How to make Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree Easier (2024)

Struggling with Elden Ring’s higher difficulty? This guide will show you all sorts of ways to make Elden Ring’s DLC Shadow of the Erdtree easier. Most of these tips and tricks work in the base game too!

Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree is quite challenging and doesn’t have traditional difficulty settings. Instead, the developers have included a number of ways that you can make the game easier or harder.

The game expects you to explore, and many of these strategies require you to do that and complete quests. You will have a much harder time if you rush through the main path just to get to the end. You are meant to fight your way through, not run past everything but the impassible.

Obtain Scadutree Fragments

Scadutree Fragments increase your stats exclusively in the Realm of Shadow (DLC area). You can consume these items at Sites of Grace, similar to how you use Golden Seeds and Sacred Tears to upgrade your Crimson and Cerulean Flasks. Initially, an upgrade will only cost 1 Scadutree Fragment, but soon after, it will cost 2.

You can typically find a Scadutree Fragment at each of Miquella’s Crosses, but you can also loot them from the shadow enemies that are holding jars. We have a guide to all locations of Scadutree Fragments in the Shadow Realm.

Use Spirit Ashes

Spirit Ashes are NPCs (non-playable characters) that you can summon to help you with challenging moments in the game like boss fights after you’ve obtained the Spirit Calling Bell. You can only summon one at a time, and it costs a substantial amount of FP, or occasionally HP, to do so.

Spirit Ashes are usually copies of enemies or allies that exist in the game, sometimes a bit dolled up (pun very much intended). The Legendary Ashen Remains are stronger, but overall power level scales with the summoning cost.

The cost can’t really go beyond a full bar of FP, so it can’t cost more than 1-2 Flasks, and you’ll definitely get a significant return on such an investment if you choose the right one, even if they’re expensive.

Since they are just enemies or allies, they also have their own strengths and weaknesses, which will affect how they perform in relevant situations. I recommend putting multiple Spirit Ashes with different strengths and weaknesses in your Quick Items list so you can easily summon whichever one will help the most.

Obtain Revered Spirit Ashes

Revered Spirit Ashes are just like Scadutree Fragments, but for your Spirit Ashes. They make your Spirit Ashes (and Torrent) stronger while you’re in the Realm of Shadow. You upgrade them at the same spot in the menu at Sites of Grace.

You’ll typically find Revered Spirit Ashes at these altars with a decapitated and amputated person sitting cross-legged. They tend to be at places with nice views.

The jar-holding shadow people can also drop Revered Spirit Ashes.

Upgrade Armaments with Hewg

Hewg, the imprisoned Misbegotten blacksmith in the right wing of the Roundtable Hold will upgrade your armaments in exchange for (Somber) Smithing Stones and a small number of Runes.

The two types of Smithing Stones, Somber and regular, are completely separate upgrade paths, though regular Smithing Stones are more common.

Each weapon can only be upgraded by a single type of Smithing Stone. You can find both types in the Mines with tiers that match the enemy power level on the continent.

Somber Smithing Stones are exclusively required to upgrade armaments that have Unique Skills, where you can’t change their Ash of War or Affinity, and they typically scale with at least 3 Attributes.

Regular Smithing Stones are exclusively required to upgrade armaments with interchangeable Skills. You can change a weapon’s Skills using an Ash of War or Affinity (damage type and scaling).

Somber upgrades cost 1 Somber Smithing Stone per tier and you can upgrade the weapon to +10. You can upgrade a weapon to +25 spread across 8 tiers of Smithing Stones (+ 1 Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone) and requires 12 of each tier to progress to the next upgrade.

While the total number of upgrades differs, the performance of a +25 weapon upgraded with regular Smithing Stones is equivalent to that of a +10 weapon fully upgraded with Somber Smithing Stones.

You should always make sure that the weapon Affinity is a good fit for your Attribute Point allocation (from leveling up).

On regular weapons, you should set the Affinity to whichever scaling has the highest grade in the damage stats that you have invested in the most.

The Affinity that has the highest damage potential will be the one that has the highest sum of all numbers in the marked location below:

If you want a weapon to have a certain Affinity or you can’t change it, but that Affinity doesn’t scale well with the stats you have, you need to adjust your stats or pick a different Affinity or weapon one because the game is balanced around combining things that work well together to create synergy.

Upgrade Spirit Ashes

You can upgrade Spirit Ashes with Roderika, who sits across from the blacksmith, Hewg, in the right wing at the Roundtable Hold.

Just like with armaments and Smithing Stones, upgrading Spirit Ashes requires either Ghost Gloveworts or Grave Gloveworts. The Grave ones are required for normal Spirit Ashes while the Ghost ones are required for the special ones, like Legendary Ashen Remains and Puppets.

Just like you get Smithing Stones from Mines, you can find most Gloveworts in the Catacombs, which feature more disrespectful enemies, puzzles, and tricks, and should help you to improve your skills with the game.

Unlike Smithing Stones, you only need 1 Glovewort of the required type and tier to upgrade, so a fully upgraded Spirit Ash will be +10 regardless of type.

The +10 Great Gloveworts are rare, just like the (Somber) Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones, and can typically be found in places that are further off the beaten path.

Summon NPC Characters or Online Players

Regardless of whether are playing online or offline you can almost always find at least 1 NPC character available to summon rought outside the golden fog wall in each boss room who will help you fight the boss just like a Spirit Ash. Sometimes, NPCs will only appear if you’ve completed their associated quest.

If you choose to play online, you can consume a Furlcalling Finger Remedy to make friendly and unfriendly summon signs visible.

Typically, ones placed near the boss rooms are there to help others out, but sometimes people will place their summons at the beginning of dungeons and castles to help you reach the boss.

Use the Flask of Wondrous Physick Wisely

The Flask of Wondrous Physick allows you to concoct a special beverage using Crystal Tears that provides specific, powerful buffs for a short time.

You can only drink once from the Flask of Wondrous Physick and can only refill it by resting at a Site of Grace.

I recommend saving your swig for right before you enter a boss fight, or gulp it down as soon as you respawn to make the game easier as you go to pick up the Runes you dropped on the ground.

Make sure you’re using buffs that synergize with your build or are otherwise broadly applicable to what you’re trying to do. For example, don’t use a Crystal Tear that buffs Fire damage if your build doesn’t deal any Fire damage.

In general, I prefer and recommend the longer-lived buffs that will last for entire boss fights as opposed to buffs that only last a few seconds, even if they are more powerful.

My personal favorites are:

• Opaline Hardtear (Survivability)
• [Damage Type]-Shrouding Cracked Tears (Damage)
• Greenspill Crystal Tear (Stamina Regen)

Use Rune Arcs for Great Runes

The effect of your equipped Great Rune only lasts until you are defeated. Make sure you consume a Rune Arc every time you respawn. However, Rune Arcs aren’t infinite, so if you don’t think you’re gonna survive for very long, you might want to hold off.

In addition, make sure to have the best one equipped for your build. Some can be useless and others detrimental. Here are all of their effects:

Great Rune	Effect	Use Case
Godrick	+5 Attribute Points to all stats	Use until you get another one.
Radahn	+15% HP, FP, and Stamina (Equal to +285 HP at 60 Vigor, +45 FP at 50 Mind, and +23 Stamina 50 Endurance)	Use if you don’t have enough of all 3 stats at your current level.
Morgott	+25% Max HP (Equal to +475 HP at 60 Vigor)	Use during boss fights instead of Rykard’s , or all the time if you
Rykard	Heal 80 HP + 7% of max HP after defeating an enemy. (Equal to +213 HP total at 60 Vigor)	Use outside of boss fights if you run out of either type of Flask before reaching the Site of Grace.
Malenia	Bloodborne-style health recovery after taking damage, but -30% Crimson Flask effectiveness while Rune Arc is active.	Use if you have an aggressive build that gets healing from Incantations. Or you want a challenge.
Mohg (PvE)	Spirit Ashes heal you for 10% of max HP whenever they defeat an enemy, and they deal 30% more damage and heal themselves whenever blood loss happens near them.	Use if you are heavily reliant on Spirit Ashes, especially ones that cause Bleed buildup.
Mohg (PvP)	As an invader, you get a consumable that activates the Great Rune in the invaded world, but Rune Arc must be active pre-invasion. Buff grants +20% damage and a 10% heal whenever Blood Loss happens near you.	Use if your primary activity is invading other players.

I think, if you’re looking at this guide, alternating between Morgott and Rykard’s Great Runes is your best bet, unless you and your Spirit Ashes can apply Bleed, in which case go with Mohg. Check out our Bleed Build Guide made specifically for Shadow of the Erdtree if you want to go that route.

I’m not a huge expert on Spirit Ashes, but the following Spirit Ashes should apply Bleed.

Use Buffing Consumables and Incantations

There are a lot of consumable items and a few Incantations that can provide buffs for a decent chunk of time.

It’s helpful to precast these right before fighting a boss, but their cast times are long, so I only recommend reapplying them when said boss is invulnerable. Some buffs will overwrite others, so you only get to pick 1 to be active at a time.

This is an incomplete list of buffs that I recommend considering that conflict frequently. Pick 1 of the following:

• Exalted Flesh
• Boiled Prawn
• Boiled Crab
• (White) Cured Meats
• Dried and Pickled Livers
• Flame, Grant Me Strength
• Protection of the Erdtree, etc.

A few buffs don’t conflict as much, namely the Golden Vow Incantation and Pickled Turtle Neck consumable.

You can also apply a single heal over time effect. Be conscientious of the Faith requirement. You don’t want to allocate Faith to use these buffs when you could spend them on other things.

You can get both Golden Vow and Blessing’s Boon for 25 Faith, which I think is a solid deal. Keep in mind you’ll need to equip a Seal, though it doesn’t matter which one, and you don’t need to upgrade it because none of this stuff is affected by stat scaling.

Streamline Your Stats with Rennala

No one spends all of their Attribute Points perfectly, and over the course of 200+ levels, those mistakes can start to add up and make the game harder than it could be.

It’s worth visiting Rennala at the Academy of Raya Lucaria to respec so you can reallocate those wasted stats.

Even though you aren’t doing a “full” respec, you’ll need to spend a Larval Tear, but you get enough of them that spending even a few for this is fine. We have a guide to all Larval Tear locations in the Lands Between.

Elden Ring’s stats have pretty strong diminishing returns after you hit certain Attribute Point thresholds, which are commonly referred to as soft and hard caps.

In general, you only want to approach those caps for the two stats your weapons scale with the most, along with Vigor, Mind, and Endurance.

You should only invest exactly enough Attribute Points in the other stats to reach the minimum requirement to use everything that has a requirement in your build.

I hope it goes without saying, but your weapons should scale with mostly the same 2-3 offensive stats.

Commit to an Equip Load and Optimize Your Armor

Damage mitigation from armor determines its weight. The heavier the armor, the more mitigation it provides. However, there’s a lot of weight in between each Equip Load threshold.

The 4 Equip Load thresholds are:

• Light (<30%)
• Medium (<70%)
• Heavy (<100%)
• Overencumbered (>100%).

The key point here is that you want to commit to one of those Equip Load thresholds, and then equip an armor set that gets you as close as possible without going over.

If you are actively upgrading your Endurance Stat, you can alter your garments when you’re near the threshold to make minor tweaks to the weight of your armor.

I recommend shooting for either a Medium or Light Equip Load, as you need a more specific build to be effective with a Heavy Equip Load, as you’re basically giving up the ability to dodge roll.

Use More Specialized Talismans

This one is probably a little more controversial, but I think you’re a lot better off if you avoid using more than 1 Talisman out of the first category.

The same goes for the defensive category below it, but I think it’s a bit more obvious when those are less effective.

Yes, these will always tend to be beneficial, and many builds lack a potent 4th Talisman. However, I think you have bigger issues with your build if you need to rely more heavily on these.

If you don’t have that many specialialized Talismans, or feel that you need to rely more heavily on these, those may be a sign that you need to do more exploration or adjust your build. Check out one of our Build Guides, where we tell you what you need, how to use it, and where to find it!