I only played one or two rounds of Nightreign (FromSoft) today, and it’s for a prosaic reason. The Switch 2 dropped, and I have had a devil of a time trying to matchmake. Now, the systems are down for maintenance and for a patch that improves Remembrance matchmaking. Before I go on, here is the post from yesterday.
Brief explanation. There are eight classes in Nightreign (called Nightfarers). Each class has a personal questline that you have to do Remembrances for. In order to do them, only one person in the party, the host, will get credit for doing the Remembrance. I think that meant that if you were trying to do a Remembrance, you could not get matched with other people also trying to do a Remembrance. You can probably see the issue with this.
Mainly, everyone in the first week will be working towards their Remembrance. And it would feel like a waste to do a run and NOT get credit for whatever Remembrance you’re working towards. For the Recluse, I’m working on (I think) the last part of her Remembrance–which is beating four Nightlords (simplified. No one seems really sure what exactly you need to do, but that’s the basic gist).
I’m hoping that they’re going to make it so everyone in the party can be working on a Remembrance at the same time. I can see why they might not want to do that (I know nothing about coding. I have the vague idea that something something mutter mutter cross-purposes of the Remembrances, but whatever. It’s a frustrating restriction).
In the one run I acutally played today, I was taking on the third boss. I had gone into the third world once before (yesterday), and I could tell that it was going to be much harder. I got a good duo, and again, they were working in harmony. We had a raid event, which I didn’t even know was a thing. Apparently, its’ one of the Nightlords in a simplied version or something? Or maybe not a simplified version. I don’t know. I have tried to avoid spoilers about the bosses, but when I looked up Augur to see what it was, I found out it was one of the Nightlords.
There are signs where the event is happening. I’m not entirely sure how you’re supposed to know when it happens because people are contradictory on it, but I got an achievement for it. I also read that this particular one is really rare. I found the Augur itself really easy, which was nice.
We cruised through the first two days/nights, honestly. I will say that we took on a field boss we probably shouldn’t have, and I lost two levels. At least I think it was that run. At any rate, it wasn’t as good a run as when I beat the second Nightlord, but I wasn’t expecting it to be great because it was my first real run towards the third Nightlord.
Side note: I really can’t overemphasize how important it is to be at least Level 10 for the Nightlord. Being able to withstand two hits is such a gamechanger. And 6 Estus Flasks as well.
I went into the 3rd Nightlord feeling oddly calm. Not because I thought we were going to do it, but because I had gotten that far on my first real run into the third world. (Actually the same world, but with a different configuration and added really hard things. I told Ian that for the first time, I don’t feel like a complete drag on the team. Like, I can actually contribute and do good things. I’m still probably going to have to be revived once or twice a run, but I’ve mostly made my peace with that.
This boss is…not fun. And frustrating in a completely different way than the last. I had heard about it, and there are some people who think this is the worst boss in the game. I mean, I could probably find plenty of people who struggle against each boss because they are very different. The one thing they all have in common is that they are all in a huge arena (the same one, it looks like. Basically jsut endless reams of sand and dunes) wiuth no sense of depth or space.
The last boss in the base game of Elden Ring was in an arena like this, and it drove me crazy. It’s actually disappointing that the Nightlords are all in the same arena. I already know this boss is going to be a pain in my ass. I’m tempted to do at least one run in each of the other worlds just to see how they differ. It’s hard for me to do that, though. I tend to be very much a list follower when it comes to things like this.
The servers were down tonight so I decided to work on the Remembrances (personal quests for each character). I had gotten the Recluse as far as I could without beating several Nightlords, so I checked out the other characters. You have to unlock the Remembrances for each character, and in a true FromSoft fashion, it’s different for each one. Because I can’t be stuffed to stumble around figuring it out, I have looked it up. And no one can agree as to the specific steps. With the Recluse, I am not quite sure because I beat the first Nightlord on my second run. You have to get a Memory Fragment in order to unlock the first Remembrance, and the one surefire way of getting one is to kill a Nightlord.
You can get them from a run, anyway, but no one is quite sure how long the run has to be. I took the Raider out for a run, and I died on the first night boss. I still got the Memory Fragment, so maybe it’s just you have to make it to the first night boss? With Wylder, I was already on Chapter 3 somehow. For that, I had to run into a mine, take out a Crystallian boss (god, I hate those things, but it wasn’t too bad. I died once, but was able to get it on my second run), which secured a whetstone that I had to take back to the Iron Menial in the Roundtable.
There is disagreement as to what unlocks Chapter 5 with some people saying it immediately unlocks, but it didn’t for me. Then again, I was not online when I finished the previous Remembrance. I don’t know if that makes a difference.
This is when I get imptaient with FromSoft. I love the obfuscation of the lore and reading item descriptions to glean clues as to what the hell is going on. The NPC quests, on the other hand, can be quite frustrating. And fiddly. On a first playthrough, I try not to look things up because I want the organic experience. But then I miss out on awesome shit that don’t hit quite as hard the second time through the game.
The example of this that is the most stark is the NPC questlines in the Shadow of the Erdtree. If you don’t do four questlines in very specific ways for each (well, one is still being debated as to what you can and can’t do in it, and in what order), an epic fight at the end of the game turns out in a very different (and pathetic) way.
Bedtime! More tomorrow.