Elden Ring Nightreign is filled with excellent loot for Nightfarers to wield, on your expedition to take down the Nightlords. But how excellent can it get? Well, one player who found a rare weapon and decided to find out has gone viral for building their blade up into the ultimate Nightlord-slaying machine — only to see it also then ultimately tumble back down to nothing.
All of this centers on Japanese YouTuber mintius (via Automaton Media), who acquired the Marais Executioner Sword, a weapon that raises attack power upon defeating enemies — but usually only by a certain amount.
Given that Nightreign usually has time limits, thanks to its encroaching storm, this sword's power wouldn't normally have the chance to snowball too far out of control, despite being a strong weapon. But Mintius managed to get the right combination of enemy and encounter spawns to scale it as far as it can go, and then even further.
Per Automaton's translation, Mintius hunted mobs in the Wormface encounter for "about an hour" with the Marais Executioner Sword, to see what would happen. Their attack power hit a damage cap at 9,999 after defeating 725 enemies, with the last damage value he saw as 63,375. After defeating the 727th enemy, though, Mintius was "suddenly unable to deal any damage at all," and got killed.
「マレー家の執行剣」で1時間ほどミミズ顔の雑魚を狩り続けて検証
727体の敵を撃破して攻撃力は9999で余裕のカンスト
最後にステータスから確認したマレー家の執行剣の表示攻撃力は63375
725体目を撃破したところで、突如として全ての敵へ一切ダメージを与えられない状態になり死亡した pic.twitter.com/q95neZfdu3— 負けミン mintius (@amabamamabam1) June 24, 2025
The going theory is that Mintius hit an "overflow," and suddenly went from hitting the damage ceiling to scraping the damage floor. Much like the internet tall-tale about Gandhi in Civilization, hitting the upper-limit may have caused Mintius to wrap back around to the lower.
Mintius is apparently going to continue testing the Marais Executioner Sword, to see what kind of limits and bounds exist on it, as well as the incredible damage potential behind it. They apparently want to try doing a plunging attack on a Flame Chariot, just to see what kind of damage numbers it can put up. It will probably get wild.
For the average Elden Ring Nightreign player, maybe take this as a sign to not get too greedy in farming up that Marais Executioner Sword when you find it. Or at least, don't spend an hour doing so. It certainly seems like a good weapon, but it looks like there's some hubris to be found in trying to take it to its highest heights.
We’ve got plenty of Nightreign tips and tricks to help you take down all the eight Nightlord Bosses, and if you’re wondering how to unlock the two locked Nightfarer Classes, check out How to Unlock the Revenant and How to Unlock the Duchess, plus How to Change Characters.
Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.
