Elden Ring (25th February 2022) | Shadow of the Erdtree (21st June 2024)

[Julius]

Story trailer for Shadow of the Erdtree: 

Hypeeeeee

[Hero-of-Time]

Been waiting for you to post this. You took your time.

[Julius]

Shadow of the Erdtree previews be dropping:

Some clarity on the separate levelling system:

Quote

Shadow of the Erdtree introduces a new system, called Shadow Realm Blessing, to help level the playing field a little. Intrepid explorers are offered the chance to find and use a new consumable to apply a stackable buff that negates some incoming damage and increases the damage you cause to opponents in the Land of Shadow.

Just 2½ weeks to go, and I'm still totally undecided about how - and if - I want to go about playing this DLC at its launch.

Do I hop back in a day or two before to get back into it and perhaps re-spec? Do I start a new save like a week out and just focus on taking out Mohg and Radahn? Or do I give it a pass for now – am I even in the mood for this? Guess we'll need to wait and see 

Edited June 4 by Julius

[Julius]

The "recapitulative" (From's words on Twitter, not mine!) story video for a bit of a refresher on how things were last time out in the wild of The Lands Between:

Also, the game has sold a couple million copies more since our last figure update back in Feb, now standing tall at 25 million copies sold:

Still unsure about committing to diving into Shadows of the Erdtree next Friday or holding off a bit -- I'd love to, but after playing around with it last week I feel lost, and definitely feel like I need to replay the game again to get back up to snuff. Hmm. 

Edited June 12 by Julius

[Julius]

Spoilers for Shadow of the Erdtree are now apparently out in the wild: 

Crazy that this has happened for digital DLC, guess it's a reviewer gone rogue yet again  shocking just how often it happens these days

[Julius]

Been so busy and focused on the hype of the Nintendo Direct that I totally forgot -- reviews and previews dropped for Shadow of the Erdtree at 15:00 today! And, at time of writing, this is currently sitting at 95 on Metacritic and 94 on OpenCritic. 

Time for gaming to have another conversation at the end of the year about whether or not a DLC/expansion can be considered for GOTY, I guess, because if we go purely off review scores and aggregates here - which, okay, isn't the most complete picture - Shadow of the Erdtree is the highest rated game of the year so far on both MC (beating Rebirth, which is on 92) and OC (again beating Rebirth, which is on 93). 

Anyways, I've got to round off Peace Walker first, but expect me back in this thread before Shadow of the Erdtree drops this weekend, because I've made a very, very stupid decision 

[Jonnas]

On 6/12/2024 at 4:05 PM, Julius said:

The "recapitulative" (From's words on Twitter, not mine!)

Sorry to chime in with this old issue, but I'd just like to say that the verb "recapitular", in Portuguese, means "to review" or "to refresh [on a subject]". I believe this is also true in Spanish.

It is possible that whoever wrote that tweet just assumed (or hoped) the word existed in English as well. Maybe it does, but nobody uses it!

(Happened to me once, with the word "crepitar". Just went with "to crepitate" and then it turns out, it actually exists in English )

[Julius]

Launch trailer for Shadow of the Erdtree:

Way more interestingly, though: the latest patch, 1.12, has updated the base game's final battle to include Torrent – you know, that FINAL BATTLE IN A MASSIVE ARENA WITH CERTAIN ATTACKS CLEARLY DESIGNED TO BE TAKEN ON WITH TORRENT?! 

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New inventory features

[...]

• Added new feature to summon spectral steed during the Elden Beast the boss battle.

[...]

Kind of insane to not only see it added, but to see it updated this far out from the game's initial release, and tied to the update going live before SotE goes live – I wonder if that's a hint that there might be another big boss battle where you can do this in the DLC? 

[Julius]

Over 5 million players have checked out the Realm of Shadow in Shadow of the Erdtree, close to a 20% attachment rate compared to sales for the base game. 

Pretty astounding considering the type of game that this is and the requirements of needing to take out Radahn and Mohg before accessing the DLC to begin with – probably 2 of the 3 toughest Shardbearer fights in the game in my opinion, after Malenia and ahead of the other 3 Shardbearer fights we get with Morgott, Rennala and Rykard? 

Edited Thursday at 02:09 PM by Julius

[dwarf]

Yeah it's kinda crazy from a publisher perspective, but people can always summon other players or use a beefed up mimic tear to make things more manageable. You can tell they've thrown a lot of money into advertising the game.

I've played a lot of the DLC and it's great so far – it's basically another helping of the main game. With it being an add-on, I was concerned it would be quite small and not feel very open-worldy, but the Land of Shadow is MASSIVE and has plenty of branching paths to pull you in various directions. I suppose that's to be expected given the price tag and how long From have had to work on it. Master stroke of Miyazaki to suggest it would 'only' be the size of Limgrave.

Edit: lmao at them patching Torrent into the Elden Beast fight... take your time lads 

Edited Thursday at 02:59 PM by dwarf