Today, I want to talk about the NPCs in the Shadow of the Erdtree.
*SPOILER WARNING*
In the RKG Discord, I mentioned the Leda fight which is right before the last boss. Depending on how you do the NPC questlines, you can have (as I did in my first playthrough because I fucked almost all the questlines) Leda and Dane against me and a rando Sanguine Noble. I may have talked about this in a recent post. I knew this was supposed to be epic, and it just felt sad and empty. Oh, I also called in Mimic Tear.
On my second playthrough, I did the best I could to do all the NPC questlines. I didn’t allow Hornsent to enter the fray, though, because he was one-shotting the guy I watched do this fight. And the guy had at least 60 Vigor. Hornsent has the Horned Bairn consumable that sends death heads at people, but I’m assuming he has the incantation rather than a consumable. Or not a consumable because it’s not just one and done–it’s reusable. I think it’s for people who don’t have any other use for their FP. It’s like the Homing Soulmass from the Souls games, except it’s the dark version. And vengeful spirits rather than white puffy stars. I did not have Hornsent in either fight, thankfully.
In the second fight, I had Needle Knight Leda, Moore, Redmane Freyja, and Dryleaf Dane against Sir Ansbach, Thiollier, and me. I definitely mentioned this in the last post or before. It was so joyful and fun with so many different styles of fighting. Thiollier uses poison perufume bottles while Ansbach did…I’m not sure. I think he did blood scrawls such as Mohg did. Moore just two-handed a huge shield that bonked you backwards. Leda did holy shit, I think. Dryleaf is the martial arts guy. His shit is dope, but not my style at all, unfortunately.
It starts with Freyja and…Dane I think. Two come in at a time, and I can’t remember if my boys came in right away or not. It was such a great fight, and someone in the Discord mentioned that he reacted more emotionally to this fight than the final boss. I agreed with him because you get to know the NPCs throughout the DLC–if you play it right. I knew that Redmane Freya was in it for the love of the fight. She was loyal to Radahn and admired him beyond reason. Weirdly, her sword does Lion’s Claw (that’s not the weird part), but when you get it, it does Spinning Slash. Which is shit, by the way. And why for a great sword? That just really puzzles me.
Afterwards, when all their bodies save Leda’s are in the arena, I felt an actual pang of regret and sorrow. Also a tiny bit of excitement that I would get all their shit, but mostly remorse and sadness. Yes, they were fighting for a cause and yes, they were happy to die for it, but all of them were decent people. The ones in this room, that is. I am not as keen on Leda, but we’ll get to her in a second.
Dryleaf Dane was just a martial arts dude who believed in Miquella. He was pure of heart and doing the best he could. I quite liked him, even though he gave me a lot of trouble in our hand-to-word encounter in my first playthrough.
Then there was Moore. My sweet, bewildered, gentle soul. He’s kind of like the Onion Knight in temperament and in fierceness. He’s wearing heavy armor and has a heavy shield that he double-hands. He has no weapon, which is wild. When Miquella’s Care breaks (or whatever), he is bereft and does not know what to do. There are two options that you can do along with doing nothing (as a third option). The first is to tell him to put it behind him, and the other is to tell him to be sad forever. I chose not to do anything in my first playthrough, and he just sat where I first found him the whole time.
In my second playthrough, I told him to put it behind him. I knew that meant he would be in the big brawl, and I was fine with that. I have not chosen ‘remain sad forever, but I know that’s not a good thing to tell him. There are certain things that I have not done in this game, that I cannot make myself to do. I know they are just a bunch of pixels, but I really did care about them–well, some of them, anyway. There is something in the base game that is so repugnant to me, I have never done it on any of my runs. Well, at least not to the people I really like. Now that I’ve done it, I will not do it again.
Also, there are some choices in which there is clearly one good answer (for me), and I have not been able to bring myself to do the other. It bothers the completionist in me, but not eenough to actually do it.
In the DLC, the reason I don’t like Leda is because she’s a zealot. She believes in Miquella so wholeheartedly, she will defend him with everything she has. Once the charm breaks, she decides to hunt out those she deems agaist Miquella. That would be Hornsent and Ansbach, to be more specific. She goes after Hornsent first and if you don’t side with Hornsent against her (which I did) and presumably beat her (which I did), she will go after Ansbach next. I never got to that point because I was not going to let her kill Hornsent.
Interestingly enough, the horned beings are sympathetic figures at first. Messmer wiped them all out and Miquella’s acolytes seem to be against them. We know from the base game that horned beings were persecuted in that as well. The omens were mercilessly hunted and had their horns cut off. I mean, there are actual Omenkillers in the world. In fact, I used the Great Omenkiller Cleaver in my first playthrough of the DLC.
Side note: I did not use any of the new weapons or armors from the DLC for my first playthrough. Honestly, because I was magicks-based, I did not really care much for the drops. That was another issue. I did get a few decent incantations, but I felt bereft in the exploration. I have found plenty of sweet goodies in my second playthrough for my paladin, but as I mentioned in another post–there have been plenty of holy bonking sticks. That fits for my paladin character, but I would not have minded a bit of variety.
Back to the NPCs. Freyja is bae. I really liked her a great deal even though I didn’t know much about her. I dug her whole vibe and that she was fairly uncomplicated. I also liked Ansbach quite a bit. He had been a fighter in his youth, but he considered himself more a scholar now. That’s why we find him in the library as the last step before the big fight. I like him, even though he’s loyal to Mohg. It seems that we have to rethink Mohg as well, but I don’t want to talk about that right now.
I’m done for today.