Summary
Elden Ring:Shadow of the Erdtree’s first patch is here after less than a week, and it makes some big changes to how Scadutree Blessings work in the early game.
Ever since Elden Ring’s long-awaited expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, launched last week, there’s been one resounding thought from almost every player -it’s hard as hell. FromSoft is known for making challenging adventuresbut years of “Elden Ring player beats” headlineshad everyone thinking they’d be able to breeze through the DLC without any trouble. They were wrong.
Shadow of the Erdtree’shigh difficulty has been surprisingly controversial over the past few days, but one of the main reasons that some players seem to be struggling is because they’re not properly using Scadutree Fragments,a new item introduced in the DLC. Well, if you’re one of the players ignoring the mechanic, a new patch has made it even clearer that you shouldn’t be.
Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree’s First Patch Buffs Scadutree Blessings
Just a few hours ago, the first patch for Shadow of the Erdtree (Version 1.12.2) went live and made some big changes to how Scadutree Blessings work.As revealed by the patch notes shared on Bandai Namco’s website, the update “revises” the attack and damage negation curve scaling of Shadow Realm blessings “for the first half of the maximum amount of Blessing enhancements”.
That sounds complicated, but what it actually means is that the attack and damage negation granted by using Scadutree Fragments has been buffed in the early hours of the game until you get around half of the Blessing enhancements. This should give players who have been having a tough time getting started in Shadow of the Erdtree a bigger boost, but only up to a certain point.
The patch notes also address some of the frame rate problems that have been reported by PC players, which is apparently due to a bug that causes raytracing settings to be automatically enabled.
On the flip side, the patch also makes it so that Scadutree Blessings are more “gradual” once you hit the halfway mark, which should balance out their effectiveness later on in the expansion. Really, though, it seems that a lot of complaints about Shadow of the Erdtree’s difficulty come from not using the Fragments early on in the game, so buffing their usefulness in the first half should make things a lot easier.
So there you go, Shadow of the Erdtree strugglers, you’ve got your easy mode.
