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No maidens? No worries. Because thou can finally cease thy bated breath whilst waiting for the Shadow of the Erdtree. It is finally upon us, and once more must thou ready thy soul for crushing. For Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree is thy sole maiden, thou needst to please. Writ below are meager undertakings thou must perform before one dies in obscurity under the Shadow of the Erdtree.
My head hurts. In other words, here’s how to prepare for the Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree DLC before it arrives on June 21, 2024.
Make a New Character or Play NG+
If you’ve been away for a while, then you’re probably rusty and should consider starting a new character or taking your old character into NG+ to re-familiarize yourself with the game. Granted, we’re all probably going to be walking into Shadow of the Erdtree like hapless, mewling infants.
But retraining that muscle memory can go a long way. After all, each new Souls DLC adds a difficulty spike that will blindside most returning players who have been gone for a while. It’s reasonable to expect the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC to be more difficult than the base game.
Train With Malenia
Malenia has held the throne as the most difficult Souls boss ever but we imagine that will change once Shadow of the Erdtree drops. Have you seen the new boss, Messmer? We’re calling it this early on; he’s probably going to one-up Malenia in terms of difficulty.
Sadly, there might be no other way to train for that than repeatedly fighting Malenia. Just leave your invites in her boss room if you want more of her. Channel a bit of your “Let Me Solo Her” energy and help out other Tarnished who are tired of turning into Malenia’s flower fertilizer.
Cap Out Your Builds
In addition to fighting the toughest boss in Elden Ring repeatedly, you’ll also want to finish your build at the very least. The usual cap for stats is 80 for the main damage stat (whether it’s Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Faith, or Arcane), and beyond that, you’ll get diminishing returns.
Meanwhile, for survivability, you’ll want at least 60 Vigor and some Endurance to at least put you in the Medium weight Equip Load bracket. You can technically boost all stats up to 99 if you want. You have plenty of months to do that anyway.
Collect All Gear
We’re almost certain that Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree will introduce some busted weapons and busted builds. But you need to keep in mind that some of those builds might be reliant on certain interactions from the main game’s weapons.
For that matter, we recommend collecting each and every weapon (at least one copy) to ensure that you’re ready for whatever comes up in the new meta, whether it’s PvP or PvE. Or you can just ignore the meta but still have some gear at the ready, for variety.
Try Out Other Builds & Skills
Speaking of meta, here’s your chance to see what the fuss is all about and why everyone’s going gaga over Bleed builds. Some Elden Ring builds are sadly more blessed than others (R.I.P. Quality/Str-Dex builds). It’s easier to test this if you have all the weapons and Talismans in the game.
Additionally, this is also a good opportunity to test out other Ash of War Skills or spells that you might have missed or ignored. You’d be surprised at how powerful some of them are, especially Lion’s Claw (which never got nerfed).
Collect All Weapon Upgrade Materials
In the spirit of being as ready as you can be, try to collect every Smithing Stone you can lay your hands on. That includes the Somber Smithing Stones for special armaments. To do this, you’d have to raid every cave, dungeon, and nook and cranny in the Lands Between.
It’s quite a long undertaking, but having all the upgrade materials at the ready could help you test out some of the new toys in Shadow of the Erdtree. If you’re on the PC, there are cheat and convenience mods to avoid the chore, letting you just dump all the upgrade materials in your inventory. But we only recommend them if you’ve already finished the game at least once.
Get All the Endings, Make Melina Mad
Speaking of finishing the game, there are a total of six endings, and some of them come with rather lengthy questlines to unlock. We don’t mean finishing the game six times to unlock six endings. You can actually unlock around four or five endings in one playthrough.
One ending conflicts with the other endings, though (Lord of the Frenzied Flame Ending). That one needs its own playthrough. For the most part, they’re just different flavors of ending cutscenes, but the involved quests come included with major lore bits to help you understand the story.
Kill All Bosses, Including Optional Ones
You haven’t really finished a Souls game until you’ve killed all the available bosses, right? That includes the optional ones. And in Elden Ring, there’s a whopping 238 bosses (including the re-skins). So, get to work on that hitlist because it’s about to expand once Shadow of the Erdtree drops.
At least clean up the main game first before going on a regicide, deicide, or genocide in the DLC. For the most part, the majority of the bosses are easy anyway and you shouldn’t have trouble defeating them. Don’t forget the nighttime bosses; put them out of their graveyard shift misery.
Finish All Side Quests
The questing system in Elden Ring, while pragmatic, can be obscure sometimes, and you’re bound to miss a lot of them. So, if you’re on another playthrough like we suggested, you might want to hunt all of them and finish them. They also come with rewarding story bits — some of which are likely connected to Shadow of the Erdtree.
Even the whole area in which Malenia resides, the Haligtree, is completely missable if you don’t have patience or are in a rush. Additionally, plenty of these side quests tie into some of the endings. So you’ll be hitting several birds with one stone.
Prepare to Die
With all that’s been said and done, a general advice we can give you is to bolster your grit. Because no matter how much you prepare for Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, there will be bosses who will put thoust in thy meager grave. Knowing that you will die over and over again should soften the blow.
Of course, the tips we’ve given above on how to prepare for Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree will still even out your odds. They also might clear up your over-reliance on skills. So you might as well play as much Elden Ring as you can before Shadow of the Erdtree puts your foolish ambitions to rest.
