On the heels of the biggest Elden Ring Nightreign patch yet, developer FromSoftware and publisher Bandai Namco released a new trailer for the action RPG's incoming Deep of Night mode, which will bring new challenges, gear, and multi-day sagas.
Deep of Night is coming to Elden Ring Nightreign today, September 10, at 6:30pm PT / 9:30pm ET / 2:30am BT (September 11). This "high-difficulty" mode sees players cleave through day after day of bosses and enhanced enemies to delve deeper into the night, with Depth 4 being some sort of finale that leads into an "endless battle for those seeking even greater thrills."
"We encourage you to try and see if you can surpass Depth 3," Bandai previously teased.
Today's trailer goes into much more, er, depth. Deep of Night modifies the normal gameplay loop with a new tier of gear, special weapon affixes, and three extra slots for relics with their own unique affixes.
"Depth Relics" are only active in Deep of Night, and since you get three extra slots for a total of six, they won't derail your normal builds.
These relics can roll new and stronger effects, as well as detrimental effects to counterbalance them. It looks like every roll can have a downside, so you'll have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages against each other for your build.
Here are some of the new negative relic effects shown in the trailer:
- Reduced Vigor and Arcane
- Reduced Dexterity and Faith
- Reduced Intelligence and Dexterity
- Taking damage causes Madness buildup
- Taking damage causes Poison buildup
- Taking damage causes Blood Loss buildup
- Reduce damage negation for flask usages
- Lower attack when below max HP
- Poison buildup when below max HP
- Rot buildup when below max HP
- Near death reduces max HP
Some weapons will also spawn with multiple affixes – some positive, some negative. In the trailer footage, there's a recurring theme of negative affixes punishing you for being below full health, but there's a greater variety of effects beyond that. You can also roll multiple positive affixes on one weapon, it seems.
Red-grade weapons, which share the level 7 wield requirement of purple-rarity weapons, feature unique new bonuses. We saw a Jar Cannon that summons lightning on precision shots, and a Blade of Calling that triggers Holy shockwaves on charged attacks.
Even normal enemies will be stronger in this mode, and super-buffed red-tinged variants will also appear. Terrifyingly, this includes a red version of the Bell Bearing Hunter, an enemy so tanky and lethal even in normal Nightreign that most players avoid it entirely. As you might expect, these variants drop those fancy red weapons. Red-eyed, red-tinged BBH, here we come.
"In Deep of Night, the target Nightlord will not be revealed until the battle begins, and ongoing Shifting Earth at the Roundtable Hold will not be reflected," the trailer narrator explains.
"It is advisable to prepare relic presets in advance to be ready for each Nightlord fight."
The deeper you go, the stronger enemies become. You'll also run into special modifiers, including a nasty one that conceals points of interest on the map and another that completely hides the target Nightlord. Additionally, Everdark Nightlords can randomly appear.
With Everdark versions of all the non-final Nightlord bosses already available, Deep of Night feels like the next step in the Nightreign arms race as we wait on that DLC. The fact that it has a true endless mode feels like FromSoftware saying, "Here you go, sickos, knock yourselves out." And as a sicko who was just getting tired of Nightreign, yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back.
I love Elden Ring Nightreign but I'm not sure if it's good for my mental health.
