Need More Runes? Elden Ring Rune Farming Tips

I tend to use these spots if I’m just shy of levelling up, or need to buy something. Of course, you can use them to grind yourself up to a level so high that you can destroy everything with ease. I personally think that ruins the fun of the game, but if that’s how you wanna go about it, there’s no judgement here. Anyway, Elden Ring has too many places to count for rune farming, so I’m going to share a couple that will help no matter how far through the game you are. The first spot is accessible as soon as you exit the Stranded Graveyard and hit the First Step Site of Grace: a Troll-filled cliff top in Stormhill.

Elden Ring Rune Farming in Stormhill

A stormy cliff with a bunch of Trolls. A perfect early farming spot.

First, you want to get to the Warmaster’s Shack. Follow the directions where the Sites of Grace point until you reach Stormhill Shack then go the exact opposite direction the Grace is telling you.

I would suggest getting your steed, Torrent, to make things quicker. Activate three Sites of Grace then rest at any of them and you’ll get a cutscene with Melina where she gives you a ring that summons Torrent. This should happen naturally as you play so you don’t really have to think too much about it.
Head east for a short while and you’ll reach Warmaster’s Shack, shown below.

You’ll find Knight Bernahl in the Warmaster’s Shack. He sells you Ashes of War which you can equip to your weapons. Some good ones to get from him are Parry, Quickstep and No Skill. If you need help with Ashes of War, we have a guide for that.

Troll Hunting

Go behind the Shack then head southeast until you get to a cliff with five big trolls wandering around. You would’ve encountered one of these guys already if you followed the directions. They may seem intimidating, but they’re pretty easy to kill. Their attacks are slow and well telegraphed so it’s easy to dodge them. The strategy is to wait for them to attack, dodge through the attack, and then hit them with a charged heavy attack. They don’t have great poise so it only takes a few charged attacks for them to fall down. You can hit them with a critical attack if you like but I find you end up doing more damage by just wailing on them. Sometimes they’ll get in a quick stomp, but it doesn’t do much damage so you can recover from it.

Each troll gives you a thousand runes. By using this farming spot, I was able to earn five thousand runes in under three minutes. Of all of the early spots Elden Ring has for rune farming, I found this to be the most consistent and with the best yield. With only a few hunts, you’ll have enough runes to level up to a point where you can take on Stormveil Castle and progress to the best farming location in the game.

Elden Ring Rune Farming in Mohgwyn Palace

The second farming spot offers by far the most plentiful farming I’ve ever encountered in a Souls game. From starting a new game, I was able to get to this area in under four hours. Now that I’m there, I’ll never have to worry about runes again. The next farming spot is Mohgwyn Palace, Palace Approach Ledge-Road.

Palace Approach Ledge-Road Site of Grace.

White Mask Varré

There are two ways to reach Mohgwyn Palace but one of them is way late in the game so I’m going to go with the quicker route which has you going through White Mask Varré’s questline. Varré is the first person you talk to once you leave the Stranded Graveyard. He introduces you to The Lands Between, and then sends you on your way. Later on, he teaches you about multiplayer, particularly how to invade other players’ games.

White Mask Varré standing by the First Step Site of Grace.

Stormveil Castle

Keep following the Sites of Grace to Stormveil Castle, where you’ll have to fight two bosses: Margit, the Fell Omen at the beginning, then Godrick the Grafted at the end. There’s a lot more you can do in Stormveil castle, but I’ll leave that to you. Of the two bosses, Margit is the more difficult.

Once you’ve defeated Margit, Melina will invite you to the Roundtable Hold, which is where you can upgrade your weapons, change your appearance and buy spells and stuff. After you’ve defeated Godrick, you have to go back to the Roundtable Hold. Go through the big doors at the back to visit the two fingers and speak to Enia. Once you do that, Varré will move from The First Step to a place called Rose Church.

Once you’re past Stormveil Castle, you’ll be in the land of Liurnia which is a big watery swamp place. Your destination is Rose Church which is located here.

Rose Church on the map.

Varré will give you some Festering Bloody Fingers which can be used to invade other players’ worlds. Three worlds need to be invaded to progress the quest. You don’t have to defeat the other players, or even fight them. It will still count if you invade then use the Finger Severer item to leave. This almost feels intentional, as if Elden Ring is telling you that if you want the best rune farming, you first have to be a villain to other players. It’s fine, most people enjoy the challenge.

Time to Defile a Corpse

Speak to Varré after your three invades and he will give you the Lord of Blood’s Favor which needs to be coated in maiden’s blood. There are three maidens whose blood you can use.

Lord of Blood’s Favor after coating it in Maiden blood.

Option 1: Irina

The fastest would most likely be Irina. She’s located southeast of The First Step in the Weeping Peninsula by the Bridge of Sacrifice, shown here.

You will have to kill her which will affect her questline so bear that in mind.

Option 2: Chapel of Anticipation

The next fastest route is the most difficult because you have to beat a boss. If you’re feeling confident, go to The Four Belfries on a cliff north of Rose Church.

Go to the fourth belfry at the highest part of the hill and open the chest for an Infused Stonekey. This unlocks any of teleporting gates at the other three belfries. Go the second belfry, it’ll be marked with a message saying Precipice of Anticipation.

Unlock it to find yourself back in the area you were in when you first started the game. If you got wrecked by the Grafted Scion before, now you can get some revenge.

Once he’s dead, go past the bridge to a church where you will find a dead maiden lying next to a message.

Chapel of Anticipation Maiden. If you have the Lord of Blood’s Favor, there will be a prompt to use it on her.

Option 3: Church of Inhibition (The Better Option in My Opinion)

There’s one other maiden which is the furthest away but is easiest to get to without any downsides. You have to go to the Church of Inhibition which is located here.

Church of Inhibition map location.

The intended way to get there is to go all the way around Liurnia, or through Raya Lucaria, but I found an unintended way of getting there. Go around the east edge of Liurnia until you get to a Minor Erdtree, pictured here.

This is where you find the Minor Erdtree with a climbable rock nearby.

Find this rock.

This rock is just slightly north of the Minor Erdtree. You can see the Erdtree to the left.

Jump around its dodgy geometry with Torrent, then up on the adjacent hill.

I made a video on my Twitter if you need a better aid.

The proper way to play open world games …#PS5Share, #ELDENRING pic.twitter.com/rUwWxnEYej

— Theo Cookson (@TheoCookson) March 1, 2022

You’ll find yourself next to Frenzied Flame Village and a big flaming eye. Don’t stare at it too long or you’ll go insane.

It does look cool though.

From here, you can run through the Frenzied Flame Village all the way up to the Church of Inhibition where the maiden will be sitting there dead by the Site of Grace. There is an invading boss here called Festering Fingerprint Vyke but it’s not mandatory to kill him. Fight him if you want.

Church of Inhibition Maiden. Use the Lord of Blood’s Favor on her.

Give the bloody Lord of Blood’s Favor to Varré then he’ll tear one of your fingers off and give you the Bloody Finger. It’s all good, it’ll grow back … probably. Speak to him again and he’ll give you the Pureblood Knight’s Medal which you can use to teleport yourself to Mohgwyn Palace.

Use this to teleport to Mohgwyn Palace.

The Land of Blood

After teleporting, you’ll find yourself in front of some steps which lead up to a boss – Mohg, Lord of Blood – at the top of the cliff. First, you need to find a map which is luckily close by. Go through the arches right in front of you. You’ll find a corpse on the platform with the map.

What you want to do now is turn around, jump on Torrent and run away from the arches, You want to get to the Palace Approach Ledge-Road Site of Grace, pictured below.

Depending on how far through the game you are, you may be quite under-levelled for this area. If you end up dying, it’s alright, you can use the Pureblood Knight’s Medal as much as you want. You may even want to run around and collect stuff, Mohgwyn Palace has some high-level items.

Slaughtering Frogmen

Kicking an Abinauric off a cliff.

As you’re travelling up the hill towards the Palace Approach Ledge-Road Site of Grace, you’ll see the enemies that will be giving you all of your runes. They’re called Albinaurics and they’re kind of dumpy-looking frog-like dudes. Most of them are sitting around looking depressed but you will have to watch out for the blood variants. They attack by spouting a bunch of spikes from their skin and cartwheeling after you.

A Blood Albinauric spike-rolling me.

If you stick close to the cliffs, you can get lucky sometimes and they’ll roll straight off. Other than that, just try to get an idea of their attack patterns and you’ll be fine. They have really bad poise, so they’ll stagger easily. For the normal ones, all you have to do is charge attack them so they stagger then critical hit them, and repeat until they’re dead. They’ll only attack you if you attack them, so try not to get too many of them fighting you at once.

These guys give over two thousand runes a piece and they’re mostly docile, making them perfect for rune farming.

There are sixteen Albinaurics in total (four of which are the blood variants) and they each give you over two thousand runes (double in new game plus). At low stats, it would take me around five minutes per run, so that’s 32k runes in five minutes. It’s actually closer to 35k. For reference, Godrick only gives you 20k. I cannot think of a spot in Elden Ring more packed with runes, perfect for farming.

Rune Acquisition Items

Elden Ring does provide a couple of items you can use to raise the drop rate of the runes, heightening your farming by up to 50%.

The Golden Scarab

There’s a talisman called Golden Scarab which can be found in the Abandoned Cave in Caelid. The entrance is on the side of a cliff; it’s only accessible by coming at it from the west and crossing a tree.

Once you beat the two Cleanrot Knights at the end of the cave, they’ll drop the Golden Scarab which gives you 20% more runes.

The Golden Scarab raises your rune acquisition by 20%.

Gold-Pickled Fowl Foot

There’s also a consumable item called Gold-Pickled Fowl Foot which raises your rune acquisition by 30% for three minutes at a time. You can craft this item if you have the Missionary Cookbook (2) which you can buy from the recurring Dark Souls NPC, Patches.

Patches is first located in the Murkwater Cave in Limgrave.

This is where you find and fight Patches. Make sure you don’t kill him.

You have to beat him down to a third of his health and then chose to ‘forgive and forget’. Afterwards, he’ll be by the Scenic Isle Site of Grace in Liurnia, and you can buy the cookbook from him there.

You can farm for Gold-Pickled Fowl Feet if you like, but I don’t think the added 30% acquisition rate is worth the time when it could be spent rune farming.

Elden Ring Rune Farming in New Game Plus

Once you get into new game plus, rune farming gets insane. If you take the remembrance that you get from the final boss to Enia, you can trade it for the Sacred Relic Sword which has a unique skill called Wave of Gold. An upgraded Sacred Relic Sword can kill all of the Albinaurics in a few seconds. In new game plus, you can be farming 450k runes per minute.

A fully upgraded Sacred Relic Sword.

The total amount of runes needed to get to the highest level is 1,692,558,415. Using the Mohgwyn Palace farming spot, it would take you around sixty-three hours to farm that many runes. I don’t know why you would want to do that, but it’s at least interesting.

Not only does the Wave of Gold skill kill all of the Albinaurics in a single hit, it also looks fantastic.

Summary

If you’re at the very start, kill Trolls on a cliff southeast of Warmasters Shack for 5k runes per three minutes. After beating Godrick, you can go to Mohgwyn Palace and kill Albinaurics for around 35k runes per five minutes (more if you have the Golden Scarab).