It’s been two years since Elden Ring launched, and fans are naturally eager to get their hands on its first expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree. The game’s director has now shared some additional details about the DLC, which he says is the biggest expansion FromSoftware has ever created.
In an interview with Weekly Famitsu (and helpfully translated by Frontline Gaming Japan), director Hidetaka Miyazaki provides an idea of how big the new open field map in Shadow of the Erdtree will be. Miyazaki explains that the idea was to make sure the DLC provided an “Elden Ring-like experience,” which meant another huge map to explore, full of complex dungeons and massive monsters to vanquish.
The total size, he says, is bigger than the soulslike game‘s opening area, Limgrave. It includes its own new legacy dungeons as well as smaller minor dungeons, and overall is “more diverse” than Limgrave – so we can probably expect to run into several distinct sub-zones in it.
This new area, The Realm of Shadow, is connected to the main map in Elden Ring via a portal accessed by touching the withered arm emerging from the cocoon found in Mohg’s boss arena. Miyazaki says that once you’ve reached the Realm of Shadow, you’ll be able to freely travel back and forth to the Lands Between, and the new area contains the sites of grace that you can teleport to once you’ve found them.
You’ll need to have defeated both Starscourge Radahn and Mohg, Lord of Blood in order to access the RPG game‘s DLC, and Miyazaki says the difficulty of the new area is designed for late-game players. However, Shadow of the Erdtree has its own internal leveling system, which Miyazaki says is similar to the attack power stat found in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. This new stat means that even fully leveled characters will run into bosses they can’t handle yet, so it’ll take a while before players figure out how to whip right through this expansion.
The full interview has loads more details about the new expansion. The Elden Ring Shadow the Erdtree release date is set for June, so we don’t have much longer to wait for this new adventure.
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