How to fast travel in Nightingale and make Portals
Here's how to fast travel in Nightingale and construct portals
Want to know how to fast travel in Nightingale? Much of Nightingale centres around the free exploration within the different Fae Realms. With so many combinations of Realm Cards available, it's easy to get lost and separated from your home realm, or 'Respite Realm' as it's otherwise called.
Below, we'll take you through how to fast travel in Nightingale as well as provide information on how to uncover Realm maps, place custom waypoints and craft your own Portals. See below for full details.
In this guide:
- How fast travel in Nightingale
- Other ways to travel quickly around Nightingale
- How to make a Portal in Nightingale
Nightingale | Release Date Trailer | gamescom 2023
How fast travel in Nightingale
One of the most important tools for fast travel in Nightingale is the Estate Cairn. An Estate Cairn is a craftable structure that can be built at any of your settlements with 20 Rocks and 5 Stone Blocks. Once built, interact with your Estate Cairn to set it as a 'Respite' - this will lock the Cairn in as your respawn point upon death and the location of your main settlement. You can only have one Respite per game across all the realms you visit, and this can be fast-travelled to from the main map.
Although you can build bases in whichever realm you like, the Abeyance Realm is the best option for beginners as it provides a somewhat safer starting zone and also contains Sites of Power structures, needed for plot progression.
If you decide to set a different Estate Cairn as your Respite, ensure you have a Portal with access to your old one so you don't loose access to that realm. More on contrusting Portals below.
Other ways to travel quickly around Nightingale
Within each realm there will be a Fae tower that you'll need to climb to the top of and defeat waves of enemies to unlock. Once completed, it will highlight all the points of interest on your map to explore. As such it's usually a good rule of thumb to complete these first, to enable easier exploration across the different realms.
Another important way of getting around in Nightingale are the World Beacons. These are essentially custom waypoints that you can put on your map by right-clicking and selecting from a drop-down menu. These will make it a little easier to navigate the various Fae Realms if you haven't unlocked the Fae Tower and revealed the other points of interest on the map first. You can also use Stamps within the same dropdown menu to mark resources on your map that you wish to come back to.
To make running about in Nightingale a bit easier, another key method of traversal is the Umbrella. This can be crafted or looted and assigned to one of your hotkeys via the inventory menu. As well as providing shelter against heat in the Desert, the toughest starting biome in Nightingale, these Mary Poppins-inspired tools can be used to gently glide from heights. Just make sure you keep an eye on your stamina meter, as you will plummet quickly if it runs out before you've safely landed on the ground (though if you are running out of stamina, you can always put it away and open it up again just before hitting the ground to ensure a smooth and safe landing).
You can also use the right-click feature to dodge, which uses up a small portion of your stamina. This swift movement is useful if you find yourself swarmed by enemies and need to get some distance from them quickly.
How to make a Portal in Nightingale
The main ingredient for making a Portal in Nightingale is the Synchronous Lotus. You can find these in Chests at the top level of Fae Towers. As such, it's a good idea to prioritise these to craft more Portals in your Respite Realm.
To craft an initial Crude Portal, you'll also need the following ingredients:
- Synchronous Lotus x1: Found within chests at the top of Fae Towers
- Lumber x10: Made at a Saw Table with Wood Bundles
- Ingot x7: Made at a Smelter from Ore
- Wire x3: Made at a Brazier from 2 Ingots
Be sure to also focus on completing Sites of Power in the Abeyance Realm. These contain waves of enemies and Fae puzzles that, once completed, will unlock new Major Realm cards. Each Major card will set the destination of the Realm. You can then set the theme by inputting one of three Biome cards: Forest, Swamp or Desert. You can also add a Minor Card, which will apply certain environmental changes to the biome you picked.
Once you unlock new Realm Cards at Sites of Power, you can then create them at an Enchanter's Focus. Once created, put them into a Realm Card Machine next to a Portal.
Don't forget you can also rename Portals by pressing the 'E' key when interacting with them. It's a good idea to name your Portals so you can easily remember which Portal goes to which Realm and save yourself some time checking the machine interface each time.
That rounds off our guide to everything you need to know about fast travel and other traversal methods in Nightingale. For more Nightingale coverage, check out our guide on how to play multiplayer in Nightingale or see our magic wood adventures where the RPS team had a chance to sample Nightingale during a pre-launch playtest. Expect hijinks and chaos ahead.