How to upgrade Spirit Ash summons in Elden Ring

Your first few hours in Elden Ring will be centered on a couple of different things. One will be exploration, as the world of the Lands Between is larger than you can imagine. The other will likely be trying to upgrade your character and weapons. This is the first step into progressing in any RPG. The early part of Elden Ring might make it seem like you’re only able to upgrade weapons, which is a process in and of itself. However, eventually, you’re also able to upgrade your Spirit Ash summons in Elden ring as well.

Spirit Ashes are characters that you can call into battle to help in a fight. They’re particularly useful in boss battles and when you have a large mob around you. While you can’t call them in whenever you want, they’re a way to make Elden Ring a little bit easier. For this reason, they’re fairly difficult to find, but we’ve laid out locations to loot them in a previous guide.

Of course, this is even before they can be upgraded, which is a long and confusing process. You can see exactly what you need to do to upgrade your summons below.

Upgrading Spirit Ash summons in Elden Ring

The first step you need to take is to venture into Stormhill and find a location called Stormhill Shack. This is found northwest of Stormgate and is on the road to Stormveil Castle.

Inside of the shack, you’ll find a woman on the ground in red. Her name is Roderika and she tells you that she’s searching for her purpose in the Lands Between. If you keep the dialogue going, she’ll tell you to deliver a message inside Stormveil Castle. Once inside the castle, you need to defeat Margit, The Fell Omen and reach a Site of Grace called Rampart Tower.

At this Site of Grace, you need to find a pit of dead bodies with some dogs. Drop down into this pit, kill the dogs and then loot the bodies. One of the bodies will hold something called the Chrysalid’s Note. Return to Roderika and this note will convince her to go to the Roundtable Hold.

Now, you need to travel to the Roundtable. If you need to learn how to get back there, check out our previous guide. Roderika will be standing next to the fireplace. You can talk to her and she will say she’s still searching for a purpose. After she’s done talking, go into the other room and talk to Master Hewg, the blacksmith. Ask about Roderika and then return to her with Hewg’s message.

You need to keep going back and forth until Roderika says she will talk to Hewg about becoming his apprentice. Once this happens, leave the Roundtable Hold and then immediately fast travel back. Now, Roderika will be on the floor next to Hewg. She is now a Spirit Tuner and you can bring your Spirit Ash summons to upgrade to her.

At the menu to upgrade the summons, you’ll need some Runes and an item called Ghost Glovewort. These work exactly like Smithing Stones, where you need a higher number Glovewort in order to progress the upgrade of a Spirit Ash. You can find Gloveworts all over the world but they don’t all come in the same variety.

There are some called Great Ghost Gloveworts, which are used to upgrade Renowned Spirit Ashes. These are of higher value than regular ashes and usually cost more FP to summon.

That’s the entire process of upgrading Spirit Ash summons in Elden Ring. It takes some time, but it’s worth it to give your summons more power when they’re called in.

If you want to read about every and anything Elden Ring, check out Upcomer’s guide hub for the game.