It wouldn’t be a FromSoftware game without some deep, deep lore, and secrets that send you down rabbit holes, and it looks like Elden Ring Nightreign players have come across the first one of those in the co-op game.
It all comes back to an incredibly rare item that players initially didn’t know what to do with, but after a bit of work, they figured it out… only to realise it was just the first step in what could be a major secret.
The Nightreign item in question is called Cord End, which – by some estimates – seemingly has about a 0.05% chance of dropping in one of the churches you find all over the game’s world of Limveld.
After some sleuthing, players found an actual use for it. The item opens a door to a cave underneath a castle that sits in the middle of the map. Though the castle itself is a pretty popular spot, the way the door itself is hidden likely made it invisible to most players.
If you have Cord End in your inventory, the door will open. Inside, you’ll find three Sacrificial Twigs. Now, here is when things get interesting. Officially, Sacrificial Twig items prevent you from losing your runes upon death, which is obviously very useful to have, especially in the first two days of a run.
As nice of a boon that is, it’s not enough to warrant how rare the item is, and the process involved in using it to open the secret door. This is part of why players believe there’s more to it than that, and the clue they’re going off of is in the item’s description – where all rabbit holes begin.
The Cord End’s description makes a reference to a “cutting-gifted tribe” that “vowed to sacrifice their flesh” to conceal some sort of secret. In the Roundtable Hold’s Crypt area, there are two coffins you can interact with, which also mention cutting.
Even more interesting, however, is that they both also ask that you “bestow branches”, which players believe is a reference to the twigs you gain from the secret area. The text is slightly different between the two interactables, and each points to a different area.
Players believe that one message is likely referring to Recluse, while the other could be about Wylder, and Duchess. Each one also references an area of the map, which could be the home of their respective characters, and may end up playing a role in solving the puzzle.
Perhaps, some theorise, you need these specific classes to carry the Sacrificial Twigs all the way through to the end of the run, and survive. Maybe that’s going to unlock the next step of the quest.
Part of what makes this particular secret difficult to crack is just how rare the item’s drop rate is, which slows down progress considerably. Without modding and datamining, we may never end up finding what the deal is with Cord End.
There is, of course, the chance that it may end up amounting to nothing. Not every word in FromSoftware’s games is meant to be part of a larger picture; sometimes it’s just flavour text. We’re going to be following this one, though, because of its potential to be hiding something cool.
Our Elden Ring Nightreign guide may not hold an answer to that particular dilemma, but it will help you get better at the game. And yes, that includes proven strategies to beat Nightlords such as Darkdrift Knight Fulghor, Sentient Pest, and the final boss: the Night Aspect.