Elden Ring features an enormous dragon that’s sure to give you a run for your money. It doesn’t really fight back, but if you get close to it, a bunch of smaller dragons will fight to defend it. 

This giant creature is the Elder Dragon Greyoll. It is a boss in Elden Ring, but it works differently from most. Its health is linked to all the smaller dragons. If you manage to beat the giant one, all the others will perish. If you defeat the smaller ones, the large one will be gone as well.

However, it might be very complicated to deal with a bunch of dragons at the same time. They are huge, powerful, and maybe too much work. If you want to know how to beat this boss fairly, it’s all about trying to lure a single dragon at a time and fighting them one by one.

However, if you want to know a trick that allows you to walk away with nearly 100 thousand runes without any effort, stick around.

This guide will show you where to find Elder Dragon Greyoll, what you get from defeating it, and finally, how to beat the giant dragon in Elden Ring without even having to worry about the smaller ones. Not only that, but we will also show you a trick that makes you walk away with far more runes than what you’d typically get from finishing off this foe.

How to Defeat Elder Dragon Greyoll

This majestic creature is located in Caelid, right outside of Fort Faroth. You’re going to take a long path to get there, but I assure you it will be worth it.

You can take this boss down as soon as you have a weapon that causes hemorrhage damage. This is important because hemorrhage deals damage based on a percentage of the target’s maximum hit points.

If you didn’t notice, Elder Dragon Greyoll has way too many hit points. It will take you way too much time to put it down if you intend to do it by normally attacking it with your weapons. Just look at its health bar while you strike its leg and wing; it doesn’t even seem to change.

Get a Proper Weapon

If you don’t know where to find one, go to the Stormhill Catacombs to the Northwest of the Church of Elleh. Make sure to get the horse before you go there and get the spirit calling bell just in case. Go through the dungeon and fight some of these little creatures until you find the weapon they wield. Since you are there, take this opportunity to defeat the Buriel Erdtree Watchdog. Once you find the Forked Hatchet, you are ready to go.

If by any chance you missed it, other weapons that cause Hemorrhage are the Reduvia, the Hookclaws, the Flail, the Uchigatana, and the Vulgar Militia Saw.

You will find the Reduvia by defeating Bloody Hunter Nerijus. The Hookclaws are in Stormveil Castle. There is a flail guarded by soldiers in Gatefron Ruins. Samurai players start with an Uchigatana, but you can also find one within the Deathtouched Carabombs. Finally, the Vulgar Militia Saw is near Liurnia Lake.  

If you have a spell or an Ash of War that makes your weapon cause hemorrhage, you can skip this step altogether.

Honestly, you don’t need a fancy weapon. Your enemy won’t fight back. All you need is the weapon to take a chunk of its maximum HP from time to time.

Where to Find Elder Dragon Greyoll

Alright, you got your weapon, and you can ride Torrent. What now?

Head to the Gatefront Ruins site of grace and take the road to the south. You are going all the way past the stone bridge. Take a left and keep moving. 

There’s a long way ahead of you, and it might be even more dangerous at night, but it’s relatively simple to get there. 

Stay on the path until you find the Third Church of Marika. There are a few important items in this place. Take them all and rest at the site of grace within the church. Once you’re ready to go, try to locate a portal behind the church. This will be a bit annoying and extremely dangerous at night, but this is the simplest way to get where we want.

Once you find the portal, interact with it to be transported to a much higher level area. You will be right in front of a fort-like structure in Greyoll’s Dragonbarrow. 

Don’t move once you’re transported. Be careful. The statue behind you is a boss. 

If for any reason you can’t open the doors in front of you to rest at the site of grace that is inside, you can always just try to run past the boss. Hop on Torrent’s back and dash to the opposite direction of the door.

It won’t take long for you to see a stone bridge with a dragon on it. Touch the site of grace near the bridge and get ready to run through the dragon.

Your objective here is to reach the other side and keep following the road until you get to Fort Faroth. There will be many dragons along the way, but they are fairly easy to avoid.

What you want right now is to find the Elder Dragon Greyoll and the site of grace that is near it just in case things go wrong for any reason.

With that out of the way, it’s time to deal with the giant beast.

Make Elder Dragon Greyoll Bleed

I know it sounds awful when I put it this way, but this is precisely what you need to do. Otherwise, you will spend hours hitting it, and the dragon won’t get even close to dead.

This is why we need a weapon that causes Hemorrhage on your target. When the hemorrhage effect is applied, the creature affected will take a considerable amount of damage based on its maximum HP, making this whole process much, much easier than you’d normally expect. It will take many hits to make it happen, but you will see a large chunk of its health disappearing once it works.

First, you need to find a safe place where you won’t aggro the smaller dragons. This would cause unnecessary issues, and we don’t want that. Go around the Elder Dragon Greyoll and find a place between its left leg and its left wing. You should be able to attack it from there without any issues.

Now get to work. Equip one of the weapons or enchant the one you have and start attacking it. Elder Dragon Greyoll might try to lift its wing or scream to call the others. However, if you are where I told you to be, no help will come. It’ll stay in place while you attack it, and there’s nothing it can do to stop you.

Eventually, you are going to single-handedly take down this gargantuan dragon and walk away with all the rewards it provides without having to fight a single dragon.

What Does Elder Dragon Greyoll Drop?

You might be able to get around 100 thousand runes from this boss battle. I’ve done it a couple of times, and the number of runes I got was slightly different each time. 

It seems that you get 10845 runes from the giant dragon and 5423 for each of the other dragons around. Once you finish off the Elder Dragon Greyoll, all the dragons protecting it perish as well. 

You get runes from them as well. You also get five Dragon Hearts, which is very useful to buy incantations for all of you using Faith-based characters.

If you want to make sure that you’ll get as many runes as possible from this endeavor, you better look for a Gold-Pickled Fowl Foot.

This is a four-toed foot of a fowl in a golden medicinal solution that boosts the number of runes obtained from defeating enemies. It doesn’t last forever, but it lasts for 3 minutes. This is long enough to make itself useful here. While its effect is active, the amount of runes players receive for defeating enemies increases by 30%. That bonus is applied to the runes received from all dragons, giant or regular sized. That’s a lot of runes, and it can cause an enormous power spike if you go for it when you’re still starting the game.

Where to Find a Gold-Pickled Fowl Foot

First, you need to know where to find Patches since he is the one who sells this item. Once you meet him, you can buy the Missionary’s Cookbook to craft your own Gold-Pickled Fowl Feet. If you haven’t met Patches yet, you should do that first. Don’t hurt him once he surrenders; you need him. Also, don’t try to open his chest once he becomes friendly. You can do that later, but this will send you to a different region, and it will delay your plans to farm the giant dragon considerably.

Although getting the recipe is somewhat simple, crafting is not. Making this item requires three Rowa Fruits, two Four-Toed Fowl Foot, and a Gold Firefly to be crafted. 

Rowa Fruit is an easy-to-find item. It’s abundant in Limgrave and frequently dropped by defeated nobles. Four-Toed Fowl Foot is an item dropped by a creature called Guillemot. They are the little birds that often rest on rocky areas in East Limgrave.

When it comes to the Gold Fireflies, defeated bats will drop this item. They can also be found near waters close to Minor Erdtrees.

Final Thoughts

I’ll be completely frank about this guide; I can’t recommend you to do this once you start the game for the first time. It will possibly be enough to level up your character over twenty times. This will make the challenges in the game’s first area nearly trivial.

Don’t get me wrong, it is amusing to take advantage of the non-linearity of games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and now Elden Ring. However, this method is usually recommended to people who have already beaten the game and want to quickly boost their new character. 

This can also be helpful to those who are very frustrated with the game. So if, for instance, you might use this method if you can’t figure out how to beat Margit or another powerful boss that the game will eventually throw at you.

All that being said, if you have already gone through many regions and naturally arrived in this area where the dragon resides, I don’t see why you shouldn’t follow our guide if you want those runes. After all, it will take you forever to beat this dragon by traditional means, no matter your level.

In the end, this is my recommendation for greater enjoyment of the game, but the decision is yours. If the difficulty of the game is not allowing you to enjoy the world of Elden Ring, or if you just want to be extra powerful in the beginning, go for it. In the end, having fun is all that matters.