Shadow of the Erdtree Review: A reintroduction to Elden Ring via asskicking

In my first moments with Shadow of the Erdtree, I found myself in a graveyard dotted with incorporeal gravestones… and puddles of glowing blood. By the time I remembered what those bloodstains meant and the imminent danger I was in, I was ripped to shreds by a man I did not see or hear coming, leaving behind a new little blood puddle to mark the occasion.

I have not stopped grinning since. 

Shadow of the Erdtree is the long-awaited expansion of 2022’s game of the year, Elden Ring. According to FromSoftware, this will be the only DLC for the game, giving Tarnished one last crack at the Lands Between.

Most of my time with the DLC has been wrapped up in exploring Belurat, Tower Settlement, one of the legacy dungeons that dot the map that game director Hidetaka Miyazaki described as being as big as Elden Ring’s Limgrave. Belurat is a labyrinthine place, filled with lovely blind corners from which enemies can ambush me and attractive puke-brown waterfalls that lead to at least one of the DLC’s poison swamps. 

Despite that enticing description, Belurat is a really pretty place. It’s cast in the same pallor of pale gold as any location in the base game. And I loved looking up at the skybox and seeing what looked like billowing fabric cascading down from the sky as though the whole dungeon were covered in a gauzy funeral shroud.

The dungeon’s inhabitants, though, are less pretty to look at and not pretty at all to fight. The most basic enemies I faced were shadowy humanoid creatures, scorpions, and huge scraggly birds. Most of the time, the humans didn’t bother me unless I got too close or ventured into their line of sight. However, there was a hardier version of the humanoids who kicked the living crap out of me up and down the dungeon. 

Despite their strength, though, the humanoids were easy to kill — most creatures in the dungeon were. This, in turn, led me into a whole mess of problems of my own making. 

Playing Elden Ring successfully means keeping this in mind at all times: if you see one enemy, in reality, there are four coming up right behind you. And if, by some chance, you see the four, there are actually 12 of them, and congratulations, you are now dead.

Ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

This lesson is pretty easily learned once you’ve spent more than an hour in the Shadow Lands. However, the reason I died so many times — and the reason I haven’t been able to make much headway in the DLC — is that I let myself get lured in by how deceptively easy the enemies were to kill. Everything went down in one or two swings of my upgraded sword. If I was lucky enough to sneak up behind an enemy, the resulting surprise attack one-shot them. This built an unearned confidence in me that took a long time to dismantle. I was essentially saying to myself, “Yes, I am surrounded, but one more hit and I’ll be — oh, heck, there’s 12 of them.” 

I was too greedy and too cocky, lacking the humility necessary to navigate Erdtree safely. And I think such a lesson is vital as lots of players prepare themselves for Erdtree. Taking down Mohg, Lord of Blood — one of the bosses required to access Erdtree — is one of the harder accomplishments in the game (something not a lot of players have done according to Steam charts). And beating him or any of the other harder bosses, like Malenia, might instill in players the same undeserved arrogance I had — the kind that made me think I could just waltz through the new DLC untouched.

Tarnished, as you embark on your journey, learn from my mistakes and do not be deceived. You will die — a lot. Be slow, be methodical, be patient… upgrade your Mimic Tear ashes.

And while it was frustrating to die so much at the hands of things I knew I could easily defeat, I never felt cheated by any of my fifty ‘leven demises because I understood they were all my fault. 

By the time I got to Belurat’s boss, I figured I was in for another lesson. I wondered how many times I’d die before learning the boss’s patterns and tricks. But then another beautiful moment happened: I cheesed my way through it. I used one of the game’s summons, called up my Mimic Tear ally, and stayed back, pelting the boss with the hardest working damage spell in the Lands Between: the Glintstone Pebble.

Shadow of the Erdtree will humble the living daylights out of you, and you will thank the game for the pleasure. But you, too, have the ability to shame it back — use it.

Playing Shadow of the Erdtree is like visiting that strict grandma you love but don’t get to see very often. Whenever you see her again after a long absence, it takes a moment for you to get reacquainted with her quirky but tough-ass customs. And when you finally do get back into the rhythm, it feels like you’ve never left.

Shadow of the Erdtree launches June 21st on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.