Highlights

  • Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC offers a challenging experience with difficult combat and exploration.
  • Accessibility features like Stake of Marika checkpoints help players manage the game's difficulty.
  • The Shadow Realm in the DLC is large and features a significant amount of verticality, with Stakes of Marika providing respawns for players.

Exploration in Elden Ring can be almost as difficult as its combat, depending on the enemy or the location. This has been a thing since the base game, although Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC takes this environmental difficulty up to a whole new level, considering that the Shadow Realm is a massive, open-world area that stretches across multiple vertical layers. Not to mention, some of the dedicated platforming sections in Elden Ring’s dungeons can be especially unforgiving. So considering this environmental difficulty on top of Elden Ring’s infamously difficult combat, the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is proving to be a true test of players’ patience and skill.

However, despite being known for its intimidating difficulty, Elden Ring has done a lot to distinguish itself as a much more accessible game compared to certain other games within its subgenre, including many of FromSoftware’s past games. In hindsight of the controversy surrounding Elden Ring’s difficulty, some of the game’s accessibility features are proving more useful than they have ever been. One such feature that can prove invaluable in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is the Stake of Marika checkpoints in Elden Ring.

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The Shadow of the Erdtree DLC’s Difficulty Lets Elden Ring’s Accessibility Features Shine

The steep difficulty in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC has proven to be quite divisive among the game’s playerbase so far. Although, for better or worse, this discourse has served as an indirect reminder of some of Elden Ring’s best accessibility features that can help make the game’s difficulty more manageable. While most, if not all, of Elden Ring’s accessibility features have been around since before the new DLC was released, these features are seemingly proving more useful than ever before.

At first glance, the Shadow Realm may not seem like that large of a region, but players shouldn’t underestimate its size. Even with all of the map fragments for the Shadow Realm unlocked, its size can still be deceptive, considering that there is a surprising amount of verticality in Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. So in all reality, the size of the Shadow Realm feels like somewhere around twice the size of what the full 2D map displays.

Elden Ring’s Stake of Marika Respawn Points Are Life-Savers in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC

Yet while Elden Ring’s Shadow Realm features a massive region to explore, the Sites of Grace in this region can often feel few and far between, which can discourage players from taking risks. However, there are plenty of Stakes of Marika scattered around most points of interest and boss encounters that allow players to respawn nearby if they die.

If players know that a Stake of Marika is nearby, it’s a great strategy to intentionally die to replenish Flask of Crimson Tears , Flask of Cerulean Tears , and the Flask of Wondrous Physick . However, players should be mindful of dropping their Runes when dying in Elden Ring .

Whether players are exploring the open world or fighting major bosses in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, oftentimes there’s a Stake of Marika nearby that can save players a lot of time and trouble. There’s even one new dungeon in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC that features multiple Stakes of Marika: the Scorpion River Catacombs.

While the game’s overall difficulty may still be up for debate, Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC arguably takes full advantage of some of Elden Ring’s best features when it comes to accessibility. In hindsight, Elden Ring may have been better off being more generous with the placement of Sites of Grace, although, with the number of Stakes of Marika throughout the Shadow Realm, this isn’t that much of an issue anymore.