Equipping A Single Elden Ring Item May Help You Beat Shadow Of The Erdtree’s Bosses

Summary

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
‘s bosses are harder and DLC adds a new item, Blessing of Marika, to help.
Mimic Tear, an upgradable Spirit Ash, can use Blessing of Marika to double player’s health.
Blessings of Marika are rare and should be used sparingly, but can be consumed by Mimic Tear without affecting player’s stocks.

Unsurprisingly, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree’s bosses are much harder than those in Elden Ring’s base game. If Tarnished aren’t getting tangoed to death by the Divine Beast Dancing Lion , they’re being needled by a gross porcupine hippo or messed up by Messmer. Thankfully, the DLC also adds a new item that could potentially turn the tides in the fight against these unforgiving bosses.

Thanks to an abundance of AoEs and some nasty damage output, the Mimic Tear isn’t quite as dependable in Shadow of the Erdtree as it is in the Lands Between, but it is still an extremely handy tool for the DLC. For those who don’t know, the Mimic Tear is an upgradable Spirit Ash that summons a clone of the player with high health and the ability to use any of their equipped items. If the player keeps a powerful healing item on their hotbar, the Mimic Tear can use it to effectively double their health.

Messmer, Radahn, and Gaius from Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree

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Support Your Mimic With A Blessing Of Marika

A Powerful Combination

The icon for the Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree item, Blessing of Marika, in the inventory screen. Shows a thin flask.

One of the rarest and most useful items added by the Shadow of The Erdtree DLC is the Blessing of Marika , a single-use potion that “completely restores HP and heals all ailments.” There are three known fixed locations for the Blessings: one inside a cave behind the Church of Consolation, another on a corpse behind the Fort of Reprimand, and another dropped by the Tree Sentinel in the Hinterlands. Functionally identical to Divine Blessings from the Dark Souls series, these items are so rare that they ought to be used only in the direst of circumstances.

As Twitter user @Ziggy_Princess_ points out, Blessings of Marika are immensely more useful in the hands of a player’s Mimic Tear. While the player is limited to around three uses per playthrough, Blessings can be consumed once per boss attempt by Mimic Tears without affecting the player’s limited stocks. This means that if the player reserves one hotbar slot for the item during boss fights, their Mimic has a chance of radically extending their lifespan during the DLC’s longer and tougher encounters.

Don’t Be Afraid To Secure Every Advantage Against Shadow Of The Erdtree’s Bosses

Use Whatever Wins

The player character in Elden Ring cowers before a squat, dark stone fortress. The sky is pink and the Jagged Peak can be seen in the background.

Shadow of the Erdtree’s bosses fight dirty, and so should any lowly Tarnished who hopes to topple them. Fans have argued endlessly about how “valid” or “fair” Spirit Ashes are as a tool against Elden Ring’s bosses, but the debate is as old as time. Certain FromSoftware fans scoff at summons for the same reason that those apocryphal English bowmen turned their noses up at crossbows – honor. But Bayle the Dread couldn’t care less about honor. Bayle weighs the same as an aircraft carrier. Bayle’s sneezes are measured in megatons.

Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree provide the player with dozens of spells, incantations, Ashes of War, and various tools to temper boss difficulty. The DLC poses a formidable challenge, but it was also designed with the assumption that the player would make use of these tools in order to succeed. They exist for a reason. All is fair in love, war, and FromSoftware games.

Spirit Ashes from Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC in Elden Ring

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AI for NPC summons is a mixed bag in Elden Ring, so Mimic Tears aren’t always guaranteed to use their Blessing of Marika during a fight, but any FromSoftware fan who’s got this far should be hardened to a little RNG. Also, a minor aside – the Blessing’s icon resembles that of the Flask of Wondrous Physick , so players should make sure to keep the two well away from each other in their hotbars. This trick has the potential to be truly game-changing for many and may help them to finally glimpse Shadow of the Erdtree’s ending cutscene.