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CNET
a day ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Secret Characters in Elden Ring Nightreign: How to Unlock the Revenant and Duchess
Elden Ring Nightreign's Nightfarer class design allows new players and Souls veterans alike to hop into its speedy, round-based roguelike action RPG gameplay. Key character archetypes have been boiled down into Nightfarer classes with different passive and active skills that can help you round out a strong and efficient three-player squad -- but you don't have a full roster of Nightfarers available to you when you start the game. Creating a strong team composition is just as important as speedrunning bosses and collecting runes, flasks and other upgrades during the three-day expeditions. You'll want to mix-and-match damage dealers, tanks and supporting roles while also ensuring you have melee, ranged and elemental damage options. Read more: Elden Ring Nightreign Beginner's Guide: Team Strategy, Level Goals and Survival Tips As the first wave of players come to grips with Nightreign's speed-based roguelike expeditions on May 30, they might gravitate toward more forgiving Nightfarer options, such as Wylder, Guardian and Ironeye. The six Nightfarers available to you when you first start Nightreign aren't the only player classes in the game -- you're missing the ever-deadly Duchess and the spirit-summoning doll known as the Revenant. Here's how to unlock the two secret Nightfarer classes in Elden Ring Nightreign. If you receive this relic after an expedition, you'll be able to unlock the first secret Nightfarer. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET How to unlock the Duchess The first Nightfarer you'll have a chance to unlock is the Duchess. Once you finish your first Tricephalos expedition, you'll be rewarded with a special green relic -- the Old Pocketwatch. You don't actually have to defeat Gladius in order to obtain the relic, but you do have to complete a full run in order to claim your rewards. This relic imparts decent buffs on any Nightfarer that you're running with a dexterity-based build, but it also doubles as the key item that unlocks the first secret Elden Ring Nightreign class. Once the Old Pocketwatch is in your possession, approach the Priestess in the Roundtable Hold. Her normal dialogue options give some background on what the Nightfarers are doing here and why the fight against the Nightlord is so important. Now, she'll ask about your new relic, and present you with a choice of whether or not to hand it over to her. Even if you've slotted the Old Pocketwatch relic into your build, you have nothing to fear by handing it over to the Priestess. You'll retain the relic and it you can still equip it on any of your playable Nightfarers. When the Priestess is handed the relic, a short cutscene plays where she drops her shroud and reveals that she has been the Duchess all along. She vows to stop standing on the sidelines and join the fight, and with that you'll unlock Nightreign's seventh playable Nightfarer. The Duchess wears a Dark Souls Firekeeper mask, but her overall aesthetic is much more Bloodborne-y. Screenshot by Tyler Graham/CNET What is the Duchess' role in a team? The Duchess is a dexterous attacker who can flit in and out of battle to keep up the pressure. She doesn't have high poise, defense or health, but she can hold an enemy's attention and easily evade their attacks. The Duchess greatly benefits from weapons like fists, daggers and curved swords, though any weapons with powerful lunge attacks will feel right at home in this Nightfarer's arsenal. The Duchess' passive ability lets her expend less stamina when attacking and dodging, allowing her to stay in the battle longer before taking a tactical reprieve. Her class ability, Restage, rewinds time and inflicts additional damage against enemies who have been wounded in the past few seconds. Her ultimate ability, Finale, shrouds the Duchess and any nearby teammates from enemies during a fight, allowing the team to heal up and prepare attacks with long wind up times. The effects of Finale instantly wear off on any person who attacks an enemy (or gets hit by a stray attack themselves). After you unlock the Duchess, a new item will be available in the Jar Bazaar. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET How to unlock the Revenant You'll need another key item in order to unlock the Revenant, the eighth and final playable Nightfarer. However, this item becomes available as soon as you unlock the Duchess -- it's nestled down toward the bottom of the Jar Bazaar. The Besmirched Frame will cost you 1,500 Murk and, just like the Old Pocketwatch, it's a relic you can use in your Nightfarers' builds. The Old Pocketwatch gives you an insight into the type of Nightfarer it's connected to, boosting dexterity-related stats. The Besmirched Frame is a great relic for any Nightfarer with an affinity for magic, and that's no coincidence. Once you've obtained this item, a Lost Phantom will spawn in the east hallway of the Roundtable Hold. This NPC will be denoted by a girl's portrait on your map -- there will be an exclamation point icon by the portrait's head. Approach this phantom and interact with the girl. You'll be warped to the plateau where you fought the Margit the Fell Omen in Nightreign's tutorial, but this time a unique boss will be waiting for you. Taking on the Night Idol is much easier once you defeat her summons, but you'll still have to avoid some of the spells she slings. Screenshot by Tyler Graham/CNET The Night Idol is an easy boss fight, but there are a couple of enemies you'll have to micromanage. She has three spirit summons she fields against you: Helen, an agile page who will quickly press the attack; Frederick, a bulky cook who swings slowly but delivers devastating blows; and Sebastian, a massive skeleton who can't move but has deadly melee attacks and magic beams. Focusing on these spirit summons is imperative, because they don't come back once they're defeated. You can beat this boss with any Nightfarer, but I found it was easiest with Ironeye. You can use your bow to zone out the summons, peppering them with arrows until they fall, and then move in on the Night Idol boss using your action skills. Once the Night Idol is defeated, you'll be transported back to the Roundtable Hold and informed that you've unlocked the Revenant, the last of the Nightfarers missing from the roster. The Revenant is a doll, like Ranni the Witch. She commands spirits to enact her will. Screenshot by Tyler Graham/CNET What is the Revenant's role in a team? The Revenant is one of the more magically inclined player classes in Elden Ring Nightreign, which means that she's a high risk, high reward character to use. The Revenant has a high focus point (or mana) pool and can take advantage of sorceries and incantations alike, though her stat spread favors spells from Seals and Dragon Communions. What this character lacks in defense, though, she makes up for in utility that allows her to shift focus away from herself and her teammates. The Revenant's passive ability has a chance to spawn spirit summons of non-boss enemies that she deals final blows to. This combines well with her class ability, Summon Spirit, which allows her to call Helen, Frederick or Sebastian (the same summons from the Lost Girl boss fight) to the battlefield. The Revenant's summons add an element of chaos to Nightreign's battles, and often pull enemy aggression away from players. It's much easier to get in the thick of the fight and mete out some damage when there's a small army marching on a boss. When the fight is turning against her, the Revenant's powerful ultimate ability makes herself and her allies briefly immortal. The Immortal March ability applies to other players as well as the Revenant's spirit summons, making it a real Swiss army knife of an ability -- if you really want to squeeze the most value out of it, you can activate it when your teammates are knocked down to instantly revive them. If you've got a spirit summon active, it'll use its own ultimate ability, but it can't swing a fight nearly as well as picking up your fallen squadmates. The Revenant is fragile, but she provides more effective health to her tankier teammates -- and levels the playing field by bringing more allies into the fight. Now that you have a full stable of Nightfarers, it'll be easier than ever to take the fight to the Nightlord. If you're still having trouble with Elden Ring Nightreign's first set of expeditions, follow these beginner tips and make sure you're utilizing all of the advantages from the game's meta-progression systems. Elden Ring Nightreign launched on May 30 for PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Series S and Xbox One consoles for $40. Owning the original Elden Ring is not required to play this game.
CNET
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Elden Ring Nightreign: What Is the Scenic Flatstone?
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.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Elden Ring Nightreign review – FromSoftware brings multiplayer mayhem to the Lands Between
A standalone spin-off from FromSoftware's incredibly successful yet mostly single-player dark role-playing game Elden Ring, the multiplayer-oriented Elden Ring Nightreign is a curious beast, often feeling like an amalgamation of several different experiences all at once. Each session begins with players, either solo or in teams of three, dropping into a small but dense world, working to urgently gain as much strength as possible as a rapidly closing ring tightens around them – a very Fortnite experience. Rather than other players, they fight a variety of monsters and explore locations lifted directly from the Elden Ring universe. After each match, they also gain upgrade materials to modify future runs and advance the game's story, similar to a rogue-like game … so it's a Fortnite/Elden Ring/Hades experience? This is getting complicated. Every session is an engagingly frantic race against time to craft an on-the-fly strategy that takes you across the whole map. Each match is split into three days: on the first two, you pick areas to rush through, besting local bosses to gain minor buffs to your strength or loot weapons with powerful passive abilities, before escaping the rapidly closing ring that saps your health and is sure to end your run. Each night culminates in a larger and far more challenging fight than you've faced thus far, amping up the pressure even further. It's quite the stressful slog, but day three is what you're battling towards. As the day dawns, you step into a barren arena, ready to face one of several tough-as-nails mega bosses specifically designed to be tackled by multiple players. Nightreign is overwhelmingly designed for three-person teams. You can choose to head out on your own, but doing so is a severe challenge. There's no one to get you back up if you accidentally die rolling into a boss's attack, and many of the enemies designed to be tackled by a team of allies frequently overwhelm you. Ultimately, this is a game all about momentum. The feeling of pressure as you navigate the world is palpable. Every second, you're constantly questioning yourself: am I wasting too much time by checking what's around this corner? Can we take down this boss quickly enough to warrant the reward? It's an incredibly stimulating experience, as you rush to analyse your equipment and make build-defining decisions on the fly, but so much has been modified for the sake of speed that the nuance typical to FromSoftware games is somewhat lost. There's no choice of stats when levelling up, for example, with levelling now reduced to the mash of a button when you reach a rest point. And while the world has been painstakingly populated with smaller enemies, beyond taking down a couple in the first few seconds of a run to hit level 2, there's little point engaging with them, since tackling bosses is the main way to get more powerful. This momentum gives Nightreign its 'just one more run' feel, but the pace feels more rapid than necessary, reducing much of the world to a distraction that wastes your precious time. It's also why the bugs present in the review version we played feel particularly frustrating. Spending five minutes tackling a dragon that then flies through a wall and ends up being untargetable feels particularly unfair. One of the more loathed mechanics from the Dark Souls series is the requirement for you to run back to the boss arena every time you die. When this was updated for Elden Ring, allowing you to respawn right outside the arena, fans rejoiced. Yet the Nightreign experience is such an extreme move back in the other direction that it feels almost Sisyphean. Every run requires you to spend around 35 minutes to reach the final boss, but those bosses often have unique mechanics that can wipe out unsuspecting teams in just a couple of hits. Dying to a new move you've not seen before, requiring you to spend another 35 minutes rolling that boulder back up the hill, feels grossly disrespectful. Considering the success of Elden Ring in applying FromSoftware's dense level design ethos to an open world, it's disappointing that the developer appears to have missed the mark with Nightreign. Where that game iterated, Nightreign takes shortcuts. It is billed as a standalone release, yet so much environmental content is carbon-copied from Elden Ring – often thrown in haphazardly – that the world feels more like a particularly polished fan-created mod than a whole new title. FromSoftware's experiment in upending its established gameplay formula is admirable, and taking down gargantuan foes alongside friends really adds to the joy you feel at finally besting what at first felt like an insurmountable task. It's just a shame that the game's skewed pacing and overreliance on Elden Ring's pool of assets so greatly mars the experience. Elden Ring Nightreign is out Friday 30 May; £34.99
Digital Trends
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Ex-Fortnite devs found new studio and reveal its chaotic debut game, Lort
Big Distraction, a newly formed independent game studio founded by former Fortnite developers, announced its debut game, Lort. It's a one to eight player co-op fantasy roguelike set to launch later this year on PC. Formed in 2023, Big Distraction is led by the former Lead Producer and Marketing Lead on Fortnite Battle Royale. It's currently an 11-person team comprised of veterans from studios like Dice, Blizzard, and MachineGames. Big Distraction's initial goal was to create a game that it could launch within two years of the studio's founding. Lort is the end result of that effort. Recommended Videos Lort is a co-op action roguelike set in a comedic fantasy world. Its debut trailer emphasizes a gameplay loop that will have players exploring a procedurally generated map in search of loot, scaling their power up, and hunting down bosses. Think of something like Risk of Rain 2, but with more more absurd humor. Players will start a run by squading up with up to eight players. They'll be able to choose from three character classes initially, including a wizard, warrior and ranger, but Big Distraction has ideas for more. There are no team composition restrictions, so players can run with a team of eight wizards if they so desire. From there, they'll explore an open area, hunt down treasure chests featuring over-the-top weapons, and get upgrades that boost their stats. Since it's all high fantasy themed, players will fight with weapons like maces, oversized hammers, and bows. In hands-off demo footage, I watched a crew take down hoards of Dragon Quest-like slimes and other colorful monsters using over the top spells, like one that whacks foes with an enormous hunk of wood. Big Distraction says that the power progression is a major focus of a run, as it will let players eventually put together builds that feel like they can break the game. It all makes for a multiplayer game that looks lighthearted and chaotic. Lort is set to release in the fourth quarter of 2025. It will release on PC and be compatible with Steam Deck.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate (PS5) Review
Much like the inevitability of certain movie franchises getting reboot regularly, it seemed a matter of time until Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate would eventually continue its journey from Apple Arcade to Nintendo Switch to Sony and Microsoft's shores. Unlike some of those movie revivals, however, this game is undoubtedly worth checking out. If you haven't already checked it out on the other platforms, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate is a roguelike take on the ultimate 90s franchise. With 1-4 players, the Turtles must navigate four stages, building skills and modifiers while mopping the floor with Foot Clan ninjas, mouse robots, and other familiar groups of foes in order to rescue their father and sensei, Splinter, from an ethereal captor. In typical fashion, each of the brothers has their own distinctive playstyle based on their weapons of choice—starting with a basic combo, a special attack, and a 'tool' suited to their personality/skills, like Leonardo's shurikens or Michelangelo's taunting ability. Then, during each 'run' through the levels, tools can be swapped, and powers and modifiers picked up to customize their loadouts. It's Hades in a halfshell. For the wider PlayStation and Xbox release, Splintered Fate includes the Casey Jones & The Junkyard Jam DLC, which adds the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' most ornery ally to the playable roster. This also offers an alternate route through the game, replacing the third level (the streets of NYC) with a detour through a junkyard. Splintered Fate was already a great package on its own, so arriving on the remaining platforms with this extra content included is a big win for fans who still haven't checked it out—especially as the newly-announced physical Deluxe Edition and Pipin' Hot Collector's Edition both include a future, as-of-yet-unnamed DLC pack. However, there isn't much more here to take advantage of hardier hardware, despite the longer wait. The game looks, plays, and loads smoother away from the Switch, but Splintered Fate hasn't made the most of the potential next-gen benefits. Not that it needed to do much, but even embracing the sophisticated rumble options would've been a nice touch. Aside from a slightly quicker experience moving between areas, there was virtually no difference between this and the Switch version; if I'd squinted a little, I might even lose track of which system I was playing on. (Trophies are one welcome touch, granted, since Nintendo still refuses to embrace this 20-year old concept.) That being said, I had a great time starting this roguelike over from an absolute square one. I said in my initial Switch review that Splintered Fate 'might just be my favourite interpretation of the TMNT since my childhood;' revisiting Super Evil Megacorp's classically-inspired take on the mythos firmly established that as fact. Its writing offers us perhaps the most grounded yet authentic versions of the characters, expressed in an impressive number of incidental dialogues and cutscenes over at least 8 successful runs, and the pitch-perfect cast brings it to life. And even going in with full knowledge and a strong knowledge of an ideal loadout for my playstyle—Flame Dash + Inferno = cowabunga, baby—Splintered Fate remained a tightly-honed challenge. I had fresh perspective on and appreciation of its difficulty curve and the impact of improving certain skills, which was helpful when diving into the late-game's systems of Shimmering Portals and Gauntlet Challenges, the true challenge. I thought I would've had any itch for TMNT scratched by Shredder's Revenge and Mutant Mayhem, but I could keep coming back for another slice of Splintered Fate anytime. If you also grew up in the height of the early-90s popularity, and maybe got your arm stuck in that sewer playset at least once too, you should do your inner child a solid and check this out. It's a shell of a lot of game for the price of admission, especially with another DLC and some radical physical editions on the way.
