Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree is the first and only expansion to Elden Ring, but does this vast DLC live up to the majesty of the original?
Let’s first start with the biggest question, is Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree worth the two year plus wait? Yes, it certainly is, but there are a few caveats. You see, it’s nature as an expansion means Shadow of the Erdtree plays by different rules to the base game, and this change in dynamic both works for and against Elden Ring as a complete package.
First of all, let’s address the lore. The DLC is set after you kill Mohg, Lord of Blood, one of Marika’s abandoned Omen children who secretly made his own plans to win the Shattering War. His plan was to let his siblings all kill each other while he stole away with the most powerful of their number, Miquella.
Placing his cherubic half-brother in a form of stasis (in that weird egg in Mohg’s lair), the leader of the Mogwyn Dynasty would continuously feed Miquella his blood in an effort to transform him into a suitable avatar for the creepy Blood Mother outer god that Mohg worships. Then, the Lord of Blood planned to use Miquella as a puppet king/weapon and rule through him.
Mohg kept Miquella inside the egg, but where is he now?
Alas, a Tarnished champion ends Mohg’s plans when the player slays him to obtain his bloodstained shard of the Elden Ring. However, unbeknownst to Mohg, Miquella has used his vast power to shed his original body, and escape into the Shadow Lands – somewhere those who follow the Golden Order may not venture.
We’ll let you discover why that is, but the aim of the DLC is to track down Miquella, who may now be at the mercy of the Shadow Land’s vicious ruler, Messmer the Impaler. After joining up with a merry band of fellow Tarnished who have pledged their allegiance to “Kindly Miquella” off you go on your new adventure.
When you enter Shadow of the Erdtree you’ll be given the freedom to go where you like, although the game will send you down a pretty linear path as you follow the story, but that’s okay, as it’s helpful to have some direction. However, even those who’ve spend the past two years climbing to an incredibly high and overpowered level will eventually hit a progress wall.
That’s because the expansion uses a new progression system where you’ll need to acquire “Blessings” to get stronger. The lower your level, the more these Blessings will boost your stats. However, to access the DLC you’ll need to have killed Mohg, so even those on the lower level end are still likely using “endgame” characters by most player standards.
Messmer the Impaler is the ruthless ruler of the Shadow Lands.
The Blessings exist simply to help balance things out slightly, and get all players on a relatively more even keel. You see, the enemies and bosses in Shadow of the Erdtree are considerably tougher than their base game counterparts, and the more of these Blessings your gather, the more you’ll be able to boost your stats, and the easier the game will be. Want the hardcore experience? Then don’t use any of these Blessings.
There’s also Blessings for your Spirit Summons, so you can make sure they can also keep up with you and the increasing difficulty. The Blessings apply to all your Summons at once, so you don’t need to level them up individually. It’s also worth pointing out that you can only use your Blessing-boosted stats in the Shadow Lands. Should you go back to the Lands Between, you’ll revert back to the standard levelling system. However, when you return to the expansion region, you’re boosted stats will the waiting for you.
This all works well, but most of the Blessings are scattered around the whole map, meaning you’re going to need to track them down if you’re to keep progressing in the story. That’s unless you didn’t just “git gud” in the last two years, you got near perfect. This essentially means that you’ll need to pause your journey now and then to go exploring and track down more Blessings.
Most players are going to do this anyway, but it’s annoying not to do it on our terms. Should you face a boss you can’t beat, it’s time to hop on Torrent and hope the direction you’re riding in contains some of what you’re looking for. The good news is it probably will, but it takes you away from simply ploughing through the story and the path that Miquella’s followers continue to rave about.
What has become of Miquella and where is he going?
This is forgivable though, because the new regions all have their own stories and are a vibrant, masochistic joy to explore. Each new area is teeming with secrets to discover, as well as exciting new gear. As you’d expect from a Souls expansion. Shadow of the Erdtree is full to the brim with new armour, weapons, spells and more. Not only do the new weapon types allow for some funky new builds, many of the new items will allow players to tweak existing builds, creating even more build diversity in the base game.
The only thing that slightly Tarnishes Shadow of the Erdtree is its obsession with trying to up the difficulty ante. At times, it feels like FromSoft are trying too hard to make it hard, rather than making it great. Its status as an expansion means that the developers feel obliged to try and make it more difficult than anything that’s come before, and it is, but this time is feels somewhat performative. Something nobody can say about Bloodborne’s the Old Hunters or Dark Souls 3’s delectable Ringed City.
There’s one moment especially that stands out in our minds, a moment where the desire to increase the difficulty not only ruins the battle, it drags the expansion down creatively. The good news, though, is that everything up to this point reminded us why we fell in love with Elden Ring, or even why we fell in love with FromSoftware to begin with. To even those of us who started our journey with 2009’s Demon’s Souls, Shadow of the Erdtree proves that our appetite for Hidetaka Miyazaki’s marvellously malevolent multiverse can never be satisfied.
