The highly anticipated DLC for Elden Ring is finally here and what an adventure it has been, FromSoftware has hit the ball out of the park as expected and the marketing and promotions done by Bandai Namco leading up to the release were on point and amazing. Shadow of the Erdtree takes players to the Land of Shadow where you will face new bosses and find new weapons, magic, and armour to add to the already amazing armoury of Elden Ring.

After touching the withered hand of Miquella in the Mohgwyn Palace Mausoleum players will be transported to the Land of Shadow, the focus of the story for Shadow of the Erdtree is directed at Miquella who is mentioned a lot in the base game, Miquella is the child of Queen Marika and sibling to Malenia, players learn that Miquella has come to the Land of Shadow in search of someone called “The Promised Lord”, as you progress in the main story and interact with other knights in the new land you will learn the ongoing story behind the journey and the identity of the promised lord which is a character we have met in the core game and fought, Radhan who is also the half-brother to Miquella.

A new feature in Shadow of the Erdtree includes the new levelling-up system along with the standard rune spending to raise stats, players will need to seek out Scadutree Fragments which boosts your damage output and reduces how much damage you take, along with Revered Spirit Ash which increases the damage and defence of summoned ashes and even the horse Torrent.

These can be used at any site of grace locations, as you level up more with this system the required fragment cost will go up, also the cap for this new system is +20 Scadutree blessing, finding these fragments in the world can range from easy landmarks mainly a statue with the key item at the base of it, to an item drop from a loot creature which will run away and disappear if you don’t kill it fast enough if this does happen you can rest at a grace spot and they will be back where you found them but will only drop the item once.

With a new massive area to explore comes new locations and enemies to fight, and my god the team over at FromSoftware did an amazing job, as a long-time Souls game player many locations and enemies felt familiar from past FromSoftware games, throwbacks to classic enemies and locations like the deadly enemies in the Abyss area from Bloodborne the Winter Lanterns that share the same attack style of a long rage status debuff that deals damage. Some areas reminded me of locations from past Dark Souls titles with a mix and blend to them, such as the Storehouse location in Shadow of the Erdtree gave me a lot of Grand Archives vibes from Dark Souls 3 with a slight mix of Aldia’s Keep from Dark Souls 2.

Along with the vast new locations we have bosses, while seven of them are critical and have to be beaten to advance the story there are many more bosses to find and challenge, by my last count and research there were over 50 boss encounters ranging from just named enemies with a boss bar to a full-on massive encounter, one boss stood out among the main bosses with an amazing design and fight, Messmer the Impaler who was featured on the promotion art for the game and was the collector edition statue, the fight was the biggest challenge I ran into while playing and honestly loved every second of the beating I was getting.

There are over 100 new weapons to be found, eight of which are new unique weapon types such as great katana blades which are ōdachi designed as great sword variants of the katanas, or the reversed blade swords that are amazingly fast and ideal for small groups of enemies, along with the eight new weapons players will also be able to find and learn 42 new spells in Shadow of the Erdtree with spells like Golden Arcs that launch small arcs of holy magic toward foes, and for the pyro builds we now have Rain of Fire which does exactly as the name suggests you can call down a hail of fireballs from the sky onto targets for a short period.

Also with new bosses do come new boss weapons and spells after beating a big baddie, and having their soul in hand you can return to the Roundtable Hold to trade in the soul for the boss items, and certain boss gear will be available to buy from the merchant here also if you want to wear their armour.

In Conclusion, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is an amazing DLC that adds to an amazing game with many new fights and weapons to use to create new builds. It has given players so much to explore and do. Have you ever wanted to replay a game with a blank memory?

Shadow of the Erdtree offers that as it feels familiar, but everything is new for the first time again. While the new content is hard, I am not going to use that as a negative as that is what the series is meant to be. Did I die a lot? Hell yes, I did but it gave me the challenge I needed and still does as I am still finding sub-bosses to fight and new weapons to test out and use.

Written by: Shane Walsh