How To Use Great Runes In Elden Ring, Rune Arcs Locations

Great Runes and Rune Arcs work together to grant several buffs to your character in Elden Ring that will last until death.

These buffs may vary from an increased health pool to increasing all of your stats and attributes in total. The overall large variety of buffs that you get with Great Runes is especially helpful when fighting a difficult enemy or an important boss.

The only problem is that Great Runes are rare in Elden Ring and can only be obtained from a defeated boss. Rune Arcs are much easier to find as they are scattered on the ground throughout the Lands Between.

You need Rune Arcs to activate your Great Runes, meaning that you have to form both of them in Elden Ring.

How to get Great Runes in Elden Ring

To obtain Great Runes in Elden Ring, you will have to defeat any of the seven different Demigods mentioned below and get them as a reward. You will mostly find these demigods in Legacy Dungeons like the Raya Lucaria Academy or the Elphael, Brace of the Haligtree.

The first and second Great Runes that you get in Elden Ring are Godrick’s Great Rune and the Great Rune of the Unborn respectively. You can obtain the former by felling Godrick the Grafted (Stormveil Castle), and the latter by felling Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon (Raya Lucaria Academy).

Aside from the two bosses mentioned above, there are five more bosses you can battle to acquire their respective Great Runes:

You will have to battle pretty much all of these bosses mentioned above to progress through the story. Acquiring the Great Runes from Godrick and Rennala, for example, will be necessary to gain access to Leyndell, the Royal Capital. Since there are a total of seven Demigods, you can get a total of seven different Great Runes in Elden Ring, each providing a different effect.

How to use Great Runes in Elden Ring

Once you have a Great Rune, you need to activate it by using a Rune Arc in Elden Ring at a Site of Grace. Once you do that, you will activate the Great Rune and access its respective effect/buff.

While Rune Arcs do increase the HP of characters, we recommend you keep it in your inventory for making the Great Runes more effective.

Apart from improving health and minimizing the negative effects, it can also be used to take on enemies. Overall, your use of Great Runes will vary from situation to situation, owing to their diversity in effects provided.

Once you equip a Great Rune and are ready to use it, you must be careful not to die. If you get killed during a fight, your respective Great Rune will be nullified, i.e. it will lose its effects and buffs. In that case, you will need to do two things – restore your Great Rune, and obtain a new Rune Arc to use with it.

If you have more than one Great Runes on you, you can also switch between them at a Site of Grace to change the buffs. With that though, using another one of your Rune Arcs to activate it holds true once again, because you will not be able to receive the exchanged Great Rune’s buffs until you do so.

How to restore Great Runes in Elden Ring

Each Great Rune that you acquire from a boss has to be restored first before you can activate it in Elden Ring. You can restore them at Divine Towers.

Each Great Rune can only be restored at none other than its own respective Divine Tower though, which you can find in the same region you defeated the rune’s respective boss.

You can find several Divine Towers scattered across the Lands Between – one in each region. For example, the Divine Tower in Limgrave for restoring Godrick’s Great Rune, or the Divine Tower in Caelid to restore Radahn’s Great Rune.

What are Rune Arcs in Elden Ring?

Your hard-earned Great Runes are useless without Rune Arcs because you need the latter to activate the former in Elden Ring.

Since Rune Arcs are pretty easy to find, you should make sure to farm as many as possible until you encounter the Great Rune bosses in the game.

Where to find Rune Arcs in Elden Ring

Rune Arcs are scattered at random across the world of Elden Ring. There are two ways to get Rune Arcs in Elden Ring – either by finding them throughout the world, or by purchasing them from a merchant.

Rune Arcs are available to purchase at Roundtable which can be accessed by passing through Enia first. Another location where it can be purchased is the Nomadic Merchant which is found near the lakes.

You can get these by giving away 4000 Runes at any of the two mentioned places. Although there isn’t any limit to buying Rune Arcs, it can be quite costly. Hence, farming for Rune arcs in Elden Ring would be the fastest way to get your hands on them (discussed later).

The second way to get them is by searching around the Elden Ring. They are placed in many locations at Elden Ring like dropped by rats as an item, lying over decaying bodies inside catacombs, under the stairs, and inside of chests, and you can also get them as a reward when you defeat the enemies.

Thirdly, we recommend collecting Rune Arcs through multiplayer. It doesn’t matter if it’s with your friends or random players – as long as it’s multiplayer. You can obtain this valuable item by defeating bosses together and taking down invaders. Specifically, Rune Arcs in multilayers can be received by defeating the Host of Fingers in a foreign world.

Lastly, you can check on the following locations in Elden Ring as they have the most drop rates for Rune Arcs: Unsightly Catacombs, Road’s End Catacombs, Cliffbottom Catacombs, Liurnia of the Lakes, Academy Crystal Cave, and Village of the Albinaurics.

You will find some Rune Arcs in several of these locations and more. For example, on a corpse in the Unsightly Catacombs or in the Village of Albinaurics. While you find only one or two in the rest of the locations, you will find several different Rune Arcs in Liurnia of the Lakes.

How long does a Rune Arc Last?

Once you’ve got your hands on Rune Arcs, how long will they last? Well, the answer is ‘Until death’ since they are not permanent. Players can hold about 99 Rune Arcs and store up to 600 in their inventory. Unless you are killed, these valuables are not going anywhere, and your Rune Arcs are all safe in your inventory.

As opposed to the Rune Arcs, you will not lose your Great Runes upon death though, but they aren’t permanent either. If you manage to get killed while wearing a Great Rune, it will lose its effects and you will hence have to use another Rune Arc to reactivate it.

How to farm Rune Arcs offline in Elden Ring

Although you can farm a bit of Rune arcs with multiplayer by defeating certain bosses, farming for them offline can pose a challenge.

Farming Rune Arcs offline is pretty challenging due to the rare drop rates, but it’s not impossible. Therefore, one of the first steps you should be taking as an offline player is to buff your discovery and arcane stats. It will also help if you equip yourself with Silver-Pickled Fowl Foot.

It is a highly important consumable that players should have, as it boosts Discovery by 50 points for 180 seconds. In addition, it will further assure that the drop rate for Rune Arcs during offline boss fights and invasions increases significantly.

It can be found in several locations throughout the game, including Stormveil Castle and Raya Lucaria. You can also purchase it through Gatekeeper Gostoc or the Twin Maiden Husks at the Roundtable Hold.

It can also be crafted by following the recipe in the Missionary’s Cookbook found in Smoldering Church. You need three Rowa Fruits, one of the Four-Toed Fowl Foot, and one Silver Firefly to craft the Silver-Pickled Fowl Foot.

When you have made all of the preparations, consider using a rat farm, which is perhaps the best way to farm for Rune Arcs in Elden Ring.

There are several locations where you can find several Giant Rats to farm. Earthbore Cave, for example, holds eight different Giant Rats for you to farm. Similarly, the Rampart Goal (Castle Morne) also holds around four Giant Rats.

When you kill all of the rats at a particular location, rest at a nearby Site of Grace to respawn all of them and continue farming. Since Giant Rats have a low drop rate for Rune Arcs, it becomes important to apply the methods used to increase your chances mentioned above, like equipping the Silver Pickled Fowl Foot. Without that, it will take a long time to farm for even a small amount of them.