Elden Ring’s new dragon could beat up House of the Dragon’s dragons, study confirms

In Game of Thrones, dragon size matters. The No. 1 threat in House of the Dragon is Vhagar, a dragon feared not only for its magnitude, but for its uncharacteristic stealthiness. Somehow, no one sees ol’ Vhagar coming. But in another George R.R. Martin-penned universe, dragon size might be a liability. The biggest dragons in Elden Ring are dead, after all.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree recently escalated dragon size to an absurd degree. A new, unnamed (and dead) drake found west of the Finger Ruins of Rhia region of the DLC is now the biggest dragon to appear in any FromSoftware game, according to a new video from YouTube creator Zullie the Witch. This unnamed dragon is so large, it’s part of the landscape; its corpse is drawn on Shadow of the Erdtree’s map.

The previous record holder for dragon size was the great ancient dragon Gransax, whose body rests in Leyndell, Royal Capital and whom players have to climb upon at one point. Gransax measures 328 meters, head to tail, according to Zullie’s calculations, nearly twice the size of Demon’s Souls’ massive Dragon God. But the anonymous dragon that rests at the foot of Elden Ring’s Jagged Peak measures a whopping 392 meters in length — more than 2.5 times the size of Vhagar, who is 150 meters in length. 300-plus meters is clearly an unsustainable size; there’s simply not enough turtle neck meat out there in the Shadow Realm to keep a dragon of this mass alive.

Is Shadow of the Erdtree’s record-breaking dead drake “peak dragon?” For now anyway, and possibly forever. “Where FromSoftware is right now, in terms of scale, I would say Elden Ring is really the limit,” game director Hidetaka Miyazaki recently told The Guardian. “We’ve tapped every resource and talent that we have access to … scaling it even bigger, I’d have my concerns.”

Sure, he’s talking about overall game scope, but the size of dragons in Elden Ring is closely aligned with its massive world and FromSoft’s ambition. Regardless, Vhagar better watch out.