“Elden Ring” Announces its DLC Expansion, “Shadow Of The Erdtree”

A few days ago I was curious when Elden Ring would begin talking about its seemingly inevitable DLC plans. It was Elden Ring’s one-year anniversary and it had already sold 20 million copies.

It turns out that the magic number was actually one year and…three consecutive days. FromSoftware just announced Elden Ring’s DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree in a post on social media.

DLC can be classified as an expansion. This could mean anything depending on the developer. However, expansions are usually a step above smaller DLCs and significant content additions. It’s possible that this $40 content piece could be considered an expansion. I am curious to see what it will add.

We have no clues other than the photo and the name Shadow of the Erdtree. This refers to the gigantic tree that towers over the entire map and which is scalable later.

• The Erdtree appears to be molten, charred, and broken in the above image. This is not surprising considering the events in the game. It also suggests that this DLC will take place after the main storyline and not alongside it.
• There are some unidentifiable ruins, and there is what appears to be an entire field of ghostly gravestones. Ghostly gravestones are not ghostly, so they aren’t ghosts.
• There is also a single, blonde, horned horse-riding figure, presumably Torrent. This could be a player-tarnished character. You can make them look like essentially anyone you want. But it could also be an NPC DLC that is important to the story FromSoftware is creating. It may be the player, considering that it appears to be riding Torrent. ( Update – actually, upon further inspection, it appears to be Miquella riding Torrent.

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We don’t know much about the expansion, not even its release date. It is currently “in development”, but we don’t have a date or a time frame. The earliest I can imagine it being available would be in the holiday of 2023. FromSoft generally didn’t take too long to announce DLC and release it for previous games. However, my gut tells us that this DLC is likely more ambitious than any they have done before. Given the size of Elden Ring, it’s possible it will take longer. It’s possible that we won’t see it until 2024.

It’s good that they have said something. At one point, everyone was wondering whether they would just move on to Armored Core without doing any DLC. Sekiro for example has never received DLC. It’s no longer a guarantee for major releases the way it was essentially. It’s a great thing they are doing and I can’t wait to play it.