Elden Ring Nightreign has an ultra-rare item with a 0.035% chance to drop and players are convinced it's the key to the game's biggest secret

Dark Souls players spent months trying to figure out if the pendant that's in your inventory when you start the game unlocked something secret. Even though it's literally labeled "useless," people were convinced there had to be more to it. It turned out to be just a joke, but you can't blame anyone for being curious, especially when FromSoftware is known for hiding all kinds of stuff in its games.

Now that word has gotten out that Elden Ring Nightreign has a super rare drop that opens a secret door, I'm firmly in the camp that believes we haven't completely solved it yet.

It's called the Cord End and it has a ludicrously low chance to drop in one of the churches that randomly appear on the map. I have over 60 hours in the game and have never seen one, nor have I been in a group with someone who has seen one. According to YouTuber Hawkshaw, it has a 0.035% chance to drop (that's about 7 times in every 20,000 attempts), which is so rare that some people's theories might be impossible to test without modding the game.

So far as we know, you can only do one thing with it: Underneath the castle in the middle of Nightreign's map is a door to a cave that won't open unless you have the Cord End in your inventory. Inside are three Sacrificial Twig items that let you keep your runes when you die—which might just be a nod to the young girls mentioned in the Cord End's description. What doesn't line up is how rare the item is for what is a pretty middling reward you can find elsewhere during a run.

Naturally, that has some players speculating it's step one of a larger puzzle that may involve using the item somewhere else in the game. The only clue we have to go on is the item description's mention of the "cutting-gifted tribe" that is also mentioned in the Roundtable Hold's crypts. There are two messages down there that say, "Bestow branches to those who wander and roam," leading some to think you need to take the Sacrificial Twigs somewhere specific during a run. Others believe there's a way to use the Cord End in the final area of the game. The problem is that the item is too rare for anyone to figure this out very quickly, so this is where the mystery has stalled out.

Dataminers, like YouTuber Zullie the Witch, are already out there digging through Nightreign's files. Part of me suspects we would've heard from one of them if there was stuff in there that would point to a bigger secret than a cave with three semi-useful items. The Cord End could very well be Nightreign's pendant, but I can see why it's so fun to imagine there's something nobody has figured out yet and that we're one lucky run away from the prize.