Elden Ring Nightreign: What Is the Scenic Flatstone?

CNET

a day ago

Elden Ring Nightreign is a roguelike action RPG where squads of players take on massive bosses in randomized runs, but there's ways to get stronger between expeditions, too. If you're poking around the game's Roundtable Hold hub, you'll quickly find the Jar Bazaar -- a shop helmed by the cutest living jar there is.
This little guy sells meta-progression items and cosmetics in exchange for Murk. This is a currency you bring back from your expeditions, regardless of whether or not you and your allies beat the Nightlord waiting at the end of your run.
The Jar Bazaar sells different types of relics that you can use to make your Nightfarers more powerful, tilting the odds in your favor for your next expedition. He also sells key items, vessels that change the types of relics you can equip on your Nightfarer (as the game calls your adventurer) and gestures and voicelines that allow you to communicate with your allies on the field.
Some items only appear once you've successfully completed a certain amount of expeditions. But one mysterious item is available at the bottom of the shop from the very beginning of the game -- the Scenic Flatstone.
The Scenic Flatstone costs 600 Murk a pop, but you can buy them in bulk.
Screenshot by Tyler Graham/CNET
What is the Scenic Flatstone?
The Scenic Flatstone isn't a specific item. Instead, it's easier to think of this Jar Bazaar offering as a relic lootbox. When you spend your Murk on a Scenic Flatstone, it resolves into a random relic that you can equip onto your Nightfarers.
The relics generated by the Scenic Flatstone can come in any of the available colors (red, yellow, blue and green) and range in size. Small relics impart one passive buff on your Nightfarer, medium relics impart two buffs and the largest relics impart three buffs.
There are a wide number of potential relic buffs, so you'll be hard-pressed to stumble upon what you might consider the perfect roll for your playstyle. Relics can provide numerical upgrades to stats like vitality and endurance, grant you resistances to ailments like frostbite and Scarlet Rot, add an elemental effect to your starting weapon and more.
Some relics even have Nightfarer-specific buffs -- one relic might add an additional charge to Ironeye's dagger slash ability, while another might add an elemental effect to Wylder's ultimate ability.
The Scenic Flatstone can't create certain unique relics, such as the Old Pocketwatch or boss-themed buffs that unlock when you successfully defeat an aspect of the Nightlord for the first time. Other than those special buffs, you have an equal chance to draw any randomized relics from this lootbox.
You can generate up to 10 relics at once, if you're a big spender.
Screenshot by Tyler Graham/CNET
When is it worth spending my Murk on the Scenic Flatstone?
Every time you buy a Scenic Flatstone, you're rolling the dice on whether or not you'll get something you find personally useful.
If you only use a small handful of Nightfarers, it's likely that the relic generated will be a color that you can't slot into your build or has a specific bonus your main class can't take advantage of.
Even still, there are plenty of reasons you might choose to dump your extra Murk into Scenic Flatstones. The Jar Bazaar offers a pitiful collection of relics to buy at the start of the game, and the shop only expands as you successfully complete new expeditions. If you can't find something worthwhile in the regular offerings, the Scenic Flatstone can generate completely new relics for you to use.
Other than relics and vessels, most of the items you can spend Murk on are cosmetic in nature. Emotes, Prattling Pate voicelines and additional costumes for your Nightfarers might not be important to you, and if that's the case, you'll quickly accumulate the meta-progression currency.
The Scenic Flatstone gives you a way to dump some of that extra Murk into earning something that could be useful to you -- and if you generate relics that don't fit any build you're working on, you can sell them to recoup some of the Murk you spent and try again.