Elden Ring geographer tests rigorous calculation against weed-fueled horse math to determine the exact size of The Lands Between
If you Google the size of Elden Ring's map, chances are you'll see the same figure repeated throughout the results: 79 km2. What those sites won't tell you—and might not even realize themselves—is that the source for that 79 km2 figure is a reddit post from user Lusty-Batch, who on February 27, 2022 said that "my edible hit harder than expected so I calculated the size of the entire map, used the size of my horse and a bridge to estimate lengths."
Many fields of inquiry have humble origins.
While I think we can all admire Lusty-Batch's initiative, it's produced an inadvertent poisoning of the collective knowledge pool. Luckily, thanks to the efforts of YouTuber Addypalooza, we finally have a measurement of Elden Ring's map with a bit more rigor behind it.
In a video detailing an Elden Ring geographic survey, Addypalooza outlined two main concerns with Lusty-Batch's measurement (neither of which involved the edible or the horse measurements). First, Lusty-Batch's 79 km2 figure measures the entire Elden Ring map, the vast majority of which is water. Second, subtracting all that water still wouldn't account for the fact that much of the remaining geography isn't navigable for the player. Rather than an aerial measurement of the overall surface area of The Lands Between, Addypalooza wanted a measurement of Elden Ring's playable area.
To find that measurement, Addypalooza began by establishing a frame of reference for Elden Ring's illustrated in-game map. Conveniently, FromSoft's game maps are built using meters as a unit of measurement, so using map editor software to measure the precise length of an identifiable feature—in this case, the bridge to the Divine Tower of Limgrave—provided a "yard stick measurement" to determine the scale of the illustrated game map.
With that scale established, Addypalooza used image analysis software to manually trace the boundaries of player-navigable spaces in each Elden Ring region, allowing him to calculate the overall size of the game's playable area. Throughout the video, embedded above, Addypalooza provides interesting context and comparisons for notable bits of Elden Ring geography, like the fact that The Lands Between in their entirety can fit within the lagoon encircled by the main island of Tuvalu. The visual presentation is top-notch, too. It's definitely worth a watch.
Altogether, Addypalooza calculates the total playable area in Elden Ring as 13.48 km2—a much smaller figure than earlier edible-derived measurements. Worth noting is that the measurement doesn't include Elden Ring's many caves, catacombs, and castle interiors, but by Addypalooza's estimate, those areas are "little more than rounding errors compared to the vast open world."
In total, Addypalooza guesses they might combine to a generous 1.5 km2, meaning the Elden Ring's overall playable area is around 15 km2.
Of course, that leaves out Shadow of the Erdtree, but don't worry. Addypalooza took the same measuring stick to the Land of Shadow, too, measuring its explorable area as being around 5.5 km2, providing a combined playable area of Elden Ring and the DLC at roughly 20.5 km2.
Unfortunately, Addypalooza's measurements have almost three years of search engine dissemination to catch up on if we want to erase the long-standing asterisk on the Elden Ring map size that's been circulated since 2022. Hopefully, this story's a good start.