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Elden Ring: Nightreign Deep of Night screenshot
Gaming Gear

Elden Ring: Nightreign is getting a new ‘high difficulty mode’ in September, including an ‘endless battle for those seeking even greater thrills’

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Back in 2024, as the soulslike difficulty discourse once again reared its silly head, Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki said FromSoft “could just crank the difficulty down,” but warned that doing so “would break the game itself.” That doesn’t seem to be a concern going the other direction, though, as Bandai Namco says a new “high-difficulty challenge mode” called Deep of Night is coming to Elden Ring: Nightreign in September.

Now, before we get too far into this, I know, Elden Ring and Elden Ring: Nightreign are two very different experiences: One an almost entirely solo soulslike, the other a co-op focused extraction game. So the analogy isn’t exact—difficulty becomes less of a pressing issue when you’re travelling with your own personal Let Me Solo Her—but even so I find the whole “We can’t go down, but we can sure as hell go up” approach quite funny.

Anyway, Deep of Night is “designed for seasoned players who have navigated through the Night many times,” Bandai said. Enemies will be stronger than in other modes, and players won’t be able to target specific Nightlords when they set out—you’ll get who you get, and good luck to you.


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“Ongoing terrain changes are not reflected,” Bandai said, which I assume means Shifting Earth modifiers are off the table, and there will be new items exclusive to the Deep of Night mode, including “Depths Relics” and weapons with multiple new—”but also detrimental”—effects. Hey, the Nightlord giveth, and the Nightlord taketh away.

“‘Deep of Night’ is a high-difficulty mode that provides a thrilling and challenging adventure,” Bandai wrote. “We encourage you to try and see if you can surpass Depth 3.” If you do, Depths 4 and 5 “will feature an endless battle for those seeking even greater thrills.” Deep of Night’s difficulty will increase as you descend, but will also “fluctuate based on wins and losses,” Bandai said.

If all of this is ringing a bell, it’s likely because you read about some Nightreign datamining earlier this month that uncovered information on the Deep of Night mode, including that it will have five “depths,” each with 999 ratings—a system seemingly similar to the one FromSoft used for Armor Core 6.

How exactly it will all work out in practice remains to be seen, but players will find out soon enough: Nightreign’s Deep of Night mode is set to go live on September 11.

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Elden Ring Nightreign's Deep Of Night Is An Endless "High-Difficulty Expedition Mode" Coming Next Month
Game Updates

Elden Ring Nightreign’s Deep Of Night Is An Endless “High-Difficulty Expedition Mode” Coming Next Month

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Since launching in May, Elden Ring Nightreign, the multiplayer roguelike spinoff of Elden Ring, has continued to receive updates introducing new bosses and more. Now, developer From Software has announced the game’s biggest update yet – Deep of Night – will go live next month on Thursday, September 11. 

Deep of Night is a “high-difficulty” Expedition challenge mode “designed for seasoned players who have navigated through the Night many times,” the studio writes in a press release, suggesting this already-difficult game is going to get a lot harder soon. In Deep of Night, the enemies are stronger than usual. Plus, you cannot specify the target Nightlord for the Expedition, meaning the final boss of the run will be random. 

 

Alongside this, From Software says ongoing terrain changes will not be reflected, and that special items such as “Depth Relics,” which are exclusive to Deep of Night, and weapons with multiple additional but also detrimental effects, will appear on runs. Furthermore, the difficulty increases the deeper you descend, and “the ratings will fluctuate based on wins and losses, affecting the depth.” 

From Software says players should aim to surpass Depth 3, and notes that Depth 4 to Depth 5 will “feature an endless battle for those seeking even greater thrills,” suggesting that Deep of Night can turn into an endless-run mode. 

The Deep of Night update for Elden Ring Nightreign goes live on Thursday, September 11. 

In the meantime, read Game Informer’s Elden Ring Nightreign review. 



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Elden Ring: Rot & Sorcery preview
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Elden Ring: Rot & Sorcery preview

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Steamforged Games is set to begin crowdfunding for the latest campaign in their Elden Ring tabletop adaptation in just a couple days. Rot & Sorcery will feature two core boxes that can be played completely standalone, paired with each other, or even combined with the previous campaign to send your Tarnished on an incredible journey. While fully compatible with the Realm of the Grafted King, Rot & Sorcery does expand and improve upon that framework to ensure a unique experience. While at Gen Con, I had the chance to get a taste of what the new content has to offer. Please note that since this is a prototype of the game, some components and rules are subject to change.

Domain of Rot

The first core box, Dominion of Rot, features the first poison rot swamp of the board game series: Caelid. Tarnished in this region will, of course, need to deal with the Scarlet Rot. The designers tried to avoid turning this into a standard damage-over-time poison effect, and I think their solution is much more interesting and engaging for the players. Rather, the first time an enemy inflicts a Tarnished with Rot, the player gains one of the status effect tokens. This doesn’t do anything yet, but if a Tarnished is afflicted with Rot while already holding a token, they instead remove the token, gain a Rot Attribute card to their Attribute discard, and advance the Rot Intensity track. 

Tarnished face off against some Kindred of the Rot in Caelid

Rot Attribute cards have a random set of Attribute icons on them (generally only a couple) that more than likely won’t synergize with your Tarnished. When drawn, they deal damage to your Tarnished as an extra punishment. Worse than that is the Rot Intensity track. This track changes depending on the encounter, but for the one I demoed, it increased the damage dealt by each Kindred of the Rot I was facing. If the track is already filled when it needs to increase, each Tarnished instead loses two health.

An example of the new Rot Intensity track

However, Tarnished won’t be the only ones facing the consequences of the Scarlet Rot. In Dominion of Rot, the very land itself can become afflicted. Tiles during Exploration scenarios can be afflicted with Rot, and if the Tarnished don’t purify them, they transform into altered versions with different location icons. This change is persistent, and every time these tiles are drawn for the rest of the campaign, they will remain in this blighted state until cleansed. 

The same location in normal and blighted form—note the changing location icon

Exploration itself has seen some adjustments present in both boxes. The location icons have been altered for better visual clarity on how Tarnished will interact with them, as the tokens have been dropped entirely. Gone is the fiddliness of needing to fish for a couple of specific tokens each time a tile is explored. This does come at the cost of mid-exploration combat, though. Instead, Hardships will be more engaging, and Effigies of the Martyr will allow Tarnished to assist others as they overcome the new Hardships.

Player boards for the two new Tarnished

Back to Dominion of Rot, the two classes I was able to experience were an alternate Confessor and the new Hero. Instead of access to strong Push synergies, the Confessor gains a stance system. This allows them to deal extra damage on one attack or extra defense against one attack, with the stance swapping each time it’s triggered. Their combat deck provides plenty of tools to either benefit from being in a specific stance or manipulate the stance in a variety of ways (such as staying in the aggressive stance for a better combo). But as much as I enjoyed the puzzle of managing the Confessor’s stance, I think the Hero is the real standout of the box. The Hero’s perk is that at the end of every turn, they draw back up to their hand size of three. They always have options regardless of how many enemies activate between the Hero’s turns. The only downside is that once the Hero’s Combat deck is exhausted, they take four damage. Luckily, the Hero has methods of shuffling cards back into their Combat deck to delay this, creating a flavor of resource management that I really enjoyed.

Machinations of the Witch

In the second box, Machinations of the Witch, Tarnished get to explore the Academy of Raya Lucaria. In this region, there will be secrets to uncover during Exploration scenarios that will change how the final act resolves. The main feature of the region, however, is enemy spellcraft. Encounters with spellcasting enemies will include a special Behavior card that represents their spell, which includes a pattern of icons on the top. Each of their Behavior cards has an icon on the top left, and if the current card positions (ignoring anything between, like Tarnished Initiatives) match the requisite pattern when the spell is resolved, the Tarnished will get blasted with a devastating attack. If the pattern doesn’t match, a much weaker attack is resolved instead. The enemy half of the board will feature row bonuses that can allow enemies to “correct” the current order of cards to set their pattern, or allow Tarnished to “disrupt” the pattern and stop its casting. But one of the new classes excels at disrupting spells even without this positioning.

The Red Wolf of Radagon has a pretty sick miniature

I was only able to try one of the new Tarnished classes, but the Astrologer was plenty interesting to me. The Astrologer specializes in re-ordering the initiative row, enabling their allies to act at the most opportune times or shifting enemy Behaviors to prevent spells from casting. In my combat against the Red Wolf of Radagon, I was able to do both and ensured that my ally could focus on smacking the Wolf as hard as they could. This is crucial, since the Astrologer is much more of a support class and doesn’t hit quite as hard as some of the other Tarnished.

The Red Wolf will successfully cast Glintstone Dash if the Astrologer doesn’t stop it

Fighting the boss also gave me a glimpse at their new board, which helps keep everything neatly organized and assists with tracking the amount and type of cards to draw each round. With the new Spell cards and multiple simultaneous bosses to track, this is a much-appreciated quality of life addition.

Final Thoughts

Fans of the initial game won’t want to miss out on these boxes. The designers of the game have a ton of passion for it and made sure to listen to player feedback when iterating on the previous set. From focusing more on key enemies to reducing Exploration fiddliness, there are several improvements to the game without even getting into the plentiful new content and mechanics. Excited Tarnished can look forward to the crowdfunding launch on August 28th and follow the campaign on Gamefound here: https://gamefound.com/en/projects/steamforged-games/elden-ring-board-game-sorcery-and-rot


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Nightreign characters embark on a new expedition.
Game Reviews

Elden Ring Nightreign Fans Are Already Playing The Unannounced Hard Mode

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Elden Ring Nightreign‘s final Everdark Sovereign arrived last week and die-hard fans are ready for a new challenge. FromSoftware hasn’t officially revealed what’s coming to the multiplayer roguelite spin-off next, but that hasn’t stopped some players from diving into the secret new ranked mode that was added to the game’s files earlier this month and discovering what’s there for themselves.

A reference to The Deep of Night was first discovered in Nightreign by dataminers shortly after its Duos update arrived in late July. Other details hidden in the files suggested it was an endless mode with skill-based matchmaking that would give hardcore players a new challenge to overcome. It would even add slots to their existing vessel so new types of relics could be added to help them with these tougher runs, it seemed.

Weeks later, some players have been taking advantage of mods to try The Deep of Night out for themselves, even as publisher Bandai Namco remains silent about what it has planned for Nightreign‘s future. It can only be played on PC solo on a separate save file and play is limited to the first round. But that hasn’t dissuaded the game’s sweatiest Nightfarers from dipping their tarnished toes into this new version of Limveld.

While some mods unlock the mode itself, others unlock the new Deep relics for purchase from the signboard. People have been uploading their expeditions to YouTube, showing some of the new gear exclusive to The Deep of Night and their unique trade-offs. Unlike regular loot found during runs, each piece of gear in the Deep comes with additional debuffs to add to the difficulty. A Sentry’s Torch, for example, might improve lightning damage negation and boost damage negation from getting hit, but also dramatically raise the damage you take from being out in the Night’s Tide storm which, as someone who frequently spends half of the run out there, would be an instant death sentence for me.

Enemies are also way tankier in general. Rats in the starting camp will take three hits to kill instead of two. Some enemies also look like contaminated versions of themselves. Otherwise, it’s mostly the same game people have been playing for months, at least in the first round. Deep of Night runs thus far haven’t revealed any new weapons or secrets, though that could change if players survive into the later rounds or manage to get their rank high enough to unlock access to things not currently referenced in the datamined files.

We won’t know for sure until FromSoftware makes the mode official. That could come as early as this week or sometime later in September if it decides to wait until the last batch of Everdark Sovereigns have cycled through a second time. According to datamined leaks, there are also new character classes coming to Nightreign at some point. Whether they will be part of a free update or a paid DLC is unclear. The game’s biggest fans remain hungry for anything new the developers can throw at them. Hopefully, that ends up being sooner than later.



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Elden Ring reportedly runs poorly on Switch 2, but is anyone surprised?
Game Reviews

Elden Ring reportedly runs poorly on Switch 2, but is anyone surprised?

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When Elden Ring popped up at Nintendo’s Switch 2 reveal, it was a promising sign of third-party games finding their way to the new console.

Yet reports from gamescom suggest Elden Ring runs poorly on Switch 2, particularly in handheld mode, citing low framerates in open world environments. Even publisher Bandai Namco seems to be aware of this, as footage capture has not been allowed, which seems particularly damning.

FromSoftware doesn’t have a great track record with performance, though, and after three years Elden Ring still doesn’t run perfectly on PS5, Xbox Series X, or PC. But this is the studio’s first effort on Switch 2, and it’s perhaps a worrying sign for next year’s exclusive The Duskbloods.

ELDEN RING is coming to Nintendo Switch 2Watch on YouTube

IGN described Elden Ring on Switch 2 as a “disaster” in handheld mode, after Eurogamer’s Ian Higton went hands-on at gamescom.

Ian was only able to play in handheld mode, but played the very start of the game. And while he was impressed with the lighting and resolution, the framerate dropped dramatically during both the Grafted Scion tutorial boss and when entering the open world. “As soon as I opened up those double doors and entered into Limgrave and you see the Erdtree in the background, it started to chug,” said Ian.

Further, the demo only has a single graphics mode with HDR switched on, but this could potentially change in the final release.

Both Jon Cartwright from GVG and Nintendo Life’s Felix Sanchez reported similar feedback. Cartwright noted how fog in the distance caused the framerate to plummet and while the game runs at 30fps, it goes “well below when anything a little bit challenging comes up”, including bosses. He was able to test docked mode, which was “better but not perfect”.

Sanchez, meanwhile, was impressed by the graphics despite being not quite on par with current consoles, but in the open world “the framerate just tanks – it’s really bad and I understand why they don’t want you to see this because wowee zowee it is terrible”.

It’s certainly disappointing to hear, especially when Elden Ring does run perfectly fine on PS4 and Xbox One, not to mention the Steam Deck already provides a handheld mode with steady performance. Over on reddit, fans appear to be upset by the news, but not particularly surprised following FromSoftware’s poor optimisation of games in the past.

Of course, the Switch 2 is weaker compared to PS5 or Xbox Series X, but it does have VRR capabilities – it’s not clear if this has been implemented by the developers.

Perhaps this poor performance shouldn’t come as a surprise. Two years after the base game launched, FromSoftware released the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion. Yet, as Digital Foundry reported last year, this still did not fix many underlying technical issues with the game, particularly its long-standing stuttering. Seeing issues with the Switch 2 version suggests FromSoftware just doesn’t intend to fix them, with performance seemingly not a priority.

Digital Foundry also examined the Elden Ring Switch 2 trailer from its initial reveal, noting its seemingly poor performance, despite its impressive pixel count. It seems frame pacing issues from the trailer capture are present in the game itself. Still, when Cyberpunk 2077 – an infamously more technically demanding game – runs well on Switch 2, it’s disappointing to see FromSoftware struggling.

Elden Ring remains without a Switch 2 release date beyond this year, so there’s still time for fixes to be implemented. It’s the first FromSoftware-developed game to make it to Nintendo’s Switch family (there’s been no mention of an external team handling the port), as the previously released Dark Souls Remastered was handled by Virtuos. But it won’t be the last. As revealed earlier this year, FromSoftware has the Switch 2 exclusive multiplayer game The Duskbloods on the way.

Will it suffer a similar fate? It’s unclear what engine that game is being created in, but considering it’s a Switch 2 exclusive from the ground up, you’d hope FromSoftware would optimise the game accordingly rather than shoehorning Elden Ring to make it fit. Yet the precedent of poor performance – and FromSoftware’s seeming apathy towards it – has already been set.



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Game Updates

Elden Ring Switch 2 Impressions Sound Not Great

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Elden Ring is one of the most exciting third-party games coming to Nintendo Switch 2. Who among us doesn’t want to get our shit rocked on the go? Well, according to folks who have played FromSoftware’s action RPG at Gamescom in Cologne, the system is apparently struggling to run the game in handheld mode, and to make matters more worrisome, Bandai Namco is reportedly not letting people record footage of it.

Nintendo Life posted a video on its YouTube channel discussing the port and said that while they only played the Switch 2 port for about 15 minutes, the game looks pretty good visually, but leaves a lot to be desired in terms of performance. The tutorial ran pretty well at a locked 30fps. Once they reached the open world, everything changed.

“It’s really bad, and I understand why they don’t want you to see this, because wowie zowie, it is terrible,” Nintendo Life video producer Felix Sanchez said. “Of course, you’re never going to see the light of this—maybe it will just release in that state, but I can’t imagine they will do that—It was like playing Ocarina of Time. It was like 20 frames per second, sometimes I was like, ‘This has dropped [to] 15 frames per second.’”

Sanchez says that in the Switch 2’s handheld mode, the game was “incredibly unstable” in the open-world segments, even in surprisingly static areas where few enemies were on screen at once. You can hear his full impressions below:

So if you’re wondering why Elden Ring footage is conspicuously absent from the internet’s Gamescom coverage, now you know that Bandai Namco has prohibited it. The game is supposed to launch on the Switch 2 this year, but it doesn’t have a release date at the moment. It’s entirely possible the game could be delayed into 2026 to fix things up, or that things could turn around by the time it finally comes out. Whatever the case, it sounds like Elden Ring on Switch 2 has not made the best first impression.



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Elden Ring Nightreign Libra on purple background looking at camera with goggle eyes
Product Reviews

15 attempts in, I actually love that Elden Ring Nightreign’s Everdark Libra is the first FromSoftware boss who’s harder to beat in co-op than solo

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The handshake deal in FromSoftware games, the obfuscated difficulty option that’s always been there since Demon’s Souls, is co-op: Summoning phantoms controlled by other players or the computer⁠. In OG Elden Ring everybody’s best friend was the Mimic Tear, a powerful summon to make a copy of yourself to fight by your side.

This has held true in the co-op centric, roguelike spinoff Nightreign, with the sturdy tripod of a full party clearly being what the experience was catered towards. The new duos mode is nice enough but still slightly compromised, while even with post-launch patches, solo is still the worst way to play.

But now they’ve gone and turned all that on its head: The latest Everdark superboss, the ultra instinct version of Baphomet dealbroker Libra, only gets more challenging the bigger your posse is. I managed to take him down solo after just three runs, while I’m somewhere north of 15 attempts deep in duos and trios, a W still evading me at every turn.


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Everybody hates Everdark Libra. My peer, Austin Wood at GamesRadar, thinks he’s “100% getting nerfed.” Just like with the similarly loathed Everdark Augur, I disagree. I love this sick freak of a boss and how he turns all the rules on their heads.

To make Everdark Libra easier would compromise the beautiful vision at his core, the product of a sensitive, poet’s soul that’s clearly been hurt by this cruel world of ours and wants to inflict that pain right back. We’re all letting Libra down. Champions adjust. Spoilers for Everdark Libra below.

Make your choice

Yeah man, we get it. (Image credit: FromSoftware)

Libra’s already a real piece of work in his base form, tied with end boss Heolstor as the hardest in the game by my reckoning. He has an arsenal of unusual, difficult-to-read projectile attacks that all build up the madness status effect, which does huge damage and a stun if you manage to survive the initial burst.

His signature move is a delayed blast sigil that brutalizes you with madness build-up after a quick beat. It comes out fast enough that you can’t exactly respond to it carefully and can get royally screwed if you’re in the middle of an animation, while a slight delay punishes immediate panic rolling. It is deliciously evil.

Libra’s Everdark form ups the ante by summoning invader clones of the player party with all the same abilities and a number of potential weapon loadouts thoughtfully constructed to inflict the most pain and frustration. Some of my favorites:

  • Mini Malenia Executor: Equipped with the Hand of Malenia Sword and can perform a weaker, but still potentially instant-death version of Waterfowl Dance. Yes, that Waterfowl Dance.
  • Terminator Ironeye: Possesses the Jar Cannon and One-Eyed Shield (which has a built-in cannon), as well as a seemingly-permanent buff resembling the Ironjar Aromatic: He walks extremely slowly but is extra tanky and can’t be interrupted.
  • Sniper Wylder: Uses a greatbow to spam the Rain of Arrows ash of war, doing crazy damage in a huge AoE from long distance.
  • Rot Duchess: Dual wields Scorpion’s Stinger daggers for fast Scarlet Rot buildup.

Much like the player-style NPC enemies of FromSoft’s previous games, they don’t play by the same rules that you do: Malenia-Executor is particularly difficult to interrupt out of his signature move, while all of the clones are capable of dodge rolling out of attack combos a normal player could not.

The pièce de résistance is how they shuffle in: It does not feel like Libra has a consistent timer for summoning a fresh wave of evil twins. Wiping them out is not a guarantee of breathing room to DPS the boss, while it’s far more likely for them to start piling up as you fail to clear out old ones before the new clones spawn in.

The final indignity is that Libra summoning a new wave heals any surviving invaders, buffs their defense and damage, and the buffs stack. A veteran six rounds deep Executor spamming Waterfowl Dance is who I wish I was playing as.

All of this while Libra has new, more aggressive madness-inflicting AOE attacks to fling at you. A mature Everdark Libra fight is pure chaos, a field of evil clones glowing gold with layered buffs, some attacking each other, but most chasing you around like it’s Yakety Sax while Libra turns the field into a bullet hell screen. It’s utterly deranged. I don’t know how a group of randos with no coordination is supposed to beat it. It’s hilarious.

The time is ripe

The Gamer’s Gambit. (Image credit: FromSoftware)

Whether fully intentional or not, FromSoft’s classical deferred difficulty system works in reverse with Everdark Libra. It’s like a martial arts movie thing or Bruce Wayne climbing out of Bane’s house without the dang rope or something: If the enemy draws its strength from you, make yourself weaker.

Not only is one evil twin far more manageable than triplets, the singleplayer mode’s adjusted health values mean they go down quicker too. Even in the solo runs I failed, I didn’t experience the chaotic pileups of a three-player slugfest.

This inversion is another example of how flexible and surprising FromSoft’s well-worn systems can still be. Yet another boss in Nightreign is challenging in a way that took me off-guard, that wasn’t just another really tall, sad guy with a sword who moves super fast.

That has me even more excited for what the studio does next: After Promised Consort Radahn in Shadow of the Erdtree, I was worried there might be a ceiling to FromSoft’s arms race with itself to make ever greater twitch reflex challenges in its bosses. In Nightreign, the studio sidestepped this issue, proving there’s nothing stopping it from delivering spectacles, challenges, or sheer curveballs we just won’t see coming.

As for the fight itself, it’s a new favorite. Everdark Libra feels like a joke at my expense, a prank played on us players. That’s one of my favorite things to see in a game, and FromSoft is the master when it comes to this rare art.

Could they ease off the gas with the clone spawns just a touch? Maybe, it depends on how soon you ask me after a failed run. Is it kinda bullshit that Vyke’s War Spear, the only melee weapon Libra is weak to, is such a rare drop that I’ve only seen it twice in 111.8 hours (but who’s counting)? Perhaps.

I hope they never nerf Everdark Libra. He’s so stupid. It’s all so meanspirited. I love him like a son.



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