Tips You Need to Know for Elden Ring Nightreign
So you've dove headfirst into Elden Ring Nightreign and right away realized that it ain't fooling around. Come on, "merciless bully" is a pretty apt description, even if we do say so ourselves. Living long enough to finally beat the Nightlord is a tough test of your mettle at keeping upgrades in line, adding up weaknesses, and avoiding that nasty wall of doom. It's a whole bunch of balls to keep juggling.
Don't panic, you're not alone in feeling the heat. These are here to shed some light on Nightreign's complex systems and give you some good tactics for your next endeavors. We'll be going over what to focus on in those very crucial early days and then some general tips to carry you right on through to the finish.
Before we begin, if you need even more personalized guidance, we've got you covered. Discover how to farm runes like a pro, learn rad Dark Souls inspired style, or discover all about every Nightlord you'll face.
Early Game Basics: Getting Yourself Ready for Success
More Nips, More Survival: Flask Charges Galore
Unless you are a literal gaming deity who never takes damage in Soulslike games, you're going to have to heal. A lot. Nightreign bosses pack a significant punch, so your trusty holy flask is going to get used up. The bright spot. You can restock your flask uses by visiting Churches of Marika – they'll be shining gold on your map if you've not visited yet.
Here's a decent starting play: while you're descending, spot the nearest church. Touch down, send the initial wave of enemies off for a speedrun level and some bit of early loot, and then immediately towards that flask upgrade. We've found that having at least two more charges by the end of day one offers some much-needed padding.
Targeting Forts & Great Churches: Your First Stop for Early Gear
Once you've improved your healing power, you should next be targeting Forts and Great Churches. Because they have fairly simple bosses you can defeat early on for some worthwhile low-risk upgrades and items.
Most Forts have three chests hidden in their lower levels, and a knight boss upstairs. You'll most often always find a Stonesword Key in another chest on the ramparts, enabling your party to open an Evergaol and battle the boss within. Great Churches typically have a boss on the first floor or access to a basement boss fight. These areas are also great for incantation seal discovery (look for altars) and typically spawn Stonesword Keys out of chests regularly, perhaps hidden in the rafters.
Day Two Domination: Boss Rush and Gearing Up
With a decent supply of flasks and some initial weapons, your primary objective for day two should be clear: kill bosses. That's how you'll get more runes, better loot, and those coveted passive bonuses.
If your party's current set of weapons isn't on the same elemental weakness as a specific boss, prioritize clearing enemy regions on the map with that specific affinity. You'll have a much greater chance of finding weapons with the proper damage type off of the bosses in these regions.
Then, it's a matter of killing as many bosses as you can before day two is over. Once you're in rhythm destroying Camps and Ruins, it's time to use the Stonesword Keys on Evergaols. Although difficulty with Evergaol bosses will vary (watch out for Death Rite Birds), you should typically manage. Day two also indicates Great Enemy bosses on your map. These are strong enemies with lots of hit points and strong attacks, but they reward some of the best equipment for battling the Nightlords on day three. Try to be roughly level 8 prior to putting them on, although level 10 should be more comfortable.
General Strategies to Keep in Mind
Unlock The Duchess – She's a Game Changer
The Duchess is one of the two unlockable characters in Nightreign, and trust me, she's a beast. She plays best with dexterity weapons, but her true strength lies in her "Restage" ability. It recopies a percentage of all damage to enemies in the previous few seconds, and it's on an incredibly low cooldown. Having a Duchess in your party is like having a continuous stream of free extra damage.
Better still, Restage preserves the base damage and status build-up of the duplicated attacks. What this means is that your party can quite literally bludgeon bosses with your maximum damage types. You can unlock her pretty early on by defeating the first expedition boss, so you will not have to wait very long to add her heavy wrecking ball into the mix.
Don't Forget About Ranged Weapons (Even if You're Not Ironeye)
Nightreign bosses are, to be polite, rather active. Nightlords love nothing more than jumping and dashing across arenas, making it very challenging for melee characters to remain close. Even when you do succeed in closing the range, their repeated attacks sometimes leave no time for your own. Three Ironeyes blaster away at you is a viable tactic, but don't assume that ranged weaponry is entirely his stock in trade.
All Nightreign characters get a limitless amount of ammo for any ranged weapon they pick up. If you're stuck and you do have a bow handy, don't be shy about uncorking some arrows, even if you're playing a more melee-style hero. It can be a game-changer.
Map Intel: Press 'Y' for Loot Clues
Various areas in Nightreign have a greater chance of dropping certain kinds of equipment. Great Churches are your best bet for incantation seals, Camps usually have bow racks, and Arcane Towers work for sorcery staves. Attempting to keep all of these correlations in mind is a pain.
Luckily, there is a native aide. Pressing 'Y' on the Xbox controller when viewing the map will provide extra info, including what sort of weaponry is typically located somewhere. You'll find out where bows and seals are in due course, but this is actually a lifesaver when you're deciding your next move as that dreadful night circle closes in.
Stock Up on Smithing Stones for Weapon Enhancements
If you and your group have been able to amass some really decent blue-rarity weapons but didn't quite get lucky with purple drops, head to a Mining Tunnel on day two. They are scattered all across the map, so most likely you'll be near one.
Inside, you will find a boss (troll, knight, or pumpkin head) who will most certainly drop a Smithing Stone [2]. You can use these on anvils near merchants to upgrade your blue-tier weapons to purple, basically boosting their stats. It's a wonderful way of having an awesome weapon that takes advantage of a boss's weakness, or maybe just to beef up one weapon which you just love to play.
Try Charging Your Abilities
Nightreign shakes up Elden Ring's formula, but it's a FromSoftware game through and through. That's code for some mechanics being a little. obtuse. That includes character skills. Lots of them deal more damage if you charge the attack by holding the button for a moment, something you might find yourself not realizing for hours.
Guardian's spin, Wylder's bunker pile ultimate, Raider's headbutt – these are all upgradable to make them even more potent. Spend a couple of minutes in the Roundtable Hold's sparring room prior to your next playthrough to ensure you're getting the most out of your favorite Nightfarer's skills.
Ultimates: Not Just for Damage, But for Revives Too
Speaking of abilities, Guardian is not the sole whose ultimate is a good one for reviving dead teammates. The tutorial informs you that you can revive teammates by hurting them – and this does not necessarily have to be a weapon damage. If your character's ultimate is a damaging ultimate, use it in a tight spot to revive a teammate from death.
Since you're invulnerable when you're in your ultimate animation, you can risk a revive when a boss is trying its hardest to pancake you. I know, you're losing that sweet ultimate damage, but no damage for a team wipe. Wylder's particularly excellent for clutch ultimate revives; his grappling hook lets you zip straight to a fallen teammate and boom them back up with a finish. Teamwork, baby.
Gamble Your Murk for Relics in the Small Jar Bazaar
Relics are Nightreign's way of providing long-term progression. You fill your colored gems that are used in grail slots with relics to give you extra stats and expedition modifiers. Unfortunately, the modifiers on relics that you win at the end of expeditions are all random, which translates to that getting an effective set for the character you want is a long and exhausting experience.
Luckily, Roundtable Hold's Small Jar Bazaar is a safety net. You can buy a set of relics with pre-established stats using the "murk" currency you earn from expeditions. More importantly, you can use murk to gamble for more randomly generated relics. The odds aren't necessarily as great as rewards given after an expedition, but that added shot does not do harm if you wish to streamline your runs, and it's so much quicker than completing a full 45-minute expedition.
Of course, spending all your murk on baubles means fewer to use in unlocking those adorable-looking Nightreign outfits. Decisions, decisions.
Passives for weapons: Most Work from Your Inventory
There's a lot to figure out when you first start Nightreign, and it's easy to neglect how weapon bonuses really function. When you drop a weapon, it has a random bonus effect, i.e., "boosted ranged weapon attack" or "damage reduction when full health."
Here's the key point: you'll benefit from virtually all of these passive bonuses even if the weapon is just sitting in your inventory and not being used. This is how you build your character on an expedition. You're not just looking for higher attack stats or the correct elemental damage; you're balancing bonus effects against each other to upgrade your playstyle. A Raider with dual-wielding greatclubs will hit much harder if their inventory is full of items that upgrade damage with two weapons in use.
There are some exceptions, though. Some weapons will have a small hand icon to the side of their bonus effect. If you see the icon, then you only receive that benefit when the specific weapon is in one of your hands.
Cataclysms: Use with Extreme Caution (or Bravery)
Along the way, you'll see circles on the map with a dense blue/green circle over them. These are Cataclysms, and they present two major issues: First, they substantially buff the health and damage of all enemies within them. Second, when you go in, your player character will be invaded by aggressive phantom Nightfarer clones. The result is a very tough and chaotic battle against buffed-up enemies while a player character ghost keeps killing you over and over again.
If you do choose to take on one, ensure your entire group is with you and that you're all sufficiently leveled up, for a Cataclysm can go bad very, very quickly. The rewards, unfortunately, are hit-or-miss. An upgraded version of the default weapon of the same hero from killed Nightfarer specters will reward you, but no guarantee it will work on your target Nightlord or even be useful for your build at the moment.
