Elden Ring and its brutal Shadow of the Erdtree expansion draw heavily from English folklore, including a few terms that have left gamers unfamiliar with them utterly confused. You may have stared at the Scadutree for hours, but chances are you mispronounce it, too.
Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree DLC Review – FromSoftware Has Never Been Better
It’s no exaggeration to say that the Scadutree dominates the DLC. Like the Erdtree from the base game, it’s spotted nearly everywhere throughout the Land of Shadow, its gnarled form serving as a constant landmark. As if that weren’t enough, collecting the Scadutree Fragments that have been severed from its trunk is necessary to make any real progress in the DLC, and you even get to fight the tree itself at some point. Crucially, however, no one ever says the word Scadutree out loud, leading to understandable confusion over how exactly to pronounce it.
While streamers and gamers who have played Shadow of the Erdtree have consistently pronounced Scadutree as "skad-oo-tree," likely due to the spelling, this is incorrect. The term is actually simply pronounced "Shadowtree," as "scadu" is actually an archaic English spelling of the word shadow. In retrospect, it's easy to see, as Scadutree is the eponymous Shadow of the Erdtree in both a literal and figurative sense. Even if you're not a medieval scholar, there's a hint of that in the DLC's title.
Of course, this rule also applies to similar terms in the DLC, such as the Scaduview area and the formidable Scadutree Avatar boss.
