Nightreign Points of Interest, Explained

Church

In the seed data

Houses of worship visited by pilgrims. Sacred flask uses can be increased in these locations.

All 520 records

The extra flask charge makes this the first stop of most day-one routes. It does not clear the penalty you carry from being revived, though, which only a Site of Grace resets. Because every record holds one, marking a Church tells the finder almost nothing about which seed you are in; it is the most marked landmark on the site and the least decisive.

Sorcerer's Rise

Also called Old Sorcerer's Rise

In the seed data

Towers in which sorcerers experiment with their spellcraft, their findings often encrypted by cipher. Very occasionally you may come across a tower in which a sorcerer from the distant past once resided.

All 520 records

That last sentence is the only mention the game makes of the rare variant, which the site records separately as the Difficult Sorcerer's Rise: three puzzles instead of one, and a better reward for solving all three. It sits on 7 of the 520 records, the rarest thing in the dataset.

Great Church

In the seed data

Crumbling houses of worship. The faithful are known to leave their sacred seals in these locations.

477 of 520 records

Worth marking for its position rather than its presence, since nine records in ten hold one. The seals are not a maybe. Every Great Church has an altar holding them, so a faith build short of a seal has one stop it can count on.

Ruins

In the seed data

Vestiges from ages past. Home to strong foes and hidden underground chambers.

457 of 520 records

Ruins carry an affliction that varies by record, and the variants are counted separately, so a poison ruin and a fire ruin are different answers to the finder. That is what makes them decisive far more often than their frequency suggests. Confirm which one you are looking at before you mark it. Every Ruins also hides an illusory barrier, and it is a false floor rather than the wall an Elden Ring player goes looking for. Break through it and you drop into the sealed chamber underneath, where the chests can be looted without clearing any enemies first. That was never worth a detour by itself: chests sit in every location on this list and these ones are ordinary. In the Deep of Night they are not. On a run that starts with either the Nightlord or the map information hidden, players report these chests dropping a Dormant Power at a very high rate, normally the reward for killing a small boss. Nobody has put a number on it.

Main Encampment

In the seed data

Large garrisons home to powerful armies. Expect to find many strong enemies.

383 of 520 records

Like Ruins, the affliction varies and the variant is what carries the information. The silhouette from the air tells you it is an encampment and not which one, so this is a landmark to mark on the second pass. Most also keep dedicated spots to loot bows, though that one depends on the layout, so an archer should treat it as likely rather than promised.

Fort

In the seed data

Outposts full of soldiers. Strategic maps of the surrounding area can be found in these locations, which reveal things hidden nearby.

363 of 520 records

Every Fort has a spot to loot staves beside the table at the top of its tower, so a sorcerer climbing for the map gets paid twice. The map on that table reveals two things, and they fall on opposite sides of the seed line. The buried chests it exposes are recorded here and drawn on your result page already. The Scarabs are not, and never can be. If you want those, climb the tower; the game beats the tool on that half.

Township

In the seed data

Long-deserted places of safety. Merchants with rare goods are known to operate from these places.

187 of 520 records

The "rare goods" are the point. This merchant is the only one who sells talismans, the only one who sells a +2 smithing stone, and the only guaranteed source of a Stonesword Key in the game, one for each player. Everywhere else a key is a roll. Squads playing for Evergaols route through a Township for that reason alone.

Cells holding prisoners whole seals weaken over time.

The typo is the game's own. Note what this description leaves out: opening one costs a Stonesword Key, and it is the only thing a key is for. The game never says so, apparently trusting that an Elden Ring player who finds an imp statue and a key will work it out. Nothing shows you what is sealed inside until the key is spent, which is where knowing the seed changes a blind spend into a decision.

Citadels abounding with danger. These strongholds should only be challenged by those whose skill can equal their bravery.

390 of 520 records

This is the Limveld Castle, the one near the centre of the map: one guard faction, one chest, one basement boss, one rooftop boss. Noklateo removes it and the Great Hollow never had it, though the Great Hollow does have castles of its own built to a different plan. Which faction holds it matters more than most players expect, because a Trolls castle is a common reason to skip the whole structure.

Blacksmith Village

Also called Forge

In the seed data

A hamlet of smiths. Feed fire to the forge to change skills.

120 of 520 records

Two unrelated things share this location. The smithing table rerolls the skill on a weapon, and a separate chest nearby has a high chance of holding the stone that upgrades one. You can take either or both; they are not connected. Added by the DLC, so seeing one tells you which half of the dataset you are in before it narrows anything else.

Marsh

In the seed data

A fortress has sunk into the marsh, and something lies hidden in the depths.

120 of 520 records

Standing in one fills the matching status bar every second, so know which affliction it carries before you wade in. Also DLC-only, and it is the single most decisive mark in the dataset: on the Rotted Woods, marking a Marsh has settled the search almost every time anyone has done it.

Mining tunnels containing ore which can temper armaments.

Running one guarantees a +2 smithing stone, and that guarantee is the whole reason to spend the time. +2 is as far as any ordinary smithing table takes a weapon, so on most runs this is the ceiling. On a Crater run it is not, which is why Crater squads usually skip the tunnel.

Strong foes who wander from place to place. Misjudge their might at your peril.

Read "wander" literally. The seed fixes which boss is where, and reopening the same seed shows the same bosses in the same places, but each one walks a radius rather than standing on its marker. Expect to find it near the icon, not under it.

Scale-Bearing Merchant

In the seed data

Merchants normally sell the same selection of items, though some are limited in quantity. However, some merchants offer entirely unique wares.

128 of 520 records

The game has no separate entry for him, so the quote above is the shop description that covers him. He deals in offers rather than goods, and every one takes something back. Killing him is an option and he drops a talisman for it, but he does not go down easily.

He is Libra. So is the Nightlord called Libra, and so is the merchant the Libra Curse sends you to find. One creature, three ways of meeting him, and he cannot be in two places at once. The dataset shows it cleanly: of the 50 records with Libra as the Nightlord, none carries a Scale-Bearing Merchant and none carries the Libra Curse. Of the 23 records with the curse, none carries the merchant either. All three are mutually exclusive across the full 520.

Eastern Underground Fort

Also called EUF

In the seed data

A fortress seeped in deepest Night, enshrouded by crystal curse.

All 80 Great Hollow records

Present in every record, so counting it tells you nothing. Its damage type does: Holy or Rot, split evenly across the 80. Read this and the western fort together and the pool drops from 80 to about 20 before you mark anything else, which is the fastest opening on any map in the dataset.

Western Underground Fort

Also called WUF

In the seed data

A fortress in which clandestine research was conducted, enshrouded by crystal curse.

All 80 Great Hollow records

Magic or Fire, split evenly, and independent of the eastern fort. Both markers sit on the entrance rather than covering the ground, and between them these two areas take up close to a third of the map. Going into either before the giant crystal is shattered cuts your health.

A magnificent and sacred structure, in which remembrances of battle slumber. Rainbow-colored Order is bestowed upon all who take up its challenge.

It sits between the two Underground Forts, which the game describes as buttressing it, one to the east and one to the west.

Crystals found in the Great Hollow, part of the root system of the giant crystals. Their resonance is said to cause giant crystals to shatter.

Resonating with four of them, or three when you are solo, shatters the giant crystal and lifts the curse that halves your health inside the large structures. Day 1 does not mark them on your map and Day 2 does, which is too late to be useful, because by then you want to be running the upper castles. That gap is the reason the Crystal Finder exists.

Carriers of valuable things. Talismans can be taken from them.

Positions are random every run, so no dataset can hold them and this site will never mark one. The map at the top of a Fort tower is the only way to find them, which is the one job the game still does better than the tool.

Chests containing rare and precious objects, hidden such that others would not find them.

The opposite case to Scarabs, and the pair is worth understanding together. Chests are decided by the seed, so the site already draws them on the result map under the Chests filter. If you have the seed you do not need the Fort tower for this half.

Indicates the task at hand for the Nightfarers. Will only appear under certain circumstances.

This is how an active event tells you where to go. Which event a seed carries is recorded here; where its objective lands on the day is not.