Smithing Stones are among the most important items in Elden Ring. You need them to upgrade your weapons. MeinMMO tells you what you need to know and where you can farm and find Smithing Stones.
What are Smithing Stones? These are the upgrade materials that you can use at Smiths in Elden Ring to improve weapons by one level.
This is particularly important for beginners, as weapon upgrades provide significantly more extra damage than increasing your attributes.
How do I upgrade my weapons? For this, you need to visit a Smith. At the beginning of the game, you will find a Smith’s anvil at the Church of Elleh, where you can initially upgrade your weapons to +3.
Later, you will find Master Smith Hewg at the Roundtable Hold, where you can then bring your weapons to the highest levels. However, you will need the corresponding materials for this. To find out which weapons are particularly worth upgrading, check out our tier list:
Upgrading weapons with Smithing Stones, Dark Smithing Stones
Each upgrade level requires more Smithing Stones before going to the next level. There are a total of two different types:
- Smithing Stones: These can be used to upgrade most of the “normal” weapons in Elden Ring. The maximum upgrade level here is +25.
- Dark Smithing Stones: With this type, you can upgrade the more specialized weapons that you can obtain from boss enemies and boss souls. The maximum upgrade level here is +10.
This is how it breaks down for Smithing Stones:
| Smithing Stone 1 | Up to +3 |
| Smithing Stone 2 | Up to +6 |
| Smithing Stone 3 | Up to +9 |
| Smithing Stone 4 | Up to +12 |
| Smithing Stone 5 | Up to +15 |
| Smithing Stone 6 | Up to +18 |
| Smithing Stone 7 | Up to +21 |
| Smithing Stone 8 | Up to +24 |
| Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone | Up to +25 |
This is how it works with Dark Smithing Stones:
| Dark Smithing Stone 1 | +1 |
| Dark Smithing Stone 2 | +2 |
| Dark Smithing Stone 3 | +3 |
| Dark Smithing Stone 4 | +4 |
| Dark Smithing Stone 5 | +5 |
| Dark Smithing Stone 6 | +6 |
| Dark Smithing Stone 7 | +7 |
| Dark Smithing Stone 8 | +8 |
| Dark Smithing Stone 9 | +9 |
| Ancient Dragon Dark Smithing Stone | +10 |
At the Smith, you can use runes and these materials to upgrade your weapons. You can find him at the Roundtable Hold.
Farming and finding Smithing Stones
There are various ways to obtain Smithing Stones. You can find them in many places in the open world of Elden Ring, in dungeons, or as loot from certain enemies.
However, there are some spots that are particularly good for farming Smithing Stones. Additionally, thanks to so-called Sound Pearls, you can unlock regular Smithing Stones for purchase from an NPC trader.
You can farm Smithing Stones at these locations: Level 1 Smithing Stones can be found as loot from Limgrave soldiers. However, you should not expect a particularly frequent drop.
Trolls also occasionally drop Smithing Stones [1]. At the beginning, you should definitely check out the Limgrave Tunnel.
Be on the lookout for mining sites on the walls that usually glow lightly golden. There you will find some upgrade materials that will help you at the beginning:
You can find Dark Smithing Stones at these locations: You can initially buy Dark Smithing Stones up to +4 in limited quantities from the weapon master Iji. You will find the smith near the Caria Manor in the Liurnia of the Lakes region:
At the Caria Manor, you will also find some monsters that look like oversized hands. These reliably drop low-level Dark Smithing Stones. Later, you will find the same creatures beneath the divine capital and you can also find them on the mountaintop of the giants.
They also drop higher-level Dark Smithing Stones there.
However, the easiest method is to unlock Smithing Stones from a trader. You can then buy them at any time with your runes.
However, this is not directly possible at the start, and you will need to progress into some later areas.
The best method to get Smithing Stones is Sound Pearls
What do these pearls provide? If you give them to the Twin Maiden Husks NPC, this trader will now have upgrade materials in their inventory. This has also been the case in New Game Plus since Patch 1.05 or 1.08.
There are several of these Sound Pearls distributed throughout the game world. There are two types: The Sound Pearl of the Smithing Stone Miner and the Sound Pearl of the Dark Smithing Stone Miner.
There are also different gradations of these pearls, which deliver the respective lower or higher Smithing Stones to the trader’s inventory.
Everything about this can be found in our guide to Elden Ring: Finding Sound Pearls and buying Smithing Stones – All locations
