Nightingale Realm Cards Guide
Realms and Realm Cards are important mechanics that define a big part of the gameplay of Nightingale. Players are called Realmwalkers in Nightingale because they visit and explore different realms by using and combining these Realm Cards. In this guide, we’ll have a look at everything we know about realms and Realm Cards in Nightingale.
What Are Realms In Nightingale?
Realms in Nightingale are procedural-generated mini-worlds a player can travel to by using arcane portals. These realms have different traits, landscapes, and wildlife. Lore-wise the realms are the lands of Fae where players see Fae architecture and fearsome creatures.
Some realms might appear as if there has been someone else previously. Players might find some trees that have been cut down already, old houses, or other Points of Interest. Some realms might focus more on gathering resources and others more on hunting creatures.
Most of these realms are temporary. Shortly after the last player leaves, the connection to the realm will be lost forever and the realm can not be visited again.
What Is The Respite Realm?
The Respite Realm is the home realm of a player and where the player builds his or her base. Each Realmwalker can only select one realm as his Respite Realm. This Respite Realm? will be permanently available, functions as a fast travel point for the player, and is the realm a player returns to if he or she dies on an adventure.
Players can change their Respite Realm anytime, but can only have one Respite Realm at any given time. It is possible to invite friends to a Respite Realm to go on adventures together.
It is also encouraged that players build bases in the same Respite Realm, meaning different players decide that one realm is going to be their Respite Realm. Sharing a Respite Realm would allow players to build small settlements and make it easier to defend a base.
How To Travel To Other Realms
To travel to other realms in Nightingale, Realmwalkers use arcane portals. These portals function like gateways between realms.
The screenshot above shows an arcane portal and a device in front of the portal. Realmwalkers can interact with this device to open a portal to another realm. For this, players need Realm Cards.
What Are Realm Cards?
Realm Cards are craftable items in Nightingale symbolizing powerful arcane magic. Realm Cards can be used in special devices, to open a portal to a realm. The opening realms are procedurally generated with traits determined by the used Realm Cards.
The following video by Inflexion Games introduced a lot of the concepts about Realm Cards:
Realm Cards can be grouped into 3 categories:
- Biome Realm Cards
- Major Realm Cards
- Minor Realm Cards
Older video footage showed, that at least one Biome Realm Card and one Major Realm Card were needed to open a portal to a new realm. There were hints in recent updates that the minimum required cards was reduced to only 1 Biome Realm Card. The specific numbers of cards are still fine-tuned by Inflexion Games.
In any case, Players can optionally add more major or minor cards. The maximum of cards is not finalized yet and might change in the future, but in the official video, there were 5 slots in total.
How To Craft Realm Cards
To craft Realm Cards in Nightingale the player uses a Crafting Bench. Each Realm Card requires the following materials:
- 1x Paper (crafted with a Paper Press on the Crafting Bench).
- 1x Ink (crafted with an Ink-Making Set).
- 1x Essence (no further information available yet).
Realm Cards can be salvaged too. Salvaging cards yields Essence Dust. If Essence Dust and the required Essence to craft a Realm Card are linked together is not known yet.
List Of Realm Biomes
Realms in Nightingale can be grouped by their biome. Currently, there are the 3 following Biome Realm Cards available:
- Biome Realm Card: Forest
- Biome Realm Card: Swamp
- Biome Realm Card: Desert
The biome of the opening realm will be determined by the chosen Realm Card. The biome will influence the plants and creatures the player will find. To open a portal a player always has to play exactly one biome card.
Additionally, a “shadowy jungle” biome was teased pretty early but is not available in Nightingale yet.
Creatures In Realms
Creatures in Nightingale can be friendly or hostile. The game interface might not tell the player whether a creature is friendly or not (e.g. by coloring the name of a creature differently like in other games).
A big part of exploring the Fae Realms will be to find out more about the Lore of Nightingale and its creatures. Some of the friendly creatures will allow players to interact with them, other creatures might ignore the player as long as the player doesn’t cut any trees.
Friendly creatures in Nightingale can still be attacked. If the player chooses to attack a potentially friendly creature, it will be hostile.
Major And Minor Realm Cards
Currently, there is not much information available about major and minor Realm Cards. The names of a few cards are available like Eternal Night, Spring, and Faewild. The names might already give some clues about their effects.
We also know that the weather can change in a realm. There is rain but also thunderstorms. Making great lighting and weather effects was one of the reasons Nightingale got an upgrade from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5.1 in 2022. The animation below shows a lightning strike in slow-motion in Nightingale:
Below is a list of speculations on the effects major and minor cards could have on a realm.
- Adding specific types of creatures.
- Increasing the number of resource nodes like trees.
- Changing the weather.
- Adding elements for environmental storytelling like ruins.
- Adding boss enemies.
- Increasing difficulty of enemies.
- Changing the day/night cycle.
Adding new Realm Cards with completely new effects will be a part of new content updates in the future.