Elden Ring: All Great Runes and How to Find, Activate and Use Them

Great runes are not only important for the story in Elden Ring. Here you can find out where you can find them in the game and what benefits they have for you.

Hamburg – Elden Ring sends its players into the world with very little information. The Elden Ring is broken into pieces and needs to be restored – that’s about all the game gives you. However, these individual parts, also called Great Runes, are quite something. In the course of the game you will collect some Great Runes and they are not only relevant for the story. Where you can find the Great Runes, how to activate them and what effect they have, we show you here. Spoilers ahead for main bosses of Elden Ring.

Elden Ring: Great Runes – All locations and bosses of the important items

What are Great Runes? The Great Runes are the individual pieces that the Elden Ring broke into after it was shattered. Each of Queen Marika’s children has usurped one of these runes. Because of the power in the runes, these demigods eventually went insane. For you, this means that you must track down each of these demigods and claim their Great Runes in order to reassemble the Elden Ring. At the same time, the Great Runes are powerful items that can make you even more powerful.\

Where can I find the Great Runes? You can find a total of seven Great Runes in Elden Ring, although only five of them are necessary for the end of the game. You can find each rune from one of the demigods, but to get them from them, a simple chat and a bit of persuasion is not enough. The demigods are the main bosses of the game, you must defeat them to get the Great Runes from them. Here you can see which bosses give you which runes:

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Elden Ring: Great Runes – How to use and activate the powerful items

What do Great Runes do for me? Once you have obtained one or more Great Runes, you can assign them to a place of grace to use their power yourself. You can only have one Great Rune equipped at any time in Elden Ring, when used it will give you a certain buff. You can see which rune gives you which buff here:

Also, Great Runes are not permanently active. To use a Great Rune in Elden Ring, you must use a Rune Bow. These consumable items are relatively rare, but can be found anywhere in the interlands. A Great Rune’s buff lasts until you die once. After that, you must reclaim the buff by using another rune bow.

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However, in order to use Great Runes at all, you must first activate them with new power. This requires some effort in Elden Ring.

How do I activate a Great Rune? Each of the Great Runes in Elden Ring is associated with a holy tower. To use their power for you, you must first activate each rune in its corresponding holy tower. The only exception to this is the Great Rune of the Unborn. You cannot equip it, but you can use it to redistribute your attributes in Elden Ring. Here you can see which rune you need to activate in which tower:

The biggest challenge with these towers is getting to them first. Most of the time, there is a puzzle, a boss, or a small platforming passage waiting for you on the way to a tower first. The only thing you’ll eventually have to do in the tower is ride the elevator to the top and interact with the rune icon at the top. After that, you can equip the activated Great Rune at any time in a place of grace.

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Sean Morrison
elden ring runes