Do you need Elden Ring to play Nightreign?

No. Nightreign is a standalone game, not downloadable content for Elden Ring — you buy it on its own, and it never asks you to own or launch the base game to install or play it.

The confusion comes mostly from the price: Nightreign shipped at $39.99, well under a full retail game, which made a lot of people assume it was an expansion. It isn't. It's a separate multiplayer roguelike built on Elden Ring's engine and world, where a run — called an expedition — compresses into a single 30-minute session against randomized bosses, buildings and loot, instead of the sprawling single campaign of the original.

You can play it solo. Nightreign supports going in alone, though it's built around a party, and matchmaking at launch only offered two options: one player or three. There was no way to matchmake for exactly two people — you either soloed it or found a full trio. That changed with update 1.02 on July 30, 2025, which added Duo Expeditions, a proper matchmaking mode for two players instead of three. To use it, open the Roundtable, switch to the "Matchmaking Settings" tab, and set the player count to two.

Having played Elden Ring helps, but nothing carries over. There's no character, item or progress transfer between the two games — Nightreign starts you fresh regardless. What experience with the original does buy you is recognition: enemies, bosses and some of the world's lore will already be familiar, which matters when a run only gives you thirty minutes to read an unfamiliar fight and react. None of that knowledge is required to pick Nightreign up, but it does shorten the learning curve.