Support Your Mimic With A Blessing Of Marika
One of the rarest and most useful items added by the Shadow of The Erdtree DLC is the Blessing Of Marika, a single-use potion that “completely restores HP and heals all ailments.” There are three known fixed locations for the Blessings: one inside a cave behind the Church of Consolation, another on a corpse behind the Fort of Reprimand, and another dropped by the Tree Sentinel in the Hinterlands. Functionally identical to Divine Blessings from the Dark Souls series, these items are so rare that they ought to be used only in the direst of circumstances.
As Twitter user @Ziggy_Princess_ points out, Blessings of Marika are immensely more useful in the hands of a player’s Mimic Tear. While the player is limited to around three uses per playthrough, Blessings can be consumed once per boss attempt by Mimic Tears without affecting the player’s limited stocks. This means that if the player reserves one hotbar slot for the item during boss fights, their Mimic has a chance of radically extending their lifespan during the DLC’s longer and tougher encounters.
Don’t Be Afraid To Secure Every Advantage Against Shadow Of The Erdtree’s Bosses
Shadow of the Erdtree’s bosses fight dirty, and so should any lowly Tarnished who hopes to topple them. Fans have argued endlessly about how “valid” or “fair” Spirit Ashes are as a tool against Elden Ring’s bosses, but the debate is as old as time. Certain FromSoftware fans scoff at summons for the same reason that those apocryphal English bowmen turned their noses up at crossbows – honor. But Bayle the Dread couldn’t care less about honor. Bayle weighs the same as an aircraft carrier. Bayle’s sneezes are measured in megatons.
Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree provide the player with dozens of spells, incantations, Ashes of War, and various tools to temper boss difficulty. The DLC poses a formidable challenge, but it was also designed with the assumption that the player would make use of these tools in order to succeed. They exist for a reason. All is fair in love, war, and FromSoftware games.
