Elden Ring Nightreign: How to Unlock Every Nightfarer

Elden Ring Nightreign now has ten playable Nightfarers. Six — Wylder, Guardian, Ironeye, Raider, Recluse and Executor — are available the moment you start a new save. The other four take extra steps: the Duchess and the Revenant are base-game unlocks earned through in-game progression, while the Scholar and the Undertaker arrived with the paid The Forsaken Hollows expansion, which Bandai Namco released on December 4, 2025. Here is exactly how to unlock every one of them, sourced from Bandai Namco's own unlock guide and official game pages.

All 10 Nightfarers at a glance

Before getting into unlock steps, here's the full roster as it stands after Bandai Namco's own character material and the official DLC unlock guide are combined. Role descriptions below reflect how Bandai Namco itself frames each Nightfarer rather than community damage numbers or tier lists, which change with every balance patch.

How Nightreign's expedition structure shapes unlocks

It helps to understand the game loop these unlocks are built around. Bandai Namco's own description frames Elden Ring Nightreign as a co-op action-survival spin-off set in the Elden Ring universe, where three Nightfarers get two full in-game days to explore the ever-shifting map of Limveld and hunt down a Nightlord. Each night ends with a boss fight, and a successful expedition culminates in a final showdown with the Nightlord on the third day. Even expeditions that end in defeat typically reward relics, which the official page says players use "to customize and upgrade their characters" for the next run.

That relic-and-retry loop is why so many of Nightreign's unlock conditions — both the officially confirmed DLC trigger and the community-documented base-game ones — are tied to beating or at least reaching specific bosses rather than simply hitting a level threshold or story beat. It also means progress toward unlocking a Nightfarer can carry over between sessions, so a string of losses against the same Nightlord isn't necessarily wasted time.

The 6 Nightfarers available from the start

If you've just launched Elden Ring Nightreign for the first time, you can immediately pick between six Nightfarers on the character-select screen at Roundtable Hold. Bandai Namco's official game page describes them this way:

• Wylder — a melee knight built around a grappling hook for mobility and explosive iron spikes for burst damage.
• Guardian — a shield warrior who leans into blocking and protecting teammates.
• Ironeye — an archer who exploits enemy weaknesses from range.
• Raider — a hard-hitting fighter who resists minor attacks and can summon a colossal gravestone.
• Recluse — a mage who gathers elemental attributes to cast powerful spells.
• Executor — described in Bandai Namco's own wallpaper feature as "a condemned warrior from a golden age who wields a cursed katana blade."

None of these six require any unlock steps, relics, or boss kills — they're playable from your very first expedition into Limveld.

How to unlock the Duchess

The Duchess and the Revenant are the two Nightfarers that Bandai Namco's own game page counts among the base roster's eight but doesn't walk through unlocking step-by-step on its public site. We could not find an official, published walkthrough of the exact unlock trigger from FromSoftware or Bandai Namco, so the steps below come from well-established community wikis and guides rather than an official source — treat them as community-sourced and not stated with the same certainty as the DLC unlock steps further down this article, which are confirmed directly by Bandai Namco.

According to those community sources, the Duchess unlocks by completing an expedition against the Tricephalos Nightlord (the same boss featured in the official DLC unlock steps below) and recovering a specific relic drop, then handing it in in Roundtable Hold. Because relic drops in Nightreign are randomized, players sometimes need more than one run of that expedition before the item appears.

How to unlock the Revenant

Bandai Namco's own description of the Revenant, published alongside its official 4K wallpaper release, calls her "a doll inhabited by the soul of a lady who manipulates spirits in her quest for revenge." That same material confirms her general kit — a necromancy-style passive that raises fallen enemies as temporary allies, a skill that calls in a spirit companion, and an ultimate art that grants brief near-invincibility to her and nearby allies — but again, it doesn't spell out the unlock trigger.

Community guides consistently describe the Revenant as unlocking after the Duchess, through a relic purchase from a merchant in Roundtable Hold followed by a dedicated boss encounter. As with the Duchess, we're flagging this as community-sourced rather than officially confirmed, since we could not verify the exact steps or any in-game costs against a Bandai Namco or FromSoftware page.

What Bandai Namco does confirm, through its own character material, is the shape of the Revenant's kit once she's unlocked: a passive built around raising defeated enemies as temporary allies, a character skill that calls in a spirit companion, and an ultimate art that grants her and nearby teammates a brief window of near-invincibility. That support-oriented kit is a useful thing to know going in, since the Revenant plays very differently from the frontline fighters among the six starting Nightfarers.

The Forsaken Hollows: what the DLC adds

The Forsaken Hollows is Elden Ring Nightreign's first paid expansion. Bandai Namco's own launch announcement confirms it went live on December 4, 2025 across PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC via Steam. Alongside the two new Nightfarers covered below, the expansion adds two new third-day Nightlord bosses, additional field bosses, a new Shifting Earth event that reshapes part of Limveld, and new points of interest to explore. A post-release update also folds some of this content into the Deep of Night mode for matches where all three players own the DLC.

If you bought Elden Ring Nightreign through a Deluxe Edition or pre-ordered it, Bandai Namco's page notes you'll need to manually download the DLC rather than have it appear automatically — check the download option listed below the game's icon on your platform's storefront, or, on PC, make sure Steam has finished downloading the required update before launch day.

How to unlock Scholar and Undertaker

This is the one part of the roster where Bandai Namco has published exact, official steps. Per the company's own "How to Unlock the DLC Content" guide, unlocking both new Forsaken Hollows Nightfarers takes two steps:

1. Defeat the boss Tricephalos in an expedition.
2. Return to Roundtable Hold and speak with the Iron Menial, who delivers a message from the Small Jar Merchant.

That single trigger unlocks both new characters at once:

• Scholar — Bandai Namco describes this Nightfarer as "an academic skilled in spellcasting who uses arcane knowledge and sharp observation to gain battlefield advantages."
• Undertaker — described officially as "a faith-driven fighter, mandated by her monastery to slay the Nightlord, who uses great strength to defeat enemies."

Because the trigger is tied to a specific Nightlord rather than general playtime, you can unlock both DLC characters in a single successful (or even partially successful) run against Tricephalos, provided you then make the trip back to Roundtable Hold to collect the Iron Menial's message afterward.

Bonus unlock: the Balancers and The Great Hollows

Bandai Namco's official unlock guide also details a secondary unlock chain for players who want to go further. To access the Balancers boss expedition and the new "The Great Hollows" Shifting Earth event, you need to:

1. Defeat at least two bosses in the base game, including Tricephalos.
2. Make both Scholar and Undertaker playable (per the steps above).
3. Head to the chapel that opens up behind the Small Jar Merchant in Roundtable Hold.

This isn't required to play as Scholar or Undertaker, but it's the next milestone Bandai Namco points players toward once both DLC Nightfarers are unlocked.

Platforms and how to get the DLC

Elden Ring Nightreign itself launched on May 30, 2025 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC, according to Bandai Namco's official product page. The Forsaken Hollows DLC is a separate paid purchase on the same platforms, available through each platform's storefront — including the game's Steam store page on PC. Per Bandai Namco's unlock guide, activation differs slightly by platform:

• PS5 and PS4: look for the download option below the game's icon after the DLC's release date. Deluxe Edition and pre-order buyers need to start that download manually.
• Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One: the same download prompt appears below the game icon, or you can go to My Collection, select the main game, open the menu, choose "Manage Games & Add-ons," check the DLC, and save your changes.
• Steam: the DLC downloads automatically once it's live, but you need Update File 1.03 installed first — Bandai Namco scheduled that patch to land the day before the expansion's release.

Tips for unlocking the full roster faster

A few practical notes if you're working through the whole list in one sitting:

• Tricephalos matters twice over — it's the confirmed trigger for Scholar and Undertaker, and community guides also point to it as a relevant early expedition for Duchess progress, so prioritize expeditions that put that boss on the map.
• Because Nightreign runs are built around three-player expeditions, a full run can end in success or failure and still move your unlock progress forward in some cases — don't assume a loss means a wasted run before checking Roundtable Hold.
• If you're coming from other class-based multiplayer games and want a sense of how Nightreign's Nightfarer kits compare to other squad-based shooters, our comparison of Arc Raiders and Helldivers 2 breaks down how two other co-op titles handle specialized roles.
• Players coming from more traditional class/loadout systems may also find our Battlefield 6 beginner's guide to classes and weapons a useful point of comparison for how role-based unlocks are paced in a different genre.

The bottom line

Six of Elden Ring Nightreign's ten Nightfarers are playable immediately, the Duchess and Revenant come from base-game progression that's best documented by the community rather than an official walkthrough, and Scholar and Undertaker — the two new additions from The Forsaken Hollows — unlock through a single, Bandai Namco-confirmed trigger: beat Tricephalos, then check in with the Iron Menial at Roundtable Hold. If you're building out a broader backlog of character-unlock guides, our breakdown of starters, battles, and Mega Evolution in Pokémon Legends Z-A covers a similarly structured unlock progression in a very different genre.

Written byJonah Reyes

Jonah Reyes leads Pandromeda's gaming coverage: console and handheld hardware, release dates, pricing changes, patch notes and the business moves behind the biggest franchises. He sources every date and price from the platform holders and publishers themselves, and says plainly when something is still only a rumour.

More from Jonah ReyesAll Gaming coverage