Eldest Souls has 10 bosses for you to fight as you progress through its short but extremely challenging campaign. Naturally, your trials and tribulations don’t have to end there because you can also unlock some additional activities. Here’s our Eldest Souls guide to help you with New Game+ and Arena Mode.
Note: You may also take a look at our other Eldest Souls guide regarding the fighting styles/boss shards and the Empty Vessel/quest items.
Eldest Souls – Unlocking New Game+ and Arena Mode
Basically, all you need to do to unlock New Game+ and Arena Mode in Eldest Souls is to beat the game at least once. It’s harder than it sounds. As cited in our official review, the difficulty is brutal and you will die a lot. I also experienced visual miscues in certain boss fights (i.e., Eos and Hyem) due to a lack of accessibility options. Heck, I’d even consider the final boss a lot easier than those two because that enemy had spells and abilities that are clearly visible on the screen.
Still, if you managed to get to the end credits, you’ll notice that New Game+ has been unlocked. This lets you retain all your skill points and shards, but you’ll lose your special items/vessel. Likewise, things will be a lot tougher due to these modifiers:
- +15% damage taken
- -10% healing received
- +220% enemy HP
Eldest Souls‘ New Game+ also gives its bosses some extra mechanics that will force you to adapt. For instance, the first boss, the Watchdog, periodically casts an AoE blast that fills the entire arena. This takes out 75% of your health, and you’ll be dead unless you can keep your HP high enough throughout the entire battle. Meanwhile, the Guardian gains extra swings and bolstered regeneration whenever it hits you.
New Game+ is not for the faint of heart. But, you do receive additional skill points (and skill unlocks will be costlier). If you can beat a boss that drops a shard, you can earn upgrades for that shard’s capabilities, too.
As for Arena Mode, it simply spawns you in a small chamber that lets you select any of the bosses that you’ve previously defeated. You can then tweak your skill tree and shards (based on your progress), and see how well you’d do.
You’ll get to unlock tougher variants as you beat opponents. In a way, it’s like being able to practice these fights whenever you feel like it and without having to go through the campaign.
Eldest Souls is available via Steam.
