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Digital Trends
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
How to unlock Duchess and Revenant classes in Elden Ring: Nightreign
As a multiplayer spinoff, Elden Ring: Nightreign changes up the formula from the original game in some major ways. Besides the shifting world and focus on playing with friends, the biggest change is that you no longer make your own unique character. Now, you will choose from a selection of classes to embody on any given run that each have their own skills, attributes, and starting gear. Six are available from the start, but the Duchess and Revenant are locked. These are two of the more unique options in Elden Ring: Nightreign and should be your priority to make sure you can have the best team composition. Here's how to unlock each class. Recommended Videos Difficulty Moderate Duration 1 hour What You Need Get the Old Pocketwatch Purchase the Besmnirched Frame How to unlock the Duchess class Of the two locked classes in Elden Ring: Nightreign, you have to unlock the Duchess first. Thankfully, you almost can't avoid performing most of the required steps, but there are a few obtuse moments we can guide you through. Step 1: Beat the first Nightlord boss while doing the Tricephalos Expedition. This is the default expedition that you will be doing first anyway. Step 2: When you beat the boss, you will get an Old Pocketwatch item. Some players have reported getting it even when they died fighting the boss and not beating it, so you may only need to reach the boss and not actually win. Step 3: Back at the Roundtable Hold, visit the Priestess and choose to "Show her the old pocketwatch. and watch the cutscene. Step 4: The Priestess will reveal that she is actually the Duchess and unlock the class in the character selection screen. How to unlock the Revenant class Once you've unlocked the Duchess you can move on to unlocking the Revenant. This class is easier to unlock, but very easy to miss. Step 1: In the Roundtable Hold, pay a visit to the Small Jar Bazaar. Step 2: From the list of items, purchase the Besmirched Frame for 1,500 Murk. Step 3: Go to the east wing and find a phantom that has appeared. Step 4: Interact with her to get teleported back to the tutorial area where you will fight the Revenant and three summons. Step 5: Win the fight and you will unlock the class. If you fail, you are free to try again as many times as it takes.
CNET
a day ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Elden Ring Nightreign: 7 Tips to Beat the First Boss, the Nightlord Gladius
Elden Ring Nightreign, the newest multiplayer action RPG from FromSoftware, tosses you into the thick of battle and sets you up to die to a familiar face in its tutorial (it's Margit, and he still takes ages to bring his hammer down on your head). But the real proving ground is the Tricephalos expedition that ends with the triple-headed dog boss, Gladius. It's the first journey you'll embark on in the game, putting your skills to the test as you learn the flow of the day and night cycle. Speed is key here, and you can't spend a second lollygagging around in this version of The Lands Between. There are key features locked behind the first boss: Most of the game's other expeditions unlock after you beat the first one, new items unlock in the Small Jar Bazaar to advance your meta-progression and beating the first Nightlord aspect is a surefire way to unlock the first secret Nightfarer class. If you're having trouble overcoming the game's first expedition, it's probably because Nightreign is much faster-paced than other Souls games. But there are ways you can level the playing field and better prepare yourself for the fight against Gladius. Keep an eye out for sites of grace, as you'll have to quickly spend your runes before jumping into another prolonged battle. Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET Shoot for level 12 as you farm runes The level cap for a Nightfarer on an expedition is 15 -- but you'll hardly ever reach that level as you dash around the world farming runes and powers before the third night approaches. A much easier goal to shoot for is level 12 -- which you can attain if you move quickly and prioritize clearing out camps and bosses. Crucially, you generally don't want to waste any precious runes on merchants you find during day one and two. If you purchase items, you might find yourself several thousand runes shy of eking out another level before the final boss. There's a merchant available before the Nightlord fight in night three, so pack in as many levels as you can and then spend your leftover runes in that shop at the end. Keep an eye out for the elemental icons next to each enemy camp. Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET Find a holy weapon before the final night Each Nightlord aspect in Elden Ring Nightreign has an elemental weakness you can exploit -- you can view these weaknesses from the expedition screen before you embark on your mission. Gladius, the fiery dog awaiting you at the end of the Tricephalos expedition, is weak to holy damage. Hitting him with holy-imbued attacks creates additional stagger windows, giving the team more time to whale on the boss while one person strikes the critical hit. You can consistently find weapons with elemental infusions by beating certain enemy camps and fortresses around the map. If the location has an icon for the elemental type next to it, you'll be rewarded with a weapon that deals that type of elemental damage once you slay the final boss there. Keep in mind that Nightreign has inherited Elden Ring's icons for weapon affinities, and the elemental signifiers can be confusingly similar. The lightning affinity icon is a pale yellow blade stuck in the ground with crackling bolts around it, while the similar-looking sacred (holy) affinity icon is a more golden blade stuck in the ground with a circle. Every inventory slot is useful -- you need not worry about "fat rolling" in Nightreign. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET Grab other weapons that you won't use While you'll probably want to wield a holy weapon when you're face-to-face with Gladius, it's well worth it to stock up on other weapons as well. There's no equipment load in Nightreign, so it's purely beneficial to fill up all of your inventory slots during an expedition. Melee-attacking Nightfarers could benefit from picking up a bow to revive their allies from afar, and ranged-attacking Nightfarers might be able to use a dagger in a pinch. More importantly, though, are the bonuses that extra weapons confer upon your character. When you pick up a new weapon, you'll see a list of passive bonuses underneath the weapon stats and art of war. These bonuses apply to your character even when you're not wielding that particular weapon (with rare exception), so stocking up on armaments will snowball your power before the final fight. Fire damage negation might not help you survive the Nightlord's cataclysmic shrinking circle, but it will help you take down Gladius in a head-to-head fight. Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET Invest in fire and physical damage negation The final boss of the first expedition is a fire-spewing cerberus, and he hits like a truck. Nightfarers who have dodge rolls and other abilities that provide generous invincibility frames will likely be able to avoid the hits in this boss fight, but it won't be nearly as easy for tank characters to do so. During the first two days of your run, you'll still have the option to invest in passive abilities that will help mitigate some of the damage the boss can mete out, selecting dormant powers instead of weapons from certain boss rewards. Night bosses provide especially powerful passive buffs, so if you can snag fire or physical damage negation passives, it'll help soften some of Gladius' blows. These churches will look familiar to Elden Ring veterans. Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET Stock up on flasks at churches around the map Even if you take passives that help you tank Gladius' attacks, you'll inevitably end up taking a few hits. That damage adds up, and you'll need to heal through it. You start with three flasks and get two more by beating the bosses during the first two nights, but managing a Nightlord with only five flasks can still be a bit tricky. That's why churches are so important to find during day one and two of a Nightreign expedition. They appear as golden, glowing structures on the minimap, so you won't have a hard time plotting a course to these locations -- they look just like the churches that you can get flask healing upgrades from in Elden Ring, too. Each church will up your flask count by one. Walking into a Nightlord fight with eight flasks instead of five makes a massive difference, especially since that's effectively nine more opportunities to heal across an entire squad of Nightfarers. Churches aren't a distraction from rune farming: They're an investment in your survival. As you prepare to face your first night three boss, here's what you need to look out for. Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET Watch out for Gladius' massive chainsword attack Nightlord Gladius loves fighting in melee distance and spewing fire, which gives ranged Nightfarers ample opportunity to lay into him with holy damage from afar. When the boss charges away from the fight rather than into the party of Nightfarers, you'll know he's up to no good. One of the hardest hitting attacks in this boss fight has Gladius grab the chainsword off of his back with one of his heads, swinging it as the blade extends across the ground. Original Dark Souls players will probably get flashbacks to fighting Great Grey Wolf Sif, but Gladius isn't a good boy at all. This sweeping attack covers a massive area of the arena and Gladius can use it multiple times in a row. The good news is that it's pretty easy to dodge through, if your character has a roll with decent invincibility frames. The hardest part is identifying when this move is about to be unleashed -- so keep an eye on how far away from you Gladius is trying to fight. Once you begin your battle with Gladius, things can quickly get out of control. Stick together as a cohesive team unit. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET When the boss splits up, don't let your party follow suit Once you beat Gladius down to half health, he adds a new move to his repertoire. The Nightlord will occasionally split into three fireballs that rocket across the arena -- you'll want to dodge roll through these -- before turning around and returning to the party as three separate dogs. These canines are no less fiery than the cerberus-form, and they'll usually each target a single member of the party. Just because the dogs are split up doesn't mean your team has to, though. Ranged Nightfarers like Ironeye or fragile glass cannons Nightfarers like Duchess and Recluse might have trouble once they're singled out, so it's best to group up and repel this phase of Gladius as a team. Note that in its separated form, each dog takes damage for the full boss, so big attacks targeting an area like various Nightfarer ultimates (Ironeye and Raider especially) are potent here. Once enough time passes, Gladius will fireball around the map once again and return in his cerberus form (unless you manage to defeat him before he switches phases once again). When he takes on his larger base form, you can revert to your original strategy to swiftly take down this very bad dog. With Gladius defeated, a whole host of new expeditions will become available to you and your squad. Even though you've finally bested the real tutorial, you'll probably benefit from our beginner guide as you set out on some of the more challenging Nightreign adventures. Good luck out there, Nightfarer.
CNET
a day ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Elden Ring Nightreign Review: the Highs and Lows of Distilling Souls Games to Roguelike Runs
I drop into a fantasy land with a sword and two squadmates, all dedicated to defeating the Nightlord ruling over our shadowy limbo realm -- but first, we have to survive. From the deepest mines to the highest snow-capped peaks, we clashed and slew monstrous beasts for two in-game days at a breakneck pace to stay ahead of the closing ring of blue flame. On the third day, confronting the Nightlord in its lair, we get close to defeating it with wild weapons and spells -- but win or lose, we shrug and queue up to drop once more. This is Elden Ring Nightreign, a spin-off of studio FromSoftware's phenomenally successful and notoriously difficult fantasy action-RPG game Elden Ring. Rather than spend dozens of hours exploring wide lands in a solo adventure, Nightreign takes the combat and boss structure to a co-op multiplayer setting where tight gameplay must be balanced against speed and strategy to survive each trip into the game's arena. Nightreign is a departure for FromSoftware, eschewing the slow solo explorations of its previous games in favor of fast-paced rounds building your heroes from scratch, kind of similar to battle royale shooters like Fortnite and Apex Legends. But unlike those PvP-intensive games, each Nightreign round pits the friendly squad against a map full of computer-controlled enemies, leaving players dependent on teammates to survive -- or themselves, if they're bold enough for a solo run. (Currently, players can either go it alone or queue for three-player squads.) Read more: Elden Ring Nightreign Beginner's Guide: Team Strategy, Level Goals and Survival Tips Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET Nightreign is focused, repeatable Soulslike action Nightreign ambitiously tries to see how much of an idiosyncratic yet popular game can be slimmed down and imported into a new gameplay loop. It's easy to put a hundred hours or more into Elden Ring, exploring every nook and cranny, upgrading weapons and trying out different strategies. Nightreign punishes that slow pace, requiring squads to blitz around the map, hitting specific points of interest to get as strong as they can to survive and defeat the big boss at the end of each three-day run. (Playing through three in-game days and facing the Nightlord boss at the end of a run can take 45 minutes to an hour -- or less, if you die along the way.) This approach will be catnip for fans of FromSoftware's signature tough boss combat, as it distills Elden Ring down to its core combat loop with just enough randomized surprises to somewhat refresh each run while keeping enough the same to quickly plan and alter course along a run. That makes sense, as Nightreign is directed by Junya Ishizaki, the person in charge of overseeing the combat for Elden Ring. On the surface, a lot has carried over from Elden Ring, but there are plenty of subtle refinements to make it fit fast-paced multiplayer gameplay. Player characters kit themselves out with powerful weapons and spells without worrying about stat requirements or armor. There's no fall damage, allowing players to drop from great heights to keep moving, and spirit hawks lift them in aerial routes around the map. Running up to a spiritual spring of blue fire lets you leap upward hundreds of feet in an invigorating ascent with a heavy bass sound effect -- I breeze around the map feeling fast and powerful, a hunter in a forsaken land. But there is some part of FromSoftware's spirit that's lost in Nightreign: that feeling of being dwarfed by an alien world that slowly unfolds its mysterious history as you cut your way through its cursed remains. Instead, Nightreign leans heavily on the mystique and lore built up in Elden Ring, presenting a mirror version of that well-known setting with its own limited mythology that can be revealed with optional missions. But you can just stick with the gameplay loop, and many will, turning Nightreign into a greatest hits album of fun FromSoftware moments that doesn't introduce too much that's new -- beyond designing the game around persistent squad multiplayer. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET And the multiplayer is a joy, despite rough edges that, in true FromSoftware fashion, are unexplained or buggy in ways that the community will likely fondly rehabilitate as part of the game's charm. For instance, the game requires a lot of ascending big plateaus by hopping up misshapen steps with erratically successful ledge grabs. It's minorly frustrating, but does ratchet up the tension when you're trying to escape death or rush to a teammate's aid -- and much like the rest of FromSoftware's games, Nightreign is so tightly polished elsewhere that this slight jank, or other aspects like it, is tolerated and treated as part of its difficulty and flavor. Which is all to say that, for $40, Nightreign delivers on its vision of concentrated, easily repeatable FromSoftware action that's sure to hook the studio's die-hard fans and potentially lure other difficulty junkies who prefer quick multiplayer romps to lore-heavy solo adventures. With rogue-like novelty that rewards replaying, there's a decent blend of familiar elements and shifting map factors for fans of FromSoftware's tough gameplay to get their fix without needing to replay games they know so well. Fans of the longevity of Elden Ring and its DLC Shadows of the Erdtree should be cautioned: On top of a more narrow appeal than prior FromSoftware games, players will vary in how much replay value they'll get out of Nightreign, since there's currently only one map and a finite number of end-run bosses to tackle. The eight character classes, called Nightfarers, have varying complexity in their ability mechanics and will take players a while to master, but they'll likely spend most of their time attacking with weapons and dodging enemy blows, as in Elden Ring. There are plenty of randomized factors that mix up a run, from shifting terrain opening up new areas to "invasions" of powerful enemy computer-controlled Nightfarers. But in the 20 hours it took me to beat half the end-run bosses and kill the final boss, the single map became such a known entity that I stopped paying attention to it as anything but a race course to speed over on the way to my next task. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET Where Elden Ring Nightreign triumphs and falters As a FromSoftware fan who can muck his way through its games in ways that nobody would describe as "dominant," Nightreign is something of a relief, as my two permanent teammates can help a lot in distracting bosses and picking me up when I make mistakes. Thanks to previewing the game earlier this year, I hit the ground running, pairing up with CNET teammates to try taking on big bosses -- and failing. But after pairing up with a very skilled Bandai Namco employee (one of many who volunteered to help reviewers like me take on bosses and finish the game), we took down some of the biggest and baddest Nightreign has to offer. There's no mistaking that I was carried by more skilled teammates, and that has me concerned for a bit of the game's flow and player skill growth. While I was used to cautiously and slowly going through FromSoftware games, my more skilled teammates flung us outbound on a speedy tour of the map zones we needed to hit to get as strong as we could. When I fell, they tanked bosses and dodged attacks to revive me. When the map's Shifting Earth conditions led to a new area, my expert teammate took us to the exact right spot to take full advantage of it -- something that might have taken plenty more runs to figure out on my own. I certainly improved over time, but it was all during rounds -- in the Roundtable hub, players return to between missions, a Sparring Grounds area lets you try out each of the eight total (six starting, two unlockable) Nightfarers' regular and ultimate skills, along with every weapon in the game. But it's a far cry from the game's high-pressure situations of boss events, enemy groups and more. Players will improve only by trial and error in the field, sometimes letting down their teammates in the process. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET Yet, when you and your team are firing on all cylinders, there's no thrill like eking out a win over a monstrous boss. After killing a trio of end-run bosses, another reviewer, Bandai Namco employee Micah (team Cat Password all the way) and I locked in to beat the game's final boss. Shouting out congratulations over team chat, my body shaking with adrenaline, I felt like I'd completed a gaming feat -- something not unknown to many Elden Ring players after surmounting one of that game's many challenging bosses. I felt accomplished. I wanted to tell everyone, and when the game comes out, bring my friends in to play Nightreign with them, guiding as I was guided. But would I recommend my FromSoftware newcomer friends to play? Bandai Namco Who is Elden Ring Nightreign for? The more I thought about it, the more I felt my dozens of hours in Elden Ring were essential to starting Nightreign strong -- and even then, it took 20 hours in Nightreign to feel like I'd gotten a good handle on the best way to play. Knowing Elden Ring's massive arsenal of weapons and spells felt essential to picking up Nightreign and immediately having fun. New players who don't have baked-in knowledge of Elden Ring or the combat flow of FromSoftware games will probably be left in the cold. Aside from a tutorial section teaching players basic mechanics, Nightreign lacks the carefully crafted early sections of the studio's other games -- it quite literally drops players into the map for a run and tells them to get killing. The virtue of FromSoftware's single-player adventures' difficulties is that players could approach them at their own pace; in Nightreign, they must rapidly adapt to the studio's particular flavor of tough combat while also figuring out a largely unexplained world. The studio's famed minimalist storytelling will likely do a disservice to new players who die too quickly to learn. Whether they continue with the game after a humiliating defeat is, indeed, the classic trial that every FromSoftware player faces. But it sure seems like new players have a high hill to climb picking up on the game's subtly conveyed details -- map flow, enemy camps, bosses, weapons, churches, strategies -- while also figuring out how to play Soulslikes from scratch. And yet, Nightreign is so unlike every other game out there that its sheer novelty may be enough to tempt FromSoftware veterans and newcomers alike. It's polished, is easy to get into the action and has a very high skill ceiling. If players stick through its lack of direction and difficulty, they'll find a multiplayer game that feels rewarding to win in a way few other games are. And when they lose, they may find themselves like I did -- nursing annoyance that they fumbled but eager to drop in one more time with their trusted squad. Elden Ring Nightreign launches on May 30 for PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One consoles for $40. Owning the original Elden Ring is not required to play this game.
CNET
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Elden Ring Nightreign Director Interview: He Solo'd Every Boss and So Can You
Elden Ring launched in 2022 to great acclaim as the culmination of director Hidetaka Miyazaki's successes with the Dark Souls and Bloodborne series of games. When calls went out in studio FromSoftware to explore more modest spinoff projects, Elden Ring combat director Junya Ishizaki raised his hand -- and proceeded to direct the just-released Elden Ring Nightreign, the multiplayer-only spinoff game. Nightreign is an ambitious attempt to distill the Elden Ring experience into under-an-hour repeatable runs killing enemies and mini-bosses before taking on a unique and deadly Nightlord main boss. Faster, meaner and in some ways tougher than the game it originates from, Nightreign is FromSoftware's expedition into multiplayer. And while it inherits a lot from Elden Ring, the studio's next game was developed to scratch a very different player itch -- a co-op pressure cooker to produce the highest and lowest moments that Souls games are known for. There are a lot of ways the games differ, but Nightreign's director summarized it by saying "I would describe the Elden Ring experience as more of a journey while Nightreign's experience is more of that on the battlefield." In part one of my interview with Ishizaki about his directorial debut in Nightreign, we chatted about what was kept and cut from Elden Ring, how the map design changed over development and whether he himself beat every boss in the game he helmed. (Yes, he solo'd them all.) Read more: Elden Ring Nightreign Beginner's Guide: The Essentials for Not Getting Wrecked in the First 5 Minutes Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET David Lumb: With its co-op focus and fast pace, Nightreign's gameplay is different than Elden Ring. What was kept and what was cut from the latter? Junya Ishizaki: While it's not limited to Elden Ring, with a lot of our games, we keep this sense of exploring the world and traversing the world. Building on these RPG systems and growing your character was definitely an element of Elden Ring that we wanted to keep and transfer into Nightreign. I think in terms of, not what what we cut because boss battles are still a large part of Elden Ring, but more as a good focus point on where we had to deliver something new for Nightreign -- we wanted these large-scale boss battles to feel really epic and really unique to this game. DL: What's it like to tweak the difficulty in a FromSoftware game, especially one built upon Elden Ring's specific challenge level from the lethality of everyday enemies to the biggest bosses? JI: These challenging elements to our games are always under scrutiny and that we're always looking at closely. We felt like we needed to step back and review that process for difficulty balancing with Nightreign in particular … being a multiplayer-focused title, the player is constantly evolving and changing their power level on the fly during any one session. So you really need to focus on what that power curve and that difficulty curve looked like within each session quite closely. Of course, as I say, we do look at this approach carefully from title to title. It's not just an all-in, make-it-hard approach. That said, Elden Ring, we did go too far in some areas and I feel we didn't go far enough in other areas. So we're always learning from our projects and past experiences, trying to create a game that feels fair and satisfying and gives you a feeling of accomplishment when you do overcome these challenges. DL: Hold on -- I think everyone would like to know your opinion on which bosses in Elden Ring went too far and which didn't go far enough! JI: This is not necessarily related to the difficulty specifically, but I think in terms of the battle system with Elden Ring -- which is something I was quite involved in the development of that game -- where the player feels too pressured or too restricted in what they can do within that framework and that setting, I feel like that created a lot of the feeling of difficulty for a lot of players. That is somewhere that we felt we were able to release the valve a little bit with Nightreign and allow for more player freedom and to have a more liberating experience. So with Nightreign, I think really leaning into something new was at the heart of this game, even though we're using Elden Ring as a base, that really gave us a lot of room to explore these battle systems and explore how the player traverses the world. Really really lean into creating a fresh experience there that doesn't feel like it's too tied to the original game in that sense. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET DL: Speaking of traversal, I can't be the only one who's wondered this: Was there ever fall damage in the game? I love dropping down from a great height. JI: There was actually fall damage at one point, very momentarily. We did study it and try it for a bit but we felt like the game could exist without it. We felt like the game stood up on its own and didn't need it in order to feel thrilling or to feel trepidation of other areas of the game. DL: What are other things players might be surprised to discover had been cut during development or refined into something totally different? JI: I'd say one example of this is the terrain changes that occur in Nightreign. At one point, there was the idea to have different maps -- specific set maps for when you play each session. At one point, we had the idea to try to collapse this into a single map, and instead have these different layers and transformative changes that occur during that session. We thought this could be a new challenge that could set it apart from previous and existing games, give us a new challenge to work with on Nightreign and provide a different gameplay experience as well to extend the breadth of each play session by having this layering feature to the terrain features. We found this added very different gradients to the exploration and to the way each session pans out. When we tried this, we felt like there's no one right answer. There's no one correct way you can do this, it just depends on the game. And this presented a new and interesting challenge for us and a way to, again, spice up the new gameplay in Nightreign. DL: That's interesting and sounds like a lot of development in the game experience. Was Nightreign ever considered as a full-size game like Elden Ring? JI: In a word, no, Nightreign was always considered a smaller, lighter title in comparison to the likes of Elden Ring. But to give a little bit of context to that, during the development of Elden Ring, I myself expressed interest in wanting to direct my own title, and this was picked up by Miyazaki and the other staff at From and I was given this opportunity. Being a new director, we wanted to take things from a smaller scale and a smaller perspective and start with a strong base with Elden Ring. Of course, having had this experience as director, I'd very much like in the future to start completely from scratch and have my own project and see where it can go scope-wise, so I'm looking forward to that opportunity as well. Bandai Namco DL: Now that you've finished Nightreign, what's your favorite part of it? JI: There's a lot of nice things to choose from, a lot about the game I like. But I think one thing we've honed in on with Nightreign in particular is the feeling of being both approachable and light in terms of an RPG, but also quite involved and quite in-depth if you want it to be. I think this is an area that we've managed to hit quite well. DL: And what have you and FromSoftware learned from making Nightreign? JI: I think there's a lot of experience we can take forward into future projects. One thing in particular I think has been really successful and really valuable to work with is this new approach to characters and character design, both from a gameplay and narrative perspective. I think this is a really unique aspect of Nightreign and it's something I think could be developed even further with our future titles, characters feeling unique and interesting in terms of the way they play, the way their controls translate to their unique game feel, and also how you as a player approach and explore their backstories and narratives. These are areas that make Nightreign stand apart from other titles and I think this is something we could definitely improve on and refine going forward. DL: Great. Last question: I beat the final boss yesterday and I just want to know -- have you, in fact, beaten every boss and the final boss yourself? Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET JI: Yes, I can hopefully give you reassurance to know that I have beaten all of the game's bosses. I've seen everything it has to offer, both in multiplayer and as a solo player. So I want you and players to know that this is very possible and I want you to have the confidence to give it a try yourself. And in terms of secrets and a narrative as well, I think there's a lot there for players who were invested in that side of it to uncover and I hope you look forward to experiencing everything that Nightreign has to offer. DL: Just to clarify: you solo'd every boss in the game? JI: Yes. And without relics. Elden Ring Nightreign launched on May 30 for PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One consoles for $40. Owning the original Elden Ring is not required to play this game.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Elden Ring Nightreign' Is Already Being Patched To Be Easier
Elden Ring Nightreign The launch of Elden Ring Nightreign has resulted in all manner of takes about FromSoftware's adventure into a multiplayer-only co-op game. In many ways, it's a lot more punishing than the original Elden Ring and its Souls games, given mechanics like losing levels and tanking entire, lengthy runs on death. Many may say that's part of the fun, and while that may be true, even FromSoft thinks Nightreign may be pushing the limit a little too much. The developer has announced Patch 1.02, set to be released next week, which will make two changes to make things a little easier, especially for solo players. The runes thing is self-explanatory, as runs will now be more rewarding. The auto-revive for solo players on Night Lords is to combat the intense difficulties of those fights where a single wrong move can be death. So now it's…two wrong moves. Though Night Lords are hardly the only bosses that pose an extreme challenge for solo players. Elden Ring Nightreign It's not a blanket difficulty nerf, which I think most players of the game probably would not want. There are certainly mainly complaints about how hard the game is, but even if it's tougher than other FromSoft titles, I think there's a crowd that wants that. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder However, there are other significant additions players are hoping to see other than what's being offered here. FromSoft has actually apologized for the lack of duos in the game, meaning it's impossible to play with just one other friend, and that should be in development for a later update. The other issues, a lack of in-game comms past pinging and the inability to crossplay with friends, seem harder to overcome and if they were addressed, would take a long time to implement. The lack of comms especially, text or voice, seems bizarre in a wholly co-op game, and results in silent runs with random teammates you have no way to coherently strategize with, and you just have to hope everyone is on the same page. Despite being multiplayer, Elden Ring Nightreign is not a live game. It will not be pumping out content or seasons or things like that. But it will release fixes, updates and features over time. It's good they're starting off quickly here in just week one. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
