#Elden Ring shadow of the Erdtree spoilers

[spectrumos]

I'm genuinely so grateful for both of you, it's comforting to see nuance and a healthy absence of "Shadow of the Erdtree is a shameless retcon and is no good!"

People who hate miquella often act like it's canon that trina thinks miquella's plans are stupid\cruel\etc, meanwhile trina's lines are only about how she fears for miquella himself, not for people of the lands between or shadowlands

[bornetoblood]

I'D KNOW THAT MOVESET ANYWHERE !!!

[elguritch-art]

KINDRED - 6/6

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Thank you everyone who's enjoyed this little mini-comic!! I hope to draw these two more in the future!!

[geminialchemist]

It’s been about a month since I beat Shadow of the Erdtree. Thinking it through, especially the ending, I think my thoughts have changed.

I think I hate that final boss and the lore around him even more than I did before.

Call me a Godwyn Stan, but I will die in the hill that he made far more sense than Radahn, and I’m gonna explain it.

Building up to the dlc, we know Miquella is close to three people in particular. His sister, Malenia, his father, Radagon, and his half brother, Godwyn. After Godwyn dies, Miquella becomes obsessed with bringing him back, or granting him a proper death. He tries an eclipse to bring him back, it doesn’t work, implied to be because the eclipse just will not happen. Now why would a heavenly body not move into its proper place again?

Oh yeah, Radahn! Guys got a hard on for holding back the stars. So it made sense that him being dead was a dlc requirement, on top of why Malenia would have fought him in the first place. It just fueled the idea we were going to see Godwyn even more.

Yeah, Godwyn is dead. I keep seeing that argument thrown around like it means literally anything. He’s super dead, prince of death, lord of the undead, blah blah, this argument is nothing but noise. The Realm of Shadow is where all things that die pass through. It’s basically the land of the dead! This argument that Godwyn is dead, to me, is the single dumbest argument against his return when you’re in a place all dead things go. That’s like saying Godwyn’s soul is trash, so you shouldn’t expect to find him in a garbage dump. If there was a single narrative way to bring that beautiful idiot back, it would be in this dlc because of where it takes place. If they had brought him back this way, no one would have batted an eye at its inclusion.

So, the dlc takes place in the land where all dead things pass through that is super hard to get to through by any normal means, so no one could really try to revive Godwyn this way. It has a plot where Miquella, who is obsessed with bringing Godwyn back, is trying to revive someone from death by shoving them into a new body, and then they don’t do it? They bring back Radahn like that made any form of narrative sense? Like two missable lines of dialogue from two separate NPCs can satisfyingly explain this stupid idea?

I don’t know if it was Miyazaki or GRRM who wrote this, but maybe next time they should let the intern with no writing experience do the plot for the next game, they might do a better job at crafting a sensible narrative.

There is so much to love about this dlc, and I’ve said it before in a previous post that I’m just better at airing out my grievances at a thing than my praises. But when I replay it, I have such a hard time finding the motivation to finish the second half of the dlc, knowing that is what waits me at the end. It feels like such a waste.

Rant over. I hope you have a nice day.

Edit: you know what, rant is not over(but I still hope you had a nice day)! This entire mess of a plot could have been avoided if they just… didn’t have Miquella resurrect anyone! Have an original boss! It’s almost as if this plot was designed with online discourse in mind because there is no way to not think of Godwyn when you think of Miquella trying to bring someone back from the dead!

Okay, now I’m done.

[desertomb]

St. Trina 💤

[professional-sephiroth-scrungler]

A detail i love is the animation difference between first phase and second phase messmer. First phase Messmer’s attack animations are controlled and almost lazy feeling. He’s done this thousand of times. You’re just another person to impale. But a lowly tarnished managed to push him to removing the seal and being subsumed by the serpent. He didn’t want to but it’s his last resort. His second phase attack animations are desperate and almost animalistic looking. He didn’t want this, to remove the last bit of his mother’s grace, but he and the abyssal serpent are one now. Even though he’s still waiting for his mother to come back for him and is still trying to avenge her people and cares for his. This was his last resort and in the end it was futile; fully realizing his mother had truly abandoned him as he died.

[moistmailman]

Malenia: Hey, Miquella has a proposal for you.

Radahn: What is it?

Malenia: A proposal.

Radahn:…….He’s my half brother….

Malenia:…….

Radahn: I’m good. Tell him no.

Malenia, drawing her blade: You don’t have a choice actually.

[junejasprose-addict]

I truly don't understand why people are upset about sote's final boss lore. Way back when the dlc was announced, I was always hoping that somewhere in the dlc would be a boss that is radahn in his prime. When you fight him in the base game, he's 1) dying of the scarlet rot. 2) holding back a star with his mind. and 3) fighting you with his horse slowing him down because he really likes his old horse. And even with all of that holding him back, the tarnished still needed an army of infinitely respawning warriors to beat him. So when I discovered that not only was the final boss radahn without all the shit holding him back, it was radahn with a fucking god on his shoulders, I was hyped as hell. That fight is so fucking cool! He summons 50 light clones to attack you and lasers are falling from the sky and he has an even cooler "dropping in from orbit" attack it's fucking incredible! If you didn't adore this dlc then that's just a skill issue tbh

[fellmargit]

I think about this every single day

[nandorthekindofniceguy]

me when the furnace golem grabs my ass

[humanransome-note]

Miquella or anyone really, not saying anything about Melania in the DLC really hits in a not funky fresh way.

Melania’s first phase is “Blade of Miquella” she defines herself as an object of her brother’s. Everything you hear about Miquella in Vanilla ER and at the Haligtree shows this kind, loving, thoughtful, determined person who genuinely wants a better world for the people around him.

But you learn in the DLC, and it was alluded to in Vanilla, that Miquella has the power to make people love him.

So… how much of Malenia’s actions were actually her own, her own wants and desires, vs things she was convinced to want because Miquella said it would make him happy?

Was it before or after she fought Radhan? If it was before, how deep do Miquella’s machinations go, and if it was after, did Miquella tell her to wait for a return he never planned to make as a form of punishment?

[transekiro]

modders cannot be real

[mossy-green-aka-ferrythem]

Just got to the final boss of Shadow of the Erdtree

This fucking sucks.

Honestly. The fights have been so consistently fair, so consistently challenging, but this? This is bullshit.

spoilers under cut:

Like, I absolutely adore the concept of Promised Consort Radahn, how it reflects Miquella's full derangement in his path to godhood I would assume (I don't fully know what Miquella's full plan is but I bet it was "Deranged from the start"), and people, in this series about fighting powerful bosses, quite a few are clearly past their prime, they give us what is basically Radahn in his prime. You see the kind of warrior he is, what makes him the strongest, in a sort of way.

But like.

I am not a fan of this fight. I have grown to love about every DLC boss, hell, even fucking Gaius and Putrescent Knight are considered in fairly good graces, and Rellana is growing on me. But like. I fucking hate this.

It's just like, Radahn but everyone HATES his ass!

Like, I don't enjoy how fast the attacks are, how long his chains are, and the use of AOE. But still, it's the kind of thing I can adapt to, like sure, some of it isn't that great, but it's all something you can learn from. Something you can adapt to. As frustrating as it is, and as much as it needs tweaks, the first phase is pretty fair.

I fucking hate the second phase. I have only gotten this far. But I fucking hate it. Like, the arena wide AOE has too narrow of a timing, and that's just the beginning. Everything afterwards is just. I hate it. I absolutely hate it. It doesn't feel like the kind of thing where I can nod my head and go "ahhhhh, I see!", it feels like "Honestly I hope they nerf this shit to the ground I am NOT enjoying my time here!"

Like just. This is just. Not fun. It feels too tight. Constricting. I don't like it. eugh.

[elguritch-art]

KINDRED - 3/6

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messmer is such a pretty boy for real

[geminialchemist]

This is a theory I crafted up about the Golden Order, the Crucible, and the Frenzied Flame shortly after I beat the dlc the first time. I wrote it down, and forgot about it until just now, so it’ll be a little bit less well researched, seeing as it’s from waaay before the wiki had info to pull from, and so is probably shaky by our understanding of the dlc today, but I still wanted to share.

Spoilers for Shadow of the Erdtree below!

The Golden Order, the Crucible, and the Frenzied Flame are all the same thing.

So, this is one of the wilder theories, though hopefully not Pepe Silvia levels of conspiracy. If Marika can be Radagon, and if Miquella could be St. Trina, why can’t the Greater Will be the Frenzied Flame?

Throughout Elden Ring, we find out that that the Golden order assimilated a lot of things into it, even things that seem contradictory to the teachings of the Erdtree, like Carian sorcery. One of its primary teachings is that all things can be conjoined.

(Mirial dialogue upon getting a book o’ miracles)

“Oh, what have we here? Very well, let us both learn together. Heresy is not native to the world; it is but a contrivance. All things can be conjoined."

Now, this alone doesn’t mean much, the Golden Order is just branching out and adopting other cultures teachings like a lot of religions do to assimilate more followers, rather than fusing everything by melting it down with flame.

One more thing to keep in mind for later before we leave the Golden Order side of things, the DLC revealed something interesting about the Two Fingers, and the Golden Order. That even before the time Marika became a god, the Fingers had stopped receiving word from the Greater Will to guide them. The entire order is built on a lie, and no one in the Lands Between have communed with the Greater Will in a very, very long time.

Meanwhile, the DLC has the Hornsent, people who worshipped the Crucible, which came before Marika’s Golden Order. Anyone who has entered the various gaols knows the horrors they inflicted. The Hornsent believed that blending life together was a holy act, and massacred Marika’s people to put them into jars as saints, because of how easily their flesh melded with others. Now we’re getting closer to the premise of this theory. But take a look a this:

(Aspect of the Crucible: Breath description)

This is a manifestation of the Erdtree's primal vital energies - an aspect of the primordial crucible, where all life was once blended together.

The Erdtree seems to have some ties to the Crucible’s energies, which ties the two together on some level. Conjoining all things, and blending life together. And do you know what a crucible is? A crucible is a container used in smithing that you melt things in to blend them into one, heated over an open flame.

Hyetta has some interesting dialogue as well at the end of her questline:

(Hyetta dialogue)

"All that there is came from the One Great. Then came fractures, and births, and souls.

But the Greater Will made a mistake. Torment, despair, affliction... every sin, every curse. Every one, born of the mistake.

And so, what was borrowed must be returned. Melt it all away, with the yellow chaos flame. Until all is One again."

Note that she says the Greater Will made a mistake, in a way that implies that it’s something the Greater Will is fixing. It broke one into all, now it has to be made one again through the yellow chaos flames. The same Greater Will that the Two Fingers can no longer contact. Except for the Three Fingers, who seem to have found a different god to listen to. Or perhaps they found the same one, and are just doing what they were made to do, follow the Greater Will’s orders, and help burn down the world.

The Greater Will is order, and the Frenzy is Chaos, and I think they came from the same place. Two sides of the same coin, two halves of a whole being, and one of them isn’t listening or reaching out anymore. Much like Miquella stuffed St. Trina in a cave at the deepest part of the world, The Frenzied Flame has cut off the Greater Will to fix their mistake and melt it all down, back into one. It just needs a way to worm its ideology into the minds of men. Perhaps a religion is introduced that familiarized people with the concept of conjoining things, until it gets more and more extreme, and the frenzy appears, ripe in their minds. In the Shadow Lands, a place where physically conjoining flesh is the norm, the Frenzied Flame seems to have considerably more influence in comparison to the Lands Between, infecting an entire region of the map of the DLC, and even having a failed Lord of Frenzied Flame as a boss.

I swear I’m not a conspiracy nut, but if I come off as mad, well… MAY CHAOS TAKE THE WORLD! AHAHAHAHA!

[lidrens]

I may be behind on lore, but what is Count Ymir's deal at the end of his quest? If he's upset about the tarnished killing Metyr, why? What did he think would happen when he gave us the third map that clearly shows the underneath of the cathedral?

Why does he attack? The tarnished's quest in the lands of shadow never once crosses his desire to be the next mother of fingers. So what gives?

Does anyone have a theory on that?