A $50,000 bounty is live. Three-player squads are racing to clear Forsaken Hollows, the new biome added to Elden Ring Nightreign, before a Friday deadline set by energy drink sponsor Voltframe.
The clock started Tuesday at 9 a.m. PT, when the biome went live in Nightreign's latest content drop. Voltframe's bounty requires a full trio clear, all three players alive at extraction, verified by unedited VOD.
The Field
Fourteen squads registered within the first six hours. Four have emerged as the pace-setters:
- Hollow Kin (streamers Ashvane, Dez, Portmire): 2:41:12, disqualified for a mid-run disconnect, currently appealing.
- Team Cindergate: 3:02:44, the first verified clean clear as of Wednesday night.
- Nightbind Trio: 2:58:07, unverified, VOD still under review by Voltframe's adjudication panel.
- The Last Tarnished (a three-streamer squad out of the Emberreach content house): 3:11:20, verified Thursday morning.
Team Cindergate's time currently sits atop the leaderboard. Their run drew 187,000 concurrent viewers at its peak, according to figures shared by their stream platform's analytics dashboard, making it the highest-watched Nightreign clear attempt since the biome's announcement.
Why Forsaken Hollows Is Brutal
The biome's central gimmick is a rotating fog wall that cuts off retreat paths every 90 seconds, forcing squads to commit to fights they can't back out of. Two of its three boss encounters share aggro pools, meaning pulling one can wake the other mid-fight.
"We wiped four times just learning the fog timer. Once you know it, the run's a different game entirely." - a support player on Team Cindergate
That knowledge gap is why early leaderboard times cluster so tightly. Squads that ran the biome blind on day one are now re-running with route notes shared from Discord servers dedicated to the bounty.
The Disqualification Dispute
Hollow Kin's appeal centers on a disconnect Ashvane says was server-side, not client-side, meaning the run should stand. Voltframe's rules require an unbroken VOD from all three players, and Ashvane's feed cut for 40 seconds during the second boss phase.
"The reconnect timer shows I was back in four seconds under Voltframe's own grace window. This is a technicality dispute, not a legitimacy one." - Ashvane, Hollow Kin squad lead
Voltframe's panel says it will rule on the appeal by Thursday night, ahead of Friday's noon cutoff.
What's at Stake Beyond the Prize
The $50,000 bounty splits three ways among the winning trio, but sponsors are watching the broader numbers. Nightreign's Forsaken Hollows content drop has pushed the game back into the top ten most-watched titles on its streaming platform for the first time since launch month, per figures circulating among the participating creators' management teams.
Bandai Namco has not commented on the bounty itself, which is run independently by Voltframe, but the publisher's own community channels have been reposting clear attempts throughout the week.
Two squads, including a wildcard trio streaming out of a Seoul-based content house, entered late Wednesday and have yet to log a time. With under 48 hours left on the clock, the leaderboard is expected to shift again before Friday's deadline.
Follow the original reporting as this develops.