Features: Free Play Mode- Choose to fight almost any boss in the game, including Nightlords, Night bosses and minor bosses. DLC content is included.
- Freely customize your character, with full access to the Sparring Grounds weapon selection menu, the ability to apply/remove passive buffs, set your character's level, set the amount of healing flasks, equip talismans, buy relics and other items for free (mode-dependent, see "Sandbox Mode vs Progression Mode" below), and other convenience features.
- In-depth customization of the stat scaling for each boss, with options such as Day 1/2 scaling, Depth 0-5, Mutated enemies, and different variants.
- Cheats such as the built-in ones at the Sparring Grounds menu and infinite revives are available for practicing bosses.
Features: Expedition Boss Rush
- Fight through 10 rounds of increasing difficulty against semi-randomized bosses, obtaining rewards as you go, and facing a Nightlord at the end.
- You can choose the target Nightlord manually, or set it to random. You can also customize the RNG weighting for all Nightlords, including Everdark variants. It is also possible to exclude some bosses from the randomized pool.
- Your character is reset to default equipment and level 2 at the start of every run. Use of the Sparring Settings menu is not allowed during the run.
- Rewards are semi-randomized, with every round giving you weapons and consumables at random as well as some fixed rewards depending on the round.
- Dying in a regular boss round allows you to skip ahead to the next round, but you will miss all the rewards from that round. However, dying to a Night boss or Nightlord will end the Boss Rush. There is also an option to allow retrying rounds.
- Overall, the concept is to condense and streamline the experience of an Expedition into a series of boss fights.
Sandbox Mode vs Progression Mode- Sandbox Mode is the classic version of the mod where everything is available for free.
- In Progression Mode, the main difference is that most items such as relics are no longer available for free. Instead, they must be earned through Expedition Boss Rush. Some items are direct rewards from defeating Nightlords, while others can be purchased with Murk obtained from playing Boss Rush.
- Although not mandatory, Progression Mode is intended to be played on a new save slot, so that the progression aspect is actually meaningful.
- Each mode uses a separate savefile when launched through the included ME3 profiles. The first time you run Progression Mode, it will make a copy of your
vanilla savefile and use the copy from that point. It does
not use your existing Sandbox Mode save as a base.
InstallationThe included ME3 profiles are the only supported method for playing this mod. Any other method may not work or result in the mod affecting your vanilla saves and potentially getting you banned.
1. Download and install the latest
ME3 installer executable.
If your antivirus blocks the file, add an exception for it. ME3 is completely safe, but as a relatively new tool, it may still cause some false positives with overzealous antivirus software.
2. Extract the Boss Arena .zip file (right click > Extract All), and open the resulting folder. This can be done anywhere; there is no need to use the default profiles that ME3 creates. That said, it's recommended to avoid locations managed by OneDrive (such as Desktop) as they often cause file access problems. Something like "C:\Mods" works just fine.
3. Make sure Steam is running in the background with a legitimate copy of the game owned there, and simply double click the "Launch NR Boss Arena" .me3 file to launch the game with the mod installed.
UninstallationIf you used ME3 as suggested, you don't need to do anything special. Simply launch the game directly through Steam to play the normal game.
By default, the mod forces the use of a separate savefile, so it will not affect your normal saves in any way.
Important notes and limitations- This mod has been designed exclusively with solo play in mind. Seamless Co-op is inherently incompatible with it as that is designed to work with actual Expeditions only.
- The first time you launch the mod through the included ME3 profiles, it will create a copy of your save file and use the copy from that point on, to prevent the possibility of multiplayer bans. Unlike in previous iterations of Boss Arena, you are free to use existing characters here, but bringing them back to the normal game is not officially supported.
- Normal play modes such as Expeditions and character Remembrances are not supported in this mod for technical reasons. These features have generally been disabled where possible, but I recommend not going out of your way to interact with the world outside of the Boss Arena features to avoid potential bugs.
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Compatibility with other mods is not guaranteed. This mod makes changes to many aspects of the game such as map data, events, talk scripts, text, and more. Any mod that modifies any of these aspects will require manual merging, which I can't help you with. All I can do is point you to
this resource.
- This mod has been tested on regulation version 1.03.4, the latest patch as of writing this. Older versions of the game will probably not work and I cannot provide any support for them.
Known issues- Bosses not available due to technical issues: Tibia Mariner, red variant of Demon Prince (DLC), Spiritcaller Snail (DLC), enhanced version of Weapon-Bequeathed Harmonia / Balancers (DLC).
- Maris and Everdark Maris don't spawn any jellyfish enemies.
(For properly-working Maris and enhanced Balancers, you can use Free Reign.)- Quitting the game while in the dying state will have you die again at the Roundtable. To avoid this, go through the whole death sequence and choose to respawn at the Roundtable instead, or quit after being revived.
- Discarding equipment will make it disappear instead of dropping to the ground. Replacing equipment works fine though.
- Current Murk is shown on the bottom right corner even in situations where current runes would make more sense (mainly during Boss Rush).
- Equipped Deep Night relics still take effect even if Depth 0 is selected. The only way to avoid this is to unequip those relics.
- Cursed equipment does not drop during Boss Rush even if Depth 1+ is selected.
Special Thanks- All creators and contributors of modding tools for FromSoft games. Particularly Smithbox, UXM/Nuxe, ME3, DarkScript3, ESDStudio/ESDLang and DSAnimStudio.
- All contributors to the
Souls Modding Wiki.
- Everyone at the ?ServerName? Discord server who helped with development of this mod.
SupportIf you enjoyed the mod and feel like supporting my work, you can
tip me on Ko-fi.
My other mods
- Elden Ring: Boss Arena- Dark Souls 3: Boss Arena- Dark Souls Remastered: Boss Arena
- Elden Ring: Dungeon Crawler