Elden Ring Endings: All 6, and What Locks You Out

Elden Ring's ending is not a dialogue choice you make after the credits roll into view. Five of the six are the tail end of a questline you had to start hours earlier, in a region you may already have left behind.

The one that asks nothing of you is Age of Fracture. Every other ending on the list demands its own side quest first — that is the wiki's own summary of the split.

So here is the dependency map: what each of the six needs, where the item lives, and the two actions that quietly remove options from your slate.

Six endings, three trophies

Elden Ring lists six endings. It does not hand out six ending achievements. Four of them share one.

The Elden Lord trophy is awarded for "Mend the Elden Ring" or for using any one of the three Mending Runes, so all four of those endings collapse into a single unlock. That matters more than it sounds: the ending half of the trophy list costs three journeys, not six.

The choice happens at one statue, and you can walk away from it

After the final boss you are returned to a room holding Marika's statue with a Site of Grace beside it. Interacting with the statue offers "Mend the Elden Ring" plus a line for each Mending Rune you are currently carrying. If Ranni's questline is complete, her blue summon sign is also there, and touching that runs Age of the Stars instead.

The Grace is the important part. It lets you teleport out and come back later, which means arriving at the statue is not a point of no return — you can go finish a questline and return to a wider menu. The genuine commitment is selecting an option, because that is also what starts New Game Plus. After the credits you can pick "Begin Journey 2" straight away, or return later to the Roundtable Hold Grace to do it.

The exception is the Frenzied Flame, and it is a hard one. If you are carrying it, Ranni's sign does not appear at all, and touching Marika's statue triggers Lord of Frenzied Flame automatically with no menu of alternatives.

The three Mending Runes, and where each one comes from

Three of the four Elden Lord endings need a specific key item in your inventory before you touch the statue. Each one is the payout of a different NPC questline, and they finish in three different places.

Read that last row again. Leyndell, Ashen Capital is the ash-buried version of the capital that only exists once Maliketh is dead and the Erdtree has burned. Of the six endings on this page, Age of Order is the one whose item cannot be obtained early — Goldmask's corpse is not there before the burn. You can hold the other two runes for as long as you like, but the Perfect Order rune is collected on the way to the final boss, not before it.

Fia's chain also carries a dependency on somebody else's quest. Her line runs through the Roundtable Hold — Rogier's Black Knifeprint, then returning the Weathered Dagger to D, Hunter of the Dead once the Radahn Festival has been triggered — and then down to Deeproot Depths, where you defeat Fia's Champions, rest at the Grace, and pick "No, I want to be held." The step after that is the awkward one: you need the Cursemark of Death from the top of the Divine Tower of Liurnia, and reaching that tower means using the Carian Inverted Statue on the pedestal in the Carian Study Hall. That statue is a Ranni reward. Age of the Duskborn therefore requires you to have pushed Ranni's questline at least as far as handing over the Fingerslayer Blade, even though you are not taking her ending.

Hand Fia the Cursemark, reload, interact with her sleeping body to enter the Deathbed Dream, kill Lichdragon Fortissax, and the rune is on her corpse.

Age of Order needs a 37-Intelligence incantation

Goldmask's questline runs Altus Plateau to Mountaintops, and the step in the middle is gated behind a spell with a stat requirement rather than behind a place or a boss.

You find Goldmask at the end of the broken Forest-Spanning Greatbridge, get his location out of Corhyn near the Altus Highway Junction, and meet the pair again near the Leyndell colosseum. The step that moves the quest on is casting Law of Regression in front of the Radagon statue past the lift near Erdtree Sanctuary, which reveals that Radagon is Marika. Then you talk to Goldmask, then to Corhyn, and both relocate to the bridge south of Stargazer's Ruins in the Mountaintops of the Giants.

Law of Regression is filed as an incantation, but its numbers do not behave like one:

The Sacred Seal's own requirements do not have to be met to cast it, so a Faith build does not need Faith here — it needs 37 Intelligence, which on a pure Faith character is a respec. There is also a permanent failure state worth knowing: if both Corhyn and Miriel die before either has been given the Golden Order Principia, the spell becomes unavailable for the rest of that Journey. If one of them dies after receiving the book, the Twin Maiden Husks will still sell it for the same price once you turn in that tutor's Bell Bearing.

The rune itself is forgiving about Corhyn's fate — the wiki notes it can be obtained regardless of what happens to him.

The Fell Curse needs five Seedbed Curses out of six sources

Blessing of Despair is a fetch quest with a hard count. The Dung Eater wants five Seedbed Curses used on his corpse, and the wiki's Seedbed Curse page lists six places to get them — so exactly one of the six is skippable, and no more than one.

Two of those are inside Elphael, which is a long detour, and one of them only appears if you have already run most of the Dung Eater's chain: buy Rya's Necklace from Blackguard Big Boggart for 1,000 runes and buy at least one Boiled Prawn, take the Sewer-Gaol Key from the Dung Eater in Roundtable Hold once you have a single Seedbed Curse on you, free him from his cell below the Underground Roadside Grace, then talk to Boggart at the outer moat and select "About the Dung Eater." Reload, and Boggart is dying — his body holds a Seedbed Curse. The Dung Eater invades shortly after and drops the Sword of Milos.

With all five in hand, return to his cell, choose "Use the Seedbed Curse," and take the Mending Rune of the Fell Curse off his body. Reload once more for the Omen Set.

Age of the Stars is the longest of the four questlines

Counted off the wiki's own questline pages, Ranni's chain runs eleven stages before the ending itself, against Fia's seven, the Dung Eater's nine and Goldmask's six. It drags you across Limgrave, Liurnia and Caelid and down into the Eternal Cities beneath them, and it puts five bosses in your path: Royal Knight Loretta, Starscourge Radahn, the Baleful Shadow, Rennala and Astel. The short version, in order:

1. Church of Elleh (optional) — meet "Renna the Witch" after riding Torrent and resting; she hands over the Spirit Calling Bell and Lone Wolf Ashes. Skipping this costs you nothing but runes, since the Twin Maiden Husks sell both.
2. Caria Manor — beat Royal Knight Loretta to open the path to the Three Sisters.
3. Ranni's Rise — agree to be her vassal, speak to the projections of Iji, Blaidd and Seluvis downstairs, then return to Ranni.
4. Caelid — kill Starscourge Radahn to resume the movement of the stars.
5. Nokron, Eternal City — enter via the Starfall Crater in east Limgrave and take the Fingerslayer Blade from the chest northeast of the Night's Sacred Ground Grace.
6. Three Sisters — give Ranni the blade for the Carian Inverted Statue, then take the sending gate at the now-unsealed Renna's Rise.
7. Ainsel River Main — grab Miniature Ranni, rest, and use "Talk to miniature Ranni" three times.
8. Nokstella — beat the Baleful Shadow past the Nokstella Waterfall Basin Grace for the Discarded Palace Key.
9. Raya Lucaria — beat Rennala and open the chest behind her for the Dark Moon Ring.
10. Lake of Rot — ride the Grand Cloister coffin, beat Astel, take the lift. The lift stays locked without the Dark Moon Ring.
11. Cathedral of Manus Celes — descend the tunnel by the altar, trigger the cutscene, speak to her again, and receive the Dark Moon Greatsword.

Two traps sit in that chain. Administering Seluvis's Amber Draught to the sleeping Ranni stalls her questline — that one is recoverable, by taking Celestial Dew to the Church of Vows for absolution. Handing over the Fingerslayer Blade permanently ends Seluvis's and Pidia's questlines, and so does the Amber Draught. Neither of those blocks Age of the Stars itself, but if you care about Seluvis's puppets, do that content first.

The Frenzied Flame overwrites your whole ending slate

The Three Fingers sit at the very bottom of the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds, in the Frenzied Flame Proscription, behind an illusory wall at the back of the Cathedral of the Forsaken. Two conditions gate them: the area is sealed until Morgott, the Omen King is defeated, and the door itself only opens if you remove every piece of equipped armor.

Inheriting the flame does three things at once:

• It locks out all five other endings until and unless you undo it. Ranni's summon sign will not spawn beside the statue, and the statue itself skips straight to Lord of Frenzied Flame.
• Melina leaves permanently, vowing to kill you. You can still burn the Erdtree without her, using the Fingers' flame as kindling at the Forge of the Giants — the Cardinal Sin.
• It does not require you to have kept Melina. You can meet the Three Fingers after she has already burned the Erdtree for you, so this is not strictly a mid-game decision.

If you want the flame and the extra scene, note that the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending carries a bonus cutscene when Melina was not sacrificed as a maiden — she turns up in the ash to make good on the threat. Sacrifice her and that cutscene simply does not play.

Miquella's Needle is the undo, and it is one-way

You can take the Frenzied Flame and still finish on a different ending, but the escape route is deep in the endgame and it closes behind you.

Miquella's Needle is obtained by interacting with Malenia's Scarlet Aeonia flower near the Malenia, Goddess of Rot Grace in Elphael — which means killing Malenia — and only while you are holding the Unalloyed Gold Needle from Millicent's questline. If the flower is not there, rest at a Grace to reload the area.

It can then be used in exactly one place: inside Dragonlord Placidusax's arena in Crumbling Farum Azula. Using it dispels the flame, and the Three Fingers will not clasp you again. The burn marks stay on your character, though the frenzied eye variation is removed, and Rennala can clear the marks in character customization if you want them gone.

So the full undo costs you two optional bosses — Malenia and Placidusax — plus Millicent's questline, and it permanently forfeits Lord of Frenzied Flame for that Journey.

What each choice actually locks

Five actions on this page change what is still available to you. Everything else is order of operations.

Everything else is a matter of order and patience. Arriving at the statue with two Mending Runes in your bag and Ranni's sign glowing next to it is a completely legal state — you simply pick one and the others go unused.

Planning three journeys instead of six

Because the four Elden Lord endings share a trophy, a clean plan looks like this:

• Journey 1 — collect all three Mending Runes if you want the questline content and the items, complete Ranni's chain, and finish on Age of the Stars. Ranni's chain is the one with eleven ordered steps and a hard block from the Frenzied Flame, so it is the one worth building a whole run around.
• Journey 2 — go for Lord of Frenzied Flame. Its requirements are Morgott dead, the illusory wall at the back of the Cathedral of the Forsaken, and every armor slot empty.
• Journey 3 — finish on any of the four statue options for Elden Lord. "Mend the Elden Ring" with no rune at all is enough.

If you only want one playthrough to see the most content, take Journey 1's shape: the Ranni chain drags in Radahn, Nokron, Astel and Rennala's chest, and Fia's chain needs the Carian Inverted Statue that Ranni gives you anyway.

Quick Action Checklist

• Decide whether you want the Frenzied Flame before you go looking for it. The Proscription stays sealed until Morgott dies, and taking the flame removes the other five endings until you spend Malenia and Placidusax on the undo.
• Do not treat the statue as a wall. The Grace beside Fractured Marika lets you leave and come back with more options.
• Push Ranni to the Fingerslayer Blade even on a Duskborn run — the Carian Inverted Statue she gives you is what opens the Divine Tower of Liurnia for Fia's Cursemark of Death.
• Buy Law of Regression while both sellers are alive. Give the Golden Order Principia to Corhyn or Miriel; if both die before either gets the book, Age of Order's key step is gone for that Journey.
• Collect Seedbed Curses as you pass them. Five are needed, six are listed, and two of the six are inside Elphael.
• Expect to collect Goldmask's rune late. It sits in Leyndell, Ashen Capital, which does not exist until Maliketh is dead.
• Budget three journeys for the ending trophies, not six. Elden Lord covers all four statue endings.