Best rune farming locations in the early, mid, and late game in Elden Ring (2024)

Rune farming in Elden Ring will come in handy if you need to quickly level up your character and increase your stats, need to upgrade your armaments at a smithing table, or purchase items from vendors across the land.

In this Elden Ring rune farming guide, we’ll show you a few places to farm runes in the early, mid and late game.

How to get an additional rune boost when farming

Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

Before you settle on your preferred rune farming location based on your progress, know there are two ways to get even more runes as you play:

• Consuming a Gold-Pickled Fowl Foot will earn you 30% more runes for about three minutes. Drop them into your hotbar — or your Quick Pouch — or use one straight out of your Inventory to gain this benefit.
• Equipping the Golden Scarab Talisman, found by defeating the two Cleanrot bosses inside the Abandoned Cave in Caelid, will boost the amount of runes you earn by 20%. This location is in a fairly mid to late game region, so you ironically might need to use a rune farm before you can acquire this.

Best rune farming locations in the early game

For those just starting out, the good news is there’s a few decent routes in Limgrave to give you a quick rune boost.

Gatefront Ruins farm (1,300 runes per run)

Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

Very early in your exploration of West Limgrave, you’ll find the Gatefront Ruins. Clear out all the guards (and their little dogs, too) to collect about 1,300 runes. There are two nearby sites of grace — Gatefront to the northwest and Agheel Lake North to the southeast. This is also a great place to practice your stealth and gets even easier if you use your Spirit Ashes.

Stormhill trolls farm (5,000 runes per run)

Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

When you do get comfortable with killing trolls (for us, it involves a lot of rolling, an upgraded weapon, and bleed damage), head to Stormhill. It’ll a bit of a ride southeast from the Warmaster’s Shack (and down the cliffs), but you’ll find five Trolls wandering the hillside there — and each of them will give you 1,000 runes. A single trip to clear out all five of them will be enough for a level’s worth of runes up to level 30 or so.

Stormveil Castle’s Secluded Cell farm (1,438 runes)

Graphic: Dave Tach/Polygon | Source images: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

This one is only available late in your journey through West Limgrave, but just outside of the Secluded Cell site of grace in Stormveil Castle, there’s a Troll and two Exiles. We got 1,210 runes for the Troll, and 114 runes for each of the Exiles. If you have magic, this is a great place to just stand back, cast, and watch the runes accumulate. And maybe the best part: If something goes wrong, and you die, you’re right next to your site of grace.

Best rune farming locations in the mid game

For the following, you’ll want to make your way to the rather intimidating regions of Caelid and Dragonbarrow that’s to the east of Limgrave. Though you can make your way here with Torrent, arguably the easiest (and safest) way to reach the following locations is the teleporter from east Limgrave to Bestial Sanctum, as explained in our Deathroot locations guide.

Bestial Sanctum’s vulgar militiamen farm (6,000 runes per run)

Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

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Head to the Bestial Sanctum site of grace in Dragonbarrow (where you’ll find Gurranq, Beast Clergyman) and leave out of the south exit. Ignore the Black Blade Kindred at the top of the steps (assuming you haven’t defeated it), and on the plains either side of the path leading towards the bridge in the south, are multiple vulgar militiamen.

Each one will drop 1,000 runes, and though a challenge at early levels, you can simply return to the site of grace, heal up, and repeat until you are strong enough to take on more.

Though you are free to take your time in hunting enemies to help you get runes, the most efficient run is running down the west flank (the right side when you leave Bestial Sanctum) only, where you’ll encounter a total of six vulgar militiamen by the time you get to the bridge, resulting in 6,000 runes in under two minutes.

Lenne’s Rise’s sphere farm (2,000 runes per run, no combat)

Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

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Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

This strategy applies to low level characters as it requires zero combat, but since it’s in a mid-game area and will be out of the way for beginner players, might be best saved until you’ve got some playtime under your belt first.

The aim is to go to the Lenne’s Rise site of grace that’s just south of Dragonbarrow. (The easiest way is to use the Bestial Sanctum teleporter as outlined at the start of this section, leaving the Sanctum by going south, then take the east path running parallel to the bridge to avoid the dragon boss.)

Once there, rest, then head west on Torrent so you’re going under the bridge. Just as you’re about to go under, a sphere will spawn beyond you and give chase. If you make a sharp turn along the cliff back on yourself, it’ll roll past you, off the edge, and result in you receiving 2,000 runes.

Though it’s not a huge amount of runes in the mid game, this loop — headed to the sphere spawn and returning again — can take as little as 30 seconds, so if you are a little underpowered for the area or simply don’t fancy combat, it’s surprisingly efficient.

Fort Faroth (75,000 runes, but only once)

This one’s a bit different, because you can only do it once, but the massive reward makes it worthwhile. Head to the far east side of the map to the red desert area, Caelid. There’s a site of grace near the eastern edge called Fort Faroth. (This is where you’ll find one of the Dectus Medallion halves, so you’ll likely want to visit here at some point anyway.) Ride Torrent straight to this site of grace (because this area is very dangerous) and rest as soon as you get there.

Image: Polygon via Bandai Namco

To the northwest of the site of grace you’ll see a massive sleeping dragon. Run to the dragon’s tail and start hitting it. The dragon won’t do anything to stop you and there shouldn’t be any enemies in the area to bother. This dragon’s health pool is massive so it’s going to take a very long time to kill, but once you do you’ll be rewarded with a Dragon Heart and 75,000 runes.

Best rune farming locations in the late game

There is just a single strategy here, simply because nothing else quite compares to the efficiency of this run. The requirement is a little steep however, requiring you to get to Mohgwyn Palace, a secret area where you access the DLC and fight Mohg.

Mohgywn Palace’s Albinauric farm (32,000 runes per run)

Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

Reach the Palace Approach Ledge-Road site of grace in Mohgwyn Palace (it’s in the south-east of the region), and you’ll be on an inclined path lined with Albinaurics, most of which are asleep. Each of these drops around 2,500 runes each, and due to their density and close proximity to the site of grace, makes this an extremely efficient farming location, netting you around 32,000 runes every two minutes (or more if you have a Gold-Pickled Fowl Foot or Golden Scarab Talisman).

The only snag? Amongst the sleeping horde of Albinaurics, there are three red patrolling ones, which can take you down surprisingly fast if you’re caught unaware. Our tip for these is to wait until they rapidly cartwheel toward you, then roll toward the cliff, which sees them fly off the edge to their doom. Once you have these red Albinaurics down (they will telegraph their cartwheels by releasing spikes before they are about to move) you’ll be earning a frightfully high amount of runes in no time.

A final note if you plan to put all those runes into levelling. All stats have a soft cap, or rather, multiple soft caps, which is where levelling past a certain point makes stat gains less efficient. Our Elden Ring soft cap explainer can explain how this works, and the threshold for each stat.