Unfortunately I had to do a completely new run of elden ring to make it to the dlc and had already put in about 100 hours.
Now that I’m in the dlc I’m about halfway through it and starting to get burnt out.
I can tell it’s really good. I think I’m just burnt out on Elden ring because it’s all I’ve been playing lately in an attempt to unlock the dlc
Tldr I wish I would have had my Xbox and my old character to jump straight into the dlc instead of starting over on ps5 and playing through nearly the entire base hame.
In Messmer’s castle, I think most of the NPCs as well as notes you pick up refer to both of the two required vanilla bosses’ corpses being moved or otherwise manipulated. They also talk about a ritual, I believe one NPC even connecting the dots for the player and saying explicitly what the ritual is for and that the corpse is for the ritual. It’s the most coherent and opaque FromSoft lore has ever been.
Whether it’s GOOD that that’s the boss is up for debate, I certainly don’t agree. But it isn’t an arbitrary decision.
Let me know if you are able to recall which npc it is that talks about the ritual. Would love to read their lives. But definitely don’t stress about it.
Redmane Freyja and Sir Ansbach. You bring a letter to Freyja from Ansbach who elaborates some. You also bring a scroll about the ritual to Ansbach who lays it all out quite clear. The dialogue is all on fextralife so you don’t have to replay the entire DLC