The sheer scale of Shadow of the Erdtree, Elden Ring’s excellent (and punishing) new DLC, is enough to amaze you. The large map stacks on top of itself, offering myriad nooks and crannies to explore, new weapons to wield, new armor to wear, and new bosses to fight. It’s so massive that I said in my review FromSoftware could have called this DLC the base game and released that in 2022 and we would have been ecstatic. But if there is one major mark against Erdtree, one area that feels half-baked, it’s the Abyssal Woods.
You can only get to the Abyssal Woods by surviving the Darklight Catacombs and defeating an immensely annoying boss, Jori the Elder Inquisitor. And you can only get to the Darklight Catacombs by getting through a specific area in the Shadow Keep, climbing into a coffin, and going for a ride. You’d think that a place that requires such effort to reach it would be dense and rewarding, but it’s not.
It is, however, very scary. Once you step out from the boss area, you’re in a foggy, eerie wooded area that is clearly massive, even if the fog obfuscates much of it. In-game messages on the ground (not ones written by other players, but ones FromSoft put in there) instill terror: “Don’t let it see you,” “once you are seen, there is no escape,” and “It cannot even be touched.”
If you try to summon Torrent, a pop-up appears that reads “The Spectral Steed is frightened and cannot be summoned.” Torrent has been with us through the horrifying rotten land of Caelid, stood with us at the Mountaintop of Giants, hell, you can even summon him for the main game’s final boss battle now—what the fuck could scare him so much?
Turns out, it’s madness-inflicted versions of Winter Lanterns, the grotesque enemies from Bloodborne. Merely getting in their eyesight will begin to fill your madness meter, which negates your ability to cast spells and rapidly drains your health. Oh, and they’ll teleport behind you and likely insta-kill you, and though you can technically parry them, they’re otherwise invincible. Your best bet is to sneak past them by crouching through the areas of high grass, but be careful—there are some plants tucked away in there that will make some serious noise and alert the Winter Lanterns if you even lightly brush past them.
You can manage to sneak past them fairly easily by avoiding those noisemakers, however, and then you’re free to go to Midra’s Manse, the only real POI in this massive, sprawling area. Though Midra, Lord of Frenzied Flame, is a frustrating boss battle, all that buildup and set-dressing ultimately falls flat. The Abyssal Woods is huge and mostly empty, and the Winter Lanterns can be easily avoided.
Imagine if there was just one, massive Winter Lantern in there, whose gaze you had to avoid throughout the entire length of the area, ducking behind an outcropping of rocks or amongst some tall grass for agonizingly long periods of time, until your cortisol levels spike so high you feel your arms and legs go weak. Imagine barely getting out of its line of sight before your madness meter fills all the way up, your palm sweating as you roll behind a tree stump. Then imagine that there are about five or six more worthy items in there, and one or two more explorable crannies, and the Abyssal Woods would be worth the hype FromSoft creates in those opening moments.
As it stands, though, the Abyssal Woods are a small blemish on an otherwise incredible journey.
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