Elden Ring Nightreign: Is Everdark Augur An Unfair Boss Fight?

Everything you need to know about the Everdark Augur in Elden Ring Nightreign, and the discourse surrounding the new Nightlord.

Elden Ring Nightreign (Image via FromSoftware)

The release of Everdark Augur in Elden Ring Nightreign is easily the most polarizing event for the souls-like community since Elden Ring’s Malenia and her Waterfowl Dance. While some players do enjoy the boss fight for what it is, i.e., a gimmick boss, others ended up hating it for the same reason. As a boss, Augur had never been the highlight of the core Nightreign experience.

As such, with the Everdark variant, FromSoftware had a great opportunity to make the boss into something special and memorable for the players. While the developers seemed to have accomplished doing just that, but for the wrong reasons. On Steam and Reddit, players have been quite vocal about their disappointment regarding Everdark Augur.

However, is Everdark Augur in Elden Ring Nightreign really a bad and unfair boss fight? Let’s find out in this article.

FromSoftware And Their History With Gimmick Bosses

Everdark Augur in Elden Ring Nightreign (Image via FromSoftware)

FromSoftware is one of the few Triple-A studios that is best known for its impeccable boss designs. From the early days of Armored Core to the behemoth that is Elden Ring, boss fights have always remained a focal point of any FromSoftware experience. In fact, even in games that weren’t received all that well by the players, a la Ninja Blade and Dark Souls 2, boss fights still remained a highlight.

However, despite that, FromSoftware isn’t immune to their fair share of blunders when it comes to, well, boss fights. This is mostly true for gimmick bosses, a la Dark Souls’ Bed of Chaos or Bloodborne’s Witches of Hemwick. However, over the last decade, FromSoftware has mastered their craft of delivering a good gimmick boss fight.

So much so that even bosses, like Rykard, which essentially employs the same gimmick as Demon’s Souls’ Stormking, are genuinely enjoyable. However, with their latest offering, i.e., Elden Ring Nightreign, FromSoftware might’ve taken the “gimmick” part in their boss design a bit too far.

This is where we pivot back to the subject at hand, Everdark Augur. While the community is still divided on the boss, I think it’s both a good gimmick boss and a bad Nightreign boss. Let me explain.

Why Everdark Augur Doesn’t Work in Elden Ring Nightreign?

There are quite a few reasons why Everdark Augur isn’t the right fit for a game like Elden Ring Nightreign. However, the biggest reason is that it’s a “gimmick fight” that more or less nullifies your entire progress up to Day 3. Augur is weak to Lightning, and that applies to the Everdark version of the boss as well, but only for the first phase.

In the second phase, none of your weapons, Character Skills, or even Ultimate Arts are going to do any damage to the boss. The only way to deal consistent damage to Everdark Augur is with the weapon it drops and the Storm Ruler Ash of War. While a similar gimmick worked in the context of a regular souls-like game, it feels incredibly out of place for Nightreign, which is more roguelike than souls-like.

Another big issue that the boss has is the lack of information ahead of the battle. Nowhere in the game does it mention that charging Storm Ruler will refill your FP, which is needed to deal damage to the boss.

While yes, you’re meant to figure it out by trial and error, for a gimmick boss, the lack of information about said “gimmick” is never a good way to design a boss fight. Lastly, for a gimmick boss, Everdark Augur has way too much health, which ends up extending the boss fight for no good reason.

As such, it’s understandable why some players might be disappointed by Everdark Augur and the gimmick surrounding it. However, despite all that, it’s still an enjoyable boss fight, granted you’re prepared to tackle it on its own terms.

Why Everdark Augur Can Be An Enjoyable Boss Fight?

While yes, Everdark Augur does feel somewhat out of place in Nightreign for the first couple of attempts, once you get a good idea of the boss’s gimmick, it becomes one of the most memorable battles in the entire game. Firstly, Everdark Augur is a spectacle above all else, perhaps even more so than Everdark Fulghor’s second phase.

Additionally, the Storm Ruler gimmick is a great callback to FromSoftware’s past games, especially Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls 3. Also, in anything, Everdark Augur does add a bit of freshness to the whole Elden Ring Nightreign experience. And after having spent almost 300 hours in the game, I really appreciated that. It’s one of the few bosses in the game that actually makes you think about your passives more than your Relics.

While you can’t use the weapons you picked on Day 1 and Day 2 against the Nightlord, you can still work their passives into your makeshift build. With the Storm Ruler, you’re dealing Magic Damage, and you can easily find weapons with a passive that buffs said damage type.

Furthermore, you can also buff your Ranged Damage, Skill Damage, Skill FP Consumption, and Charge Attacks. All these passive stacks give you a fairly decent boost against Augur’s second phase.

Additional Notes

While it isn’t ideal, it is possible to defeat Everdark Augur with regular weapons. The only issue is that your damage output is going to be incredibly low, which will extend the boss fight well beyond the 15-20 minute mark. You can deal bonus damage with Lightning weapons/Incantations. However, it’s still nowhere close to the damage output of Storm Ruler.