What the heck is Elden Ring: Nightreign? Our big explainer covering new characters, loot, roguelike mechanics and more

If you just watched the trailer for FromSoftware's new game and reacted the same way I did, the three words running through your mind at this very moment are: "What the heck?" It's immediately apparent that Elden Ring: Nightreign is not a singleplayer RPG in the vein of Dark Souls, nor is it Elden Ring 2, but what it is is a lot harder to pin down. FromSoftware and publisher Bandai Namco knew the debut trailer for Nightreign was going to prompt more questions than it answered, so they let us spend a whole day with an early build in Tokyo a week before the reveal at The Game Awards.

You can read my thoughts in-depth in my Elden Ring: Nightreign preview, but there's a lot to say about this game, so here I've broken down all the key details I know so far into a digestible form.

Elden Ring: Nightreign is a 3-player co-op roguelike

• Nightreign is a multiplayer game, but it's purely PvE, meant to be played in relatively short sessions of about half an hour each.
• You play as a member of a three-player co-op team exploring a familiar-but-different version of Limgrave, Elden Ring's starting zone. The map has a static overall layout (with cliffs, caves, castles, and so on always in the same place) but randomized placements of encounters. You'll run into different bosses, different configurations of ruins, and some other randomized surprises.
• Before each run you'll choose one of eight final bosses to battle. Before you fight them, you have to survive two "days" of exploration and combat, with each day ending in a big boss fight of its own. On day three, you'll warp to a magical battlefield called the Spirit Shelter to battle the big boss of the run on a wide-open battlefield that resembles the site of the battle against Radahn.
• As in Elden Ring, you can be matched with random players, or use a multiplayer password to party up with friends.

Seriously? Multiplayer passwords in 2025?

• Yep. I didn't talk to FromSoftware about the minutia of its online play and matchmaking in Nightreign, but playing with friends looks like it'll work pretty much the same way that it does in Elden Ring.
• From what I saw, you won't even be in multiplayer lobbies with other players—you'll be kicking it solo in an alternate version of the Roundtable Hold hub until you launch into a session, at which point you'll connect with two other players, choose characters, and start playing.

Can I create my own character? Who do I play as?

• No character creator! Unlike FromSoft's RPGs, Nightreign doesn't let you create a custom character, though you will unlock alternate skins for the cast of eight preset characters.
• That's right, Nightreign is going the "hero" route with predefined characters. I got to play with four, but there will be eight in the final game.

Wylder

• An armored knight who resembles the canonical box art character for most Souls games, equipped with a hefty longsword by default. Wylder is more mobile than you'd expect due to the very short cooldown on their primary ability.
• Ability: Claw Shot - Wylder's grappling hook can be used roughly every 10 seconds, and is a versatile mobility tool. You can pull yourself towards enemies or latch onto the ground to dodge an incoming attack. It also deals damage and effectively interrupts lighter attacks to buy you some breathing room.
• Ult: Wedge of Invasion - Wylder charges up an explosive attack and then unleashes it at very close range (think melee distance) for big damage. Holding down the attack longer increases its potency.

Duchess

• A speedy scout-like character in off-brand Nier Automata cosplay equipped with a magic dagger. Duchess dodges with an elegant sidestep rather than a roll.
• Ability: Restage - Re-deals the last few seconds of damage from both you and allies to a nearby enemy all over again. Extremely effective with team coordination.
• Ult: Finale - Cloaks you and nearby teammates, turning you briefly invisible and dropping enemy aggro.

Guardian

• The tankiest of the characters I played, with a mechanic that lets them hold up their shield for improved damage reduction. Still deals significant damage with their Ult, and is clutch for holding boss aggro and reviving teammates.
• Ability: Whirlwind - A ranged AOE swirl of air that damages and interrupts enemies within it.
• Ult: Wings of Salvation - Guardian flies up into the air before performing a divebomb attack back to the ground, dealing damage in a wide area and raising the defense of nearby allies. Hold the button after landing to stay moored in place and tank incoming attacks.

Recluse

• A frail mage whose getup reminds me of Elden Ring's popular NPC Ranni, with a passive ability that lets them absorb magic casting FP from enemies. The most complex character of the bunch who I spent the least of my time with as a result—but will doubtless be very powerful in the hands of skilled players.
• Ability: Magic Cocktail - Whenever enemies are hit with any kind of attribute (poison, fire, ice, etc.), your attacks on them will "collect" that attribute; once you've stored up three, this ability unleashes a unique attack that varies depending on what you've absorbed.
• Ult: Song of the Blood Soul - This attack marks all nearby enemies to allow your team to heal while attacking them (and I believe deal extra damage)

Archer (name unknown)

• The archer character seen in the trailer will have some kind of "expanded targeting system" that lets them wield bows a bit more like you would in a third-person shooter. Could be a welcome improvement to FromSoftware's historically clunky bow combat.

Parryer (name unknown)

• FromSoftware told me one character will have a moveset based around the Deflecting Hard Tear parry mechanic in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, which essentially recreated Sekiro-style parrying in the expansion. Who wants to bet they'll have a katana?

??

There's a seventh character we currently know nothing about.

??

There's an eighth character we currently know nothing about.

Is this Elden Ring 2?

• Definitely not. While Nightreign does include new unique characters, bosses, and systems not present in Elden Ring, it's a spin-off—essentially a standalone expansion.
• There's no singleplayer adventure in Nightreign, and there are no 'legacy dungeons' that define FromSoftware's RPGs. By letting us play the game before it was even announced, I think From was aiming to avoid overhyping Nightreign as the successor to Elden Ring.
• This is the studio trying something different while Miyazaki presumably works on a big new project that's at least a couple years away.

It sure looks like Elden Ring, but does it play like it?

• Yes and no. In many ways Nightreign plays exactly like Elden Ring. Weapons and basic enemies have the exact movesets they do in the base game. The controls are the same, with a few additions. All Elden Ring's battle mechanics are there: backstabs, shield parries, two-handing weapons, etc.
• In other ways Nightreign feels extremely different. Movement speed and sprinting are greatly sped up. Even without the Spectral Steed mount you're far more mobile in this game: You can now mantle up most cliffs and vault up ledges.
• There is no fall damage.
• Because each run has a fairly strict time limit, you're encouraged to play at a breakneck pace, running from place to place to get more loot and defeat as many enemies as possible to level up.
• With three players and greatly increased power scaling, most basic enemies quickly become trash mobs—the feel of combat is very different than it is in Souls games, where every new room is likely to present some new threat that keeps you in constant trepidation.
• Elden Ring's RPG systems and long-term character building take a back seat to weapons and the unique character abilities defining your playstyle.

FromSoftware doesn't consider it a "live service" game

• In my interview with game director Junya Ishizaki, he told me that FromSoftware doesn't have live service plans for Nightreign.
• There are no plans for seasons or battle passes
• Ishizaki said post-release content updates are still TBD (my guess is that FromSoftware doesn't want to commit to anything until it sees how well the game sells), there will be balance updates, bugfixes etc. as with past games.

Nightreign will be premium (not F2P) and standalone

• You're going to have to pay up front for Nightreign: it will not be a free-to-play game.
• Unlike Shadow of the Erdtree, however, this expansion does not require owning Elden Ring. It'll be fully standalone.
• PC gaming has a rich history of standalone expansions, though they're less common in recent years. Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and XCOM: Chimera Squad are a couple modern examples.

Nightreign will be priced comparably to Shadow of the Erdtree

• Bandai Namco told me to expect a price similar to Shadow of the Erdtree, not a full $60/$70.
• The Erdtree expansion is $40 on Steam. I could see Nightreign being a bit cheaper or a bit more expensive, but $40 does feel about right.

Nightreign is not a battle royale—in fact, there's no PvP at all

• Nightreign borrows the popular battle royale mechanic of a 'danger zone' ring shrinking to a focal point on the map, so at first it resembles a PvP game. But nope! It's even less a PvP game than Elden Ring or Dark Souls. There's no invasion mechanic in Nightreign. You can't fight against other players at all.
• The 'battle royale' ring instead is there to limit the amount of time you can spend leveling up by fighting enemies and pushes you towards a boss fight confrontation at the end of each day (roughly 10 minutes from sunup to sundown). Survive day one's boss fight and the circle disappears, before slowly closing again at the end of day two.

When is Elden Ring: Nightreign coming out?

• All we know right now is the year: 2025.
• Early 2025? Late 2025? July 1st, right smack dab in the middle of the year? I'm just guessing, but based on how far along the version of the game I played was, I don't think it'll be before April. It also doesn't seem that far off from being finished. My prediction: between April and September.

Is the map randomly generated? How much does it change?

• The layout of Nightreign's map is static… kind of. It looks like a jumbled up remix of Limgrave, with familiar caves, forts, wizard towers, ruins, and gaols all in different places than they were in the original game, and FromSoftware says the general topography and location of structures will stay the same. But the developers are being cagey about the extent to which it can change on different runs.
• From says that sometimes an environmental modifier will appear on the map, such as a swamp or a lava-spewing volcano. I didn't encounter these, so I can't say how big they are, how significantly they'll affect the overall layout and feel of the map, or how many varieties of these environmental surprises there will be in the randomization pool.
• In my interview FromSoftware also hinted that some environmental changes might be tied to the stories for the different characters, so there's a lot we don't know here yet.
• The enemies and bosses you encounter at each place of interest will vary by session, which is clearly what FromSoft hopes will keep the combat fresh and unpredictable across many runs. I think there's a risk of the map feeling like a bit of a drag to explore in a PvE game if it remains too static, even if you encounter a different boss at the ruins you've run around 30 times before, but one day with an early build of the game really wasn't enough to see how this will all fit together.
• There will definitely be some randomized surprises—for example, Margit the Fell Omen was one of the potential "night two" bosses, but he also sometimes "invaded" our play sessions unexpectedly in the middle of the day and started chasing us across the map.

Only Limgrave? What about the rest of Elden Ring's map?

• FromSoftware only referenced Limgrave during our demo session, with no indication that there are remixed versions of Liurnia, Caelid, and so on in Nightreign as well. The plan seems to be for the randomness and those environmental surprises to keep the map interesting enough for repeat play.
• But this is the same FromSoftware that hides entire zones behind secret walls in some of its games. Could there be some major element of Nightreign it's keeping secret right now? Certainly.

How does leveling up work?

• Leveling is fast in Nightreign. You still level up via runes spent at a site of grace, like in Elden Ring, but you'll accrue them very quickly.
• Instead of leveling up an individual stat, every chunk of runes you spend will grant you one overall level and boost your stats across the board.
• Stat growth is different for each character. The Duchess and Recluse are always going to have less health than Guardian, for example.
• If you're downed by an enemy, your teammates have a short window of time to revive you before you die. If you do bleed out, you'll respawn nearby but lose all the runes you were carrying and delevel by one level. As in Elden Ring, you can reclaim your runes by returning to the scene of your death.
• Your character doesn't have a meta level, so you're back to level one at the start of each run. But there are some meta progression elements.

There will be meta progression in the form of character stories and permanent loot from each run

• In between runs you'll return to the alternate version of Elden Ring's Roundtable Hold, where you can chat with all of the characters (except the one you're currently embodying), practice their abilities in a training ground, and make use of some kind of upgrade system that wasn't accessible in the build we played.
• Each character in Nightreign has a set of color-coded relic slots that you can equip random end-of-run rewards to. These offer a range of substantial benefits. Here are some examples I encountered:
  • One relic gave me +2 vigor, made my flask heal allies in addition to myself, and also made my critical hits earn extra runes
  • Another marked treasure for me on the map, boosted magic attacks, and enhanced one of the Duchess's abilities specifically
• Each character had only three of these slots on the build we played, but based on the UI I'm going to speculate that you'll actually unlock more of these slots to further improve your character as you play more Nightreign. And that's because…
• FromSoftware told me that there will be some degree of narrative progression for Nightreign's eight preset characters, and it also sounded like moving through those stories will influence the map or random encounters you experience in a run, too. I didn't get to see any of that long-term stuff.

Characters have preset skills, but you can still customize your 'build' with relics and loot

• The relics you equip to your character before a run can potentially help enhance a particular playstyle, but until you've accrued a collection of them that let you focus in a particular direction, you're mostly going to have to develop a build on the fly in each Nightreign match.
• Elden Ring's old inventory system is gone—you can now only hold a total of six weapons (and shields), three in the right hand slot and three in the left hand slot. The passive skills on weapons you pick up will remain active as long as they're in your inventory. That means you could pick up a greatsword you don't want to use, but keep it in your pocket because it happens to offer a nice buff to your poise stat.
• Weapons do have level requirements, so you might find a rare drop that you can't equip right away and want to keep until you can equip it. Again, any passives on that weapon will still pay benefits.
• You can drop items or replace them with new loot when your inventory's full, and you'll probably want to—it makes sense to grab everything you find at the start for the passive buffs, then refine your 'build' with weapons that complement each other over time.

So there's random loot now? How does that work?

• Yes, there's loot! Turns out Path of Exile 2 isn't the Dark Souls of dungeon crawlers—Elden Ring: Nightreign is! (Just kidding—the games obviously play very differently).
• Judging by wikis, there are more than 300 weapons in Elden Ring. I only ever used a handful of them in a given playthrough, but by removing the RPG-style leveling curve and weapon scaling based on specific stats, Nightreign makes it so that just about every character can use every weapon, and you can assemble a viable build on the fly every run.
• Regular enemies and bosses around the map will drop randomized loot; as in other action RPGs, loot can include passive skills like stat buffs, active effects, and affinities like poison, bleed, ice, fire, etc.
• Loot is abundant; there are also tons of chests and breakable objects in the environment that house weapons and consumable items like oils to coat your sword for extra damage, daggers to throw for ranged damage, etc.
• When you kill a boss, you usually get to choose from three loot options, with one being a character upgrade rather than a weapon (a 15% bonus to damage reduction for the rest of the run, for example).
• Regular drops are all shared between players, so you could open a chest and someone could grab the item from right under your nose. But the more valuable boss drops are individualized.
• Loot is tiered with color-coded rarity, so if you've played Diablo or an MMO you'll know what to expect.

Is Nightreign connected to the story of Elden Ring?

• No, at least not directly. FromSoftware said this is an "alternate reality" to the Limgrave we explored in Elden Ring.
• Then again, it's FromSoftware—I wouldn't be shocked if Nightreign actually hints, somewhere, that this all takes place in Miquella's dreams or Rennala created a whole magical alternate reality or something.

Nightreign will have a Network Test before release

• Like Elden Ring and most of the Souls games, FromSoft will hold a free online beta test for players sometime ahead of release
• Based on past games, expect the Network Test to be held between three and six months before release. Elden Ring's was about 10 weeks ahead, while Dark Souls 3's was five months ahead.

Get ready to be confused about the night rain and Nightreign

• The game is called Nightreign, but the shrinking blue battle royale circle that will kill you if you linger in it? That's the night rain. Surely this won't cause any Melina/Malenia-style confusion!