Shadow Of The Erdtree’s Map Reveals New Lore For Elden Ring’s Most Important Characters

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's map hides a shocking secret that reveals new details about its most central characters. The DLC map is unbelievably huge; though once advertised as comparable to the size of the starting region, Limgrave, players have speculated that it appears much bigger, almost as big as the base game's map itself. That might be an exaggeration. The Land of Shadows isn't nearly as big as the Lands Between, but it is dense. Its areas are stacked up on top of each other. The player may spend hours exploring one dungeon path, only to realize there's another world beneath their feet.

[Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Elden Ring, and some minor spoilers for Shadow of the Erdtree.]

And on a microcosmic level, 's DLC is full of secrets. It crams so much content into such a small space that it takes players twice as long to cover an equivalent amount of ground. Things like hidden dungeons, optional bosses, and mysterious artifacts abound. Behind each of these is extensive lore, dispensed piecemeal in cryptic dialogue and vague flavor text. It's up to the player to put these explore, and put these disparate parts together to understand the whole. That's exactly what's happening with the Land of Shadows' map, but on a much larger scale, and its implications for the main case are incredibly revealing.

Reddit user GilliamYaeger pointed out that 's DLC map fits perfectly into the base game's map like a puzzle piece. The Land of Shadow can be slotted into the sea that separates Limgrave from Leyndell, the two regions' geographic formations matching each other one-to-one. Their coasts connect in certain places, leaving small stretches of sea in others. Even their respective elevations match at certain points, but where they overlap, can easily be excused by one area's being underground. It's like seeing a map of Pangea for the first time, and realizing wide-eyed how much suddenly makes sense.

But this isn't just a meaningless connection made for visual symmetry. For one