To ride your mount, Torrent, in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, you must ensure you have unlocked the Spectral Steed Whistle from Melina at the Gatefront Site of Grace during the base game. Once you interact with Miquella’s withered arm inside Mohgwyn Palace to enter the Realm of Shadow, Torrent is available to summon immediately from your quick slots. However, navigating the Land of Shadow’s extreme verticality fast requires breaking Spiritspring seals scattered across Gravesite Plain, Scadu Altus, and Rauh Base. By utilizing key environmental shortcuts and the Margit's Shackle trick, you can unlock full map traversal and reach critical upgrades within minutes of entering the expansion.
How Mounts Work in the Realm of Shadow
Torrent operates identically in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree as he does in the Lands Between, functioning as your primary mode of exploration across open regions. When you touch down at the Gravesite Plain Site of Grace, your Spectral Steed Whistle remains in your quick-item pouch or event ring. Torrent is available in almost all non-dungeon areas, enabling rapid movement, double-jumping over terrain hazards, and horseback combat against field enemies such as Furnace Golems and Ghostflame Dragons.
It is crucial to understand that Torrent does not possess a separate leveling bar in the expansion. Instead, your mount's overall health and damage resistance scale directly with your player character's Scadutree Blessing level. Collecting Scadutree Fragments makes Torrent significantly tougher, preventing enemies from easily staggering you or killing your steed in one or two hits during high-level encounters. If Torrent suffers damage, feed him Rowa Raisins, Sweet Raisins, or Frozen Raisins to recover his HP without expending your Flask of Tears. To speed up your character progression early on, check out our detailed guide on how to level up fast in Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree.
Step-by-Step: Fast-Tracking Spiritspring Mount Unlocks
The Realm of Shadow is built with layered, multi-tier geography featuring towering cliffs and subterranean canyons. Standard mount navigation is severely restricted unless you utilize Spiritsprings. In Shadow of the Erdtree, FromSoftware introduced standard Spiritsprings alongside Sealed Spiritsprings. A Sealed Spiritspring appears as a faint, ghostly gust of air that cannot launch Torrent into the air until its physical binding is destroyed.
Follow these exact steps to unlock Sealed Spiritsprings fast throughout your playthrough:
- Locate the Sealed Spring: Spot the translucent wind column along cliff bases (e.g., northern Gravesite Plain or southern Scadu Altus).
- Find the Stone Cairn: Scan the surrounding area within a 50-to-100-meter radius for a small pile of glowing, stacked rocks called a Spiritspring Cairn. These cairns are often hidden behind illusions, nestled on higher ledges, or tucked inside small cavern recesses.
- Destroy the Cairn: Hit the rock pile once with any melee attack, arrow, or spell. A message reading "A Spiritspring has been unsealed somewhere" will pop up on your screen.
- Ride the Jump Stream: Mount Torrent, ride directly into the active wind column, and press the jump button to launch hundreds of feet up cliff faces.
Unlocking these springs early opens up immediate routes to high-tier equipment and key upgrade materials. If you want to pair fast movement with top-tier gear, check our strategy guide on how to get legendary weapons in Shadow of the Erdtree.
The Margit's Shackle Trick for Instant Spiritspring Unsealing
Finding tiny, hidden stone cairns in treacherous terrain can be time-consuming. Fortunately, you can bypass the manual search process using a long-standing mechanic from the base game: Margit's Shackle (or Mohg's Shackle). According to detailed testing documented on the Elden Ring Wiki, using these items emits an invisible, non-damaging AOE attack wave that extends across a massive radius, breaking hidden illusory walls and unsealing environmental triggers through solid stone.
To execute this shortcut trick:
- Equip Margit's Shackle or Mohg's Shackle to your quick-use item slot.
- Ride Torrent directly to any sealed, inactive Spiritspring wind column.
- Use the Shackle while standing near the base of the spring.
- The invisible impact wave instantly destroys the hidden stone cairn located anywhere within a 100-meter radius—even if it is hidden behind a rock wall or located on a cliff high above you.
- The Spiritspring will immediately activate, allowing you to launch Torrent without hunting down the cairn manually.
This single trick cuts down exploration time by dozens of hours and grants instant access to vertical zones without risking dangerous platforming falls.
Key Early Mount Routes in Gravesite Plain and Scadu Altus
By using Torrent and unsealing key Spiritsprings early, you can bypass major boss bottlenecks and gain access to late-game map sectors right from the start of the expansion. Official lore and world map details provided by Bandai Namco Entertainment highlight how connected the Land of Shadow's regions are when utilizing alternate vertical pathways.
1. Castle Ensis Skip Route
Normally, reaching Scadu Altus requires defeating Rellana, Twin Moon Knight inside Castle Ensis. You can completely skip Castle Ensis on Torrent by heading south along the Ellac River canyon. Drop down the stone columns into the valley below Belurat, head past the Poison Swamp, and use the Spiritspring near the Fort of Reprimand to leap straight into the eastern plateau of Scadu Altus.
2. Early Access to Cerulean Coast
From the Gravesite Plain Main Gate Cross Site of Grace, travel southeast toward the giant ravine. Follow the riverbed south toward the Ellac River Cave Site of Grace. Riding Torrent down the waterfall stepping stones allows you to reach the Cerulean Coast and the Stone Coffin Fissure without fighting a single major boss.
3. Jagged Peak Ascent
By utilizing consecutive Spiritspring launches south of the Dragon's Pit, Torrent can scale the steep ash paths leading toward Igon's questline and the Jagged Peak area. This route is essential for gathering valuable Dragon Communion materials early. If you need to reconfigure your character attributes for these distant regions, review our step-by-step instructions on how to respec in Shadow of the Erdtree.
For players curious about how traversal mechanisms compare in other modern action RPGs, you can also read our guide on mount traversal options in Black Myth Wukong.
Mounted Combat Strategy and Avoiding Dismount Stuns
While Torrent provides incredible speed and maneuverability across the Land of Shadow, mounted combat requires careful stamina management. Enemy aggression in the DLC is remarkably high, and several heavy foes—such as Black Knight commanders and Curseblade assassins—possess tracking attacks designed specifically to knock players off their horse.
Keep these vital combat rules in mind while mounted:
- Monitor Torrent's Poise: Taking consecutive hits depletes Torrent’s poise. If his internal poise meter breaks, you will suffer a full dismount stun animation, leaving you lying on the ground vulnerable to critical strikes.
- Use Heavy Sprinting Sweeps: Heavy attacks (R2/RT) charged while riding hold your weapon blade low against the ground, continuously ticking damage against smaller enemies before ending in an upward strike.
- Equip LANCE TALISMAN: The Lance Talisman increases damage dealt while horseback by 15%, making hit-and-run tactics against Furnace Golems' feet significantly more effective.
- Invulnerability Frames on Re-Summon: If Torrent is killed in battle, re-summoning him costs one charge of your Flask of Crimson Tears. However, the mounting animation provides short invulnerability frames (i-frames) that can save you from incoming enemy AoE explosions.
By securing your mount early, utilizing the Shackle trick on every Spiritspring, and collecting Scadutree Fragments to boost Torrent's durability, you can freely explore every corner of the Realm of Shadow with speed and safety.