What is Shadow of the Erdtree?
An expansion the size of a sequel: the Land of Shadow, and the studio’s best-reviewed add-on.
Shadow of the Erdtree was released in June 2024, the single expansion for Elden Ring. The player follows the trail of the demigod Miquella into the Land of Shadow, a territory veiled from the Lands Between and centred on its own dark tree, a new map of legacy dungeons, field areas and bosses at full-game scale. It sold over ten million copies, a figure most full games never reach, and drew the studio’s strongest reviews for downloadable content.
It also received the shelf’s modern art-book treatment: the third volume of the Elden Ring Official Art Books is devoted to the expansion’s designs, a subject of its own page in this archive.
THE EXPANSION
June 2024
Elden Ring · The parent game
The world the expansion hangs beneath: Shadow of the Erdtree requires the base game and two of its great bosses felled before its veil can be entered.
One expansion, deliberately
The studio returned to the Bloodborne pattern, one expansion, enormous, rather than Dark Souls III’s pair or Dark Souls II’s crown trilogy. By 2024 the pattern reads as policy: fewer, bigger.