Elden Ring Nightreign review

Boss rushed

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Fromsoft

Nightreign is a curious experiment that magnifies a few of Elden Ring’s peculiar joys, but also sacrifices much of its identity - along with FromSoft’s own identity as committed worldbuilders.

• Developer: FromSoftware
• Publisher: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco
• Release: May 29th, 2025
• On: Windows
• From: Steam
• Price: £35 /€40 /$40
• Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-12600K, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti, Windows 11

Elden Ring had a starting class named the Wretch that gets a club and some ratty underwear filled with dreams and nothing else, and there’s something special about the first few hours in Limgrave playing them, scavenging your first pieces of mismatched armour and build-defining treasures. The first time you hit a site of grace, that initial stat boost feels like a deific power surge. Insomuch as Elden Ring’s most memorable stories run tangential and emergent to its static lore, this early fraught scramble is the player’s self-woven tale at its most captivating. Soon enough, though, the feeling is gone. You’re as powerful as god, desiring nothing but more bulbous Albinauric skulls to toss on the pile.

Elden Ring: Nightreign feels unique among FromSoft’s modern catalogue for its flippant attitude toward a convincing sense of place, and so regrettably sacrifices much of its studio’s identity as committed worldbuilders, even while amplifying some of their more peculiar and interesting beats. It’s tempting, then, to ask why it exists in the first place. On a generous day, I’d say that Nightreign exists to recreate - over and over - that same, wretchedly gratifying early-game feeling. Where every scrap of progress feels like a milestone, dull smithing stones shimmer like silver, and each incremental bonk stat increase is a hero’s journey in miniature.

Either solo or as a party of three (you can’t play as a duo yet ), you’ll each pick from a roster of eight distinct characters, then ride a spectral eagle to the outskirts of (original name do not steal) Limveld. You get about fifteen minutes to run around and get stronger, during which time a ring of blue flame periodically shrinks the size of the map until all that’s left is the arena in which you’ll fight that day’s boss. Do it all again the next day, then fight one of seven new-to-Nightreign bosses, and your run ends. Beat four of them, and you can fight the game’s big bad.

Nightreign seems to look a little sharper than Elden Ring at max settings, although I had to turn some bits down to combat that old, familiar dodgy framerate. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/FromSoft

The rhythm of matches progresses like so: beat up the nearest trash mob for your first level up so you don’t get one-shot by a sneezing demihuman. Hit up some nearby churches for extra flask charges. Your quarry boss is weak to holy damage, so find a ruin marked with holy on your map to scrounge weapons. Night falls, you fight a sub-boss, and the sun rises again, resetting the ring. Maybe today you’ll find a stonesword key in chest, letting you fight an evergaol boss for big rewards. Perhaps you want to go troll hunting in a mine tunnel for smithing stones to boost your weapons. Maybe you want to stare into the shrinking blue ring and remember when FromSoft set trends instead of embracing them. Up to you. I’m not your Giant Dad.

All this occurs at a manic pace, denied as you are by the ring and falling night and the need to get stronger, fast, a precious spare second for the contemplation, thoroughness, or wonder that defined Elden Ring. Vistas are worth taking in only so you can scry the quickest route between two points. Ruins echo not layered, esoteric histories but promises of incremental power. The mighty and mournful creatures you meet are stunlocked into clownish judderfuckery as you fall upon them with restless triple bonksticks. Maybe you decide that you can take that ulcerated tree spirit even though the ring’s closing in, and there’s no grace to restore flasks between you and the boss. Maybe the tree spirit’s been souped up, one-shots you all, and you each lose a level and therefore minutes of progress in a game where minutes feel like miles.

You sprint towards the safe zone, cresting over hills in a rushed panic like the Fellowship set to Benny Hill. The boss fight is chaos as you try to identify friendspell from foespell in a jumble of phosphorescent wisp particles, plus those noises Elden Ring likes to make that sound like the exhalations of someone who finally made it to the urinal after a work meeting that ran twenty minutes too long. Cooldown timer abilities fire off relentlessly. The raider’s risen obelisk casts another buffglow into the mix. Movement and attack animations repeat themselves as phantom outlines as part of the Duchess’s restage ability. The Iron Eye zips around and looses arrows. You try to split aggro as befits whoever’s having a hard time. If someone falls, you run over and bonk them until they get up again.

And you do it, and it feels great . Less in a “I have slain a terrifying yet oddly sad and whimsical creature on my journey to uncover the mysteries of this strange land” and more “lol top tier bullying there, mates”. Then you get to the proper boss, the new boss, and you get mollywhopped like pottery at a sledgehammer party, and you realise you’re going to have to repeat the equivalent of a forty-five minute bonfire-to-fog run to even see the move that killed you again. And that added repetition, I assume, is why Nightreign is comfortable charging 35 quid in the knowledge you probably won’t clear it in a weekend, even if there isn’t all that much new to see.

You will, at least, get some shiny rocks with stat buffs and other, more specific and situational effects. This is your meta-progression, alongside trinkets you’ll get for completing Remberance interludes. Each character has ritual objects with coloured slots, and you plug in these rocks and artefacts for effects that range from simple stat increases to more specific boons. Remembrances are short conversational sequences, often with a fetch quest attached to be performed in-match, that progress the associated character’s diary entries and reward powerful trinkets. I played the Duchess most, starting with a gem that gave my weapon fire damage and ending with a talisman that activated her damage-repeating Restage ability whenever I performed a dagger combo.

These extra abilities, the cooldown timers, a rock-clamouring double jump, automated levelling, and other mobility tweaks contribute to making Nightreign feel much closer to a focused and fixed action game than something more rooted in RPG flexibility. The action feels more controlled; in some ways more tailored, in others more unyielding in its shepherding you into specific playstyles. You won’t have to worry about equipment load, although many character abilities heavily incentivise sticking to your starting weapon class. One character has a double dodge. One can’t dodge at all, instead performing sidesteps. This halfway point between Elden Ring’s build diversity and Sekiro’s character action makes for a tight iteration on Elden Ring’s deliberate, demanding duels - if one absent the width of the former or depth of the latter.

Shoutout to these two, absolute champs. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/FromSoft

There is beauty and strangeness to be found, both in Limveld (original name do not steal) and back at the roundtable hold. Towering, twisted root giants migrate across a bruise-purple skyline. Great cinderous chasms open in the earth, inviting exploration. The roundtable hold is lusher, crumbling, given tangible form as a shoreside fort. It’s a form that nonetheless flies in the face of, to my understanding, Elden Ring’s lore. But this is a game where you might encounter Dark Souls 3 ’s nameless king, for no apparent reason other than boss variety, so asking for consistency feels foolish. Thus, the beauty and strangeness feels tangential. Discrete. Isolated wonders rather that the thoughtful, esoteric puzzle pieces that usually define Fromsoft’s fantasy worlds.

One, among many, of the studio’s enduring legacies. Souslikes proliferate to varying degrees of success and inventiveness. Both Doom and Clair Obscur ’s creatives namecheck Sekiro as a influence. Perhaps I lack foresight, but when asking myself what legacy Nightreign will leave, I struggle to see it as prophetic of anything. If pushed, I’d gloomily suggest it’s more of a harbinger.

I look at Tencent’s and Sony’s increased stakes in FromSoft parent company Kadokawa. I look at The Duskbloods, another multiplayer game that evokes a utilitarian pastiche of Bloodborne and Sekiro, rather than a world that demanded creation by a storyteller. I look at some of Nightreign’s encounter design, utter low points for the studio, seemingly satisfied to cobble together annoyances to simulate challenge in lieu of new, creative creatures. A wormface with a death aura. Plus some some giant crabs. Plus some rats.

I think of the themes FromSoft’s Miyazaki is so fond of revisiting, of monarchs clinging on to life and power well past their time, and becoming something warped and hollow in the process. And I can’t help but see an exhaustion in Nightreign, despite splotches of sprightly inventiveness. I’m left asking why I should want to throw myself at these bosses once again, absent much of the delight or discovery that would give these challenges context. Instead, this is challenge for challenge’s sake. A stripped-off part of FromSoft’s creative identity with little appeal absent the whole. And ultimately, I’m left wishing they’d sit back down at the bonfire and have a good, long rest, until a real spark makes itself known again.

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Elden Ring: Nightreign

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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