One key difference between Elden Ring: Nightreign and the original game is that players may find themselves unable to find and pick up runes after death.
Dropping experience is a staple mechanic of Soulsborne and Soulslike games. Different games approach this in different ways, whether it’s Hollow Knight spawning a monster in the location of the player’s last death, or Dark Souls shaving off a chunk of the player’s life bar with each death.
Elden Ring had one of the most straightforward iterations of this concept. When the player dies, they can pick up any runes they had on them from the spot where they died. Things work differently in Elden Ring: Nightreign, though, and not just in terms of its gameplay. Here’s how things work and how it differs from the original.
Why can’t I find my dropped runes in Elden Ring: Nightreign?
Runes in Elden Ring: Nightreign can be picked up by enemies after dying, which can make them difficult to find.
In Elden Ring: Nightreign, runes will typically be found on the ground as players would expect. After dying, a small Erdtree appears on the ground and players can press the action button to pick them up. The runes’ location is marked on the mini-map, making it easy to track them across the map.
In some cases, however, the locations of runes won’t be immediately obvious. Though they’ll appear on the mini-map, the sparkling Erdtree isn’t in the same spot. When Elden Ring: Nightreign players can’t find runes near where they died, it’s likely because an enemy unit absorbed them.
The runes can be taken back by killing the enemy carrying them. After, the runes are directly returned to the player.
This isn’t a new system for longtime FromSoftware players. A similar system existed in Bloodborne, where Blood Echoes were sometimes left on the ground and were sometimes attached to enemies. These enemies were easy to spot, as they had glowing eyes that left a distinctive trail.
The trouble in Elden Ring: Nightreign is that players might face some serious issues trying to pick up their runes. Players can find themselves having to run into the rain and might wind up needing to fight for their runes while taking devastating damage over time.
Runes still disappear after multiple deaths
While there are some key changes when it comes to recovering runes in Elden Ring: Nightreign, the central concept remains the same.
Upon death, players drop all the runes they have on-hand. Runes remain both a form of experience for leveling up, and a currency for buying items from merchants. While their value has always been primarily due to their use in leveling up, things are even more skewed in Nightreign due to how merchants are relatively unimportant in the game.
While runes can be picked up after death without penalty, Elden Ring: Nightreign continues the tradition of having them disappear forever if the player dies while they’re on the ground. The general style of the gameplay makes it so losing these runes isn’t quite as infuriating