Elden Ring’s latest update could point to ray tracing and DLC maps

Eldon Ring The latest update came out earlier this week, and it appears to contain some secrets that could point to ray tracing or even DLC.

The main purpose of the Elden Ring 1.07 patch is that PvP and PvE balance are now separate, meaning that tweaks to one won’t affect the other. However, data miner Lance McDonald found some new menu strings in the code that mention ray tracing.

Later, McDonald’s able to enable Ray tracing setup, he shared a view on Twitter. He did notice that the feature seemed to be broken for the time being, presumably some missing shaders might be the problem. McDonald also found that with ray tracing enabled, the game still uses screen-space reflections in water, which means the geometry isn’t rendered twice and therefore isn’t overly intensive in terms of performance.

Ray tracing is obviously an exciting prospect, but even more interesting are the new references to maps that didn’t exist before the update. Shared by another data minerSekiro Dubi, these new maps are labelled m20 and m45, neither of which are currently attached to an accessible area.

The m20 reference seems to be consistent with the numbering system of traditional dungeons in the game, as m10 is Stormveil, m11 is Leyndell, until m19, the stone platform. The purpose of m45 is currently unknown, as there is no number corresponding to it, so it may be an entirely new part of the player’s visit.

These map references aren’t the only maps that seem to point to DLC preparation, as DLC01 seems to have been explicitly mentioned, but of course, until it’s officially announced, this is mostly just speculation (thanks Eurogamer).