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When players have discovered efficient leveling routes to supercharge their character’s growth in Elden Ring, you better believe people will try them. One of the best risk-to-reward ratios in the game is the Bird Farm technique, named after the creatures you can kill for Runes. The Bird Farm in Elden Ring is far off the beaten path depending on how early you start, but here’s how to get there for easy Runes!
Bird Up: Where is the Bird Farm and How to Harvest Runes in Elden Ring
The Bird Farm is in Mohgwyn Palace in Elden Ring, first accessible by using Varre’s Pureblood Knight’s Medal. Using this Medal transports you just north of a vantage point next to the Palace Approach Ledge-Road Site of Grace. Just hop onto Torrent and ride south hugging the right side of the walls you reach until you go up a ramping path past some Albinaurics.
The Site of Grace overlooks a large dark scarlet pool with a diseased-looking giant bird. From the nearby cliff, fire an arrow or other projectile at the bird, and keep to the left edge as you do. It’ll kite the bird toward the cliff where it just walks off to its death, giving you 11038 Runes in the process. You can do this indefinitely, costing you only one arrow each time.
Aim carefully, as bows have a bit of bullet drop, so aim a bit above the bird to hit it in one shot each time. Use the Site of Grace to respawn it, but if you’re looking for more Runes per spawn, there is an absolute legion of Albinaurics nearby that you can farm. I recommend first investing a few levels gained by farming the Bird, but this is an excellent option potentially yielding hundreds of thousands of Runes in a short amount of time!
How to Reach the Nest
Backing up a touch, if you’ve not gotten the Pureblood Knight’s Medal, you’ll want to follow our quest guide on Varre. He’s the first character you encounter after you reach the First Step Site of Grace. After exhausting his dialogue and defeating Godrick the Grafted, you’ll later meet him at the Rose Church in Liurnia.
Speak to Varre here to get a set of five Festering Bloody Fingers, of which you only need to use three. I recommend trying all five, as they’re low-stakes PvP invasions and can be fun! But once you either win or lose each encounter (it doesn’t matter which) you can return to Varre to get the Lord of Blood’s Favor. You must then drench this in the blood of a Maiden.
Blood of the Church Doves
You can do this by collecting off a Maiden corpse at the Church of Inhibition in northeast Liurnia or at the Chapel of Anticipation west of Stormveil Castle. The latter is arguably the better option, reachable once you activate the portal that the Four Belfries. Each Belfry has a portal, so you’ll need to go up to the first one on your right and use an Imbued Sword Key to open it. Plus, it gets you a grudge match with the Grafted Scion, so why wouldn’t you try this route?
However, you can reach the Church of Inhibition early through some clever Torrent-mounted platforming on the left side of the Minor Erdtree south of Frenzied Flame Village. I don’t recommend this route to early players as they’re often not nearly equipped enough to handle the Madness hurled at you. But for the sake of demonstration, I took a newly-created character on this route, riding Torrent along the way and blocking line-of-sight from the flaring Madness Tower.
Either way, once you soak your Lord of Blood’s Favor in either of these locations, bring it back to Varre at Rose Church. First, he’ll give you a permanently reusable Bloody Finger. However, if you speak to him again, you’ll get the Pureblood Knight’s Medal. Use this from your inventory to get to Mohgwyn Palace, and go south like a Canada goose in winter to reach the Bird Farm for Runes in Elden Ring!
