Elden Ring: Nightreign Beta

This weekend was the Elden Ring: Nightreign Beta, and I was lucky enough to participate in it. I'm going to use this space to discuss my thoughts on the overall design of the game, from the core gameplay loop to the characters to the meta systems going on. I'll try to not make many tangents, but I will have to dive into my Elden Ring experience for context, since they both share many things.

So, lets start there. I have seen every ending to Elden Ring, and played through the game about four full times, and the DLC twice at this point. I've beaten every boss, played with each of the major stat builds, and so I would call myself an expert on Elden Ring. I have played every FromSoftware souls game at least twice, from Demon's Souls on PS3 up to Elden Ring. So, with my many credentials splayed out before you, let me dive into explaining this newfangled video game.

The Rain Falls

Elden Ring: Nightreign takes the systems created for Elden Ring, all the combat, exploration, and character progression, and streamlines it into a 3 player survival experience. When you enter the game, you're put into a castle ruin where you can walk around, chat with the playable characters of the game (who only had one voice line in beta), and access the menus. The streamlined options included changing your character (Wylder, The Duchess, The Guardian, and The Recluse), entering a queue to play, and filling your chalice. The chalice is a simple color slot upgrade system that gives your characters starting bonuses, like making your int slightly higher for spells to do more damage off the bat or giving your starter weapon a new weapon art, like Hoarfrost Stomp. These upgrades and a crafting currency are rewarded upon a run, success or failure (and you'll fail A LOT).

So you choose which final boss you're aiming to slay, enter the queue, and quickly get matched with three other players. You lock into the character you're going to be playing for this run, and you start. You get a nice intro cinematic and then are deposited in one of the corners of the map (I only ever dropped in at the bottom middle or top right of the map.)

So, once you land, now what? There is a lot to process, and my job was usually to throw out a ping to let the others know that I am going to the closest node of the map, a ruin usually since those have simple enemies that let you get some experience. Just like in Elden Ring, killing enemies gives runes, and the harder the enemy the more runes you get. So, you go to a ruin, slay the enemies, and open up a chest. 1-3 items will pop out of the chest, fanning out in front of it. This game uses a group loot system, so when a player opens the chest, it will usually make equipment that one of the three players will want to use. It also will pop out consumable items you've seen in Elden Ring: throwable darts, bombs, buff items, upgrade items, and even keys to unlock bosses.

After a few runs, I learn that there is a hole in the ground, exposing the catacombs that lead to a boss, specifically one that relates to the enemies above. Since the one I usually enter is full of flame cultists, the boss is a flame monk, a very simple enemy that your team beats up. Every enemy that has a health bar at the bottom of the screen will drop a purple orb. There are three ranks of enemies: Enemy, Great Enemy, and the Night's boss. Enemies orbs usually contain two blue equipment options for you to pick from, and yes this game has the classic white ->blue->purple->orange loot system from every game. These are usable at levels 1->3->9->12 respectively (I think they're missing lv6 items right now.) Using a smithing stone, you can rank your weapon up, so don't worry if you find one you like, you can just dump runes into it. Greater enemies will drop an orb that has 3 options, usually 2 unique weapons and a passive bonus. The passives aren't too big or too small, things like increase resistances, healing on critical hit, or more FP/HP/Stamina. Beating the final boss gives you 3 unique passive options that totally mix up your builds. Ranging from making your estus flasks heal nearby allies (This was broken this beta, my flasks never actually healed allies), to making darkness around you while walking(not running, only walking, though spellcasting/drinking while moving counts as walking), to "triggering bleed gives you bonus damage" type effects. These were really hit or miss, and I'm excited to see the full list on release.

Speaking of levels, clearing out a camp on the map will spawn a site of grace. This site will fully restore your character's HP, FP, and estus flasks, and let you press a button to enter the level up screen. Simply press select(x) to level up, and honestly every time I'm in this screen I just jam select and then move on. Looking at the details ain't important, just know your bars get bigger and you can use better stuff. This is incredibly important for your survival, since your HP starts off with only 1-2 hits to death, and one single level doubles that bar.

I want to note that the map is currently static, and I don't mind that. Things like Churches of Marika, Ruins, and castles never changed, so after a few runs you can sort of know what areas are worth attempting. Additionally, after even more experience with the game you'll know where every boss in the castle is and just run straight to each one to get their juicy loot. Ruins have a single boss, but are pretty quick clears. Churches of Marika give you an additional use of estus flask, so I always try to hit one a night at least.

The last major map feature to discuss is the Night Rain. Besides being a fun play on words, the rain acts as the shrinking circle mechanic from Battle Royale games. In those games, the shrinking size of the arena forces players into conflict with one another, making the game more interesting. In Nightreign it's a way to halt player progression and force a boss battle. Learning the map is very important because it is very vertical, and I've honestly died trying to escape the shrinking circle because I hit a cliff on the map and didn't realize that I couldn't climb up it.

When your HP hits zero, your character enters a downed state that requires ALLY DAMAGE to revive. This means you need to target your downed buddy and hit them until the evil purple circle goes away. If you don't get them up, that circle slowly fills again, and then the timer starts counting down whenever that circle is full. If your timer hits zero you are dead, and you will return at the closest dry(inside the circle) grace. You can go back to where you died to recover your runes, but sometimes that is outside the dry area and you're just out of luck. Full death also lowers your level sometimes, so it's safest to stick with your buddies and not run off on your own. Speaking of buddies, I think it's time to break down each character and what they are best at!

The Characters

For this beta, we had access to half the release cast. These characters all have the same core gameplay of running around, killing enemies, and staying alive, but they play differently and will require knowledge of your allies to properly work together and take out these super hard Night Lords.

I will go through each character and start with the flashiest stuff and get more nuanced as we go along. Every character has an ultimate ability, an active ability, a passive ability, and unique characteristics for that character. The ultimate ability makes you totally invincible while you are using it, which leads to some of the longer ones really useful for distracting opponents. Also, every character begins with unique weapons that can be modified using those chalices I mentioned earlier. First up, the Shoto character Wylder.

Wylder

Shoto is a term used by Street Fighter folks to refer to the most core type of character, like Ryu or Ken. Wylder is the guy on the box, and thus he's the Shoto. He's also a Balanced, jack of all trades type of character who has pretty even stats across the board, though his stats focus on physical combat and not spell casting. His starting weapon set is a parrying buckler and a claymore style weapon.

His ultimate ability is called "Onslaught Stake," and it is basically an explosive punch that will almost always stun an opponent. This ability has a pretty decent cooldown, but in longer encounters you could feasibly get it off two or even three times.

Wylder's active ability is "Claw Shot", and it a bit more difficult to use but has high utility. Wylder shoots out a claw in front of him, attaching itself to the first ally, enemy, or environment(floor) it comes in contact with. This means if you're running and use it while locked onto an enemy, you won't turn and grapple the enemy, you'll just fly off in the direction you're running. Using it on something that is about Wylder's size or smaller will pull the opponent to you, letting you get a follow-up attack off and sometimes break the enemy's guard. If the opponent is large, like a dragon, you'll fly towards them and can do that same follow-up attack. This is on an extremely short cooldown, like 5-10 seconds, so get used to using this as a spacing tool to get into combat fast or fly out of it. You can hit downed allies with this move I think, but that interaction is a bit goofy at the moment.

His passive ability is called "Sixth Sense", which once per rest at a grace you'll avoid one blow that would normally kill you, triggering a dodge animation. This triggers no matter your health, so if it's a huge hit or a little nick that will slay you, you'll be saved ONCE. This is nice for when you get ambushed or against a boss that you're not used to yet. letting you scrape by and keep on fighting.

Wylder is an all rounder, giving him access to basically any weapon type. I've found maces, axes, hammers, great swords, and more which he uses quite well. One note is that FP is only restored at graces, you can't recover them with blue estus in this game, so items with big flashy weapon arts are a bit more difficult for him to use, due to having a middling FP pool. If you ever used Blaidd's sword or the Helphen Steeple, these are the kinds of weapons you'll get out of bosses. He also excels with ranged weapons like bows and crossbows. There is no longer ammo in this game, so keeping a longbow on you to shoot an ally back to life is super good.

Overall I had a great time with this character, always feeling useful and able to adapt to fill gaps in our role coverage. The most fun I had with this lad was when I found a sepukku sword and a harp bow, and it turns out if you use the sepukku ability it also affects your ranged weapon. I was jumping around triggering bleed with my arrows and generally just clearing out the little mobs around the bosses so my allies could focus on surviving the boss. That might get fixed for release, but I honestly hope it doesn't because it was FUN!

Guardian

The Guardian is a character for those who aren't interested in the dance of dodging that Elden Ring employs. This guy starts with a shield and poleaxe and his stats focus on survival, with the chunkiest stamina and health bars out of the cast. If you want to take the heat off your allies and be the last one standing, this is your bird boy.

Guardian's ultimate is called "Wings of Salvation", and is used to fly high into the air and slam down to deal AOE damage. You can hold the button to keep your spear planted in the ground, providing a defense bonus to your allies in that area for a short time. This is great for both clearing out little enemies and setting up a safe zone for your allies to recover in.

Guardian's active ability is called "Whirlwind", where his right wing is used as an uppercut, dealing poise damage to everyone around the feathered knight. This can break guards, send little enemies flying, and even dissipate things like deathblight or poison from the area. This feels super impactful even when you aren't maximizing it, and has a moderate cooldown, so don't forget about this solid part of the kit.

Guardian's passive is "Steel Guard", and it affects every shield this guy uses. No matter the shield, his speed is dropped way down for the benefit of driving up the guard boost and damage mitigation of the shield. This means yeah, you're not dancing circles around the enemies, but you can tank through even the biggest haymaker with this. If you find a great shield on this character, keep in mind that while you're holding that sucker up nothing is getting through you.

I will say that this is the character I played the fewest matches with in the beta. I think when the game comes out and I am able to coordinate with my friends this might become my favorite character, but for now I just used him as the heavy armor type. His weapons are all big, heavy, and deal DAMAGE. That said, getting a light sword or spear also work on this guy. Just make sure you always have a shield to get the most out of his passive, it really does make him difficult to kill.

Duchess

The Duchess is an int/dex character, and the most used one I saw in the network test. Her design reminds me of Dark Souls 3's firekeeper character, which I believe is the point. She starts with a dagger and only the dagger, though it has a fun custom moveset that I never had a problem with using.

Her ultimate is called "Finale", and it applies a haze to you and all nearby allies. This haze state is basically active camouflage, avoiding the enemies ire before or during a fight. This is insanely useful if someone goes down in a hard to reach spot, or if you want to get the drop on an enemy that you can backstab. This ability is deceptively powerful, but also isn't easy to apply without a bit of brainpower.

Her active ability is called "Restage", which is usable at ANY TIME, including during attack strings. She takes out her pocket watch and causes an illusory double to reprise all the damage the opponent just took over the last few moments. This is very good when you are using status effect builds, since those phantom hits will reapply the status. It is also very powerful with large spells allies cast and even synergizes with other's ultimates, like Wylder's Onslaught Stake.

Her passive is "Magnificent Poise", and this changes how she dodges. Most characters will roll when you dodge, but Duchess does a bloodborne style quickstep instead, and you can even chain these steps together to quickly escape an onslaught/freakout style attack. This makes her the opposite of Guardian, since she's all about the dodging/dancing.

This character is the one I had the least playtime with, only playing one session, but I did reach the final boss that one time, the only time I did this whole weekend. The Duchess works best with status gear(bleed, poison, scarlet rot), as well as quick movesets like the katana. I got Moonveil on her and instantly realized why everyone queues as Dutchess: Her weapons are the ones that most players are used to from the original Elden Ring. In that game, the Rivers of Blood and the Moonveil were both extremely powerful weapons, receiving nerfs and still being viable. Since there is an FP Limit in this game, it's not as broken as in the original, but it still does so much work. Duchess is a character I suspect will be a classic public game character, where if you enter the queue you'll always have a random internet person instantly lock her.

Recluse

The final character available in the Beta was The Recluse, the only exclusive caster character. By this I mean she focused on elemental damage and not being in the thick of the fight due to her low health.

Her ultimate is called "Soulblood Song," with a long animation time and huge area of effect, this will deal slight damage and place a butterfly mark on enemies. If any player hits a marked enemy, they will recover Health and FP, making the Recluse the most team focused character beside the Guardian. She was the only way to regain FP in a fight, so if you had a recluse know how to use her ultimate your success rate skyrockets.

The Recluse's active ability is called "Magic Cocktail," and if you've played DotA then you can relate this to Invoker's ultimate. I will come back to the specifics of this ability later, but what it does is absorb the most recent element to hit an enemy out of them and fills one of the three circles on the ability. Once all three are filled, you can unleash a unique move based on the 3 types of elements in the slots.

In conjunction with Magic Cocktail, the recluse's passive ability is called "Elemental Defense." The recluse can see elemental residue on an enemy hit with that element, allowing her to collect the residue and restore her FP. This means when you hit an opponent with your spell, you can use the "draw" portion of Elemental Cocktail to absorb that spell's element and restore a portion of your FP bar. This means if you are weaving your spell casting and absorbing elements, you will never have to worry about FP. She also seemed to have a floaty dodge roll, instead of the normal one. This puts her closer to Duchess than a normal character, giving her solid mobility and maneuverability.

Here is where I'm going to list out all the abilities I found and their use. How this works is that when you draw an element, that element is shown in one of the three slots around the ring. Once all three are filled, the spell you get is based on how many elements are represented. So if it's Fire/magic/magic, or magic/fire/fire, then it will be the same spell since it's Fire/Magic. The only ones I'm mentioning are the ones I used:
Only Magic: create a ball of light that follows the targeted enemy and occasionally makes a cloud of "slashes", dealing magic damage. This damage can be absorbed again with magic cocktail, effectively letting you restore all your FP if you are careful enough.
Only Fire: send off a fire wisp that will explode on contact with an opponent. This does a lot of knockback and leaves fire on the ground. Much like the above spell, this ground fire deals fire damage and lets you restore FP to your liking.
Only lighting: the recluse calls down a thunderbolt on her position, dealing damage in a ring around her. This one needed balancing, it did minimal damage and was underwhelming.
Only holy: Never got this, never seen this, who knows!?
Magic & fire: this makes a ball of light and flame that will act much like the Magic cocktail, only erupting into an explosion instead of "slashes". This was great!
Magic & lightning: Conjure up a lightning blade and slip forward, slashing out at the opponents in front of you. This one felt so good to use, getting you into the fray and killing small enemies with ease.
Lightning & fire: slide along the ground with a jet of flame, then float into the air and erupt in fire and lightning. This one does a lot of damage and is very good for cleaning up a group on little guys.
Holy & fire: Create a glowing area. I have no data on this besides seeing a debuff appear on bosses that entered the area, so maybe it reduces defenses while inside? regardless, I need to test this. (upon googling it, the effect increases your max HP and reduces the enemy HP. Not sure about this...)
Fire, Magic, and Lightning: The only triple I ever pulled off, you conjure the three elements and force them together, making a black hole in front of and above you, that pulls enemies in then explodes. This one was fun, but not great against bosses since they don't usually get pulled.

The Recluse was the character I played most in the beta. She was not easy to learn, leading to so many deaths and players running away from me because they were annoyed at me dying. But on the final day of playing, I got her down and learned FP management, leading to some clutch plays. She can get allies up very quickly with some ranged spells, making her a weird support damage dealing hybrid. also note that she may look like a designated mage, but she is also powerful with incantations as well, making her a hybrid spellcaster. She also has many interesting melee gear, ranging from fire ball fists to thunder anchors to crystal rot spears. Her melee is meant for picking off folks who wander too close or for their abilities (like frost spear or thunderbolt.)

Enemies & World

I will begin by reminding people that this game is in beta, and I suspect that there will be more variety added to the map as development continues. That said, all enemies are currently static besides the final boss spawn and the Fell Omen. I always knew that there was a dragon next to the shrine of Marika, so combining increasing your estus flask and a boss right after the first big level up in power is a good indicator of your group's power.

But lets look at the day/night system. When you're spawned in, you're put close to the edge of the map and you're able to explore wherever you want. At some point you will be notified that the rain pours harder and a circle appears on your map, designating the area that will be safe. Then a second circle appears on the map and slowly starts shrinking to the size of that inner circle (like over 2 min). This shrinking happens twice: Once halfway through the day and again before the boss. This cycle happens on Day 1 and Day 2, but Day 3 is just the final boss door and vendors/upgrade stations, letting you finalize your build for the boss and get consumable items to help you take it down.

First night bosses are of roughly equal power, and in the beta there were only two: A Demi-Human Queen and her Swordsman, and the Centipede Demon from Demon's Souls. That's right, they're going through all their games and importing bosses from them! Additionally, they're updated to fix the 3v1 paradigm. So the Demi-Human Queen in Elden Ring does roughly the same thing every time you fight one, so going into the fight I thought I knew what to expect. But then at half health she throws away her staff (which struck and killed me the first time) and goes into a berserk rage, summoning many little demi-humans to aid her. The Centipede Demon has body parts that, when sufficiently damaged, will fall off and become a monster you need to juggle with the main boss. The demon will eventually grow that limb back after a minute or so, but while it's gone it can't use the attacks associated with the limb.

There were only two second night bosses as well: The Fell Omen and The Draconic Tree Sentinel. Before any of these bosses, a wave of enemies spawn as a warmup bout. For Margit, it's a pair of Omen Brothers, just like getting to the tower of Margit in Elden Ring. These two are pretty difficult, acting like a warmup before the boss. The Fell Omen is similar to his most difficult version in the base game, not much to say there. The Draconic Tree Sentinel is flanked by two super high health Lyndel cavalry knights, which is only the start to the remix. This boss was always hit or miss for me in Elden Ring, the lightning needing very precise timing to dodge. That said, this new sentinel took a note from a certain Dragon Legend from the base game, turning into a cloud of red lightning for a few seconds, only to slam down and deal enough damage to kill in most cases. He would also call in phantom cavalry to assault you, which is very cool but also I died to this surprise at least twice.

The final boss I only saw once, was the only available one in beta, and it was a glorious fight: Gladius, Beast of the Night. This boss is a mix of Cerberus from Greek Myth and Sif from Dark Souls. It is a multi-phase fight, switching between the three headed dog and splitting into three dogs you have to track and deal with. I can't say much more than "This fight was cool and I didn't feel awful dying the first time I fought it."

Final Thoughts

There is much more to be discussed about the game, from the consumables to the strategies, but this is beta and those things were pretty bare bones for this release. There is also the fact that weapons have random passives that apply even when not equipped, which is how you hone your build. There are so many nuances I'm sure I'll dive into upon full release, but these are just my preliminary thoughts.

I will definitely be getting this game on PC and try to form a group of friends to play it with. Playing with random people online was a very mixed bag, since even I feel unskilled at this game at times. Communication wasn't impossible but it's always been like this in FromSoftware games. Instead of voice chat you normally just wiggle your sword with the block button and use emotes, or jump up and down to get attention. Being able to form strategies and make sure everyone is on the same page before going in is going to make the game a whole lot easier I feel.

Regardless, I'm excited to see how others react to this new paradigm. Most people don't interact with the multiplayer aspect of FromSoftware games, so seeing the company change lanes and make a multiplayer asset remix is fresh and exciting from this company. I think FromSoftware is in a strange place, where they got so successful on the Demon's Souls/Dark Souls formula that they're chasing the dragon a bit. I think Malenia and the final DLC boss are almost too far down the difficulty slope, those bosses causing me to drop the character because I don't want to defeat them again. They also released Armored Core 6 to give their developers a break from the usual and learn some new lessons, which I hope they take with them into the future. FromSoftware is one of the few companies that can trigger a fight or flight response on such a deep "oh god don't let me lose progress" level for me. I'm excited for this new entry and I hope that FromSoftware continues to make games that make my butt clench.