. It stuttered like crazy, with reports of input delay, and even the odd crash.
Those issues were ultimately fixed, and Shadow of the Erdtree hasn’t reintroduced any of them.
An issue I did run into though, is that it does appear you can still sequence break quests such that they’re no longer completable. I had this happen with one character’s questline by simply stepping into a room.
The storyline of Erdtree is, in many respects, far more open in how it is being told. Quests are less opaque in what you’re expected to do. I mean- don’t misunderstand, there is still no quest log and you will have to pay attention to know what to do, but the steps at least make sense. Even with this being the case though, the fact that there are actions (and I would argue, non-obvious actions to a first-time player) that can break questlines leads to a situation where even if you don’t want spoilers, you may still be better off trying to look ahead out of the game for where these breakpoints are.
That issue aside?
I loved it.
It had all the highs and lows of a Souls game, with incredibly tough areas, then paced out by a site of grace to give you a reprieve and feel the stress leave your body, along with the endorphins from knowing: You did it.
To say nothing of the boss battles.
I didn’t address it in the difficulty section — but it is true that bosses are much more aggressive right off the bat here than they were in the base game or in any other FromSoft Souls game to date. No more slow walks across the boss arena, oh no. They’ll be dashing in your direction, getting up in your face right quicksmart.
It takes some getting used to, but I came to enjoy it. Mostly. There are two top-of-mind exceptions to that, and one of them was the final boss. Hah.
If you love Elden Ring? No hesitation on my part in recommending Shadows of the Erdtree to you.
This was posted during Blaugust 2024, the annual blogging event hosted by Belghast. Blaugust is an event aiming to welcome new blogger blood into the fold and revitalise those who’ve been at it a little longer.
The Blaugust Discord is still available to join in, year-round!
Just out curiosity what kind of character build were you fighting that last Elden Ring DLC boss with? I’m having, let’s say, ahem, some minor difficulties with a dexterity build.
I played through the base game and first third or so of the DLC as a Glintstone Sorcerer type (although relied heavily on melee by way of Moonveil anyway).
I ended up respeccing to an Int/Fai hybrid build as I wanted to use Rellana’s twinblades, ended up not liking the dual weapon playstyle though, but kept the build and finally tried out Sword of Flame and Night (I think it’s called) from the base game, and stuck with that for essentially the rest of the DLC including last boss.
All of which is to say, basically Melee + shield (light shield though, I was using the Carian Knight shield from the base game, then rather imaginatively replaced it with the Carian Knight shield from the DLC when I got that). I switched out the shield hand for focus when I wanted to cast, but in boss combat, that was almost never.
So I was melee with a some buffs and fancy options for non-boss engagements. xD
What got me the most for a long time was in Phase 2, when he did the jump in the air, and then the 4 holy image attacks slamming the ground before landing himself. I could get out of the holy disc attack, the mega AoE etc, but that one, it took forever to get the timing right on.
Forgot to follow up on this. I finally got him two nights ago, shortly after I saw your post. I loathed the second phase of that fight. That holy damage was ridonkulous, and I could never even see what he was doing, and all the light shows really lagged my game.
Anyway I used a Godskin Peeler +25 twinsword kind of thing (one handed) with the Bloody Slash ash of war for bleed buildup (it was the first one I found in Elden Ring that was clearly better than all the rest), and a Brass Shield +25. I found it to be the best overall medium shield, and funnily enough it drops from practically the first enemies you see in the game. But I’ve also used the Carian Knight shield for magic enemies. But mainly a Scorpion Stinger dagger in the first phase and Hefty Rot Pots in the second phase turned the tide for me. A number of the DLC bosses were somewhat vulnerable to Scarlet Rot, I found.
I also use the Mimic Tear on all the story boss fights. I’m not really in tune with the Elden Ring community but I assume everyone thinks that’s cheating, but in this case I absolutely hated fighting this guy and it didn’t stay alive very long anyway. I had to wait until near the point where the second phase began to summon it, and half the time I’d get killed in the process.
Congratulations!
I would not have been above using pots had I thought of that. Clever.
And yep, there is still a contingent who thinks the Mimic is cheating, but amusingly that contingent has seemingly got smaller / less vocal with the DLC.
One thing I forgot to mention in my last post, but thankfully not your detriment it seems, is I have discovered (by way of reading elsewhere) that the Blessing of Marika potions can now be used by the mimic if they’re equipped when the Mimic is summoned. That did let me (on some attempts, didn’t seem to be 100% reliable) summon Mimic from the beginning and then keep it going relatively far into P2 as well.