There are also indicators of Elden Ring's long awaited ray tracing support.
On the back of Elden Ring's 1.07 update, prolific Souls series dataminers Lance McDonald and Zullie the Witch have shared evidence of potential new DLC areas and ray tracing support added behind the scenes with the patch.
Zullie shared a screenshot of a level list for Elden Ring, which includes an entry for "m20_00_00_00: ???" As Zullie points out, m10-19 signal the IDs of legacy dungeons like Stormveil Castle (m10_00_00_00), or underground areas like Siofra or Ainsel (which are all preceded by m12). It's far from certain, but the evidence seems to point to m20 being the designation of a future DLC legacy dungeon.
Zullie also points out another mystery entry, m45. This doesn't correspond directly to any map files currently in the game, leaving the signifier to pure speculation. My best guess is that it would make sense as the ID for a new, separate overworld area to house the DLC legacy dungeon (or dungeons, if FromSoftware has multiple expansions brewing). Alternatively, if m20 covers a large number of areas like the m12 underground ID, m45 could make sense as the ID for DLC side dungeons.
Lance McDonald shared extracted menu text related to ray tracing graphics settings. The most substantial line is "Enabling ray tracing will lock performance settings to prioritize quality. The ray tracing setting will only be applied after returning to the title menu." The vaunted lighting tech was always in the cards as a post-launch addition to Elden Ring, but it's been a long time without word since release.
Personally I've yet to play a game where I've found ray tracing worth the performance hit, but with Elden Ring still capped at 60 fps and lightweight enough to run on the Steam Deck, maybe this will be the one where I keep it on. If FromSoft is still expanding its megahit's graphical options, I'm hopeful it'll go even farther and implement DLSS and FidelityFX support or even bump up the framerate cap. A fella can dream, can't he?
