Elden Ring Nightreign: All Nightlords and their weaknesses

The Nightlords are the big, Day 3 bosses that are your targets in each expedition in Elden Ring: Nightreign. Each boss poses a seriously tough challenge, even with three warriors armed with the correct gear.

In this guide we’re breaking down the weaknesses and strategies you need to be aware of for each Nightlord, and how to unlock all Nightlord expeditions. Just read below for all the Nightlord info you need to know.

How to unlock all Expeditions – ER Nightreign

The first expedition available will be the Tricephalos Expedition, but after completing that, you will unlock all expeditions but the Night Aspect. 

Once you’ve completed four different expeditions, the Night Aspect expedition will become available.

Tricephalos: Gladius, Beast of Night – ER Nightreign

• Weakness: Holy

Gladius will be the first Nightlord you go up against in Nightreign — it is necessary to overcome this expedition before moving onto any of the others. Gladius’ strikes are telegraphed pretty clearly, and the only awkward part is when they split into three. If they gang up on a single warrior, it can feel impossible to escape unscathed. As long as you focus on using Holy damage, Gladius won’t put up a fight for long.

Once you finally overcome Gladius, you’ll gain access to more expeditions, and can unlock both Duchess and Revenant as playable characters.

Gaping Jaw: Adel, Baron of Night – ER Nightreign

• Weakness: Poison

This messy wyvern-style creature has a massive mouth for a head, thus the name of this expedition. It will try to swallow you up to inflict massive damage, and that’s the attack you should be most wary of. The monster won’t stay still for too long, and can be frustrating to hit if you’re using a slower melee warrior. Things heat up considerably in the second phase of the fights, where Adel has lightning spew from the ground in the form of purple geysers. As long as you remain mobile to avoid attacks and ensure the beast always has Poison dealing damage, you’ll win with relative ease.

Sentient Pest: Gnoster, Wisdom of Night – ER Nightreign

• Weakness: Fire

Gnoster might end up being the first Nightlord that you truly struggle against in Nightreign. This mimics the familiar Moonlight Butterfly from Dark Souls, but comes with a giant insect as a partner. This will make the fight a fair bit tougher, and you’ll be forced to split your team between the butterfly and the insect. The insect has high damage, while the butterfly can be tough to hit. Your ranged teammates should focus their fire on the butterfly, while melee units can take on the insect.

Fire will give you an advantage in this fight, and is basically the only way to stun the butterfly to the ground reliably for big melee hits. After the pair have lost about half of their combined health bar, they’ll start working as a unit, making the fight a fair bit tougher. Luckily you can use mostly the same strategy, as long as you’re wary of new attack types.

Augur: Maris, Fathom of Night – ER Nightreign

• Weakness: Lightning

While this boss has the risk of taking you by surprise at the wrong time, it is mostly a reasonably simple fight to deal with. This boss will try to put you to sleep as often as possible, so preparing the some sleep resistance ahead of time will make it a little less frustrating. Maris will occasionally summon tecntacles from the ground, and you can kill them to take them out, but if you stay well outside of their (surprisingly long) range, they won’t post a threat.

Ranged units will have an obvious advantage in this battle, as Maris rarely stays still or comes down to the ground for long. As the fight progresses Maris will use waves of sleep and charges to keep you on your toes, but as long as you stay mobile or at range, you’re usually pretty safe. Most teams that come prepared with Lightning can take this Nightlord down on the first try.

Equilibrious Beast: Libra, Creature of Night – ER Nightreign

• Weakness: Madness

A note: you should not accept the deal. Accepting a deal before the battle begins may give you an appreciable buff, but will also make Libra far more threatening to deal with in battle. We recommend that you just start attacking immediately so your teammates don’t get the wrong idea. There’s also a section of the battle where you have the option of breaking seals to prevent a large attack — just be warned that Libra will actually send out more projectiles if you break the seals.

Libra can be a fearsome foe, but will also leave golden drops on the battlefield. These golden drops will heal a fraction of your HP and FP when collected, in addition to clearing any Madness build up. Libra uses Madness itself, and as any Elden Ring player will know, that means having Madness used on you can be a disaster. Using Madness techniques will slice Libra’s health down quickly and easily.

Darkdrift Knight: Fulghor, Champion of Nightglow

• Weakness: Lightning

This fearsome one-armed centaur is definitely intimidating. He crashes down to earth as the battle begins, and won’t stay still for long. Even if you’re a ranged warrior, Fulghor will rush over to swing his mighty sword before you even have time to think about it. Once you taken half of his health he regrows his left arm, and becomes an even more fearsome opponent, resembling Dark Souls’ Manus. He is weak to Lightning, which can seriously slow and damage him, so going in with Lightning weapons should make this fight much easier to overcome. 

Fissure in the Fog: Caligo, Miasma of Night – ER Nightreign

• Weakness: Fire

Caligo is one of the coolest and most frustrating Nightlords to go up against. He’s awesome because – spoiler alert – he’s a massive dragon. He’s frustrating because he’s a massive dragon. Dragons in FromSoftware games like to move while spewing huge, long-range attacks. If you’re using a melee build, you might struggle to actually get a few solid hits in. 

The moments you need to watch for are when the fog sets in and Caligo disappears into the mist. You’ll see clouds in the sky heading toward his location, and you should follow them while taking cover behind one of the protruding stones. Another moment with the fog will have the sky around Caligo crack and shatter, which is pretty tough to effectively dodge, even if you’re watching for it. Other than those attacks, Caligo is a pretty standard dragon, and you’ll take it down even faster with Fire armaments.

Night Aspect: Heolstor the Nightlord – ER Nightreign

• Weakness: Holy

This is the only big new boss in Nightreign that has a second health bar, and that phase of the fight is far more threatening than the first. In fact, the first phase is barely worth mentioning. Heolstor the Nightlord is the game’s final challenge, and you’ll have to take him on while dealing with a constant onslaught of attacks from almost all angles, using a variety of affinities.

This quickly becomes a battle of attrition, you have to focus on simply staying alive while dealing damage over time. Heolstor is weak to Holy damage, and that’s practically the only thing that can stun him, but even then his health bar will deplete very slowly, while moving across the battlefield at rapid speeds. A good strategy is to have two ranged DPS warriors and another to tank aggro, but even ranged warriors will need to be wary of charges and attacks from the ground.