The latest update for Elden Ring Nightreign has arrived with version 1.03.1, and if you’ve been struggling with bugs – particularly as Scholar – you’re going to want to pay attention.
This maintenance patch tackles a mountain of issues that have been plaguing players since The Forsaken Hollows DLC launched, while also bringing some meaningful balance tweaks and quality-of-life improvements.
DLC Integration Gets Smarter
If you own The Forsaken Hollows DLC, you’ll now encounter additional targets, Landmarks, raid events, and Shifting Earth content when playing Deep of Night mode. The catch? These new elements only appear when you’re matched with other players who also own the DLC. This smart matchmaking approach prevents DLC owners from overwhelming players who haven’t purchased the expansion while ensuring those who did invest get their money’s worth.
DLC owners also get treated to new attack patterns during the Night Aspect boss fight, ramping up the challenge for those who’ve already mastered the base encounter. It’s a nice touch that rewards players who’ve committed to the additional content without fracturing the playerbase too severely.
Balance Shifts Worth Noting
The development team made several adjustments that directly impact how challenging certain encounters feel. Elemental curse effects from temples in the Great Hollow Shifting Earth – those relating to Fire, Magic, Lightning, and Holy damage – have been increased. Translation: those temple runs just got noticeably more punishing if you’re not properly prepared with the right resistances or consumables.
On the flip side, the wolves that spawn during the Tricephalos raid event received a damage nerf. Anyone who’s faced this encounter knows those summoned wolves could turn a manageable raid into absolute chaos, especially with smaller party sizes. This adjustment should make the event feel less like you’re getting swarmed and more like a strategic challenge.
Scholar Gets Completely Overhauled
If you’ve been playing Scholar since the DLC dropped, you’ve probably noticed something wasn’t quite right. Well, you weren’t imagining things – the patch notes reveal an astonishing number of Scholar-specific bugs that have now been addressed.
Scholar’s Communion Ultimate Art would previously break when transformed using Executor’s Aspects of the Crucible: Beast ability, which essentially made one of the game’s most interesting ability combinations completely unusable. That’s fixed now, opening up new build possibilities.
The Analyze skill, Scholar’s bread-and-butter ability, had numerous issues. The skill would fail to increase the art gauge properly when fully charged, and the number of analyzed targets would reset if any player opened a door to transition into a boss fight. Imagine spending time carefully analyzing every enemy only to have your progress wiped because a teammate got impatient at the Spirit Tree shelter.
Scholar’s Bagcraft ability, which lets you level up consumable items, had several malfunctions with damage negation reduction effects not extending properly or applying incorrectly when using level three darts and fan daggers. Since Bagcraft is Scholar’s defining feature—the whole reason you’d pick this support class—these fixes are absolutely critical for making the character feel functional.
Even more frustrating: the healing effect added to level three Holy Water Pots wasn’t dealing damage to Royal Revenants, one of the few enemies where that interaction should be most valuable. Crystal Tear counts displayed incorrectly when obtaining a second one from Dormant Powers, and some enemies in Scholar’s Remembrance events wouldn’t behave as intended.
The sheer volume of Scholar bugs suggests the character was likely rushed for the DLC launch. If you tried Scholar early and bounced off the class because it felt broken or inconsistent, now’s the time to give it another shot.
Weapon and Skill Fixes
Beyond Scholar, several weapon and skill interactions that weren’t working as intended got addressed. Bow attacks affected by Black Flame Blade and Bloodflame Blade incantations weren’t removing the frostbite status from enemies, which would leave you dealing with frozen targets you couldn’t properly capitalize on.
The Improved Rolling Attacks passive wasn’t applying to Bows, and the Partial HP Restoration effect wouldn’t trigger on critical hits performed with Bows. For bow-focused builds, these fixes represent substantial improvements to viability.
Skills like Frenzyflame Thrust weren’t properly receiving the Black Flame Blade buff, while Wave of Gold and Thundercloud Form were incorrectly receiving it in ways that weren’t intended. These are exactly the kinds of inconsistencies that make theorycrafting frustrating – you can’t build around mechanics if you don’t know whether they’re working as designed or not.
Boss Fight Improvements
Several boss encounters received fixes that should make them feel less janky. The Sentient Pest fight had a bug where the boss wouldn’t lose sight of players using Duchess’s Ultimate Art Finale, which essentially made one of the character’s signature abilities worthless in that specific encounter.
The Dreglord fight was particularly problematic, with spells and ghosts summoned by Revenant’s skill sometimes aiming incorrectly, enemy attacks targeting the wrong players, and players getting stuck inside objects. Nothing kills immersion faster than getting wedged into geometry during a crucial boss phase.
The Dancer of the Boreal Valley had an issue where other players couldn’t damage her during critical hit animations, forcing teams to awkwardly wait instead of capitalizing on openings. The Demon in Pain and Demon from Below bosses wouldn’t trigger defeat animations if killed simultaneously, and arrows hitting their heads didn’t deal the expected increased damage.
Great Hollows Cleanup
The Great Hollows Shifting Earth event, added with the DLC, clearly needed significant polish. Enemies in temples wouldn’t die properly, unintended enemies would appear in certain areas, and the special merchant wouldn’t spawn even though their grace sites and blacksmithing tables appeared.
Players could become immune to the Crystal Curse under certain conditions, or conversely, the curse could persist inappropriately when moving between areas. Treasure chests could trap players, Spiritstreams wouldn’t display on the map, and Raider’s Totem Stela would spawn underground on some platforms.
These aren’t minor inconveniences – several of these bugs could completely halt progression or force session resets. The volume of Great Hollows fixes suggests this content probably needed another week or two of testing before launch.
Quality of Life Wins
Not everything in this patch is bug fixes. When swapping identical consumables in the Equipment Menu, they now combine according to stack limits, which sounds minor but significantly improves inventory management when you’re juggling multiple partial stacks.
Active effects now display proper icons and explanations in the status menu for some special effects, addressing the ongoing issue of players not understanding which buffs or debuffs they currently have active. When pinning items, the rarity color now displays in confirmation messages, making it easier to track which items you’ve marked.
The range for discovering hidden clues in Great Hollow using the map has been expanded, which should reduce the frustration of knowing something’s nearby but being unable to locate it. You can now remap the Map Display key in keyboard/mouse settings, giving PC players more control over their input configuration.
What This Means for Your Gameplay
If you’ve been avoiding Scholar because the character felt inconsistent or broken, this patch essentially makes the class playable as intended. The volume of fixes suggests Scholar players were experiencing a fundamentally different (and worse) version of the character compared to what the developers envisioned.
The Tricephalos wolf nerf means that raid event should feel more manageable for two or three-player groups, though it might become noticeably easier for full teams. The increased elemental curse effects in temples push you toward bringing appropriate resistance gear or consumables rather than face-tanking everything.
The extensive boss fight fixes remove several instances where mechanics weren’t working properly, which means strategies that previously failed due to bugs might now be viable. If you struggled with specific encounters and chalked it up to difficulty, it’s worth revisiting them to see if technical issues were actually to blame.
Nerfs, Buffs, or Something Else?
The Tricephalos wolf damage reduction is an unambiguous buff to players – those encounters will be easier. The increased elemental curse effects represent a modest difficulty increase for temple exploration, though how much you notice depends on your build and preparedness.
Most other changes fall into the “fixing things that were broken” category rather than deliberate balance adjustments. Scholar’s fixes are pure buffs in the sense that abilities now work as described, but calling them “buffs” feels misleading when they’re really just making the character functional.
The weapon and skill fixes similarly restore intended functionality rather than changing balance. If your bow build feels suddenly stronger, it’s because it’s now working properly, not because bows got buffed.
The Bigger Picture
Version 1.03.1 feels less like a balance patch and more like finishing the homework. The sheer number of Scholar bugs, Great Hollows issues, and boss fight problems suggests The Forsaken Hollows launched with significant technical debt. While it’s good to see these addressed relatively quickly, the volume of fixes in a single patch raises questions about the testing process.
For players who jumped into the DLC at launch and had frustrating experiences, this patch represents a meaningful improvement. If you bounced off Scholar or found Great Hollows too buggy to enjoy, now’s the time to give them another chance. The game you’re playing now is significantly more polished than what existed two weeks ago.
The patch also includes various minor text revisions, graphics fixes, and performance improvements that don’t merit individual discussion but collectively contribute to a more stable experience. If you’ve been experiencing crashes, specific PlayStation issues with the button configuration menu and a crash when targeting allies with Analyze skill during screen transitions have been resolved.
Looking Forward
Bandai Namco confirms that further updates will be distributed to help players continue enjoying Elden Ring Nightreign more comfortably, suggesting this isn’t the end of post-DLC support. Whether future patches bring more bug fixes, balance adjustments, or new content remains to be seen.
For now, if you’re jumping back in or trying Scholar for the first time, you’re playing a measurably more stable version of Nightreign than existed at launch. The fixes won’t fundamentally change how the game feels for most players, but they eliminate numerous frustrating moments where mechanics simply didn’t work as advertised.
Just remember: if you’re playing with others in Deep of Night and own The Forsaken Hollows DLC, you’ll only see the new content when matched with fellow DLC owners. Keep that in mind when planning your sessions—the matchmaking system is designed to keep DLC and non-DLC experiences separate, for better or worse.
… and as always: don’t forget to check out our other Nightreign articles as well!
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