How To Sign Up To Play ‘Elden Ring: Nightreign’ Early Before It’s Too Late

You don’t have much time left to sign up for the Elden Ring: Nightreign network test. The online spinoff to FromSoftware’s smash hit will be running a beta of sorts next month, and everyone is welcome to play—though not everyone who signs up will get one of the coveted spots.

It can’t hurt to sign up, however, and you may as well do so as soon as possible. The deadline to get your name on the list is Monday, January 20th at 6am PT / 9am ET. That’s just one week away.

In order to sign up for the network test, you’ll need to head over to the official website and fill out your personal information. It’s quick and easy, requiring your email, platform of choice and region. The one catch is that you can only participate on Xbox Series X|S or PlayStation 5. The network test is not available for PC players.

While signups end on the 20th, the network test itself doesn’t start until February. There will be five sessions available for players, though some of these are quite early in the morning depending on where you live (or on the later side).

Session 1: Feb 14th, 3am to 6 am PT / 6am to 9am ET

Session 2: Feb 14th, 7pm to 10 pm PT / 10pm to 1am ET

Session 3: Feb 15th, 11am to 2pm PT / 2pm to 5pm ET

Session 4: Feb 16th, 3am to 6 am PT / 6am to 9am ET

Session 5: Feb 16th, 7pm to 10 pm PT / 10pm to 1am ET

So what is Elden Ring: Nightreign exactly and what should you expect from the network test?

Elden Ring: Nightreign is a pretty massive departure from the main game. For one thing, it’s online only. Players form squads of three in an online co-op adventure that takes place across three in-game nights. Each character is a premade hero with special abilities and items.

Players will loot and level up during the day and then face a boss fight at night, culminating in a final boss on the third night. There’s even a circle that encloses on the map similar to a battle royale game, though this is not a competitive PvE title. I actually wish it had PvPvE elements so that teams could face both NPC enemies and antagonistic players, but maybe they’ll add that feature later on. Something like Destiny 2’s Gambit mode is a fun example of how this could work. As it stands, while Elden Ring has both co-op and PvP play, Nightreign doesn’t, which is a shame.

“The Network Test is a preliminary verification test in which the selected testers play a portion of the game prior to the full game launch,” the website tells us. “Various technical verifications of online systems will be examined by conducting large-scale network load tests.”

In other words, don’t expect this to be the full game. The point of this test is to see how well the game’s servers run under load—though I always view these types of tests as a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone thing. The network test is absolutely a part of the game’s marketing. Betas of any kind drive hype for a game’s full release.

I’m not entirely sure how to feel about Nightreign just yet. While I’m excited to play it and hope I’m able to during the network test, I love what FromSoftware does and don’t want to see the company move toward “live-service” style games like so many other developers. I have faith in the Japanese game studio, but hard experience has taught me that even the greatest developers can turn down a dark path.

Ultimately, I hope this is fun and a success, but not such a huge success that FromSoftware shifts its focus away from the mostly single-player experiences it does so well. That being said, I hope that their next game has full-fledged co-op similar to the Seamless Co-op Elden Ring mod, because that’s just a ton of fun.

See you in Limgrave—or, rather, a condensed version of Limgrave that is “reshuffled” in some kind of fashion, making each run a bit different from the last. We’ll know more in a month. Good luck!

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