Once you’ve created a character, chosen a class, and chosen a keepsake, follow the normal first steps of the game: meet Melina to get Torrent as well as the ability to level up, then talk to the witch who appears in the church . of Elleh. She’ll send you to Marika’s Third Church, where the Flask of Marvelous Physics awaits: head there immediately, because that’s exactly where this little trick begins.
Marika’s Third Church is located to the far east of the Grace site where you first spoke with Melina. In the ruin itself, you will find the useful object promised by the witch and a site of thanksgiving. From there, take the exit on the left side of the ruins, which leads to a shallow pool full of brush. There you will find a portal that you will examine and activate.
This portal teleports you to Greyroll’s Dragon Mound, an area that’s supposed to be explored much later in the game. Turn around first, enter the building, and activate the Site of Grace inside. Then head back out into the open, up Torrent, and roll to the left – you don’t want to deal with the beastly guardian at this point. If you look straight ahead you will surely notice the tower in the distance. This is your next destination. Roll straight towards him, dodging enemies along the way.
You’ll eventually come to a precipice, which you can avoid by going down the ramp to the left – watch out: enemies are hiding here and the ground is full of exploding poisonous mushrooms – or by carefully jumping over the roots protruding from the cliff . All you have to do is cross the bridge.
In front of the tower, you will find a site of grace, which you must activate. The only path leads along a cliff to a ravine. It’s the unlimited power source you’ve been looking for. As you walk down this path, a rock magically appears behind you. Like its counterpart The Raiders of the Lost Ark, it has only one purpose: to flatten you. Unlike Hollywood characters, however, you’re smart enough to dodge the rolling boulder to the side (just practice the timing if you don’t get it right away).
Once the boulder falls into the ravine, you’ll notice a few things: The boulder has a health bar that drops to zero when it falls – so it counts as an enemy. Additionally, your rune account balance has increased by almost 2,000 runes because you “defeated” this enemy while dodging. For the early stages of the game, this is an incredible amount of runes – you will need to kill half an army of soldiers or two trolls for this. Here you get it just for dodging that magic rock. And you can do it again and again!
Gallop back up the path to Grace’s site, rest and descend. Again the boulder will appear, again you dodge it and pocket just under 2000 runes for it. Yeah, that’s not really exciting. But these are guaranteed runes that will not be taken from you again. Even if the rock grabs you and kills you, you will pick up the dropped runes without any danger. Invest some time and you’ll level up a lot and have enough runes to buy some solid gear.
Combine this method of collecting runes with early items like the Meteor Staff and you have a perfect start to the game. From there, even a game as difficult as Ring of Elden becomes a relaxing adventure.
If you are looking for more Ring of Elden advice, see our Ring of Elden guide and step by step.
Written by Marco Wutz on behalf of GLHF.
