It has gotten worse. Shadow of the Erdtree requires you to kill a boss (Mohg) hidden within a SECRET AREA (Mohgwyn Palace) hidden within ANOTHER secret area (Consecrated Snowfield).

And the Consecrated Snowfield is only accessible if you find two parts of a hidden medallion, the first in a castle later in the game than the lift it operates. The second is hidden in a jar underneath a mountain. But you can't just smash the jar, you have to talk to the NPC inside the jar twice before you'll get the medallion.

The market rewards abstruse design.

To be fair, there is a different way to get to Mohg. You can talk to Varre at the Rose Church in the Lakes of Liurnia, and he gets you on the quest line that gets you there. You basically have to invade 3 (i think) people's worlds, PvP, doesn't matter if you win or lose, or there is one NPC that you can do an invasion on in Altus Plateau. Then he'll give you an item that just needs to be soaked in the blood of a maiden (and it's made explicit what you need to do, not just left for you to figure out). After that you get the letter and he will take you to Mohg.

All the speedrunners just kill the guy in the jar to get the medallion: you don't have to talk to him.

Also, all you have to do in the Snowfield is to take a teleporter: that's not very secret, is it?

It's not secret, but it's not exactly easy; you can find one part of the medallion just by exploring (iirc its description says what it's for), but not sure if the second half is that straightforward.

And even then, while an item may say "use it here", if it's been dozens of hours since you got it you may just straight up forget about it.

That said, I think that the target audience for the DLC was always people who thoroughly played through the game.

Same with the other games' DLC; for Bloodborne's you need to be yoinked by an invisible enemy while in posession of an item; while it's very possible people were accidentally yoinked on their first playthrough, they will forever know that the item is a trap and will avoid getting yoinked.

(unless the item in question explicitly said "get yoinked to go to DLC", I forgot)

Oh, yeah, the Snowfield itself is secret enough, but getting to the palace afterwards is just a matter of exploration. The teleport is not that hidden.

FWIW, after you get one half of the medallion, get invaded by Gideon's lackey and then talk to Gideon, he will tell you to look for the Albinauric woman, so at least they give you this much.

All in all, I find the quests in the base game relatively straightforward, but anyone with any prior experience in their games will have an inkling that if they care about quests' results, you need to double-check with the wiki.

Well for DS1 DLC, you had to kill an enemy from one of the latest area you unlock, then go to the back of an early zone, without any indication that you had to do so.

> That said, I think that the target audience for the DLC was always people who thoroughly played through the game.

That's true, but it is strange that you get there and get early-game upgrade materials, like Smithing Stone 2, etc. It seems like they wanted to emphasize that the Scadutree Fragments are the important things for scaling, and not your Base Game level, but you already have to be pretty high level and upgraded to beat Mohg.

Partly the jank is just a cost thing. Even major studios struggle with branching and merging stateful quest lines in game. I guess From picked a system that is cheap, robust, but kind of annoying for players, who forgive it because they otherwise love the game.

To some extent it's a design decision maybe. From makes games that are harsh and unforgiving, but not too harsh - you can mess up bits of quests but not end up unable to get an ending (afaik) which kind of matches the gameplay (harsh but not rage-quit inducing).