6 Things You Need To Do Before the Elden Ring DLC: Shadow of the Erdtree

Shadow of the Erdtree is coming out very soon and there are a few things you need to do before you can play the game, which we’ll cover in this guide.

How to prepare for Shadow of War Elden Ring DLC

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Shadow Trees is the new expansion for Elden Ring that tells the story of Miquela and his journey to the Shadowlands. The expansion offers a variety of new weapons, boss fights, spells, and areas you can visit. There is a lot to be revealed about Miquela in the Shadowlands, which you will learn about in the expansion.

However, before you embark on a new journey, you need to do the things we mention below.

Defeat Blood King Mog

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The first thing you have to do before playing the Shadow Tree expansion is to find and defeat Blood Lord Mog. Since the expansion tells the story of Miquela, and it was Miquela’s half-brother Mog who kidnapped her, you have to defeat him before you can play the new expansion.

The place where you face Mohg is also where you are able to enter the Shadowlands, so it is one of the prerequisites to access the Shadows of the Erdtree DLC to defeat Mohg. After defeating Mohg, you will find the baby corpse of Miquella inside a large egg in this location. To enter the Shadowlands, you need to interact with Miquella, which is only possible after defeating the Blood Lord.

Defeat Star Scourge Rodan

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Another optional boss that must be defeated before entering Shadows of Erdtree is Starscourge Radahn, the boss of Redmane Castle. After defeating this boss, the frozen star cycle will resume, and one of the stars will fall to the Lands Between, opening the way to the Eternal City of Nokron. Starscourge is related to the story of the new expansion and will answer one or more questions about the plot.

Both are optional bosses in the game, but both are required to access the Elden Ring DLC, as confirmed by game director Hidetaka Miyazaki.

Increase the use of flasks

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When your health is low, using flasks will heal your character, and you’ll need as many flasks as possible to heal your character more often when facing enemies in the new expansion. You’ll need to collect as many golden seeds and sacred tears as possible to upgrade your flask usage and increase the health you’ll restore.

The flask will help you survive when you visit new areas and encounter unfamiliar enemies. It also comes in handy for replenishing your FP when running a magic build.

Re-evaluate your character attributes

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With the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, there are at least 100 new weapons to try and spells to examine. If you end up liking any of the new weapons, but it doesn’t match your current build, you’ll have to re-spec your character’s attributes. So you should start collecting Larva Tears.

Larva Tears allow you to reassign your character’s statistics by talking to Rennala in the Lucaria Grand Library. But before that, you need to defeat her in a boss fight. After defeating her, talk to her and select the “Reborn” option to open the statistics menu. You can now change your character’s statistics. Each reassignment of your statistics requires one Larva Tear.

Improve your character level

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You need to be somewhere between level 100 and 150 to fight the enemies in Shadow of Erdtree, and to do that you need to level up your character as much as possible to be able to fight them. Get runes by defeating optional bosses and level up your character before entering Shadowlands.

Should you use NG+?

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If you have already finished the game and are deciding whether to play NG+, you should consider that the enemies will also be challenging for you in the expansion due to the new scaling system. This will make it harder for you to deal with the new enemies, as their difficulty level will scale with your level. In addition, you will have a limited number of useful items available to you, as you will have already used most of them in the base game.

You can choose whether to use NG+ to face stronger enemies, or go straight to the DLC without it.

These are all things that can help you prepare for the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion pack. You should also consider grabbing the best weapons in Elden Ring in the upcoming DLC.

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