Elden Ring: Here’s Where You Should Farm Runes – CNET

To progress in Elden Ring you’ll need three things: Skill, luck and runes. You need runes to buy items, but also to upgrade your character. The most effective way to make your Tarnished stronger is via levelling up your weapons, which requires both runes  and Smithing Stones. Then there’s good old-fashioned character levelling. This is more simple in that it exclusively requires runes. Thousands and thousands of runes.

You’ll get those sweet runes by killing foes and selling items. In the course of playing Elden Ring, earn runes by killing foes, selling items and defeating bosses. But if you’re looking to earn them quickly, there’s an easy way to farm them. Best of all, it’s available to you very early in the game.

To start off, you’ll need to head to the Third Church of Marika, which is encircled on the map above. If you’ve not already found the Site of Grace there, travel to Agheel Lake North, where you were granted Torrent by Melina. Travel on the path, running past everything, including a giant that’ll be waiting near the Church. Once you’ve activated the Site of Grace inside, go around the back and you’ll find a transporter by a little cove. 

Once you go through the transportation portal, you’ll be taken to a place called the Bestial Sanctum in a region called Dragonbarrow. Inside the Sanctum is Gurranq, a creature that rewards you for bringing it Deathroots. That’s a whole other guide though: What we’re interested here is outside.

Once you look out into the fields, you’ll see a giant dragon knight guarding the Sanctum. It’s a boss, the Black Blade Kindred. Do not fight it. You will die. 

Instead, walk to the left side of the steps you’re standing on and jump into the field. The boss won’t notice you unless you’re directly in front of it, so just avoid that. Go into the fields, however, and you’ll see a bunch of diminutive, statue-looking warriors walking about. These are what you’ve come for.

They’re easy (by Elden Ring standards) to kill at almost any level, since they stagger from being hit. And you can sneak up behind them to perform a critical hit from behind, which will either defeat them straight up or take a chunk off their health. And best of all, killing them grants you a little over 1,000 runes each. 

On the left side of the balcony you jump off, all these enemies are walking around alone. The right side is more challenging, since they travel in packs of two or three. If you’re a low level, I recommend hanging to the left and picking them off one by one. Either way, you can rack up lots of runes quickly by killing a set, respawning them by traveling to the Site of Grace inside the Bestium Sanctum, and doing it all over again.

I managed to get 50,000 runes in 15 minutes. I bet you can go even higher.