Fellow Tarnished, the patch notes never mention this one: buy the Tarnished Pack and the Twin Maiden Husks start stocking Backhand Blades at Roundtable Hold. That’s a Shadow of the Erdtree weapon, on sale before you’ve touched Stormveil.
It’s listed on the pickup as Reverse-Bladed Sword, and it isn’t the only Erdtree weapon that made the jump into the base game. None of that appears in the official 1.17 notes, which don’t name the two new invaders either, or describe their triggers, or list a single drop. All the notes give you is “an NPC invasion event in Caelid” and one in Leyndell, Royal Capital. Everything below that came out of players running the content on launch day.
What You’re Actually Buying
The Tarnished Pack went live August 28, 2026 on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Steam, and it exists so the Switch 2 exclusive content can reach the platforms Tarnished Edition doesn’t ship on. Bandai Namco lists it at €4.99, with local currency variation. Patch 1.17 landed the day before, on August 27. It’s free, it’s required for online play, and it’s what makes the paid content function. If you don’t buy the pack, you still get every balance change in the update.
Shadow of the Erdtree is not bundled in. It stays a separate purchase. There’s no new region and no new questline either. What you get is two starting classes, seven weapons, four armor sets, three Torrent skins, and the two invasions.
The Caelid Invasion: Leontiel
This one is gated behind Starscourge Radahn. Kill him first.
Once he’s down, summon Torrent and ride north from the Starscourge Radahn Site of Grace toward the War-Dead Catacombs. Somewhere along that stretch, an invader named Leontiel drops in on you. She hits hard. Put her down and you get her full armor set plus Leontiel’s Greatsword.
The set is the Lucatiel homage everyone spotted in the reveal trailer, rebuilt with heavier plating than the Dark Souls II original. If you’ve been waiting three years to run around the Lands Between dressed as Mirrah’s most tragic export, this is it.
The loot isn’t even my favorite part. Leontiel is also available as a summon during the Radahn fight itself. You can fight alongside her, then fight her twenty minutes later. Very FromSoftware.
The Leyndell Invasion: Broken Gold Mask
Broken Gold Mask takes more setup, and there’s a point of no return attached.
You need the Law of Regression sorcery. Buy it from Miriel or Brother Corhyn after handing over the Golden Order Principia prayerbook, which sits on the upper floor of the arena where you fight the golden shade of Godfrey, First Elden Lord.
Then head to the Radagon statue in Leyndell. From the Erdtree Sanctuary grace, go out the door, down the stairs, take the lift, then follow the path down the next staircase. The statue is waiting at the bottom.
Cast Law of Regression on it. The statue reveals Marika, and Broken Gold Mask invades. Kill him for the Broken Gold Mask headwear, the Gold Tattoo chest, arms and legs, and the Golden Order Flail.
Now the part that will burn people. This event does not trigger once Leyndell has become Leyndell, Ashen Capital. If your only save is deep into the endgame, that armor set and that flail are off the table on that character. Reports suggest the invasion still fires if you’d already transformed the statue on a pre-Ashen save, but I haven’t seen that confirmed.
All Three Torrent Skins
These are cosmetic and nothing else. No attire changes Torrent’s speed, health, or any other stat, in PvE or PvP. Pick one up and a spectral steed appearance option appears in your Site of Grace menu.
Tree Sentinel: Stormveil Castle. Beat Godrick, open the throne room, and take the right-hand doorway behind the throne. That side room has been empty since 2022. There’s a chest in it now. If you cleared Godrick two years ago, you can walk back in and grab it.
You don’t strictly need the boss, either. I ran the Stormveil skip up the back of the castle on a fresh character and picked up the chest without fighting Godrick at all, which makes this the earliest of the three skins by a wide margin. The throne room is reachable from behind.
Silver of Caria: Liurnia of the Lakes. It’s in a chest in Ranni’s Rise, in the main downstairs room right next to the grace. You’ll need Loretta dealt with in Caria Manor to reach the tower, which most players will have done anyway.
Funereal Night: Altus Plateau. This is the Night’s Cavalry black caparison and it’s the hardest of the three to pin down. Look for the sword war memorial southeast of the Hermit Merchant’s Shack, then check to the left side of the memorial for the item sitting in front of a sword.
Getting the Class Gear Without Rerolling
The patch notes are explicit that the equipment for both new classes can be bought from merchants or found in the world, so you don’t have to start a new character.
For the Idus Knight kit, the Nomadic Merchant in north Liurnia sells the Silver Grooved armor. He’s on the east side of the ravine leading to the Ruin-Strewn Precipice, north of Bellum Church and southeast of Caria Manor. You can reach him via Bellum Church from the plateau above, or ride to the end of the ravine and take the slope on the right. The Idus Sword itself is out in the world: travel northwest from the Liurnia Lake Shore grace and look for a corpse propped against a tree.
For the Heavy Knight kit, the Isolated Merchant at the Isolated Merchant’s Shack in western Weeping Peninsula stocks the armor. That’s south of the Fourth Church of Marika and Witchbane Ruins, past the walking mausoleum toward the coast. The Hefty Scimitar comes from a different vendor entirely: the Nomadic Merchant in southern East Limgrave, northwest of Fort Haight.
If you’re weighing which class to actually roll, I broke down both stat sheets when FromSoftware published them in Idus & Heavy Knight: What the New Stats Really Say.
The Part Nobody Announced
The Backhand Blades are the headline case. Twin Maiden Husks, Roundtable Hold, available the moment you walk in. That’s hour three of a fresh save. Backhand blade builds from the opening stretch of the game are suddenly a thing, and no press release said a word about it.
The Ritual Thrusting Shield turned up in the Caelid Colosseum, in the entrance room behind the giant jar, on a corpse resting on a bench to the left. Getting there is the usual pilgrimage: down the Siofra River Well in eastern Limgrave, north through the length of Siofra, two Stonesword Keys for the lift at the far end, then west from the Deep Siofra Well past the golem archers.
The odd one out is the Reed Great Katana. It’s a Great Katana, which is a Shadow of the Erdtree weapon class, but this particular weapon isn’t an Erdtree import at all. It’s a new armament that only exists in the Lands Between, and it ships with the Overhead Stance skill. You’ll find it in Greyoll’s Dragonbarrow, essentially on top of the dragon herself: look for the corpse on the large mound to the left of Greyoll’s head, north of Fort Faroth.
What Everyone Gets for Free
Skip the pack entirely and 1.17 still changes how the game plays. Parrying got faster recovery with daggers, curved swords and small shields, and twenty-three shields, most of them greatshields, came out of the patch with better guard boost. I went through the whole balance section in my 1.17 breakdown.
One change is worth repeating here, though. Great Katana critical hits had been underperforming against large enemies, and jumping attacks with the class could be parried. Both fixed. So the Reed Great Katana is arriving in the base game at the exact moment the weapon class stopped being quietly broken.
Is It Worth Five Bucks
Yes, and I’d say that even if you stripped out the armor and the horse wardrobe. Backhand Blades available at Roundtable Hold rewrites early-game build routing. A Great Katana in the Lands Between opens a weapon class that used to require the expansion. That’s five bucks for build ideas I hadn’t considered a week ago, on a game I’ve already put hundreds of hours into.
The other thing it buys, if you’re not a permanent resident of the Lands Between already, is a reason to go back. Not a new region to clear, but a fresh route through the old one, with two invaders waiting in places you’ve walked past a hundred times.
So go boot it up, Tarnished. Grab the blades, roll a build you’d never have bothered with, put on a set that isn’t the one you’ve worn since Stormveil. The Lands Between will still be there, and now it has something new to show you.
Leave a Reply