Elden Ring Nightreign characters tier list and the best ones to pick

Our Elden Ring Nightreign character tier rates all ten Nightfarer classes, with some proving to be excellent all-rounders that are almost essential for any Expedition, while others are hard to master or highly specialized. Thankfully, every class is at least good, so there's little chance of you picking a character and being completely useless as them, but the variety of characters and distinct playstyles – from wielding hefty melee weapons or long-range bows to parrying and casting spells – means there's a lot to learn. Having spent many hours testing each character on various runs, I've explained the most important things you need to know about every Nightreign character, as well as how good they are in a tier list.

Elden Ring Nightreign character tier list

From testing all the Nightreign characters extensively, I can safely say they are all perfectly viable at the very least. However, your effectiveness with each will largely depend on your preferred playstyle in Elden Ring Nightreign and mastery over their individual abilities, with some characters being much harder to master than others:

• S-Tier: The most powerful Nightfarers who are effective against a range of foes
  • Ironeye: The Ironeye is an excellent all-rounder and great for exploiting the weaknesses of the various Nightlords. Ranged damage is crucial in Nightreign and it's the Ironeye's area of expertise, helping him chip away at bosses from afar, often drawing their attention to help the melee fighters score some easy hits. His Single Shot ultimate is great for staggering bosses to cancel attacks or even break their stance for critical hits too.
  • Wylder: Beginner-friendly and forgiving but still highly effective, the Wylder is a solid Nightfarer to play as, capable of wielding a massive range of melee weapons effectively. Good use of his grappling hook can help you get out of danger or keep pressure on bosses, especially with his powerful Onslaught Stake too, and a free do-over to avoid death is nice to have.
• A-Tier: Strong classes that excel in a particular niche
  • Undertaker: The Undertaker sits between the Wylder and Raider, balancing hard-hitting melee strikes with mobility. That makes her a really strong Nightfarer but only if you're prepared to make the most out of her hyper-aggressive abilities.
  • Recluse: As an S-rated Int/Fai magic user, Recluse can cast a huge range of powerful sorceries and incantations, and even gets FP regeneration for theoretically infinite casting. However, her abilities are quite fiddly and getting the most out of them requires good resource management and teammates who can run interference in the frontline to keep enemies away from you.
  • Duchess: Duchess has the best dodge, a skill that massively increases damage output when used at the right time, and an Ultimate Art that makes the whole team invisible, but is somewhat let down by some average stats. As a result, she's very versatile but also a bit of a master of none.
  • Raider: Raider is quite a simple character, but the slow and mighty Strength-oriented playstyle isn't as easy as it looks. With that said, well-timed abilities and careful positioning and attacks will result in a massive damage output and plenty of opportunities for critical hits against bosses.
  • Executor: In the right hands, Executor can be lethal, particularly against bosses, thanks to his Cursed Sword parries and high Dexterity. The problem is that parrying consistently and effectively isn't easy and can be tricky to master, so this character simply won't be for everyone.
• B-Tier: Good characters that have a couple of obvious flaws
  • Guardian: Guardian doesn't have the greatest damage output, but his disruptive crowd-control abilities are perfect against regular enemies, and his defensive guard is great for mitigating damage from bosses. Wings of Salvation is also quite powerful, being an excellent ability for protecting and reviving teammates.
  • Scholar: The Scholar's mostly underwhelming base stats and complicated abilities mean he is far from being beginner friendly. But master the many layers of his complex kit and he can be a potent and versatile support character, capable of dealing excellent status ailment damage, debuffing enemies, and bolstering allies all at once.
  • Revenant: A solid support character who can help the team with spirit summons and her Immortal March ultimate, which can revive downed teammates and potentially save an Expedition. However, her spellcasting is easily outclassed by the Recluse and her summons can be unreliable during boss fights.

Every character in Elden Ring Nightreign explained

Before starting a run, you and your co-op allies get to pick one of ten Elden Ring Nightreign character classes to play as. Each one comes with bespoke stats, a Passive Ability, a Character Skill (Triangle + L2/Y + LT), and a powerful Ultimate Art (Triangle + R2/Y + RT) with a long cooldown. You can even have more than one of the same character in your Nightreign squad but bear in mind that you’ll want a well-rounded team for fighting basic enemies and massively varied Nightreign bosses on any Expedition.

Unlike in Elden Ring where weapons have stat requirements, every character can wield any weapon, but a weapon's power is partly determined by the character's scaling stats, such as Strength and Dexterity. That means you still need to pick the right weapons for the character you're playing as – preferably the ones with scaling that matches the character's A or S-rated stats – and we've explained the best Nightreign weapons for each character here!

These stats can't be tweaked individually when leveling up at a Site of Grace, as in Elden Ring. Instead they all increase by a set amount with each level, boosting your HP, FP, Stamina, and damage with relevant weapons and spells. You also don't need to worry about armor and can even unlock Nightreign skins to change their garb.

To help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of every Nightreign character, I've listed their level 1 stats (HP, FP, and Stamina) and Attributes, as well as how the basics of their abilities:

Nightreign Wylder

The Wylder is the generic knight character in Nightreign, though that doesn't mean he doesn't have a few cool tricks up his gauntlets. Packing solid stats, including high Strength, he can wield a variety of weapons capably, and gets to use a grappling hook for agility and a powerful exploding crossbow bolt that's great for staggering larger enemies and bosses. The Wylder is an excellent all-rounder, being both beginner-friendly and suitable for experienced players.

• HP: 260
• FP: 65
• Stamina: 54
• Strength: A
• Dexterity: B
• Intelligence: C
• Faith: C
• Arcane: C
• Starting weapons: Wylder's Greatsword (Stamp, Upward Cut) and Wylder's Small Shield (Buckler Parry)
• Preferred weapon type: Greatswords
• Passive Ability – Sixth Sense: Cheat death a single time by negating lethal damage. You won't benefit from this ability again until you reset it, either by dying or by passing through a Site of Grace.
• Character Skill – Claw Shot: Fire out a grappling hook to reel in smaller enemies or pull yourself towards larger enemies, bosses, and the environment. Good for breaking the guard of defensive opponents. Holding the inputs lets you see your point of aim before grappling.
• Ultimate Art – Onslaught Stake: Fire a very short-range exploding bolt from Wylder's wrist crossbow. Tap the inputs to fire the shot quickly, causing Wylder to get knocked backbut also reduce the cooldown for the next stake. Alternatively, hold the inputs to fully charge up the stake, increasing its damage and stagger power and keeping Wylder on his feet.

Nightreign Guardian

The Guardian is a heavily armored eagle man with very high HP and stamina compared to the other Nightreign classes. He mainly acts as a tank, using his defensive powers, mainly shields and Wings of Salvation, to soak up attacks from the frontline while also disrupting enemies with his Whirlwind. His damage output is far from the best, but he's an asset to most teams because of his supportive offerings.

• HP: 280
• FP: 55
• Stamina: 60
• Strength: B
• Dexterity: C
• Intelligence: D
• Faith: C
• Arcane: C
• Starting Armaments: Guardian's Halberd (Charge Forth) and Guardian's Greatshield
• Preferred weapon types: Halberds
• Passive Ability – Steel Guard: Dodge while blocking with a shield to brace yourself and improve your guard. Blocking attacks in this state does not drain stamina but you move more your stamina drains continuously, limiting the duration of Steel Guard.
• Character Skill – Whirlwind: Create a small cyclone in front of you, launching smaller enemies into the air and dealing small amount of damage. Enemies that aren't launched are pulled towards its center. Hold the inputs to make the cyclone larger.
• Ultimate Art – Wings of Salvation: Leap into the air and fly for a moment before crashing down, dealing high damage in a large area and knocking away smaller foes. Continue holding the inputs create and miantain a protective area where you land, making yourself and allies in the area invulnerable. You can hold this protective area for about six seconds but are unable to do anything else while doing so.

Nightreign Ironeye

As an assassin archer, the Ironeye’s kit is based around ranged combat in Nightreign. His high Dexterity stat means he can wield bows and many melee weapons that require a bit more finesse, and his high Arcane stat also means he's good at applying status ailments like Poison, Scarlet Rot, and Blood Loss. Ironeye is therefore one of the more versatile Nightfarers, capable of dealing great damage and helping his team with through his abilities.

• HP: 200
• FP: 65
• Stamina: 56
• Strength: C
• Dexterity: A
• Intelligence: D
• Faith: D
• Arcane: B
• Starting Armaments: Ironeye's Bow (Mighty Shot)
• Preferred weapon types: Bows
• Passive Ability – Eagle Eye: Increased item drop rate from defeated enemies for yourself and your allies.
• Character Skill – Marking: Dash forward, slicing a foe in front of you with a dagger, creating a temporary weak point highlighted for all allies. Damaging the weak point extends its duration until it is eventually destroyed, which then staggers the affected enemy.
• Ultimate Art – Single Shot: Fire a massive supersonic arrow that deals high damage and stagger. It also ignores pretty much everything in its path, so it can penetrate any enemy and even structures and natural terrain.

Nightreign Duchess

The Duchess is the nimblest Nightreign character owing to her unique Bloodborne-style quickstep dodge. She is also very versatile thanks to her good Dexterity, Faith, and Intelligence, making her excellent with a wide range of melee weapons and sorceries. However, the rest of her stats aren't great, leaving her as more of a glass cannon assassin character who can attack quickly before escaping.

• HP: 220
• FP: 75
• Stamina: 54
• Strength: D
• Dexterity: B
• Intelligence: A
• Faith: B
• Arcane: C
• Starting Armaments: Duchess' Dagger (Magic Dagger)
• Preferred weapon types: Daggers
• Passive Ability – Magnificent Poise: Rather than a traditional roll, Duchess has a fast quickstep dodge. Repeatedly pressing the dodge input causes her to perform a double step dodge that lets her travel much further than usual. Her dodges and attacks also consume less stamina compared to other Nightfarers.
• Character Skill – Restage: Repeat any damage dealt to a single enemy in second before activation. This manifests as a ghost of that enemy getting hit again though this is purely visual. You can also use Restage at any time, including during critical hits.
• Ultimate Art – Finale: Make yourself and any nearby allies invisible for about 12 seconds. Attacking an enemy or getting hit by a stray attack does not end the invisibility effect.

You need to unlock the Nightreign Duchess by beating the game's first Nightlord, the Nightreign Tricephalos. Then, if you want help with the Nightreign Duchess Remembrance, we've got that covered too!

Nightreign Raider

The Raider is Elden Ring Nightreign’s brutish barbarian character and has the highest possible strength rating, which makes him excellent for those wanting to wield the largest weapons in the game – make sure you know how to switch to a Nightreign two-hand grip! He’s also got plenty of health and stamina, making him excellent for getting close to foes and beating them senseless, particularly by crashing his Totem Stela into them, while also being able to take a beating himself. However, the rest of his stats are lacking.

• HP: 260
• FP: 55
• Stamina: 60
• Strength: S
• Dexterity: C
• Intelligence: D
• Faith: D
• Arcane: C
• Starting Armaments: Raider's Greataxe (Endure)
• Preferred weapon types: Greataxes, Great Hammers, and Colossal weapons
• Passive Ability – Fighter’s Resolve: Raider cannot be knocked down while using his Retaliate skill and taking enough damage empowers his next Retaliate punch (you'll know he's empowered when steam starts pouring out of him). Raider can also survive heavy damage, being taken down to a minuscule amount of health.
• Character Skill – Retaliate: A powerful stomp and punch combo that knocks back smaller enemies and deals high stagger to larger foes and bosses. While winding up Retaliate, damage resistance is increased.
• Ultimate Art – Totem Stela: Summon a giant tombstone from the ground, dealing damage to nearby enemies as it erupts. The totem has its own protective aura and provides a temporary Strength boost to yourself and nearby allies. The tombstone can also be climbed on, providing a nice height advantage and a good place to deliver a powered-up jump attack!

Nightreign Revenant

The Revenant is Nightreign's resident necromancer class, being able to conjure spirits of her dead family and those of enemies recently killed during your expedition. Her damage output isn't incredible, but she makes for a great support character, particularly as she's a Faith-based magic user, meaning she can use a whole host of buffing and damaging incantations, provided you can get her a good Sacred Seal.

• HP: 240
• FP: 80
• Stamina: 54
• Strength: C
• Dexterity: C
• Intelligence: B
• Faith: S
• Arcane: B
• Starting Armaments: Revenant's Cursed Claws (White Shadow's Lure)
• Preferred weapon types: Scared Seals for incantations
• Passive Ability – Necromancy: Some defeated enemies briefly come back as ghosts to fight as allies before dissipating. This happens automatically every so often
• Character Skill – Summon Spirit: Press the skill input to get Revenant to pull out her lyre, then press one of the summon inputs to conjure one of three familial spirits to help in battle. You can only one spirit active at a time and if one dies, it becomes temporarily unavailable. You can also press L2/LT to deactivate your current spirit.
  • R1/RB = Helen, a nimble page who fights with a thrusting sword
  • R2/RT = Frederick, a big Pumpkin Head cook who attacks with a massive hammer
  • L1/LB = Sebastian, a giant skeleton butler who slams enemies with his one arm, roars, and fires lasers
• Ultimate Art – Immortal March: Make yourself and nearby allies (including the family spirits above) immortal. You can still take damage while this effect is active, marked by a pale flame within your character, but cannot die. You can also use this to revive knocked-down allies.

The Nightreign Revenant isn't available at the start of the game, and you'll need to unlock her by fighting her first.

Nightreign Recluse

The Recluse's whole deal is casting powerful spells of any kind as she's rated S-tier in both Intelligence for sorceries and Faith for incantations. That means she can pack plenty of offensive or defensive power, or a combination, depending on the staves and seals you find. However, with complex abilities to figure out in the heat of battle and limited HP and FP, she's tough to master. As such, we've got a separate Nightreign Recluse guide to help you understand how she works.

• HP: 200
• FP: 80
• Stamina: 54
• Strength: D
• Dexterity: C
• Intelligence: S
• Faith: S
• Arcane: C
• Starting Armaments: Recluse's Staff (Glintstone Pebble and Glintstone Arc)
• Preferred weapon types: Scared Seals for incantations or Glintstone staves for sorceries
• Passive Ability – Elemental Defense: Discover affinity residues by using affinity attacks (these are attacks that deal Magic, Fire, Holy, or Lightning damage) on enemies. You'll know when a residue can be collected when an enemy has a colored marker around their lock-on dot. Residues can also be created by allies and restore FP when collected.
• Character Skill – Magic Cocktail: When an affinity residue is created, use this skill to collect it, adding it to your Magic Cocktail. Once any three residues have been collected, you can unleash a unique spell. The spell's power and effects depend on the residues you collect.
• Ultimate Art – Soulblood Song: Temporarily mark nearby enemies with blood sigils, causing them to take increased damage. Whenever a blood-marked enemy is hit, you occasionally regain FP and HP.

Nightreign Executor

Executor is one of the more challenging Elden Ring Nightreign classes to play as with Sekiro-style parrying being a core part of his kit with his Cursed Sword. That means he struggles against groups of enemies, but his crucible beast ultimate helps with that to a degree. He also has the highest possible, Dexterity rating, making him excellent at wielding all sorts of weapons and his high Arcane rating means Blood Loss weapons are especially lethal in his hands.

• HP: 260
• FP: 55
• Stamina: 54
• Strength: C
• Dexterity: S
• Intelligence: D
• Faith: D
• Arcane: S
• Starting Armaments: Executor's Blade (Unsheathe)
• Preferred weapon types: Katana
• Passive Ability – Tenacity: After recovering from a status ailment (Blood Loss, Madness, Poison, Scarlet Rot Frostbite, etc), you briefly gain increased attack and stamina recovery speed.
• Character Skill – Cursed Sword: Draw a cursed sword that can be used to deflect enemy attacks – you need to block right before an attack hits you to successfully deflect. You can use the cursed sword like any other sword, but deflecting attacks not only deals stance damage to enemies, but also empowers the blade, causing it to glow gold. While the sword is powered up, it deals much more damage, particularly with its special lunge skill. However, whenever you have the cursed sword drawn, you move very slowly, and sprinting causes you to sheath it.
  • The cursed sword has no cooldown and can be drawn whenever you need it. The empowering effect also persists even when you sheath the sword and after death! The only thing that removes the effect is using the sword's lunge skill.
• Ultimate Art – Aspects of the Crucible: Beast: Transform into a massive crucible beast and gain unique attacks and combos that are great for menacing groups of smaller enemies. The beast has massively increased health and fully heals Executor when activated. The beast form also lasts until your Ultimate Art gauge drains fully or immediately after using the beast's special skill (L2/LT). You can also manually transform back by pressing the Ultimate Art inputs again.

Nightreign Scholar

The Scholar's kit has many layers to it and is more oriented towards support than pure damage. That makes him quite a difficult character to learn, requiring a more cautious playstyle too, but he can be very effective in the right hands. Good use of all three of his abilities will allow him to massively help his teammates in any situation, and his S-rated Arcane stat means much of his damage can come from potent status ailments such as Blood Loss, Frostbite, and Scarlet Rot if you have those available to you. Our Nightreign Scholar guide should help you master the ways of this bookish support character.

• HP: 220
• FP: 65
• Stamina: 54
• Strength: D
• Dexterity: C
• Intelligence: C
• Faith: C
• Arcane: S
• Starting Armament: Scholar's Thrusting Sword (Repeating Thrust)
• Preferred weapon type: Thrusting Swords
• Passive – Bagcraft: Carry more consumable items per stack and level them up by using them.
• Skill – Analyze: Scan enemies in your field of view, then press R2/RT to apply buffs to yourself or L2/LT to apply debuffs to the targeted enemies. The longer you analyze, the more powerful the buffs or debuffs
• Ultimate Art – Communion: Nearby allies and enemies become threaded. Threaded enemies share a portion of damage taken to each other and threaded allies receive a portion of your healing.

We can also help you out if you're trying to get through the tricky Nightreign Scholar Remembrance quest.

Elden Ring Nightreign Undertaker

The Undertaker's kit revolves around strong melee attacks and high mobility, with both her Passive and Skill granting free uses of her Loathsome Hex Ultimate Art. It's not the most powerful Ultimate in Nightreign, but the fact that she can use it so often makes the Undertaker great for aggressively pummelling bosses, potentially interrupting their attacks and opening them up for critical hits. She's not as strong as the Raider or as versatile as the Wylder but does have high Faith, meaning she can make use of sacred seals to stack buffs and deliver more damage. To help you master her kit, you can check out our Nightreign Undertaker guide.

• HP: 220
• FP: 65
• Stamina: 54
• Strength: A
• Dexterity: D
• Intelligence: D
• Faith: A
• Arcane: C
• Starting Armaments: Undertaker's Hammer (Prayerful Strike)
• Preferred weapon types: Hammers
• Passive Ability – Confluence: When an ally uses their Ultimate Art, you can use your own Ultimate Art for free. Certain enemy attacks also trigger this effect. You'll know when you have a free use of your Ultimate because the icon will turn purple.
• Character Skill – Trance: Enter a temporary state where your mobility is increased and successive attacks deal more damage. Using your Ultimate in this state gives you a second, free use.
• Ultimate Art – Loathsome Hex: Fly rapidly at a target and do a single, high-damage strike to them.

If you're trying to complete the Nightreign Undertaker Remembrance, we've got some pointers for you.

Those are all ten Elden Ring Nightreign classes you can play now, including the two characters released with The Forsaken Hollows DLC. More characters could arrive in future DLCs, but we don't know of any more coming yet.

If you're trying to beat the Forsaken Hollows DLC, you'll need to know how to overcome the Nightreign Great Hollow event and beat the Nightreign Balancers and Nightreign Dreglord bosses.

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