You know how defeating the major bosses in Elden Ring grants you a remembrance of them? Typically, you’re meant to use these to get runes for leveling or spending, otherwise you can mold those remembrances into weapons reminiscent of the boss. What if, instead, you could use them to call on former bosses to aid you in fights?
That’s the general conceit of a new Elden Ring mod that Polygon first reported on, which turns the sometimes diabolically difficult RPG into a wildly fucked up version of Pokémon. Are you having a tough time with Shadow of the Erdtree? Well, Dragonlord Placidusax uses flamethrower and it’s super effective.
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Shadow of the Erdtree features a hell of a gauntlet of boss fights, including some of the toughest and most ludicrous encounters in this already larger-than-life game. Anecdotally, folks seem to get stuck on one of about three encounters in the DLC: the one against the massive dragon Bayle the Dread, a fight against the DLC’s main antagonist Messmer the Impaler, and an extra special “fuck you” fight to close out the expansion against Promised Consort Radahn. Each one of these fights is taxing in its own right, so imagine being able to trivialize them by making them turn on each other.
The mod, which is available now on Nexus Mods, was created by a user known as FlippantTunic 22. It currently lets you summon 11 bosses from Shadow of the Erdtree into your game as long as you have beaten them first. So maybe you can’t use Placidusax, since he’s a boss featured in the main game, but you get nearly a dozen able-bodied and twisted replacements who probably hit even harder. Among the list of heavy-hitters are both Messmer and Radahn, Rellana, and the Divine Beast Dancing Lion.
I won’t pretend to understand the dark magic and witchcraft that goes into making mods work, but evidently they seem tied to the use of Spirit Ashes in the main game, which function as summons that players can deploy in battle. Some of the bosses featured in the mod are still kind of buggy, like the Golden Hippopotamus, which should be summoned in large, flat arenas to accommodate the big guy. One boss has their phases split up between two different summons, but upon using HP or FP to call on them, they’ll have access to their typical boss moveset, making them invaluable allies. Each of the 11 bosses is tied to a summon and the list detailing each of them can be found in the mod’s description.
Excitingly, this now means that Elden Ring players have even more toys to play with. For example, which incarnation of Radahn wins a fight, Promised Consort or Starscourge? Think of the lore-accurate beefs we can play out! We can pit Radahn at his prime (as Promised Consort) against Malenia and let him get payback for inflicting him with Scarlet Rot, which would ultimately drive him to madness for the rest of his days. Personally, I can’t wait for Bayle to be added to the mod’s functionality eventually, so he can also get his lick back for Placidusax’s betrayal. I apologize, I’m clearly Placidusax-pilled and failed to realize it till now. He just has such a cool name.
With all that in mind, go forth Tarnished. You gotta catch ‘em all, and be the very best there ever was if you’re going to bring Grace back to the Lands Between, or whatever the fuck you get up to in the Land of Shadow.