Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is Playable on Steam Deck - First Look

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We are giving away Shadow of the Erdtree on Twitter and Reddit for the next 12 hours! Head over there to enter. Keys were provided by 2Game. You can also get the DLC for $35 if you purchase on 2Game, which is an official store.

Elden Ring's highly anticipated DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, is finally released, and man, it is awesome. The new world looks phenomenal, and while I have just scratched the surface, it feels big enough to justify a full new game. There was some worry about this release due to the new system requirements, and it does seem like it might be harder to run on the Steam Deck, but luckily, this isn't completely the case. It is playable, but it's definitely going to be harder to run than the base Elden Ring experience.

In this article, I want to go over my experience so far and highlight what I think will be the best settings to play Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree at. This is a tough one, since the expansion is massive and I don't want to just recommend any settings without playing the full game, so this is purely an impression and not indicative of a full review with recommended settings.

I also want to mention that a key for the expansion was provided by Bandai Namco, and we are giving away two copies of Shadow of the Erdtree over on X/Twitter and Reddit. The keys were provided by 2Game and we can't thank them enough for the opportunity.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree - Steam Deck First Impressions

While the base Elden Ring game can hit 40 FPS with reduced settings, it's nearly impossible to reach with Shadow of the Erdtree. Even at the lowest possible settings and a resolution of 960x600, I was still getting drops into the mid-30s when riding around horseback in the open world. Inside buildings is a different story, and we can hit higher framerates above 40 when in closed-off areas, but as soon as you step out into the open world, it goes right back down.

The areas in Shadow of the Erdtree are more demanding in the base game, and it shows throughout gameplay. The open world can drop, while some big effects, especially ones from bosses, will slow down the framerate, too. At the lowest settings, one of the first bosses, Rellena, brought the framerate down to 30 with one of the big attacks. So, with this in mind, I would say 30 FPS is the way to go.

I found that our recommended 30 FPS settings for the base game do the job 90% of the time, but for some of the bigger areas and bosses, I did find lowering some settings to help slightly. So, with most of the settings on low and a couple on medium or high, I could keep a stable 30 FPS in the open world with some minor drops in boss battles or when a lot of effects are on the screen. This is all at a resolution of 1280x800 as well, so everything looks crisp. You can lower the resolution to 1152x720 to mitigate some of these drops, but it wasn't enough to justify a change.

And here are our settings:

You will see some chunky shadows if you stand still on inside areas or possibly some blurry vegetation in the open world, but in the end, everything still looks beautiful.

There are also a couple of bugs that can crash or freeze the game, plaguing the stable branch of SteamOS, but a fix is in the works, and we will hopefully see it on the stable update soon!

So, Is It Worth Playing Shadow of the Erdtree on Steam Deck?

The big question! Honestly, I would say so. With the bulk of the game hitting 30 FPS so far with some minor spots, that drop isn't terrible. It is much more worthwhile to play the expansion than not. The new world is amazing, and even if you have to lower some settings to experience it, it's still worth diving in. I can say with full certainty that if you are a fan of Elden Ring, don't miss out on Shadow of the Erdtree, even if you are primarily playing on the Steam Deck.

You can purchase Shadow of the Erdtree on Steam for $39.99, but if you want to save a little money, you can purchase it on 2Game for $34.99 and save $5!

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