One of the biggest questions left over after Elden Ring Nightreign’s network test back in February was: “How will the world of Limveld change in the real game”? After all, Nightreign is, for all intents and purposes, a roguelite. And one of the core elements of any roguelite is a degree of randomness or procedural generation that ensures that every run feels just a little bit different. Nightreign has that in the loot department, with every run giving you different rewards and forcing you to cobble together a build based on what you’re able to find within that run; and also in the enemy and boss department, since none of the boss encounters are static, with the sole exception of the Nightlord battle on Day 3. But as far as the world of Limveld, we never really got a chance to see how it changes from run to run during the Network Test.
During my two days of playtime at FromSoft’s office and over the course of about 10 full runs, I got my answer. Here’s how Limveld will change from run-to-run in Elden Ring Nightreign:
Elden Ring Nightreign: How Limveld Will Change
Actually, we jumped the gun. Before we go into the ways Limveld will change, let’s quickly establish what doesn’t change:
- This overall structure of Limveld will not change. The shape of the island, the major geographical features, the positioning of the cliffs, rivers, and lakes, will all be the same, barring a few major exceptions that we’ll cover in just a bit.
- The locations of sites of grace, evergaols, the launching spirit springs, cave entrances and exits, the spectral trees and the wind currents, all of these are static and do not change location from run-to-run.
- There is also a giant castle that features exceptionally tough battles and big rewards right smack in the middle of the map that will never change.
Everything else, from the locations of all of the rest of the points of interest, the types of rewards offered at those points of interest, to the wandering mini-bosses, and the bosses you’ll fight at the end of Day 1 and 2 are left completely up to chance.
That said, there are two other huge factors that can completely alter a run. The first are world events known as “Shifting Earth”. Occasionally, before you even launch into a level, you’ll be made aware that there is a Shifting Earth modifier in effect. In our playtime, the one we encountered was “Crater,” which transformed the northern section of the map, placing a giant crater in the middle and rivers of lava all around it. The enemies around and inside the crater are no joke, and wiped the floor with us when we first attempted to even get close enough to investigate the crater on the first day.
But investigate it you should, and you should do so as soon as the second day begins, if you’re up to the challenge. Exploring the crater took us pretty much the entirety of the second day, but when we did eventually make it all the way to the bottom, we beat a boss that granted us an epic rarity level reward by itself, but then also the unique reward of being able to take any weapon in our arsenal and upgrade it to max for free! It’s a risky endeavor though, as in order to escape from the crater, you need to use a bunch of spectral trees and ride the hawks from platform to platform as you try to escape, which will certainly lead to nail-biting escape sequences when you take too long in the crater and now must race against the clock to get out while the circle closes in around you.
The other big way that runs can change are through the appearance of certain events that seem to occur completely randomly and can throw a huge wrench into an otherwise routine run. I’ve seen a couple of these, and some might be familiar with the Margit invasion from the Network Test, in which Margit the Fell will just all of a sudden jump into your game and mercilessly hunt your squad down wherever they are.
But a new one that I encountered involved the appearance of a swirling tornado-like phenomenon in the sky. When our squad approached it, we were suddenly attacked by a very tough group of AI-controlled Nightfarers who seemingly invaded us from another world. Like typical NPC invasions in Elden Ring, these enemies were smarter and hit a lot harder than typical enemies, making it another big risk/reward consideration to explore the areas near one of these ominous swirling tornadoes in the sky.
The most impactful of all of these random events, though, was the appearance of a mysterious boss that would attack from miles away with mortar shots of level-sapping bugs. That's right, get hit even just once by these telegraphed mortar strikes, and you lose a level. It’s not even limited to losing just one. Get a hit again, it’ll take another level from you. The only way to get those levels back is to find and kill the boss by following the bugs to his hiding spot. Unfortunately, I don’t have footage of this, nor do I know what the reward is for killing him, because by the time we found the boss by following the bugs, the circle had started encroaching, and we just wouldn’t have been able to kill him before the circle killed us. I’m not going to lie, It was pretty soul-crushing to have to just give up on those levels that he stole from us, and it really kind of doomed our run right from day one.
There are certainly more of these that I still haven’t encountered, like the forest of corruption, the madness towers, and more that we can see in the overview trailer released by FromSoftware. It’s worth mentioning as well that if you don’t like the Shifting Earth modifier that will affect the world, you can use the bed in the Roundtable Hold to sleep to either remove the modifier or have it be replaced by something else.
As devastating as some of these modifiers can be, I’m nonetheless eagerly anticipating seeing more of them. They inject a healthy level of chaos into what otherwise might start to feel very routine, and led to some great emergent moments with high emotion between me and my squadmates as we raced to escape the crater, or panicked at an unexpected ambush, or felt true despair as we realized the levels that were stolen from us were gone forever. Moments like these are the heart of any good roguelite, and hopefully Nightreign is able to keep them coming at a steady pace.
