An Elden Ring scientist did the math: The Erdtree is taller than the Alps

Elden Ring's Erdtree is its most notable landmark. Visible from almost any point in the Lands Between (at least, in the overworld), it towers over every area in the game, even the lofty Mountaintops of the Giants to the map's far north. It is, to put it mildly, very big. But how big is 'big', exactly?

"At the base, we could measure from where it meets the ground," Zullie explains, "but the trunk continues for hundreds of metres below that." Looking at the top of the tree, Zullie notes that "The trunk also abruptly cuts off at the peak of the tree, but it's naturally crowned by many branches that extend farther up."

Taking all this into account, Zullie measures the tree from its base beneath the overworld to the tip of its tallest branch, concluding that the Erdtree model's total height is approximately 5,048 metres tall (or 16,562 feet). This is taller than the highest mountain in the Alps, Mont Blanc, which has an elevation of 4,808 m, or 15,773 ft.

This is only if you include the entire model, however. As Zullie points out, trees "aren't usually measured from the roots". If you measure the Erdtree from the point it emerges from ground, then its height is a slightly less impressive 4,452 m, or 14,606 ft. That's still taller than a lot of big mountains, including Japan's Mount Fuji. It's also five-times taller than the largest man-made structure on Earth, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

But how does the Erdtree stack up to other videogame tallbois? Well, it is but a sapling compared to the Citadel in Half-Life 2, which, after nine years of arguments and research, was concluded to be 8,773 m tall, which is close to the height of Mount Everest. There is still some debate about that measurement, however, so perhaps Elden Ring's Erdtree might win out in this height-based bunfight yet.

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.