PSA: Every weapon you carry grants you its passive buff in Elden Ring Nightreign

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In Elden Ring Nightreign, the inconvenience of rolling slowly due to carrying too much weight is a common complaint among players – it’s simply too sluggish. While we’ve learned to minimize unnecessary items in our inventory in other Souls games, that’s not an option here, even though the UI looks almost identical. In this unique multiplayer spinoff by FromSoftware, there are significant alterations under the hood that they failed to communicate effectively.

As a gamer, I used to worry about equipment load, juggling fast and slow dodge rolls. But with Nightreign, that’s a thing of the past! Now, it’s all about that balanced medium roll. Plus, this game has introduced new loot tiers, similar to battle royale. You might think, like me, that the aim is to snag one or two top-tier weapons for my build, while everything else is just excess. However, I found out that’s not the case. In Nightreign, even seemingly ‘useless’ items can play a crucial role in shaping your gameplay experience.

  • Every weapon in Nightreign comes with a passive, displayed at the bottom of the item tooltip. These passives can be anything from improved jump attack power to giving your weapon poison damage or health recovery on hits. They’re build-defining, potentially game-winning effects.
  • These passives are permanently active and stack in the background, so long as you have them in your inventory. Yeah, that’s right, that common bow that you walked past which improved your ranged damage? You should have picked it up, even though you have a better purple one.
  • The one exception to this is passives marked with a red hand icon. You’ll typically only see this on the Nightreign’s legendary weapons, but it means these passives are only active when the weapon in question is currently in your hands—though you could always off-hand it if you want.

The main objective is to load up each of your six weapon slots with passive abilities that enhance your gameplay, although you may only utilize one during battle. For instance, an ideal Ironeye setup focuses on amassing items that boost ranged damage, regardless if the passive effect is attached to a sword, seal, or bow. Similarly, Duchess thrives when equipped with consecutive hit passives such as reduced damage or increased damage while wielding two weapons (dual-wielding), and so forth.

If you’re curious about how significant the difference was, let me explain. During my initial battle against the final boss, it was a complete defeat for me as I was playing Ironeye with no weapons that enhanced my ranged gameplay or exploited the boss’ vulnerabilities. That loss might have been due to bad luck, but in my third try, I had five weapons that increased my ranged damage by around 10-20% each. Guess what? I emerged victorious this time.

In Nightreign’s realm, each Nightfarer is distinct with their own playstyle. Try to figure out how they operate and hope that RNG grants you the desired passives. An on-map overlay can be activated to display the types of weapons and ailments available at various locations. For instance, camps offer bows, ballistas, and jar cannons from racks, and these ranged weapons usually have the ranged weapon damage passive. Unfortunately, there’s no way to conceal equipment in your quick-slots; you’ll have to manually scroll through all the gear (which might be helpful in a pinch) if you’re switching between items during combat.

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2025-05-30 01:40