Nightingale: How Realms & Portals Work, Explained

There are Realms and Portals in Nightingale that you’ll be able to unlock. And while the game isn’t live yet, players might be wondering how the Realms and Portals work and how to utilize all their features. I’ll give you a rundown on how they work here. Just note that the game is still in preview, so these mechanics might not accurately reflect when the game goes live. 

How Realms & Portals Work – Explained

Realms can be opened with the use of Realm Cards. Different kinds of cards confer different kinds of conditions to your portals, so I’m here to break it all down for you.

Additionally, you can optimize your realms and open and close them as you please. I’ll walk you through all of these features below.

Get Your Cards

Minor Cards

You get Minor Cards as rewards from encounters, chests, or buying them from Essence Traders. With the new patch updates to the game, these don’t get played anymore, instead, you can use them at the Transmuter (more on this later).

SIDE NOTE: We have a FAQ (Frequently-asked-Questions) article for Nightingale. Make sure to check it out for more information!

Major & Biome cards

You can buy them from Essence Traders or if you complete the tutorial, you can also get them by completing power towers as a reward.

In general, you can find cards out in the world as loot in chests, from Essence Traders, or by completing encounters. These cards will affect what environment, monsters, and conditions your next Realm will be. 

Let’s talk about the current Major Cards here:

• Desert Card
  • Will give a desert environment.
• Swamp Card
  • Will give a Swamp environment filled with water.
• Forest
  • Will give a standard forest environment filled with trees and lush plant life.

There are more Major Cards to come as the game continues to get updates, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Recipes

Once you get the recipes, you can craft using a Simple Enchanter’s Focus, where you can also craft charms, infusions, and enchantments. 

In the beginning, the recipes are pretty simple only requiring paper and ink. As you move on to biome and major cards, you will need more complex materials to craft them. Abeyance, Antiquarian, Astrolabe, and Provisioner cards require regular paper and ink.

For now, there’s not a lot in terms of craftable material, so we’ll have to see what the developers come up with in time.

Craft Your Portal

Once you’ve made your cards, you can place them in the portal. You can read our in-depth guide on how to build your first portal attached here.

No enemies will pop out of the small portals, but summoning larger Fae portals may come with an enemy or two.

If you make two portals with the same combination of cards, they will lead to the same place. 

Reset Realms

Additionally, there is a way to reset Realms. Do this by:

1. Closing the portal down (the one you’re working on) 
2. Buy or get new cards
3. Craft them
4. Play them
5. Choose the option to go ahead and Reset the Realm.

This means that all interactions and Traders will reset. Additionally, you can get more Essence and change the difficulty of the Realm when you do this. Changing the difficulty will change the amount of Essence you can get per encounter.

Opening and Closing Realms

Nightingale gives players the option to return to a Realm. This means that you can go back to the portal to that Realm whenever you want.

You don’t have to keep crafting new cards to return to a Realm you’ve already been. However, if you click Close Portal instead of Reopen Portal, this will use up your cards and you will have to craft new ones even if it’s the same Realm.

Make Realms Public

You can make your realms public but it is strongly advised that you don’t do this for your Abeyance Realm. 

Make sure that you only do this for a Realm where you want to encounter random players who could maybe help you out. This means that you don’t have to set a Realm to public if you just want to play with your friends, they can simply just join in with you.

And these are the basics of how realms and portals work in Nightingale! These are some of the more unique features that the game has to offer, so we’re excited to see what the next updates have in store. Hopefully, there will be even more combinations in the cards!

Ready for more? Here’s our comprehensive guide on Dungeons and Towers in Nightingale!