Elden Ring Rune farming is both the key to getting around difficult bosses and addressing a character build you regret. There’s no shortage of enemies in the Lands Between, but some clusters offer a way to level up fast with the least amount of traveling or danger to yourself. Before you can take advantage of the best method, you need to level up a little bit, but once you’re ready, you can get tens of thousands of Runes in 15 minutes.
You May Also Like:
- Elden Ring Ancient Dragon Lansseax Guide – Locations & Strategy
- Elden Ring Gold Scarab Location Guide – Get the Rune Boosting Talisman
- Elden Ring Patches Guide – Where to Find Patches in Elden Ring
Elden Ring Rune Farming in Limgrave
Limgrave has a few good Rune farming spots suitable for new Tarnished, though the best one is the path to Stormveil Castle. Once you arrive at Stormhill, you run a gauntlet of enemies until reaching the tunnel that leads to the Margit fight. You’re at a disadvantage the first time through. It’s literally an uphill battle, with enemies in all the good hiding places and a powerful ballista. Once you unlock the tunnel Site of Grace, you can approach them from behind, eliminating the ballista before it can target you and getting roughly 60 Runes from each Soldier (the fast ones) and Godrick Soldiers (the ones in green and red).
Some players recommend attacking the Trolls around Stormhill — southeast of the Warmaster’s Shack — or east of Stormgate. Each gives you 1,000 Runes, but they can take quite a few hits if you don’t know their weakness. Namely: they stagger easily. The trick is to get behind their ankles and wind up a charged attack (or a jumping heavy attack if you need to be quick). Even at low levels, just a few fully charged hits will do. This quickly drops the giants to their knees. When that happens, make sure you run around to face their… face. A glowing, orange marker will appear indicating you can land a critical hit. This does massive additional damage. If you can’t reach the head in time, of course, you can always just wail on them normally while they’re down.
Once you’ve got a good 10 or so levels under your belt – and at least two weapon upgrades – you can handle Elden Ring’s best Rune farming spot in Caelid: south of the Bestial Sanctum.
Elden Ring Caelid Rune Farming
Caelid is a dangerous region, but you don’t have to travel through it to reach the Sanctum. Find the Third Church of Marika in Limgrave, north of the Waypoint Ruins and where you found the Flask of Wondrous Physick. Exit the church to the north, enter the swampy pond, and move towards the northeastern corner of it. You should notice a wisp of glowing blue air. Follow it until you see a teleporter hidden in the bushes.
This takes you to Caelid right outside the door of the Bestial Sanctum. There’s a giant bird boss behind you, which will kill you almost instantly if you engage it. Don’t. Go inside the Sanctum and activate the Site of Grace in case of accidents. Get on Torrent, and ride to the south around the bird towards the bridge.
Activate the Site of Grace there and turn around to face north. If you’re a Confessor, use the Assassin’s Approach skill to give yourself an extra stealth boost. Crouch and slowly walk north among the rot debris, clicking the right stick as you go to lock onto enemies before you get too close. Once you’ve spotted a target, make sure you’re out of their line of sight. Approach from behind and use a backstab.
The backstab attack from a +3 weapon should reduce their health almost to zero. Lock onto the target again, and immediately continue attacking for as long as your stamina allows. Retreat immediately if you were unable to defeat them, as one or two hits are enough to kill you at this point, then use a ranged attack or another sneaky approach to finish them off. You’ll get 1,000 Runes for each of these enemies, and there are about six or seven in the immediate area.
The Caelid Rune Dragon Trick
This method technically isn’t farming since you can only do it once. However, it’s an early way to get almost 100,000 Runes, helping tweak your character build before you gain access to respeccing. For this, you need a weapon that causes Bleed. Some good choices are:
- A club
- The Hookclaws from Stormveil Castle
- The Reduvia Dagger from Bloody Finger Nerijus
The Bloodhound Fang from the Forlorn Evergaol boss also works, though the attack animations are slower.
With weapon in hand, travel back to the Site of Grace near the bridge, south of the Bestial Santum. Get on Torrent and gallop south across the bridge, ignoring Dragon Greyll, and continuing on until you reach the Minor Erdtree. Go left around the tree, jump up the Spiritwind, and make your way towards the fortress Site of Grace.
Face away from the Grace, and you will see a massive dragon. Ride up to its left side and start attacking with your Bleed weapon. It’ll roar and summon several other small dragons, though they can’t attack you. Keep attacking until it dies, and you’ll get 80,000 Runes and five Dragon Hearts for the Dragon Communion altars.
The War-Dead Catacombs Trick (Post-Radahn Fight)
This one is slightly strange. It requires you to first beat General Radahn — an extremely tough fight that opens up late in Elden Ring. As such, you may already be strong enough to take on many of the game’s challenges. This is mostly for endgame farming when you have very little of the game left to play.
After Radahn is dead, make sure to explore the beach where the battle took place. There’s a single side dungeon in the whole area. This is known as the War-Dead Catacombs. The enemies inside are laughably strong. However, they also focus on fighting each other more than you. The weakest drops 1400 Runes while the stronger enemies drop over 2000 (with the Gold Scarab equipped). You can theoretically stand back and watch them duke it out until they off each other. Leaving you with the Runes, of course. The best part? The foes in the first room respawn infinitely. You can just keep fighting (or watching them fight) practically forever.
That could take a while, though. The soldiers have incredibly large health bars and don’t damage each other very much. They also bite back very hard and can easily one-hit-kill players with 20 Vigor or less. What’s worse is that the skirmish almost always drops the enemies into the Scarlet Rot on the floor below. You could go in to fight them there, but we don’t recommend it. A stray shot and the poison goop will kill you quick.
Instead, you can hang back and fry them from above. Whether that’s with sorcery, incantations, ranged weapons, etc. The Flame of Frenzy found in the Ailing Village (near the center of the Weeping Peninsula) is one good option.
What you want is for a single enemy to drop. This will cause a new foe to spawn back up on the starting platform, alone, giving you a chance to backstab or land a charged hit. With this method you can more reliably farm solo enemies over and over again as they respawn. It takes some time and preparation, but the large number of Runes can make it worth it.
Best of luck!
