Elden Ring’s underground areas nearly looked very different thanks to an unrealized “cataclysm system” discovered by an expert dataminer.
Elden Ring’s most dedicated dataminer Sekiro Dubi recently revealed some staggering discoveries centered around the game’s underground areas. A long-theorized “cataclysm system” that Sekiro Dubi has found connections to in their previous datamining looks to align with this latest discovery.
Most players will have taken note of the Lands Between’s crumbling topography and it appears that when Marika shattered the Elden Ring, it also shattered the realm. In your own journey, you shatter it a little further, at least you do if you follow Ranni’s questline.
Sekiro Dubi has seen more of Elden Ring’s underbelly than perhaps any person who doesn’t work at FromSoftware and according to them, the meteor that strikes Limgrave when you kill Radhan was once part of a much larger gameplay system. Their latest video reveals more evidence of what they call the cataclysm system and the unseen underground areas attached to it.
Within Elden Ring’s files, Sekiro Dubi discovered new underground areas and was even able to use existing mesh left in the game to explore them. Their first trip takes them into a new area of the Deeproot Depths in which the withered and mutated husk of Godwyn the Golden is found. When viewed in the world map, extends all the way into the Consecrated Snowfield.
Following the winding path, Sekiro Dubi even discovered leftover assets including an elevator that takes them all the way up to the Mountaintops of the Giants. It’s possible that this was the original method of traveling to the Consecrated Snowfield or the inverse, that players were meant to gain access to the Deeproot Depths from this entry and finish Fia’s questline far later.
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Entry to this path seems to have been barred by the heavy snowfall on the mountains but that snow would be melted away by an in-game event similar to the meteor fall in Limgrave. The most likely reason for this would be the ignition of the Giant’s Forge.
The other underground area uncovered by Sekiro Dubi was an addition to the Moghwyn Palace’s surroundings. Ordinarily in Elden Ring, you have to teleport to this area via the aforementioned Consecrated Snowfield or the Pureblood Knight’s Medal given to you by Varre.
This newly discovered area would be accessed by a meteor crater in Starscourge Radahn’s boss arena. When looking at the featureless mesh that Sekiro Dubi was able to traverse, it appears to open with a large bowl that would have been the crater.
The area also houses what appears to be a sizeable boss arena which would likely have been an arena to fight Astel or one of his counterparts. It also gives a more cohesive entrance into the Moghwyn Palace area than what we wound up with in the final version of the game.
As with all cut content from Elden Ring, it was left out for a reason and most will be hesitant to factor it into their understanding of the game’s lore and overall story. Still, this particular information uncovered by Zulie may be useful in your own efforts to piece things together.
