Elden Ring Nightreign’s first paid DLC, The Forsaken Hollow, is finally here. If it does it’s job, the new mini-expansion will bring fans back and give them new reasons to obsess over the surprisingly excellent multiplayer roguelike.
I’ve cleared my schedule and shamed my friends into joining me for whatever fresh surprises from FromSoftware await us. Here’s everything you need to know about the new content, including what’s in it, when it goes live, and the accompanying patch notes.
What time does Elden Ring Nightreign: The Forsaken Hollows go live?
The official release schedule of #ELDENRING #NIGHTREIGN The Forsaken Hollows is now available.
Learn how to access the content of The Forsaken Hollows here: https://t.co/YKcgUiynX1 pic.twitter.com/RJafPEq0dV
— ELDEN RING (@ELDENRING) December 2, 2025
This is the part that sucks. The global release times are staggered and consoles get the short end of the stick. The Forsaken Hollow launches December 3 at 6:00 p.m. ET on PC and December 4 at 12:00 a.m. ET. If you’re on Xbox Series X/S, you can pull the time zone trick to get in early, but it seems like everyone on PlayStation 5 and PS4 are out of luck.
I’m still holding out some small ray of hope that the DLC will magically unlock around 9:00 p.m. ET like most of Nightreign‘s free updates and weekly content rotations. That doesn’t seem to be the care this time around, however.
How do you access The Forsaken Hollows?
Just because you bought the $15 DLC doesn’t mean the content will automatically be active in your version of Nightreign. To actually access the two additional Nightfarer characters you’ll need to have first defeated Tricephalos, the game’s three-headed wolf Nightlord. After that, head to the Roundtable Hold, talk to the Iron Menial, and get the message from the Small Jar Merchant to unlock the new Scholar and Undertaker classes.
What about the new Shifting Earth event? To access that and the new Balancers boss fight, you’ll need to have completed the above steps and defeated a second Nightlord. With those conditions met you’ll head to a chapel that appears behind the Small Jar Merchant where you can activate the cataclysmic Shifting Earth event ‘The Great Hollows.’
What’s The Forsaken Hollows DLC adding to Nightreign?
There’s the Scholar, a new support class whose Character Skill is called Analyze and lets him debuff enemies by keeping them within a scoped view. His passive skill is Bagcraft which lets him hold more items. His Ultimate Art is called Communion and it links enemies so damaging one damages them all, while also doing the same for allies letting them share heals.
Then there’s Undertaker, a more aggressive melee class whose Character Skill is called Trance and gives her free stamina and bonus speed. Her Ultimate Art is Loathsome Hex which unleashes a flurry of attacks at whatever’s targeted. Her passive, Confluence, briefly gives her another free Ultimate Art any time an ally uses theirs.
The Forsaken Hollows DLC also adds the aforementioned Great Hollows Shifting Earth event, which isn’t just a repurposed section of the existing map but an entirely new area players will have to fly to with its own points of interest, ruins, and underground mazes. In addition to the new Balancers Nightlord, the DLC is bringing poison swamps to Limveld, fresh field bosses, and also entirely new weapons.
Most importantly, it should feel hard. “Whenever people who have played the main game extensively go into the DLC content, they’ll be able to have a bit of that feeling like they had when they first played Nightreign, where there’s still a bit that they’re trying to figure out,” director Junya Ishizaki promised. “[The Forsaken Hollows is] definitely a little bit harder, but it’s not ridiculous or anything like that, but that’s still within what we would consider to be a fair challenge.”
A new patch with no Nightfarer balance changes
Finally, the DLC arrives alongside the latest free update which is already live. It includes some small quality-of-life tweaks and a bunch of bug fixes, including for Raider’s Retaliate skill where it wouldn’t work properly and an ongoing issue where some Sites of Grace or Churches wouldn’t activate. Notably, however, there are no actual buffs or nerfs to the existing cast of characters. Maybe FromSoftware wants to see how Scholar and Undertaker compare before decided to rescale them.
Here are the full patch notes for Nightreign version 1.03:
New features
- Added support for The Forsaken Hollows.
- If you own the DLC The Forsaken Hollows, it will be displayed in the lower right corner of the title screen.
- Added a display of the currently equipped relics in the Character Selection menu.
- You can check the effects of equipped relics by toggling the display.
- Added a feature to set names when registering Relics presets in the Relic Rites menu.
- Set names can be changed in the All Presets section.
- The order of presets for each character can now be changed in the All Presets section of the Relic Rites menu.
- In the Relic Rites menu, you can change the order of presets (but not the order of the character themselves) in the All Relics section.
- Added Deep Large Scenic Flatstone to the Collector Signboard shop.
- The map’s layer display can now be toggled in the Results menu.
- The relics equipped by each player can now be displayed in the Results menu.
- Relics can only be displayed for sessions played in version 1.02 or later.
- Players with a Personal Objective that requires defeating a specific target while Reliving a Remembrance can now embark on Expeditions with players whose Personal Objective does not require defeating a specific target.
- Personal Objectives that do not require destroying the target will only appear for one player per Expedition.
- The flask count will now be highlighted in the following situations:
- When the flask count is at the maximum capacity,
- When an enemy-induced effect that influences the flask is triggered.
- The vertical position of the compass’ rune icon will now be displayed if the runes dropped upon death are significantly above or below the player character.
- You can now highlight specific events that occur on a map layer that is on a different level from the character’s location in the map menu.
- Adjusted the Dormant Power selection screen so that the HP gauge and other UI elements remain visible while the screen is displayed.
- Adjusted the weapon lineup in Limveld’s shops.
- Added Fire Pots to the shop inventory inside the Spirit Shetler.
- The target-lock on enemies that are behind when the tombstone summoned by Raider’s Ultimate Art appears no longer gets released.
Balance Adjustments
In general, the trigger conditions of Relic effects that trigger with low HP, equipment passive effects, and special effects have been broadened.
Changes to Passive Effects and Special Effects
- Added new Passive Effects:
- Improved Melee Attack Power
- Improved Dash Attacks
- Improved Rolling Attacks
- Increased the effect of the Passive Effect Improved Attack Power when Two-Handing.
- Increased the effect of the Passive Effect Attack Up when Wielding Two Armaments.
- Increased the effect of the Passive Effect Improved Chain Attack Finishers.
- Increased the effect of the Passive Effect Improved Charge Attacks.
- Increased the effect of the Passive Effect Improved Jump Attacks.
- Increased the effect of the Passive Effect Improved Guard Counters.
- Increased the effect of the Passive Effect Improved Skill Attack Power.
- Increased the effect of the Passive Effect Physical Attack Up.
- Broadened the trigger conditions and decreased the effectiveness of the Passive Effect Improved Damage Negation at Low HP.
- Broadened the trigger conditions and decreased the effectiveness of the Talisman Blue-Feathered Branchsword.
Changes to Relic Effects
- Increased the effect of Physical Attack Up.
- Increased the effect of Improved Initial Standard Attack.
- Increased the effect of Improved Critical Hits.
- Increased the effect of Improved Guard Counters.
- Increased the effect of Improved XXX Damage (excluding bow weapon types).
- Increased the effect of Improved Attack Power with 3+ XX Equipped (excluding bow weapon types).
- Broadened the trigger conditions and decreased the effectiveness of Improved Damage Negation at Low HP.
Other Changes
- Reduced the FP consumption and increased the power of the Wrath of Gold Incantation.
Bug Fixes & improvements
- Fixed a bug in the Augur invasion event where the character would not be properly teleported to the battle area against Augur if the player was performing a critical hit at the time of the teleportation trigger.
- Mitigated an issue where Sites of Grace or Churches would not activate and Leveling Up and Adding Charges to Flask could not be performed under some conditions.
- Fixed a bug where the range of Night’s Tide differed from other players upon rejoining a session under some conditions.
- Fixed a bug where Hammer weapons with the Prayerful Strike skill would not appear.
- Fixed a bug where effects that heal or enhance allies did not apply to characters dodging or performing their Ultimate Art.
- Fixed an issue where the weak points created by Ironeye’s skill Marking would appear for some players and not others under some conditions.
- Fixed a bug where Raider’s Retaliate skill would be canceled and the character would flinch when receiving some enemy attacks that deal no damage while the skill was active.
- Fixed a bug where affinity residues spawned by Recluse’s Elemental Defense passive ability would not appear when hit by some enemy attacks.
- Fixed a bug where Stagger damage was not applied when parrying some enemy attacks with Executor.
- Fixed a bug where the range of rolls to dodge some enemies’ darkness-imbued attacks was different than intended.
- Fixed a bug in Depths Relics where the effect Greenspill Crystal Tear in possession at start of expedition did not appear.
- Fixed a bug in the expedition menu where the gauge indicating the Deep of Night rating was not displayed when performing Reduce Depth, resulting in the subsequent gauge not reflecting the rate correctly.
- Fixed a bug in the Relic Rites menu where the icon indicating placement in other Vessels was not displayed correctly.
- Fixed a bug in the Dormant Power selection screen where the UI indicating rarity was not displayed on equipment and item icons.
- Fixed an issue where sorting by FP Consumption in the Sparring Equipment menu and Visual Codex menu of the Sparring Grounds, when displaying the list of Sorceries and Incantations, did not work correctly.
- Fixed a bug in the Results menu and Victor’s Record menu where the attributes added by Relics to each character’s weapons during an Expedition were not correctly reflected.
- Fixed a bug in the Results menu where the special effects held by other players were not recorded beyond a certain number.
- Fixed an issue where, if a session was disbanded immediately after a player left, the message at the title screen confirming the return to that session would keep appearing even after selecting OK.
- Fixed some graphical rendering issues.
- Fixed an issue where some sound effects did not play correctly.
- Corrected some text.
- Made several other performance improvements and bug fixes.
