Will Elden Ring Nightreign’s Day One Patch Fix A Big Problem?

Elden Ring Nightreign’s bosses can be a real struggle, even working alongside two other teammates. Solo, however, they’re downright brutal. While the game allows fans to play offline by themselves, it’s an experience best left to only the most hardcore Soulslike sickos. Will FromSoftware address that in a day-one update? The predictably opaque patch notes don’t say.

Bandai Namco revealed a day-one patch for the multiplayer roguelite RPG— arriving May 30 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC—and the update apparently addresses character handling, bug fixes, and game balance. But what precise changes were made? The publisher doesn’t say. Here are the full patch notes:

• Improved handling of playable characters

• Soundtrack addition and adjustments
• Text adjustments
• Balance adjustments
• Added character scenarios
• Bug fixes

Neat! But what does it mean?! Early reviews, including my own impressions of Elden Ring Nightreign after 10 hours with the game, paint a picture of FromSoftware’s latest spin-off being a messy but intriguing experiment in old-school (read: hostile) game design, built on modern twists (randomized loot, a closing battle royale circle of death). Throwing yourself against that brick wall as a group can be fun, suffering the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of great FromSoftware bosses together.

But some of the pain points and uneven friction are a lot harder to negotiate when just playing by yourself. From simple things like enemy aggro, to more intricate nuisances like loot RNG and grinding a run just to discover your never got the weapon-type to exploit a Nightlord’s weakness, is even more frustrating solo with no friends to help bail you out. While there are some early players who have seemingly cleared the game in single-player, I can confidently say that’s not a viable option for most of the 30 million people who bought the original Elden Ring.

Does that matter? Maybe not! But it would be nice to know if it’s something FromSoftware is looking to tweak in the day-one patch, or whether it intends to maintain it as a cornerstone of the experience, with the extra challenge of solo play pushing more people toward multiplayer matchmaking. Director Junya Ishizaki said earlier this week he was all “nerves and excitement” approaching the game’s launch, but that the team is “continually tweaking and balancing the game.” We’ll see what that amounts to in practice when Nightreign goes live, starting at 6:00 p.m. ET May 29 for players on PC, then midnight on console.

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