Elden Ring Nightreign: How To Fight Everdark Sovereign Sentient Pest

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With the addition of the post-launch content, Elden Ring Nightreign has been able to keep a leg up with its live-service model, introducing new enhanced versions of boss fights such as the Everdark Sovereign Darkdrift Knight.

Now that you’ve beaten him, the next one on the agenda is the Sentient Pest. While I personally think this Nightlord in particular was the easiest one out of the rest, the Everdark Sovereign version does mix up this fight in quite an unexpected format.

But hey, if you’re in the minority who thought this Nightlord was annoying, I’d still not worry much, because with my strategy guide on the Everdark Sovereign Sentient Pest in Elden Ring Nightreign, you’ll have this fight down in a jiffy with your squadmates.

Recommended Team Compositions

With how you’ll be fighting not two but three different creatures in this fight (more on that in a bit), it’s crucial to establish a team comp that can easily target weaknesses. With the runs I’ve been able to test out myself, these characters seem to be the most doable here.

Ironeye: A character who I think is tailor-made for this fight with his ranged attacks that are especially viable against the moth creature (Gnoster). You can also obtain bows that can roll with the fire element affinity, plus his skill can be used as an evasive maneuver with I-frames, and the ultimate art can be a great way to stun bosses briefly.
Raider: You’ll want him head-on against the Scorpion (Faurtis) as a good Raider can tank attacks easily thanks to his character skill. With the proper relic setup, he can dish out a staggering amount of damage. In the chance that you don’t get a fire weapon, you can opt for powerstancing to break its stance and stagger it.

For the third character, I thought long and hard about this—I’d honestly prefer you could run another of the two characters above, or just any of your choice. Even a fairly balanced character like Wylder could be a great addition to this fight, with two melee characters at the front, and the Ironeye in the backline.

Key Differences With Everdark Sovereign Sentient Pest

As is the recurring theme with previous Everdark Sovereign versions of the Nightlords, Sentient Pest comes with a notable number of changes, with a particular one that sticks out like a sore thumb being how you’re fighting an additional boss this time around.

Regardless, despite the inclusion of an extra creature alongside our previous two, I’ve gone ahead and outlined the major differences to take into account when heading into this fight.

Both Gnoster and Faurtis will start in their team-up phase, but have a relatively low health pool here.
Once you defeat them, ‘Animus, Ascendant Light’ will appear as the third boss and revive the other two bosses to half HP.
Animus can reanimate and possess the bodies of the other bosses throughout the fight if they’re defeated again. The latter action sacrifices a bit of HP for Animus.
A bunch of new AOE attacks, especially Animus’ light ray barrages, are present throughout.

The weaknesses are still the same; you’ll want to bring weapons with the fire affinity so you can pour in as much DPS as possible. The points of interest spawning with that affinity are RNG-based, so I’d encourage you to at least have something slotted in your relic rites that provides that affinity on your starting armament.

Everdark Sovereign Sentient Pest Moveset

Before I move on to describe the strategy to use against this enhanced Nightlord, it’s imperative that you know the major attacks from the bosses, specifically the phase with Animus, and how it can transform the two bosses here with a bunch of new attacks.

Moveset	Boss	Description
Charging Pounce	Faurtis	An Animus-possessed Faurtis will charge head-on at a player. It’s your typical charge-in attack from bosses, which can be telegraphed and evaded easily.
Frontal Spiked Stomp	Faurtis	Another enhanced Faurtis attack, where it will lift its frontal legs to slam the ground with an AOE blast wave. In this possessed version, the stomp will be followed up by red fissure explosions, which you can avoid by promptly jumping over them.
Side Spiked Stomp	Faurtis	Similar to the previous move, the Animus-possessed Faurtis will lift a side of his body to unleash another blast wave AOE on the ground with explosions following. Dodge the stomp and preferably jump over the explosions.
Claw Slam	Faurtis	Not a particularly dangerous move, but when at range, Faurtis will slam down on you with both claws— it can be dodged easily.
Frenzy Slams	Faurtis	The most devastating move from a possessed Faurtis. It will pound the ground erratically around it, with those AOE spike explosions from the waves. To evade this, I strongly suggest quickly getting away, as it emits a shriek to signal this attack.
Claw Pound Explosion	Faurtis	Lastly, this attack from Faurtis involves it slamming the ground three times in a row, with the third strike being followed by a shriek and the AOE explosion wave.
Beam Rain	Gnoster	An Animus-possessed Gnoster will fly across the air and spontaneously launch red lasers for a few seconds. Evading these projectiles can be tricky, so I recommend keeping an eye out whenever it’s prepared to launch this attack.
Grab Attack	Gnoster	This enhanced variant of Gnoster’s usual grab attack will involve it swaying to the side a couple of times before ultimately closing in and latching itself onto you.
Orbital Beams From Hell	Animus	Midway through the fight, Animus itself can launch an endless barrage of orbital beams that will continuously damage you and anyone caught in them. It’s highly advised that you sprint and evade their relentless damage as much as possible.

How To Beat Everdark Sovereign Sentient Pest

I’ll try to keep this brief as much as possible because this fight can feel like a drag without the fire weaknesses, an optimal team setup, or if you’re struggling to evade Gnoster’s aforementioned AOE attacks. Anyway, let me explain how the strategy works here.

Once you’ve taken down Faurtis and Gnoster, Animus will spawn and revive both creatures back to almost half of their HP. You can start dishing out damage immediately when Faurtis is getting back up. In fact, it will be our primary focus for this fight.

Let me put it out there right here: Defeating Animus is the end goal, since defeating it will automatically take the other two down with it, regardless of their remaining HP. However, due to the tendency of Gnoster being an aerial annoyance, our main priority should be Faurtis.

Take out one boss, and Animus will sacrifice a portion of its health to revive and take possession of them. Faurtis in particular has a variety of attacks, as I’ve mentioned above. Practice your evasions, because these ground wave explosion attacks can mess you up, especially on squishy characters like Duchess or Revenant.

The main strategy revolves around two players focusing their attacks on Faurtis. At the same time, a ranged character like Ironeye can draw Gnoster’s attention on the sidelines like I’ve done above, since the latter’s projectiles can be extremely annoying to deal with for the other two characters.

A good Ironeye player (or any ranged Nightfarer) can easily grab aggro and even take out Gnoster themselves, trivializing the fight further since chances are, Animus will prioritize reviving Faurtis again and leaving Gnoster downed—a walk in the park boss fight in all honesty.

Dealing damage to the possessed boss will damage both it and Animus. If you’re constantly focusing on Faurtis, you should be able to maintain an optimal edge in the fight where Animus won’t even be able to unleash its orbital ray barrage.

Besides that, the orbital laser barrage attack from Animus is exactly what I named it; it can pretty much kill you instantly unless you have a large health pool, so consider having a Wending Grace or two duped to avoid causing any defeats for your group.

For defeating the Everdark Sovereign version of the Sentient Pest, you’ll be rewarded with x25 Sovereign Sigils for your first completion, and the Dark Night of the Wise Relic will be available to pick up from the Collector Signboard shop. This is a great relic to use on Mage characters like Recluse.

Where to play

WHERE TO PLAY

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