Miyazaki had announced that the Elden Ring expansion would have a new region the size of Necrolimbe, but that was a blatant lie. The Shadow Realm is much larger in practice, and it’s full of dungeons and bosses, and they’re particularly tricky. Don’t expect to beat them all that quickly. That said, there are several ways to approach the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, and your skill level is a factor as well.
Just finish the main story of the DLC in a straight line
If you just want to finish the expansion, as quickly as possible, completely ignoring the open world, secrets, quests and optional bosses, it turns out to be very quick. However, you may have difficulty with the bosses, unless you are really very good. Theoretically, it is possible to complete Shadow of the Erdtree in just a few hoursknowing exactly where to go, since only 5 bosses are really mandatory. Of course, if you can’t kill the final boss, it’s possible to spend dozens of hours on it.
Complete the DLC by killing all bosses
From our point of view, this is the ideal approach for the majority of players. It is the right compromise allowing you to enjoy the fights and the world, as well as unlock the optional areas with their formidable bosses. We will also assume that you tend to explore dungeons and complete the quests you find on your way. Once again, our estimate will vary depending on your level of play, killing the bosses in one or two tries, or spending several hours on each of them is absolutely not comparable.
In these conditions, it is necessary to count between 30 and 50 hours of gameplayor even more.
Complete the DLC 100%
Unfortunately there is no no trophies for Shadow of the Erdtreethis implies that your own criteria will determine when you’re done with what it offers. There are no big story branches, and there is only one ending that we know of, but many quests can be completed in at least two ways, which also influences the rewards obtained. You also have 8 new weapon categories, dozens of new spells and war ashes at your disposal, if you want to test everything out, or even seriously play with it, you may spend a few hundred more hours on the game.
More reasonably, to collect everything on a single character, you have to complete the expansion twice with the same character. Even setting aside the time spent on the base game to come back, you probably have enough a hundred hours at the very least.
