Elden Ring's first major patch sees FromSoft belatedly admit singleplayer is all sorts of unfair, adds an auto-resurrect and buffs the levelling curve

Elden Ring Nightreign is now in the wild, and my experience thus far can be summed up as "wow this game is hard." I had a few runs over the weekend and, masochist that I am, went in fairly blind. Bad idea: Every single one ended when a party member picked a fight they shouldn't have, and we got brutally wiped by something gigantic.

But at least in multiplayer it felt like we had the teensiest tiniest chance of survival. Singleplayer? Good luck pal. This was an issue flagged in previews but players have quickly found that Nightreign is utterly unforgiving in solo runs, and just does not hesitate in throwing everything plus the kitchen sink at you.

The game's director has previously waved this away, insisting that the game is built for multiplayer, but now FromSoftware has belatedly acknowledged it might have, y'know, very slightly got the balance a bit off in solo play. A new patch is live, and makes the following changes to the singleplayer mode only:

• The effect 'Automatic Revival Upon Defeat', which allows revival once per night boss battle, has been added to solo expeditions.
• The amount of runes gained has been increased for solo expeditions.

Each Nightreign run takes place over three in-game days, and at the end of each you fight a night boss, with a night lord (the biggest baddest nasties) turning up on the third night. These are the toughest fights in the game so, while this isn't quite a get out of jail free card, one auto-resurrect is at least going to improve solo players' chances.

The second change may be even more consequential: essentially Nightreign is going to let solo players level up quicker. If I had to pick a common thread among my failed Nightreign runs, it would be failing to level properly before taking on certain threats, so this should make a big difference.

As well as the changes to singleplayer there are some general balance adjustments to high-rarity Relics that should help all players. The number that drop on the third day has been increased, and the Scenic Flat stones that can be purchased at the in-game bazaar now have a higher probability of dropping high-rarity Relics.

There's also a slew of minor bug fixes that can be read in the full patch notes, and one adjustment to the Steam version's performance in low graphics settings. All players will need to install this patch before playing online.

This should make a difference to solo players, though I can confidently say that I will never ever play Nightreign on my own: I'm not even surviving at the moment with two buddies. Believe it or not there are players out there who, even before this patch, were solo-ing Nightreign. But I'm old and wizened, and my thoughts pretty much align with Wes Fenlon: this is the first FromSoftware game I wish I could play on easy.