There are some fundamental rules to surviving in Elden Ring Nightreign. Things like “always hit the small camp first to get level 2″ and “never fight the Bell Bearing Hunter boss beneath the castle.” A third is “don’t bother trying to revive someone with three bars unless you have your ult.” But time and time again, players try to do that anyway. Now we finally have the math to prove why that’s such a dumb idea.
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YouTuber Zullie the Witch, always at the forefront of FromSoftology, laid out how resurrecting fallen allies actually works in Nightreign in a recent video (via PC Gamer). While the visual icon over a fallen party member’s body shows a trisected circle with one segment filled for each time they’ve been downed, it turns out the actual number of hits it takes to bring them back to their feet scales dramatically with each full bar. (Yes, you revive your teammates by doing damage to them.)
Anyone who’s spent a few hours with the multiplayer roguelike intrinsically knows this, but having the math clearly laid out should help discourage anyone from trying to be a hero and getting cooked by a Nightlord in the process:
As Zullie the Witch explains, attacks done in an effort to revive a teammate are logged completely differently than normal damage against enemies. Each weapon type does a certain base amount of damage—starting at 10 for daggers and torches and peaking at 25 for ballistas—and it takes 40 damage points to fill up the first revive bar. Simple enough, a flurry of quick stabs with a dagger will do it. But the second and third bars are where things get deceivingly devilish. At two bars, the damage required per bar is 45 for a total of 90, and at three bars its 80 each, for a whopping total of 240 damage.
That would be tough enough on its own, but the extra tricky part comes from how fast the bars refill in-between hits. At one bar, the meter refills at just two damage per second. At two bars, meanwhile, the refill happens at nine damage per second, while at three bars, they’re refilling at 40 points per second. That’s why it’s essentially impossible to revive other teammates without an ultimate cooldown ready when you’re the last one standing. Turning your attention away for even a second to dodge an incoming attack will see almost all of your progress lost.
So why do many players insist on trying to revive thrice-downed teammates anyway? Psychologically, the fact that our minds are trained by the UI to think linearly while the game is scaling exponentially is no doubt part of it. Another is that no one wants to be the reason their team failed, getting your ass beat while strangers watch powerless to help. Third, it’s kind of just terrifying to go up against Nightreign’s tougher bosses with no backup.
Unless you’re used to playing solo, the game has a knack for making you think you’re better than you are because of how easy it is to whale on enemies while they’re trading off aggro against two other players. Once the odds are evened, the truth has nowhere to hide. As Zullie the Witch has shown, though, your best bet is to just dig in, block, dodge, and take pot shots until your ultimate art is ready.
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