Elden Ring: Everything You Need To Do Before Shadow Of The Erdtree

With dropping its long-awaited Shadow Of The Erdtree expansion on June 21, players should be looking to round out their characters to enter The Land of Shadow at peak performance. FromSoftware has stated that the DLC will be as hard as the late game, giving players plenty of reason to prepare for quite the challenge. While the expansion will undoubtedly contain a plethora of interesting weapons, armor, and spells, there are plenty of quality-of-life items that will help your character's journey through this exciting new land.

The expansion can't even be accessed until making headway into the latter parts of, as the entrance to the Land of Shadow is blocked by Mohg, Lord of Blood. By this point, many Tarnished will have already fleshed out their builds and allocated their runes, as Mohg is one of the late-game bosses. However, The Lands Between are incredibly large, and valuable items often go uncollected by even the most avid of players.

Throughout the journey through The Lands Between, there are dozens of smithing stones scattered throughout the world that can be used to upgrade your armaments. While scouring the world for these is valuable in the early game, at some point in the journey, players will find themselves in need of additional stones as they encounter new weapons.

The solution to this problem is to find their corresponding bell bearings, which can be turned in to the Twin Maiden Husks to use runes to purchase an infinite amount of these stones.

You cannot use bell bearings to purchase ancient smithing stones to max out your weapons, as there are meant to be a finite number of these per playthrough.

Name of Item

Location

How to Find

Smithing Stone Miner's Bell Bearings

Defeat the Crystalian

Inside a chest after entering the first area

Inside a chest at the bottom of the stairs

Defeat the Godskin Duo

Somberstone Miner's Bell Bearings

Defeat the Fallingstar Beast

Defeat the Crystalian Spear and Ringblade

On a body in front of the Church

Ne