Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Continues to Receive Balance Patches Demanded by Fans
When Elden Ring’s massive expansion ‘Shadow of the Erdtree’ launched late last month, many fans were impressed by the high level of quality upheld in the DLC compared to the main game. Although there were fewer groundbreaking additions than some were hoping for, more weapons, intertwining areas and bosses were enough on their own to make this the best rated add-on on Opencritic of all time. Despite the high praise from critics and fans alike, the DLC also had its fair share of controversies and problems. This ranged from performance issues and problems with item drops but, most vocally, a lot of fans were overwhelmed by the DLC’s difficulty.
Image by FromSoftware
Of course, Elden Ring (as well as all FromSoftware games) is known for its crushing controller-smashing difficulty. However, according to many fans, the bump in boss health and damage felt unfair and tedious compared to the base game. This got so bad with negative reviews on Steam that the expansion dropped to a mixed rating just after launch- proving players frustrations. Of course, many of these complaints faded once the word about the DLC’s ‘Scadutree fragment’ system got around but, even with the knowledge that players could simply explore to gain a flat damage and defense advantage in battle, many players were still constantly failing to succeed.
Image by FromSoftware
To throw these players a bone, developers FromSoftware quickly issued a patch less than a week into the DLC’s release. This tweaked the scaling of the Scadutree fragments so that the first few levels were far more impactful than before. This allowed for the difficulty going into the DLC to be more of a curve rather than a harsh spike straight away. Of course, the expansion remains far and away the toughest challenge of the game but, at least with these changes, players were eased into this more than previously.
Image by FromSoftware
Since then, there have been several buffs to different weapons to further diversify player build variety and ease the difficulty somewhat. In the coming weeks and months, there are sure to be even more balance changes but, considering how many have now got used to the difficulty of the DLC and have accepted the need to level up their Scadutree blessing level, its unlikely that this aspect will be changed. Whether this was a change that was needed is still debated among the community but, considering how reviews of the DLC have risen to mostly positive again, it seems that the majority of the community are in support of these tweaks.
