In Elden Ring Nightreign, there are two unlockable characters, one of which is the Duchess. She’s the game’s agile, stealth archetype. While her overall strength may be lacking, her abilities make up for it. She probably has one of the most compatible team synergy in the game, and is dangerous in the hands of a skilled player.
Ability: Magnificent Poise
Duchess’s passive ability is called Magnificent Poise, which lets her “optimally” attack and dodge. The Duchess lunges instead of rolling when she dodges. Additionally, Duchess gets two dodges in a row, letting her get out of sticky situations and avoid enemy attacks easier.
Read More: How To Unlock Nighreign’s Duchess
Furthermore, this ability makes it so that her dodging and attacking actions deplete less stamina than usual. This lets the Duchess string together long combos before tiring out and needing to recover stamina.
Ability: Restage
When activated, Restage will see time will rewind and about 50 percent of the damage that has been inflicted during the last few seconds will be inflicted on the enemy a second time. You can tell when she uses Restage because phantoms of the enemies appear and reenact themselves receiving that damage.
Not only does Restage replay the Duchess’ previous damage output, but it also applies to any teammate’s. This has huge damaging potential as you could coordinate with your squad to have them unleash Ultimate Arts on a boss, only for you to activate Restage to pile on even more hurt.
Restage can also be used at any time, including during the middle of a combo, while dodging, or even being attacked. The Duchess doesn’t have to reposition herself in order to activate. It’s essentially instantaneous. This skill has a relatively quick cool down period, so make sure to constantly utilize it.
Ultimate Art: Finale
The Duchess’s Ultimate Art is called Finale, and it’s a pretty simple one. She pulls out her cape and turns herself and nearby teammates invisible. This lets those impacted to avoid detection from enemies. This skill is mostly used defensively, especially during boss battles. When the Duchess is invisible, this lets her take the time to revive downed teammates without being interrupted, or just take the pressure off and heal.
While invisible, she can still be targeted, particularly by projectiles that home in on their targets. Area-of-Effect attacks will still hit her as well, along with grabs if she happens to get caught in one. Hitting an enemy will reveal her location, too; so make a big splash before coming out of invisibility.
A look at the Duchess’s attributes
- HP: C
- FP: C
- Stamina: D
- Strength: D
- Dexterity: B
- Intelligence: A
- Faith: B
- Arcane: C
Surprisingly, the Duchess’s highest stat isn’t Dexterity, but is instead Intelligence—although her Dexterity is still above average. This means that daggers are her best option as they take advantage of her rapid-fire attacks. Daggers are also great at inflicting status effects, so if you come across any rare ones like Bleed or Scarlet Rot, those will be a boon for your run. The more hits dished out, the faster status effects build up.
Despite being a melee character, she can put her high Intelligence to use with staves to inflict long-range magic damage. Speaking of long-range damage, bows scale well with dexterity, so you can use her as a backup ranged character if you can’t get in close..
“Successive attacks negate damage” is a really useful buff that’ll be incredibly helpful if you come across it. Because the Duchess inflicts so many small cuts without losing stamina, she can end up becoming tankier with this buff active, sometimes not even having to dodge out of enemy attacks.
Regardless of how you play her, the Duchess is well-worth unlocking and using on your next expedition.
Elden Ring Nightreign is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X, and Windows PCs.