If there’s one thing FromSoftware is known for, whether it’s completely accurate or not, is that its games are difficult. Just calling them hard is a bit of a misleading statement, however, since many arguments can be made that the games allow for multiple ways to reduce that difficulty. In Elden Ring, all the usual ways of mitigating difficulty exist that were present in the previous Souls games, plus the added benefit of being in an open world where you are never forced to fight one boss again and again until you beat it before you could make any kind of progress. Leveling up your character, though, is the key to keeping up with the game’s challenges.
Your XP and currency in Elden Ring is called runes this time around. They work exactly as souls did in past games, in which you earn them from slaying enemies — the tougher they are the more you get — and you can use them to level up your character and improve its stats. Each level costs more and more runes, though, and you only get one point to spend across all your stats every time you level up, making each decision more and more important since it will take progressively longer before you hit the next level. You can grind runes from just about anywhere in Elden Ring, but we’ve found the fastest and easiest way to grind up tons of XP if you need to beef up your character in a hurry.
Further reading
- Is Elden Ring cross-platform?
- How to upgrade weapons in Elden Ring
- How to change your character’s armor and appearance in Elden Ring
The fastest way to grind runes
There are plenty of other guides out there that will show you places you can fight enemies quickly and near a Site of Grace that can earn you a good stack of runes in Elden Ring, but no matter how many runes those routes give you, there’s still some risk involved. They also are dependent on how fast you can fight those enemies, and if you’re too low a level you might not even be able to do it, defeating the entire purpose of being a good farming spot.
Our method involves no combat at all, and you only have to have Torrent, your mount, and to travel to a specific Site of Grace. The spot in question is in the top east corner of the map of the Dragonbarrow area. Be warned, this is a high-level zone, so just ride straight to the Site of Grace or you’re likely to be stomped by the random mobs. Just past the Erdtree icon on the map, where the landmass begins to taper off into a peninsula, you can find the Lenne’s Rise Site of Grace. This will be your spot.
Once here, look directly west from the Site to a slope downward under a stone bridge. Mount Torrent and start riding down the hill. A giant metal ball will appear behind you and roll after you, Indiana Jones style. What you want to do is ride along the edge of the cliff and make a hard turn once the ball starts chasing you, causing it to fall off the edge. This ball, as it turns out, is an enemy and will give you just short of 2,000 runes. From there you’re mere seconds away from riding back to the Site of Grace, resting, and repeating the process. Once you get the hang of it, you can earn thousands of runes per minute with basically no risk at all.
Some estimate you could earn as much as 600,000 runes in an hour this way, though we wouldn’t recommend trying since it would be pretty boring after that long and you probably don’t need that many runes.
Rune farming items
If you wanted to further maximize your time farming runes, there are a couple of items you can get that increase how many you earn passively. First is the more common Gold-Pickled Fowled Foot item. This is a consumable, so you will need to spend resources crafting them, making them not ideal for the long term, but do increase how many runes you earn for a set amount of time.
The best item you can get to boost your rune acquisition is the Gold Scarab Talisman, which will increase how many runes you get by a nice 20% so long as you have it equipped. The downside is that this is much harder to obtain than the consumable chicken feet. This item is in the Caelid region, which is decently high-level, in which you’ll find the Smoldering Wall Site of Grace. From this point, you will need to travel toward the minor Erdtree not too far off from there, make your way down, and find a cave hidden in the cliff. Make your way through this cave to the boss, or rather pair of bosses. If you can overcome these two knights, one wielding a spear and the other a sickle, they will drop the Gold Scarab Talisman. Wearing this while using the method above will net you almost 400 more runes per run.
