Elden Ring Has Been Teasing Shadow Of The Erdtree All Along

FromSoftware’s award-winning 2022 RPG Elden Ring is full of secrets. Its most evocative ones are hidden in environmental details and item descriptions, and when they’re discovered they offer information about The Lands Between’s characters and lore. Apparently, one of those secrets may have been alluding to the game’s recently unveiled Shadow of the Erdtree DLC this whole time, and FromSoftware stans believe they’ve finally discovered what that something is.

Read More: Everything We Know About Elden Ring’s Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC
Pre-order the Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC: Amazon | Humble Bundle

As spotted by Eurogamer, redditor cudakid210 posted screenshots of a very mid-looking piece of equipment. It’s called the Candletree Wooden Shield, and it’s something you can find relatively early on if you’re willing to brave the punishing Atlus Plateau region that’s just past Limgrave and Liurnia. It’s not the perfectly fine shield that drew cudakid210’s attention, but the iconography emblazoned on it and its description that got the Elden Ring subreddit talking.

“A tall, medium-sized wooden shield. Light for its size, and easy to handle,” the Candletree Wooden Shield’s description reads. “Thought to represent a surreptitious prophecy of cardinal sin, the lit candle-tree design was forbidden.”

The second part about “cardinal sin” and “prophecy” and “candle-tree design” might’ve been signposts for the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. See, in a February 22 IGN interview, game director Hidetaka Miyazaki alluded to a “small element” about the expansion that players hadn’t discovered in the base game yet. Of course, there’s no way of knowing if the shield’s item description is that “small element” that Elden Ring fans may have missed, but if lore details plucked from the add-on’s gameplay reveal trailer suggest anything, it may be that the Candletree Wooden Shield is tied to the flaming hot bad boy Messmer.

Messmer the Impaler is a brand-new boss coming to Shadow of the Erdtree. He’s a red-haired demigod who, when we first encounter him in the February 21 DLC trailer, is flanked by a ton of lit candles, which could suggest an allegiance to some Candletree faction of sorts. There are also various enemies either battling with candelabras or wielding gear emblazoned with a candelabra, which just so happens to be the very same symbol etched on the front of the Candletree Wooden Shield. Further, as cudakid210 speculates with regards to “cardinal sin,” the shield’s description mentions how the “candle-tree design was forbidden,” suggesting that Messmer may have been erased from The Lands Between’s history because of his sins. There’s also another potential Shadow of the Erdtree hint that redditor Urusander found: Candelabras hidden in the Haligtree Prayer Room, which they suggest may be a reference to Messmer’s faction.

Read More: Shadow Of The Erdtree Is The Sekiro DLC We Never Got

While you absolutely should take these findings with a grain of salt, they certainly make it seem like the highly anticipated Elden Ring DLC may have been hiding right under our noses since February 2022. Either way, we won’t have to wait too long to find out if the sleuths were right, as the Shadow of the Erdtree drops on June 21. You can pre-order the $40 DLC now.