Intro

FromSoftware released an infographic showing the data around summons, spells, incantations and deadly foes for players who went through Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC and while some were quite obvious, others painted a picture of people shooting themselves in the foot.

Summoning Miquella’s followers

In regards to summons, the most common of Miquella’s groupies were:

• Dryleaf Dane vs Romina at 35.4%
• Redmane Freyja vs Dancing Lion 29.07%
• Needle Knight Leda vs Rellana 22.65%

Surprisingly, people seem to have found Romina difficult. In my own playthroughs, I found her to be the most pleasant of Remembrance bosses but a slight difference in a build could mean completely different difficulty settings versus various bosses in FromSoft games.

More surprising, however, is the high summoning rate for Freyja versus the Dancing Lion. While Dane might actually help with damage and tanking against Romina, Freyja is completely useless against the Divine Beast because of its highly erratic movement. Essentially, summoning Freyja against it only serves to beef the Lion’s health up without much benefit. In other words, almost every third player made the game more difficult than it had to be.

I expected Leda would be more popular against Rellana due to her high stagger potential but summoning her makes the fight’s difficulty trivial, which is probably why she wasn’t a summoned more often.

Eels are dangerous apparently

Spectral eels, those things we saw around basically all evergaols, managed to kill 289,116 Tarnished since SotE launched. In the rare occasions that these noodles are aggressive, their attacks are extremely slow and easy to dodge so the kill count might seem mind boggling at first.

I do have one theory how they racked up so many kills though.

There is one Skadutree Fragment that requires players riding through multiple aggressive Eels and the cave it’s found in is inhabited by a rather nasty Beastman. Fighting with it can sometimes lead Tarnished outside the cave and into the reach of the Eels’ artillery while at fairly low health and a dangerous enemy behind them.

It’s just a theory though, maybe someone just pumped their KDA ratio for fun.

Impenetrable Thorns, the bane of Radahn

Most popular spells in the DLC were:

• Impenetrable Thorns
• Rellana’s Twin Moons
• Glintblade Trio
• Mantle of Thorns

All the spells on the list are powerful and frankly, it’s no surprise people use them so much. FromSoft didn’t reveal the percentages but I have a strong feeling that the gap between Impenetrable Thorns and everything else is pretty significant. This spell is invaluable against beefcakes like Radahn and one of the easier ways to beat the bosses.

Incantations also love thorns

Most used incantations in SotE so far are:

• Knight’s Lightning Spear
• Aspect of the Crucible: Thorns
• Midra’s Flame of Frenzy
• Pest-Thread Spears
• Golden Arcs

No surprise here. All of these are powerful incantations and the one thing they have in common is high Stance damage. Knight’s Lightning Spear is basically a beefed up version of an already great incantation so if you find yourself having high Faith in the Shadowlands, make sure to pick it up.

Most used Spirit Ashes

• Taylew the Golem Smith
• Jolan and Anna
• Demi-Human Swordsman Yosh
• Inquisitor Ashes
• Divine Bird Warrior Ornis

Once again, FromSoft didn’t clarify the criteria for this list. Mimic Tear is still immensely powerful, even after the nerfs but the reason it isn’t in the top 5 probably has to do with the ashes on the list being exclusively from SotE. Once again, Stance damage is the name of the game so it’s no surprise heavy hitters, spammers and a duo are the summons of choice for Tarnished wandering the Shadowlands.