Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is the sole major expansion to Elden Ring (2022), developed by FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. Released on June 21, 2024, for all platforms the base game supports, it requires ownership of Elden Ring and completion of a specific progression gate to access. It holds a Metacritic score of 94 across platforms — the highest recorded for a DLC expansion at the time of its release — and introduced what the community widely considers the most difficult content FromSoftware has ever shipped, including a final boss that generated enough debate to prompt the studio to patch him.

The People Also Ask result Google currently associates with this game is “Why do people dislike Shadow of the Erdtree?” The question’s framing — and the 94 Metacritic score it contradicts — captures the DLC’s reception precisely.

Technical Specifications

How to Access

Shadow of the Erdtree is locked behind the defeat of Mohg, Lord of Blood, a late-game optional boss located in the Mohgwyn Dynasty Mausoleum. Mohg is not on the critical path of the main game — accessing his arena requires either following Varre’s questline or using the teleporter in the Consecrated Snowfield — and is one of the harder boss fights in the base game. The DLC entrance then appears within Mohg’s arena in the form of a specific object.

This gate is higher than most FromSoftware DLC has historically required, and the studio acknowledged this was intentional: the DLC content is calibrated for players with substantial Elden Ring experience, and the access requirement serves as an implicit readiness check.

The Realm of Shadow

The Realm of Shadow is a parallel space adjacent to the Lands Between — described in lore as the place where the Erdtree’s light does not reach, and where things were buried and forgotten before the Shattering. It is accessed through the withered hand of St. Trina, reaching into the site of Mohg’s rite. The geography shares visual DNA with the base game but is substantially distinct in palette: desaturated blues and golds, crumbling architecture of a different period, and a landscape that feels simultaneously adjacent to and entirely separate from the Lands Between.

The Realm of Shadow is structured around six major Legacy Dungeons — Belurat, Castle Ensis, the Shadow Keep, Scadu Altus, the Ancient Ruins of Rauh, and the Specimen Storehouse — and the open fields connecting them, which follow the base game’s formula of scattering optional dungeons, caves, and enemy camps across the traversable space. Interactive map services like MapGenie track nearly 2,700 monthly organic visitors to the Realm of Shadow specifically, indicating sustained active exploration rather than a playerbase that has catalogued the region entirely.

The narrative thread of the DLC concerns Miquella, the demigod twin of Malenia who appears in Elden Ring’s backstory as a figure of uncommon wisdom who voluntarily stripped away his own godhood in pursuit of harmony. The expansion reveals what he was trying to accomplish and where that intention led — a story that divided the community between those who found the resolution meaningful and those who found it unsatisfying, a debate still active in the “what is your opinion” thread that currently sits in the game’s Knowledge Panel.

Messmer the Impaler

The DLC’s principal antagonist and primary mid-game boss, Messmer the Impaler, was received as one of the finest boss designs in FromSoftware’s history — a near-universal critical and community verdict in a DLC otherwise marked by sharp disagreement. Messmer is a red-haired warrior commanding fire magic and serpent-based attacks, whose connection to the realm’s buried history is elaborated through item descriptions and environmental storytelling rather than direct narrative. His boss fight is widely cited as visually spectacular, mechanically fair, and emotionally satisfying to overcome — the design benchmark against which the DLC’s other bosses were frequently measured, usually to their disadvantage.

Other notable encounters include Bayle the Dread — a dragon boss placed late in an optional questline, widely praised as the best dragon fight in the game’s history — and Midra, Lord of Frenzied Flame, an optional area boss described in multiple reviews as the DLC’s most atmospheric single encounter, with a buildup and reveal that ranked among the best FromSoftware had produced.

The Scadutree Blessing System

Shadow of the Erdtree introduces a dedicated progression system separate from the base game’s levelling. Scadutree Fragments — items scattered throughout the Realm of Shadow in enemy drops, hidden locations, and accessible ruins — are consumed to raise the player’s Scadutree Blessing level, which increases outgoing damage and reduces incoming damage within the DLC zone. A parallel system, Revered Spirit Ash Blessings, applies the same scaling to Spirit Ash companions.

The system was designed to reward exploration: players who engage thoroughly with the Realm of Shadow accumulate enough Scadutree Fragments to face the DLC’s bosses at competitive power levels, while players who rush toward objectives encounter enemies calibrated for players who have explored more carefully. This functioned as intended for players accustomed to the base game’s thorough exploration approach, and produced significant difficulty spikes for those who did not know the system existed or where to find its items. Multiple guides ranking “where to find all Scadutree Fragments” in the Realm of Shadow received substantial traffic in the weeks after launch.

New Weapons and Combat

The DLC added over one hundred new weapons alongside eight entirely new weapon categories not present in the base game. The most discussed additions included:

Throwing blades — a ranged physical weapon type that filled a gap between spells and melee, allowing fast-moving builds to engage at range without committing to a casting stat.

Light greatswords — lighter, faster variants of the greatsword class, well-suited to builds that wanted the greatsword moveset without the strength investment.

Great katanas — a heavier katana variant with distinct moveset and scaling, immediately popular with the community’s large katana-specialist playerbase.

Martial arts — unarmed combat techniques applicable without a weapon equipped, providing a gameplay expression that had no direct equivalent in the base game.

The combination of weapon volume and category breadth produced more build experimentation in the community within the first month of the DLC than any single update to the base game had generated.

Radahn, Consort of Miquella

The DLC’s final boss is Radahn, Consort of Miquella — a version of Starscourge Radahn, a major base-game boss, reimagined in the context of the DLC’s narrative conclusion. He is the source of most of the dislike the DLC attracted.

At launch, Radahn was described by a large portion of the player community as the hardest boss FromSoftware had ever produced by a meaningful margin — harder than the DLC’s other bosses, harder than the most demanding base-game content, harder than any equivalent in the studio’s history. Specific attacks, particularly a diving aerial combo in his second phase, were criticised as inadequately telegraphed relative to the window available to respond. The community response was substantial enough that on August 5, 2024 — approximately six weeks after launch — FromSoftware issued a patch that reduced his damage output and adjusted the timing windows on several attacks. He remains one of the most demanding bosses in the game after the patch; the patch brought him from broadly described as “unfair” to broadly described as “very hard.”

The debate generated by this boss persists. Players who cleared him pre-patch dispute whether the changes were necessary. Players who found him impossible pre-patch found the post-patch version accessible at max Scadutree Blessing. Players who are indifferent to FromSoftware’s difficulty house style found the narrative payoff of the DLC’s conclusion underwhelming regardless of his power level. These three groups do not agree, and the “why do people dislike” Google search reflects all three.

Why People Dislike It — and Why the Score Is Still 94

The core criticism of Shadow of the Erdtree is not that it is bad but that it is difficult and that some of that difficulty was produced by design choices the community considered unfair rather than challenging. The final boss at launch. The Scadutree Fragment system punishing players who under-explored. Camera issues during Commander Gaius, a mid-DLC boss fought in a wide-open space on a charging boar, which produced angles that obscured attacks. These are complaints about specific executions of an otherwise well-regarded expansion.

The 94 Metacritic score reflects the scale and quality of the DLC’s content when those specific complaints are placed in context: the Realm of Shadow is approximately twenty to forty hours of content at the price of a small game, introduced Messmer and Bayle as FromSoftware highlights, added weapon categories that became enduring builds in the base game’s community, and resolved the Miquella storyline that the base game deliberately left open. GameSpot’s review was titled “Kill Them With Kindness.” The title was ironic; the score was 8/10. The DLC earned its critical reception while generating the community friction that “why do people dislike it” reflects — a combination consistent with a 94-rated expansion that demanded more from its players than they expected.