A two-second snippet of Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC trailer has players dreading an inclusion that only Miyazaki would find funny. A Deathblight swamp.
Elden Ring fans have been satiated after months of waiting. The Shadow of the Erdtree DLC trailer finally dropped and it’s a banger from start to finish.
Ravenous Tarnished are pouring over the three-minute spectacle for any hints about what to expect. While the primary focus is on the mysterious Messmer the Impaler, other details have also piqued the interest of players.
Chief among them is a horrifying preview pointed out by Reddit user u/AK47Kalashnikov that has terrible implications. It appears players may have to wade through a Deathblight swamp in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.
FromSoftware President and Soulsborne mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki is partial to his poison swamps which feature prominently in nearly every game he’s helmed. His masochistic tendency to force players into punishing areas that kill you for existing is a well-known phenomenon in the fandom.
In Elden Ring’s base game, he upped the ante by including the Lake of Rot which is essentially a poison swamp on steroids. Now it looks like players will have to contend with a swamp that inflicts Deathblight, a status ailment in Elden Ring that instantly kills the player if it is allowed to build up.
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A Deathblight swamp has been jokingly theorized since Shadow of the Erdtree DLC’s initial reveal but now, terrified Elden Ring players are berating one another for “speaking it into existence”.
“I was joking about Deathblight swamp… really, just a joke,” one player qualified. “They probably took all the jokes as something we all desired…. but deep down, maybe we did,” pondered another.
Fortunately, there are ways to alleviate Deathblight build-up in Elden Ring through items like Rejuvenating Bolluses and incantations like Law of Regression.
Perhaps even more comforting is that it looks like you can ride Torrent through the swamp and he’s immune to status effects. Although, as one player pointed out so astutely “real men walk across Deathblight swamp”.