You've likely been made aware of Shadow of the Erdtree's step up in difficulty, by now: A saga of thrown controllers, a "Mixed" Steam rating (which, at the time of writing, has just barely nudged into "Mostly Positive") and a hard enough final boss that one marathon streamer had to take a live therapy session on Twitch.
FromSoftware's focus right now, however, is aimed at the early-game experience, which may give you the impression that the DLC is crushingly difficult if—and this is very important—you ignore the expansion's core power scaling mechanic, Scadutree Fragments.
For the uninitiated, Shadow of the Erdtree has its own scaling, where you need to collect Scadutree Fragments to boost your offence and defence. Much of the launch-day frustration came from players running headfirst into the Blackgaol Knight with nary a scaddy frag to their name, or trying to take on the Divine Beast Dancing Lion without exploring similarly.
FromSoftware's tried to tackle it with an initial patch, but has fully moved into the bargaining stage, bless its doubtless-exhausted developer heart.
On a news post titled "Tips: How to strengthen your character in Shadow of the Erdtree," FromSoftware all but gets on its hands and knees and begs players to actually use the mechanic it tried so hard to introduce them to. The font size and selective bolding is really the cherry on top here.
"If you get stuck in the game, explore various areas and look for the items 'Scadutree Fragments' and 'Revered Spirit Ashes', which are necessary to strengthen your character in the Realm of Shadow."
Then, in a move I'm not sure I've seen from FromSoftware before, the studio directly shares a map to an early-game fragment location, as well as a Revered Spirit Ashes spot—complete with nicely-lit screenshots in case you forgot what a church is.
In fairness, the news post does proceed to clarify something I didn't realise until embarrassingly late—those shadow dudes with pots that glisten? Yeah, they're carrying fragments in them. I didn't realise this until I was at around Shadow Realm Blessing 15 and looking to get an additional edge on the final boss, and I think the noise I made could be sampled for a horror game.
It's a very funny escalation of the current "issue" with the game, and I can't help but feel for FromSoftware—Shadow of the Erdtree is a fantastic expansion, good enough to make me feel conflicted about the base game, and I don't really think it deserved its initially-tanked review score. If you've been struggling, I highly recommend going on a scavenger hunt and seeing if it makes a difference.
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