Great job on Grubb for beating the algorithm! Here's some more information!

Finally! It seemed obvious that there would be a paid expansion DLC for this thing eventually, FS has done one for every Soulsborne game except Demon's Souls and Sekiro, and Elden Ring had sold too many copies/had too large a playerbase for them not to do a DLC.

I deliberately avoided entering NG+ specifically so I could play the prospective expansion on my first game cycle, so now I'm glad I waited. When this does come out I imagine I'll play the DLC and then probably do an entire NG+1... it's been a year, I'm ready to play it again.

@atheistpreacher: Same for me. I've been holding off on a NG+ run but almost started one the other day as I was feeling the itch to dive back into this world. Glad I didn't lol.

As a side note, I wonder if this has anything to do with Future Press delaying Volume 2 of their strategy guide. Probably not as that is still due to release in March and I can't imagine this DLC will be ready anytime soon.

Yeah, I mean, technically it could be coming any day because they could be announcing it very near to release. But the fact that they didn't have a date with the announcement certainly suggests that it's gonna be a while.

At least I'll have Wo Long to occupy me for a bit. It's not Souls, but Team Ninja has made probably the best non-FS Souls-likes with the Nioh games... unless it's Deck13 with The Surge and The Surge 2. But it's something, anyway.

I currently have one Faith/Strength character ready for NG+ and a sorceries character in Caelid (my daughter insists on me playing the latter). I’m interested to see where the DLC is accessed from, and what the recommended level or progression is. However, this was my GOTY and this DLC is a day one purchase from me for sure.

RE: other Soulslikes, is it weird that only Remnant has ever resonated with me?

Given the state of the Erdtree in the image they posted, it seems pretty safe to assume you'll have to access it from postgame (or at least post-Maliketh).

I liked Remnant a lot, I platinumed the thing, played it through solo multiple times, once with some friends, and got every piece of gear you can possibly earn. But it was also one of those games that felt like it was perpetually about to fly apart at the seams. Some very weird bugs at times, and some bizarre design decisions/oversights especially concerning multiplayer. And I liked the concept of that survival mode they added, but the execution of it was kind of a mess.

Looking forward to Remnant 2, though. I hope that one feels a little more polished. The devs did a big blog post about some new systems in it about a week ago.

\o/ PRAISE THE SUN!

Still haven't finished the main game yet. 150+ hours. I wish From games weren't so long.

I've got a NG+ what-eventually-became classic blood ninja build in NG+ somewhere around Raya Lucaria after about 12 hours (it's pretty hilarious how quickly you can melt through the early parts of Elden Ring with an endgame character and knowledge of the world, even on NG+ ... it took me about 35 hours probably just to get past Margit the first time) and another sorcerer/even more blood character about 30 hours in around the same place in the game. Which I left alone mostly because I just needed to play other stuff.

...And yet I'm not all that interested in this? I completely missed the Haligtree on my original save and I honestly don't feel like I missed anything. Despite beating the game with the frenzy ending I would've been fully satisfied if the game ended after beating Mr. Powerslam. I totally get why people are excited - I'd be lying if I said I'm not quite curious - but Elden Ring is the rare sort of game that feels so complete it's almost too complete, y'know? Sort of like The Witcher 3's best bits being in Velen and your first couple rounds through Novigrad, only by that point you're so interested in the world that, whoops, here's another 100 hours for ya! (I'm currently replaying The Witcher 3, a game I put almost 250 hours into in total seven years ago, and am nearing the 100 hour mark without cracking either DLC yet, so...there's that...)

So, sure, if this is Blood and Wine level DLC, amazing. If this is Old Hunters type DLC...well, I'll just have to cross my fingers whatever FromSoft is cooking up retains Elden Ring's "keep at it bruv, you'll get through this" ethos because no matter how much praise gets heaped on Old Hunters my love for Bloodborne proper can't overcome how hilariously hard that shit is.

That's Miquella on Torrent so it's either set in the past or the dream world. I can't really imagine how you would enter it other than the Cocoon of the Empyrean although a lot of people are gonna be pissed off having to beat Mohg to access it.

@snarfoogle: Yeah, actually, you're not wrong. That original Dark Souls DLC sent you to another time period in the same world, so they could do that again here. We'll see!

I feel like my perspective on the difficulty of Old Hunters remains skewed because I had beaten the game already when it released, and so I played it for the first time on a NG+ cycle, which did indeed make it, as you put it, hilariously hard. But I have to wonder whether, if I'd played it on the first cycle, I would feel very differently about the difficulty.

We all knew this would happen eventually and its a good thing. Unlike most people it seems, I fell off the game the moment I've beaten it. I didn't start a new game plus, or made a bunch of different builds. Apparently, the samurai build is the best one, or so many speedrunners will have you believe. But when that new DLC drops, I'll be on it, just like I was for Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3s. Funny thing about Bloodborne, I just realized I didn't do the Old Hunters DLC yet, and I had the complete edition of the game for many years now. I also need to do more of the chalice dungeon. Darn Soulbornes, let me go!

BTW: I hope they do a better job with the final boss of the DLC. That Elden Beast thing was cheeks. A very disappointing final boss design in an otherwise fantastic game.

That final boss felt like it was designed for you to have Torrent with you and then they forgot to let you call him. You spend half your time running toward it, unable to do anything else. Definitely a dumb boss.

I actually really like the first half of that boss fight. The music is great and its a solid 1 v 1 v let-my- summon-do-the-work-because-I-can't-be-bothered duel.

But yeah, the second half is straight up garbage against a goo monster.

yeah, i'm largely in agreement here. granted i wouldn't consider myself the target demo (i enjoy and admire From games, but i'm not madly in love with them). and i honestly probably overdid it on ER- i smoked the whole pack in a single 150ish hr playthrough at release (...i've seen too many Ulcerated Tree Spirits and Burial Watchdogs, brother) such that i'm very much over the open-worldness of it. moreover i've been playing that Bluepoint Demon's Souls, and it's just underscoring how much i prefer the brevity and conciseness of a hub with branching dungeons.

but then again maybe the DLC will subvert the vastness of ER- so they have my curiosity (and more than likely money, heh).

I think most people will have heard by now, but this DLC recently got a trailer and a release date: June 21.

In addition, IGN interviewed Miyazaki about it here. Probably the most significant takeaway is that the DLC will all take place on an entirely separate map. In terms of size, Miyazaki says that it is "probably comparable, if not larger, than the area of Limgrave from the base game." The $40 asking price certainly seems to suggest a robust amount of content.

If Elden Ring is essentially Dark Souls 4-6, is it too much to expect this to be Dark Souls 7 based on the time it took? The Ringed City was a beefy DLC for 3, and I feel like putting this on another map is going to make The Ringed City look like a trifle.

Regardless, I am very excited, enough so that I'm unwisely considering a new character. Talk me out of this please (don't talk me out of this).

Does the $40 asking price suggest a robust amount of content or is that just the price they feel like they can get away with charging? I don't know what to think anymore. Has anyone else ever charged $40 for a piece of DLC before?

@brian_: Well the answer here can definitely be Both.

As to anyone else ever doing this, in (relatively) recent memory I can think of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which sold a huge standalone expansion pack for $40. It was really good.

I know they sold Elden Ring digitally for the 'slightly lower than normal' £50 at release. I don't think Steam and other storefronts had parity with that. £40 seems ... well, it depends on the content.

The problem with open worlds is the value proposition can be justified any which way from Sunday.

True, it could just be overpriced. I guess I just tend to assume it must be pretty beefy if it's 40 bucks and took them more than two years. We'll see!

It's just odd to think about having paid $60 for Elden Ring and gotten, I think, 150 hours out of the single playthrough I did, and then to try and figure out what I might get out of a $40 DLC. Surely, it can't be another 80ish hours of new content, right? Will it even be 40ish? Is this just them regretting that they didn't charge $70 for the base game?

@mellotronrules: I played ER a few months after having beaten the Demons Souls remake and felt the same open-world fatigue pretty quickly. I enjoyed ER’s “legacy dungeons” far more than anything in the open world.

But what do I know, I’m one of those idiots who also thought DS2:SotFS was more enjoyable than DS3 (of course the first 2/3rds of DS1 put both to shame)