Elden Ring Nightreign is a PvE gauntlet designed for teams of three, and it really encourages matchmaking, though there is soft balancing to accommodate solo play despite the unavoidable risks of going it alone without buddies who can revive your downed corporeal form by lovingly hitting it with swords. The idea of playing with exactly one other friend, however, kind of got lost in the mix. You either drop in alone or the game gives you a team of three. But director Junya Ishizaki says FromSoftware hasn’t abandoned squads of two.
Speaking with IGN, Ishizaki explains the lack of dedicated duo play in Nightreign. “The simple answer is that this is simply something that was overlooked during development as just a two-player option, so we’re very sorry about that,” he says.
“As we said before, we set out to make this a multiplayer co-op game for three players, balanced for three players, so that was the main focus and it’s at the core of Nightreign,” he continues. “Of course, I myself as a player understand that and often want times where I’m just playing myself, so this is something that we considered from the start. And so we did put a lot of effort into creating this experience that was playable for solo players in as much as the rules and new systems allowed.”
While “we kind of overlooked and neglected the duos aspect,” Ishizaki says “this is something that we are looking at and considering for post-launch support as well.”
For the time being, the only post-launch updates confirmed for Nightreign are the contents of its DLC, which includes new characters, bosses, and map biomes. From Ishizaki’s comments, it sounds like player feedback could inspire more granular updates aimed at specific gameplay experiences, including a more bespoke two-player run.
So, can you play Elden Ring Nightreign solo? Yes, with some asterisks. One way that Nightreign numbs the sting of solo play is “a self-revive feature” that you can find out in the map, Ishizaki told IGN. It’s a limited life raft, but anything is better than going down, dying alone, and losing a hard-earned level on respawn.
Ishizaki previously said that even when playing in a team – especially, I’d imagine, if you’re matchmaking with random players – you may end up taking on some enemies solo since you and your teammates “don’t have to babysit one another” and can explore at your own pace. And as a solo player, rather than mathematically scaling enemies down, it seems enemy AI is adjusted so you don’t get dogpiled quite so heavily. I’d expected bosses, which will corral players together, to feel pretty tanky alone, though, and it certainly feels like Nightreign is best experienced as a group.
In my Elden Ring Nightreign hands-on preview, my team found more success staying together and doing some dogpiling ourselves, but that’s much easier to plan with a premade team.
FromSoftware warns “the same strategy won’t always work” in Elden Ring Nightreign, which is bad news for me because I used the same strategy in all the Souls games.
