Elden Ring Nightreign – All Nightlords Ranked From Easiest to Hardest

Players will spend a lot of their time in Elden Ring Nightreign fighting bosses, but the Nightlords represent the apex challenge that the game has to offer. Fought at the end of Day 3 as the primary target of each expedition into Limveld, players spend the bulk of Days 1 and 2 increasing their power and improving their gear in the hopes of toppling these foes, each of whom ranks among some of the toughest encounters that FromSoftware has ever devised.

However, some Nightlords are easier than others, and even those that are deemed difficult for some might potentially pose no problem to certain players or team compositions. Since difficulty is often subjective, we've chosen to focus our challenge ranking of Elden Ring Nightreign's Nightlords on the mechanics of the fight, how much RNG plays into success, and the number and effectiveness of different weaknesses and resistances that each boss brings to the encounter.

• Solo HP — 11,328
• Trio HP — 33,984
• Weakness — Holy, Sleep

Gladius, Beast of Night is the first Nightlord players will face in Elden Ring Nightreign and is a suitably challenging foe that gatekeeps the rest of the game. He also happens to be the easiest of the 8 Nightlords, which should come as no surprise given every player has to topple the beast before they can proceed to the other 7. This Cerberus-like wolf primarily attacks using its three different heads and the sword attached to its back, but it will occasionally split into three separate wolves that become harder to deal with individually than the main three-headed beast. With the right team composition, character levels, and gear, Gladius is fairly easy to take down. It has the lowest HP pool of any Nightlord, and its attacks are clearly telegraphed and easy to avoid.

• Solo HP — 12,687
• Trio HP — 38,061
• Weakness — Lightning

After defeating Gladius, players will unlock the next handful of Nightlords to challenge. While you might assume that Gaping Maw is the next one you should fight in terms of its difficulty due to its appearance right after Gladius, it's actually a very challenging encounter best reserved for once you gain some better relics and experience. Instead, Augur is arguably the more adequate second Nightlord to challenge, but it can still be quite a difficult fight without the right team composition or resistances. Primarily, players will want to ensure they have Sleep resistance before entering the fight along with a Lightning weapon. Having a ranged damage dealer like Ironeye in your team also helps greatly for the many times when Augur — aka Maris, Fathom of Night — flies around the arena.

• Solo HP — 13,027
• Trio HP — 39,081
• Weakness — Fire, Scarlet Rot, Blood Loss, Frostbite

Another fight in which players will want to make sure they have ranged damage dealers is the Sentient Pest, Gnoster. Gnoster will appear as two separate creatures, a moth and a scorpion, before eventually joining into one single giant beast roughly halfway through the fight. Having a ranged character occupy the moth while two other players keep the scorpion busy is the easiest way to handle this fight, and having fire weapons almost makes the encounter trivial. Just be sure to watch out for the deadly poison clouds that the moth regularly deposits around the arena, as they can quickly sap your health and even result in a permanent debuff to your max HP.

• Solo HP — 13,140
• Trio HP — 39,420
• Weakness — Poison, Scarlet Rot, Frostbite, Sleep

Whether playing solo or in a trio, Gaping Maw/Adel, Baron of Night is where Elden Ring Nightreign's true challenge begins to come into picture. Compared to most of the other Nightlords in the first batch, Adel is a much more challenging foe simply because of how deadly some of his AoE attacks are and how fast he moves around the arena. Often, you'll be battling with the camera as much as Adel himself. The best weapon to bring into the fight is anything with the ability to proc poison, as it's the only way you can momentarily stun Adel and dole out some uninterrupted punishment. With at least one character with a poison weapon, Adel is somewhat manageable. Without one, he's nearly impossible.

• Solo HP — 11,894
• Trio HP — 35,682
• Weakness — Lightning

In general, the first four Nightlords are slightly less challenging than the second four, with the final group of Elden Ring Nightreign bosses representing a bit of a difficulty spike. Despite being more challenging than Gladius, Maris, Gnoster, or Adel, though, the Darkdrift Knight is still the easiest of the last four Nightlords, as long as you have a lightning weapon. Like the other Nightlords, finding gear or spells that dish out Fulghor's prescribed weakness (in this case, Lightning) is the trick to taking the fight from being exceedingly difficult down to manageable or even easy, thanks to how effective lightning damage is at stun-locking this boss or breaking him out of the wind-up to use his ultimate attack. Fulghor is fast and hits incredibly hard, but regularly dishing out lightning-based attacks renders him almost toothless.

• Solo HP — 13,048
• Trio HP — 39,144
• Weakness — Holy, Poison, Scarlet Rot, Madness

With the right team composition and understanding of Libra's mechanics, the fight against the Equilibrious Beast goes from feeling impossible to almost laughably easy. But until you learn the ins and outs of the fight, Libra is almost a contender for being both the hardest boss Elden Ring Nightreign has to offer and one of the hardest FromSoftware encounters, period. The key is understanding what to do during his ultimate.

While charging his ultimate attack, Libra will generate several golden discs around the arena that you must shatter to break him out of it. Or, what's even more effective, is to communicate within your team to save your character's ultimate abilities and stagger using them in rotation to break Libra out of his ultimate attack with ease. Still, even knowing Libra's attack patterns and refusing to let him use his ultimate still leaves you with a boss that hits like a dump truck and is relentless in his speedy pursuit of players.

• Solo HP — 12,007
• Trio HP — 36,021
• Weakness — Fire

Despite being one of Elden Ring Nightreign's hardest fights, there's a strong case for the fight against Caligo also being one of its most fun. Caligo's fight plays out like most dragon fights in Elden Ring. Players need to stay on their toes and manage their camera as Caligo flies around the arena, dodging deadly breath attacks and hard-hitting tail and claw swipes while attempting to deal some damage of their own. The kicker with Caligo, though, is that both his breath and the icecicles it leaves behind can quickly inflict Frostbite, making frost resistance an absolute must to bring into the fight. Even with frost resistance or a flame weapon, though, a skilled team of Nightfarers still has an uphill battle to climb as they try to whittle down Caligo's large HP pool in a battle of attrition.

• Solo HP — 4,984 (Phase 1); 10,195 (Phase 2)
• Trio HP — 14,952 (Phase 1); 30,585 (Phase 2)
• Weakness — Holy (Phase 1); Lightning (Phase 2)

The final boss of Elden Ring Nightreign and the game's antagonist, Heolstor the Nightlord is about as close as you can get to a perfect boss fight. But that doesn't mean he's easy; far from it. Instead, Heolstor presents an appropriately epic and challenging conclusion to what's already a fairly difficult game, requiring players to put all their knowledge and skills to use in a climactic encounter that pulls out all the stops. To even have a chance of defeating the Night Aspect, players should be level 12 at minimum, and having a Holy weapon handy for the fight is practically a must. The first phase of Heolstor is just a small preamble of what's to come before the real fight begins in phase two, which is where the training wheels come off.

Heolstor becomes faster and more aggressive during his second phase, including a ground-pound attack that can one-shot players at full health if they're not careful and observant of when to dodge (which, by the way, is a second after he lands rather than right at the point of impact with the ground). But, like the best FromSoftware fights, if you can best the challenge that Heolstor presents, the sense of accomplishment that comes afterward makes all the hard work feel that much more worthwhile.