I’m not a huge fan of running around in the dark in open world games. If a survival game has a feature that lets me skip or fast-forward through nighttime by sleeping in a bed, I’ll hit the sheets every evening when the sun goes down and wake up the next morning like the night doesn’t even exist.
It’s not just a matter of things being spookier at night—though that’s definitely part of it—it’s mostly because open world games are typically lovely to look at and I don’t see the point of exploring and adventuring if I can’t enjoy the scenery along the way. Spotting landmarks or new places of interest, solving environmental puzzles, finding secret locations, and completing quests is always going to be easier in the bright light of day.
Enshrouded gets that, so just like in a lot of survival games, when the sun sets and you climb into bed, it’ll speed through the dark hours at 60X normal speed. A few seconds later, the sky begins to brighten as the sun starts rising again. Perfect.
But I noticed something interesting when I was playing co-op with Andy. It was getting dark (and Enshrouded’s nights are extremely dark) so I suggested we fast-travel back to base to speed up the night. I jumped into my cot, expecting that Andy would have to jump in his bed for time to begin accelerating. But with just one of us in bed, time started passing at 30X speed. Only when Andy got into his bed did it increase to the full 60X.
That’s really cool. Unlike a survival game like Valheim that requires every player to be in their beds simultaneously to skip the night, Enshrouded only needs a single player to hit the hay for nighttime to speed up. And how much it speeds up depends on the total number of players and how many are in bed at the same time. For instance, if four players are present in the world, and one gets into bed, nighttime will pass at a rate of 15X speed. For two sleepers, 30X, three, 45X, and four will bring it full speed to 60X.
(Image credit: Keen Games)
That’s exceptionally neat, and it can come in handy quite a bit, especially if your gang of adventurers aren’t always grouped up. If a bunch of you are exploring or raiding or completing a quest in some far flung part of the map, but one person is back at base doing some crafting or farming or building, they can help out the rest of the team when night falls. Just hop into bed and the group out in the world can watch night speed by, the moon sink and the sun rise, and then they can get back to work with the aid of daylight.
Even if you are all out romping around together, you can send a single person back to base via fast-travel to speed through a murky night instead of everyone having to completely stop what they’re doing to rest. It’s a thoughtful feature and yet another way Enshrouded, when it comes to survival, is pretty darn forgiving.
