It’s time. Elden Ring Nightreign‘s gotten a randomiser mod, just in case the base game isn’t quite maxing out your unexpected chaos-per-run meter at this point, despite its revamped bosses.
While FromSoft’s roguelike-ish twist on the established souls formula already switches things up in a manner that’s a bit like a randomiser mod makeover of one of the series’ traditional entries, modder thefifthmatt has still found ways to tinker with it.
Enter their Nightreign randomiser and derandomiser, which can be used to scramble map layouts beyond what’s possible in the base game, which has a finite range of different map patterns it can chuck at you per Nightlord. It’s a first foray into Nightreign randomising that the author says will serve as a “basis for more advanced randomisation” down the line.
“At a base level, the only difference you might notice using the randomizer is that Night Bosses are more varied for a given Nightlord,” thefifthmatt wrote. “Under the hood, it’s creating map patterns nearly from scratch and has a tremendous amount of freedom in its placements. In the future this can be extended to randomising enemies and bosses within maps and in-depth placement customisation.”
The randomiser works by modifying files when you start up the game, and comes with three distinct randomness presets, “similar to base game”, “balanced random”, “extra random”. They all basically do what they say on the tin, with “balanced” looking like the one you’ll want to try first, while “extra” ditches some “placement restrictions which are normally helpful for balancing purposes” to make things tougher for uber-hardcore folks.
You can also pick “any custom combination of these options or other options like greatly increasing the frequency of double Night Bosses”. Plus, thefifthmatt’s chucked in extra options like increasing the chance of shifting earth being a factor or reverting patch 1.01’s tweaks to runes and revives so uber-sweaty solo players can wind back the clock to a time of enhanced hardness.
Not every aspect of the maps has been made randomness-eligible yet, but as the modder says, it’s a start, and one that’s compatible with Nightreign’s Seamless Co-op mod so you can dive in with however many buddies you like. If you fancy giving it a go, you’ll need to grab Mod Engine 3.
