In Elden Ring, bows serve as a supportive tool, often used to draw enemy attention or to weaken foes from a distance before engaging with your primary weapon. This utility extends to causing strategic environmental kills, such as making birds plummet for rune farming. However, in the game Nightreign, when you choose the Ironeye class, the bow becomes central to your gameplay, offering a unique playstyle that distinguishes it from the other eight classes. This class leans heavily into support, making it a standout in Nightreign's roster. Dive into the exclusive gameplay video below to see the Ironeye in action.
Playing as the Ironeye, you'll quickly notice their vulnerability; they're a squishy class that benefits greatly from keeping a bow at the ready. This allows you to stay out of direct combat, minimizing the risk of taking hits that could quickly knock you out, especially in the early stages of the game. Thankfully, your starting bow is robust, delivering decent damage and featuring the Mighty Shot skill, which enables long-range attacks with increased damage and poise impact.
Nightreign has revamped the mechanics of bows significantly. They now fire faster, and you can move more swiftly while targeting locked-on enemies. The removal of the need for arrows simplifies inventory management, though you're limited to the arrow type of your equipped bow. Other enhancements include new animations for shooting from a roll, acrobatic maneuvers like wall-running and jumping shots, the ability to aim without switching to first-person view, and a powerful spread shot that can hit multiple targets. Additionally, you can now perform backstabs and visceral attacks on downed enemies with arrows. These changes transform the bow into a formidable primary weapon, addressing many of the limitations found in Elden Ring.
As the Ironeye, your bow is not just a weapon but the core of your class identity. Your primary skill, Marking, is a swift dagger dash that pierces through enemies, leaving a mark that amplifies damage from all sources. With a short cooldown, this skill can be consistently applied to bosses, enhancing your team's offensive capabilities. It also serves as an effective mobility tool, allowing you to escape dangerous situations by passing through enemies.
The Ironeye's ultimate ability, Single Shot, is a potent, single-arrow attack. It's essentially an enhanced version of Mighty Shot, requiring a brief charge time during which you're invulnerable. Once released, it delivers massive damage and penetrates through multiple enemies, making it ideal for crowd control.
The true value of the Ironeye becomes apparent in team play, particularly with their ability to revive allies from a safe distance. In Nightreign, reviving an ally involves depleting a segmented circle above the downed player. While other classes must risk close combat or expend resources to revive, the Ironeye can do so safely and efficiently without any resource cost. This ability is crucial for the success of team missions. However, the challenge increases with each ally faint, as more segments are added to the circle, making it difficult for the Ironeye to revive teammates who require all three segments to be cleared, unless they utilize their ultimate for this purpose.
Although the Ironeye may not match the raw damage output of other classes, their utility in a squad is unparalleled. From enhancing team damage through marking, increasing item drops, clearing mobs with their ultimate, to safely reviving allies, the Ironeye's contributions are vital and highly valued among Nightreign's nightfarers.
