Boss fights have always been at the heart of FromSoftware’s “Soulsborne” action RPGs, and Elden Ring Nightreign — the studio’s experimental new co-op roguelike spinoff of the beloved 2022 title — is full to bursting with them. In fact, the game’s entire gameplay loop involves running around and battling minibosses to get stronger with levels and randomized loot drops, then fighting major bosses from Elden Ring or past Dark Souls games before eventually challenging one of Nightreign’s new Nightlords.
There are eight of these bespoke encounters in total, each one giving players a distinct challenge to overcome through perseverance and patient mastery of their movesets and mechanics. And having now beaten all the Nightlord battles on most of Elden Ring Nightreign’s character classes, I thought it would be fun to rank them based on how much I enjoy the fights.
Below, I did just that — breaking down what I liked about each Nightlord battle’s mechanics and atmosphere, what I didn’t, and what I loved. Without further ado, here are my rankings for all eight of Elden Ring Nightreign’s Nightlord boss fights.
Spoilers for every Elden Ring Nightreign Nightlord boss, including the final boss, are ahead. If you don’t want the fights spoiled, stop here!
8. Augur / Maris, Fathom of Night
Despite being in last place on my list, I don’t necessarily dislike the Augur / Maris, Fathom of Night encounter. In fact, I find most of its melee-range attacks where it attempts to corkscrew through the air at you fun to dodge, and the fact you can destroy the exploding jellyfish and teardrop-shaped nukes it drops on you with ranged weapons or magic adds some fun opportunities for counterplay that don’t simply involve running away.
The ultimate problem with Maris, however, is that it spends way too much time flying around — effectively making melee-focused classes like Wylder, Guardian, Raider, and Executor feel like they can never get a hit in as they endlessly chase the big cosmic slug around the arena. Indeed, without an Ironeye or a Recluse, this battle takes ages and ends up becoming pretty boring after the charm of the fight’s visual spectacle wears off.
I’m also not the biggest fan of the move where Maris flies off and falls to the ground asleep, subsequently rapidly building up your Sleep meter and damaging you quite a bit if the status effect procs. You’re supposed to wallop it with some big hits to stun it out of its slumber, but due to all the running you’ll have to do just to catch up to the boss, you usually don’t have time to do so before sleep takes you.
7. Tricephalos / Gladius, Beast of Night
The fight with Tricephalos / Gladius, Beast of Night is effectively Elden Ring Nightreign’s tutorial Nightlord encounter, but that doesn’t mean this Cerberus-inspired wolf is a pushover. It may be the easiest of the eight overall, but it can still take you down quickly if you get careless.
Gladius’ moves are clearly telegraphed, with the boss using a combination of biting melee attacks with its heads up close and sweeping sword slashes with its chain sword from afar. It can mix things up with the occasional fire breath, too, and in Phase 2, Gladius periodically splits into three forms that encourage each member of your team to duel one so no one player gets overwhelmed.
I have zero major complaints with the battle; the only reason it’s ranked this low is because its moveset is far less diverse or interesting than most of the other Nightlord bosses. With that said, it’s still a strong fight, and a great introduction to Elden Ring Nightreign.
6. Sentient Pest / Gnoster, Wisdom of Night
One of Elden Ring Nightreign’s more unique encounters is Sentient Pest / Gnoster, Wisdom of Night. In it, two huge bugs — a grounded scorpion and a flying moth — share an HP bar, with the former attempting to barrel into and smash you up close while the latter assails you with magic projectiles, clouds of Poison, and the occasional grab attack attempt.
Naturally, with melee fighters better suited to the scorpion and ranged ones ideal for the moth, players will usually split up to deal with each — though getting poisoned by the moth will sprout a parasite on you that will continuously apply Poison until a teammate hits it off, forcing the team back together and leading to complicated situations where you’ll have to dodge both creatures’ attacks.
This design approach is creative and makes Gnoster stand out from most other fights in which all three players end up hitting the same target, though in Phase 2, the moth starts riding on the scorpion’s back and the two start performing some intense attack combos with both magic and melee strikes. At this point, it starts to feel more like a traditional encounter; this gives it a neat feeling where you and your allies come together as they do for one final stage of battle.
5. Darkdrift Knight / Fulghor, Champion of Nightglow
Undoubtedly, the Darkdrift Knight — also called Fulghor, Champion of Nightglow — is one of the harder Nightlords to defeat, as this armored juggernaut of a centaur is very aggressive, hits like a truck, and is fully capable of running you over like one, too. In Phase 1, he tends to send waves of destructive wind at you with his lance, smash the ground to create area-of-effect quakes, charge players like a raging bull, and slam down his weapon to call up spears and geysers of Holy energy from the earth.
Fulghor’s attacks are as varied as they are deadly, but they’re also excellently telegraphed and many of them can be avoided by jumping over them — rewarding players that do so an opportunity to counter-attack with jump attacks. Players will be similarly rewarded by bringing along a weapon or spell that does Lightning, as on top of taking more damage from it, Fulghor will also be stunned out of his spear-calling attack if you hit him with it while he’s charging the move up.
In Phase 2, the boss grows a slimy and twitchy hand of purple energy, using it for a few new combos in which he uses it to try and smack players or slams the ground with it. These add further variety to the encounter, though the hand’s animations are a bit erratic. All in all, though, Fulghor is a great boss.
4. Gaping Jaw / Adel, Baron of Night
From a mechanical standpoint, Adel, Baron of Night — the massive, vaguely draconic beast at the end of the Gaping Jaw Expedition — is less varied than many other Nightlords, as it primarily attacks with combos in which it tries to clamp its gargantuan maw around you. It can also grab you with its jaws, charge into you, and slam its head down to create a heavy area-of-effect shockwave. Phase 2 adds lightning aftershocks to many of these moves, but ultimately, Adel’s moveset doesn’t change too much.
With that said, I still can’t help but rank Adel above Fulghor, as the spectacle of the fight with the beast pushes it ahead of the Champion of Nightglow for me. Dodging its gigantic chomps and slams feels incredible, and in Phase 2, its grandiose use of vibrant purple lightning makes the encounter that much more epic. On top of that, I’d say Adel’s moves are flawlessly telegraphed, while Fulghor’s Phase 2 hand can seem a little unpredictable at times.
It’s also worth noting that the Baron of Night has some nifty mechanics you can take advantage of. For one, any teammate who gets grabbed can be saved from heavy damage (and potential death) by striking Adel’s head with heavy attacks, hard-hitting weaponskills, or powerful spells; this allows you to help an ally if they failed to avoid the move, which feels awesome given Nightreign’s co-op focus.
Also, poisoning Adel in Phase 1 will cause it to vomit the contents of its stomach, expelling the Poison status but rewarding you with multiple seconds to freely and safely hit his legs and tail (the vomit can damage and poison you). Distinct interactions with status effects like this are cool, and I wish more of FromSoftware’s bosses had them.
3. Fissure in the Fog / Caligo, Miasma of Night
Generally, FromSoftware’s dragon boss battles are either awesome or terrible, so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I fought Caligo, Miasma of Night for the first time. Thankfully, the Fissure in the Fog encounter turned out to be quite an amazing one, and in my mind, Caligo is hands down one of the developer’s best-ever dragons.
With a diverse assortment of claw, ice breath, and tail swipe attacks along with special ones that challenge you to locate Caligo’s position in a blanket of fog and either run away (black wind) or get close (the sound of ice cracking; you’re rewarded with a big damage opportunity with this one if you can reach Caligo quickly), this ice dragon is one of the most engaging to fight in Soulsborne history. Some fun additional mechanical complexity comes from the ice crystals formed wherever Caligo breathes frost that build up Frostbite when stepped on, driving you to pay attention as you move into position to get your hits in.
Phase 2, though, is where things really take off — literally. It begins with Caligo soaring into the air and dive bombing players with hails of gigantic ice crystals, all while its majestic, grand orchestral boss theme swells with unbridled, jaw-dropping intensity. Then, it weaves new frost attacks into its Phase 1 moveset and becomes more aggressive.
Caligo can be a bit frustrating to fight in Phase 2 at times, but on the whole, all of its moves are perfectly readable and whatever minor annoyances there are are worth dealing with in order to bask in the encounter’s incredible atmosphere.
2. Night Aspect / Heolstor the Nightlord
The final boss fights in FromSoftware’s games tend to also be some of the best, and that holds true in Elden Ring Nightreign. Indeed, Heolstor the Nightlord is one of the co-op roguelike’s most exhilarating encounters, and in a game full of battles against huge monsters, I find it fitting that its final fight is one against a sword-wielding knight that’s barely any bigger than you are.
From start to finish, the bout with Heolstor is a beautiful dance, with the Primordial Nightlord performing varied, tricky combos with both a magic greatsword and a smaller blade. He’s very similar to Dark Souls 3’s Slave Knight Gael or the Elden Ring DLC’s Rellana, Twin Moon Knight in that his attack flurries are highly aggressive and feature a blend of quick and delayed strikes, but are also superbly animated with clear counter-attack windows you can take advantage of if you’re aggressive yourself.
Heolstor’s Phase 2 is also an amazing spectacle; when it starts Heolstor will fly into the air and cut the sky itself open with his sword before imbuing it with a random element and crashing back down to earth, creating a massive explosion that sends out exploding shockwaves shortly after. All of his attacks for the remainder of the fight will then create linear shockwaves of that element in the directions he slashes in, forcing you to carefully pay closer attention to positioning.
All in all, it’s simply a perfect fight, and one I’ve greatly enjoyed throwing myself at again and again with all of Nightreign’s different character classes after beating it for the first time on Wylder. And yet, for me, it’s still ultimately the runner-up boss to…
1. Equilibrious Beast / Libra, Creature of Night
As much as I love Heolstor and think he’s a tremendous final boss, there’s one Nightlord in Nightreign I enjoy battling even more: Libra, Creature of Night. Recently, I wrote about how he’s the weirdest boss in the game, and I stand by that; not only does he make a monkey’s paw-style deal with you before the fight even begins, but the crazy high Madness buildup from his various magic attacks can be countered by picking up crystals those very same attacks spawn on the ground.
Libra’s also a very unique boss due to the importance it places on positioning. Because he’ll quickly turn the arena into a bullet hell of Madness projectiles if you stay back and run away, it’s better to instead stay close to him and try to bait him into using more punishable melee strikes instead.
You can also goad him into an enraged melee frenzy by hitting him with Madness magic yourself or by destroying all nearby runes that appear when he tries to meditate for a defense buff. This series of wild swings and explosive slams is incredibly deadly, but bold players that patiently dodge these strikes will be rewarded with big windows for counter-attacking.
Like the other top-tier Nightreign bosses, Libra has expertly telegraphed moves and an amazing musical theme, too. Ultimately, though, it’s his weirder elements — the accord he offers, the fact his attacks leave behind healing crystals, his weakness to the same Madness he uses against you — that make him my favorite boss in the game. He’s basically the FromSoftware boss fight version of the Greek god Dionysus, complete with trickster mechanics and a fresh spin on Elden Ring’s Madness concept. More wild stuff like this, please.
Elden Ring Nightreign is a bold new experimental spinoff from FromSoftware that spices up the original game’s Soulsborne combat with a roguelike, co-op driven twist. Though it has sizable issues like only having one map or underwhelming enemy variety, it’s nevertheless going to be one of this year’s best Xbox games and best PC games for Souls fans craving action. It’s $39.99, but you can get it for $33.99 at Newegg with the promo code XVSAVE.