Every boss has an unused third phase.
In typical FromSoftware fashion, it teased an Elden Ring Nightreign update coming this month that will add “enhanced” boss fights with zero clues as to what that actually means. Well, it turns out, those clues have been sitting in the game files since it came out, and there’s already a mod that will let you fight each boss in what seems to be those “enhanced” versions.
The first thing that tipped people off was unused sections in every boss theme on the soundtrack for a third phase. Then they found unused relics associated with each boss that look like the kind of rewards you’d get for defeating them in hard mode. And now they’ve dug up the files that let you actually fight the enhanced versions yourself.
You’ll need TerraMag’s Enhanced Nightlord Fights mod on NexusMods to do it, or you can visit their YouTube channel to see footage of them. Some of the fights slightly change the look of the Nightlords as they unleash new attacks and others bring in a whole new enemy to hound you. It’s hard enough surviving two nights in a chunk of the Lands Between before it’s swallowed whole, and now you get to cap off your run with a boss fresh out of the hyperbolic time chamber.
While all of the new fights look playable, they don’t quite look finished. The updated models and attacks aren’t as polished as the normal versions, but you can see what they’re going for. It’s also possible that these are really early concepts that will end up much different in the final update. Either way, it’s neat to peek behind the scenes on how FromSoft designs bosses, even if we were not really meant to see all this.
There’s no word on when the update will arrive other than sometime this month. And in the future we’re supposed to get more Nightfarers to play as and entirely new bosses added to the roster. Right now, Nightreign is lacking a boss that rivals Malenia in difficulty and I fully expect FromSoft to punish us with a new one eventually.
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