Elden Ring’s first DLC, the Coliseum Update, has been announced, and it’s a big player-vs-player (PvP) update that adds an arena to the game. Best of all, the update is arriving today, and it’s completely free as well.
Announced in a tweet by the official Elden Ring Twitter account, the one minute-long teaser trailer shows a group of Tarnished journeying across the Lands Between, before finally pushing open the gates to reveal the Coliseum itself.
Like the Lands Between, the Coliseum is intact, but with signs of wear. Greenery sprouts from between the flagstones of the coliseum’s ground, and there are no spectators to cheer on your bloody fights to the death. Not that you’ll be able to spend much time worrying if you’re providing entertainment -- Elden Ring’s bosses get a lot of credit for difficulty, and rightly so, but like in other Dark Souls games before it, other players are the true predators of Elden Ring, and it’s them you’ll be worrying about here.
The teaser trailer crams a lot into just over a minute, and it shows one-versus-one duels, along with using Spirit Ashes and summoning bosses to the fight. Most interestingly, the trailer also shows a three-on-three battle between players, showing that jolly cooperation is also available within the Coliseum, and it won’t just be the last man standing who wins.
Elden Ring has been an enormously popular and successful game, so it seemed inevitable that DLC would be released for it. Dataminers uncovered traces of the Coliseum back in March, so this has clearly been in the works for some time, but it’s still surprising it took this long to arrive.
The Coliseum is a good place to start for From Software, as well. The previous Dark Souls games leaned heavily into PvP with their own arenas, and allowing players to battle it out between themselves added a huge amount of replayability to the game, and encouraged a sense of community within the games. Elden Ring already has a massive community, and we can’t wait to see what the inclusion of the Coliseum adds to the game.
The Coliseum Update is likely to only be the beginning of DLC for Elden Ring, but don’t expect the next bout of DLC to arrive before 2023, and don’t expect the next one to be free either. Rumors abound as to what the next DLC will be, with "Barbarians of the Badlands" having been spoken of as a potential title, but nothing has been solidified just yet. Best to put that to one side, and sharpen your weapons before stepping into the Coliseum. Best of luck out there, Tarnished.