Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, despite being critically lauded (fellow PC Gamer writer Tyler Colp gave it a 95 in his Shadow of the Erdtree review, himself) has somehow reignited the age-old Elden Ring difficulty discourse—although more people are on the side of toning things down than they were in 2022, as Steam reviews dropped to "Mixed" last week.
The review score is still "Mixed" at the time of writing, though just barely, with 69% of reviews being positive. One root cause of this Erdtree agony is a mixture of misunderstandings and fair criticisms over the Scadutree Fragments system—a DLC-specific source of power scaling that increases your overall defence and offence after finding specific macguffins, akin to the Sacred Tears and Golden Seeds from the first game.
