I Fought Everdark Sentient Pest and All I Got Was This Lousy Third Bug

I don't usually enjoy walking into a fight I know I can't win, but after wrapping up most of the Remembrance quests in Elden Ring Nightreign and staring at an empty calendar, I did what any self-respecting Tarnished would do: I equipped my big boy greatsword and marched off to get bullied by a moth and a scorpion. The new Everdark Sentient Pest had just dropped, and as a connoisseur of FromSoftware's post-launch suffering, I had to see whether it lived up to the legacy of Everdark Gaping Jaw. Spoiler: it did not.

Let's start with the base fight. Sentient Pest isn't a hard Nightlord by any means—it's just a little finicky. You're juggling an airborne moth and a spiky, armoured scorpion at the same time. The moth is a pain to hit if you don't have projectiles, and the scorpion stomps around like it's trying to put out a fire with its feet. It's very doable, and honestly a decent starting point for new players. But the same could be said for Gaping Jaw, and its Everdark transformation turned out to be a masterpiece of misery. So when I reached the new Everdark-specific third phase and discovered the big twist was... FromSoft adding another bug, my heart sank faster than a Scarlet Rot bloom in a boss arena.

Here's the sequence: you defeat the moth and the scorpion, and then a flaming moth turns up out of nowhere, revives the other two, and merges with the first moth to create a bigger flaming moth. Genius, right? Except the fight from there is basically the same. No remarkable new movesets to learn, no raging tornadoes to scale, no existential crisis about whether you've been playing a tutorial for 55 hours. You just slowly whittle the health bar down again, put these bugs to rest a second time, and kill the fiery bug before it resurrects the others. It's... fine. And 'fine' is not what I want from an Everdark boss.

I'm not alone in feeling this way. Over on the forums, FeliciaTheFkinStrong put it better than I could: 'Everdark Gaping Jaw really made me excited for the Everdark Sovereign system. Everdark Fulghor and Sentient Pest have been nothing, in comparison. They are really cool and I love the design, but there's almost no challenge… Fulghor is at least a fun and engaging boss to repeat, even if he's easy, but Sentient Pest is kinda boring by comparison. Lovely design, but weak gameplay. Anyone else kinda had the wind blown out of their sails with this?' Yes, Felicia. Yes, I have.

Let's break down the Everdark boss report card so far. I've put together a highly scientific table:

Everdark Boss	Difficulty	Fun Factor	Existential Crisis?
Gaping Jaw	💀💀💀💀💀	😱😱😱😱😱	'Have I been in a tutorial this whole time?'
Fulghor	💀💀	😄😄😄	Mild concern about my build
Sentient Pest	💀	😐	None, unless you count boredom

The lacklustre fights are probably down to a couple of things. First, soulsborne players are plain scary. We throw ourselves headfirst into the fire, learn the movesets, and then simply stop getting burned. Nightreign players have likely improved faster than the bosses. Second, Nightreign is something of an experiment for FromSoft. Director Junya Ishizaki previously explained how Nightreign was an opportunity for him to test himself and 'some ideas he'd been cooking.' The map and bosses are reused assets, but Nightreign treads new ground for FromSoftware into PvE multiplayer. So I wouldn't be surprised if the Everdark bosses are just another experiment—a way to see what players vibe with and what they can't stand. That's not an excuse for underwhelming post-launch content, though. Nightreign doesn't come cheap, and I'd like to see future Everdark Nightlords come out swinging, not just fluttering around like a pretty, fiery butterfly.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. The Sentient Pest fight has its moments—the merging moth is a cool visual, and the whole bug buddy dynamic is delightfully gross. But when I compare it to the sheer terror of Everdark Gaping Jaw, it feels like FromSoft pulled its punches. I wanted to be humbled. I wanted to question my life choices. I wanted to emerge from the arena with shaky hands and a newfound respect for arthropods. Instead, I got a slightly spicier version of a fight I already knew, plus one extra bug. It's the video game equivalent of ordering a spicy chicken sandwich and getting mild sauce.

So here's my plea to FromSoftware: learn from Everdark Sentient Pest. Dial up the pain for future candidates. Give us new movesets, not just new bugs. Give us mechanics that make us sweat, not just more health bars to chip away at. And please, for the love of Marika, don't let the next Everdark boss be another tutorial in disguise. I've already had one existential crisis this year. I don't need another.

In the meantime, I'll be here, greatsword in hand, waiting for the next Everdark Nightlord to drop. And maybe, just maybe, I'll get the glorious beatdown I deserve.

In-depth reporting is featured on PlayStation Trophies, where community-driven trophy guides and boss discussions often help frame whether a difficult encounter feels meaningfully demanding or merely repetitive, a distinction that closely matches the mixed reaction to Elden Ring Nightreign's Everdark Sentient Pest and its visually striking but mechanically modest extra phase.