Elden Ring Max Level – How many runes do you need?

Elden Ring is a hugely challenging game, and you’ll certainly require a lot of runes on your journey through the Lands Between. After getting pulverised time after time, we’ve probably all longed for a bit of additional power to make life easier and the best way of doing this is scooping as many runes and possible and levelling up.

Like all RPGs, Elden Ring has a level cap where your Tarnished character will hit the peak of their powers so if you are wondering about the Elden Ring max level, look no further.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Elden Ring max level, and confirmation of how many runes are needed to reach the max level in Elden Ring.

What is the max level in Elden Ring?

If you’re aiming to max out your character, then you need to be in it for the long haul.

The max level in Elden Ring is level 713.

This is far, far beyond the recommended level to complete the game, and is realistically only going to be possible if you continue to play the game after beating it.

Why 713? Well, there are 8 stats that can all be increased to 99 points (Vigor, Mind, Endurance, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Faith, and Arcane). If you got one point per stat, this would require 784 levels (each stat starts on at least 1 even if you are a Wretch).

However, the number is lower because certain stats will increase by more than 1 depending on which class you selected at the start of the game. Once you’ve hit the ‘soft cap’ for the main stats of your class, then you’ll only be able to increase a stat by 1 point per level. The whole process takes precisely 713 levels.

How many runes are needed to hit the Elden Ring max level?

To reach the Elden Ring max level, the actual number of runes required is a whopping 1,692,566,842 runes!

Yes, that’s nearly 1.7 billion runes.

To put this into context, the final level up alone, between level 712 and level 713, will require just under 9 million runes.

If you are truly looking to do this legitimately without somehow hacking the game, then I would advise you to question whether you are actually prepared to put in the hundreds of hours required (seriously, it’s estimated to take 500+ hours). Is there really nothing better to do with your time? If not, feel free to continue.

How to farm runes to reach max level

There are plenty of ways to farm runes in Elden Ring, such as the “ball farm” near Lenne’s Rise and or the Mohgwyn’s Palace rune farm tactic, but truthfully none of the typical methods will even scratch the surface of what is required to hit the maximum level of 713. Here are a couple of tips to hit the Elden Ring max level.

Repeatedly complete the game for R  une bonuses

When you complete the game and commence a New Game+, the difficulty of Elden Ring will ramp up, but so will the number of runes rewarded by each enemy and boss. This is the only realistic way to reach the magic total of nearly 1.7 billion runes. You do carry over the vast majority of things for a New Game+, but not everything.

If you complete the game once and commence Journey 2, the rune rewards will significantly increase – this depends on the enemy and is somewhere between 200% and 550%. Bonuses tend to be higher for earlier game enemies and lower for late game enemies.

These rewards continue to increase the more times you complete the game, but are not quite as drastic as the first New Game+ bonus. These increases stop after completing the game eight times. To be clear, anything after your eighth Journey will give the same number of runes.

For reference, Melania will award around 1.2 million runes if you defeat her in Journey 8. Whilst that sounds like a nice figure, it will still not even be close to a level up when you are at the business end of a max level challenge, perhaps putting into context the required time of this endeavour.

Equip the Golden Scarab Talisman and use Gold-Pickled Fowl Foot

Along with the increased rune rewards, it’s definitely essential to have the Golden Scarab Talisman.

This awards a 20% bonus to the runes obtained, and can be acquired by defeating two Cleanrot Knights in the Abandoned Cave in central Caelid (map location above). The closest Site of Grace is Smoldering Wall. Equip this at all times to bump up your runes.

Furthermore, you are advised to craft some Gold-Picked Fowl Foot, which also grant a stackable 30% bonus to your runes. This bonus lasts three minutes, so you should use it during encounters with stronger enemies and bosses when you have the upper hand.

These items can be bought from Patches for 600 runes or crafted after obtaining the Missionary’s Cookbook [2] with 3 Rowa Fruit, 1 Four-Toed Foul Foot and 1 Gold Firefly.

How does this affect the Elden Ring Colosseum?

Elden Ring’s 1.08 update introduced an online PVP Colosseum, where players from across the globe can tackle each other in team, individual or free-for-all matches. The characters used and their stats are indeed the same ones used during your game, so there is no level cap to online play.

One potential perk of the countless hours grinding to max level could be the feeling of superiority when dispatching other players easily, right?

Well, maybe not. There isn’t an exact ranking system in place but the skirmishes appear to be matched up roughly based on level and item upgrades. Therefore if you have hit max level, you are likely to come up against someone who is there or thereabouts themselves.

Having said that, plenty of people have commented that they have fought people at a wildly different level and if you are on max level yourself with maximum stats of 99 for everything, at least you know it’s impossible to fight anyone with better stats than you!

Whew. That’s everything we’ve got on the Elden Ring max level, covering the number of runes needed to hit level 713. If you are actually undertaking such a task, we salute you. Good luck.