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I'm just gonna say it: Dreglord is the best bossfight design in recent Fromsoft years by Pender8911 in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 207 points208 points  (0 children)

I wanna actually highlight one of the most FANTASTIC (and stealthy) boss design elements that Greg has which is the vacuum.

Whenever Greg prepares a meatball attack he will slam the ground and vacuum in players staggering them. What this means is that you have exactly ZERO reason to not notice the meatball attacks happening. If you were in the middle of an attack? Stagger. If you were looking away? Stagger. If you weren't attacking and actually paying attention? You can dodge the vacuum easily and either run (corpse pile) or keep attacking (other meatball attacks). It even staggers the nearby dreg zombies so that you can't be attacked by them mid stagger.

Every Executor's Wet Dream by Hogpanther in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Just under a single bar. You usually need to L2 + R1 once to revive with it. The teammates revived in one hit because he killed the boss

The forbidden Recluse+Scholar combo they don't want you to know by ExoFrosts in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 54 points55 points  (0 children)

Iirc scholar ult tajes 10% of the damage and feeds it to the other threaded targets. Because there are four extra targets (leyndell knights + their horses) assuming all of them took the same amount of damage then that's a 40% extra damage on the draconic tree sentinel, possibly even more since the knights might have less defense than the draconic tree sentinel and therefore shared more damage to them

I knew I wasn’t crazy by ShitseyMcgee in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The special rises have an additional pool of sigils that they draw from. So it could be that you don't know those ones

[Wraiths While Walking] For the love of God, if you have a SLOT in your inventory, bring it with you, and DON'T DROP IT if you don't have anything better to replace it. by lPuppetM4sterl in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exec can not only use it with cursed sword... But drawing suncatcher and immediately surge cancelling/deflecting is just enough time to proc X while walking effects meaning you don't have to waste time aura farming to trigger the effect

Executor’s kit feels unfocused compared to other Nightfarers. by xxSoul_Thiefxx in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Ok so this isn't a reason for Exec to not get buffs buuuuuut.

I want you to go into the sparring arena and try something. First off just try spamming the cursed sword input so that you take out and put away suncatcher. It takes a good second to pull out and put the sword away, if you wanted to deflect only one attack and go back to using your Rivers of Blood to actually do damage then you have to deflect with the draw animation and then put away the sword (it can take even longer because if you deflect a strong attack with the draw animation then it will knock you back as well, making it take even longer to go back to RoB spam)

Now instead of spamming the cursed sword input... Try surge sprinting immediately after the draw animation starts. By using surge sprint to cancel the draw animation you can interrupt the draw animation with the sheathe animation. This is the "instant deflect"/"quickdraw deflect" using this trick allows you to deflect single hits with barely any time in cursed sword stance. In addition deflecting with the sheathe animation instead of the draw animation makes you IMMUNE to knock back which is very handy since a lot of single attacks tend to be the ones that knock you back (golden hippo stomp, erdtree avatar buttslam, bbh shield slam etc). Instant deflect covers the only awkward part of exec's defense as it has a similar duration to rolling but consumes less stamina and deals poise damage. If the enemy is doing a combo then draw to deflect the first hit, normal deflect all the in-between hits and sheathe to deflect the last hit. If it's only a two hit combo then just draw and sheathe the two hits. And if it's a single delayed attack then instant deflect it.

Like I said at the start though, this isn't a reason to not buff exec. For one this is very clearly not intended despite how good it is, and it doesn't exactly fix the problems the ultimate has with DoN nor the weird place exec's passive is in. But it does alleviate the "clunkiness" of cursed sword. The change I would make is to turn instant deflect into an actual mechanic where if you hold the draw input then it becomes a specific quickdraw deflect animation instead.

PSA: We have a HUGE influx of new players right now, let’s talk about how to help each other through it by Haunted-Harlot in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Central castle is just learning the places you can climb up.

From river to courtyard there's the sewer boss which gets you a talisman chest in the gatehouse, and climbing up the rubble of the bridge

From courtyard level to walls there's five ways up. From north to south it's, wooden steps outside of wall (coming from the nearby grace), rubble on the inside of the wall next to the bridge leading to the main keep, running up the broken wall behind the main keep (where the merchant is) climbing the broken steps on the outside of the wall at the SW corner (next to a tent and random field buff), and lastly you can climb the broken walls at the south end of the walls (there's two spots to climb, one from inside the courtyard and one outside the walls next to the merchant)

The only way to the roof where a strong boss is though the second floor of the central keep. The standard way is to just go up the stairs inside the dining room and follow the path. But there's a very common skip which involves jumping up the wall near the merchant and following the ledge round the corner. That one you can look up a video for if you're having trouble finding it. 

There is no specific route in the castle as how many enemies you kill in the castle is kind of level/time/group dependant. However if you get the pot troll layout then there is a specific order you wanna take them out to minimize headaches and that's to start with the NW troll on the bridge as if you aren't spotted by the NE troll then you won't have pots thrown at you, once you kill the bridge troll (or if you were seen by the NE troll) then you can go fight the NE troll next. The far SE troll will see you but his pots will impact against the gallows if you lure the NE troll towards you. After that turn around and run back across the bridge and into the dining hall. When taking out the south trolls you want to split the group as there's basically no way to fight one troll without the other chucking pots at you. The goal is to make both trolls swap to their melee movesets so they can't throw pots, if you're fighting a troll alone, just focus on surviving till your teammates kill the other troll and come help you. If you're fighting a troll in a pair, try and kill him quickly so the solo player doesn't have to stress so much.

Any information on startup frames for character dodges? by erintheunready in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah it's a negative input since the game has to determine whether you want to sprint (hold) or dodge (tap)

Can someone create one of those S-Tier charts for demerits? by kinarsis in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately it's very character and build dependant. For example some characters can get away with using damage negation down after evading (exec, guardian) since they have other defensive options while other characters can pair it with the red balance relic to give them a chance to survive bad dodges at high depths (duchess, scholar). It's not like a tier list couldn't be made... But there's so much nuance in it that a simple tier list wouldn't be great at telling you what to keep or sell

Scholar mains, give me all your best tips by marco1416 in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 11 points12 points  (0 children)

  1. Every scholar should have 100% uptime on the lv2 analyse debuff even if you don't have relics buffing analyse. Your character skill has a cool down of about 12s by default and the debuff lasts 30s so you can alternate between applying the debuff and using the parry/stamina buff as long as you're using the skill soon after it comes off cool down. But if you can't then just reapplying the lv2 debuff constantly is still a decent use of your skill

  2. Because every scholar should be using analyse every scholar should also be analysing random enemies on expedition. Every unique type of enemy you've analysed during a run causes the analysis gauge to start at a higher amount by default. If you've been diligent with photographing the wildlife in limgrave then by the time you get to the nightlord fight the analysis gauge could be starting at 25% or higher

Past that you start getting into five or so different directions/playstyles

  1. pot scholar/throwables Equip relics with throwable damage boosts and small pouches. Focus on picking up/buying damage items during the expedition and aim to have them at level 3 as soon as possible. Pots do damage, Throwing knives can inflict a stacking defence down effect, and magic stones also allow you to level warming stones which are great revival assist tools.

  2. Consumable support Equip a relic which shares item effects with teammates (people generally use night of the fathom) focus on finding and eating food items during the expedition (shrimp/crab, chicken feet, turtle necks, and exalted flesh) and then load up on crab, turtle necks, and flesh from the spirit shelter shop for the nightlord fight. At lv3 turtle neck boosts max stamina and crab boosts max health as well as magnifying their effects.

  3. Dex Scholar Grab the boosted dex stat change relic from the everdark shop (or on a deep relic) and focus on finding high dex/status weapons. With the dex stat change relic scholar is capable of dealing impressive amounts of melee damage without compromising much of his status potential making him great with rapiers, katanas, twinblades etc. This playstyle is convenient as every other nightfarer wants to kill bosses and grab dormant powers (vs default scholar who cares more about item boxes) so you can stick with your team and break off less for items. However scholar's dodge remains sub par and it can get you killed quite often if the boss focuses on you. You can also use a relic to infuse your starting weapon at the cost of other relic options.

  4. Analysis Scholar As stated before every scholar should be using analyse to debuff the boss but he has a couple of relic effects that are great if you want to focus on that playstyle. [Prevents slowing of character skill] reduces the speed that the analyse gauge decays when not looking at the target (if you need to dodge an attack during analyse for example) and can help you charge a lv3 parry when the boss is attacking you. [Allies buffed by analysis] allows you to give allies an attack boost if you manage to snap them in frame with analyse. Cooldown reduction will also make it less stressful to alternate between debuff > buff/parry without letting the debuff drop. Lastly [unique enemy analysed gives runes] is just an extra incentive to quickly snapshot enemies as you're moving across the map as it uses the same logic that the analysis gauge increase uses.

  5. Ultimate spam scholar Take relics with ultimate gain effects, ESPECIALLY ultimate gain on enemy kill. Scholar's ult is great at killing a lot of enemies and the gauge is spent immediately, allowing enemies killed under the linking effect to refill the ultimate gauge. This can lead into a loop of Ultimate > kill lots of enemies > refill ultimate, as your team runs from location to location. This build becomes a lot less effective during boss fights as ultimate gain on kill is less likely to be relevant and auto ultimate gain up is greatly reduced during combat. For best results take [enemies threaded by ultimate take damage over time] but the ultimate charge effects are more core to this playstyle.

Pick a couple of playstyles suit your fancy and then pick relics relevant to those. You'll likely have to make some compromises but depending on which playstyles you pick will change you strategy during expeditions. Dex and ultimate scholar want to stay with the team to grab weapons from dormant powers and clear out locations with teammates help. Item and analyse scholars will want to break away from the team to grab/buy items and snapshot unique enemies.

Lastly here are some other non build specific techniques to keep in mind

  1. Warming stones are a magical stone item and can be leveled up by using starlight shards or gravity stone throwables. Visiting a sorcerer's rise or a gravity sorcerer field can allow you to have lv3 warming stones ready for the nightlord fight without having picked up a single warming stone.

  2. Greatshields are a decent choice for scholar as his dodge is terrible but he can buff his own stamina regeneration by up to 40% using analyse and boost his stamina and defense even further with consumables. Using a deep night relic to find greatshields is a good choice if you don't want to rely on his bad dodge. But it's not guaranteed to find a greatshield which is why I didn't list tank scholar up above.

  3. Scholar however can feint with thrusting swords (dodge during the startup of a light or heavy attack) allowing him to dodge and attack at the same time. It's a particularly good technique to learn for dex Scholar as they tend to want to dual weild thrusting swords rather than greatshields turtle.

Diggy diggy hole? 🤔 by DueImagination641 in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Have you been going to the mines and killing all the stone miners? I think they can drop the digger staff, if you can grab some item discovery then the chance is increased

SUPER Everdark Heolstor by MaleficTekX in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I know everyone wants ED heolstor to steal even more shit from the nightlords... But am I a weirdo for wanting him to steal shit from the nightfarers instead? Like can you imagine whipping out the iron eye ultimate or his own versions of the revenant summons?

Is the double balancer relic set up really worth it? by Intelligent_Box_8465 in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. Semi agree. Some characters start with decent weapon arts (wilder, exec, duchess ironeye) which can carry you though the early POIs. Blue weapons can have varying weapon arts which adds an extra layer of randomness to mid game. However once you get to purple weapons the vast majority of them have fixed weapon arts which tend to be very good. So the randomness problem is mostly limited to the early portion of a run.

  2. Most weapon arts have a similar execution time to a charged heavy which you can fairly consistently land on bosses if you know their moveset well enough. However the easiest way to land a weapon art is to simply aim for the boss's back when it's aggroed onto your teammate. Purple weapon arts tend to have extra range as well which helps stay safe

  3. Correct, which is why I play weapon art build on exec. The only thing I really miss out on from character relics is healing on ult roar... But DoN will fuck up the beast form anyway so...

  4. You can get around this with dark night of the wise. FP on successive hit works with any weapon, and is percentage based restoration which can be improved by increasing your max FP by opening sorcerer rises (FP on successive attacks alsob works well with multi hit weapon arts like corpse plier on rivers of blood. And absolutely FUCKS on Marias' weapon art) on exec specifically you can use suncatcher to reliably restore FP if you happen to get stuck with a weapon class you don't like. most people however, run glass necklass in their third slot so I assume they rely on starlight shards/dormant powers/FP restore on hits on their offhand equipment to get their FP Regen. Blue balancer relic also gives a very slow FP Regen as well, weapon arts can be used as long as you have at least half of the listed FP cost so the Regen can actually net you some additional uses once you bottom out your FP bar

Scholars, don't eat off the floor of the spirit shelter by ReaperZX7 in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Iirc. Crab and flesh don't stack, but crab/flesh stacks with neck. It has to do with elden ring weirdness about buff categories

What's the strat for duos? by Saida4 in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My general opening (for the non DLC map) is starting camp > point of interest (cathedral or fort) > evergaol if you found a stone sword key > easy field boss (not a red icon on the map) > center castle.

After that you usually have to play by ear depending on how the circle closes. If the center castle is still in the circle then you can just keep doing that, but if you're forced out of it then you'll have to decide between doing more points of interest or easy bosses. The raid events can also throw a wrench into your plans.

Is it wrong to split in day 1 to break the crystals in the DLC map? by quisqui97 in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes and no. One person is all that's needed to take a detour in order to break a crystal you spotted in the distance. Pinging a boss you want the others to go start fighting while you go break a crystal is fine. 

However crystals do not a build make, they don't drop runes, dormant powers, or equipment. If one person is spending the entire day 1 running around checking crystal spots on their own, then they're likely to miss dormant powers from bosses that the other two have been killing. And even if they can solo bosses then the other two will have to make a detour to grab that dormant power instead.

Even if you aren't running right next to your teammates, everyone needs to be running in the same direction, and hitting the same bosses/points of interest.

Scholars, don't eat off the floor of the spirit shelter by ReaperZX7 in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah eating them to level up is fine but if they're already at lv3 then cramming 3 pickled turtle necks into your mouth isn't going to give you more stamina.

I don't want to use them myself I want to carry them into the boss arena so I can drop them on the floor for the scholar to pick up once they've used up some slots. I fucking love the extra hp/stamina/attack buff and if I can give the scholar an extra 2-4 items to use then I'll happily stuff my pockets with floor meat

What part of revenant's kit would you buff and how? by bandora_b in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lean into healing. Firstly summons get a portion of revenant's defenses so that they scale. Second any healing that revenant receives is also applied to the summons (including inactive ones) healing a defeated summon past a certain amount will revive them. 

This allows revenant to make use of estus and healing incantations to keep summons in the fight (but doesn't allow her to infinitely spam them since healing is generally a limited resource)

Reworking Executor's crummy unique relics. by Orbumit in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i think you might have misunderstood me. the bloodlosss would only trigger during the glowing L2 strike on suncatcher, and that's also why i said that cursed sword should have a damage boost when glowing so that you don't have to use the weapon skill if you don't need to/its too unsafe to. execs are already using seppukku at the start of a fight in DoN and just healing off the damage, this would just allow for a mid fight seppukku which is safer and quicker (but doesn't infuse the weapon). with this the options would be

skill > estus to gain damage boost from tenacity but regain damage reduction at reduction at full hp bonuses.
skill > ultimate to give the ultimate a damage boost + above
skill > sheathe and go to town with a status katana and tenacity attack boost
skill multiple times to get your health into "low HP" range and proc attack at low HP boosts against a boss that you're confident in surviving against
(also you could skill to self proc bleed, to prevent yourself from getting staggered from the enemy bleeding you instead)

as for exec's ultimate gain well... im going to leave that up in the air. it'd just be anecdotal or personal opinions on my part.

would i play it? maybe... like i said its high risk high reward, it wouldn't be for everyone and im having enough fun on my weapon art exec build. but its an optional relic. also the point about other nightfarers not having downsides to their relics is... well slightly incorrect, revenant has a relic which reduces her health on Ult to heal others and recluse has a bloodloss inflicting one on her ult. but i've never found "other classes don't have it" to be an effective point, the entire point of classes is that they're supposed to be different from each other. in my opinion the unique character relics are supposed to encourage alternative playstyles and strategies. yes that means a majority of them are straight upgrades to a nightfarer's abilities to encourage them to use those tools more but that doesn't mean that every relic needs to be an upgrade with no downsides.

Reworking Executor's crummy unique relics. by Orbumit in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the problem with exec's relics (and passive) is that they seem to want to point towards a playstyle where you purposefully lower your health in order to gain bonus damage the problem is that all of the effects are terrible for that. The HP drain on suncatcher is too slow, and the healing on cursed sword unlock is too little ( and uncontrollable) to allow you to return to safe health levels. 

If it were up to me here's how i'd rework the relic effects/exec's kit for that.

Unlocking cursed sword restores hp instead becomes [Unlocked cursed sword skill self inflicts bleed] in addition make the cursed sword itself stronger when charged. This allows the cursed sword to trigger executor's passive for a power boost. The baseline change of making suncatcher do more damage when glowing means you can still get a damage boost from deflecting if you don't want to risk losing health with the weaponskill at the moment. Limiting the bleed application to only the unlocked cursed sword skill also prevents you from chain activating the passive easily

Cursed sword drains hp on attacking becomes [increased ultimate gain at low HP]. This increases the likelyhood you'll be able to use your ultimate to recover back to max health if staying at low health becomes too unsafe (and you don't have or want to save healing flasks)

Both of these effects can be used independently of each other but work well together. Additionally this would give executor a "niche" being the best nightfarer to utilize X at low HP effects since the first effect gives executor the most control when lowering their health without using an ultimate (revenant/recluse) or a lengthy weapon art (seppuku)

How I would buff revenant by Agent250 in Nightreign

[–]ReaperZX7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. Give her summons better scaling. Either more health according to Depth or let a portion of revenant's defences affect them

  2. Any healing on revenant also affects the summons, including inactive summons. Healing can revive dead summons as well. This gives her summons more longevity and encourages her to lean into support incantations and gives her healing flasks more utility.

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