Elden Ring is the blockbuster game that needs no introduction - another Souls-like by From Software, whose portfolio at this point is getting crowded with iconic, industry-defining, and tough-as-nails games. Winning basically every award it was put forwards for last year and beating sales records across the board, it's no wonder a DLC is on the way. If it's been a while, then don't worry - because with these five mods, you've got plenty of resources to build up your Souls experience once more!
High-Res UI and Subtitle Fonts
By backfoggen
Fonts in the PC edition of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition weren't designed to take advantage of the more powerful hardware of PCs; and whilst you can get the game running at high framerates and gorgeous resolutions, the scaling on fonts won't match up. This visually faithful addon might be a quality of life improvement, but those are some of the best mods out there - improving the resolution on fonts to fit better with PC visibility.
DARK SOULS World Randomizer
A critical component of the Dark Souls formula is mastery - mastery over combat, knowledge of enemy patterns, and to a certain extent, memorising what enemies are where, when, and what to expect of them. So, then, a randomizer mod might be one way for even masters of the Dark Souls games to turn things up a notch - now having to be ready for every encounter, prepared to face enemies you might not expect to in a normal playthrough for hours yet. It's a perfect way to sharpen your instincts without being able to rely on rote memorisation.
New Aggression Mod
By Dziggy
This mod significantly increases the distance that enemies see and hear the player, and removes the limit on how close the player must be for them to initiate combat. This means they will see you from much, much farther away, and will initiate combat as soon as they see you. Alternate editions of the mod are also available that emulate the behavior of the original Cheat Engine script by making enemies automatically sense your presence without needing to see you first. If randomisation isn't enough, try making it so you'll never get the drop on enemies - for those who are a true glutton to punishment and not afraid to beat back the odds.
Dark Souls HD Texture Pack
By DragonCrestPC - Toology86
FromSoft's world and art design is at least half the reason the Dark Souls games are so memorable - a regular mix of dark fantasy and gothic design present in all of their titles, and tinged with whatever setting they've chosen for that particular game. As time goes on, though, the technical limits of that game's era become apparent no matter how well designed they were initially, and so mods like these do the legwork of uplifting the original just that little bit more and giving it an excuse to bat with the best of them.
Hollow Overhaul
By witcherrr
Finally, a big one - an overhaul for Dark Souls III, the (to date) latest game in the Dark Souls line-up. Over time, you might've mastered its mechanics, memorised its levels, committed to practising every element of play - but still want more. Well, why not start the learning all over again and dig into a mod that changes enemy positioning, presents a total tonal rebalance of the entire game, new upgrade paths for weapons, and a change to gameplay values that aim it towards difficulty and hardcore fans of the game.
Untarnished
Elden Ring is 2022's game of the year for many, a solid evolution of the From Software Souls experience which saw a gigantic open world that just kept growing, packed full of secrets that, to this day, are still being deciphered and discovered. It attained widespread and mainstream success, prompting discussions on the reality of the modern games industry and inspiring studios to take just a few more risks with what people might be willing to get in on. Not surprising, then, is news that a DLC is coming to Elden Ring titled Shadow of the Erdtree.
Elden Ring is the most successful From Software launch ever,
with hundreds of thousands of concurrent players on all platforms
Not Yet Buried
Little was revealed in the initial tweet showcasing the DLC - just a singular piece of concept art depicting all the mood, tone, and features we've come to expect from new entries in From Software's line-up. Rich Stanton over at PCGamer has some interesting speculation about this being a prequel to the main story, but the jury's out with no official details yet. For now, it's not a bad idea to revisit Elden Ring and brave the inevitable whiplash returning to a Souls-like usually induces.
