Elden Ring Nightreign gets a free ‘high difficulty mode’ called Deep of Night
Players can earn a rank which makes the mode progressively harder
Elden Ring Nightreign has received a free update which adds a new “high difficulty mode”.
The new mode, which is called Deep of Night, adds new challenges to the game and introduces a new ranking system which makes runs progressively harder.
To access Deep of Night mode, players need to have first defeated the Night Aspect Nightlord.
“Using the skills you’ve honed through countless nights, navigate through Limveld while the land is teeming with enhanced enemies and challenge an unknown Nightlord,” Bandai Namco says.
Players won’t be told who their target Nightlord is until their Deep of Night expedition begins, and any ongoing Shifting Earth states aren’t in effect during the run.
Enemies in this mode will be stronger than they are in the normal game, while even more powerful ‘variants’, who can be identified by their red sheen, can also be encountered.
To help get through the mode, players can find weapons with multiple additional effects, some of which are new to Deep of Night mode.
“If you choose and utilize these new weapon effects with future battles in mind, you can gain enhancements that make even powerful enemies insignificant,” the publisher suggests.
The main twist in Deep of Night mode is the Depth rating. Every time players defeat a Nightlord their rating will increase, which eventually lets them reach the next ‘Depth’.
As the Depth goes up, enemies get even stronger and other effects come into play, such as key points on the map being hidden or the target Nightlord being kept unknown until the final battle starts. Players will be matched up with similar Depth level in multiplayer.
Players who complete Deep of Night expeditions will also earn Depths Relics. These can only be activated in Deep of Night mode and give a new range of powers and detrimental effects, with three extra relic slots added for them.
Elden Ring Nightreign was released earlier this year, and despite a lukewarm reception from players, the game has performed well. According to SteamDB, the game reached a peak of 313,593 concurrent users on Steam an hour after its release. This was FromSoftware’s second-highest maximum peak for a game, behind the 953,426 peak achieved by Elden Ring itself.
The game sold 2 million copies during its first day, according to its publisher Bandai Namco. By the end of July it had crossed 5 million units sold.
VGC’s Elden Ring Nightreign review called it “a clumsy multiplayer sideshow to the generation’s best RPG,” saying: “While its rougelike elements may entertain, a lack of variety and uneven combat system ultimately make for a curious sideshow that doesn’t come close to the series that shares its name.”
