In yesterday’s post, I talked about what I liked about Shadow of the Erdtree (Elden Ring DLC, FromSoft, my GOTY), and one thing that I really didn’t like. The latter was how easy it was to fuck up the NPC questlines, which was somewhat my fault, but also the fault of the strength of the game, too. The intricacy of the level design. It spins me around, which is great for grandeur and epicness, buut not great for my sense of direction.
Since I want to talke about the whole DLC, there will be
*SPOILERS*
When I reached Shadow Keep, I was already turned around and disoriented. Because of the ladder I mentioned in the last post, I approached from the back. This is not especially hidden, and I’m sure thatt many people went in the back way.
Shadow Keep is both amazing and frustrating as fuck. The two entrances lead to different floors, though you can get to one of the floors you reach from the front by jumping down to it from one of the floors you reach from the back. This legacy dungeon is so labyrinthian, I was constantly turned around. This is where two of the NPCs are, and I completely missed one of them (Ansbach) in his hidey hole. I found the other one, Redmane Freyja, near the Site of Grace on the seventh floor. She was trying to puzzle something out and said she should talk to Sir Ansbach.
This is where I fucked up. What you’re supposed to do is go back to Ansbach and tell him what Freyja had said. He’ll give you a letter to give to her, but the wikis warn not to give Ansbach the Secret Rite Scroll you find in the keep BEFORE getting the letter to give to Freyja because it might block the progress in her questline. If you do things in the wrong order, you won’t be able to give her the letter–and she just stays stuck in the same place for the rest of the game. You can get her shit at the end of the game, but you can’t finish her questline.
The NPC questlines are off the charts difficult to follow in the DLC. I mean, they’re never easy to follow, but From definitely kicked it up a notch for this DLC. The only NPC questline I did right was Igon’s, and that’s because it’s ok to miss one step in his questline AND he’s literally on the road where you’re going. You can’t miss him the first time, and I will admit that I looked up where to find him later on.
Look. I had messed up the following questlines: Ansbach, Freyja, and Thiollier. Also, I wanted to be able to summon Jolan for Messmer’s fight on my second playthrough, so I had to look that up as well. I was paranoid that I was going to fuck it up, so I checked it every step of the way. Did it take away from the experience? A bit. Did I regret it? Not at all. It was the same with the Dragon Communion Priestess. She had a questline that was easy to fuck up, so I consulted the wikis liberally the second time through.
I like to do things an organically as possible on my first playthrough, but I don’t like missing massive things, either. Yes, I know I’ll play it again, but it’s not easy to get into the DLC. In fact, that’s one of the things people mentioned as a negative for its GOTY candidacy. They argued that having to play most of the game in order to access the DLC meant that it should not be eligible.
Which, no. I mean. There are console exclusives that get nominated. In fact, the winner for 204 at Keighley’s game awards show was a PS5 exclusive–Astro Bot (Team ASOBI). That cuts out a lot of people from being able to play the game, so it’s essentially the same argument. In fact, it’s even more restrictive because anyone who has Elden Ring can access the DLC.
We can argue about the limitations of a DLC being nominated, but it has to be a good faith argument. I know I’m not in the majority, but I honestly don’t see a reason Shadow of the Erdtree shouldn’t be nominated. I heard one games journalist say angrily that FromSoft had already got their flowers for the game, so why couldn’t they just let other developers get their kudos.
I thought that was such a strange argument. Like, did he think there was only so much praise a game should get? And if it’s sufficiently different, then why shouldn’t it be considered again? If they had called it a sequel and just slapped a different title on it, then no one would have been mad about it. The game is in a completely different map and is connected to the first game, but happens at a parallel time, so it qualifies as a squel if you want to be nitpicky about it.
Seriously. My first playthrough took me about seventy hours to finish. that’s a third of the time the main game took me, but it’s still more than many full base games give you. It was also half the price of a new game, so that’s really good bang for your buck.
Also, you can get to the DLC fairly early in the game. I’ve done it twice with my NG+ characters. I wouldn’t recommend it for people who were playing for the first time, but you can get there in less than an hour. Again, I wouldn’t necessarily do that on your first playthrough, but on NG+, it’s eminently doable. The biggest hurdle is that Mohg is one of my least-favorite bosses to fight, and you have to kill him in order to get into the DLC. Why do I dislike him? Because in the second half of the fight, he does this blood thing that continuously drains your health. There’s a tear you can put in your Flask of Wondrous Physick to block the attack, but it lasts for a limited amount of time. Oh, and he regains attack if the blood attack harms you. So he’s basically stealing your health. I think. That’s my take on it, anyway.
In other words, it’s a DPS attack. You have to kill him quickly, otherwise it gets harder and harder as the fight goes on (because you’re using all your resources, and he’s just gaining strength). I did not have much of a problem with him with my first character because I had a lot of powerful ranged attacks that I could hit him with from afar and not worry as much about his blood attacks.
The second time I faced him was with my strength character, and I just could not be fussed to fight him. I didn’t enjoy the fight at all, and I thought it was cheating. I fought him three or four times with my strength character, and nearly got him the second time. He did some bullshit attack and got me–and I was done. I had no desire to fight him again, so I–oh, wait. I did fight him another time before that, but I summoned humans and felt no guilt about it. With my strength character, I could not get human summons.
I had read about a cheese with this boss that included falling through his arena. I watched a video of it and decided to give it a go. Just getting to the place where I needed to get to in order to do the fall was stressful, and I fucked up the fall once or twice. I did manage to make it work, and got 500,000 Runes at some point during the fall. He’s supposed to give 420,000 Runes, but I read that various creatures can die along the way and I might have had my beetle on (the golden scarab that gives extra runes per kill. Rory calls it his beetle, so I’ve taken to calling it that, too).
That’s all for today.. I’ll be back at this tomorrow.