Two New Classes Locked Behind Elden Ring's Switch 2 Port

Two new starting classes, Heavy Knight and Knight of Ides, are coming to Elden Ring this August, but only if you're buying the game on Switch 2 or willing to pay extra on every other platform.

Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition launches August 28 as a Switch 2 exclusive package that bundles the base game, the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, and a slate of new content: the two classes, new weapons, character skins, and Torrent customization options. It'll retail for $79.99. Players who already own Elden Ring on PC, PlayStation, or Xbox can access the new content through a separate Tarnished Pack DLC releasing the same day, though exact pricing for that pack hasn't been confirmed yet. Estimates from Game Rant put it around $5.

I don't love the framing here. Gating new classes behind a specific platform port, even temporarily, is an odd move for a game that's been available everywhere else for over four years. The Tarnished Pack DLC softens the blow considerably, and if it really does land at $5, it's hard to call it exploitative. But of marketing "exclusive new content" for a port of a 2022 game still feel like they belong to a different era of platform deals. FromSoftware earned an enormous amount of goodwill with free post-launch updates to the original Elden Ring. Charging separately for two classes and some cosmetics, even cheaply, is a step in a different direction.

What's Actually in the Box

The $79.99 price tag for Tarnished Edition covers a lot of ground. Shadow of the Erdtree alone was a massive expansion, large enough that it was controversially nominated for Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2025. Bundling it with the base game and new content for first-time Switch 2 players is a solid package on paper. The question is performance. There have been concerns about how Elden Ring will run on the hardware, and FromSoftware's track record with optimization has been inconsistent. The original PC launch in 2022 had well-documented stuttering issues that took months to fully address.

For existing players on other platforms, the value proposition is simpler. Two new starting classes and some customization options are nice, but they're unlikely to pull anyone back into a game they've already finished unless they were already looking for an excuse. Heavy Knight and Knight of Ides sound like they could offer different early-game builds, which matters in a game where your starting class shapes your first several hours. Whether they introduce new weapons that stay relevant into the endgame will determine if this is a fun novelty or something with real replay value.

The Tarnished Pack DLC launching day-and-date with the Switch 2 version is the right call, and I'd have been far more critical if existing players had to wait weeks or months for content that was ready to ship. FromSoftware and Bandai Namco appear to have avoided the worst version of this scenario. Elden Ring currently holds a 96 on OpenCritic, and the Switch 2 edition will need to run well enough to justify that legacy at a premium price point when it arrives on August 28.