Oh no, I’ve been playing a tutorial for 55 hours: Elden Ring Nightreign’s Everdark Sovereigns aren’t just a health and damage boost, the Gaping Jaw’s got all-new mechanics to lay us flat

It had all the signs of a good run. I entered with two onion bro raiders, we hit a good tempo and meandered our way to the Everdark version of the Gaping Jaw. Or Adel, Baron of Night, if you’re feeling fancy. I’ve gotten into a rhythm in my games of Elden Ring Nightreign, to the point where the horrors have become rote. But as some guy in a dark dungeon once said: Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.

We knocked down the first night, then the second. We entered through the boss gate, found a familiar desert—and then Adel introduced himself by elbow-dropping me from the top rope with his mouth. Then he summoned a tornado.

After minutes of chipping away at his health, applying and re-applying poison when I got the chance, I had a sudden and eerie thought. Ah, man. I’ve been playing a 55-hour tutorial.

In case you missed the news, yesterday, Elden Ring Nightreign dropped a new patch with an “Everdark” version of one of its boss fights, Adel, Baron of Night. These are sort of analogous to archtempered monsters in Monster Hunter—suped-up versions of their former selves.

I went in for my first brush with death assuming this’d just mean some big health and damage, but no. Adel’s got a whole new set of moves to contend with; a tornado that creates its own storm you need to escape by hurling yourself over its walls with slipstreams. Starting out with his phase two aftershocks. Healing if he manages to grapple you in his maw. And, in a moment of sheer horror, DBZ-style instant transmission.

I don’t know who taught this guy to wavedash but I assume they’re out to get me, personally.

I’m not the only one giddy with a kind of mortified delight. “We asked for hard and they said fuck you guys here you go,” writes one player on the game’s subreddit, in a thread aptly named “this… just feels like a lot, man.” Others are, in true souls tradition, telling folks to ‘git gud’. And they’re kinda right. Oroboro’s already solo’d this guy, so he’s not an insurmountable climb.

Once I’ve gotten over my first-encounter fear, I’m sure I’ll be able to lock in—I definitely wasted a bunch of flasks before realising I was looking at a slipstream, and not a fiery pillar of death—but this is just a sampler. Per the update notes, we’ve got yoked versions of the Sentient Pest and the Darkdrift Knight to contend with in the future. Get ready to pull an all-nighter, everybody—the real fight starts here.