Elden Ring player loses 10 million runes to fall damage after grinding for 2 days

Elden Ring
(Image credit: FromSoftware Inc.)

One particularly daring Elden Ring player managed to lose 10 million runes in one fell swoop after two full days of grinding thanks to the game’s most unforgiving foe - gravity.

As GamesRadar+ reports, this tragic tale was documented in its entirety over on the Elden Ring subreddit, where Reddit user DementedEnjoyer announced that they had “wasted nearly an entire day of my life” grinding for four million runes with a level eight character (seemingly by wiping out the entire population of Giant Crows at Mohgwyn Palace). It was at this point that they asked the internet what they should do with the runes, and they settled on a monstrously difficult challenge - complete the rest of the game using only a bow, and without spending any of the runes to level up until they beat the final boss. 

It wasn’t just four million runes on the line, though - before continuing on their adventure through the Lands Between, DementedEnjoyer continued to do irreparable damage to the Giant Crow population, and ended up with a tidy 10 million runes. For reference, that would have been enough to take their Tarnished character to level 166.

UPDATE POST from the tarnished who wasted an entire day farming 4 mil runes at lvl 8 from r/Eldenring

Even if you’ve not played Elden Ring before, I’m sure you’ll be aware that FromSoftware’s action-RPG is full of deadly enemies and brutal bosses, and you’d think that there’d be a very strong chance that DementedEnjoyer would end up losing their hard-earned runes to one of those, but no. In a painful (but hilarious) final update, they shared a clip of them trying their very best to navigate safely down a steep drop to reclaim their runes (which had already been dropped, for some reason), and slipping, causing them to lose everything. It hurts to watch.

FINAL UPDATE from the tarnished who wasted two days farming 10 million runes on a lvl 8 character and refused to level up until he beat the final boss from r/Eldenring

Needless to say, in that moment, the challenge came to a swift end, and based on the lack of updates since, it seems that DementedEnjoyer has decided against giving it another go, and I can’t say I blame them.

If you’ve had your fill of exploring the Lands Between, you can take a look at our list of the best open-world games on PC to find something new to immerse yourself in. You can also check out our selection of the best PS5 games available now.

TOPICS
Catherine Lewis
News Writer, TechRadar Gaming

Catherine is a News Writer for TechRadar Gaming. Armed with a journalism degree from The University of Sheffield, she was sucked into the games media industry after spending far too much time on her university newspaper writing about Pokémon and cool indie games, and realising that was a very cool job, actually. She previously spent 19 months working at GAMINGbible as a full-time journalist. She loves all things Nintendo, and will never stop talking about Xenoblade Chronicles. 

Read more
Three Nightfarers stand outside the Nightlord's boss door in Elden Ring Nightreign
Elden Ring Nightreign has the makings of a seriously fun multiplayer game if FromSoftware can fix its performance issues
A screenshot from The First Berserker: Khazan
I got absolutely destroyed by The First Berserker: Khazan’s bosses for hours on end and loved every second of it
Fighting a large monster in Eternal Strands.
Eternal Strands review: magic monster hunting
Zero draws his sword
Phantom Blade Zero switches up the soulslike formula by introducing four difficulty options, will also feature 20 hours of additional side content on top of its 30 hour story
Elden Ring: Nightreign
Elden Ring Nightreign is arriving in May and you can pre-order it now
A screenshot of the party members from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 blends Western gaming sensibilities with JRPG panache in 2025’s weirdest role-playing game
Latest in Consoles & PC
Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con up-close from app store
Nintendo's new app gave us another look at the Switch 2, and there's something different with the Joy-Con
Nintendo Music teaser art
Nintendo Music expands its library with songs from Kirby and the Forgotten Land and Tetris
Image of Naoe in AC Shadows
Assassin's Creed Shadows is hands-down one of the most beautiful PC ports I've ever seen
Image of AC Shadows cover art & Steam Deck
It's not perfect, but Assassin's Creed Shadows' performance is impressive - it runs smoothly on the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally
Steam Deck OLED in limited edition white color
With a single update SteamOS could turbocharge handheld PCs – here's how
Samus Aran leaping through space
Metroid Prime 4 tipped to be at the heart of April's Nintendo Switch 2 deep-dive
Latest in News
Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con up-close from app store
Nintendo's new app gave us another look at the Switch 2, and there's something different with the Joy-Con
cheap Nintendo Switch game deals sales
Nintendo didn't anticipate that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was 'going to be the juggernaut' for the Nintendo Switch when it was ported to the console, according to former employees
Three angles of the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch M4 laptop above a desk
Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M4) review roundup – should you buy Apple's new lightweight laptop?
Witchbrook
Witchbrook, the life-sim I've been waiting years for, finally has a release window and it's sooner than you think
Amazon Echo Smart Speaker
Amazon is experimenting with renaming Echo speakers to Alexa speakers, and it's about time
Shigeru Miyamoto presents Nintendo Today app
Nintendo Today smartphone app is out now on iOS and Android devices – and here's what it does