How to retrieve your lost Runes from a boss fight in Elden Ring

Dying in Elden Ring is inevitable. Unless you’re a world-class speed runner who has mastered every square inch of the Lands Between, then you will perish once or twice. For most of us, the death counter will be in the triple digits within the first few hours of the game. This means you will be chasing after your lost Runes quite a bit.

This is usually an uneventful task, as your Runes can be picked up with ease if you sprint past the enemy who killed you in your last life. However, this process gets substantially more difficult if you die and lose your Runes in a boss arena.

A boss arena is defined as the area behind the yellow mist in Elden Ring. The game forces you to “traverse the mist” and doesn’t allow you a way out aside from beating the boss in the arena or perishing at their hand. However, you can use a sneaky trick to leave the boss arena after you retrieve your lost Runes.

Getting your Lost Runes back from a boss in Elden Ring

Whenever you head into a boss fight in Elden Ring, it’s usually wise to try and spend as many of your Runes as possible beforehand. This allows you some freedom when battling the boss. You’re not constantly worried about getting your Runes back and you can instead put all of your focus on the boss itself.

If that’s not an option, though, and you die when fighting a boss, you can actually leave the fight immediately after retrieving your Runes. To do this, you just need to collect the Runes, go to the main menu and then proceed to exit out of the game. This will return you to the main menu, where you can then start your Elden Ring save back up.

When the game starts again, you’ll find yourself at the foot of the yellow mist before the boss arena you were just inside. You’ll also have all of your Runes that you collected before exiting. It’s unclear if this is an intended mechanic, but developers FromSoftware have yet to comment on it or apply a patch to potentially fix this exploit.

For the time being, you can get your lost Runes back from a boss arena without any repercussion in Elden Ring. For more helpful content, check out Upcomer’s comprehensive Elden Ring guide hub.