Expert advice: How a 16-year Souls veteran approaches challenge and buildcrafting in Elden Ring and Nightreign

Elden Ring and its offshoot, Nightreign, are the culmination of decades of game design evolution, one I've been a part of for over a decade. Then, I sat down with one of the largest Souls PvP streamers, Peeve, to talk about being there from the beginning.

Hey Peeve, thanks for chatting with me today about Elden Ring: Nightreign and your career in the wider Soulsborne series. Can you highlight your history with the franchise, starting with your introduction to the original PS3 Demon’s Souls?

Well, I remember a friend visiting our house in 2009. “You’ve gotta check out this game,” he said. He throws in Demon’s Souls, and we all take turns trying it. He mentioned hearing that players could show up in your game world to hunt you down, which I refused to believe. After he left a few hours later, I went to the store and bought my own copy. I had a college class that night…I didn’t make it. Many invasions, fight clubs in 4-1, and skipped college courses later, Dark Souls 1 released.

I started recording and uploading PvP videos to YouTube in late 2011 and streaming on Twitch a few months later. The transition was easier because of series I’d made, like “Gankers Pay the Price,” where I hunted groups of players waiting around all day to jump invaders as they spawn. We call them gank squads. I also started an annual community event for Demon’s Souls called “Return to the Nexus” in 2013. We’d simulate launch day by making new characters and engaging in multiplayer organically as we played. The idea was popular enough that the community organized similar events for the other titles over time.

Then, in Dark Souls 3, the odds for invaders were terrible, and I decided to revisit an idea I had in Dark Souls 1: player covenants. My community and I made shared-theme builds and invaded the area after Pontiff Sulyvahn. We called ourselves the Bloodshades, a name radiating the edginess I’d become known for.

Other player covenant ideas popped up, too, but there were a lot of people who were not fans and were not shy about sharing it.

In the six years leading to Elden Ring’s release, I continued playing Dark Souls 1, 3, and Bloodborne, with a brief side trek into Sekiro. Dark Souls 2 was also in there, I guess.

With all that experience under your belt, what was your initial reaction when you first saw the reveal trailer for Elden Ring: Nightreign?

I was co-streaming the reveal event, and I’ll just say it was mass confusion mixed with excitement — but mostly confusion. After the trailer went up, I was silent for a while, trying to reach Bandai Namco representatives to get some answers. Nightreign was literally the last thing I expected, mainly since it involved Elden Ring.

You and I both had a chance to try Nightreign during the network test, and it’s hard to properly describe in a few words. What advice do you have for players who’ve only experienced Elden Ring or want to get Nightreign as their first FromSoftware game?

I’m concerned about the game overwhelming newcomers — or those with only some Elden Ring experience — trying to learn boss patterns in the open world. If FromSoftware intends to utilize most of its past boss catalog, how difficult will it be for those players to learn the fights? When will they see that boss again, and what will they fight in between? Certain Nightreign encounters are designed to have everyone holding their own, sometimes one-on-one, so you’re only as strong as your weakest link.

Beyond playing the rest of the Souls games, my best advice for anyone trying Nightreign as one of their first FromSoftware games is to keep the following in mind:

1. The ultimate rule: level Vigor. Almost any health upgrade you find is worth it. I had a run in the network test where I had an HP bar that took up two-thirds of the screen. The final boss was literally a joke.
2. Watch your Stamina during fights. Stamina management is key to handling tough encounters in From games. While it’s tempting to throw out as many attacks as you can, without Stamina, you won’t be able to get away when the enemy retaliates.
3. Control your rolls. Many bosses are designed to punish “panic rolling,” or when a player mashes dodge instead of timing it correctly. Wait to roll when an attack is just coming at you. Otherwise, you might get hit and queue up an extra roll input, and the boss’s next attack is designed to hit you when your character exits their invincibility frames. 

One of the main concerns about Nightreign is its longevity. The network test was a very watered-down version of the final product, but knowing that, is there anything that still worries you about the final release?

Honestly? Replayability and longevity are my biggest concerns as well. I’m pretty sure the network test was only two combinations of map layouts and enemy encounters in a single biome. Their intention with the experience was to offer a small sample of the final product, not have people destroy their sleep schedules to make every test session. That’s me. I’m people.

That aside, if Nightreign utilizes FromSoftware’s massive enemy catalog and brings enough map layout variety across different biomes, that’d be a great start. Build variety feels like it’s in the right spot, too, but I worry about how long it’ll be before you steam-roll every run, no matter who your teammates are. I hope the difficulty ramps up significantly across the different encounters.

If the game’s fun, has enough variety between runs, and is challenging enough to keep my attention, I’ll be satisfied.

Rogue-like elements are at the heart of Nightreign’s progression. While Elden Ring is very much its heart and soul mechanically, there are also a lot of evolutions in ER’s gameplay to accommodate the new systems. How well do you think FromSoftware married the two concepts, and what, if anything, would you say needs improving?

It’s hard for me to answer this question, considering we’ve only seen two map seeds. I sometimes grew tired of the same starting points, knowing what enemy camps were the best to rush and what boss was coming up. I see the potential, and if Nightreign releases and I only recognize a few world encounters on my first run, I’ll be very relieved.

As for the build crafting, it feels so strange. It’s bizarre that the game accounts for the bonuses from ALL your equipment, not just the gear you have out. If I make a build focused around a halberd and greatshield, I’ll also pick up items I don’t intend to use just for their passive bonuses. 

These games have always been at their best when they give the player the freedom to make their own characters shine, so seeing dedicated “Heroes” does disappoint me a little. It makes sense for the game, though. Maybe we’ll get some nice fashion customizations as rewards.

The communicative experience between randomly matched players could be improved, as well. In the test, queuing with randoms felt awful because everyone was unorganized. You and another player could be fighting a boss while your third was dying in the rain because he spent too long searching a random castle for Rivers of Blood. There will supposedly be opt-in voice chat, which is great, but not everyone will use or listen to it. Maybe an option to have offscreen gestures appearing on everyone’s HUD could help. Or they just bring back the loud “HEY!” scream from Dark Souls 3 and give it full map range.

Switching gears a bit, one of the main things that drew me to your content was your distaste for relying on top-tier meta builds to succeed in Souls games. Can you explain that desire and why you focus more on character-building than build-making?

Well, PvP players tend to make multiple builds that stop at specific levels for matchmaking and, ideally, promote build variety in opponents. Limited stat allocation makes for far more diverse encounters than everyone at max level having everything.

So, if I’m making multiple builds for replayability, I want each one to have its intended playstyle and themed setup. That way, it’s set apart from my other characters and gives me a reason to switch between them. I’ll find a weapon or spell/incantation that looks cool, come up with a theme, and then find other combat options that can fit the theme to give it some playstyle variety. From there, I’ll min-max the stats as much as possible within a group of boundaries I set. 

I often develop loose backstories for each build over time, and a character can form around them. That’s where some of my most popular characters, like Red-Eyed Ino, come from. Sometimes, the backstory of one character results in spin-off characters. That could be because of another weapon or spell or because the backstory of an existing character inspires a new build with a connected theme. 

I find that if I haven’t played Elden Ring for a while, I’ll miss my characters more so than the actual game. If all my builds were just named Dex Build, Strength Build, etc., I'd lose interest even with every optimal weapon at my disposal. I need to keep up my immersion in these games, even in PvP.

How do you think that desire for unique characters and build concepts meshes with Nightreign? Do you see yourself gravitating toward specific, more off-the-wall strategies in a run, or is there a specific strategy you landed on in the network test?

Considering I don’t have direct control over my character and equipment in Nightreign, you better believe I’ll take every opportunity to make some bizarre build by the end of a run [laughs]. Despite RNG removing control I have over my build’s uniqueness, I enjoy having a strong setup using what would be an extremely odd combination in base Elden Ring.

And maybe, just maybe, Nightreign’s RNG loot will inspire players to use more interesting weapons within Elden Ring itself. At least let me dream, ok?

One of the greatest challenges you’ve faced in your Souls career was beating the final boss of the Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC at NG+7. Can you tell the story of your 110-hour brawl with him?

Ah, the good ol’ days. It was my first DLC playthrough, and I went in at New Game +7 with my level 200 main character, a Meteoric Ore Blade-wielding Pyromancer. I reached the boss when I had pre-launch access, and I thought, surely, I could beat him in time for the full release.

I was mistaken. 

After retreating to explore and not spoil my viewers, I went back to try again. I had the Spear of the Impaler and was at level 18 Scadutree Blessing. I did next to no damage. At probably 60 hours into the fight, I decided to revert back to the original version of the build, which utilized the Meteoric Ore Blade, all because I realized how well Freyja's Greatsword matched its style. This change, purely for the sake of fashion and immersion, just made the fight more difficult. Why? Now I did even less damage. How much less? My DPS was lower than a gear-optimized level one build on NG+7 with zero Scadutree Blessing.

I relied on the Deflecting Hardtear for attacks that would instantly kill me, but my fight lasted eight minutes, three longer than the buff’s five-minute duration. As a fallback, I decided to give myself my own “Phase 2,” starting after he’d lost roughly 60 percent of his health. I’d switch off the Ore Blade to Freyja’s Greatsword and use a shield to parry him (which I didn’t want to rely on exclusively to win). Then there was figuring out phase two and ignoring my Twitch chat’s advice about the cookie-cutter builds everyone else had used.

Then came the final battle. Pure cinema. I landed every free-aimed Giant’s Flame Take Thee. I took no damage outside of deflects until past the 60 percent mark…and then all hell broke loose. One near-one shot broke the rhythm, and I burned through every resource I had as the fight dragged on. That included the one Blessing of Marika I’d been saving for more than 50 hours. 

I had nothing left to heal with and had finally reached my breaking point mentally. I’d started that day’s attempts confident he’d go down early. Then, 7 hours passed. With no heals left and stress levels through the ceiling, I needed to land three parries in a row to win the fight and salvage my sanity.

One successful parry. Then two. The third, in desperation. Then, after 110 hours in that boss room, silence. God Slain. I laid my character down, and a massive wave of relief hit me. I sat back in my chair without talking for several minutes as my heart rate came down.

I’m genuinely nostalgic for the endless torment in that boss room, but I know I can’t recreate that feeling of the initial win.

I did save a highlight of the final fight on my Twitch channel for those who want to see it.

Spending 110 hours in a boss fight is a testament to anyone’s endurance and is likely longer than most players take to run the whole game and DLC. What about overcoming that challenge differentiates it from, say, a level one or no upgrades playthrough?

In 16 years of these games, I’ve never had any interest in a level one playthrough. Any challenges I end up doing have to involve the characters I make. It’s just that this hyper-specific scenario was more challenging than most no-leveling runs. 

If you want to make a playthrough difficult, you don’t necessarily need to do one of the traditional go-to challenge runs. Consider making a unique challenge tailored to your playstyle.

Were there any boss fights or roadblocks in the Elden Ring: Nightreign network test, or in the marketing we’ve seen for it, that could give players the difficulty level as your DLC final boss?

[Laughs] For everyone else’s sake, I hope not. Just between us, though, I’d love to see it.

Last question now. What are you most looking forward to watching when Elden Ring: Nightreign comes out?

I’m looking forward to playing a “Wild Card” role and jumping into crews of all sorts. That includes streamer pals both within the Souls community and those outside of it. I think I’m mostly looking forward to watching groups of more casual players play together. Forget cool, calm, collected veterans of the game. The pure chaos within those teams will be the real content.

The post Expert advice: How a 16-year Souls veteran approaches challenge and buildcrafting in Elden Ring and Nightreign appeared first on Destructoid.