Additional Visual Options

General Info

Works with The Forsaken Hollows DLC.

This is essentially the same thing as my other Additional Visuals Options mod for ELDEN RING but re-done for ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN. Report a bug if a file doesn't work, especially after an update. Nothing here uses a regulation.bin file at the moment, so you should be able to use this with some other mods.

Do NOT play online with any of the modded files, as you are likely to be banned if Easy Anti-Cheat doesn't block you from launching the game.

Install Instructions:

Disable Easy Anti-Cheat with your preferred method. I use Elden Ring Nightreign Anti-Cheat Toggler. May not be necessary with the steps below but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Download ModEngine3 and set it up via the "me3_installer.exe" setup wizard. Once ModEngine3 is installed, download Mod Engine 3 Manager, launch it and navigate to the "Nightreign" tab. From there, extract the contents of the .zip file of the mod you chose anywhere (e.g. desktop), then drag and drop the named folder to where the GUI shows to do so and launch the game via the "Launch Nightreign" button.

To uninstall, just disable or remove the mod from Mod Engine 3 Manager's GUI.

File 1: Effect Disabler

Changes the "Low" setting for various options to disable certain effects. This should improve performance in most cases.

I plan to look into disabling vignette, chromatic aberration and grass in the future. However, I can't promise anything.

If you can't wait and want to disable things now, here are two mods that disable chromatic aberration (in-case one doesn't work) and one that disables the vignette effect:

Disable Chromatic Aberration by Giorma1.
NIGHTREIGN - Remove Chromatic Aberration v1.0.0 by huutaiii on Patreon (it's free, no money needed).
Disable Vignette Effect by Giomra1.
NIGHTREIGN - Remove Vignette v 1.0.1 by huutaii on Patreon (it's free, no money needed).

Settings changed:

Shadow Quality: "Low" setting will now disable most shadows from rendering.
Lighting Quality: "Low" setting will now disable many smaller light sources (e.g. light from a candle) from rendering. This setting will also disable any shadows that still remain if Shadow Quality is set to "Low" (this is vanilla behaviour and primarily affects the Roundtable Hold).
Effects Quality: "Low" setting will now disable many effects from rendering. This can include some effects such as candle lights or certain bloom/glow effects, as this is vanilla behaviour.
Volumetric Lighting Quality: "Low" setting will now disable volumetric fog effects from rendering, which looks a weird sometimes, but it should give good performance improvements.
Reflection Quality: "Low" setting will now disable screen space reflections entirely.

File 2: Shadow Resolution Increases

Increases the shadow resolution of the majority of shadows over the vanilla game by a factor of either 2x or 4x, depending on the file you install.

Files available:

Doubled Shadow Resolution: increases the shadow resolution values for all settings by 2x.
Quadrupled Shadow Resolution: increases the shadow resolution values for all settings by 4x.

File 3: Soft Shadows

Applies a blur filter to the majority of shadows, including the sharp player shadow (which is now soft with this installed).

This blur filter can be hard to notice, as shadows in ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN can be quite soft/low-resolution to begin with and some shadows are affected by Lighting Quality and not Shadow Quality itself, so are not affected unfortunately. It works a lot better in base ELDEN RING.

Files available:

Soft Shadows Only: only applies the blur filter to shadows and leaves shadow resolution unchanged from vanilla
Soft Shadows with Doubled Shadow Resolution: applies blur filter to shadows and doubles the shadow resolution values over vanilla
Soft Shadows with Quadrupled Shadow Resolution: applies blur filter to shadows and quadruples the shadow resolution values over vanilla

File 4: Beyond Maximum (work in progress/experimental, some changes may not work!)

Several settings have been adjusted at their highest selectable setting in favour of visual fidelity over performance and there are two versions to pick from depending on if you like softer shadows or not. Good for screenshotting or recording higher quality footage, if your system can handle it.

I haven't found a way to enable ray tracing. The parameters are there and tweakable, but nothing seems to enable it. There's a very high chance it wouldn't work properly, even if forced enabled, due to the game not supporting it officially at this time.

Generally, the setting before the highest (usually "High") now uses vanilla's "Maximum" quality values and the setting below (usually "Medium") now uses vanilla "High" setting values, so you can swap on the fly—reducing the need to enable/disable the mod when you want to get back to normal and higher framerate gameplay.

Settings changed:

Motion Blur: changed "High" setting to use hidden Ultra value parameters. This may not do anything and even if it does, it's hard for me to tell if the quality improves for an effect like motion blur.

Shadow Quality: The "Maximum" setting has had its resolution parameters drastically increased over vanilla, "High" is doubled over vanilla Maximum, "Medium" is the same as vanilla Maximum and "Low" disables most shadows from rendering, for the novelty (set Lighting Quality to "Low" to disable the remaining shadows).

Lighting Quality: "Maximum" setting has been changed to render some lights several times further than vanilla. "High" setting now renders lights at 2x the vanilla Maximum setting distance and the "Medium" setting now renders at the vanilla Maximum setting distance. "Low" is unchanged.

Effects Quality: "Maximum" setting values are all doubled over the vanilla Maximum setting. "High" setting now uses vanilla Maximum values with "Medium" using vanilla High settings. "Low" is unchanged.

Volumetric Lighting Quality: "Maximum" setting will now render volumetric lights at a higher quality with a very heavy performance cost and will now forcibly cast shadows, "High" now uses settings that are in between vanilla Maximum and the new highest possible quality at a seemingly minimal performance cost, and "Medium" now uses vanilla Maximum settings. "Low" will disable volumetric effects entirely, for the novelty.

The quality improvements for volumetric lighting may be difficult to notice in ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN, compared to base ELDEN RING where the improvements are much more noticeable. If the performance hit is too high at "High" or "Maximum" or you don't notice the differences, stick with Medium quality while the mod is installed.

Reflection Quality: Reduced the amount of screen edge fade out for screen space reflections at "Maximum" quality, allowing more of a reflection to appear near the edges of the screen. This may not be working at the moment.

Shader Quality: changed "High" setting to enable the hidden "highPrecisionNormalEnabled" parameter. This may not do anything, I don't know what to look for even if it does work.

Known Issues, Potential Bugs & Workarounds

Known Issues

Has a lighting bug in the new room added to the Roundtable Hold with the Forsaken Hollows DLC but appears to work otherwise. An update to fix this will be released in the future.

Report a bug if you catch another issue and you're sure it's a file from this mod page causing it.

Potential Bugs

This section is for bugs that aren't confirmed to exist but they may happen, as they were issues in earlier versions of this mod for base ELDEN RING. If these do occur for you, please report it and I should be able to fix it relatively fast.

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN may crash when loading certain cutscenes if Shadow Quality is set to "Maximum".
Volumetric Fog may cast weird shadows when Volumetric Effect Quality is set to "Maximum".

Note on the Global Illumination Flickering Issue

ELDEN RING and ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN have an issue seemingly caused by NVIDIA drivers that can randomly cause global illumination flickering on both unmodded and modded setups. Certain mods exacerbate the problem with them installed but are not the root cause of the problem.