Skip to main content

Elden Ring: How to find and use Rune Arcs

Like everything else developed by FromSoftware, Elden Ring is painfully difficult. It’ll take you hundreds of hours to discover everything it has to offer, and unless you’re a grizzled veteran, you’ll likely hit the “Game Over” screen thousands of times before your journey in the Lands Between comes to an end.

One way to help even the odds is by using Rune Arcs — a consumable item that lets you access Great Runes. You’ll first need to unlock Great Runes to start properly using Rune Arcs, but once that’s taken care of, you’ll notice a big boost in your abilities.

Recommended Videos

That all might sound a bit confusing, but the process by which Rune Arcs works is surprisingly simple. Best of all, you can find them in a variety of locations, making it easy to fill your inventory and unlock the abilities of your preferred Great Rune.

If you’re looking to survive the unforgiving Lands Between, here’s a look at how to find and use Rune Arcs in Elden Ring.

What are Rune Arcs in Elden Ring

The item menu in Elden Ring displays the description for Rune Arcs.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Even if you’ve just started playing Elden Ring, you’ve probably found a handful of these mysterious items and are confused as to what they do. Rune Arcs in Elden Ring allow you to utilize your equipped Great Rune. If you don’t have one equipped (or haven’t unlocked one yet), cracking a Rune Arc increases your HP slightly.

For you Dark Souls 3 fans, Rune Arcs are similar to Embers. They also work like Humanity from the first Dark Souls. For the remainder of this article, we’ll refer to cracking a Rune Arc as being “runed” and not having one cracked as being “unruned.”

An Elden Ring player sits on their horse as undead creatures attack them.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

In the image above, you can see what your HP, FP, and Stamina meters look like when you’re runed. When you crack a Rune Arc in Elden Ring, you’ll see the Great Rune icon glowing next to your HP. When unruned, that icon appears dull. You’ll lose your Great Rune ability if you die, requiring you to use another Rune Arc to get it back. In a game like Elden Ring, when death is a common occurrence, you shouldn’t burn through Rune Arcs until you’re sitting on a tall pile of them.

Here’s a quick Rune Arc tip to keep in mind: In Dark Souls 3, you could restore your HP by cracking an Ember, which was helpful during boss fights if you ran out of Estus. Unfortunately, that little trick doesn’t work in Elden Ring. You’ll get the max HP boost, but you won’t recover any HP.

How to use Rune Arcs in Elden Ring

To use Rune Arcs in Elden Ring, open up your inventory and find them among your flasks under the tools tab. Select and use a Rune Arc to gain the effect of your Great Rune. For example, we have Morgott’s Great Rune equipped, which boosts our overall HP when runed. Our unruned health (at 40 Vigor) is 1,450. When we crack a Rune Arc, our max HP increases to 1,812, about a 25% increase.

You can also add Rune Arcs to your equipment bar, or hotkey them to your pouch. Since they don’t offer any on-the-fly benefits, like a full heal, there’s no reason why you’ll ever need them at a moment’s notice.

We recommended using Rune Arcs right before boss fights, but only after you’ve tried a handful of times. You wouldn’t want to waste one when you’re still learning the boss’s moves. Otherwise, Rune Arcs can help you trudge through molten lava, like in the Gelmir Hero’s Grave near Volcano Manor.

Where to find Rune Arcs in Elden Ring

An Elden Ring player kills a host of fingers.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

You can find Rune Arcs through general exploration. They’ll be marked as blue-tinted item pickups, the ones indicating special items. You can also get Rune Arcs in Elden Ring by playing multiplayer. You’ll get a Rune Arc for helping another player defeat a boss in their world or fend off invaders. You can also get Rune Arcs for invading other worlds and killing the Host of Fingers.

The Twin Maiden Husks in Roundtable Hold have five for sale. However, they cost 4,000 runes each. Your runes are better spent elsewhere.

If you’re looking to grind Rune Arcs in Elden Ring by invading other worlds (but ran out of Festering Bloody Fingers), you have some options. You can complete White-Faced Varre’s questline to obtain the reusable Bloody Finger. Alternatively, head to Volcano Manor and complete the first invasion quest to get the Recusant Finger.

Mike Colucci
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Michael Colucci is a lifelong video game fan based out of the greater Boston area. He's the one insistent on searching every…
All Smite 2 relics and when to pick them
Key art for SMITE 2.

A lot has changed between Smite and Smite 2, but many of the original game's Relics are back in some form or another in the spruced-up sequel. These active items provide you with extremely useful abilities on long cooldowns — and when used at just the right time, they can turn the tide of an entire match. Here are all of the Relics currently available in Smite 2 alongside some use cases to give you an idea of what types of situations they might be most helpful.
Purification Beads
Purification Beads makes you CC immune for 2 seconds.

Cooldown: 150 seconds

Read more
Smite 2 roles, explained
Key art for SMITE 2.

Smite 2 sticks to most of what made the first Smite so successful, including all of the basic gameplay mechanics and design philosophies the popular MOBA is best known for. However, this sequel has changed the way roles work, doing away with the original's class-based design in favor of a loose and flexible system that allows you to use any god in any role if you build and play them correctly. While there are still gods best suited for certain roles, the creativity this extra freedom allows can be very rewarding for new and returning players alike. Here's what you need to know about each role in Smite 2.
Solo
The Solo roster is comprised of characters designed for, well, the Solo lane. Because this is a 1v1 lane, your goal is to clear waves more quickly while also dealing as much damage to your opponent as possible. Because you need to equally be able to survive their incoming attacks, you'll generally want to focus on a Bruiser-style build, which consists of both offensive and defensive items. Counterbuilding is more important here than in nearly any other role, as you'll spend quite a lot of time engaged in a battle of attrition seeing who can force the other person out of the lane to score a few hits on a tower. Later in the game, you'll become a frontliner alongside the Support to help control the flow of teamfights.
Recommended god for newbies:
Chaac offers low cooldowns, solid lane clear, and a powerful area-of-effect ult that is easy to land and silences foes momentarily. He also has sustainability via an ability that self-heals.
Jungle
The Jungle role is among the hardest to master in Smite 2, as you'll spend your time rotating around the map and learning when you need to rush to the aid of your teammates. This is a job for those who enjoy playing as an assassin of sorts by ganking enemy players from each of the three lanes. However, it's not as easy as just being a killing machine because you'll also need to quickly and consistently farm jungle camps throughout the map while you plan to make those moves on out-of-position foes. If you aren't clearing camps (or have them stolen by the enemy Jungler), you'll fall behind in level and make things more difficult on your team. It can take quite some time to learn how to play Jungle effectively, but when you do, you can turn the tides of a match in mere moments.
Recommended god for newbies:
Thor offers an easy-to-hit stun and straightforward kit designed to deal huge damage. Additionally, his ultimate ability allows him to cover a lot of ground to catch unsuspecting opponents.
Middle
The Middle role is among the most important in a match of Conquest because the Middle lane is a central convergence spot for large team pushes. Your goal here is to clear your lane very quickly and keep your opponent pushed back to their tower as much as possible so that your team can use your lane as a way to cross back and forth to other lanes without much fear of repercussions. Winning the Middle lane can often be what leads your group to victory, as it will funnel both teams to the center of the map to engage in a large-scale battle that, if your team plays well, could result in a deicide (team wipe) for your foes. In the late-game, this is likely to give you a chance to take down their titan and wrap up the match.
Recommended god for newbies:
Kukulkan has excellent lane clearing capabilities, an attack that slows foes hit, and a very hard-hitting ultimate ability. His dash can also let him get in and out of engagements quickly.
Support
The Support role is exactly what it sounds like: supporting your team and setting them up for success. You'll begin matches in the Duo lane with your Carry, but as the match progresses and they're clearing the lane alone, you'll need to move around the map to assist others, too. Support gods tend to have abilities that lock enemies down or displace them so that your team can dish out massive damage. Depending on the god, though, you may also need to help via healing or bolstering your team with stat-boosting abilities. Your job as a Support isn't to earn the largest damage numbers at the end of a match, but you'll be every bit as important to your team's success as those who do.
Recommended god for newbies:
Khepri provides a lot of control opportunities via a stun and a grab, both of which are fairly easy to land. Plus, his ultimate ability can be used to save himself or another player from death.
Carry
The Carry role is designed to provide your team with a deadly damage dealer that can quite literally carry the team to victory in the late-game. Your goal is to begin in Duo lane with a Support and work diligently at scoring a few early kills while farming your lane. In most cases, you won't be majorly powerful in that early part of the match, but your damage will begin to ramp up rapidly after you've built 3-4 items, allowing you to spring into action in later teamfights and rapidly destroy your opponents. All of this damage will help you take down objectives quickly as well, making you a vital component of your team's strategy beginning around the 15-20 minute mark and beyond as they work hand-in-hand with you to shred through anything in your path.
Recommended god for newbies:
Cupid can provide support for himself and others via healing, has a dash for quick escapes, and can dish out solid auto-attack damage. His wide area-of-effect ultimate ability can even slow enemies down for big damage opportunities.

Read more
PS5 overheating: common problems and how to fix
Playstation 5 with controller in the foreground,

The PS5 overheating problem has once again become a hot topic amid the release of CPU-hungry games like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Gamers have been here before. Four years ago, when Cyberpunk 2077 and Ghosts of Tsushima released, comment threads were full of cynical gamers questioning what next-gen truly means after their consoles had randomly shut down mid-gameplay. Plenty of the best PS5 games have been met with similar feedback over the years.

Fortunately, overheating doesn’t rank among the most common problems with the PS5, but gamers should know what to do to prevent it, especially with such graphically impressive upcoming PS5 games slated for next year and beyond. First, though, you need a proper diagnosis.
How to tell if your PS5 is overheating

Read more