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The Best Ways to Farm Runes in Elden Ring For Any Playstyle (and the Two Worst Ways)

Make the early and mid-game of Elden Ring a little less punishing with these tips on how to farm runes so you can level up fast and easy.

Knowing how to farm runes in Elden Ring will make your life in the Lands Between easier. You can trivialize bosses, get around more comfortably, and face even the toughest of the game’s challenges without breaking a sweat. Here’s how.

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How to Farm Runes in Elden Ring

A Gold-Pickled Fowl Foot crafting screen in Elden Ring
Screenshot by GameSkinny

No matter how you want to farm runes in Elden Ring, there are a few things you must do beforehand. Get the Golden Scarab Talisman, get Gold-Pickled Fowl Foot, and use a community password.

The Golden Scarab Talisman makes every enemy you defeat award 20% more Runes. Find it in the hellscape of the Caelid Wilds. Knowing where it is doesn’t make getting there any easier, so read our guide on how to cure Scarlet Rot.

Next, farm Gold-Pickled Fowl Foot consumables. These food items have the same effect as the Golden Scarab Talisman: enemies award 20% more Runes when killed. The Scarab and Fowl Foot effects stack. Wearing both gives you a whopping 40% more Runes. You can find Gold-Pickled Fowl Foot in the world, but you’re more likely to craft them after you buy Missionary’s Cookbook [2] from Patches.

Use a community password. If you’re part of a content creator community, Discord server, or have friends who also play Elden Ring, use a community password available through the multiplayer menu. Every time someone with a password defeats either a Shardbearer boss or finishes the game, you’ll get an additional 10% boost to collected Runes. You can have five such passwords active at a time.

Best Overall Elden Ring Rune Farming Method to Level Up Fast

I’ve found the easiest and most consistent Rune farms in Elden Ring are at the Palace Approach Ledge Road Site of Grace in the Mohgwhyn Palace zone. Complete the Bloody Finger questline and collect the Pureblood Knight Medal, then run through the blood swamp to reach the Site of Grace.

Once you’ve done this, there are two Elden Ring Rune farms here: across from the Ledge Road Site of Grace and The Palace Approach Ledge Road Site of Grace.

Ledge Road Site of Grace Rune Farming Method: 200K Runes an Hour

The bird to farm near Mohgyn Palace in Elden Ring
Screenshot by GameSkinny

The first Elden Ring Rune farming spot is an easy one. Get a bow and as many arrows as you can. Find the huge wandering bird across the chasm, to the north of the Ledge Road Grace. Shoot it with an arrow. It charges straight at you and off the cliff to its death. I personally recommend this Elden Ring Rune farm if you want something quick, easy, and relatively consistent with minimal effort.

You get 11,000 Runes for every bird death. You can rest at the Site of Grace behind you and repeat as long as you have the patience. The process takes about 20-30 seconds, so that’s at least 200,000 runes every hour if you take your time.

Palace Approach Ledge Road Site of Grace: 80K to 90K Runes an Hour

Screenshot by GameSkinny

Should you have a friend who’s beaten the game and acquired the Sacred Relic Sword, there’s another Rune farm here. As long as you have the stats to use the weapon (14 Strength, 24 Dexterity, and 22 Faith), you can sit at the Palace Approach Ledge Road Site of Grace, face east, and use the Wave of Gold weapon art. Doing so kills most of the Albinauric enemies resting in the wave’s path.

Make your way down the path toward the lake of blood, using Wave of Gold as you go. Killing all of the enemies, the bird included, nets you around 80,000-90,000 Runes per run and takes only a few minutes to complete.

Best Early-Game Elden Ring Rune Farms Without Requirements

There are two areas in Caelid that are excellent for getting a ton of Runes fast without needing to beat any bosses or complete any quests: near the Beastial Sanctum in Greydoll’s Dragonbarrow and around Castle Redmane.

Bestial Sanctum Rune Farm

The portal to the Bestial Sanctum in Elden Ring

The first place to farm Runes in Elden Ring without requirements is the area directly south of the Beasital Sanctum. To reach this late-game area, head to the Artist’s Shack in northeast Limgrave, then travel across the river into a small shaded corner.

The map of the portal to the Bestial Sanctum in Elden Ring
Screenshot by GameSkinny

A portal nestled in some shrubs will take you to the Sanctum in Greydoll’s Dragonbarrow. Here’s how the farm works.

  • Grab the Site of Grace inside the Bestial Sanctum.
  • Exit the Sanctum, run past the gargoyle boss, then turn right down the hill.
  • Defeat the little gremlin enemies (they’re called the Vulgar Militia) that litter the space.

With the Golden Scarab equipped, each Miliita member killed drops 1,312 Runes. With the Fowl Foot buff atop that, the rune value jumps to 1,706. If you take four or five minutes to kill all of the Militia, you rack up around 18,000 Runes. The only catch is this area of the map is one of the highest-difficulty zones you can reach early in a playthrough, so while it’s easy to farm Runes here, I don’t recommend it for newer players unless you want a few hard lessons about Elden Ring PvE.

Castle Redmane Rune Farm

Farming runes in Caelid in Elden Ring
Screenshot by GameSkinny

Another great Elden Ring Rune farm is in the southeastern section of Caelid, near Starscourge Radahn’s Castle Redmane. You reach the Impassable Bridge Site of Grace and notice an ongoing fight between the large demon dogs and Radahn’s soldiers nearby.

These enemies are content to fight themselves, and after the dogs die, clean up the remaining soldiers. You’ll get a few thousand runes for about five or so minutes of doing almost nothing. From all my hours experimenting with Elden Ring Rune farms, this is the place to be if you want a casual, chill way to farm some runes while you have a snack or do a chore.

Best Rune Farm With Friends: Beating These Bosses

The rewards for the Rennala fight in Elden Ring
Screenshot by GameSkinny

Cooperation is another great way to farm runes in Elden Ring. The fastest way is to be summoned to fight one of the early game Legacy Dungeon bosses. You mustn’t beat either boss to be summoned, but you should know how to beat them if you want to help, farming or not.

Which boss you choose is ultimately up to you, as there ought to be activity at most of them, but the four I recommend (in order of reward) are Godrick the Grafted (6,200 Runes), Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon (12,000 Runes), Starscourge Radahn (35,000 Runes), Mohg, the Lord of Blood (420,000 Runes).

Rennala and Radahn Rune Farming

Place your summon sign with the Tarnished’s Furled Finger just outside Renalla’s boss fog. For the best activity, be between Levels 30-50 for Rennala and 40-65 for Radahn. Your weapons should be no higher than around +12 regular or +5 Somber. Increasing your character and weapon level limits how Elden Ring calculates your summon range. Both fights only take about five minutes at most with multiple people.

Godrick and Mohg Rune Farming

Mohg, Lord of Blood in Elden Ring
Screenshot by GameSkinny

You can do the same thing with Godrick the Grafted for earlier game farming. He awards 6,200 Runes per defeat. The fight is about as long as Renalla’s for half the Runes but is easier to access if you’re farming Runes around the game’s starting levels.

If you’re feeling particularly brave or masochistic, you can fight Mohg, the Lord of Blood early on for a good Rune farm. He gives 420,000 Runes, so you receive 210,000 as a summon. He’s incredibly difficult at low levels with un-upgraded weapons. Mohg isn’t an efficient Rune farm solo, but if you go in with other higher-level phantoms using Bleed or Comet Azur to melt Mohg before he so much as swings his trident, it can be the fastest farm in the game.

No matter which bosses you choose to farm, you’ll also get plenty of Rune Arcs for activating your Great Runes and Furlcalling Finger Remedies for more summoning of friends.

The Two Worst Ways to Farm Runes in Elden Ring

Lastly, there are two Rune “farming” methods I want to debunk: going AFK using the Taunter’s Tongue and high-level friends summoning low-level friends.

AFK farming is heinous. The theory is that if you use the Taunter’s Tongue multiplayer item while in a place invaders can reach, you can simply sit with Hunters active in your world and farm endless Runes. However, unless you’re very high level, the amount of Runes you get per invader killed or disconnected is so low that you might spend four or five hours “farming” and not even have enough for one level.

PvP matchmaking is based on your level and the highest weapon upgrade level your character’s reached, so if you’re Level 25 with a +8 weapon, you won’t get more than a few hundred Runes per invader, and it might take five minutes or more per reward. I don’t have to convince you it’s not worth it.

The second Rune “farm” going around is to have a high-level friend summon low-level friends into their world and have said high-level friend kill equally high-level invaders. Sure, you can get relatively more Runes per kill, but you risk getting nothing if the invader is halfway competent, sees that the low-level invader is the weakest link, and one-shots them. Not only have you given the invader a hilarious win, you’ve wasted both your and your friend’s time. Which is exactly the opposite of what you want to do.

That’s how to farm runes in Elden Ring to level up quickly. You’ll want all the power you can get your hands on to take on later bosses like Malenia, Blade of Miquella, or, much earlier, the Red Wolf of Radagon. Head to our Elden Ring guides hub for even more tips and tricks.


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Author
Image of John Schutt
John Schutt
John Schutt has been playing games for almost 25 years, starting with Super Mario 64 and progressing to every genre under the sun. He spent almost 4 years writing for strategy and satire site TopTierTactics under the moniker Xiant, and somehow managed to find time to get an MFA in Creative Writing in between all the gaming. His specialty is action games, but his first love will always be the RPG. Oh, and his avatar is, was, and will always be a squirrel, a trend he's carried as long as he's had a Steam account, and for some time before that.