Elden Ring & Nightreign

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The 1.02 update is also launching with massively improved filtering options for the Relics which was a MUCH needed quality-of-life upgrade.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1948745612758798806

Them choosing to show Wylder & Duchess running together as the main image for duos is particularly poignant (for story reasons). Also, having Revenant & Executor running to an Evergaol but not having a Stonesword Key feels like it's loosely poking fun at the community over the current "Evergaol Meta" (some relics give you a permanent boost for every Evergaol prisoner that you defeat which can help snowball a run particularly well, and since a lot of people are running them that just makes it highly effective to have in your build since most random matches will be going for that anyway right now).

Insofar as gameplay, I really think that duos will be interesting to see how they balance them when it comes to character resurrection. In Single Player you get an auto-revive as single player & the option to purchase several Wending Graces from Merchants for 10k a pop (I think for a max of 3) and there's also a difference in how many Runes drop from enemies, whereas in the standard 3-person party the Wending Grace is only a possible drop from Gold Boss rewards. It's much harder to revive with only one active player because no one can pull aggro, but I've had success on some of the Everdark Sovereign bosses when we've been dropped to a duo midway through the match, so I'm curious how the overall enemy scaling feels when everything is designed around duo gameplay and if the Rune/HP scaling makes that more fun.

It feels like duos are going to be largely used by people who have one friend that they already want to play with & can have direct comms with, so I'm wondering if duos will actually end up noticeably impacting the wait times for trio matches at all, (especially since singleplayer doesn't impact the multiplayer times at all). It'll be interesting to see how that pans out overall. I do think that for a lot of people it'll end up in better match quality since it's a lot harder to coordinate with 2 people than to just grab one friend to dive into a game with you, and sometimes there's just the one random who really makes a run a struggle compared to just going with two people who have direct comms.

Aside from that – what duos will excel at most is helping to introduce new players to the game. It's a LOT easier to just run a match as an experienced player with the one new player to show them the ropes, because you can just go at whatever pace you want. Even when trying out a new character, it's probably a more favorable option for a lot of people than going totally solo (since when I was doing Remembrances I'd run a solo match on the characters I felt least confident with). Overall I think it's likely to be a big positive for the lifespan of the game in the long run, and also help to make players a lot stronger.

Either way, I can't wait for the 30th to dive in on the new Everdark, and be able to sort through my sea of relics a bit more efficiently. Mayhaps I'll also find out how duos end up feeling (if I can find someone to coordinate with). The REAL dream world would still be Cross-Platform (since I know a few PC players, but no PS players) – and while THAT'S something that I won't hold my breath for, given how well they've been paying attention to the community it doesn't feel totally impossible for the future now.

Lastly,

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1948382858109698175

Nightreign hitting 5 million is great, and the 10 million gives Shadow of the Erdtree an attachment rate to Elden Ring of ~30%, which is particularly high. It feels like in general this bodes well for Nightreign eventually launching its own DLC to add in all of the Shadow of the Erdtree weapons, spells, etc. at some point later in the year. Most of all, I'm just really glad for everyone on those teams to be in what feels like a really good place where they can make ventures and try out projects like Nightreign as well as give them really solid support without having to cram it into a live service model.




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[X-SOLDIER]

Through three of the Everdark Sovereigns thus far and looking forward to Gladius this week (it'll be especially interesting to see what it's like revisiting the first boss again after so long).

My thoughts on them thus far.

Everdark Maris:

Spoiler

– Having the Storm Ruler as a gimmick to the fight was a really interesting choice, and while it was a little awkward to get used to a weapon art on a staff, I overall just enjoy a good gimmick fight. I like that it allowed making Maris' undersea mechanics more emphasized and for them to make the boss absolutely ABSURDLY enormous as well. While it was a little bit divisive as it doesn't have a lot of interesting combat to it, I quite enjoyed this one because it still gave some exceptionally interesting relic choices, and I think it's got the best of the Everdark Relics thus far as I've used Maris' normal version on Recluse for a long time because the extra 100HP goes a long way. Being blue helps and rather than being AoE with flasks & items, you gain a tiny bit of regen as well as some low-HP regen power, which can be a nice asset when you're running a little thin or playing a bit more defensively – just like you do in this battle.

Everdark Caligo:

Spoiler

– The 4 armor region mechanics for her are really interesting, but I do really miss the more MMORPG raid boss-style mist attacks of her Phase 1 not coming back in this form. The massive "Frostbite the entire map after blowing up a crystal while she flies around" attack she has just feels like it lacks the more fun nuance that her Phase 1 mist massive arena attacks have. Design-wise, the way the ice armor appears to be frostbiting her flesh and she's losing the thumb digits on her wings with them replaced by magic ice spires is super neat. The fact that the cold is brutal enough to be destroying the body of an ancient Ice Dragon is REALLY cool.

While most of the Everdark bosses add a lot more interesting mechanics to their overall kit, Caligo really feels like she loses out a bit by her Phase 3 being an enhanced Phase 2 without those REALLY unique bits of her Phase 1 kit. That said, I am glad that this one really gives a strong reason to do the Mountaintop Shifting Earth event to get all of the Frostbite resistance – which is fun because it's a bit under-utilized otherwise (it could theoretically be good for Adel because of the anti-Dragon properties, but I seldom see that). The Relic is a nice alternative to her main one depending on how you run a build and which character it is since it's Green (Ex: it could make for a good Wylder build if you use his Chalice, Wylder's Earring, and a Yellow Relic that gives you his follow-up attack, because the combination of his burning sword dealing frost damage just bursts out & resets Frostbite repetitively).

Everdark Libra:

Spoiler

– This one is a really mixed bag, but it IS chaotic as all hell. Once you can wrap your head around the particulars of the mechanics that get applied from the deals he forces on you, and how the Condemned benefit from surviving longer, it helps to give a better cadence to the fight. There are some risks to certain teamups – Wylder has a chance to spawn their condemned with Gideon's All-Knowing Scepter, which means that Recluse will get one-shot by basically EVERYTHING her Condemned copies cast. (Overview of all of the 3 variants of each Condemned here).

For me, the most frustrating part of the fight is that it's monumentally punishing for Recluse more than most of the other Nightfarers. Stagger is the only way to really knock Libra out of his casting phase since he doesn't have the seals to break this time around, and she doesn't really have any way to effectively do that. Her Condemned will have the Lunar or Eternal Darkness spells which pull in can cancel her spells which basically turns the endeavour into a huge FP drain on top of gutting your DPS and snowballing their survivability. On top of that, since 90% of her spells need to be targeted, when your allies are made invisible, you can't res them even when you know where they are, whereas most other characters can still dive in with jump attacks effectively. (I've heard that this is also a hellish fight for Guardian mains because one of the Guardian Condemned is "The Wall" with two Fingerprint shields, and you have so few ways to do anything effective against that as him).

This is also the only fight where I've had a bug during it, where one of the Raider Condemned didn't die, and instead went invisible, jump attack and 2-shotting me at full HP, following by rushing down my other teammate. I only wrapped my head around what happened after rewatching the footage a few times. I finally just acquiesced and swapped over to Ironeye, lucked into getting the Grafted Blade Greatsword on Day 1 of Rotted Woods, ended Night 2 with 1800 HP, and neither of my teammates went down. The difference in difficulty and being able to consistently stagger Libra and send him rampaging around at his own troops periodically was just... SO different from what it was like with a Recluse that it felt just unfairly different because it felt like a breeze rather than a hopeless slog. That being said, I do very much appreciate this being such a crazy pivot for what the experience is like, and enjoy that a lot of the community meme builds showed up in it (like Revenant with a colossal weapon), but I do wish that it were a little bit more manageable, especially with the limitations on communication.

I haven't tried this as a Duo, but apparently it's a bit more manageable there just given how it trims down the number of condemned that you have to contend with. Lastly is that it's basically just a meme Relic, and I doubt most anyone will be running it, so it feels like having such an oppressive fight having the least helpful reward sort of suits the whole thing. I am curious if it'll get patched the way that Storm Ruler did for Maris to help with the balance of how it plays out.

All-in-all, it's still a solid bit of fun and the leaks around what looks like the longer-running options for the game sound promising and mirror a lot about the Bloodborne Chalice dungeons (Depths 1-5, more Relics but both those and the weapons having 2 huge buffs and one negative makes things fairly interesting, as well as not being able to know which Nightlord you'll end up facing sounds like it'll add in some intensity to things, especially if that also mixes up the possibilities between the normal & Everdark versions of the Nightlords as well). Really curious to see if there's ever an announcement about Everdark Sovereign Heolstor, or if he'll just be dropped in at some point now that the main Everdark bosses are wrapping up this week.


Lastly, Tarnished Edition should be dropping at SOME point for the base game as DLC, as well as overall for the Switch 2, and I'm curious how Nightreign will balance that release with its own content, as I do expect that there's some careful consideration to make sure that they don't end up hamstringing the trajectory of either with the updates and things. Given that we know it's a 2025 release, and Nightreign still has DLC set for late this year, I'm extremely curious how/when all that will end up being announced.



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[X-SOLDIER]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1961066321329652193

UNBELIEVABLY excited for Deep of Night to drop, but especially because of having Relics that make specific weapon types more common, and also what we know about the character-specific effects for the Deep Relics (thanks to what'd been datamined). I've only seen the descriptions of them, and I don't know what any of the specific stat breakdowns, or mechanics of how they work.

Each character has 2 potential relics that will change their stats, as well as ones that will also give them a new ability. No idea if/how the stat ones are allowed to stack, but the abilities themselves point to interesting ways to change how the character plays, as well as ways for them to pivot in dealing with a mode where the enemies are a lot more deadly (especially for the already squishy characters). I'll break down my thoughts about it based on the same categorization I used when I was going over my thoughts on all of them post-Remembrance clear.

Spoiler: Super-Flexible DPS:

• Wylder:
  
  • More MIND, Less VIGOR
  • More INT & FAI, Less STR & DEX
  • Character Skill inflicts Blood Loss

This basically enables him to shift his kit over into Legendary weapons that scale with different stats, and utilize Ashes of War, so long as he's confident in his survivability. A more aggressive playstyle, and using his Skill to engage rather than escape also means Blood Loss to deal burst damage, which will start to be more and more impactful as the HP scaling of enemies gets higher. His ability to follow up his character skill with a Flaming attack, makes him really strong with a weapon set to Frost because he can trigger the damage burst of Frostbite & instantly reset it.

I expect that Everdark Sovereign Caligo's Relic putting Frostbite on the starting weapon, improved physical damage negation, & concealing him when Frostbite is triggered nearby will make for an INSANELY ruthless build if you've got the Follow-up attack on a Yellow Relic. There's also the fact that his Silver Tear gives him +3 ARC which can help his Status Effect Build-up as well (though it's also Red).

• Ironeye:
  • More ARC, Less DEX
  • More VIGOR & STR, Less DEX
  • Character Skill inflicts Heavy Poison Damage on Poisoned Enemies

This is VERY centered around his unique ability that doesn't come on a Remembrance Relic, which enabled the charged version of his Ultimate to deal 300 Poison Buildup to the target, and he can follow-up with the mark, which I assume causes it to become some variant of Deadly Poison, which causes the tick damage to be increased but usually also shortens the duration. ARC impacts how fast the build-up happens, so swapping his Dex damage into being more about survival and focusing on Status build-up plays similiarly to Wylder, especially given that both of them have Skills that are evasive tools that can gain +1 use.

I expect that a lot of builds will swap out the Edge of Order in exchange for standard Gnoster's Night of the Wise on him, as they're both Yellow Relics, and this pivots him a lot more into Status-Build up, gives him more FP to work with, and also boosts his damage when Poison/Rot get triggered.

Spoiler: Ultra-Close-Range Tanks:

• Guardian:
  
  • More STR & DEX, Less VIGOR
  • More MIND & FAI, Less VIGOR
  • Character Skill Boosts Damage Negation of Nearby Allies

The stat changes give him a lot more options to be aggressive and dish out damage, but means that his blocking needs to be VERY good, because of the Vigor reduction. The ability allows him to operate as a vastly more effective Tank for his allies all at close range (though it's not clear if that gets extended by his skill duration boost, or if it applies to himself at all, as it only mentions nearby allies). This overall plays into how his whirlwind character skill blocks projectiles including targeted magic ones, and so he can make functional safe-zones.

I expect that Everdark Fulghor's Dark Night of the Champion will be a really strong pick for him, as it gives him better added affinity attacks, more max Stamina, & boosts his Ult when enemies are defeated, and as his Ult is a gigantic res & safe-zone, and the standard enemies will all be tougher to deal with, he'll be able to hold ground while clearing camps, since I expect that doing so will be a MUCH more thorough and methodical affair, especially as his mobility is much lower.

• Raider:
  
  • More MIND & INT, Less VIGOR & ENDURANCE
  • More ARC, Less VIGOR
  • Hit with Character Skill to Reduce Enemy Attack Power

This stat shift also skews Raider towards more of the high-end weapons & arts like Wylder but with different choices, like the Falling Star Beast Jaw or Ruins Greatsword being exceptional options. His lower stats are offset by him being able to tank against targets he's focused on, and also some of his passives allowing him to have higher stamina & recover HP when neat Totem Stella. He'll be exceptionally strong against single bosses with more squishy characters, because he'll be able to prevent them from getting one-shot when he's keeping up on the boss. Recluse's Ult will be helpful (so I do hope that the allow Totem Stella to actually make her deal more damage, since it currently only does an attack boost, which doesn't change her spell damage).

I figure that either Maris' Night of the Fathom or Everdark Maris' Dark Night of the Fathom will continue to be top choices for him being able to flask heal & item nearby allies and/or recover their HP when his gets low as an added ability to sustain and keep their HP up. The trade-off with lower Vigor is that it'll be harder to effectively proc that since it triggers every time the character's HP drops under 20%, but I expect that there'll be some interesting balancing around that with both him & Guardian as it's extremely popular as a Tank relic, and gives +100 HP as a base already to help curb that impact.

Spoiler: Unique Specialists:

• Revenant:
  
  • More VIGOR & ENDURANCE, Less Mind
  • More STR, Less FAI
  • Increased Max FP upon Ability Activation

This plays into the famous Meme Build to let her go around with colossal weapons and bonk everything to death, at the cost of being less effective as a caster, but it also just generally boosts her survivability and gives her more options when her Summons get taken down. I am quite curious how that'll end up playing out in Deep of Night, because her passive to bring them back on kill seems like it will EITHER be extremely powerful... or VERY weak when running through the first 2 Nights. The Max FP boost on her Ult means that it boosts how much FP she gains back with a Starlight Shard during that window, and also incentivizes using that invulnerability window to use more FP-intensive casts like Dragon Communion which split scale off of ARC and will be a little less impacted by her lower FAI stat.

Unexpectedly, I think that this means that Revenant actually has a viable build for Everdark Libra's Dark Night of the Demon relic, where she can recover FP via madness, build up madness with the Crossed Legs gesture, and she has an explicit window to trigger it without worrying about dying because of her Ultimate, AND her summons can potentially pull aggro and let her do it the same way Everdark Libra does by summoning the Condemned. She can sacrifice her own health to restore her teammates with a relic, and there are a lot of potential builds where she keeps attention off of herself so that she can dive in and stagger with huge weapons. It's crazy, and I've no idea if anyone will try to go for it, but she has some of the most out-of-left-field builds ever, and this seems like a potentially viable new one.

• Executor:
  
  • More VIGOR & ENDURANCE, Less ARC
  • More DEX & ARC, Less VIGOR
  • Slowly Restore HP upon Ability Activation

Executor's are what make me curious about the specific stat values, because if this stays as-is, and all values are equal, this is just a flat boost to both DEX & ENDURANCE, which makes it unlike any of the other characters (thus far). Additionally, he gains Slowly Restore HP upon his Ult Activation, which is basically a critical necessity for Deep of Night, because getting swarmed by multiple hits when he suddenly turns into a MASSIVE target is monumentally dangerous, and assumedly this will also let him exit that state with that buff still active if it operates the same way as it does from other Relics (and hopefully it also stacks). This will let him toggle between his Sekiro-style damage-blocking, and also let the default relics that let his bestial form Roar to heal his team, effectively serving as a psuedo tank while also keeping a lot of his VERY powerful status build-up potential since he's got the highest ARC stat in the game (which doesn't change for any character as you level up, so it effectively functions as a hard set potential for status effects).

I expect that all of his current builds that keep him as a status effect monster, as well as those that focus a lot around his character skill will be very similar, as I think that by default he's the most well-equipped to deal with Deep of Night, outside of his Ult, which this directly alleviates. I think that more than ever, hunting for a viable way to secure Ironjar Aromatics is gonna be a really big focus, since that lets his Ult be one of the most powerfully unstoppable things in the entire game.

Spoiler: Glass Cannons:

• Duchess:
  
  • More VIGOR & STR, Less MIND
  • More MIND & FAI, Less INT
  • Use Character Skill for Brief Invulnerability

This shifts her either to being more of a generalist caster, similar to Recluse (or depending on how much the stats change by, potentially even more of an Incantation user RATHER than a Sorcery user). This also focuses her to stay VERY close to the action, because her Character Skill can trigger in a way that seemingly will have timing similar to Executor's though it's not clear how similar those windows are. It does make her rogue-ish character archetype even more pronounced, and plays into the idea of her Rewinding time as a means to evade even as their damage gets echoed a really cool one conceptually. In practice, I expect that it'll mean that she may be a bit less aggressive with it, since it's now going to be a VERY valuable survival tool, and it's also going to allow her to expand out to some other weapon types, or keep on her Daggers to use the ability to Reprise damage.

I expect that Everdark Gnoster's Dark Night of the Wise will continue to be a VERY big relic for her to keep up pressure and be rewarded with FP, as that'll also help to offset anything with lower MIND, though I also bet that either of Caligo's (Dark) Night of the Miasma that allow her to automatically conceal herself with Frostbite will also end up being massively beneficial to her survivability.

• Recluse:
  
  • More VIGOR, ENDURANCE, & DEX, Less INT & FAI
  • More INT & FAI, Less MIND
  • Collect Affinity Residues to Negate Affinity

Much like Executor's this looks like she might just be trading MIND for VIGOR, ENDURANCE, & DEX. This would make sense, because she's VERY vulnerable to damage. This looks like it's being assisted where collecting Affinity Residues will Negate that Affinity. I can only assume that this means that it'll basically cancel some instance of that affinity type of damage from Magic/Fire/Lightning/Holy, as I'm not sure what else that could possibly be inferring even though it doesn't use the word "damage" in the description. Essentially all of this is focusing on the fact that right now her Skill doesn't function as a survival tool whereas LITERALLY everyone else's does, and it also helps if she has strong Lightning magic against a Boss that's strong vs. Lightning so that she can boost her survival even if her damage isn't as strong (especially important since you can't choose which Nightlord you're going to face).

Whether this is a buff that can/can't stack, or if it's tied to a sigil like Terra Magicka, or if it's a unique buff with a limited duration is anybody's guess, but it all addresses the current challenges with her going into a game mode with more deadly enemies. I expect that the DEX increase MIGHT be able to put her casting speed on-par with Duchess' (who only needs a Casting Speed +1 to max out, whereas Recluse requires a Casting Speed +2 to max out) since that's also a danger early-on – but we'll see exactly how all that shakes out. Overall, it seems like Recluse & Executor have some of the most minor changes to them depending on what those stat adjustments actually end up looking like in practice, because of the types of kits that they have.

As always, Everdark Maris' Dark Night of the Fathom is monumentally valuable for her, because starting out with +100 HP at level 1 is beyond helpful, and having the ability to trigger HP regen when dropping below 20% HP means that her relic ability to Suffer Blood Loss when activating her Ult in exchange for greater damage can simultaneously trigger HP regen. This ends up being exceptionally strong since it lasts for 50 seconds, and her Ult allows her to heal back a lot of that (especially if he's also got the relic to boost her max HP when using her Ult). This gives her a way to benefit massively from anything that boosts her defenses at Full HP – and as a Glass Cannon, the best way to think about her is to just make sure not to get hit at all, and so this compliments pushing her towards that even as enemies get a lot more deadly.

Overall, it REALLY feels like these exist in a way that help to enable the characters to be more well-rounded for a harder game mode, as well as open up some neat possibilities with them. I think that with the 3 additional Deep Relic slots, and changes to the character playstyles, that team compositions will start to be different, and Tanks will unexpectedly get a lot of time to shine. Despite the descriptions and the encouragement from the announcement to surpass Depth 3, and mentioning that, "Depths 4 to 5 will feature an endless battle for those seeking even greater thrills." I haven't the FAINTEST idea what that means, but am quite eager to do my best to find out.

It also seems like there will be some new weapon effects to what appears in the normal version, (since the weapons will have additional effects, as well as the detrimental effects that seem like it'll make choices more interesting), and just a lot more that'll mix things up, especially since it's ONLY the base map. I'm also curious whether or not the secret door with the Sacrificial Twigs will have something that's specific to this game mode, since it's unaffected by Shifting Earth.

Really stoked to see how it plays when it drops on the 11th, and if there ends up being any more teases or clarification on the mechanics that it introduces, and/or what sorts of crazy generalist Deep Relics effects there end up being that builds start to shape around, and if there end up being some neat team synergy options or something similar.




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