If you’ve just beaten Rellana and are wondering who comes next in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, you’re definitely not the only one. Rellana, Twin Moon Knight is one of the DLC’s first real wall bosses, and taking her down at Castle Ensis feels like it should point you straight toward the next major fight. The tricky part is that Shadow of the Erdtree doesn’t really work that way. Once Rellana is gone, the DLC opens up hard, with several routes, optional bosses, and progression paths that can make the “next boss” feel way less obvious than it should.
Who Is After Rellana in Elden Ring DLC
The short answer to who is after Rellana in Elden Ring DLC is simple: there isn’t one single mandatory boss waiting immediately after her. Rellana is the end of Castle Ensis, but beating her doesn’t shove you down one narrow hallway toward the next fog gate. Instead, it pushes you out into a wider mid-game structure where multiple destinations open at once.
From the area beyond her arena, you can move toward Moorth Ruins and eventually into Scadu Altus through the northeastern route. At the same time, Scadu Altus is also reachable through the broader Castle Ensis exterior progression, so the game is basically telling you that your path can split here depending on what you want to do next.
That split matters more than it might seem at first. If your goal is pure story progression, you’ll want to move north into Scadu Altus and start working your way toward Shadow Keep, Messmer the Impaler, and eventually the Sealing Tree. If you’re more interested in sweeping the map, grabbing Scadutree Fragments, or chasing gear for a specific build, this is where the DLC really starts branching in every direction. In practice, Rellana is less “the boss before the next boss” and more the point where the full expansion finally opens up.
After Rellana Boss Order in Shadow of the Erdtree
If you want a cleaner sense of progression after Rellana, it helps to follow a recommended boss route rather than trying to guess what the game expects. For most players, especially on a first run, this order feels the most natural.
| Boss | Location | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Rellana, Twin Moon Knight | Castle Ensis | Opens Scadu Altus and the DLC’s mid-game routes |
| Dancing Lion | Shadow Keep Front Gate | Main progression fight; opens Shadow Keep interior |
| Messmer the Impaler | Shadow Keep, upper sections | Required for the Sealing Tree; drops Messmer's Kindling |
| Romina, Saint of the Bud | Ancient Ruins of Rauh | Required before interacting with the Sealing Tree |
| Putrescent Knight | Stone Coffin Fissure | Optional; reached through lower Scadu Altus routes |
| Midra, Lord of Frenzied Flame | Abyssal Woods | Optional; hidden behind a more specific route |
| Bayle the Dread | Jagged Peak | Optional, but many players tackle him before the finale |
| Needle Knight Leda (and followers) | Enir-Ilim | Triggered after burning the Sealing Tree |
| Promised Consort Radahn | Enir-Ilim | Final boss of the DLC |
For most players, Dancing Lion is the first major boss they’ll run into after settling into Scadu Altus. That fight opens the way deeper into Shadow Keep, which is where the DLC’s main story path really starts tightening up. From there, the big target is Messmer the Impaler, who acts as the expansion’s central story boss and one of its biggest difficulty spikes.
Messmer matters for more than just story weight. Beating him gives you Messmer’s Kindling, which is needed to deal with the Sealing Tree and push into the DLC’s final stretch. After that, you still need to defeat Romina, Saint of the Bud in the Ancient Ruins of Rauh before the Sealing Tree can actually be used.
The rest of the list is where things loosen up again. Putrescent Knight, Midra, and Bayle the Dread are all optional from a strict critical-path perspective, but they’re far from filler. They offer some of the DLC’s best rewards, extra lore, and in Bayle’s case, one of the most brutal fights in the entire expansion. Honestly, Bayle feels like a full legacy-dungeon climax even though he technically isn’t framed that way.
Post-Rellana Areas and Unlocks
Beating Rellana is really about what it unlocks. Once Castle Ensis is cleared, several important regions either open directly or become much easier to access.
Scadu Altus is the big one. This is basically the DLC’s version of Altus Plateau from the base game: a major mid-game region that connects you to Shadow Keep, the Rauh Ancient Ruins, and later routes leading toward the Abyssal Woods. You can also grab the Scadu Altus map fragment fairly early once you get there, which makes the region much easier to navigate.
Just northeast of Castle Ensis, you’ll find Moorth Ruins, one of the first worthwhile post-Rellana exploration zones. There’s a tunnel beyond the boss area that leads into this poisonous stretch, and it’s a solid place to start picking up extra Scadutree Fragments. If you cross the poison swamp east of Moorth Ruins, you can also reach Scorpion River Catacombs, which contains the Knight’s Lightning Spear incantation. For Faith builds, that’s a seriously strong pickup this early.
Then there’s Shadow Keep, which pretty quickly becomes the centerpiece of your route whether you planned for it or not. Its Front Gate, central halls, church district, and rear sections all feed into major progression, Sites of Grace, NPC quest steps, and eventually the path to Messmer. You can delay it for a while, sure, but if you try to skip straight past it toward Enir-Ilim, the game makes it very clear that you’re not getting away with that.
The Scorpion River side area along southern Scadu Altus is also worth mentioning because it gives you a more lateral route into the Rauh Ancient Ruins. Veteran players can use it to avoid parts of Shadow Keep’s interior pathing, and it also hides several useful mid-game items, including weapons and sorcery-related loot.
Best Route After Rellana by Goal
Main story progression
If you only care about the fastest route through the DLC’s main story, the post-Rellana path is pretty straightforward. Head north from Castle Ensis into Scadu Altus, activate the key Sites of Grace, and make your way to Shadow Keep’s Front Gate for the Dancing Lion fight. After that, push through Shadow Keep, including the Church District and Specimen Storehouse sections, until you reach Messmer the Impaler.
Messmer is the key checkpoint here. Once he’s down, move on to the Ancient Ruins of Rauh and defeat Romina, Saint of the Bud. After both bosses are cleared, you can return to the Sealing Tree, burn it, and unlock access to Enir-Ilim.
One thing you really do not want to overlook: the Sealing Tree is effectively the DLC’s point of no return. Burning it advances NPC questlines into their final states, cuts off some dialogue, and pushes the game into its endgame sequence. So if you still need to finish quest steps for Leda, Ansbach, Thiollier, or Hornsent, do that first.
Exploration and fragments
If your priority is getting stronger before the DLC’s nastier late-game fights, it’s usually better not to rush Shadow Keep right away. A more exploration-heavy route through Scadu Altus lets you collect a good number of Scadutree Fragments, and that makes a massive difference in survivability and damage.
A lot of these fragments are tucked into field corners, minor dungeons, and spots near Sites of Grace that are easy to miss on a blind run. The same goes for Revered Spirit Ashes, which improve summons alongside the Scadutree Blessing system. If you use Spirit Ashes at all, getting these upgrades early can make fights like Dancing Lion and Messmer way more manageable.
A solid post-Rellana sweep usually includes:
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Moorth Ruins
-
nearby field fragments in Scadu Altus
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minor dungeons before Shadow Keep
-
early Rauh access routes if you want extra pickups
That extra prep pays off fast. The DLC’s damage scaling is no joke, and going into the mid-game underblessed feels rough in a hurry.
Build-specific detours
Your best route after Rellana can also change a lot depending on your build.
Sorcery builds should look toward the Finger Ruins of Rhia and spend extra time searching Shadow Keep’s library-adjacent sections. That’s where you’ll start finding stronger glintstone sorceries and INT-scaling weapons that actually feel worth swapping into your setup.
Incantation builds get huge value from clearing Scorpion River Catacombs, mostly because Knight’s Lightning Spear is such a strong reward. It’s also worth progressing Ansbach’s questline, since that eventually leads to a unique fire incantation.
For Strength and Dexterity builds, the Rauh Ancient Ruins are a very worthwhile detour thanks to the heavier weapon options and strong armaments hidden there. And if you’re comfortable taking on a brutal optional fight, Bayle the Dread is absolutely worth considering, since his Remembrance can be traded with Finger Reader Enia for two extremely strong weapons.
Rellana Lore and Patch Context
Rellana, Twin Moon Knight has one of the more interesting placements in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, both mechanically and in terms of lore. Her title immediately ties her to Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon from the base game, and the item descriptions plus environmental clues point to Rellana being Rennala’s younger sister. She left the Lands Between and ended up serving in the Realm of Shadow as part of Miquella’s following.
That background is all over her fight. Her moveset blends moon sorcery with fire in a way that feels deliberate, almost like a visual statement of her divided lineage and allegiance. No other DLC boss really combines those elements in quite the same way, which is part of why the fight sticks with people.
There’s also a small but surprisingly talked-about patch update detail tied to her arena. After launch, a chair was added near the entrance to the room. It’s a tiny change, but the community immediately started reading into it. Some players think it suggests Rellana was waiting for someone, maybe Miquella or some absent figure tied to the base game’s timeline. Others think it was just a practical environmental tweak with no deeper meaning at all. FromSoftware hasn’t explained it, which, honestly, only made the speculation louder.
Part of the reason players keep asking who is after Rellana in Elden Ring DLC is because her placement feels unusual. In pure combat terms, she hits like a mid-game boss. But in narrative terms, and even in how Castle Ensis is positioned, she feels more like an act-break boss guarding the threshold to the deeper Realm of Shadow. Beating her isn’t just another victory screen. It’s the moment the Tarnished gets past one of Miquella’s most important lines of defense, and that’s a big reason the progression after her feels so open-ended and easy to misread.
Conclusion
If you’ve just cleared Castle Ensis and want the cleanest first-run route, the safest recommendation is to move into Scadu Altus, head for Shadow Keep, deal with the Dancing Lion, then push up to Messmer the Impaler before looping over to Romina and the Sealing Tree. That route keeps you on the main story while still giving you room to grab enough Scadutree Blessing upgrades to stay on curve.
Optional bosses like Putrescent Knight, Midra, and especially Bayle the Dread are well worth doing before you burn the Sealing Tree. The rewards are excellent, the fights add a lot to the DLC’s overall experience, and some of the best weapons and late-game build tools come from those detours. For most players, a full sweep of Scadu Altus and the Rauh Ancient Ruins before committing to Enir-Ilim ends up feeling like the best balance of progression, power, and payoff.