Elden Ring Nightreign’s Final DLC Boss Almost Copies Another FromSoft Game

As players continue to explore The Forsaken Hollows DLC for Elden Ring Nightreign, the expansion’s last boss has been an extraordinary challenge for many. Even with three player groups, the difficulty of the Dreglord expedition calls back to other difficult opponents in FromSoftware’s history. Based on the last Nightreign boss’ patterns, there’s one former enemy players might remember more than others, much to their horror.

One of the defining features of Elden Ring Nightreign is the ability to fight returning bosses from other FromSoft games, such as Gaping Dragon and Artorias the Abysswalker from the first Dark Souls. Other examples like Dark Souls 3‘s Nameless King or Dark Souls 2‘s Duke’s Dear Freja create formidable challenges at the end of each day during a run. However, this extends to some new bosses, who still seem to use moves from past enemies.

The Forsaken Hollows’ Traitorous Straghess Shares Many Similarities To Bloodborne’s Orphan Of Kos

At the end of the Dreglord expedition, your final opponent is Traitorous Straghess, a corpse fiend comprised of countless piles of discarded flesh. This lumbering beast has no clear weaknesses, a trait almost singular to it among the other bosses in the game. Traitorous Straghess has two distinct phases too, making it one of two bosses that you have to defeat by lowering its health bar to nothing twice. While its first phase has similarities to Erdtree Avatars from Elden Ring, its second phase looks oddly familiar.

When you beat the Traitorous Straghess once, it will transform the arena, erecting spires of solidified flesh into a deadly battlefield. As it does this, the creature gets on all fours and begins attacking you and your party with reckless abandon. This feral style of fighting is eerily reminiscent of the Orphan of Kos, Bloodborne‘s final DLC boss in the Old Hunters expansion. The Orphan of Kos also attacks with ferocity, using slamming attacks with its strange weapon much like Traitorous Straghess does.

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Slams, red mist AoE blasts, occasional leaps, and rare deadly projectiles all are techniques both bosses use to add an extra layer of challenge to their boss fights. In Bloodborne‘s aggressive gameplay, the Orphan of Kos is undoubtedly the fastest and hardest hitting enemy in the game, easily representing the hardest fight among any boss. Traitorous Straghess has many of the same qualities, using high damage moves and a relentless attack to ramp up tension to maximum levels as a final test of your wits and skill.

Nightreign’s Toughest Boss Yet Adds Even More Intensity Than The Old Hunters Did

There’s an argument to be had that Traitorous Straghess is even harder to face than Orphan of Kos, simply because there’s more going on in its boss fight. Even with all the right Relics, Traitorous Straghess is meant to test your patience throughout both phases of its fight. The Forsaken Hollow’s final boss uses Scarlet Rot to poison enemies, similar to Malenia, the hardest boss in Elden Ring.

Massive AoE pillars of rot dominate the first phase of the Traitorous Straghess fight, including a move where it gathers all the corpses around it in a swirling pillar. The pulse that occurs during this move is hard to avoid, having huge range to nearly one-shot characters who aren’t already at full health. Furthermore, Traitorous Straghess summons additional foes in its first phase, which leap onto you and cause guaranteed Scarlet Rot if they hit you. Huge Death Blight creatures also appear at this stage, giving you many enemies you have to keep track of, lest they overwhelm you alongside the boss.

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The second phase also has a number of additional details compared to the Orphan of Kos, mainly in how Traitorous Straghess interacts with the environment it creates. The boss can leap onto the pillars it creates, confusing your camera and making it harder to track at times. Additionally, it still has access to many Scarlet Rot inflicting moves from its first phase, keeping the risk level high. Although you have more tools in Elden Ring Nightreign to deal with this boss compared to Bloodborne, there are plenty of obstacles that are tricky to surmount.

The intensity of the Dreglord boss has the same intensity born of uncompromising ferocity that Orphan of Kos had, shaping a fight that’s hard to forget. Ultimately, this makes the final boss of Elden Ring Nightreign‘s DLC an incredibly worthy opponent, calling back to arguably the greatest challenge FromSoftware has ever demanded from its player base.

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