With Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC mere hours away from release, you might think there’s not much FromSoftware could possibly do to refocus your excitement on the base game. But Elden Ring’s previously promised new base game patch is now here, and it’s already caused a bit of a flutter among fans – not least because it finally lets you take your trusty steed Torrent into the concluding Elden Beast boss fight.
Now, I’ll readily admit I haven’t fought the Elden Beast myself – the short explanation being my wildly misguided decision to do a purely melee-based first run through and, uh, Malenia – but even I’m aware of the boss fight’s notoriety. Not due to its difficult, mind, but because it teleports itself around an arena so massive, players have frequently found the ensuing on-foot chase-the-monster action utterly exhausting. This Reddit thread from two years ago called it the “single worst designed boss” in Elden Ring, and, well, it’s a fairly common opinion.
Plenty of people have speculated the Elden Beast was originally designed to be fought on the back on Torrent given its cavernous arena – and wondered why everybody’s favourite goat-horse wasn’t accessible in the final release version – but, some two years on, he’s finally here. “Added new feature to summon spectral steed during the Elden Beast the boss battle”, explains today’s 1.12 patch notes – and the Elden Ring fanbase rises for thunderous applause.
Torrent’s inclusion in Elden Ring’s finale is just one of the additions in a fairly hefty patch. A lot falls under the banner of balancing changes, but there are also bug fixes, new Steam-exclusive keyboard and mouse settings, FIVE NEW HAIRSTYLES, plus the handful of extremely welcome quality of life improvements detailed earlier this week.
Elden Ring’s inventory has, for instance, been tweaked so it’s easier to see newly acquired items at a glance (previously, new items just vanished into the pile, which was a pain for lore hooverers like me) by highlighting them with an exclamation. A Recent Items tab has also been added to the inventory.
Elsewhere, colosseum competitors will find all crafted consumable items used during PvP battles are now replenished at the end of a session, and Summoning Pools have had a bit of an overhaul too. Active Summoning Pools now carry over to NG+, and it’s possible to enable or disable individual Summoning Pools in the newly added Map Functions menu.
“If ‘Include Distant Areas’ is selected when using the Small Golden Effigy,” FromSoftware notes, “summoning pools within the Mohgwyn Palace will not be selected for summoning, even if you have activated them. If you are within the Moghwyn Palace and select ‘Nearby Only’ when using the Small Golden Effigy, you will be able to be summoned within the area.”
All this, of course, arrives ahead of FromSoftware’s highly anticipated Elden Ring DLC – a release I’m currently so excited about my reality is practically shimmering. Based on my previous experience of FromSoftware DLC, I expect this excitement to last approximately 30 seconds before turning into utterly humiliated misery – but for anyone planning a more cautious approach, here’s everything you might want to do to prepare for Shadow of the Erdtree.
