In thisElden Ring Nightreign Nightfarers Beginner Guide, we’re going to be taking a look at the fourNightfarersofElden Ring Nightreign, or the four classes if you will. These are the four characters that you’re going to get to choose from on any given run while you’re playing through the game. The full launch of the game will include eight of these, but for now we only have four. So I want to run you through what these classes do, what they’re capable of, and what their skills are to help you better decide which one you want to play on the network test in a couple of days.
Elden Ring Nightreign Nightfarers Beginner Guide
So there are a few things I want to discuss first before we get into the specifics of eachNightfarer. And the first thing is I want to talk about the differences and similarities between Nightfarers. So the differences betweenNightfarersare their appearance, they obviously all look different. They each have a different passive ability, a different character skill, and a different ultimate art. They each have their own starting equipment that they’ll begin each run with.
This is unique toElden Ring Nightreignand these weapons are not found in the base game ofElden Ring. And note that the weapons that Nightfarers begin with in Nightreign don’t have passive bonuses like the equipment that you will pick up throughout your playthrough. So they’re a little bit inferior compared to things you’ll find in chests generally. Each Nightfarer has its own HP, FP, and stamina. Andeach Nightfarer also has its own different colored relic slots. I will get into what relics are a little bit later in this article, but for now let’s move on to similarities. The similarities between each Nightfarer are thatthey all have no armor. There is no armor in this game.They each can use any weaponthat they pick upas long as they are at the correct level or higher. And they all start at level 1 at the beginning of any run. So looking at the starting HP, FP, and stamina across all four Nightfarers you may see a few things instantly.
You’ll notice thatGuardianandWylderhave more HP thanRecluseandDuchessby a good ways actually. And I think this is one of the reasons that these two classes will be played a lot and will be popular amongst new Nightreign players. Is because it gives them a little bit of an advantage while they’re learning how Nightreign plays even though they’re familiar with Elden Ring combat. And you’ll notice thatDuchess and Recluseeven though they have lower HP pools havehigher FP pools. Meaning that they’re going to be able to use more weapon abilities and spells more easily than eitherWylderorGuardian.
So these two classes have more of a higher skill floor but also a higher skill ceiling. And keep in mind that each Nightfarer begins at level 1 at the beginning of every run. And that when you level up at aSite of Graceyour character is just going to level up automatically into the growth of that character. That means that your HP, FP, and stamina will grow depending on what character you chose. So Guardian should always remain ahead of Wylder in terms of HP. And Duchess and Recluse should always remain ahead of Guardian and Wylder in terms of their FP. Even when they level up, assuming that they’re the same level as each other. Okay, with those things out of the way let’s talk a little bit about each Nightfarer and we’ll start with Wylder first.
Elden Ring Nightreign - Wylder
Wylderis anall-around warrior. He has great abilities and he’s likely to be a fan favorite and probably will be the most-played Nightfarer during the network test. He’s very easy to learn and very fun to play. He begins the game with aGreatswordthat hasStamp (Upward Cut)on it as its weapon skill. And he also has aSmall Shieldthat hasBuckler Parryon it for those who like to parry.
His passive abilitySixth Senseis extremely powerful. What it does is it makes it so that he cheats death a single time. Meaning if he would take lethal damage that downed him he would actually not be downed that one time. And this is a really good passive ability for new players to Nightreign because it’s going to prevent one death to them. And you’re likely to die more when you’re learning mechanics in Nightreign. It’s just a reality. So again this is another reason that Wylder will be a new player friendly. What I don’t know though is if this is just one single death it prevents in the entire run. If it refreshes after the end of each day or if it refreshes each time you rest at a site of grace. These are things that need further testing.
His character skill is calledClaw Shot. What this skill does is it launches out a grappling claw that can pull enemies to him. It can pull himself to larger enemies like bosses. It can break the guard of enemies that have their shield up allowing him to do a critical strike. And it can also grab the landscape and move him quickly across it as well. So it has a lot of different utility. It only has about a six or seven cooldown as well. So you can use this all the time in combat. And keep in mind too that skills you use from your characters that aren’t weapon skills or spells don’t cost any FP. So you can basically use this every time it’s off cooldown.
His ultimate art is calledOnslaught Stake. What Onslaught Stake does is it’sa powerful attackusing the stake that you can find on his left arm. That’sone single strike that deals high damage and high stance damage in an explosion. Oftentimes this ultimate art alone is enough to stance break some bosses allowing you to go in for a critical strike. And keep in mind in this game too that your teammates can continue to attack the boss through the critical strike animation. Making critical strikes and stance breaks even more deadly in Elden Ring Nightreign than they were in the base game. The one downside to this ultimate art is it has very short range.
And it’s very easy to miss with the skill doing nothing at all when you first learn how to use it. But keep in mind that you can useClaw Shotto pull yourself to a boss and then use this immediately afterward for a nice little one-two combo. Note that to use an ultimate art in Elden Ring Nightreign you have to fill up your ultimate art gauge. And the way you do that is by attacking and damaging enemies and bosses. Ultimate arts don’t have a cooldown like some character skills do. So you can’t play passively and expect to use your ultimate art all the time. And you’ll need to be aggressive in order to use this more often.
Elden Ring Nightreign - Guardian
Up next we haveGuardian. Guardian is the best character for would-be tanks out there and those that prefer blocking to dodging. His ultimate is perfect for multiple enemy situations or for rezzing down teammates quickly. So as I mentioned earlier Guardian has more HP and more stamina than any of the other night fairs you can play in the playtest. And he also begins withGuardian’s HalberdandGuardian Greatshield. So between the higher HP, the higher stamina which he can use from blocking, and aGreatshieldwhich is going to have better guard boost than a typical shield, he’s kind of set up already to be a tank.
His passive ability,Steel Guardreads, “plant feet and brace with a shield for a more powerful guard.” And what I think this skill does is that it makes it so that when he blocks heavy attacks, the attacks that would normally push you backward where you roll backward and you pop up with your shield, you might not take any damage but you still get knocked all the way backward. I don’t think that can happen to Guardian so he can tank even the most devastating attacks without being pushed backward significantly.
His character skill,Whirlwind, does like a 360-degree cyclone of air around him for just a split second thatknocks enemies up into the air and lands on the ground, making them vulnerable to attacksfrom Guardian and his teammates. And it’s just great for situations where you have a lot of enemies around you, or if maybe you have an enemy behind you that you don’t have time to turn around quickly enough. Like maybe one of your teammates falls out to you, hey behind you and you pop it and you’re fine.
Guardian’s ultimate art is calledWings of Salvationand this is the one where you see himlaunch up into the air, float for a second and then come crashing down in a large AoE that knocks enemies backward and downand deals significant damage. And this has two uses, predominantly for large groups of enemies and secondly for rezzing teammates. It’s a very safe, quick, effective way of rezzing teammates, especially if you maybe have like two teammates that are downed in the same spot during a boss fight. You can just use this and then land on them and res them. As the tank, Guardian is typically the last one alive unless you made a very critical error. So it’s a good idea to save this ultimate art during some boss fights in case your teammates go down and you need a fast way to resurrect them.
Elden Ring Nightreign - Duchess
Up next isDuchess. She’s a little bit more challenging to play thanWylderin my opinion for a general attack-type character, but she is more agile, she has a better dodge and herRestageskill is absolutely lethal in the right hands. Duchess has a little bit of a slow start in my opinion because she begins the game with adagger, her dagger,Duchess’s Daggerand someShield Greaseand those are her only equipment to begin the game with. So if you don’t like using a dagger or you want to use some other fast weapon that’s like astraight swordorthrusting swordor something, you’re gonna have to find one before you may really take off with her. Duchess’s dagger though does have a weapon skill that not only does an attack animation but it buffs her dagger with magic damage simultaneously so she can deal increased damage and buff herself from the beginning of the game.
Her passive skillMagnificent Posemakes it so that she has the dodge that she has and I’m pretty sure it also makes it so that she attacks faster with certain weapons than other Nightfarers. Don’t quote me on that but I think that’s what she does. Her character skill is calledRestageand what this does is it reapplies damage an enemy has taken over the last few seconds to nearby enemies.
This is a great way if you rip off bleed or something off a target or you all downed it with a critical attack and then we’re hitting it a couple times to use this real quick and this is the white phantom you sort of see it come out of the lion and the other enemy there, the exile enemy, that reapplies that damage. And as I mentioned earlier this can be deadly if you have a player that’s very versed in when is the best time to use this to maximize its effect. You don’t want to hang on to it all the time so you’re never using it but you don’t want to use it when it’s not necessary to use it. Finding the right moments to use it is really the key to one of the successes of playing Duchess.
Duchess’s ultimate art is calledFinale. What this does is it makes her and nearby allies invisible for I think about 10 seconds. I don’t know the exact amount of seconds but it’s somewhere like 8 to 10 seconds somewhere in that range. If you’re out of range, Duchess’s range when you cast this you won’t become invisible I don’t think. But it does make you guys invisible. The primary reason to do this would be like to go into a room with a bunch of enemies and you could go backstab one independently and you’re not getting overwhelmed by lots of enemies. Or during a boss fight to give yourself a brief reprieve to heal or pick up a downed teammate or just to like figure out what your strategy is and just give you a breather for a second. It would be very valuable during those times as well.
Elden Ring Nightreign - Recluse
And finally, we come toReclusewho’s arguably the hardest character to learn but nonetheless is very effective in the right hands. Being able to replenish FP almost at will allows her to stay at a safe distance most of the time and prevent her from taking a lot of damage. So Recluse is basically your would-be mage class. She begins the game with astaffthat hasGlintstone Pebbleon it andGlintstone Arc. So you have two spells at the beginning of every run you can use and as you find other staffs they’ll have spells on them so you can sub them out. Or different spells as you pick them up or you can put one staff in one hand and one in the other or you can use a sacred seal in one hand or the other.
Becausethere are no intelligence, faith, stats, or requirementsor anything like that she can use incantations and sorceries interchangeably and it doesn’t matter. But she will likely have a melee weapon in one hand and a casting implement in the other or two casting implements. Now she has kind of complicated mechanics compared to the other classes but they’re not that complicated once you understand how they work and I’ll try and explain how they work here.
The first thing to understand is her passive ability,Elemental Defense. This makes it so she can discover affinity residues that can be collected for Plenish FP. And you predominantly see these when you damage enemies. You can sometimes collect these from allies as well. I don’t know exactly why you can sometimes and not others. But generally this is going to happen from damaging enemies and you can see after she usesShattering Crystalon the Omen boss a little blue circle kind of appears on his midsection. This circle indicates that she can collect a magic residue from that enemy and in doing so she’ll gain FP.
And this is what her character skill is,Magic Cocktail. Her character skill allows her to withdraw that FP from the character and her passive skill allows her to see the elemental affinity that she can withdraw. There are different elements you can withdraw.Magic is blue, fire is orange, and I thinklightning or holy are both yellow. I don’t know if lightning and holy are both and I think maybe only one of them is. But you’ll see a different colored circle depending on the elemental affinity that you can withdraw from the target. And you can’t see it in the gameplay footage because there’s no UI, but down on the bottom of this screen each time she uses Magic Cocktail it will bank one element in this kind of triangle. And after she’s filled that triangle by using that ability three times, the fourth cast ofMagic Cocktail will do some sort of animation that has a special effect. And the effect thatMagic Cocktaildoes when you use it that fourth time and dispel those three elemental residues that you’ve collected the first three casts is determined by what elemental affinities or residues you collected when you were using triangle and L2 the first three times. You can see two examples in this gameplay footage.
The first looks likea combination of fire, magic, and lightning residues or fire, magic, and holy residues, which causes theRecluseto do an explosion on the target when she uses Magic Cocktail the fourth time. The other one is a blue ball that seems to be circling the bosses that’s constantly damaging it. And I think if I remember correctly, this is like a combination of magic affinities using it three times, or it’s a combination of like magic twice and one other element, I believe. It sounds really complicated when you say it out loud, but the too long didn’t read version of it is basically when you damage an enemy, you’re going to siphon out FP from them. And every fourth time you siphon FP from them, instead of siphoning FP, you’re going to do some crazy animation that has a special effect based on the elements that you pull.
These two abilities, elemental defense and magic cocktail are really what make Recluse the mage class because it’s not just that she starts with a staff and some spells, because any character can use a staff and some spells. It’s because she can continuously replenish her FP in order to keep spell casting. And a large part of playing Recluse is the dance that you do between using magic cocktail to siphon FP and cast spells in order to deal damage because magic cocktail doesn’t deal any damage when you siphon FP. So you want to cast spells use magic cocktail cast a spell use magic cocktail, cast a spell use magic cocktail, cast a spell, awesome detonation or some ability and kind of do that dance is what playing Recluse is like and it can be very difficult when you’re trying to learn following night rains mechanics and learn to do that simultaneously.
Theultimate artforRecluseis calledSoulblood Songeyou will see this in the gameplay footage and what this does isit marks all nearby enemies and bosses with a mark for about 10 secondsor so. That makes it sowhen you or allies damage them, they replenish HP and FP for each time they hit them. So this is really good because this is kind of like a support ultimate really, it allows your teammates and sustain because sometimes you run out of healing potions during boss fights and this can be very valuable to get some healing or even replenish some FP for you if your FP is low. And it has a really long animation so it’s difficult to time sometimes but it also has iframes allowing you to avoid damage. If you use it through some devastating attack.
One other great thing I’ll say about Recluse before I kind of stop talking about her is that because she has spells by default, they’re useful for rezzing teammates because normally, most of the other players are probably going to have predominantly melee weapons, and they have to run up to a player and hit them with melee attacks to res them unless you’re using Guardian’s ultimate. But she can do so at range with like soul pebble or some other spell, she can lock on to a player that’s down and hit them at range with spells in order to pick them up, making her a great support character as well as a great offensive player if played correctly.
Elden Ring Nightreign - Relics
So the last thing that I’ll talk about in this article isrelics. This is not something you saw during the gameplay footage but it’s something we got experience with during our test session. Every run you do through Elden Ring Nightreign, whether you succeed or fail you’re going to get something called relics.Relicsare essentially passive upgrades that you can apply at round table hold in between each run that give you some sort of passive benefit that will improve your character and are kind of like the permanent progression that you gain as you play through Elden Ring Nightreign.
Each Nightfarer has three relic slotsand theirrelic slots are all color codedmeaning they can only use relics of the colors that are available to them. For instance like Duchess has green green green meaning that she can only use green relics and she cannot use other colors. So after your first couple of runs in the Nightreign network test you’re not going to have enough relics to go around for all of your characters and they won’t be the right ones that you need for some of them. But there is also variants of certain relics. For instanceyou have qualities like you have delicate, polished, and grand.Delicate relics have one passive bonus, polished relics have two passive bonuses, and grand have three passive bonuses.
Lastly, there are specific relics that you’re able to get that only benefit certain characters like their passive benefit only applies if it’s slotted into Duchess or only applies if it’s slotted into Guardian. So you want to be on the lookout for those and slot them into the appropriate Nightfarer for maximum impact. I really wish I could show you this but we will have all this on the wiki for the network test. I don’t have all of these currently but as the network test continues we’ll keep adding them and updating them so you can see what all of these are.
So that wraps up our article on the Nightfarers or classes of Elden Ring Nightreign. I hope this gave you some insight into them if you’re playing the network test or maybe you just wanted more information even if you’re not playing. If you have further questions about these classes please ask me in the comments and I will try and reply. I tried to get everything in here that I could but I may have missed some things.
