Elden Ring DLC Discussion - Shadow of the Erdtree
Welcome to the official discussion thread for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree! Share your thoughts on the new areas, bosses, weapons, and lore. What's your favorite addition? How does it compare to the base game?
Remember to use spoiler tags for major story reveals!
Replies (2)
Disagree on difficulty - I think if you max out Scadutree Blessings it's actually quite manageable.
jason_schreier: Disagree on difficulty - I think if you max out Scadutree Blessings it's actually quite manageable.
Fair point on the Scadutree Blessings - people who bounced off the DLC almost always skipped the fragments and then wondered why they were getting one-shot. It's basically the DLC's real leveling system, and once you're at blessing 15-ish the numbers make sense.
That said, half the "difficulty" complaints I saw at launch were actually a frame-pacing problem in disguise. On PC, Shadow of the Erdtree shipped with the same traversal stutter Elden Ring has always had - you cross an area boundary, the frame time spikes, and suddenly a dodge roll eats an extra 40ms it shouldn't have. Against Messmer or the final boss, that stutter is the difference between a clean i-frame dodge and a death. FromSoft's 60fps cap doesn't help either.
If you're on PC and it feels unfair, try locking the framerate below your average (a hard 58 cap via RTSS smooths the pacing a ton), keep the game on an SSD with headroom, and let shaders settle on the first run through an area. It won't make Radahn easy, but at least you'll be dying to your own inputs and not to a hitch.