Game Theory: 5 spoiler-free tips for surviving Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree

Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off the weekend by taking a look at the world of gaming, diving in to the ideas that underpin the hobby we love with a bit of Game Theory. We’ll sound off in the space above, and invite you to respond down in the comments, telling us what you’re playing this weekend, and what theories it’s got you kicking around.

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Today (or yesterday, if you’re one of those lucky bastards blessed by the timezone gods), From Software released Shadow Of The Erdtree, the massive DLC expansion to its best-selling, Game Of The Year-claiming action-RPG Elden Ring. If you want to know whether the expansion is worth your 40 bucks (and the 60-plus hours of your life it’ll eat), you can read our review here. (Short version: Absolutely.) But if you’re just looking for a few (largely) spoiler-free ways to ease your trip into the game’s separate universe, the Realm Of Shadow, well, we’ve got you covered there, too. Here they are, then, without any further preamble: Five tips that would have helped us in our first bumpy forays into Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree.

1. Prepare to live

Shadow Of The Erdtree is endgame content, by mandatory design: Elden Ring players can’t access the DLC at all until they’ve killed both Starscourge Radahn (a mid-game boss) and then the much nastier Mohg, who lies waaaaay at the end of one of Elden Ring’s million or so optional dungeons. So chances are that you’re going to be fairly high level, and comfortable in your character build, before venturing into the Realm Of Shadow.

That being said, there are a few things you can do to make sure your first few hours with the expansion are a bit less torturous. The most important, to our mind, is managing your Flasks Of Crimson and Cerulean Tears, Elden Ring’s main healing method. Somewhat surprisingly, Shadow contains absolutely zero ways to add more charges or effect to your handy source of healing—while also offering up fights that are going to make you desperate to sip down every last drop. Upgrading the Flasks is a major priority at the start of every Elden Ring playthrough, but you’re going to want your trusty magic thermos in top condition before you head into the expansion content.

Level-wise, a character who can kill Mohg can probably survive the early hours of the expansion—which isn’t to say that our late-game build, fresh off beating the game’s final boss, didn’t struggle mightily in the early going. Luckily, the expansion has a way to even those early bumps out…

2. Scadutree blessings and you

As we noted in our review, the new “Scadutree blessing” system is Shadow Of The Erdtree’s main way to a) make sure characters coming in at pretty different strength levels can at least basically hang in the fancy new DLC they just shelled out 40 bucks for, and b) allow characters to continue to grow stronger, even when their numerical level has hit the point where you’re getting piddly benefits from buying each new stat point. By spending Scadutree Fragments in increasing number, you increase your blessing level, which corresponds to flat increases to both your damage and your defensive stats, active only while you’re in the Realm Of Shadow. By the end of our time with the expansion, we were rocking an extra 200 or so damage thanks to the blessing, a boost of about a third of our total—which is to say, the improvements for getting these upgrades are genuinely impactful.

And since bosses in Shadow Of The Erdtree absotively, posilutely expect you to be bringing those kinds of numbers to the fight, you’re going to want to prioritize finding those fragments as early as you can. We won’t give you directions on that, since learning where they’re likely to be is part of learning to navigate the DLC. (More on that in a second.) But it’s worth keeping in mind, as you play, that upgrading your Blessing remains a viable path to power for pretty much all of Shadow Of The Erdtree. It’s kind of like the classic first-time Elden Ring pitfall of running straight for newb-crusher Margit The Fell Omen and being taught, one massive shillelagh hit at a time, that you should maybe leave and come back when you’ve got more power: If you hit a wall in Erdtree, go explore, find some more Fragments, and bring that shiny new upgraded blessing to bear on your tormentor.

3. Learn (or re-learn) how to read your map

Elden Ring has one of the best maps in all of gaming. Not only is it beautiful as art, full of strange little bits of incidental drawings and recreations of the world’s various gorgeous locales, but it’s also shockingly functional—a careful examination can reveal the locations of valuable resources, important secondary locations, and even things like caves and tunnels that can help you find whole new regions of the world to explore.

Shadow Of The Erdtree is, if anything, more dense with secrets than the base game, and its map is consequently even more useful. You’re always going to want to beeline for the locations where each map is waiting for you as soon as you get to a new region, but you’re also going to want to re-acquaint yourself with what the various symbols and lines on the map mean. The biggest one is remembering what the light dotted lines that appear all over the terrain indicate—i.e., an underground passage or other bit of scenery that passes below the main feature represented on the map. We lost our minds a bit trying to figure out how to get to certain places in the Realm Of Shadow, and remembering what those little lines meant is what finally helped us crack the problem.

4. Knowing your mini-dungeons

As with base Elden Ring, Shadow Of The Erdtree divides its areas into a few big basic categories. On the one hand, there’s the overworld, where you run around on horseback, navigate wide vistas, and look up at beautiful locations sitting on top of giant cliffs and ask yourself “Well, how the fuck do I get over there?” On the far other side, there are so-called “legacy dungeons,” huge expanses of level that map, roughly, on to what would have been a dungeon in From’s earlier Dark Souls games—carefully crafted combat encounters, environmental challenges, and a big, nasty boss fight at the end. In the middle remain mini-dungeons, much shorter doses of content—and, just like in Elden Ring, Erdtree’s versions of them come in different flavors. (Which we’re now going to break down, so if that’s a spoiler for you, please scroll past.)

Catacombs: These are pretty much the same as they are in the base game: Trap-filled dungeons with lots of tricky level design and hidden secrets. Your primary reward for exploring them will typically be either new summons, or upgrade materials for your existing ones.

Nameless Mausoleums: These are one-room boss dungeons, focused on a single fight, and usually rewarding you with a piece of equipment or spell used by the enemy you fight. Notably, these don’t have a Site Of Grace checkpoint attached to them, so you’ll have to use the nearby Stake Of Marika to revive yourself if you lose to the enemy within.

Forges: Smaller puzzle dungeons with a fire theme, primarily used to acquire upgrade materials to improve the many, many new weapons you’ll be picking up throughout your time in the Realm Of Shadow. Notable for typically not having bosses, and a fairly limited palette of enemy types.

Gaols: The most interesting of the new mini-dungeon types, these are larger dungeons with a focus on vertical maneuvering, and a more, let’s say, gooey enemy variety. Often maze-like, expect to budget a little more time when you’re venturing into one of these suckers. (The legions of abandoned cages on the outside are a dead giveaway that one is nearby.)

5. Prepare to die

As we noted in our review of the expansion, one of Shadow Of The Erdtree’s first big statements of intent likely comes just a few minutes into your initial exploration of the Realm Of Shadow. You’ve just come out of the starting zone, looked out over an absolutely startling vista… and then gotten yourself thrown right the hell off your horse by some sort of whirling dervish with knives attached to his hands. If you’re coming into the expansion rusty, like we were after more than a year away from Elden Ring, it’s likely this first fight—with, we emphasize, one of the expansion’s regular enemies, albeit one of the nastier varieties—will hand you your first “YOU DIED” much sooner than you were expecting.

Shadow Of The Erdtree has been designed, somewhat understandably, for people who already know how to beat Elden Ring—who have attuned to the rhythms of its combat, the various buffs and special moves you need to add to your arsenal to survive, all of it. The game actually calms down quite a bit after that first encounter—and once you start picking up the aforementioned Scadutree Blessings—but its first goal is to disabuse you of the notion that taking down the original game’s final boss means your character is going to roll through the Realm. You are going to die here, a lot. Sometimes it will be exhilarating—but sometimes, it’s going to suck. From’s most popular games have always had a strong element of perseverance built into them, and Shadow Of The Erdtree isn’t afraid to make you sweat to see everything it has to offer. (We, for instance, are still stuck on the last boss as we write this.) It’s also generous with tools to help ease those problems, and learning how to find said tools, and bring them to bear on the game’s challenges, and ultimately triumph remains just part of what makes the game a masterpiece.

Alright, that’s enough tipping from us. Go forth, Tarnished. The Realm Of Shadow awaits.