Nightborne

Details

Playable RaceHorde

Secluded in Suramar for 10,000 years, the nightborne developed unrivaled mastery of the arcane arts.

PlayableYes

Starting level10

FactionHorde

Model keyNightborne

Read from ChrRaces in the current retail client build. The name forms, starting level and model key are the client's own fields; the portraits and body model are the client's own art; the racials come from the client's "Racial" skill line.

Racial Abilities (6)

Each one is a real spell in the current build. The client groups them as Racial - Nightborne, where every rank and its tooltip lives.

What Each Racial Does

Ancient History
Inscription skill increased by 5.
Arcane Pulse
Deals Arcane damage to nearby enemies and reduces their movement speed by 80%. Lasts 8 sec.
Arcane Resistance
Reduces Arcane damage taken by 1%.
Cantrips
Conjure up an Eldritch Grimoire, allowing you mail access for 90 sec.
Magical Affinity
Increases magical damage dealt by 1%.

5 of the 6 racial abilities the client teaches this race carry tooltip text in the current build. The rest are passive hooks with no description of their own.

In the Character Creator

The client's own ChrRaces row names Mage as this race's default class, which is the specialization the character creator lands on before you touch anything.
Azeroth's bestiary files Nightborne under the Humanoid creature type, the same classification the game uses on every NPC that shares the body.

Appearance Options

The character creator ships 21 distinct appearance options for Nightborne, 19 on Body Type 1 and 19 on Body Type 2, worth 285 individual settings between them.
Body Type 1 alone carries 145 of those settings.
Body Type 2 alone carries 140 of those settings.
Eye Color is the widest single slider at 26 settings.
Body Type 1 is the only one with Chin Decoration and Mustache.
Body Type 2 is the only one with Necklace and Hair Decoration.
Both bodies share Face, Skin Color, Hair Style, Hair Color, Earrings, Body Tattoo, Eye Color, Eyes, Eyebrows, Face Jewelry, Jaw Jewelry and Face Tattoo.

Face12
Skin Color11
Hair Style16
Hair Color17
Earrings7
Body Tattoo7
Eye Color26
Eyes2
Eyebrows3
Face Jewelry4
Chin Decoration8
Jaw Jewelry5
Mustache4
Face Tattoo9
Jewelry Color3
Headdress2
Luminous Hands2
Eyesight4

Counted from the client's own ChrCustomizationOption and ChrCustomizationChoice records for this race's models. Blizzard labels the two records Body Type 1 and Body Type 2 in the creator itself.

Unlocking Nightborne

Nightborne is one of the client's allied races, which means the race is earned on an existing account rather than offered at the start.
The achievement that opens it is Allied Races: Nightborne: Earn the allegiance of the Nightborne elves and welcome them into the Horde. It is worth 10 achievement points.
Blizzard's own recruitment line reads: Then visit the Orgrimmar Embassy to recruit this Allied Race.

Who Is Playing Nightborne

Our rated PvP crawl currently holds 1,617 Nightborne characters, the 23rd largest of the 26 races it has seen.
The classes they play most are Mage (535, 33%), Priest (364, 23%), Warlock (288, 18%), Death Knight (113, 7%) and Hunter (107, 7%).
8 different classes appear on Nightborne characters in that sample.
The body split across those characters is 60% female and 40% male.
In the Mythic Plus crawl, 96 ranked runs were set by Nightborne characters, the deepest key among them a plus 13 and the best Mythic Plus rating 2,874.

These are counts from our own rated PvP and Mythic Plus crawls, last refreshed 2026-09-20. They say who is playing the race right now. They are not the character creator's list of allowed classes: the client keeps that in CharBaseInfo, which this datamine does not carry, so a class missing from the list above only means nobody in the sample is playing it.