Archipelago

Update v1.4, Archipelago, added two new isles off the coast of West Limgrave.

Isle of Bounty

The Isle of Bounty is a peaceful little island hosted by Caretaker, a mysterious woman whose forgotten where she's come from. All she knows is this island and that she does not, or cannot, leave it.

Maveth's Crypt

Once you drop into the Chapel of Anticipation after creating your character you'll be greeted by the Omnipotent Statue who will present you with a few options: Select Difficulty, Omnipotent Shop, and Skip to Journey 2.

New Difficulties

Dark Moon introduces two harder difficulties that are inherited from Shattered. You'll select between these and the Vanilla Elden Ring difficulty in order to leave the Chapel and enable the Rally mechanic. 

• Vanilla: The basic Elden Ring experience.
• Shattered: Reduced stats, rune gain, and higher enemy aggresion.
• Masochist: Further reduced stats, rune gain, and even higher enemy aggresion.

If you ever need to change your difficulty mid-playthrough you can either return to the Chapel or simply speak to the copy of the Statue in Roundtable Hold near the balcony.

Omnipotent Shop

This is a shop that sells every single item in the base game (with a few exceptions) including cut content.  The purpose of this shop is twofold: to allow for minor alterations of class loadouts and to allow for a build-your-own class system. Each new class begins the game with 50k Runes (with the exception of the Wretch who starts with 150k Runes).

You'll use these to purchase weapons, armor, and items, most of which cost 10k Runes each. You can do some really interesting things with this shop like, for instance, buying the Pureblood Knight's Medal and skipping straight to Mohgwyn Palace right away.

This shop closes the second you leave the Chapel, but once you defeat Elden Beast or skip to Journey 2 the Ranni Puppet in Roundtable Hold will open the shop once more.

Skip to Journey 2

In Dark Moon, New Game+ has been overhauled. The Omnipotent Statue gives you the option to skip ahead to Journey 2. When you do this, you’ll receive a ton of runes as well as some items to help you get caught up. You’ll also be teleported to Roundtable Hold immediately where you’ll find that you already have all the maps unlocked, the ability to level up and summon Torrent, as well as access to a few key graces across The Lands Between.

The skip provides enough Smithing Stone Shards to upgrade 3 Standard and 3 Unique weapons to max. It also unlocks the Omnipotent Shop at the Ranni Puppet if you’d like to purchase anything else with the over four million Runes you now have. Don’t forget to use some of those Runes to level up though! It should be enough to get you to around Level 110.

NG+ Scaling has been altered as well. Enemies scale higher overall, but they should be more or less the same in terms of HP/Damage across Limgrave, Liurnia, Caelid, and Altus. This is to incentivize progressing through the first part of the game in an irregular, non-linear fashion. Things ramp up again after Leyndell, however.

These changes, aside from the boon you get from skipping straight to Journey 2, are also active in every further cycle.