The moment it became available on Steam, the positive user reviews for Elden Ring's new Shadow of the Erdtree expansion started pouring in. The DLC has almost a thousand ratings as I write. None of these players have seen much of the Land of Shadow yet—the expansion is much larger than we were initially led to believe and has barely been out for an hour.
It isn't news that Steam reviews are mainly a vehicle players use to cheer for or scorn a game, but this might be the most extreme example I've seen of pure goodwill manifesting as virtual thumb-ups. I can't think of another developer that commands the same level of "they don't miss" player trust today, especially not one that's released as many games as FromSoftware.
More than 550,000 Steam players are currently online in Elden Ring, a pretty amazing draw for a DLC launch on a Thursday. Elden Ring's all-time concurrents peak, recorded just after it launched two years ago, was 953,426—we might see it beat that number this weekend.
Some of the players jumping in for the DLC definitely still need to beat Mohg, an Elden Ring boss who must be slain to access Shadow of the Erdtree's realm. According to the Steam achievements, only 39.3% of players have taken out that particular shardbearer. (If you wind up needing help with that, a redditor has posted a strategy video to help you cheese your way past the boss quickly.)
We gave Shadow of the Erdtree a glowing review earlier this week, and prior to that visited FromSoftware's studio in Tokyo for an in-depth feature on the making of the expansion.
If you get stuck or need tips, we've also put together an enormous collection of Shadow of the Erdtree guides.
One quick tip before you start playing: Don't watch the Shadow of the Erdtree launch trailer if you want to maximize surprise. I'm informed by people who've already played hours of the game that it's spoiler heavy, at least if you consider boss reveals spoilers.
