We’ve all been waiting to jump into the new Elden Ring DLC Shadow of the Erdtree on June 21st, 2024. Since its initial reveal, there hasn’t been much more information.
But we do now have a new interview with details, design and even difficulty. And on top of this, a new enemy type has been teased on Twitter. That has Bloodborne fans absolutely quivering.
The difficulty of the boss is upgraded. In order to avoid being defeated frequently, it is a good way to choose to recharge Elden Ring Runes.
If you’ve missed the latest reveal or you’re just unsure about what Shadow of the Erdtree is all about, then we’ve got you covered here with a recap.
New DLC Recap
Narratively, DLC has a focus on Miquella, who’s one of the demigod children of Queen Marika, Eternal and Radagon, golden. Miquella will be a key figure in this new story as it dives into how he departed from the main world of Elden Ring in favor of Land of Shadow.
It’s going to focus on how he divested his flesh strength lineage and all things golden, which does suggest a transformation or rebirth of sorts as he embraces a new role in the world or a new destiny.
Interestingly, Miquella’s physical cocoon and body will be the entry point for the new DLC area, which is called Land of Shadow. From interviews, we know this new area is going to be around. If not bigger than the size of Limgrave in the base game and their vision is to keep the feeling of exploration and vastness of the world. Even in this DLC in the new Land of Shadow, as such, it will be a single large area for us to adventure and explore.
Miquella’s character, although centuries old, is cursed to remain in the perpetual form of a child and you may be wondering why he’s portrayed as being in a cocoon in the base game in Mohgwyn Palace. When Malenia, his twin sister, was afflicted with the rot and cure was impossible.
He actually created Haligtree, where you fight her in the base game by cocooning himself to try to grow into an adult and help purge the rot from her. However, before this could fully happen. Miquella was stolen by Mohg, Lord of blood while in this cocooned form, but you may have seen in the game that his cocoon and his arm coming out of the physical body appear to be dead.
Mohg was desperately pouring blood into the cocoon to try to revive him and ascend him to godhood.
His body, however, is just a husk of Miquella, an empty shell because he stripped himself of his flesh to travel to Land of Shadow. Land of Shadow is a place severed from the lands between which is the base games map. It’s an area overshadowed by Erdtree, and it’s theorized to have been sealed away by Marika to allow for immortality to exist.
We know it’s a land where the goddess Marika first set foot and, as such, there will be connections to both her and her offspring. But the exact details aren’t currently known. Miquella is described as being the most fearsome of Empyrean, possibly due to his unique ability to compel the affection of others which may be linked to his curse and could be the reason that Mohg was so obsessed with him and ultimately stole him.
Perhaps most interesting is the voice at the end of the trailer, stating may we meet again? This is particularly odd because the player character has never interacted directly or actually met Miquella.
Elden Ring Wiki theorizes that this could hint at Melina, Finger Maiden who is the guide to Tarnished, actually being Miquella in disguise. This further plays into her ability to draw on the affection of others. As honestly, who doesn’t like Melina, so we as the player will venture into Land of Shadow and uncover the truth behind Miquella and Marika.
With many thinking, Miquella will actually be a friendly guide to us inside as we know he protects and shelters those who are without Grace and Land of Shadow is kind of like an entire area outside of the grace of Erdtree in its Shadow. So now that you’re in the loop for roughly what’s going on.
New Enemy Revealed
Let’s go over the new enemy that’s been teased on Twitter. As we can see, it has an oversized grotesque head glowing with an intricate pattern of orange light beneath it, resembling some kind of magic or molten fiery core. The head is secured by a thin skeletal body that seems barely capable of supporting its weight.
Hence its hunch over posture in the back, we see a dark foggy forest area with twisted trees and hanging moss, and from the enemy’s design, it suggests it will either have a magical status or maybe fire based ability set. But for any Bloodborne lovers out there, many people online have already drawn similarities between enemies like Winter Lanterns and Garden of Eyes.
Both of these creatures also have large heads with many eyes. The thing is, in Bloodborne Winter Lanterns will constantly damage and build up frenzy against you just with their gaze, making them extremely annoying to deal with. So could this new enemy in the Shadow of the Erdtree be a reference or similarity to one of these mobs and possibly build a status just by being near it? We know the madness effect is an Elden Ring and it will stun and damage you based on your max HP.
DLC Difficulty
And with that, the difficulty of the DLC might be an interesting topic to you. Because we know you can get quite powerful if you spent a lot of time in Elden Ring and beat the game and farmed a ton of runes. This has been commented on in several interviews and there’s even a whole new level system of sorts that allows you to tune difficulty. When Miyazaki was asked by Famitsu, he more or less said the DLC world would restrain the players’s attack power.
That means your kind of capped at a certain strength to experience the DLC as a challenge and not just breeze through it like you would when revisiting low level zones. But in a very recent Chinese interview when asked about enemy strength and difficulty and the balance, he said the difficulty of the DLC will probably be equivalent to the level of the second half of the game.
Players at this time should already have an understanding of the game. And generally speaking, since it’s the second half the difficulty is relatively high, we also will introduce a new level element to the DLC. Allowing you to freely choose the challenge intensity. For example, if the player’s level in the main body is already very high, he can choose to turn off growth and not upgrade his new attribute to challenge his enemy.
But if he feels it’s already difficult for him, he can continue to improve the new attributes and the character’s strength. So it’s really interesting to hear about a new level system that you can choose to turn off or on depending on how brutal you like the challenge. And in the base game, you could always farm up more runes if you felt weaker.
So if the new system is anything like this, it might be another one to farm out if you’re struggling. There’s more interesting news in the interview, such as confirmation that DLC wasn’t deliberately arranged after the fact. But actually was already existing within the world as the original mythology created by George RR Martin but was too large and difficult to all fit into the base game.
New Weapons & Magic
And of course, the weapons and magic are one of the best things in Elden Ring and when asked about this. He said that the DLC will have many new weapons, new combat skills and new spells. And in terms of weapons alone, there will be eight new categories added in. Even for players that are proficient with the main content will find new stuff to experience and develop new tactics.
These new elements are not limited to DLC and can be brought back into the main game. So if you’re interested, you can challenge the original bosses with these new weapons. We actually know some of these new weapon categories from the trailer, which include Jeweling Swords, martial arts weapons, reverse grip swords and some form of throwing weapons. So it’ll be really cool to see how these are all implemented and the additional ones not yet shown.
Story Length
Something I really wonder about is the length of the DLC if the size of the actual DLC is about as big as Limbgrave. When asked, he said that he feels he cannot answer this appropriately, because at the release of Elden Ring they revealed in an interview it’s roughly 30 hours to complete the game.
But after it released, everyone disagreed with that. And so I think they aren’t confident in giving a solid number estimate. They essentially say that everyone can play according to their preference and there’s no strict order to it. So they don’t want to give an exact number due to how different people play the game and, of course, there is a focus on exploration.
Multiple Endings
With this, many of you may be wondering how the DLC affects the main story, as well as how many endings there might be. Miyazaki has said that this is an independent story to the main campaign and there won’t be as many endings as there is in the main story. But players will have some choices during the DLC, suggesting a couple or a few ending variants but not loads.
Future Of Elden Ring
And then there’s the fact that this is the first and last DLC for Elden Ring. As Miyazaki has said that they have no plans to add more content to Elden Ring. But it’s not yet decided whether the entire story of Elden Ring will be the focus. He says FromSoftware‘s style of doing things does not generally allow future IP to be easily locked. So it’s good to leave some possibilities, but as far as Shadow of the Erdtree goes, it is the only DLC.
So are you excited for the new Elden Ring DLC? And what interests you most? Personally, I can't wait to learn more about the story and get some answers to questions that we've been waiting ages for.
