Why Is Shadow of the Erdtree So Hard? - Elden Ring

There's a Miyazaki interview where he explains why he implemented the dlc upgrade system and why it's so hard.

[hyounie]

The only thing thats hard is me when i play this dlc

[saltycoffee]

'Get your blessings' is the new 'level up your vigor'

[DRNOval]

I think another thing that is making people struggle with this dlc is the fact that the bosses have a lot of hyper armor and consistent gap closers which I believe many people exploited the lack of these things in the base game to heavily negate needing to engage with the mechanics of the boss and all the bosses in the dlc are seemingly designed to punish this mindset.

[fulltimeslackerii]

Going from 60% -> 70% is taking 10% less damage absolutely but the relative damage chance is 25%. If an attack did 1000 damage, going from 60 -> 70 does mean taking 100 less damage per hit. But that 100 is 25% of what you were taking previously.

Damage negation is exponential. It gets more powerful from the RELATIVE perspective the higher it gets. And this makes sense as at 100 negation you take 0 damage

[asgarzigel]

I think one issue is the way the map is laid out. You can get to most of the map without killing bosses, but you often have to find unintuitive ways that you can't see on the map due to the verticality. So you need to explore for the scadutree fragments, but there usually isn't an obvious way to get to other areas other than beating the boss you are stuck on.

There are cliffs everywhere so it feels a lot more confined than it actually is.

[DiscoFinalBoss]

I’ve been getting my ass kicked by even common enemies but I’m having a blast. The shadow tree blessings have been making a difference.

[alanviniciuswanderleytavar]

The answer is scadtree fragment

That and also: 60 vigor + dragoncrest greatshield, its non negotiable

Edit1: Y'all with the 40 vigor is probably the reason why you die in 2 hits when I invade

Edit2: boiled crab is king. Helps a lot

[jgunner]

I've gotta be honest, I saw this coming at the tutorial prompts. "Hey guys! We made a new system just for this area that makes your attack and defense way better with no downsides!"

Me: Oh... so I'm going to need to grab and clutch every one of these to do okay, unless I'm one of those perfect parry psychos that beat this game on a Guitar Hero controller? Already, got it.

[imaheadout]

The ambient music is beautiful in the dlc

[vitaminnc]

One Crucial thing everyone seems to be forgetting: Use crafting! The pickled livers are fucking insane against elemental damage, especially the new vastly boost damage negation.

[Zach-qoon]

honestly, i’m at Scadutree level 9 and about to go for 10 but as soon as I reached 5-6 most of the dlc became a bit more manageable and feels more like end game base game.
at 9 and most areas feels pretty good (haven’t reached end game areas yet but i’ll be around 15 levels in at that point) of course enemies can still destroy me but it’s less likely to happen now, so if anyone is having a hard time at the beginning of the dlc then try reaching for Scadutree level 5, you can reach that before fighting any main bosses.
Explore around and experience the world have fun before you tackle the main stuff first.

[rainbowkrampus]

I will say that a lot of the bosses have attack patterns which basically force you to just chill until they're finished. In the base game, they gave bosses a lot of moves that had huge windup. This meant you could get in a few hits during a boss's combo chain. Sometimes you could even get a fully charged r2 in there. This made for some really awesome stagger moments where you're half a second from eating it and then the boss crumples. Maybe it's just the newness but my perception of the bosses I've fought so far is that their combo chains are some combination of too active or too long to really get any hits in. Like, I'm at 40 endurance on a very high level character and I can find myself running out of stamina if I try to weave attacks in, that's how long some of their attack chains are.

There's also a tendency for the bosses to run away after an attack. The worst culprit that immediately comes to mind is the damn hippo. They've just made it so much harder to actually hit the boss outside of the obvious points where their big combo has ended. it kinda feels like a completely different team with a different ethos made the bosses for the DLC. Now that I've adjusted, it's not bad. But those first couple of bosses were a pain. The game has spent all this time training you to weave hits into boss combos and now it's telling you to stop.

[richardhandcock]

One thing I don't see many people bring up when it comes to Elden Ring's (and other Fromsoft games) difficulty is the way they implemented dodging. You dodge when you release the button, rather than when you press it. If you're constantly getting that 'I dodged that!' feeling, this is why. It makes dodging the relentless assaults of the bosses way harder, you have to tap the button as quickly as you can and even then there's a bit of a delay. On Steam, you can get alternate controller maps that make it so you dodge on button press, and it makes a world of difference. There might also be a way of doing this on console but I don't know. It's worth trying, and there are a bunch of different ones. The one I use maps sprint to left stick click like in other games and it's amazing!

[FiveHoursLater]

I have a pretty big gripe with the remembrance bosses. With the exception of Messmer, all the remembrance bosses don’t feel like their openings are wide enough for you to reliably land a charged heavy attack without trading.
The bosses, just like the base game, have tons of openings, but unlike the base game, they are much more brief.
So builds that use ultras and colossal weapons, who get the MOST out of charged attacks, have their play style gimped.
I played most of the DLC with the Zweihander and this is what I felt. The biggest exception was Messmer, who felt much more inline with the base game.

[TheWokerDCJ]

Im loving this DLC, but im worried about speed and aggression creep. Elden Ring has had the fastest, most aggressive bosses of any From Software game. I hope they dont continue the trend upwards with the next game. Im only getting older, and it's legit getting hard to keep up with all the flashy spell effects and hyper aggro bosses. Its visually hard to parse what is actually happening most of the time, as long as they never take great shields away. I can continue to have fun and beat their games

[jhankcean]

I'm getting absolutely stomped by Rellana as we speak 😀

~30 attempts so far

[chenzgaming]

It’s funny to me that we do this every time with FromSoftware. DS1 DLC is too hard, Bloodborne DLC is too hard, DS3 DLC is too hard, Sekiro is too hard, and so on. People will come to their senses just like all the other times.

[redst]

While I do understand the importance of Scadutree Fragments, the system as a whole has one big, glaring flaw.

The devs implemented this system not to encourage exploration, but to ENFORCE it, as gathering these items are pretty much mandatory to not get 2-shot. While this is alright for crafting the perfect "first playthrough", once you know where everything is, this system has the potential to become absolutely OBNOXIOUS on subsequent playthroughs. Gathering these fragments now becomes a chore that you have to do when you start the DLC just so you can fight properly. This is the same problem that people face when they make a new character in this game: you have to do so many chores like gathering the Steed Whistle, Whetstone Knife, Physick Flask, and so on before the playthrough genuinely begins. It's boring.

That's the flaw behind this system's premise: they didn't NEED to enforce exploration. Players were already going to explore every nook and cranny of this land just to find all of the cool shit they've scattered everywhere. But now you HAVE to explore every nook and cranny. Every playthrough. Thus artificially extending your playtime with none of the fun. They didn't really need to introduce this system. They could've just made the Gravesite Plains on the same area scaling of Elphael and gradually increased the enemy scaling from there.

If Fromsoft insists on keeping this system, then I hope that they consider reducing the amount of Scadutree Fragments required to reach +20, or perhaps place more of them along the critical path through the DLC, and then allow the player to sell any excess fragments that they find (and honestly, they should allow you to sell excess Golden Seeds as well).

[Aurongel]

For me, the real heart of the “difficulty” critique boils down to this:
— In Dark Souls, you died to a boss because you ran out of Estus.
— In Elden Ring, you died to a boss because you mistimed two rolls in the middle of an 8+ move combo and the combined damage exceeded your max health.

[Shiftshapercat]

It's hard because unlike the base game, you can't just level your way out of your problems.

In the DLC it is effectively SL1 or go on a scavenger hunt for scadutree fragments (and revered spirit fragments). Ok, yes, having more vigor DOES matter up until the level 60 hardish cap. But after that, yoou are basically just as squishy as sl1