All endings in Elden Ring and how to get them

All Elden Ring endings have their own take on how reality emerges, and while every ending could use some explaining, we're here to help with that. In fact, we have everything you need to know about the different ways to finish up Elden Ring here, along with how to get every ending in the game, what they mean, and what ending is best.

Spoilers to follow, of course!

All Elden Ring endings

There's a total of 6 Elden Ring endings that players can obtain, each of which have their own names by which they can be identified, by which we'll be using to separate them below. We've listed them here, as well as the entity or character you'll be allying with for each one. These endings are non-compatible and it's not possible to get two together at the end of your Elden Ring game.

• Age of Fracture (default ending) - allied with nobody/The Greater Will
• Age of Order ending - allied with Brother Corhyn/Goldmask
• Age of Duskborn ending - allied with Fia, Deathbed Companion
• Blessing of Despair (bad ending) - allied with the Dung Eater
• Lord of the Frenzied Flame ending - allied with the Three Fingers
• Age of the Stars (best/secret ending) - allied with Ranni the Witch

All Elden Ring endings explained

What with the whole game being about trying to reach the Elden Ring itself (a divine object that grants enormous power and partly controls how the universe works, like it's the code in a computer program), the endings are determined by what you do when you find it. The Ring was shattered and its pieces, the Great Runes, distributed among many important figures, but along your journey you can meet many NPCs who want to repair the Elden Ring in different ways, putting new "Mending Runes" into it that'll change how it functions - and reality with it. Depending on what you do and who you work with across the game, you can either simply repair the Elden Ring for the return of the status quo, or make significant changes to it to reshape the Lands Between. We'll go through each ending below and how to get them.

Some of these endings are a lot easier to obtain than others, though none of them are easy, and all require completing certain mandatory steps. In fact, all of them require beating the Elden Ring main bosses listed here, with additional steps on top of that.

It's also worth noting that while you can only get one ending, for most of these mission paths you won't get locked into them until making a final choice at the end of the game, allowing you to pursue some or even all of them. There is an exception to this rule - the Lord of the Frenzied Flame ending - but we'll cover that below and how you can break this lock with a special quest.

Age of Fracture

1. Kill the final boss.
2. Interact with the Elden Ring and choose to "Mend the Elden Ring".

The Age of Fracture is the easiest and simplest ending to obtain, and might as well be considered the default or standard ending to Elden Ring. This basically commits you to continuing the status quo, albeit more brought to order as you become the next Elden Lord ruling everything, presumably with the (distant) approval of the Greater Will.

Age of Order

1. Complete the Elden Ring Goldmask questline.
2. From this, obtain the Mending Rune of Perfect Order.
3. Kill the final boss.
4. Interact with the Elden Ring and choose to "Use Mending Rune of Perfect Order".

The Age of Order might be considered a more emphatic version of the Age of Fracture, where the Tarnished works with Brother Corhyn and the Goldmask to obtain a special rune to create an ordered, unchaotic reality.

You can argue about whether this is morally better or worse than the Fracture - it's basically a more reinforced version of the status quo, where reality looks like it'll be less dangerous, but also a lot less liberating for those living in it. "Perfect Order" doesn't really afford a lot of room for experimentation and freedom, ominously. It's often unclear what the Greater Will (the god of the Elden Ring) actually wants to achieve in the world, but it's presented as being diametrically opposed to chaos - so no loud music or delayed trains, we can presume.

Age of Duskborn

1. Complete Fia's quest, as outlined in our Elden Ring Fia questline and ending guide.
2. From this, obtain the Mending Rune of the Death-Prince.
3. Kill the final boss. 
4. Interact with the Elden Ring and choose to "Use Mending Rune of the Death-Prince".

What we have here is a seemingly darker ending in which the player works with Deathbed Companion Fia to make life and death more intertwined, done through magical experiments on the corpse of the demigod Godwyn. 

The game isn't clear about what this will mean (that's Elden Ring for you), but it seems to herald an era of undead demigods, with death now made an integral part of the cycle of the Lands Between. Fia is a character greatly associated with death and undeath, but it's not certain whether this means we'll see mortality as usual in the Lands Between, with the Erdtree no longer respawning people or collecting souls, or if it'll be something a little more necromantic in nature - zombie gods, perhaps? 

Blessing of Despair

1. Complete the Elden Ring Dung Eater questline and Seedbed Curses, as labelled in our attached guide.
2. Kill the final boss.
3. Interact with the Elden Ring and choose to "Use Mending Rune of the Fell Curse".

If you want to work with the Loathsome Dung Eater… well, that's a bit weird, but we won't judge. The Dung Eater wants to infect the whole world with the horrible curse that plagues him, and make it so that the souls of those affected will be unable to return to the Erdtree, locking them into gruesome living death. Again, bit weird, but by working with him, you can make the whole world eat s*** too, by applying that curse to reality itself.

There's a pretty clear argument for this being the "bad ending", or at least the most depressing. The Dung Eater doesn't have a lot of arguments for blighting the world beyond just being weird and nasty, deranged about his own curse and viewing it as a blessing. So if you go down this road, this is less about moral arguments and more just about venting your frustration on reality by making it apocalyptically horrible.

Lord of the Frenzied Flame

1. Find the Cathedral of the Forsaken beneath the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds.
2. Down here will be a large stone door that the player cannot open.
3. The only way to open it is to remove all armor and effectively interact with it while "naked". Do not do this if you don't want the Lord of the Frenzied Flame Ending! This is the step required that will lock you into this ending until you find Miquella's Needle, which is not easily done.
4. Interacting with the door naked triggers a cutscene where you walk inside and are grabbed by the Three Fingers, leaving you with full-body burns and glowing red eyes.
5. Kill the final boss.
6. Interact with the Elden Ring and choose to "Become the Lord of Frenzied Flame".

If you want to tear everything down by working with the manifestation of Chaos, with no more gods, erdtrees or runes, you can ally with the Three Fingers. This is the ending that, if you take the first few steps below, you get locked out of all other endings! You'll get marked by the Frenzied Flame and it locks out out of any other result unless you can find a way to remove it.

The only way you can cure yourself of this mark (if you have buyer's remorse) is to pursue the Elden Ring Millicent questline and get Miquella's Needle, a massive quest that'll put you against the hardest boss in the game. Make sure you want this ending before you commit! Alternatively, make sure you don't want this ending before using the Needle, as you can't go back to the Three Fingers afterwards. Once you clean yourself of the mark, you can't get it back.

Again, this feels like a fairly bad ending, as the word descends into disordered chaos and flame. Everything we've seen about the Frenzied Flame suggests it installs madness in those affected by it, so reality built on this sort of thing doesn't seem great. On the plus side, maybe everybody will be too cultishly crazy to mind?

Age of Stars

1. Complete Lunar Princess Ranni's quest. This is such a complex side quest that we actually put together a whole Elden Ring Ranni questline and secret ending page to take you through it.
2. Kill the final boss.
3. Do not interact with the Elden Ring! Instead, there'll be a unique blue summon sign on the ground close to it, between the Elden Ring and the Site of Grace, that reads "Summon Ranni." Triggering this and summoning Ranni the Witch will activate the final ending.

Probably the most complicated, elaborate and emotionally-complex ending, here you work with Ranni to bring her to power and replace Marika as the new Queen Goddess and vessel for the Greater Will.

However, there's actually a bit of debate in the community over the original Japanese translation versus the English phrasing, as the two versions seem to imply different outcomes. If you read the English version, Ranni seems to be bringing in a cold, more emotionless world that's becoming one with the cosmos and the stars. Whereas in the Japanese ending, it implies she's just trying to get rid of the Greater Will altogether and won't do much ruling once it's been deposed, ushering in an era of the Lands Between where the Gods have no control anymore and people get to rule themselves. Even Ranni will leave the planet and go travelling through the stars once she achieves godhood, not wanting her people to have cosmic rulers oppressing them. Whatever the ending you believe in, you'll end up marrying Ranni as part of this arrangement, becoming the new Elden Lord and consort.

This is arguably the "secret ending", as Ranni's quest is the longest and most varied in the game, with little to suggest at the start that working for her will take you through to this grand conclusion.

What is the best ending in Elden Ring?

It's very much a matter of perspective and opinion as to what's the best ending for Elden Ring, but we personally would say that the Age of Stars is probably the best, as Ranni has been a major character from early on and her ending (no matter which version you read) feels like an interesting, narratively-satisfying transition for the Lands Between. Even if you don't summon her at the end, her questline is definitely worth pursuing, as it'll take you to some fantastic optional areas and boss fights. 

The reality is though that you should go with whatever ending you feel sounds like the most fun - this isn't a right/wrong answer, and if you enjoyed Elden Ring enough to play it through to the end, there's always New Game Plus to try out a different finale…?

Elden Ring tips | Elden Ring secrets | Elden Ring Classes | Elden Ring Keepsakes | Elden Ring PS4 and PS5 comparison | How to get the Elden Ring horse | Elden Ring Rune farming locations | Elden Ring Summons | Elden Ring stats explained | How to level up in Elden Ring | Elden Ring respec and Larval Tears | Elden Ring merchants | How long is Elden Ring? | Elden Ring cheats  | Elden Ring coop and multiplayer  

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission