Praise the yak, thanks to Elden Ring's latest update you can finally summon Torrent during the final bossfight
The latest patch also brings new hair, inventory and summoning tweaks, and various balance changes
We’re less than a day now from Shadow Of The Erdtree’s launch, and as promised, FromSoft have just released the latest patch (notes here) for the open world game. It’s only 6GB, and you’ll need it to play the expansion, so do click that button if you haven’t already. The updates headline features - new hairstyles, plus inventory and summoning QOL tweaks - were announced last week. However, it seems they buried the lede deeper than my disgust at the game’s Albinuaric murdering community: Torrent, the game’s spectral steed mount, is finally summonable in the fight against the final boss - just as the community have long speculated it was always intended to be.
Spoilers for the name of that boss below, if you’d rather not know.
“Added new feature to summon spectral steed during the Elden Beast boss battle,” declares the item as if it’s no big deal. Some context: The fight against Elden Beast is a low point in what’s otherwise an interesting run of bosses during Elden Ring’s final stretch. The actual creature itself is a gorgeous and deeply strange Ghibli-esque ink dragon. But the boss arena is huge, and the beast likes to teleport around it, making for agonizing sprints back and forth as you try to keep up. This, alongside certain attacks that look as if they’re designed to be hopped over with Torrent, has lead to speculation that this fight was always meant to be beaten mounted, but for whatever reason, your steed wasn’t summonable in the release version of the RPG. It’s an incredibly welcome change, in other words.
Elsewhere in the patch are the following headline changes:
- Added support for the SHADOW OF THE ERDTREE DLC.
- Five new hairstyles have been added to the game. They can be selected during character creation, using the Clouded Mirror Stand or using Rennala's Rebirth feature.
- Added "Map Functions Menu" to the Map Menu.
- Active Summoning Pools will now be carried over to NG+.
- Individual Summoning Pools can now be enabled / disabled in the newly added Map Functions Menu.
New Inventory features:
- Newly obtained items will be marked with a "!“.
- A new tab called "Recent Items" has been added to review recently obtained items.
- Display settings can be changed from the Display tab in the system menu.
- Added new feature to summon spectral steed during the Elden Beast the boss battle.
- Added new feature to the colosseum: crafted consumable items that have been used during a battle will be replenished at the end of your session.
- Added support for Arabic language.
The patch also includes the following Steam only changes:
Alongside this are various other balance changes to weapons, ashes of war, and great runes, both PvP specific and in general. Shadow Of The Erdtree itself just got a new launch trailer today, which you can find below. Fair warning though: it's not shy about spoiling what look to be several bosses.
- New Keyboard/mouse settings:
- Added "lock-on change threshold" setting of mouse controls.
- Added a setting to change cursor movement behaviour in the map menu.
- Added key assignments to open the map in the Key Settings menu.
“The Land Of Shadow may not be as expansive as the base game's Lands Between, but it's knottier, denser, more of a twisting mass that burrows into the earth and soars into the skies. For this reason I think it produces some of Elden Ring's finest moments, as exploration leads to a truer sense of discovery reminiscent of old Souls,” wrote Edders in his Shadow Of The Erdtree review, “but I also think its sheer density exposes more chinks in its open world format, where its interconnected sprawl leads to even greater recollection paralysis.” You should read the full thing though. It contains the phrase “fuckery per capita.”