After years of waiting, the first and only expansion pack for Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree, is finally available. While there are plenty of intriguing secrets hidden in this up-to-date corner (that’s a huge corner) of the Land Between, Steam Deck players may also stumble upon a not-so-welcome up-to-date discovery due to a bug that can cause the game to become unresponsive.
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The issue stems from Elden Ring update 1.12, which was released yesterday on the eve of the launch of Shadow of the Erdtree. In addition to adding support for the expansion itself and some general tweaks and balance, the latest update introduced some fresh hairstyles, a useful up-to-date “Recent Items” tab in the inventory, and a rather major change to the game’s final boss fight, which now allows you to summon your trusty ghost horse Torrent.
Unfortunately, along with these lovely up-to-date features came an unexpected bug on Steam Deck, confirmed by the official TwiXer Elden Ring account. The bug appears to affect the game as a whole – meaning it doesn’t matter whether you’re playing the base version of Elden Ring or Shadow of the Erdtree – and essentially causes the game to stop working by refusing to accept input if Steam Deck remains inactive for more than five minutes during gameplay.
This doesn’t seem all that unlikely if, say, you’re waiting to be summoned before facing a complex boss, or even if you just crouch down in a place of grace and make yourself a cuppa. Elden Ring’s exact auto-saving and the suggestion that you have to be at a point in the game where you’re not doing anything anyway means you probably won’t lose much progress unless you’re particularly unlucky (or get attacked) , but having to restart the game if you leave it a few seconds too long is a pain regardless.
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The good news is that FromSoftware is already looking into this and confirms that it is working on a fix to eliminate the annoying bug. The worst news is that they can’t yet confirm a time or date for this patch to arrive, so in the meantime you’ll just have to keep busy with your Steam Deck more than usual.
While this certainly isn’t a deal breaker, the extra bit of sprightliness is more noticeable given the otherwise wonderfully glossy display of Elden Ring on board, which James found continues in Shadow of the Erdtree. There have been several reports of a separate error message signaling an “Inappropriate Activity Detected” warning and blocking online play, although From has not yet confirmed the cause or resolution of this issue.
