With Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC mere hours away from release, you might think there’s not much FromSoftware could possibly do to refocus your excitement on the base game. But Elden Ring’s previously promised new 1.12 update is now here, and it’s already caused a bit of a flutter among fans – not least because it finally lets you take your trusty steed Torrent into the base game’s concluding Elden Beast boss fight.
Now, I’ll readily admit I haven’t fought the Elden Beast myself – the short explanation being my wildly misguided decision to do a melee-only first run-through and, uh, Malenia – but even I’m aware of the boss’ notoriety. Not due to its difficult, mind, but because it teleports itself around an arena so massive, players have frequently found the ensuing on-foot chase-the-monster action utterly exhausting. This Reddit thread from two years ago called it the “single worst designed boss” in Elden Ring, and, well, it’s a fairly common opinion.
Plenty of people have speculated the Elden Beast was originally designed to be tackled on the back of Torrent given its cavernous arena – and wondered why everybody’s favourite goat-horse wasn’t accessible in the final release version – but, some two years on, he’s finally here. “Added new feature to summon spectral steed during the Elden Beast boss battle”, explains today’s 1.12 patch notes – and the Elden Ring fanbase rises for thunderous applause.
Torrent’s inclusion in the Elden Ring finale is just one of numerous additions in a fairly hefty patch. A lot falls under the banner of ‘balancing changes’, but there are also bug fixes, new Steam-exclusive keyboard and mouse settings, FIVE NEW HAIRSTYLES, plus the handful of extremely welcome quality of life improvements detailed last week.