Elden Ring: How to find and use Rune Arcs

Like everything else developed by FromSoftware, Elden Ring is painfully difficult. It’ll take you hundreds of hours to discover everything it has to offer, and unless you’re a grizzled veteran, you’ll likely hit the “Game Over” screen thousands of times before your journey in the Lands Between comes to an end.

One way to help even the odds is by using Rune Arcs — a consumable item that lets you access Great Runes. You’ll first need to unlock Great Runes to start properly using Rune Arcs, but once that’s taken care of, you’ll notice a big boost in your abilities.

That all might sound a bit confusing, but the process by which Rune Arcs works is surprisingly simple. Best of all, you can find them in a variety of locations, making it easy to fill your inventory and unlock the abilities of your preferred Great Rune.

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If you’re looking to survive the unforgiving Lands Between, here’s a look at how to find and use Rune Arcs in Elden Ring.

What are Rune Arcs in Elden Ring

Even if you’ve just started playing Elden Ring, you’ve probably found a handful of these mysterious items and are confused as to what they do. Rune Arcs in Elden Ring allow you to utilize your equipped Great Rune. If you don’t have one equipped (or haven’t unlocked one yet), cracking a Rune Arc increases your HP slightly.

For you Dark Souls 3 fans, Rune Arcs are similar to Embers. They also work like Humanity from the first Dark Souls. For the remainder of this article, we’ll refer to cracking a Rune Arc as being “runed” and not having one cracked as being “unruned.”

In the image above, you can see what your HP, FP, and Stamina meters look like when you’re runed. When you crack a Rune Arc in Elden Ring, you’ll see the Great Rune icon glowing next to your HP. When unruned, that icon appears dull. You’ll lose your Great Rune ability if you die, requiring you to use another Rune Arc to