HoYoverse Confirms Nodusfall Has No Character Gacha System

HoYoverse's latest update on Nodusfall clarifies how characters unlock, but it opens up an even bigger mystery about money.

If you've been keeping tabs on Nodusfall, you finally have something concrete to work with. HoYoverse just released a new FAQ for the game, and it settles one of the loudest arguments the community has had for months. It also includes a lot of smaller details worth walking through, since some clear up confusion and others raise new questions.

Let's start with the big one. You've probably seen people going back and forth over whether Nodusfall would use a character gacha, and HoYoverse has now put that debate to rest for good. You can unlock every character in Nodusfall by playing the game normally.

That's a much firmer statement than what came out of Gamescom, where the wording only said characters wouldn't come from random draws. You already knew there was no traditional character gacha planned, but this is the first time HoYoverse has directly said the entire roster is earned through regular gameplay rather than pulled from banners.

What you still don't know is how that unlocking actually works. Maybe it's tied to story missions, maybe it's boss drops, maybe it's some milestone system. HoYoverse hasn't spelled that part out yet. And that naturally leads to the money question. If nobody's paying to pull characters, and Nodusfall is free to play, something else has to fund the servers and keep the studio running.

According to the FAQ, HoYoverse is still figuring that part out. Character gacha is off the table, but weapon monetization, cosmetics, battle passes, premium currency, paid progression, and even cosmetic gacha are all still on the table. So if you assumed "no gacha" meant no gacha of any kind, that's not quite right. What's confirmed is no character gacha specifically.

A cosmetic-only gacha system is still very much a possibility.

Plenty of live-service titles already lean on that model instead of selling player power. Some recent examples handle monetization almost entirely through cosmetics and battle passes, with barely any pay-to-win elements attached. Others follow a similar formula, where the paid systems are mostly surface-level and the actual gameplay advantages stay out of the shop.

If Nodusfall goes that route, it would line up with a broader shift away from selling raw strength and toward selling looks instead. Back at Gamescom, HoYoverse had already floated cosmetics as one avenue they were considering, though nothing was locked in at the time.

This new FAQ doesn't contradict that; it just confirms the studio is still working through the details rather than having landed on a final structure. So the headline here isn't that Nodusfall has no monetization plan. It's that character gacha specifically has been ruled out, while several other paid systems remain possible.

Multiplayer is another area that got some real clarity. Nodusfall has been marketed hard around co-op, which made it easy to assume you'd need a group actually to experience the game. HoYoverse says that's not the case. Solo players can get through most of the core content on their own.

Party size isn't the only combat detail still being worked out.

That doesn't mean everything is soloable, and HoYoverse didn't claim every boss fight or endgame encounter can be tackled alone. But the direction is clear: single-player progression is meant to stay viable through most of Nodusfall, with co-op there to enhance the experience rather than gatekeep it.

There's also some internal back-and-forth happening over party size. The Gamescom demo was built around four-player squads, but the FAQ notes that the final team cap hasn't been locked in. It's genuinely still being debated, which means it could shift before launch.

Something in the three-to-eight range seems like the realistic window, and sticking with four or bumping it up slightly feels like the most likely outcome, though nothing is official yet. Mechanically, co-op matters because of how combat is built.

Characters in Nodusfall use something called Divine Skills, layered on top of their normal kits, and you can tune them toward offense, defense, or support. That means a single character isn't locked into one job. Different bosses can call for different loadouts, and your team composition can change which Divine Skills make sense to bring into a fight.

Divine Skills give combat real flexibility depending on how you build.

HoYoverse says this is meant to let players approach the same encounter in different ways depending on their setup, giving combat real flexibility instead of one fixed solution per fight. There's also a cooperative ability tied to this, called Divine Drain, where multiple players trigger the effect together mid-battle.

It sounds like a system built to reward coordinated teamwork rather than solo execution. What's still missing is basically everything about how Divine Skills function long-term: how you unlock them, how many you can equip, whether they come in rarity tiers, and whether any of it connects back to monetization. All of that is still unknown.

On difficulty, the visual comparisons to Elden Ring have been everywhere since Nodusfall was revealed, but HoYoverse's own framing paints a different picture. The studio wants Nodusfall to be approachable for players who don't normally play action games, while still keeping a high skill ceiling for people who want to master builds, execution, and team coordination.

That sounds a lot closer to how a certain other Elden Ring spinoff played out, one that had a strong initial reception before interest cooled off over time. That game was tough to master even though it was easy to jump into fully, and Nodusfall sounds like it might follow a similar curve, possibly landing a notch below that difficulty overall while still having room for a deep endgame.

Gameplay comparisons shift once you look past the Soulslike label entirely.

A recent hands-on preview from an outside source actually pushed back on the Soulslike label entirely, describing Nodusfall as feeling closer to a Monster Hunter-style structure. That tracks pretty well once you look at the pieces: contracts, oversized monsters, multi-phase boss fights, team roles, and prep work before heading into a hunt.

Elden Ring might be the easiest visual shorthand people reach for, but it seems to describe Nodusfall's look far more than its gameplay loop. Speaking of the loop, Nodusfall won't just be about repeatedly taking contracts, killing something big, and resetting.

The new FAQ makes it clear there's more going on around those hunts than the Gamescom demo suggested. HoYoverse specifically brought up narrative content, socializing with other players, playing music together, and relaxing in hot springs as part of the broader experience.

Those all sound like lighter, more casual additions, but they confirm Nodusfall has downtime and social features built in alongside the combat loop. The Gamescom footage made the whole thing look like accept contract, fight boss, repeat, but there's clearly more structure surrounding that core gameplay than what was originally shown.

Several major details are still missing well beyond just the platforms.

Platforms remain one of the bigger open questions. Right now, PC is the only confirmed platform for Nodusfall at launch. There's no word yet on PlayStation, XBOX, Nintendo platforms, or mobile, and nothing has been said about cross-play or cross-progression either. HoYoverse says more platform information will come through official channels down the line, so this part is still very much up in the air. Plenty of other pieces are still missing too.

There's no release window yet, no finalized monetization system, no specifics on how character unlocks actually work, no full picture of the endgame, no confirmed player limits for multiplayer, and no word on future playtests or whether certain content might require a group after all. Nodusfall is still early in development, and HoYoverse has been upfront that a lot of these systems are subject to change before launch.

The character gacha question has been answered, and it's a clean answer. What matters now is what fills that gap. Since the entire roster is meant to be earned through gameplay, how HoYoverse structures progression and monetization around that promise will shape how people ultimately feel about Nodusfall once it releases.