Rune Arc | Elden Ring Wiki

for a game called elden ring they sure made the rune arcs and great runes mostly useless specially for pvp... At least mohgs rune does something, even if its mostly dogshit...

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Pregnant ant drop rune arcs

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From a quick glance I calculated that there is a total of approximately 60 rune arcs in the game, without farming that is.

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I think there is a hard cap for each rat for each zone or grace. I farmed all the behind gaol+mad people village at the start and ones at the fake sewers near the leyndell church. But then I remember the rats in actual sewer shunning grounds. And the ones in shunning grounds dropped one without any extra item drop boost. While I tried the others with all the buffs and had none.

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Best rune arc drop rate is the sewer rats that can be jumped on after lower churc grace of leyndell. there will be 4 rats in each corridor. Thank me later

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wait why isnt this player tradeable wtf

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i still find it funny how the only enemy to drop this important item are the rats

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Can anyone confirm that farming for Rune Arcs (on rats) doesn't work anymore? All they ever drop are Golden Runes (1) and Golden Runes (3).

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For a RL70 WL12 noob that just went ahead and explored the game offline it seems pretty unrealistic to hop into multiplayer now and do invasions, right?
My build is probably far from being min-maxed for this level, even with roughly following a build guide, but most equipment I just collect as I find it, except for that Scarseal early on. Ngl, with just rats dropping it at ultra-low chances, this makes Great Runes nigh useless without an ample supply of arcs, as you're always torn between learning a boss' moveset and "accidently" managing to overcome it before trying it "seriously" with an arc activated. Just killed Radahn and at no point I felt confident enough to fire an arc, but still managed to down him anyway after 3 tries when I mostly saw all he's throwing at me and my bois.

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You farm the rune arcs to get bonus for a hard boss, I pop them for fun sound and particle effects cuz I have tons of them via coop/invasions, we're not the same

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The one at Castle Morne is a random drop with a very low drop rate

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I advise new and repeat players to gather as many of these as possible before leaving limgrave and liurnia. You can be summoned pretty quickly in limgrave and most dungeons are fairly short and easy.

From caelid onwards it gets very tedious trying to get rune arcs as you will wait 10 mins to be summoned and the dungeons get longer and more annoying and there is a fair chance you will be summoned somewhere with no boss or a long trek to the boss and the host will die or you will get a connection error just as you are about to beat the boss. Honestly not a fan of this whole system.

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I didn't know what these did until i finished the game.

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I advise people who hate these to re-evaluate a little. You pick up a ton of these just from playing through the game, even offline. Just pop one when you're in a tough area or on a hard boss. Best case scenario, you make it through and still get to keep your power boost for a while longer! You'll have an easier time surviving with that extra bit of juice, which means more value out of your rune arc. And even if you die, let's be honest, you have 20 more lying around. Pop the rest of them, too. If you run out you'll just go back to not using your great rune like normal anyway. Just give them a chance!

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There is a rune arc in the black knife catacombs, at the bottom with the two crabs

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There's also a rune arc in Liturgical Town on one of the balconies near its site of grace, to the east of the site of grace, you can jump to on torrent.

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Is this concept completely worthless for anyone else? In an effort to get good at the game, I finished it multiple times. Then, I got my speedruns to under 3 hours. Now, I'm in the middle of my first RL1 run. And the idea of farming rune arcs seems like the absolute worst thing I could possibly do. With how often the game is designed to kill you, to have (very) finite resources tied to that death... seems ridiculous. One man's opinion.

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It's funny how rats are the farming method, it was the same for humanity in ds1 and embers in ds3

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It's funny how rats are the farming method, it was the same for humanity in ds1 and embers in ds3

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For those that want to know the health boost of a rune arc with no great rune is 10%

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Remember the page didn't mention this but. RUNE ARCS DO WORK IN MULTIPLAYER but only for the host not any phantoms.

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They should simply make the effects last for up to 5 deaths instead of just one. Instead of losing the effects immediately, they get progressively weaker after each death, then disappear on the 5th.

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"small giant rat" and "large giant rat". isn't that kinda redundant? why not just say "rat" and then "giant rat"?

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The dragonbarrow one is actually at the base of the divine tower, the map coordinates are for siofra directly below it

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Starting to actually use these turned me from an offline player to an online one.
I started using the runes as a buff to when I'm clearing the land/a path to a boss. Then if I die to a boss, I'll be reluctant repopping one, since I feel like I need to practice and then I often end up downing the boss without one, unless I get really confident and just need that last edge.

But I really like how it opened me up to being a coop player, since that's a nice way to farm them, so I don't feel bad using them, which enriches my game a ton! I can recommend! I never get invaded anyway, for some reason - maybe it's because I have the Small Golden Effigy on all the time?

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Anyone else never use these things? On my first play through when I was streaming discord dying to malenia my friend ask me why I don’t use rune arch’s and I didn’t understand what they were for until that point and had 40-50 of them. In 600 hours I’ve popped less than 10 of these it’s just a chore to go up those towers I don’t bother I straight up don’t fw no rune arch’s

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They still haven't added a proper way to farm these offline after almost 2 years? Good lord.

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I love how I waste half of these because I end up falling to my death for whatever dumb, random reason the game decides to make me fall. Truly, gravity is the greatest foe of them all.

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"Either way you should average a couple Rune Arcs per hour even with low discovery." - lmao, no thanks

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Most reliable source is from invasions and co-op, but i can't even use great runes in multiplayer apart from Mohg's which tbf is pretty good since every other player runs bleed in some capacity.

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To anyone thinking about farming these off the rats near the "Beside the Rampart Gaol" grace in Castle Morne. These were my results getting just 7 of them with 274 item discovery. 99 Arcane and a Silver Scarab Talisman.

17th run
8th run
1st run
6th run
7th run
24th run
50th run

Yes, you read that right. 50 runs to get a single Rune Arc. x4 rats each run, that's 200 rats before I got even one. Needless to say I gave up after that.

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I don't use runes. Every Time I need to use some rare consumable to be able to defeat boss, I am stressed and I F* it up and waste that rare resource.

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do devs try to mocks players putting this in rats, humanity was dropped by rats too in DS1

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Seems like most people in this comment section are ingrained offline players who prefer farming enemies to get one Rune Arc per hour instead of getting fun in co-op. Actual Rune Arc system is good as it is and doesn't need any "fixes" that you offer. Rune Arcs give you buffs more significant that even legendary talismans, therefore, you should use them with care and only when absolutely necessary. If you have beaten the game few times already, on a new playthrough you will most likely end with dozens of unused Rune Arcs in your inventory, because now you're good enough not to die to every boss. Dislike this post as much as you want, won't change the fact that some ER players just whine about everything.

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Strong belief that these should have had a slight chance to drop from all enemies - not just giant rats that are a chore to farm in one spot for hours of wasted gameplay only to get a tiny handful, when they could instead be added to the allure of exploring by allowing them to be able to drop from anyone/anything/anywhere. Even if the drop rate was tiny I think it still would have been a better system.

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Missing location: Cave of the forlorn
https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Cave+of+the+Forlorn

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People here complaining that they can't have their free +40 levels bonus for the entire game. Get good first

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I like how from didn't even bother telling you that your equipped great runes are COMPLETELY USELESS without using these and that the buff granted by these arcs last until death. Never change, From (actually change a little)

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Genuinely useful on a lvl 1 run. With Godricks great rune you can free up talisman slots for more flexibility. A little higher drop rate would help too.

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The one labeled under dragonbarrow saying it's behind a waterfall should be labeled as siofra river, it's wrong on the map link, too.

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Is there anything more heartbreaking then seeing a large item pickup thingy and for it only to be one of these stupid things?

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All of this information, and not one line on the effects a Rune Arc provides by itself.

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The fact that rats drop these is so weird imo

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If you’re not gonna use an exploit, instead of farming these to always have the stat bonuses associated with the great runes wouldn’t it be better to just spend the equivalent time farming runes to level to have the higher stats permanently?

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Best way to get these is to just spend a weekend from level 1 - 50 helping noobs with the scrub limgrave bosses and stockpile them.

Gonna be rough when online is dead unless they tweak drop rates.

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*hits blunt*
What if Rune Arcs dropped way more often, but you could only hold one at a time (including your stash), and they would only drop while you aren't under the effects of a Great Rune? That way, you might as well use it while you have it, because it becomes impossible to hoard.

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Utterly worthless item unless you're the host phantoms both red, blue, and gold should be able to utilize thier effect balance it by having it lost upon death even in anothers world come on fromsoft these things could be so interesting if you actually put some throught into it.

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Dont see how this is any different from farming humanity and covenant items? Or is it an issue with the great runes? Bloodborne showed you dont need boss souls anymore, with carryl runes in that and talismans in this one along with the AoWs.

I look at these as a bone to throw to the player as they beat story bosses. Beats doing mutiple NGs just to create weapons youll never use.

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I only just realized during my third playthrough that the rune effects last until death -- I thought it was a buff that lasted for a minute or so.

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I was almost through my first run when I found out those have a use. Still not using them.

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or just dupe them if you feel like it

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Why would you ever farm these when you could do invasions?

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Hot Take: This system is actually worse than Embers due to not being as convenient, you don't get a Rune Arc activation on Boss kills, which would have been very useful considering just how many bosses there are. On this topic, what this system and the Great Runes really needed are minor passive benefits that encourage you to go out and collect them all, something like Godrick increasing the power of fully charged heavy attacks by 5%, Radahn increasing the power of jumping attacks by 5%, Mohg increase your attack power by 5% on blood loss, Malenia increasing your attack power by 5% on poisoning, Morgott increasing general damage by ~2%, Rykard increasing the power of Ashes of War by 5%, and Unborn could have possibly provided 1 FP every 5 seconds. Also, bring back a version of the "Humanity Counter" from DS1 but for Rune Arcs that very slightly increases your item discovery and maximum health for every Rune Arc you use up to a cap of 20 or something, and you can pick them back up if you die, like with Runes.

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just got a rune arc from a non-giant rat in earthbore cave(!) [v1.6]

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everyone complaining about farming and **** but i just like thinking that this is the shard of the elden ring inherited by all the tarnished.

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I use them all the time, haven't run out yet. I'm running arcane build, which give drop rate, so it's not too much of a bother to farm sometimes. If you use all the time, you can lower all stat requirements of Equipment, by 5 points, and invest them in primary stats instead - with all this, your power and survivability will go up anyway.

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Never used a single arc xD
Never seemed relevant because the risk of losing them would put stress on exploration or learning a boss. DS3 encouraged being embered all the time by making NPC invades only happen when you are. Plus embers where quite plentiful iirc.
Elden Ring's rune arc system seems lackluster imo.

Nonetheless, for those who like to use them I don't see a reason why you cannot transform runes into rune arcs either via Melina or crafting. Make the cost scale to level so it always stays an investment. Turn runes into strength, right? ;)
Encouraging to farm rats for such an item is both hilarious and absolutely brazen by From. Online has to be optional without drawbacks imo. Make players use online functions by making them fun, not by gating items behind them, From.

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Why is everyone so mad about the droprate of these? Hello?! This is just a completely facultative item that just gives a minor bonus, don't act like you NEED to have the inventory full of rune arcs so you can have one for each time you die, that is stupid. Even more stupid is to spend hours to kill rats to farmthese. Are people for real?! Lmao

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OOOHHHHHHHHH! Now I get it

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There's one in gaol cave entrance in a chest. And most likely many more not listed here either.

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I don't understand what these Rune Arcs actually do. When do I use them and what exactly do they do?

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How can I keep from dying, so I don’t have to use so many RA??

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Hope these become some sort of currency later like starlight shards.
I have more than 99 and they’re useless cause I don’t need them except in really dire situations.

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I barely use these, I dont get how you people are just blazing through them, do you guys just pop one whenever you die even if your not near a boss?

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How to never run out of rune arcs ever:
- Do co-op, its easy runes and arcs.
- just do multiplayer, seriously its that easy you people really are making a problem out of nothing.

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Good they're drop is so low... PvP and win more or stop wasting. Not everything should be handed to us

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if you're like me and cooperate alot but don't eat many rune arcs you can sell these to merchants in a pinch for 200 runes a pop, very useful for shopping when you don't need 2k runes but you do need 400 and you dont have any golden rune (1) on hand

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pls let rune arced players be invadable

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Hoarfrost stomp is very good for farming the rats at Castle Morne. Just got 2 RAs in 30 mins with 8 Arcane and no boosting items.

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pls let everyone rune arc in multiplayer, i just want to use my bloodborne rune in coop for god sake

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One step forward, two steps backwards. This is plain stupid. Not only it's a lazy "ember" system but dumb as well. It's fair to say that having Great Runes active 100% would be a bit OP especially on lower levels. Ok, as I said, fair enough. Here's come the BUT.

If the intent was to provide a little boost when you need it, typically in a boss fight, why would you need to go through the pain of accessing the change rune menu through a Grace site? Just enable the change from the character equip menu. Is this so hard? But to take it further, why change runes and not just let the player choose which buff to get when use an Arc depending on which you have already unlocked? Is this so hard of a concept? Lastly, online might be a good way to farm Arcs but online will someday be shutdown. Why limit the player like this? Make the farming easier and/or crafted.

I don't think these unreasonable requests/points.

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I swear every time I use a Rune Arc for a boss attempt I do way worse. I don’t know if I’m thinking about not wasting it or what but it’s an absolute bloodbath.

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How to never run out of rune arcs during boss attempts:
- Backup your save.
- Restore your save if ran out of rune arcs before you beat the boss.

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I thought it's just some lame projectile consumable like glintstone arc and never used it. I completed entire game without using it not realizing it acts like humanity in dark souls.

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There's one in the dominula village where the godskin apostle is at. Don't see it here or in the map

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Wish the drop rate was higher, maybe around double what it is now. Farming these just isn't worth it in the long run because I'm going to die from something dumb and then I've basically wasted 30 mins to an hour of smacking rats. And PvP basically just gives you an unlimited supply? That's stupid. Not everyone wants to play PvP, making it more viable to farm would make a lot more sense.

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I find it funny that only rats drop this. Embers in ds3 were dropped mostly by elite enemies.

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I actually only used one single rune arc the entire game. Went in to elden beast/radagon at 55 vigor, level 156, and kept dying when the beast was at like 20% health. It must have given me the slight edge (plus I changed to godskin weapons which really melted them). The next day when I restarted the game, I noticed my stats were weird, here the rune arc was still active. So I'd say rune arcs are important, and are great to have, but don't let their absence stop you. You can kill all prior bosses without them.

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The rarity makes sense, given their benefit. They shouldn't be a free health buff like in DS3, where I spend 95% of each playthrough embered since they're so common. But on the other hand, I never use rune arcs because it's an open world game and I'm exponentially more likely to randomly die from poor terrain, glitches or just torrent controlling like a speedboat in a pool of tar

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Got one on the first rat I murdered in a while. Maybe this is based on time, can someone try to kill rats once every hour or so and document that.

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wish there was a better way to obtain unlimited rune arcs without having to use multiplayer.

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So I did a bit of testing and I think I probably found the best ways to grind rune arcs offline and online.
OFFLINE: its possible to get your discovery stat all the way to 324. first get your arcane stat to 99. with that you have 199 discovery. Btw You can use godricks great rune and Marikas soreseal for +10 arcane. +8 arcane from silver tear mask by beating the mimic tear in nokron. also using the Silver-pickled fowl foot +50 discovery and lastly the silver scarab talisman +75 discovery.
METHOD: if you are farming rune arcs offline I honestly think the best possible farming method is to first go to the Beside the rampart Gaol site of grace in castle morne and kill the 4 rats in the small room and run back to the Grace repeatedly. I would recommend using the sacred relic sword. The dragon breath incantations work as a good alternative and almost kill as fast. Since we have a discovery stat of 324 it's basically gonna be a 3.24% chance of a rat dropping a rune arc or 1.62% chance cus of the base drop rates being 0.5-1% I believe. Basically you kinda have gacha rate levels of dropping at that point. Honestly not super terrible but I would only recommend using this method if you have a lot of time on your hands. For me I averaged about 1 rune arc every 10-15 minutes at least. After 2 and a half hours I got 20 rune arcs.
ONLINE: I think probably the best method would be to ask a friend to make a new save get killed by the grafted scion. go to the effigy martyr next to the tree sentinel set a multiplayer password to bypass level restriction and ****. The person who is getting rune arcs gets summoned to kill the tree sentinel and repeat that over and over again. Obviously funner methods exist like killing margit with randoms at lvl 20 and invading. Which I did on other saves But coop is dead for me now on xbox sadly.
God why does from software have to make it so hard to get rune arcs in this game. I play on xbox and it's literally impossible to get rune arcs online cus no one plays co-op anymore. Also WHY cant u trade these anyways. It's not gonna break the game. How come fromsoft didn't see that further into this games lifecycle that once the player retention goes down and less ppl start playing elden ring at some point. All of the players in the future will have to resort to the stupid only grinding offline for a long time method. And that's another thing that a few of the “NOoOoOo iF u wANt rUNe aRCs JUSt pLaY pVP!” people don't understand. Like come on bro

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for someone who doesn't play online, where is the best location to farm Rune Arcs?

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I’ve been consistently farming this in castle morne, beside the rampart site, there’s a bunch of rats in the next building. It’s rare but is faster than other locations such as earthbore cave

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Greetings Traveler!

Before scrolling further down you'd best be warned, the lands below feature some of the worst takes you'll find in these parts. Best to be moving back up and trying a different page, if you ask me.

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I don't mind doing coup for this but the issue im running into is that im just not getting summoned since the recent update. As of now im lv 75 in the capital/ volcano area am I just over lv for the area or is something wrong?

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The top 1% of Elden Ring Players own over 80% of rune arcs. It's time to change this. Vote Mohg for President.

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Dropped from a Rat in Stormveil Castle. Must be super rare but potentially farmable.

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Dropped from a Rat in Stormveil Castle. Must be super rare but potentially farmable.

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I got a bunch of the Rune Arcs from Ant cave in Deeproot Depths. Each killed Ant Queen drops one and there were 7+. Cave is accessible from roots when descending from the secret passage in Frenzied Flame Proscription

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Godrick was so fun, I ended up helping way too many people and got 41 rune arcs in the process

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I found several more:

1. northern Caelid at the foot of the Divine Tower on a corpse in a chair
2. two in the Ruin-Strewn Precipice: one on a corpse in the chapel, the other on a corpse on the edge near the two harpies
3. Liurnia of the Lakes, east of the road to the Dectus elevator on a corpse below a rock cliff
4. Raya Lucaria gate, drop from killing the Ravenmount Assassin
5. Caelid, in a chest in the camp northeast of the road-blocking hearse
6. Dominnula, on a corpse in a house
7. Volcano Manor/Mountaintops of the Giants, you also get one by killing Juno Hoslow
8. Volcano Manor, in the same area where you get the Critical Hit talisman
9. Ainsel river, there's an ant queen, killing her gives you a Rune arc
10. Frenzied Flame Proscription, behind the fake wall is a chest with a Rune Arc
11. Nokron, on a corpse in the aqueduct after the Crucible Knight
12. Caelid, in the Divine Tower, behind the first black flame monk
13. Leyndell, after going down the well in "down town" on a corpse in front of a grate

However I didn't find the one in Castle Morne, and I checked three times now (on different play throughs).
Couldn't that be just a chance drop from a rat?

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When I got one from a rat, I instantly thought of Dark Souls Humanity farming

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I just spawn these in. Absolutely stupid that there is no way to reliably get these without engaging in multiplayer. Not to mention that summoning for bosses is pretty much a dead activity until you hit the later game/SL 120/150.

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Worst takes I've ever seen in my life are all on this page

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if you want those you will need to play pvp and stop complaining

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From loves their rat ranch memes don't they

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I wish you could trade these in multiplayer.

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Clearly all those who tell off offline players are pvp masters or their PS+ gets paid by mom and dad, lmao. This item should be avaiable for ANYONE who wants to stay clear from an online mode which doesn't fit an offline openworld. Farming rats for hours just to obtain 2 rune arcs is stupid af. I hope a future dlc will make them as farmable as humanities in the abyss area from DK1.

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Kinda weird that these are described as 'shards of the shattered Elden Ring' when you think about the fake that they're theoretically infinite in number, given they drop from rats.. Elden Ring confirmed for violating laws of conservation.

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