Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree’s narrative focuses on Miquella’s followers and is largely character-driven.
The DLC’s second-last mandatory boss fight varies based on interactions with NPCs.
Summonable allies play a crucial role in the fight against Leda and her followers, making each player’s experience unique.
Major story spoilers for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree ahead.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, like all of FromSoftware’s previous DLC expansion achievements, is a masterful piece of storytelling and world-building that lends itself to the base game’s narrative and enhances it tenfold. Whether that storytelling is all easily digestible or comprehensible is questionable, which is also not unlike all of FromSoftware’s past Soulslike work, but Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree chooses to center its narrative wholly around players’ conversations with Miquella’s followers and renders itself largely character-driven as a result.
Indeed, Needle Knight Leda is now present before the Cocoon of the Empyrean in Mohgwyn Palace and she’s in the Land of Shadow to guide players most of the way as they explore and discover more of Miquella’s scattered crosses. Quests related to Leda and Miquella’s followers are fully optional and possibly inadvertently missed on the player’s behalf as there technically aren’t many mandatory bosses on players’ paths to the final boss. Moreover, the DLC’s second-last mandatory boss fight is dramatically different based on how players chose to engage with its associable NPCs, many of whom are either friends or foes in the making.
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Leda’s Betrayal in Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree Manifests as a Boss Fight Players Can Contour in Their Favor
Miquella’s followers consist of an eclectic cast of colorful characters. Possible follower NPCs-turned-bosses players may have to confront at Enir-Ilim before ascending a staircase to tackle Shadow of the Erdtree’s Promised Consort Radahn are as follows:
Needle Knight Leda (mandatory).
Dryleaf Dane (mandatory).
Moore (dialogue-dependent).
Redmane Freyja (quest-dependent).
Fortunately, even with all five spawning in, players can turn the tide in their favor with their own summonable allies. Possible NPCs whom players may have an opportunity to summon to aid them in the fight against Leda and her available followers at Enir-Ilim, and whose summon signs are both quest-dependent, are as follows:
Sir Ansbach.
Thiollier.
Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree Gives Weight to Optional NPC Interactions
So, depending on what decisions players made throughout Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion concerning Miquella’s merry band of followers, players’ experiences in this gank fight could range from grossly outnumbered, evenly matched, or outnumbering Leda’s troupe. That’s before considering players can summon their own Spirit Ashes to accompany them, too.
This makes for a tremendous encounter because any handful of players is unlikely to have all endured it in the same permutation. Some players may have unknowingly sentenced Moore to death based on their binary dialogue selection with him, for example, while some players may have decided to summon Hornsent during Messmer, the Impaler’s boss fight without knowing that this action, plus speaking with him afterward, seems to be one of the only prerequisites needed for him to not take part in Leda’s ambush.
There are a lot of moving parts to each of these NPCs with some interactions not being necessary to have the same outcome, such as partaking in any early invasions or assassinations where players must choose to abide by Leda’s paranoid motivations or not, and that makes the optional progression of their individual quests that much richer with direct repercussions represented in a penultimate boss fight.
Summons are evidently embellished in Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree with Spirit Ashes having their own dedicated scaling in the DLC, but quest-related NPC summons are equally important and that goes a long way in making them intrinsic to the events the player is experiencing since they get to fight alongside them. Even aside from Leda’s companions, there is a fairly compelling and satisfying quest involving a vengeance-driven Igon, who heartily bellows throughout Bayle the Dread’s boss fight if players choose to summon him during it, and thus Igon is allowed to be a crucial and meaningful accessory to Bayle’s vanquishing rather than a forgettable NPC.
