Have you ever found yourself playing Elden Ring and wanting a bit more unpredictability? If that sounds like you, then Elden Ring Nightreign is right up your alley. This game takes the familiar world and foundation of Elden Ring and morphs it into a roguelike experience focused on cooperative gameplay. While you’ll recognize many elements, Nightreign offers enough fresh aspects to make it distinct.
One major addition is the wide selection of pre-set characters. Among the diverse Nightfarers you can choose, each offers unique strategies for tackling your Expeditions. However, the Executor character stands out with a gameplay style that’s reminiscent of Sekiro, especially if you prefer a more deflection-based approach.
Executor Overview
The Executor is designed with a specific play style in mind. While they have solid HP scaling, they are relatively fragile and rely heavily on effective dodging and parrying for survivability. This makes them less suited for beginners; it’s advisable to master the basics of parrying before diving into their gameplay.
As a pure Dexterity character, Executor excels with sharp, fast weapons, but does poorly with anything else. This design encourages players to use the core mechanic of Executor: the Cursed Sword. This unique character skill can be activated anytime without a cooldown, unlike skills from other characters. It allows you to parry attacks easily, dealing posture damage while negating the incoming hit for a minor stamina cost.
That said, Executor struggles against multiple foes. They thrive in one-on-one situations, requiring focused opponents and allies to handle distractions or take down weaker enemies. With an S scaling in Arcane, Bleed builds can significantly enhance your damage output.
Executor’s Traits
Like all Nightfarers, Executor features three unique traits: a Passive Ability, a Character Skill, and an Ultimate Art. Despite their specific gameplay style, these traits offer a surprising degree of diversity.
Passive Ability
Executor’s Passive Ability, Tenacity, is one of the most straightforward among the Nightfarers. After recovering from a status ailment, you’ll receive a boost to attack damage and stamina recovery speed. For ailments like Poison and Scarlet Rot, you need to completely recover for Tenacity to activate. However, it triggers immediately for instantaneous ailments like Frostbite and Blood Loss.
Blood Loss can be used strategically to activate Tenacity as well. Much like in the original Elden Ring, using Seppuku with a suitable weapon will cause Blood Loss, boosting your damage and activating Tenacity for added enhancements. This feature makes Executor a true risk-reward character.
Character Skill
The main draw of playing as Executor lies in their Character Skill: Cursed Sword. This skill allows the Executor to draw a katana and wield it with both hands. The moveset mirrors that of a standard katana, but you can only walk while holding it, and dodging becomes a short hop instead of a longer roll.
To put the Cursed Sword away, the only option is to initiate a surge sprint or reactivate the Character Skill.
While using the Cursed Sword, you gain the ability to deflect attacks by blocking just before the hit lands. Timing is crucial, as doing so accurately results in sparks flying. This will inflict posture damage on the enemy, with enough successful deflections breaking their guard. The more you deflect, the more the Cursed Sword reveals itself, glowing gold.
When the sword glows, your deflections deal increased posture damage and your attacks hit harder. Additionally, you can unleash a powerful slash as a weapon skill that inflicts significant HP and posture damage. Once the sword is revealed, that state lasts until you use the weapon skill.
Fortunately, if you deflect too early, the incoming attack will still be blocked, albeit at a higher stamina cost. This could break your guard, making you vulnerable to counter-attacks. Therefore, using the Cursed Sword is best suited for confronting a single enemy, as it becomes challenging to deflect against fast, multiple strikes.
Keep in mind that only physical attacks can be deflected; magic attacks cannot. It’s best to reserve the Cursed Sword for melee opponents.
Ultimate Art
Executor’s Ultimate Art is quite surprising. Aspects of the Crucible: Beast allows the Executor to transform into a primordial beast, gaining a unique moveset. Unlike their focused one-on-one approach, this form is excellent for tackling groups of enemies.
In this beast form, you’ll significantly increase your HP and gain access to new light and heavy attacks, along with a weapon skill. The weapon skill is a powerful slash that deals heavy damage but will end your Ultimate Art instantly, so use it when the gauge is nearly depleted. You also gain considerable hyper armor, allowing you to withstand enemy attacks.
If your HP is higher when exiting the beast form than when you entered, you will retain that higher HP up to your maximum limit.
While in Beast mode, you won’t be invulnerable. Being aware of your HP is crucial to prevent it from entirely depleting. This form is particularly useful when facing hordes or in low-health scenarios. Additionally, its substantial attacks can effectively revive allies.
Best Weapons for Executor
Given Executor’s S scaling in Dexterity, you’ll want to focus primarily on weapons that align with this skill. Other scalings simply don’t compare, so stick with what Executor does best: lighter weapons such as katanas, daggers, and curved swords. These weapons strike quickly and provide solid damage scaling.
Moreover, Executor also has an S scaling in Arcane, meaning that certain incantations, particularly blood-focused ones, work wonders with Executor. Since katanas naturally inflict Blood Loss, enhancing this with Arcane—like with the Bloodflame Blade—offers a substantial boost to damage.
Lastly, the Cursed Sword Character Skill grants Executor consistent access to a katana moveset, providing ample reason to consider other Dexterity weapons in your loadout for more versatility. Since using the Cursed Sword often becomes a waiting game for deflections, initially inflicting a status ailment like Scarlet Rot with a different weapon can help wear down an enemy as you provoke their attacks.
In Nightreign, an icon appears under an enemy’s health bar to indicate active status ailments.
