How to Level Up in Elden Ring

How to Level Up in Elden Ring: A Comprehensive Guide

Leveling up in Elden Ring is not only crucial for your survival but also for enhancing your gameplay experience. Like other Soulsborne games, leveling up in Elden Ring revolves around the accumulation of runes, the primary currency for both purchasing items and enhancing your stats. However, the process can be somewhat daunting for new players, given the vast open world and the intricacies of its leveling mechanics. This guide will cover everything you need to know about how to level up in Elden Ring, from where to start to how to optimize your rune usage.

The Basics of Leveling Up

In Elden Ring, players accumulate runes through combat, exploration, and defeating bosses. These Elden Ring Runes runes serve two primary purposes:

 1.Currency for purchases – Buy items from merchants, upgrade weapons, or use consumables.

 2.Experience points for leveling up – Spend runes at specific locations to increase your character's stats.

Unlike some RPGs where you can level up anywhere, Elden Ring requires players to visit specific places to increase their attributes. Initially, these locations will not be available, but after progressing a bit into the game, you'll unlock the ability to level up.

Unlocking the Ability to Level Up

At the start of the game, leveling up isn't available. You first need to unlock the feature by meeting a specific NPC, Melina.

1. Reach the Site of Grace in Limgrave

After defeating or avoiding the Tree Sentinel in the starting area, head towards the Church of Elleh and find the nearby Sites of Grace. These are glowing golden checkpoints that serve as resting spots, similar to bonfires in previous Souls titles. Upon interacting with a few of these Sites of Grace, you will trigger a cutscene where Melina will appear.

2. Meet Melina

Melina is a key NPC who will offer to act as your maiden. In the lore of Elden Ring, having a maiden is necessary for using runes to level up. Melina provides you with the ability to spend runes at any Site of Grace after meeting her.

3. Obtain the Spectral Steed Whistle

Melina will also give you the Spectral Steed Whistle, allowing you to summon Torrent, your loyal mount. This is incredibly useful for traversing the vast world of the Lands Between and collecting more runes.

How to Level Up

After unlocking the ability to level up, you can now spend runes at any Site of Grace. Here's how you do it:

 1.Rest at a Site of Grace: Interact with the Site of Grace and select the “Level Up” option.

 2.Allocate Runes to Stats: The leveling menu shows your current stats and how many runes are required for the next level. You can choose which attribute to improve based on your playstyle.

 3.Confirm the Stat Increase: Once you've allocated your runes to a specific stat, confirm your choice. The number of runes required increases with each level, so you'll need more runes as you continue leveling up.

Attributes: Where to Invest Your Runes

Choosing where to allocate your runes can dramatically affect your build and playstyle. Elden Ring offers a wide variety of stats, and each one benefits different types of characters. Here's a breakdown of each attribute:

 1.Vigor: Increases your health points (HP). If you're finding yourself dying too easily, investing in Vigor can give you more room for error in combat.

 2.Mind: Boosts your Focus Points (FP), which are essential for spellcasting and using weapon skills. If you're planning on using sorceries, incantations, or weapon arts, Mind is crucial.

 3.Endurance: Raises your stamina, necessary for attacking, dodging, blocking, and sprinting. It also increases your equipment load, allowing you to wear heavier armor without becoming overburdened.

 4.Strength: Determines the effectiveness of heavy weapons and allows you to wield weapons that require high strength. If you're going for a heavy-hitting melee build, Strength is important.

 5.Dexterity: Improves the scaling of lighter weapons like katanas and daggers, and also speeds up spell casting time for certain spells. Dexterity builds tend to focus on quick, precise attacks and faster casting.

 6.Intelligence: Required for casting sorceries. If you're planning on being a sorcerer, Intelligence will be one of your most important stats.

 7.Faith: Boosts the power of incantations. Faith builds are great for those who want to heal, cast buffs, or deal damage through lightning, fire, and holy spells.

 8.Arcane: Governs item discovery and certain incantations. It's a niche stat but important for builds that rely on bleed effects or want to find rare items more easily.

Rune Farming Tips

To efficiently level up, you'll need a lot of runes, especially as you progress deeper into the game. Here are some tips on how to farm runes effectively:

1. Explore Rune-Rich Areas

Certain areas in Elden Ring offer enemies that drop a significant number of runes. For example, the region around Stormveil Castle is known for enemies that give decent rune rewards.

2. Defeat Bosses

Boss fights are a reliable source of runes. Major bosses like Godrick the Grafted will reward you with thousands of runes upon defeat. You can also revisit certain areas after resting at a Site of Grace to farm bosses and mini-bosses repeatedly.

3. Use Golden Rune Items

During your journey, you'll come across Golden Runes, consumable items that grant a fixed amount of runes. Save these for when you need just a few more runes to level up instead of using them immediately.

4. Rune-Boosting Talismans

Equip talismans like the Gold Scarab, which boosts rune acquisition from defeated enemies. Combine this with rune-rich areas for efficient farming.

5. Rune Arcs

If you find Rune Arcs, these items can activate your equipped Great Rune for a powerful temporary buff. When paired with a Great Rune that increases rune acquisition, these can enhance farming sessions.

Optimizing Your Build

To maximize your effectiveness in combat, it's important to think carefully about how you allocate your runes. While it buy Elden Ring Items can be tempting to spread them out across multiple stats, focusing on a specific build type (e.g., a Strength or Intelligence build) can provide greater benefits early on. Here are some example builds:

1. Strength Build

Prioritize Vigor, Endurance, and Strength. This build excels in dealing massive melee damage and tanking hits.

2. Dexterity Build

Focus on Dexterity, Vigor, and Endurance. Dexterity builds are nimble and focus on fast, critical strikes with lighter weapons.

3. Sorcerer Build

Pour runes into Intelligence, Mind, and Vigor. This build revolves around ranged spell attacks, using sorceries to keep enemies at a distance.

Leveling up in Elden Ring is a crucial aspect of mastering the game and overcoming its many challenges. By understanding how to unlock the ability to level up, knowing where to invest your runes, and finding efficient ways to farm them, you'll be better equipped to tackle the dangers of the Lands Between. Whether you prefer the heavy-hitting brute force of a Strength build or the strategic magic of a sorcerer, careful planning and rune management will lead you to victory in this unforgiving world.