Elden Ring Nightreign Progression: What Actually Carries Between Runs

Progression in Elden Ring Nightreign carries between runs through relics only — character levels and weapon upgrades reset the moment an expedition ends, and the third layer, your own game knowledge, never shows up on a stat sheet but matters more than either. This guide breaks down exactly which of the three layers survives a run, where relics actually come from, and the unlock order for Duchess and Revenant that saves you from wasting entire evenings on the wrong sequence.

Nightreign is not the open-world Elden Ring with a new coat of paint — it is a separate, session-based roguelike spin-off from the same team, and treating it like the mainline game’s leveling system is the single most common mistake new players make. Nightlord boss mechanics and the roster of Nightfarers overlap with the base game’s world, but the progression math underneath is completely different.

A run in Nightreign is a single expedition through Limveld: you level up in-run using runes, find and upgrade weapons at smithing tables, and build toward a Nightlord fight — but in Elden Ring, progression is mostly permanent, you gain runes, level your character, upgrade weapons, and keep your power forever, which is exactly the assumption that breaks in Nightreign. Upgrades aren’t permanent here, and the same is true of your character level. Everything you build inside an expedition belongs to that expedition alone.

Relics are earned two main ways: by taking part in expeditions and by spending the currency those expeditions generate. Relics are acquired through taking part in your hunts for the Nightlord and through purchases at the Small Jar Bazaar. You don’t need to win a run to walk away with something — you do not lose Relics at the end of each run, instead, you are rewarded with Relics at the end of each Expedition, whether you are successful in killing the Nightlord or not. The currency behind bazaar purchases is Murk, which accumulates quietly during a run and only shows up once the expedition is over.

The rarest relics don’t come from the shop at all. Powerful unique Relics can be obtained by defeating Nightlords or completing Remembrance questlines, and these come with fixed, often build-defining stats rather than the randomized rolls you get from common drops. Fextralife’s wiki splits the full relic pool into three buckets: scene relics that drop randomly or come from a bazaar purchase, Nightfarer-specific relics tied to Remembrance quests, and Nightlord relics earned from a first-time boss kill.

Six of the eight Nightfarers are available immediately after the prologue. The other two — Duchess and Revenant — are gated behind a fixed sequence, and getting the order wrong means backtracking through content you’ve already cleared. The agile and dextrous Duchess unlocks after you complete a major story objective at the end of a Nightreign run, specifically the Tricephalos expedition against Gladius, Beast of Night.

To unlock the Duchess, you first have to defeat Gladius, Beast of Night at the end of the Tricephalos Expedition, and you’ll get the Old Pocket-watch item; back at the Roundtable Hold, give this item to the Priestess and a cutscene will play. Notably, you don’t strictly need to land the kill yourself — you can also receive the Old Pocketwatch if you group with a player who has defeated Gladius, Beast of Night, and you do not need to kill the boss yourself to receive it in your Expedition Rewards, though the source guide flags that interaction as possibly unintended and subject to a future fix.

Revenant is locked behind Duchess specifically, not just “progress the game” in general. The Besmirched Frame is the most important item available at the Small Jar Bazaar. It can be bought for 1500 Murk after unlocking the Duchess and is mainly used to unlock the Revenant as a playable Nightfarer. After buying it, you still have to fight the Revenant’s spirit and her summons before she joins the roster.

There’s no separate “farming mode” — every method for stacking relics runs through completing expeditions, so the real question is which expeditions to repeat and when to spend versus save Murk. Early on, the bazaar’s stock is thin, so hoarding Murk instead of spending it on early relics tends to pay off once the shop expands.

Beyond raw stat boosts, some bazaar purchases unlock entire new systems rather than a single number going up. To get new Vessels with different color slots, Nightreign players have two options: purchase new Vessels from the Small Jar Bazaar or earn them as a reward for certain Remembrance quests. More Vessel slots mean more relic combinations per character, which matters more than any individual relic’s power once you’re a few expeditions deep.

Relic Rites and the Roundtable Hold

All of this equipping happens outside expeditions, at the Relic Rites table in Roundtable Hold, not inside a run. You swap loadouts per character between expeditions, and the slots you have access to depend on which Vessels and Goblets you’ve already unlocked.

Why Goblets Beat a Single Good Relic Early

A Goblet doesn’t hit as hard on paper as a strong unique relic, but it changes how many relics you can equip at once. Buying the first character Goblets right after clearing Tricephalos is consistently flagged as a priority purchase over more relics, precisely because it multiplies what every future relic can do for that character.

The instinct to chase a single powerful relic misses how the system actually scales. Relics are color-coded into slots, and a Vessel’s layout determines which combinations are even possible — each Relic is associated with a certain color, red, blue, green, yellow, or colorless, and can only be slotted into a Vessel slot of a matching color. That means a loadout of three merely decent relics that all synergize with a character’s kit routinely outperforms one big relic sitting next to two wasted slots. Passive effects can also stack in ways that change how a skill functions entirely, not just how hard it hits, which is why players building around a specific Deep of Night boss strategy tend to prioritize a coherent relic set over any single standout item.

“Leveling up now helps my next run”

It doesn’t. Character level and weapon upgrades gained inside an expedition are wiped the moment that expedition ends, regardless of whether you won or lost. The only things that persist are relics, Murk, and unlocks like new characters or bazaar stock.

“A high account level or big relic collection means a better player”

Relics are permanent stat power, but they don’t replace knowing boss attack patterns or which relic combinations actually synergize. An experienced player on a thin relic collection regularly outperforms a stacked account piloted by someone still learning the fights.

“You have to beat Gladius yourself to unlock Duchess”

Not necessarily. Grouping with a teammate who lands the kill can also trigger the Old Pocketwatch drop for you, though this has been noted as possibly unintended, so treat it as a nice-to-have rather than a guaranteed method.