The Lands Between in FromSoftware’s magnum opus offer players a journey of unprecedented scale, difficulty, and narrative depth. As you navigate the fog-shrouded valleys and towering castles, your ultimate goal remains the same: mend the Elden Ring and claim your place as the Elden Lord. However, the path to godhood is rarely straightforward. With six distinct conclusions available, choosing the best Elden Ring endings guide can make all the difference in defining your legacy.
Unlike traditional RPGs with binary good and evil paths, Elden Ring presents a spectrum of philosophical, existential, and cosmic outcomes. Some paths preserve the current order with minor adjustments, while others plunge the world into eternal darkness, burn it to cinders, or usher in an entirely new age of stars. This comprehensive guide will walk you through every major conclusion, how to unlock them, and which ones truly stand out as the best Elden Ring endings for your playthrough.
Understanding the Elden Ring Endings System
Before diving into the specific paths, it is crucial to understand how the endgame choice works. Unlike previous Souls games, Elden Ring does not automatically lock you into a specific conclusion the moment you defeat the final boss. Instead, as long as you have acquired the necessary Mending Mending-runes or fulfilled specific NPC questlines, you can choose your destiny at the site of grace after the final battle.
Furthermore, players who wish to experience multiple outcomes in a single playthrough can utilize the infamous save-scumming method. By backing up your save file right before interacting with the final prompt, you can witness almost every variation of the base ending without embarking on a grueling hundred-hour New Game Plus run. However, the Age of the Stars and the Lord of Frenzied Flame require specific proactive steps that span the entirety of the game.
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The Standard Path: Age of Fracture
If you reach the end of the game without engaging deeply in secondary NPC questlines, you will naturally stumble upon the Age of Fracture. This is considered the default or standard conclusion of the game.
When you defeat the final boss and interact with the ruined Marika, you simply use the standard Elden Ring to mend the world. Visually, the Erdtree remains largely the same, albeit slightly more stable, and your Tarnished sits upon the throne as the new Elden Lord under the guidance of the Greater Will. While this path satisfies the baseline narrative, most lore enthusiasts and completionists do not consider it the best Elden Ring endings choice due to its lack of thematic resolution for the suffering of the Lands Between.
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The Golden Order Restored: Age of Order
For those who want to fix the systemic flaws of the Golden Order without destroying it entirely, the Age of Order is a compelling choice. This path is tied to the brilliant and tragic questline of Goldmask and Brother Corhyn.
To achieve this, you must progress Goldmask’s quest by solving the riddle at the Erdtree Capital, revealing that Radagon is Marika. Ultimately, Goldmask crafts the Mending Rune of Perfect Order. When used at the end of the game, this removes the petty emotions, flaws, and fickleness of the Outer Gods from the equation, establishing a rigid, mathematically perfect divine order.
Key steps to unlock the Age of Order include:
- Finding Brother Corhyn at Roundtable Hold and sending him on his pilgrimage.
- Locating Goldmask on the bridge in Altus Plateau.
- Using the Law of Regression incantation in front of the Radagon statue in Leyndell.
- Collecting the Mending Rune of Perfect Order from the Ashen Capital.
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Embracing the Undead: Age of the Duskborn
If you find yourself sympathetic to those who live in death—the undead skeletons and Necromancers scorned by the Golden Order—then Fia’s questline offers a deeply atmospheric alternative. Known as the Age of the Duskborn, this conclusion integrates death as a natural part of the cycle rather than an abomination.
To unlock this path, you must befriend Fia, the Deathbed Companion at the Roundtable Hold. By allowing her to hold you, you eventually receive a weathered dagger to deliver to D, Hunter of the Dead. This triggers a tragic sequence of events in the Deeproot Depths, where Fia seeks to birth a new Mending Rune using the remains of Godwyn the Golden.
The Age of Duskborn is widely considered by lore hunters as one of the best Elden Ring endings from a narrative standpoint. It challenges the dogma of the Erdtree and creates a world where death is no longer feared or hunted, but accepted as a fundamental pillar of existence.
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The Curse of Despair: Blessing of Despair
Not every ending is noble or redemptive. For players embodying a chaotic or truly villainous roleplay, the Blessing of Despair—often referred to as the Dung Eater ending—is as grotesque as it gets.
By following the vile questline of the Dung Eater, you collect Seedbed Curses across the world to defile his physical form and create the Mending Rune of the Fell Curse. Choosing this path at the end of the game infects every soul in the Lands Between with a hereditary curse, ensuring that even in death, their spirits are tormented and barred from returning to the Erdtree.
While mechanically unique, this is universally regarded as the darkest and most dystopian conclusion, making it the antithesis of the best Elden Ring endings guide recommendations unless you are chasing achievements.
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The Cosmic Shift: Age of the Stars
Ask any veteran player in the community, and the overwhelming majority will point to Age of the Stars as the true narrative pinnacle and the best Elden Ring endings available. This breathtaking conclusion is the reward for completing the epic, multi-stage questline of Witch Ranni.
Ranni’s journey takes you from the haunted towers of Liurnia of the Lakes deep underground to the eternal city of Nokron, through acidic lakes of rot, and finally to the celestial heights of the Moonlight Altar. By aiding Ranni in her quest to slay her Two Fingers and sever ties with the Greater Will, you earn her absolute trust.
When you summon Ranni at the end of the game instead of interacting with Marika, you plunge the Lands Between into a thousand-year voyage of the night. Ranni explicitly states that she is taking the chill night, fear, and loneliness of the cosmos far away from the planet, allowing humanity to live free from the tyrannical meddling of Outer Gods. Accompanied by the stunning blue moonlight aesthetic and a poignant final dialogue, the Age of the Stars delivers unmatched emotional resonance.
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Total Annihilation: Lord of Frenzied Flame
If you believe that the entire world is beyond redemption and needs to be wiped clean, the Lord of Frenzied Flame offers a fiery, apocalyptic finale. This path is tied to the terrifying Three Fingers hidden deep beneath the subterranean shunning grounds of Leyndell.
To embrace the Frenzied Flame, you must endure the horrifying embrace of the Three Fingers, which brands your Tarnished with yellow-hot scars and locks you into this specific path. Melina, your loyal maiden, will abandon you in disgust, promising to hunt you down as the embodiment of chaos.
Choosing this ending results in a cinematic masterpiece where your character stands atop a burning world as the Lord of Frenzied Flame, reducing everything—distinctions, suffering, and life itself—into a single, unified crucible of nothingness. While catastrophic, it is an essential path for players aiming to unlock every achievement in the game.
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Comparing the Options: Which Is the Best Elden Ring Ending?
Choosing the ultimate path depends heavily on your personal interpretation of the game's lore and your preferred roleplay style. Here is a quick breakdown to help you decide:
- For Lore and Narrative Depth: Age of the Stars (Ranni's ending) reigns supreme, offering freedom from divine tyranny.
- For Redemption and Balance: Age of the Duskborn (Fia's ending) validates those shunned by the natural order.
- For Order and Perfection: Age of Order (Goldmask's ending) fixes the systemic bugs of the Golden Order.
- For Pure Chaos: Lord of Frenzied Flame delivers the ultimate dark fantasy apocalypse.
Ultimately, Elden Ring succeeds because it respects player agency. Whether you choose to usher in an era of celestial freedom, restore a reformed golden order, or burn the entire cosmos to ash, your journey through the Lands Between remains an unforgettable epic.
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Q: How many endings are there in Elden Ring?
A: There are six distinct endings in Elden Ring. These include the standard Age of Fracture, three variations created using Mending Runes (Age of Order, Age of the Duskborn, and Blessing of Despair), the secret Age of the Stars, and the destructive Lord of Frenzied Flame ending.
Q: Can I get multiple endings in a single playthrough?
A: Yes, you can technically witness almost all endings in one playthrough by utilizing the save-file backup method right before the final choice. However, the Lord of Frenzied Flame and Age of the Stars require extensive prerequisite questlines to even appear as options.
Q: Which ending is considered the canonical best ending?
A: While FromSoftware games rarely declare a strict canon, the Age of the Stars (Ranni’s ending) is widely regarded by the community as the most satisfying, expansive, and narratively rewarding conclusion in the game.
Q: How do I lock myself out of the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending?
A: If you accidentally inherit the Frenzied Flame from the Three Fingers, you can reverse it by completing Millennium-long questline of Millicent and using the Miquella's Needle item inside Dragonlord Placidusax’s boss arena in Crumbling Farum Azula.
Q: Do I need to complete every NPC quest to finish the game?
A: No, you can defeat the final boss and achieve the default Age of Fracture or the Lord of Frenzied Flame without ever touching secondary NPC quests. However, questlines are mandatory for unlocking the specialized Mending Runes and Ranni's path.
Q: Does your choice of ending affect New Game Plus?
A: No, your chosen ending resets the world state for New Game Plus, allowing you to retain your weapons, levels, and items while choosing a completely different path during your next run.
