I'm obsessed with a guy who keeps soloing Elden Ring Nightreign's hard mode over and over like they're trapped in a purgatory of their own making

We all have our guys, the true freaks and sickos online who it feels like only we know about, whose trials and travails move us in ways we can scarcely explain. Replica sword reviewers, world-class competitors in niche sports, historical reenactors with hearts of gold⁠—you know, your guys. One such guy, for me, is eauvni, a YouTuber who silently and implacably keeps playing Elden Ring Nightreign alone, then uploading the VODs.

Crucially, eauvni is very good at Elden Ring Nightreign, and will upload multiple runs a week, like clockwork. They rotate through the entire cast, but seem to have a particular affinity for the Sekiro-parrying Executor. All of their runs have been in the mega-hard Deep of Night mode since its release at the end of last year, but they've exclusively uploaded VODs of Depth Three of Five in recent months.

My guess would be that, even at this skill level, solo Depth Five just isn't fun⁠—even Sekiro/Souls no-hit maestro Ongbal has said as much (in the description of a successful Depth Five solo run, naturally). My understanding is that the jump in difficulty from Depth Three to Four is the most pronounced in the game, with enemies dealing twice as much damage in Four vs. Three⁠—and that's on top of the three depths worth of DoN advancements over the base game already.

The Depth Three/Four barrier is what separates the freaks from the perverts among Nightreign players, while the Four/Five divide splits the perverts and the reprobates.

The individual videos are prime "have something on in the background while you do something else" material for me, but as a whole, eauvni's body of work is kind of staggering as a record of obsession: Dozens and dozens of Nightreign runs, all on the same two maps with the same bosses. I've played a fraction as much of this game as eauvni, and there's a point where you start to see the Matrix code, you recognize different map seeds and can even anticipate individual boss placements.

And all to seemingly no end: Eauvni has reached Depth Five and turned back, content to keep fighting more manageable versions of the same pool of base Elden Ring bosses. They already have mathematically perfect relic builds for every character. There is, seemingly, no further support or content for the game planned in the future, nothing to anticipate or prepare for. Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

I can relate to this obession, even at a much lower skill level: Almost every day for our lunch break, PCG writers Tyler Colp, Sean Martin, and I do a Nightreign run. We are in the latter half of Depth Four, coming up on Depth Five, and I have never felt more hated by a game.

Eauvni's "Thank You Nightreign Compilation" is very illustrative: Even more than FromSoft's other games, whether it's glitches, enemy AI, or RNG odds, there's a spite lurking beneath Nightreign. It feels like there's a malicious intelligence working against you at all times. This only makes eauvni's stoic, meditative repetition all the more disquieting to me.

Their recent no-damage run as Executor is a real heater: Eauvni has a habit of level one bum rushing bosses I'd be hesitant to tango with at the end of a run. They began this latest video with a ballsy, flawlessly executed level two takedown of a red (read: turbocharged) Erdtree Avatar at the top of Limveld castle. Elsewhere, they've 1v1'd the memetically difficult Bell Bearing Hunter at level one so many times, it almost doesn't feel worth commenting on anymore.

My friends and I aren't as good as eauvni, but part of me is worried that Nightreign will ruin normal FromSoft games for us and other disturbed Deep of Night holdouts: When I finally replay Elden Ring again with the Tarnished Edition patch allegedly due out this year, will it just feel too fair and well-balanced for me to enjoy? When I'm not instakilled by an overtuned area of effect attack in FromSoft's next mainline release, will I miss the thrill?