Much has been said about the fiendishly difficult bosses in Elden Ring‘s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, but the lands between each of them can pose just as much of a challenge. Even those who never played the original Dark Souls have heard stories about the archers of Anor Londo and the rooftop route over which they defend, and now a section in Elden Ring‘s Land of Shadow is garnering the same onerous infamy.
Though 2009’s Demon’s Souls was the genesis of the Soulsborne genre and the meteoric rise of FromSoftware, it was two years later when most of its fans were introduced to the studio’s genius through Dark Souls. Within the world of Lordran and the many boss fights therein, conquered through trial and error, attack pattern recognition, and sheer will, is a portion of the game that still haunts fans’ dreams.
A skilled Elden Ring player manages to defeat the already infamous final boss of the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC in one hit using a dangerous trick.
Enir-Ilim is Anor Londo All Over Again
In the abandoned city of Anor Londo, traversing its Gothic Renaissance rooftops, lies an unassuming flying buttress that players must cross to progress. What would be an inconsequential platforming section becomes a march toward madness when combined with a pair of Silver Knight archers guarding the way forward, their unerring aim knocking countless Chosen Undeads to their doom. In a game with such time-honored boss fights as Ornstein and Smough, Manus, the Four Kings, and the Knight Artorias, some still claim the Anor Londo rooftop as the game’s biggest hurdle.
Shadow of the Erdtree has no scarcity of gruelingly difficult encounters. Through the Scadutree Fragment progression system, even those who had ground out hundreds of hours in Elden Ring found themselves running into a brick wall at several points during the DLC, including its final encounter, which is already topping the lists of FromSoftware’s hardest bosses. Just before that boss, however, is a section that may surpass Dark Soul‘s Anor Londo rooftop as the most daunting and frustrating across the studio’s entire catalog of games.
Above the upper half of Belurat is Enir-llim, Shadow of the Erdtree’s third and final legacy dungeon. Upon sun-bleached cobblestones, sand-eroded pillars, and clay-shingled rooftops, players have to contend with some of the DLC’s hardest non-boss combatants. The lead up to its finale is a test of patience, endurance, and coordination wrought with encounters that will have players yearning for the days of two simple Silver Knights guarding a lone flying buttress.
Elden Ring Remains Unforgiving
The Spiral Rise contains a confluence of factors that make it so aggravatingly difficult. The element-infused Divine Beast Warriors players will face along the way have such intricate and unforgiving attack chains that each could be a boss in their own right, and only the last one will not respawn after being defeated. Compounding this challenge are several casters perched upon balconies, flinging the Spira Incantation with such unforgiving frequency and determination that even sprinting past is not an option. All of this would be less grueling if not for the length between the Spiral Rise Site of Grace and the one in the Cleansing Chamber Anteroom, making players do the trek all over again if they die before reaching that final checkpoint.
It is funny how between the margins of jaw-dropping cutscenes, set pieces, and boss fights, are relatively innocuous sections of FromSoftware games that leave the biggest impressions. Years from now, as fans reminisce on the thrilling encounters in Shadow of the Erdtree, the Spiral Rise of Enir-llim might be seen in the same light as the rooftop of Anor Lando: the perfect storm of level design and enemy placement to test the skills and fortitude of players in a way arguably even more challenging than its plethora of boss fights.
