How to use Great Runes in Elden Ring and best Rune Arc farming locations

Farming Rune Arcs in Elden Ring and collecting Great Runes are two sides of the same coin, as each one will offer you something valuable. Throughout Elden Ring, players can find and equip powerful Great Runes, but these remain unusable until they locate a Rune Arc that effectively acts as fuel to trigger whatever temporary buff the Great Rune gives you.

Great Runes are usually a reward for killing certain Elden Ring main bosses, allowing you to tap into a little of their power, but you'll also need to find special Divine Towers to make them usable. It's a whole process, so let's get into the nuances and explain with some clarity how to find all the Great Runes in Elden Ring, as well as the best locations to farm Arc Runes.

Best Rune Arc farm in Elden Ring

These are the best ways to farm Rune Arcs in Elden Ring, with options for both online and offline players.

• Go kill bosses in other games. If you need Rune Arcs, the most efficient way to do it is to help other players kill bosses, which always rewards the helping player with a Rune Arc (as well as a lot of Runes). Find an easier or low-level boss, leave a gold summon sign outside the door, and wait to be called in.
• Slaughter rats. The standard giant rats that appear in various locations around the Lands Between, like the basements under Stormveil Castle or the rafters of the Divine Tower of Liurnia, can be used for farming Rune Arcs. We found that rats occasionally dropped them when killed, though at a slow enough rate that farming wouldn't be rewarding quickly. Still, if you're struggling with a boss, the chance to power up might make it worth doing. Boost your Arcane stat for the best Item Discovery chance and try to kill them as efficiently as possible.

Great Runes in Elden Ring explained

Here's a basic summary of how Great Runes and Arc Runes work in Elden Ring.

1. Obtain unique "Great Runes" by defeating certain bosses.
2. These Great Runes are unusable until they're restored. To do that, you need to take them to the top of a specific Divine Tower, usually in the region where you killed the boss who dropped it.
3. Equip the Great Rune from a Site of Grace.
4. When you consume a Rune Arc, it temporarily triggers that Great Rune you have equipped, giving you a powerful buff.

For example, using a Rune Arc with Godrick's Great Rune equipped effectively gives you a temporary bonus to all your attributes, making you better at everything for a short time. Meanwhile, Radahn's Great Rune boosts your health, stamina and FP. Whatever you choose while playing Elden Ring, it's always a powerful ability and one that serves well when used just before, or even during, boss fights.

Where to find Great Runes

Great Runes are unique items found by killing the game's main bosses, such as Godrick, Renalla and Radahn. If you ever want a pointer on where to find the next ones, go back to the Roundtable Hold and speak to Gideon Ofnir, who can give info about them all.

All Great Runes in Elden Ring

There's a total of six proper Great Runes that players can find an equip, with a few similar items available (such as the Great Rune of the Unborn, which can't be "used" except to unlock a new type of merchant service from a major NPC).

Nonetheless, we've listed all the Great Runes below, including what they do, what boss you need to cut down to get them, and where in the world those bosses are found. Keep in mind that you'll need to restore all these before they can be used (explained below).

Most of these Great Runes' effects are fairly simple, if powerful. Morgott gives you a ton of more health, Godrick enhances everything about you, and Malenia turns Elden Ring into Bloodborne.

The exception to this is Mogh's Great Rune, which is... complicated. If you trigger the Rune before summoning an Ashen Spirit Summon (such as the Lone Wolves or Mimic Tear), they come in with a Blessing of Blood, which gives them a red smoky effect. More than that though, any enemies who are killed by these summons while you stand close to them grant you restored health - effectively giving all these summons lifesteal for your character. There's also a secondary effect where whenever your summons trigger the Bleed status effect on an enemy, they get a damage boost as a reward.

But there's more! If a player has Mohg's Great Rune and gets invaded by another player, the invader gets a special consumable called the Phantom Great Rune. When triggered, any enemy NPCs near the invader get that Blessing of Blood. This means if you're invading a player, you can boost all the monsters nearby to make it even more dangerous for them. How villainous!

How to restore Great Runes

Any Great Runes you find have to be empowered in a Divine Tower, and specifically the Tower in the same region as the boss who dropped that Great Rune.

For example, killing Renalla in the Raya Lucaria Academy of Liurnia requires you to restore her Great Rune in the Divine Tower of Lurnia close by. It'll only work for that specific Great Rune, and you'll only need to do it once. This applies across the game, though some Towers are harder to get into than others, requiring you to kill difficult enemies, find items or solve puzzles. They all follow the same visual theme that marks them out though - massive tiered structures made of dark stone, usually with a bridge halfway up them that extends out to another point (though not always). For more info on where all these are, we've got a dedicated guide on how the Divine Towers in Elden Ring.

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