Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree Guide Directory

Shadow of the Erdtree is the anticipated expansion to Elden Ring, one of 2022’s most beloved games, and an era-defining RPG. It transports players to the Land of Shadow, a new area filled with plenty of quests, NPCs, and bosses to test your skills against.

Here, we’ve collated GGRecon’s coverage of everything you need to know about the DLC. Whether it’s the location of certain items or the best strategy for taking down a boss, you’ll find it all right here.

Beginner’s Guide

Just like the base game, Shadow of the Erdtree doesn’t hold your hand in the slightest. You’ll need to piece the story together for yourself, and have your wits about you if you want to make it even a small way through the early sections of the game.

Our beginner’s guide will walk you through how to start the DLC, what sort of level you should be before tackling it, and some of the directions you should head first at the start of your playthrough.

Preparation Guide

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If you’ve just started a brand new save in Elden Ring, don’t go thinking you can jump right into the DLC from the get-go. You’ll need to do a hefty amount of grinding before you can even access the new content, and there’s a particular boss you’ll need to take down, too.

We’ve explained how you can best prepare yourself for a playthrough of Shadow of the Erdtree in our handy preparation guide.

Boss Guides

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Bosses are a pillar of Elden Ring, and the DLC is no different. With ten new main bosses to tackle and countless more hidden away in dark corners of the map, you’ll have your work cut out for you if you want to take them all down.

We’ve listed all of the bosses we’ve found in the DLC so far, as well as some tips, tricks, and best strategies you can use to defeat them yourself.

• All bosses, main boss order & tier list
• Divine Beast Dancing Lion
• Blackgaol Knight

Equipment

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Shadow of the Erdtree adds plenty of new Armour, Weapons, Spells, Talismans, and Ashes of War to the game, with completely new playstyles and class builds opening up once you find them.

Here are all of the equipment items we’ve found in the DLC so far, as well as which ones we recommend you hunt down first.

• All weapons

Locations

Navigating the Land of Shadow is no easy feat, especially when its corners are filled to the brim with secrets and items to find.

We’ve absolutely scoured the map and uncovered plenty of things that you’ll want to hunt down in a playthrough. From map fragments to entire areas, we’ve got you covered with these location guides.

• All areas & how to reach them
• All Map Fragment locations
• All Scadutree Fragment locations so far

Best Mods

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Shadow of the Erdtree is still a part of Elden Ring, and that means it’s still possible to mod the game with new content and quality-of-life features.

We’ve rounded up just a few of our favourite mods, from visual overhauls to gameplay tweaks, and collected them in an easy-to-follow guide that also explains how to install them yourself.

Review

Want to know what we thought of Shadow of the Erdtree? Give our full review a read, which explains why we think it's not just a fantastic expansion of Elden Ring, but that it might even hold some of FromSoftware's best-ever moments.

Patch Notes

This game is constantly being updated, with bugs fixed and new quality-of-life features added over time.

In this section, you'll find all of the patch notes for the game, starting from the day the Shadow of the Erdree DLC was released.

• Update 1.12

FAQs

How long to beat

It took us around 32 hours to complete Shadow of the Erdtree, with our playthrough involving a good amount of optional content. We also used spirit ash summons on every boss we could - don’t judge us, this DLC is hard.

If you’re looking to complete absolutely everything that this DLC has to offer, we expect that it will likely take you around 50 hours to complete. Expect to take even longer if your character is under-levelled or you generally struggle with Soulslike gameplay.

Download Size

The total download size for Shadow of the Erdree is around 16.5 GB. This is similar on all platforms, including PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.

Installing this alongside the base game of Elden Ring takes the total game size up to 54.2 GB.

Steam Deck

The base game runs fairly admirably on Steam Deck, pulling around 40-45 fps depending on the location you’re in. We’ve not managed to test Shadow of the Erdtree on our Steam Deck just yet, but our playthrough on PS5 hasn’t given us reason to suggest that the DLC will run any worse on Valve’s portable hardware.

We’ll report back once we’ve had a chance to test the DLC on our Steam Deck properly and provide some accurate numbers.

This guide is a work in progress and will be continuously updated as we learn more about the game.