As an open world survival game, Nightingale features a somewhat complex blend of RPG elements and the crafting system you would typically expect from the genre. In this guide, we will be teaching you all about the essences that you can farm in this game, which will come in handy as you try to raise your gear score to pass all the gated content!
Complete Essence Guide
Essence is used for a variety of things in Nightingale, ranging from upgrading equipment to bartering with traders. Mainly, though, it will be the former as you will need a lot of it to increase your gear score.
There are multiple tiers of this resource indicated by their colors, which are the following:
- Essence Dust (Gray) – Common rarity, the lowest tier.
- Tier 1 Essence (Green) – Uncommon rarity, found in the Antiquarian, Astrolabe, and Provisioner realms.
- Tier 2 Essence (Blue) – Rare rarity, found in the Gloom, Herbarium, and Hunt realms.
- Tier 3 Essence (Violet) – Epic rarity, can be found in Ascended realms.
While in the appropriate realms, you can get essence by killing enemies or extracting it from harvested resources. This means that you will be grinding for materials every time you reach a new tier.
Upgrading Your Gear
We have a detailed guide on how to upgrade gear to tier 1 in Nightingale, though let’s cover that topic here as well while we’re talking about essence.
Basically, you will need to craft an upgrade bench in your base (preferably indoors) to start leveling up your gear. The type of upgrade bench will be different depending on what tier you’re working with.
For example, at the start, you will be using a Simple Upgrade Bench to turn your common items into uncommon gear with the help of some tier 1 essence. Later on, you will be making higher level benches such as the Excellent Upgrade Bench.
Upgrades, regardless of the level, will cost 40 essence of the appropriate tier. This increases the attributes of the item, as well as its level, which boosts your gear score.
Repairing Your Items
Repairing items that have low durability will cost you Essence Dust, which is the base form of essence that you can get. You can easily get a lot of this by extracting basic resources in your inventory.
As you upgrade your gear, the cost of repairing will also increase. However, as of writing this, the cost stays the same regardless of the item’s current durability.
Because of this, you should always wait until something is very close to breaking before you repair it. This will save you a lot of Essence Dust in the long run, though this can change in future updates.
Other Purposes of Essence
Essence can also be used in alchemy, as you’ll notice that some potion recipes will call for it as well. If you are really short on Essence Dust, you can also extract higher tier essence to get more.
Some enchantments and infusions also require essence, and their rarities may depend on what tier you used to craft them. We talk more about this feature in our guide on how to make the best gear in Nightingale!
Realm cards also require a lot of Essence Dust, so you’ll definitely be extracting a whole lot of stuff as you progress further into the game. Certain minor realm cards can also boost your essence gains.
Getting a Lot of Essence
In addition to killing enemies and hoarding resources, one reliable method of earning a lot of essence is by completing points of interests all around the map.
The amount you will get upon completing an activity will depend on the realm’s difficulty and what tier it is, so keep that in mind while you’re expanding your portal hub.
Since maps are procedurally generated, you will be doing quite a lot of exploring through the realms. As you become more experienced in the game, you will undoubtedly find this process easier.
If you are still very early into the game, check out our guide on how to make your first realm portal as well. This will be a major part of the gameplay loop, so you may as well learn how it works now too!
Besides that, you can also check our dedicated guide on how to get essence dust fast in Nightingale.
And that is everything you need to know about essence in Nightingale, which is one of the most important resources that you can grind for. Don’t forget to check out our beginner’s guide for Nightingale as you prepare for the early access launch coming very soon!
