The mid-June 2024 release of Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is approaching, and many players can't wait to see what it has in store. Elden Ring was already an enormous fantasy adventure that crammed dense amounts of narrative and combat into its open world, so getting more of it at all is a welcome surprise.

Interviews with director Hidetaka Miyazaki suggest that no expense has been spared for Shadow of the Erdtree, just like FromSoftware’s past DLC efforts, with plenty of new surprises in store.

What those surprises are should only become known after Shadow of the Erdtree has launched, but Miyazaki teased some of its additions. The new Demigod, Messmer the Impaler, will be the main focus, with Elden Ring’s mysterious child Empyrean Miquella also playing a major role. Miyazaki estimates that the “surface area” of the DLC is larger than Limgrave, and on top of having plenty of new weapons, equipment, and skills to find, there will be eight entirely new weapon categories. Over ten new bosses will also grace Shadow of the Erdtree, a vague figure that nonetheless helps paint a much more vivid picture of this expansion.

Elden Ring Margit the Fell Omen Boss
Related
Elden Ring Boss Types That Should Return in Shadow of the Erdtree to Help Newcomers

For the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, Elden Ring should reintroduce some Elden Ring's base game boss types, highlighting the best ones.

Calculating Elden Ring’s Boss Distribution

Base Elden Ring has an impressive 165 boss fights, although that comes with some caveats. This number counts everything with a boss health bar, including Invader-type human enemies like Patches and enemies elevated to bosses like Elden Ring's tutorial boss Soldier of Godrick. Several duplicate bosses sharing names are also in that figure, and cutting those out still doesn't account for all the bosses that share models and movesets with other bosses or normal enemies. This may seem like a tangent, but there's good reason to remember Elden Ring’s limits when addressing its DLC.

Shadow of the Erdtree’s Suggested Boss Count is Deceptive

A region slightly larger than Limgrave with over ten new bosses may sound small, but that’s because it’s not the whole story. Limgrave has twenty-one bosses, and the Weeping Peninsula adds ten more, which sets the bar for the rest of Elden Ring’s major regions. Even the combined snowy regions have around twenty, though that’s stretching the definition of “a region.” Chances are good that Shadow of the Erdtree will recycle bosses just like prior areas, which makes a single region introducing over ten entirely unique bosses much more impressive. Even if the Weeping Peninsula wasn’t included in Miyazaki’s Limgrave estimate, players could easily be looking at an expansion with over twenty boss fights.

Comparing Soulsborne DLC Bosses to Shadow of the Erdtree’s

Fighting every boss in each of Elden Ring’s regions takes players different amounts of time, but boss counts from past FromSoftware DLC can give a more precise idea of Shadow of the Erdtree’s length. Dark Souls 1’s Artorias of the Abyss DLC came with four new bosses. The Lost Crowns trilogy from DS2 had three new bosses per episode, reaching ten total with Scholar of the First Sin’s Aldia. Ashes of Ariandel and The Ringed City gave Dark Souls 3 another six bosses, and Bloodborne’s The Old Hunters completes the set with five new fights, though Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice deserves mention for adding three remixed bosses in a free update.

Elden Ring’s DLC Will Probably Be Quite Large

Whether Shadow of the Erdtree mixes old foes with its newcomers or not, just having more than ten new boss fights outdoes every prior FromSoftware DLC, even with Elden Ring’s open-world format ironically making its bosses more dense than other Soulslikes. As each prior Dark Souls DLC episode typically takes players three-to-ten hours to beat, Shadow of the Erdtree should last ten at a minimum and could take completionists twenty or more hours to find everything. How Shadow of the Erdtree spaces out its bosses, and whether there will be any repeat opponents, will only be known for sure once Elden Ring’s expansion is out.