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Best Nightlords bosses order in Elden Ring Nightreign

Nightlords are arguably the hardest enemies in Elden Ring Nightreign — powerful, nerve-racking bosses who show up at the very end of your runs.

All the preparation you go through during the first two days of a match in Elden Ring Nightreign — from farming runes to looking for ways to upgrade your weapons — is in service of one goal: getting strong enough to beat the Nightlord of your run. Each boss has their own dedicated mechanics and weaknesses, and you can tackle (most) of them in the order you see fit.

In this Elden Ring Nightreign guide, we’ll go over our recommendation of the the best Nightlords order so you know which boss fights to prioritize. 

Best Nightlords boss fight order in Elden Ring Nightreign 

The best Nightlords order in Elden Ring Nightreign is a subjective matter, largely up to your individual class, equipment, and personal adeptness with each character. That said, we’ve assembled guide to present what would be, in our opinion, the fights you should focus on first to build up confidence and accumulate knowledge about the game.

In general, the better-prepared you are for each fight, the better you’ll fare. But some Nightlords are less forgiving than others if you reach the final day under-leveled or under-equipped. Along the same lines, we consider bosses who can inflict detrimental effects more difficult to prepare for than those who you can defeat simply by mastering their mechanics.

And then, of course, there’s the huge matter that all of this — as with all things Nightreign — is contingent on whether or not your teammates actually collaborate with you.

An Elden Ring Nightreign screenshot showing the Expeditions menu, with a list of most bosses you can fight in the game.

With all this in mind, below, here’s our recommendation for the best Nightlords order in Elden Ring Nightreign, with their respective expedition names in parentheses.

  1. Gladius, Beast of Night (Tricephalos)
  2. Gnoster, Wisdom of Night (Sentient Pest)
  3. Maris, Fathom of Night (Augur)
  4. Adel, Baron of Night (Gaping Jaw)
  5. Caligo, Miasma of Night (Fissure in the Fog)
  6. Libra, Creature of Night (Equilibrious Beast)
  7. Fulghor, Champion of Nightglow (Darkdrift Knight)
  8. Heolstor the Nightlord (Night Aspect)

Gladius, Beast of Night (Tricephalos)

An Elden Ring Nightreign screenshot showing the a group of players fighting Gladius, Beast of Night, the first Nightlord available in the game.

There isn’t much to say here because you can’t actually choose not to face Gladius, Beast of Night first. Tricephalos is the first expedition you have access to and the other expeditions won’t become available until you have defeated them.

Use your first runs against this Nightlord to learn your way through Limveld.

Gnoster, Wisdom of Night (Sentient Pest)

An Elden Ring Nightreign screenshot showing the Gnoest, Wisdom of Night Nightlord and the Ironeye character in front of it.

It might sound contradictory to face a duo boss after beating Gladius, Beast of Night. Tracking two enemies is challenging and requires you to know the limits of your class. Even so, you should still pick Sentient Pest as your second expedition and fight Gnoster, Wisdom of Night. There are two main reasons for that.

First, almost none of their attacks are capable of instantly killing you unless you’re under level 10. They don’t require you to have specific resistances or weapons either. If you’re playing a melee class, you just need to have patience until Gnoster gets closer and wait for a good window to attack. 

The second reason is Gnoster’s weaknesses. Fire damage is extremely strong against it and it is easy to find a weapon that causes fire damage; throwing pots or Fire Grease, a consumable that makes your weapon cause elemental damage for a period of time.

Maris, Fathom of Night (Augur)

An Elden Ring Nightreign screenshot showing Maris, Fathom of Night, one of the bosses in the game.

The only reason why we suggest tackling Maris, Fathom of Night (from the Augur expedition) after Gnoster is that this boss constantly applies sleep, dealing a lot of damage and leaving you exposed to follow-up attacks. Nevertheless, after enough matches, you’ll have obtained enough Relics, some of which can come with sleep resistance, removing a challenging factor of this fight. 

When it comes to mechanics, there are just a couple of attacks to watch out for. Kill or dodge the small jellyfish the boss sends your way and run from the shining one, since it nukes a large area. Their main attacks are clearly telegraphed so there isn’t much to worry about on that front. Learn their patterns and defeat your third boss.

Adel, Baron of Night (Gaping Jaw)

An Elden Ring Nightreign screenshot showing Adel, Baron of Night. They seem like a mixture of a featherless chicken and a hippo.

Although the Gaping Jaw is the expedition Nightreign suggests tackling after Gladius, we’d suggest waiting to fight Adel, Baron of Night until you become more familiar with the game. Adel deals a lot of damage with their bite attack, which causes blood loss, a major threat if you don’t have a lot of health.

In general, Adel’s attacks can really pin you down, but when the boss enters its second phase, it becomes a real nightmare. To make your life easier, you can use poison against the boss, but this is a type of elemental damage difficult to find weapons with or greases to apply. In other words, you will probably have to face the boss without relying on exploiting any weakness. 

Caligo, Miasma of Night (Fissure in the Fog)

An Elden Ring Nightreign screenshot showing Caligo, Miasma of Night. This boss is a giant dragon surrounded by freezing winds.

Fighting a giant prehistoric dragon is never a good idea, but Caligo, Miasma of Night, the Nightlord you must fight in the Fissure in the Fog expedition, could be worse. To prepare for this fight, farm runes to reach level 12 or higher. 

Once you know how to handle Caligo’s attacks, this gigantic dragon becomes less of a threat, but knowing the fight is not enough to survive. During the match, watch out for elemental resistances that might drop from minor bosses. Caligo’s attacks can inflict Frostbite and they cover large areas of the arena, so you’ll probably get hit by them. You also want to come with strong weapons capable of causing fire damage. 

Libra, Creature of Night (Equilibrious Beast)

An Elden Ring Nightreign screenshot showing Libra, Creature of Night. This boss resembles a goat holding a staff and expelling yellow smoke from its body.

The Equilibrious Beast expedition, where you must fight Libra, Creature of Night, is presents a notable step-up in difficulty compared to the previous fights. The most challenging aspect of this fight is in the preparation: Most of Libra’s attacks inflict madness and there aren’t many methods to prevent it. They are also weak to madness, but you’ll need to find the right incantation to cause that type of damage.

Most importantly, there isn’t a safe spot to hide in this fight. Libra is fast, can teleport next to their target, and unleashes lengthy, quick sequences of attacks with their staff. Finding the right window to heal is difficult, because they can cast long-range area-of-effect attacks that hit many places in the arena. Beating Libra is a matter of farming, learning the fight, and luck.

Fulghor, Champion of Nightglow (Darkdrift Knight)

An Elden Ring Nightreign screenshot showing Fulghor, Champion of Nightflow. One of the most difficult bosses in the game, Fulghor is a one-arm centaur wolding a large spear.

Among the bosses in Elden Ring Nightreign, very few are as punitive as Fulgor, Champion of Nightflow. This one-arm centaur is waiting for you in the Darkdrift Knight expedition and facing them will test all you’ve learned so far. Exploiting Fulghor’s weakness to lightning damage is a must, but the challenge here involves actually hitting them while avoiding their massive area attacks or quick thrusts. 

You need to know how to farm well for this fight and memorize Fulghor’s attack pattern if you plan on completing this expedition. Fulghor causes a lot of damage, making you run out of flasks pretty fast if you don’t dodge at the right time. In addition, during the second phase, Fulghor becomes more brutal with a complex combination of short and long-distance attacks.

Heolstor the Nightlord (Night Aspect)

An Elden Ring Nightreign screenshot showing a battle against Heolstor the Nightlord, the last boss in the game.

Just like Gladius had to go first, you can’t avoid saving the Night Aspect expedition for last since it is the last one you unlock and where you must fight Heolstor the Nightlord. Be sure to have sourced the best gear and achieved the highest level you can before facing this one.


For more Elden Ring Nightreign guides, here’s how to change skins, what “memory fragment found” means, and a list of the best rune farming locations.

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Recluse Remembrance quest walkthrough in Elden Ring Nightreign

The Recluse in Elden Ring Nightreign, standing at the top of an unlocked Rise

The Recluse‘s Remembrance quests in Elden Ring Nightreign dig a bit deeper into the dark forces that gave birth to the Nightlords and gives the mage a useful new relic — but not for free. Completing these quests involves taking on an additional boss, solving some puzzles, and engaging in a final showdown with Nightreign‘s ultimate boss.

Our in-progress Elden Ring Nightreign guide gives you a Recluse Remembrance quest walkthrough, explaining how to start the Recluse’s Remembrance quest, how to handle Recluse’s Chapter 6 challenge, and how to complete each task along the way.

How to start Recluse’s Remembrance in Elden Ring Nightreign

The Recluse in Elden Ring Nightreign, standing near a journal

The Recluse’s Remembrance quest begins in her journal’s second chapter, and like with the other Nightfarers’ quests, there’s seemingly no set guideline for when that chapter becomes available.

In our experience, chapter two showed up after completing three or four expeditions as the Recluse. (Nightreign is flexible with what “complete” means in the early journal chapters, as you don’t have to defeat a Nightlord for an expedition to count toward the chapter unlock requirements. Failure counts as well.)

Check the Recluse’s section of the journal after you return to Roundtable Hold from an expedition, and when Chapter 2 shows up, the option to “begin Remembrance” appears under the journal entry text. Choose to start the quest, and you’ll “relive” a memory. You can only play as the Recluse while reliving one of her memories, but there’s no penalty for changing classes or putting the Remembrance quest on the back burner. You can pick it up again at any point when you’re ready.

The only other thing to keep in mind when deciding whether to start a Remembrance quest is that Nightreign only allows one personal objective per expedition, and there’s no evident process by which the game decides whose objective will show up. If you team up with someone else who’s also pursuing a Remembrance quest, there’s no guarantee your objective will show up on the map.

Chapter 2: Vanquish Enemies Tainted by Night

The Recluse in Elden Ring Nightreign, in the Roundtable Hold’s dining room

Speak with the Iron Menial in Roundtable Hold’s dining room to start the Recluse’s first quest. He tasks you with defeating enemies tainted by the night to prove your devotion to the Nightfarers’ cause and returning with evidence that you did so. Despite the Menial’s phrasing, “enemies tainted by night” isn’t a Nightlord, so you don’t have to deal with a major boss for this. You also just need to defeat one enemy.

Start an expedition, and check your map for a red quest icon similar to those that mark Volcano Manor‘s quests in Elden Ring. The target monster’s actual location seems to differ from game to game, and it’ll differ further depending on whether Shifting Earth is influencing the map. What stays the same is the boss you’ll face: a Night-Swallowed Golden Hippopotamus, one that behaves the same as the hippos you may face at the end of a day in any expedition. The “Night-Tainted” part is just for thematic flair.

A Night-Swallowed Golden Hippopotamus in Elden Ring Nightreign

You should be at least level three to safely deal with this battle, though if you’re playing solo, you may want to make this a priority for night two after you have some additional levels tucked away. Upgrading your starting weapon, the Recluse’s Staff, at least once is also a good idea. Avoid using sorceries and incantations with long casting times and short ranges, since you need to remain agile and far enough away to escape the hippo’s lunge attacks. Glintstone Pebble and Magic Cocktail’s standard effect aren’t glamorous, but they’ll be enough to get you safely through the fight.

You receive a Night Shard after defeating the hippo. Take that to the Menial after completing the expedition in failure or success, and exhaust his dialogue options to finish this part of the Recluse’s Remembrance. You’ll get a Recluse’s Chalice for your trouble — a new Reliquary with one yellow, one green, and one free Relic slot.

Chapter 4: Vestige of Night

The Recluse in Elden Ring Nightreign, standing where the Vestige of Night was

Complete more expeditions as the Recluse, and you’ll eventually unlock her journal’s fourth entry. Begin the Remembrance, and read the note the Menial left for you on the table. Speak with him again in the dining room, and request the Night Shard back. A message pops up that says imbuing the Night Shard with magic caused it to pulse, but offers no further guidance.

Check the map for the next location — Roundtable Hold’s bedroom. One of the beds has a shadowy stain on it. Examine that to obtain the Vestige of Night, a Recluse-oriented green relic that boosts magic power and creates Terra Magica when the Recluse absorbs magical affinities. Standing in the Terra Magica zone increases the power of all spells while the zone lasts.

The Vestige of Night relic in Elden Ring Nightreign

Chapter 6: The Witch of the Wheel

The Recluse in Elden Ring Nightreign, standing in the Rountable Hold’s training grounds where the lurking presence is

The next Remembrance chapter should appear after completing three more expeditions, though again, the number seems random. Just keep checking the journal when you return to Roundtable Hold as usual to see if a new chapter is available. The next Remembrance quest begins with a cryptic task: Find the presence lurking in Roundtable Hold.

The Witch of the Wheel in Elden Ring NIghtreign

The map offers no guidance this time, so you’re left to figure out where this shadowy, nameless presence might be hiding. Head to the training grounds, where you’ll see the Iron Menial standing around. Walk up to him, and give him a couple of punches to reveal the being’s true form, a witch from the Recluse’s coven. Exhaust her dialogue options, and she’ll finally tell you the Menial is taking a little break in the Roundtable Hold’s mausoleum.

The entrance to Roundtable Hold’s mausoleum in Elden Ring Nightreign

The mausoleum’s entrance is in the little low-ceilinged room down from the Small Jar Bazaar. Take the staircase, turn left, and you’ll find the locked door is open now. The Menial is slumped in a corner at the mausoleum’s far end. Speak with him, exhaust his dialogue, and you’ll receive the Bone-Like Stone key item. You can’t do anything with this yet, and it’s not a relic. Conclude the Remembrance, and continue clearing expeditions.

The Roundtable Hold mausoleum

To unlock the Recluse’s final Remembrance quest, you need to defeat three Nightlords after completing the second chapter. Then, challenge and defeat Heolstor, The Night Aspect while playing as the Recluse.

We’re still working on that last part and will update with the final steps and rewards soon.


For more Elden Ring Nightreign guides, here’s a list of all classes, the best class to pick first, how to unlock the Duchess and Revenant, and the best early Duchess build.

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Nobody understands gambling, especially in video games

In 2025, it’s very difficult not to see gambling advertised everywhere. It’s on billboards and sports broadcasts. It’s on podcasts and printed on the turnbuckle of AEW’s pay-per-view shows. And it’s on app stores, where you can find the FanDuel and DraftKings sportsbooks, alongside glitzy digital slot machines. These apps all have the highest age ratings possible on Apple’s App Store and Google Play. But earlier this year, a different kind of app nearly disappeared from the Play Store entirely.

Luck Be A Landlord is a roguelite deckbuilder from solo developer Dan DiIorio. DiIorio got word from Google in January 2025 that Luck Be A Landlord was about to be pulled, globally, because DiIorio had not disclosed the game’s “gambling themes” in its rating.

In Luck Be a Landlord, the player takes spins on a pixel art slot machine to earn coins to pay their ever-increasing rent — a nightmare gamification of our day-to-day grind to remain housed. On app stores, it’s a one-time purchase of $4.99, and it’s $9.99 on Steam. On the Play Store page, developer Dan DiIorio notes, “This game does not contain any real-world currency gambling or microtransactions.”

And it doesn’t. 

But for Google, that didn’t matter. First, the game was removed from the storefront in a slew of countries that have strict gambling laws. Then, at the beginning of 2025, Google told Dilorio that Luck Be A Landlord would be pulled globally because of its rating discrepancy, as it “does not take into account references to gambling (including real or simulated gambling)”.

DiIorio had gone through this song and dance before — previously, when the game was blocked, he would send back a message saying “hey, the game doesn’t have gambling,” and then Google would send back a screenshot of the game and assert that, in fact, it had.

DiIorio didn’t agree, but this time they decided that the risk of Landlord getting taken down permanently was too great. They’re a solo developer, and Luck Be a Landlord had just had its highest 30-day revenue since release. So, they filled out the form confirming that Luck Be A Landlord has “gambling themes,” and are currently hoping that this will be the end of it.

This is a situation that sucks for an indie dev to be in, and over email DiIorio told Polygon it was “very frustrating.”

“I think it can negatively affect indie developers if they fall outside the norm, which indies often do,” they wrote. “It also makes me afraid to explore mechanics like this further. It stifles creativity, and that’s really upsetting.”

In late 2024, the hit game Balatro was in a similar position. It had won numerous awards, and made $1,000,000 in its first week on mobile platforms. And then overnight, the PEGI ratings board declared that the game deserved an adult rating.

The ESRB had already rated it E10+ in the US, noting it has gambling themes. And the game was already out in Europe, making its overnight ratings change a surprise. Publisher PlayStack said the rating was given because Balatro has “prominent gambling imagery and material that instructs about gambling.”

Balatro is basically Luck Be A Landlord’s little cousin. Developer LocalThunk was inspired by watching streams of Luck Be A Landlord, and seeing the way DiIorio had implemented deck-building into his slot machine. And like Luck Be A Landlord, Balatro is a one-time purchase, with no microtransactions.

But the PEGI board noted that because the game uses poker hands, the skills the player learns in Balatro could translate to real-world poker.

In its write-up, GameSpot noted that the same thing happened to a game called Sunshine Shuffle. It was temporarily banned from the Nintendo eShop, and also from the entire country of South Korea. Unlike Balatro, Sunshine Shuffle actually is a poker game, except you’re playing Texas Hold ‘Em — again for no real money — with cute animals (who are bank robbers).

It’s common sense that children shouldn’t be able to access apps that allow them to gamble. But none of these games contain actual gambling — or do they?

Where do we draw the line? Is it gambling to play any game that is also played in casinos, like poker or blackjack? Is it gambling to play a game that evokes the aesthetics of a casino, like cards, chips, dice, or slot machines? Is it gambling to wager or earn fictional money?

Gaming has always been a lightning rod for controversy. Sex, violence, misogyny, addiction — you name it, video games have been accused of perpetrating or encouraging it. But gambling is gaming’s original sin. And it’s the one we still can’t get a grip on.

The original link between gambling and gaming

The association between video games and gambling all goes back to pinball. Back in the ’30s and ’40s, politicians targeted pinball machines for promoting gambling. Early pinball machines were less skill-based (they didn’t have flippers), and some gave cash payouts, so the comparison wasn’t unfair. 

Famously, mob-hating New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia banned pinball in the city, and appeared in a newsreel dumping pinball and slot machines into the Long Island Sound. Pinball machines spent some time relegated to the back rooms of sex shops and dive bars. But after some lobbying, the laws relaxed.

By the 1970s, pinball manufacturers were also making video games, and the machines were side-by-side in arcades. Arcade machines, like pinball, took small coin payments, repeatedly, for short rounds of play. The disreputable funk of pinball basically rubbed off onto video games.

Ever since video games rocked onto the scene, concerned and sometimes uneducated parties have been asking if they’re dangerous. And in general, studies have shown that they’re not. The same can’t be said about gambling — the practice of putting real money down to bet on an outcome.

It’s a golden age for gambling

2025 in the USA is a great time for gambling, which has been really profitable for gambling companies — to the tune of $66.5 billion dollars of revenue in 2023.

To put this number in perspective, the American Gaming Association, which is the casino industry’s trade group and has nothing to do with video games, reports that 2022’s gambling revenue was $60.5 billion. It went up $6 billion in a year.

And this increase isn’t just because of sportsbooks, although sports betting is a huge part of it. Online casinos and brick-and-mortar casinos are both earning more, and as a lot of people have pointed out, gambling is being normalized to a pretty disturbing degree.

Much like with alcohol, for a small percentage of people, gambling can tip from occasional leisure activity into addiction. The people who are most at risk are, by and large, already vulnerable: researchers at the Yale School of Medicine found that 96% of problem gamblers are also wrestling with other disorders, such as “substance use, impulse-control disorders, mood disorders, and anxiety disorders.”

Even if you’re not in that group, there are still good reasons to be wary of gambling. People tend to underestimate their own vulnerability to things they know are dangerous for others. Someone else might bet beyond their means. But I would simply know when to stop.

Maybe you do! But being blithely confident about it can make it hard to notice if you do develop a problem. Or if you already have one.

Addiction changes the way your brain works. When you’re addicted to something, your participation in it becomes compulsive, at the expense of other interests and responsibilities. Someone might turn to their addiction to self-soothe when depressed or anxious. And speaking of those feelings, people who are depressed and anxious are already more vulnerable to addiction

Given the entire state of the world right now, this predisposition shines an ugly light on the numbers touted by the AGA. Is it good that the industry is reporting $6 billion in additional earnings, when the economy feels so frail, when the stock market is ping ponging through highs and lows daily, when daily expenses are rising? 

It doesn’t feel good. 

In 2024, the YouTuber Drew Gooden turned his critical eye to online gambling. One of the main points he makes in his excellent video is that gambling is more accessible than ever. It’s on all our phones, and betting companies are using decades of well-honed app design and behavioral studies to manipulate users to spend and spend.

Meanwhile, advertising on podcasts, billboards, TV, radio, and websites – it’s literally everywhere — tells you that this is fun, and you don’t even need to know what you’re doing, and you’re probably one bet away from winning back those losses.

Where does Luck Be a Landlord come into this?

So, are there gambling themes in Luck Be A Landlord? The game’s slot machine is represented in simple pixel art. You pay one coin to use it, and among the more traditional slot machine symbols are silly ones like a snail that only pays out after 4 spins.

When I started playing it, my primary emotion wasn’t necessarily elation at winning coins — it was stress and disbelief when, in the third round of the game, the landlord increased my rent by 100%. What the hell.

I don’t doubt that getting better at it would produce dopamine thrills akin to gambling — or playing any video game. But it’s supposed to be difficult, because that’s the joke. If you beat the game you unlock more difficulty modes where, as you keep paying rent, your landlord gets furious, and starts throwing made-up rules at you: previously rare symbols will give you less of a payout, and the very mechanics of the slot machine change.

It’s a manifestation of the golden rule of casinos, and all of capitalism writ large: the odds are stacked against you. The house always wins. There is luck involved, to be sure, but because Luck Be A Landlord is a deck-builder, knowing the different ways you can design your slot machine to maximize payouts is a skill! You have some influence over it, unlike a real slot machine. 

The synergies that I’ve seen high-level players create are completely nuts, and obviously based on a deep understanding of the strategies the game allows.

Balatro and Luck Be a Landlord both distance themselves from casino gambling again in the way they treat money. In Landlord, the money you earn is gold coins, not any currency we recognize. And the payouts aren’t actually that big. By the end of the core game, the rent money you’re struggling and scraping to earn… is 777 coins. In the post-game endless mode, payouts can get massive. But the thing is, to get this far, you can’t rely on chance. You have to be very good at Luck Be a Landlord.

And in Balatro, the numbers that get big are your points. The actual dollar payments in a round of Balatro are small. These aren’t games about earning wads and wads of cash. So, do these count as “gambling themes”?

We’ll come back to that question later. First, I want to talk about a closer analog to what we colloquially consider gambling: loot boxes and gacha games.

Random rewards: from Overwatch to the rise of gacha

Recently, I did something that I haven’t done in a really long time: I thought about Overwatch

I used to play Overwatch with my friends, and I absolutely made a habit of dropping 20 bucks here or there for a bunch of seasonal loot boxes. This was never a problem behavior for me, but in hindsight, it does sting that over a couple of years, I dropped maybe $150 on cosmetics for a game that now I primarily associate with squandered potential.

Loot boxes grew out of free-to-play mobile games, where they’re the primary method of monetization. In something like Overwatch, they functioned as a way to earn additional revenue in an ongoing game, once the player had already dropped 40 bucks to buy it.

More often than not, loot boxes are a random selection of skins and other cosmetics, but games like Star Wars: Battlefront 2 were famously criticized for launching with loot crates that essentially made it pay-to-win – if you bought enough of them and got lucky.

It’s not unprecedented to associate loot boxes with gambling. A 2021 study published in Addictive Behaviors showed that players who self-reported as problem gamblers also tended to spend more on loot boxes, and another study done in the UK found a similar correlation with young adults.

While Overwatch certainly wasn’t the first game to feature cosmetic loot boxes or microtransactions, it’s a reference point for me, and it also got attention worldwide. In 2018, Overwatch was investigated by the Belgian Gaming Commission, which found it “in violation of gambling legislation” alongside FIFA 18 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Belgium’s response was to ban the sale of loot boxes without a gambling license. Having a paid random rewards mechanic in a game is a criminal offense there. 

But not really. A 2023 study showed that 82% of iPhone games sold on the App Store in Belgium still use random paid monetization, as do around 80% of games that are rated 12+. The ban wasn’t effectively enforced, if at all, and the study recommends that a blanket ban wouldn’t actually be a practical solution anyway.

Overwatch was rated T for Teen by the ESRB, and 12 by PEGI. When it first came out, its loot boxes were divisive. Since the mechanic came from F2P mobile games, which are often seen as predatory, people balked at seeing it in a big action game from a multi-million dollar publisher.

At the time, the rebuttal was, “Well, at least it’s just cosmetics.” Nobody needs to buy loot boxes to be good at Overwatch.

A lot has changed since 2016. Now we have a deeper understanding of how these mechanics are designed to manipulate players, even if they don’t affect gameplay. But also, they’ve been normalized. While there will always be people expressing disappointment when a AAA game has a paid random loot mechanic, it is no longer shocking.

And if anything, these mechanics have only become more prevalent, thanks to the growth of gacha games. Gacha is short for “gachapon,” the Japanese capsule machines where you pay to receive one of a selection of random toys. 

In gacha games, players pay — not necessarily real money, but we’ll get to that — for a chance to get something. Maybe it’s a character, or a special weapon, or some gear — it depends on the game. Whatever it is, within that context, it’s desirable — and unlike the cosmetics of Overwatch, gacha pulls often do impact the gameplay.

For example, in Infinity Nikki, you can pull for clothing items in these limited-time events. You have a chance to get pieces of a five-star outfit. But you also might pull one of a set of four-star items, or a permanent three-star piece. Of course, if you want all ten pieces of the five-star outfit, you have to do multiple pulls, each costing a handful of limited resources that you can earn in-game or purchase with money.

Gacha was a fixture of mobile gaming for a long time, but in recent years, we’ve seen it go AAA, and global. MiHoYo’s Genshin Impact did a lot of that work when it came out worldwide on consoles and PC alongside its mobile release. 

Genshin and its successors are massive AAA games of a scale that, for your Nintendos and Ubisofts, would necessitate selling a bajillion copies to be a success. And they’re free.

Genshin is an action game, whose playstyle changes depending on what character you’re playing — characters you get from gacha pulls, of course. In Zenless Zone Zero, the characters you can pull have different combo patterns, do different kinds of damage, and just feel different to play.  

And whereas in an early mobile gacha game like Love Nikki Dress UP! Queen the world was rudimentary, its modern descendant Infinity Nikki is, like Genshin, Breath of the Wild-esque. It is a massive open world, with collectibles and physics puzzles, platforming challenges, and a surprisingly involved storyline. 

Genshin Impact was the subject of an interesting study where researchers asked young adults in Hong Kong to self-report on their gacha spending habits. They found that, like with gambling, players who are not feeling good tend to spend more. 

“Young adult gacha gamers experiencing greater stress and anxiety tend to spend more on gacha purchases, have more motives for gacha purchases, and participate in more gambling activities,” they wrote. “This group is at a particularly higher risk of becoming problem gamblers.”

One thing that is important to note is that Genshin Impact came out in 2020. The study was self-reported, and it was done during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a time when people were experiencing a lot of stress, and also fewer options to relieve that stress. We were all stuck inside gaming.

But the fact that stress can make people more likely to spend money on gacha shows that while the gacha model isn’t necessarily harmful to everyone, it is exploitative to everyone. 

Since I started writing this story, another self-reported study came out in Japan, where 18.8% of people in their 20s say they’ve spent money on gacha rather than on things like food or rent.

Following Genshin Impact’s release, MiHoYo put out Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero. All are shiny, big-budget games that are free to play, but dangle the lure of making just one purchase in front of the player. Maybe you could drop five bucks on a handful of in-game currency to get one more pull. Or maybe just this month you’ll get the second tier of rewards on the game’s equivalent of a Battle Pass. The game is free, after all — but haven’t you enjoyed at least ten dollars’ worth of gameplay? 

I spent most of my December throwing myself into Infinity Nikki. I had been so stressed, and the game was so soothing. I logged in daily to fulfill my daily wishes and earn my XP, diamonds, Threads of Purity, and bling. I accumulated massive amounts of resources. 

I haven’t spent money on the game. I’m trying not to, and so far, it’s been pretty easy. I’ve been super happy with how much stuff I can get for free, and how much I can do! I actually feel really good about that — which is what I said to my boyfriend, and he replied, “Yeah, that’s the point. That’s how they get you.”

And he’s right. Currently, Infinity Nikki players are embroiled in a war with developer Infold, after Infold introduced yet another currency type with deep ties to Nikki’s gacha system. Every one of these gacha games has its own tangled system of overlapping currencies. Some can only be used on gacha pulls. Some can only be used to upgrade items. Many of them can be purchased with human money.

All of this adds up. According to Sensor Towers’ data, Genshin Impact earned over 36 million dollars on mobile alone in a single month of 2024. I don’t know what Dan DiIorio’s peak monthly revenue for Luck Be A Landlord was, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that.

A lot of the spending guardrails we see in games like these are actually the result of regulations in other territories, especially China, where gacha has been a big deal for a lot longer. For example, gacha games have a daily limit on loot boxes, with the number clearly displayed, and a system collectively called “pity,” where getting the banner item is guaranteed after a certain number of pulls. 

Lastly, developers have to be clear about what the odds are. When I log in to spend the Revelation Crystals I’ve spent weeks hoarding in my F2P Infinity Nikki experience, I know that I have a 1.5% chance of pulling a 5-star piece, and that the odds can go up to 6.06%, and that I am guaranteed to get one within 20 pulls, because of the pity system.

So, these odds are awful. But it is not as merciless as sitting down at a Vegas slot machine, an experience best described as “oh… that’s it?”

There’s not a huge philosophical difference between buying a pack of loot boxes in Overwatch, a pull in Genshin Impact, or even a booster of Pokémon cards. You put in money, you get back randomized stuff that may or may not be what you want. In the dictionary definition, it’s a gamble. But unlike the slot machine, it’s not like you’re trying to win money by doing it, unless you’re selling those Pokémon cards, which is a topic for another time.

But since even a game where you don’t get anything, like Balatro or Luck Be A Landlord, can come under fire for promoting gambling to kids, it would seem appropriate for app stores and ratings boards to take a similarly hardline stance with gacha.

Instead, all these games are rated T for Teen by the ESRB, and PEGI 12 in the EU.

The ESRB ratings for these games note that they contain in-game purchases, including random items. Honkai: Star Rail’s rating specifically calls out a slot machine mechanic, where players spend tokens to win a prize. But other than calling out Honkai’s slot machine, app stores are not slapping Genshin or Nikki with an 18+ rating. Meanwhile, Balatro had a PEGI rating of 18 until a successful appeal in February 2025, and Luck Be a Landlord is still 17+ on Apple’s App Store.

Nobody knows what they’re doing

When I started researching this piece, I felt very strongly that it was absurd that Luck Be A Landlord and Balatro had age ratings this high.

I still believe that the way both devs have been treated by ratings boards is bad. Threatening an indie dev with a significant loss of income by pulling their game is bad, not giving them a way to defend themself or help them understand why it’s happening is even worse. It’s an extension of the general way that too-big-to-fail companies like Google treat all their customers.

DiIorio told me that while it felt like a human being had at least looked at Luck Be A Landlord to make the determination that it contained gambling themes, the emails he was getting were automatic, and he doesn’t have a contact at Google to ask why this happened or how he can avoid it in the future — an experience that will be familiar to anyone who has ever needed Google support. 

But what’s changed for me is that I’m not actually sure anymore that games that don’t have gambling should be completely let off the hook for evoking gambling.

Exposing teens to simulated gambling without financial stakes could spark an interest in the real thing later on, according to a study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. It’s the same reason you can’t mosey down to the drug store to buy candy cigarettes. Multiple studies were done that showed kids who ate candy cigarettes were more likely to take up smoking (of course, the candy is still available — just without the “cigarette” branding.)

So while I still think rating something like Balatro 18+ is nuts, I also think that describing it appropriately might be reasonable. As a game, it’s completely divorced from literally any kind of play you would find in a casino — but I can see the concern that the thrill of flashy numbers and the shiny cards might encourage young players to try their hand at poker in a real casino, where a real house can take their money.

Maybe what’s more important than doling out high age ratings is helping people think about how media can affect us. In the same way that, when I was 12 and obsessed with The Matrix, my parents gently made sure that I knew that none of the violence was real and you can’t actually cartwheel through a hail of bullets in real life. Thanks, mom and dad!

But that’s an answer that’s a lot more abstract and difficult to implement than a big red 18+ banner. 

When it comes to gacha, I think we’re even less equipped to talk about these game mechanics, and I’m certain they’re not being age-rated appropriately. On the one hand, like I said earlier, gacha exploits the player’s desire for stuff that they are heavily manipulated to buy with real money. On the other hand, I think it’s worth acknowledging that there is a difference between gacha and casino gambling.

Problem gamblers aren’t satisfied by winning — the thing they’re addicted to is playing, and the risk that comes with it. In gacha games, players do report satisfaction when they achieve the prize they set out to get. And yes, in the game’s next season, the developer will be dangling a shiny new prize in front of them with the goal of starting the cycle over. But I think it’s fair to make the distinction, while still being highly critical of the model.

And right now, there is close to no incentive for app stores to crack down on gacha in any way. They get a cut of in-app purchases. Back in 2023, miHoYo tried a couple of times to set up payment systems that circumvented Apple’s 30% cut of in-app spending. Both times, it was thwarted by Apple, whose App Store generated $1.1 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2022.

According to Apple itself, 90% of that money did not include any commission to Apple. Fortunately for Apple, ten percent of a trillion dollars is still one hundred billion dollars, which I would also like to have in my bank account. Apple has zero reason to curb spending on games that have been earning millions of dollars every month for years.

And despite the popularity of Luck Be A Landlord and Balatro’s massive App Store success, these games will never be as lucrative. They’re one-time purchases, and they don’t have microtransactions. To add insult to injury, like most popular games, Luck Be A Landlord has a lot of clones.  And from what I can tell, it doesn’t look like any of them have been made to indicate that their games contain the dreaded “gambling themes” that Google was so worried about in Landlord.

In particular, a game called SpinCraft: Roguelike from Sneaky Panda Games raised $6 million in seed funding for “inventing the Luck-Puzzler genre,” which it introduced in 2022, while Luck Be A Landlord went into early access in 2021.

It’s free-to-play, has ads and in-app purchases, looks like Fisher Price made a slot machine, and it’s rated E for everyone, with no mention of gambling imagery in its rating. I reached out to the developers to ask if they had also been contacted by the Play Store to disclose that their game has gambling themes, but I haven’t heard back.

Borrowing mechanics in games is as old as time, and it’s something I in no way want to imply shouldn’t happen because copyright is the killer of invention — but I think we can all agree that the system is broken.

There is no consistency in how games with random chance are treated. We still do not know how to talk about gambling, or gambling themes, and at the end of the day, the results of this are the same: the house always wins.

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A Godzilla masterpiece is coming back to the U.S. in 4K

Godzilla fans have had plenty to feast on in the past decade, with Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse producing five films and a pair of streaming series. But while Hollywood has come up with increasingly silly ways for its titans to fight, Japan’s Toho Studios still produced the smartest and best Godzilla film of this era — and it’s coming back to U.S. theaters in August.

Originally released in Japan in 2016, Shin Godzilla from directors Hideaki Anno (Neon Genesis Evangelion) and Shinji Higuchi (Bullet Train Explosion) was inspired by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to fail. It starts as a dark comedy focused mostly on an endless series of meetings to address a mysterious incident in Tokyo Bay that keeps getting worse every time the politicians think they can declare victory. 

Godzilla glowing purple on a poster for Shin Godzilla Now in 4K

As Godzilla makes landfall and evolves from an ungainly lungfish-like beast to the iconic city destroying kaiju, the country’s leaders need to cut through the red tape and come up with a solution. If they can’t figure out how to neutralize the monster themselves, America will nuke the whole city. The examination of Japan’s place in the post-World War II era is deeply political, reframing the series in a nationalistic vein continued by 2023’s Godzilla Minus One.

A 4K remaster of Shin Godzilla will be released in North American theaters on Aug. 14 by GKIDS, which was purchased by Toho last year. According to the announcement, a home entertainment release will follow.

“With an incredibly timely story of people struggling to work together to stop imminent destruction, backed by some of the most explosive action scenes the franchise has ever seen, Shin Godzilla is a modern masterpiece,” GKIDS president David Jesteadt said in a news release. “We are honored to play a part in bringing the film back for American fans, better than ever.”

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PS5 shooter goes from 5 players to bestseller after devs defend game

Hypercharge, a whimsical action figure shooter, just went from near-obscurity to becoming one of the top 10 sellers on PS5 over the weekend, and it’s all thanks to the developers’ honesty. Every day, thousands of new games are released on major storefronts, and the sad reality is that most won’t make it. Live service titles like Fortnite already hoard most of the user base on any given platform. Some games earn well below whatever it took to make them in the first place. And so we arrive at Hypercharge: Unboxed, a third-person shooter where players control action figures, which was ported at the end of May to Xbox and PlayStation.

Originally released in 2020 on Steam, Hypercharge arrived on the scene with plenty of fanfare. Footage of the game periodically went viral on social media as onlookers were delighted by the prospect of a game that looked straight out of Pixar’s Toy Story. Steam users have granted Hypercharge a “Very Positive’” rating, with one top review on the platform declaring the experience “pure childhood joy.” Not bad for a game made by a team of 5 people.

But that was years ago. In 2025, the shooter landscape is more competitive than ever, which means that success was not assured for Hypercharge. Despite launching with cross-platform support, it seems that interest in the game was minimal at the start of 2025. On Steam, the top-voted review posted on May 12th of this year declared, “Game is dead.”

Players on console soon realized this was the case, with at least one player taking to social media to voice their dissatisfaction. This player claimed there weren’t enough players to form a full lobby, and that there were “literally 5 people online.”

This prompted developer Digital Cybercherries to respond, and the post was surprisingly earnest. The makers of the action figure game acknowledged that there weren’t many people enjoying the game, but that they were OK with that so long as the game brought someone, somewhere joy.

Maybe there aren’t thousands of players online. But somewhere, someone’s on the couch with their kid, playing split-screen, laughing, figuring things out together, side by side.

If that’s all Hypercharge ever is… that’s enough for us. Not every game is meant to be online-only. https://t.co/ae6d2aLpFy

— Hypercharge | Out Now on PlayStation! (@HyperchargeGame) May 30, 2025

The developers followed up this post with a longer explanation where they said that ultimately, they had made the game they would have wanted as children.

“Making games has never been about getting rich, becoming famous, or having the most concurrent players”

“Making games has never been about getting rich, becoming famous, or having the most concurrent players,” the post reads. “To us, being rich means waking up every day to do what we love with the people we love […] as long as we can pay the bills, feed our families, and keep creating what we care about, then yeah, in our eyes, we’re already rich.”

We made the game we always wanted as kids. And we did it. That’s our success. pic.twitter.com/OhDUmf9CO3

— Hypercharge | Out Now on PlayStation! (@HyperchargeGame) May 31, 2025

The devs’ display of vulnerability exploded on social media, where the post has accrued over 600,000 views. This attention was enough to catapult the game into the top 10 sellers on PS5 over the weekend.

“Picked it up yesterday to support you guys on PS5 myself!” one response reads. “I’m gonna get this game when I get paid again,” another says.

While Hypercharge seems to have fallen out that bestseller list now, it’s still at number 5 in the bestselling new releases for PS5. The whirlwind of attention was still welcome by the small developer.

“To be honest, it has been surreal,” Joe Henson, head of marketing for Hypercharge, told Polygon over email. “We are a team of five, with no publisher, no outside funding, and no big marketing budget. Just five friends who grew up loving games and wanted to make one that meant something to us. To see Hypercharge go viral and now stand alongside major AAA titles as the #5 bestselling new release on PlayStation is something we never anticipated. It has genuinely touched us.”

Henson did not share specific player base numbers with Polygon, only noting that the game doesn’t have a “huge” player base but that there are thousands of players across all platforms. He also reiterated that the developers consider the game more of a co-op experience, and the online functionality is more of a bonus.

“I completely understand it can be frustrating if you’re trying to jump into online matches and can’t find anyone,” Henson says. “I hear that. But I don’t think it’s fair to call a game a failure when it’s doing exactly what it set out to do: offer a solid offline and local co-op experience, with online as a nice extra, not the main focus.”

As for what’s next, it’s business as usual. There are bugs to fix, and updates to dole out to ensure cross-platform is working as intended. But the team is still taking some time to bask in the accomplishment.

“It has been a monumental task, but one we are incredibly proud of,” Henson says.

Hypercharge: Unboxed is available on PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.

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Summer Game Fest and ‘Not-E3’ 2025 schedule: All conference dates and times

Summer Game Fest 2025 returns in June to fill the vacuum left by E3 — may it rest in peace — and will be joined by a long list of showcases from the likes of Xbox and tireless independent organizers who will put on shows like Day of the Devs and Wholesome Direct.

This year’s Summer Game Fest and “Not-E3” extravaganza may look a little lighter, though. Publishers like Sony, Nintendo, and Ubisoft haven’t yet announced their brand of events — PlayStation Showcase, Nintendo Direct, and Ubisoft Forward, respectively — but some of that may change as we approach what would normally be E3 season.

In this guide to Summer Game Fest and not-E3 2025, we’ll run down the conference schedule, with dates and times across time zones in North America and Europe, and what to expect from each one. (This story will be updated with new events and details as they are announced.)

Summer Game Fest 2025

Where to watch: YouTube, Twitch
When it starts: Friday, June 6, at 2 p.m. PST/5 p.m. EST/10 p.m. BST

Summer Game Fest 2025 kicks things off on Friday, June 6. Geoff Keighley’s annual showcase of the big games coming in 2025, 2026, and beyond will stream live from the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles. SGF 2025 is expected to run about two hours.

With its focus on the types of games that would normally be reserved for E3 showcases past, expect the biggest reveals of AAA sequels, surprises, and world premiere exclusives to show up at Summer Game Fest 2025. Also, probably expect an appearance from Hideo Kojima. Here’s everything that was announced at SGF 2024, for an idea of what to expect.

Day of the Devs: Summer Game Fest Edition

Where to watch: YouTube, Twitch
When it starts: Friday, June 6, at 4 p.m. PST/7 p.m. EST/12 a.m. BST

The Summer Game Fest edition of Day of the Devs will stream live on June 6, at 4 p.m. PST/7 p.m. EST/11 p.m. GMT, immediately after SGF 2025 wraps. Day of the Devs, a non-profit co-production from Double Fine Productions and iam8bit, will reveal and highlight some of the best, most creative indie games from a wide variety of creators. Looking for something original and maybe a little weird? Then don’t miss this show.

Wholesome Direct 2025

Where to watch: YouTubeTwitch
When it starts: Saturday, June 7, at 9 a.m. PST/12 p.m. EST/5 p.m. BST

You wanna get cozy? Let’s get cozy. Wholesome Direct returns Saturday, June 7, promising “a vibrant lineup of artistic, uplifting, and emotionally resonant games from developers of all sizes from around the world.”

Future Games Show Summer Showcase

Where to watch: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, TikTok
When it starts: Saturday, June 7, at 1 p.m. PST/4 p.m. EST/9 p.m. BST

The Future Games Show Summer Showcase promises to highlight “some of the most exciting games on the horizon,” with world premieres, exclusive game demos, developer interviews, and new trailers from more than 40 games. Confirmed to appear are Supermassive Games’ Directive 8020, Hangar 13’s Mafia: The Old Country , and Crisol: Theater of Idols from Blumhouse Games. Actors Laura Bailey and Matthew Mercer will host this year’s Future Games Show Summer Showcase.

Xbox Games Showcase 2025

Where to watch: YouTubeTwitch, Facebook
When it starts: Sunday, June 8, starting at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST/6 p.m. BST

Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase 2025 will be streamed live on Sunday, June 8, starting at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST/6 p.m. GMT. The Xbox team promises a look at upcoming titles from Xbox Game Studios and third-party partners.

Immediately following the Xbox Games Showcase, Obsidian Entertainment will get its own The Outer Worlds 2 Direct showcase, offering a deep dive into this year’s highly anticipated sci-fi RPG sequel.

PC Gaming Show

Where to watch: YouTube, TwitchFacebook
When it starts: Sunday, June 8, at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. BST

PC Gamer’s PC Gaming Show will show PC games — and nothing but PC games — on Sunday, June 8. Organizers say that this year’s PC Gaming Show will be “brimming with exclusives, announcements, world premieres and behind the scenes developer interviews,” viewers can look forward to over 50 games on PC, Steam Deck, Linux and MacOS this season of summer events and broadcasts—in the one and only show designed solely to celebrate all things PC gaming.” Some 50 games will be showcased, with publishers Ubisoft, Failbetter Games, Devolver Digital, and Astra Logical confirmed to appear.

PlayStation State of Play/PlayStation Showcase

Sony Interactive Entertainment hasn’t announced a PlayStation Showcase or State of Play event for the Summer Game Fest/Not-E3 season, though it typically holds one in late May or early June. According to frequent leaker/Giant Bomb co-owner Jeff Grubb, Sony has a State of Play showcase in the works for sometime in June.

Nintendo Direct

Nintendo also typically has a Nintendo Direct presentation sometime in mid-to-late June, though the company has not yet announced such an event for 2025. But since Nintendo is about to launch Switch 2 on June 5, don’t be surprised if it has more to show regarding the next-gen console’s lineup near or after launch.

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Here’s what Pokémon Scarlet and Violet look like running on Switch 2

Since their launch, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have faced criticism for their subpar performance. But that’s about to change with the newly released free upgrade for the Nintendo Switch 2. In a new trailer, fans just got a first look at the enhanced experience.

Serebii Update: A trailer for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet for Nintendo Switch 2 has been released on the Nintendo Today app https://t.co/gDbXkHSvkT pic.twitter.com/JQlc66YobG

— Serebii.net (@SerebiiNet) June 2, 2025

In the trailer above, the visual improvements are immediately noticeable. Character models, once plagued by jagged edges, now appear crisp and polished. The game runs at a smooth 60 frames per second, bringing a new level of fluidity to everything from the protagonist’s movement across open environments to the natural behavior of wild Pokémon, even in densely populated areas. It’s a dramatic upgrade from the original release, which struggled to maintain a stable 30 fps. Even the Tera Type transformation sequences look more dynamic and refined on the Switch 2 hardware thanks to improved lighting effects.

After seeing the trailer, many fans who were disappointed with the original release now claim that Scarlet and Violet look like they were always intended for Switch 2 hardware, and it’s hard to disagree. The initial version struggled with performance, even after a day-one patch aimed at addressing early criticism. Given that the Pokémon Company first announced Pokémon Legends: Z-A for the current Switch before revealing a Switch 2 version after the handheld’s official announcement, it’s reasonable to believe a similar strategy was in play here.

Either way, the free upgrade for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet on the Switch 2 will surely be a great second playthrough as fans eagerly await Pokémon Legends: Z-A to release in October.

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Can Spritzee be shiny in Pokémon Go?

Spritzee, the perfume Pokémon from Kalos, can be found in the wild in Pokémon Go. Yes, Spritzee can be shiny in Pokémon Go!

Neither Spritzee nor its evolution Aromatisse see any use in meta play, but it does have a pretty good shiny!


What is the shiny rate for Spritzee in Pokémon Go?

As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), the shiny rate for Pokémon on a regular day is approximately one in 500. Spritzee is not a confirmed Pokémon that gets a “permaboost” (meaning that it’s a rare spawn and thus gets a boosted shiny rate).


What can I do to attract more shiny Pokémon?

Not much, unfortunately. It appears to be random chance. Shiny Pokémon catch rates are set by developer Niantic, and they are typically only boosted during special events like Community Days or Safari Zones, or in Legendary Raids. There are no consumable items that boost shiny Pokémon rates.


Where can I find a list of available shiny Pokémon?

LeekDuck keeps a list of currently available shiny Pokémon. It’s a helpful visual guide that illustrates what all of the existing shiny Pokémon look like.

For more tips, check out Polygon’s Pokémon Go guides.

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Dying first in Elden Ring Nightreign blows

A trio of players face off against Elden Ring Nightreign’s first big expedition boss.

Death comes for everyone in Elden Ring Nightreign. FromSofware’s experimental combination of Fortnite meets roguelike is built on a foundation that’s already notoriously difficult, so you can expect to see ‘YOU DIED’ often. Some deaths are worse than others, though.

Every time you begin an expedition in Nightreign, your trio begins at level 1. You then have to quickly defeat mobs, find gear, and level up before the storm closes in and a major boss appears on the map. If you die, you’ll eventually respawn and have a chance to recollect the Runes you dropped in your last life — but you’ll be knocked down one level. It’s an understandable compromise that is arguably more lenient than what you might find in a typical roguelike, where death means completely starting over. But since things move quickly in Nightreign, being the first in your group to die can start a cycle of pain that’s sometimes impossible to bounce back from.

You barely have time to level up at all, so losing a level is a huge setback. The chances of catching back up are slim, which turns the player who dies first into the biggest liability on the team during combat encounters. The poor sod who dies first usually becomes the person who will lose all their HP the fastest in all other scenarios, which could potentially mean falling back even further.

In the overworld map, level discrepancies are a little easier to deal with. Teammates have a small window to revive their pals without penalty, and most mobs can be dispensed quickly enough to safely do so. If you’re playing as Ironeye, you can even revive from afar without much danger. Where things really get dicey are bosses, which are designed to be tough even if you’re at full power. End of day bosses in particular appear in an area that is closed off from the rest of the map, so you can’t retreat back into safety. In those cases, your teammates might be too busy trying to stay alive to be able to help you anyway.

I’ve had a couple of embarrassing runs that just kept getting worse and worse due to this gameplay framework. In one unfortunate instance, I was running toward a church in search of an extra flask charge. The fastest way there was by taking a spirit stream up a mountain, which was located near a tree spirit boss. I sauntered forward, confident that I could outrun the boss as I would any other baddie. What I didn’t expect was that the bastard could interrupt the animation that vaulted me up, thereby preventing me from leaving entirely. In one fell swoop, the woodsy worm took me into his maw and killed me.

My teammates were nearby and dutifully sprung into action. But Nighreign requires that you hit someone multiple times before they’ll revive, and I had fallen right under the boss. There was no way to get to me without being in the direct line of fire of the enemy, and no one was playing a ranged character. Seconds later, all three of us were crawling on the ground, gasping our last breaths. Nightreign doesn’t have voice chat or any way to communicate with your team, so I could only imagine everyone else’s disappointment that we’d gone out in such an anti-climactic way.

If one good thing has come out of all of this, is that it’s motivated me to play better to try and avoid dying as much as possible. But Nightreign is a tough game. Everyone will eventually die. I’m just hoping I’m not the first person to fall under — and I feel bad for whoever dies first.

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Switch 2 pre-orders are getting cancelled days before launch

A close-up of a Switch 2 with the Joy-Con 2 detaching

The Switch 2 is out on June 5, which means that anyone who scored a pre-order will be keeping a close eye on its status. What people expect are notices that their Switch 2 has been processed or shipped, and that they’ll get Nintendo’s new console on time. Instead, some people are getting hit with the news that they won’t be getting a Switch 2 at all.

Walmart pre-orders in particular seem to be getting hit the hardest, judging from dozens of posts on social media sites like X and Reddit. While some customers aren’t surprised by this turn of events — they placed pre-orders days after most had been sold out at other major retailers — others say that they placed their orders the day they went live. The situation is pervasive enough that it’s prompting paranoia among fans, who are now regularly refreshing the status of their orders and are praying they won’t be next.

As news spreads, it’s become evident that some cancellations are not happening due to a lack of stock. Some people have discovered that their orders were flagged for fraud by their credit cards companies, which prevented retailers like Walmart from charging the order. In those cases, getting in contact with your bank might be the quickest way to ensure that your order gets processed properly.

Walmart seems to be attempting to do right by customers, though, with some reports of fans being offered gift cards as an apology for canceled orders. While Walmart appears to be the most prevalent case of canceled preorders, there are still reports on social media hailing from customers at other retailers, like Target and Best Buy. In the case of Best Buy, some customers are encouraging each other to go into physical stores for help, as the retailer’s phone line has proven unhelpful. GameStop has taken the opportunity to gloat about the status of its pre-orders, only to be met with responses from people who also had their order canceled.

Not us.

— GameStop (@gamestop) June 1, 2025

It might be worth checking your pre-order to make sure things are moving smoothly, as most major retailers have reports of canceled orders. In some cases, people are indeed being promised consoles, but they won’t arrive on launch day necessarily.

If you had your order canceled, don’t despair. There are also reports from retail workers at major stores that many of them are getting an abnormally large stock of consoles reserved for people who come into the store without pre-orders. Just make sure to check if your local store is doing midnight releases or not — you don’t want to make the journey just to find out you’ve been beaten to the punch by people who were willing to camp out in line.

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