Elden Ring gets difficulty settings and Bloodborne weapons in this "massive overhaul" of a mod

The makers of Elden Ring - Shattered, a new mod promising a "massive overhaul" to combat, decided the game could use difficulty settings and also a dash of Bloodborne. Actually, a whole lot of Bloodborne. Screw it, maybe all of Bloodborne.

Uploaded to Nexus Mods earlier this month by Bull04, one member of a larger mod team, Elden Ring - Shattered basically makes the game way faster-paced, often by folding in Bloodborne mechanics. It's got Bloodborne's sprint and dash animations, the same rally system that lets you heal by dealing damage after getting hit, and plenty of the game's iconic trick weapons. The movesets of many existing weapons have also been updated to make them quite a bit speedier. 

Elden Ring's overall difficulty curve has been adjusted, too. The biggest change here is the addition of difficulty settings accessed via a new Difficulty Master NPC found in Limgrave. You can choose between Cakewalk, Newblood, Standard, Shattered, and Masochist. 

Lower difficulties grant more Runes, offer passive HP and FP regen, improve your flask healing, and generally weaken enemies. Masochist difficulty, meanwhile, cuts your Runes in half, disables the Bloodborne-style rally healing, makes item drops rarer, increases all incoming damage (including fall damage), and reduces the flasks you regenerate from killing groups of enemies – and that's just the first stop on the pain train. If Elden Ring wasn't challenging enough for you, give this nightmare concoction a whirl. 

The mod also makes difficulty changes outside of the bespoke settings. It adds more enemies, for starters, and they all have more base HP to account for how much faster you are and how aggressively you can play. The scaling of HP, FP, and stamina has also been boosted to frontload early levels. Even Torrent, your loyal spirit steed, is faster – 50% faster, no less. Can't catch me now, giant demon shrimp. 

Crafting and upgrading receive some fascinating changes and additions as well. Smithing Stones are more plentiful, crafting ingredients are up to 1000% more plentiful, the buffs from Crystal Tears and weapon greases last much longer, and major bosses will drop Erdtree Essence that can be used to craft new Erdtree Armor. Once again, that's just the start. 

You can find more details over on Nexus Mods. Elden Ring - Shattered is still very much "in heavy development," and installing it takes some doing, but user responses have been pretty positive so far.

Elden Ring DLC looks more likely than ever, but sadly it probably won't add Bloodborne in its entirety to the game.