Elden Ring Ancient Smithing Stones: Where to Get Max Upgrades

Ancient Smithing Stones are the top-tier upgrade materials that push weapons past the point regular Smithing Stones can reach. Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone is an upgrade material in Elden Ring that strengthens armaments up to +25. Its counterpart does the same job for special weapons: Somber Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone is an upgrade material that strengthens special armaments to +10. Regular weapons and Somber weapons run on two completely separate upgrade tracks, and each track has its own final-tier stone. This is the single most important thing to understand before you start hunting for either one, and it’s exactly where the “just farm more runes” instinct falls apart.

Neither stone is sold on an open shelf the way regular Smithing Stones are once you unlock a bell bearing. Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones cannot be bought infinitely from the Twin Maiden Husks, even after collecting all the Smithing-stone Bell Bearings in the game, and the Somber side works the same way: Somberstone Bell Bearings only supply Somber Smithing Stones 1-9, so for the +10 upgrade material you have to complete NPC quests and loot special chests across the Lands Between. In practice that means three overlapping sources: boss and enemy drops in specific late-game zones, chests and corpse loot tucked into those same zones, and rewards for finishing certain NPC questlines. A small number are also purchasable, but only once, and only after meeting a quest condition.

On the confirmed-location side: the stone is described as a scale of the Ancient Dragonlord and hidden treasure of Farum Azula, which lines up with multiple pickups in that zone — a dead body near the lift at the Dragon Temple Altar site of grace and one in a small gazebo behind a large dragon south of the Dragon Temple Rooftop site of grace. Consecrated Snowfield holds several more: one is a reward for defeating the Night’s Cavalry duo, another comes from defeating Great Wyrm Theodorix, both flagged as missable. On the Somber side, Anastasia, Tarnished-Eater drops one when defeated near the frozen river southwest of Ordina, Liturgical Town, and a chest past the Dynasty Mausoleum Midpoint site of grace in Mohgwyn Palace holds another. Fandom’s tracker adds that three are in Elphael, Brace of the Haligtree, one is in Mohgwyn Palace, one is in Leyndell, Ashen Capital, and one is in Crumbling Farum Azula. Some community trackers place the Leyndell one slightly differently, so treat that single stone’s exact spot as the one point of disagreement rather than a hard confirmation.

Runes still matter, but they stop scaling the way they did early on. Our rune farming guide breaks down how stat soft caps work stage by stage, and the short version is that once your main damage stat clears its soft cap, each additional level buys less attack rating than it used to. A weapon sitting at +25 (or +10 for a special weapon) is not subject to that curve — it is a flat, permanent damage jump that does not decay the higher your character level climbs. That is why pushing a weapon to its cap before a hard fight is frequently the better time investment than grinding another ten or fifteen character levels, especially heading into the fights covered in our boss order guide. Rune farming buys you levels; Ancient Smithing Stones buy you a ceiling that levels can’t touch.

This is the part that trips people up the most. Shadow of the Erdtree does not extend the +25/+10 weapon ladder — it runs a separate power curve built around Scadutree Blessings, collected from Scadutree Fragments scattered across the expansion’s map. Your character’s effective damage and defense inside the DLC scale with how many Blessings you’ve picked up, not with rune level or weapon upgrade tier alone. The regular smithing-stone logic from the base game still exists underneath it — slaying a Ghostflame Dragon in the DLC will also provide a Somber Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone, and defeating the DLC boss Ancient Dragon Senessax gives one of the Somber Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones plus a regular Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone — but treating Scadutree Blessing progress as optional the way you might treat a few extra character levels in the base game is a mistake. Our boss order guide covers how that Blessing scaling actually plays out fight by fight.

Standard Weapons Need More Stones Overall

Regular weapons run through the full +1 to +25 ladder, and the final stretch of that ladder is where Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones come in — you’ll typically want more than one to finish a single weapon, so pick the weapon you’re committing to before you spend any.

Special Weapons Are Rarer But Cheaper to Finish

Somber weapons only run to +10, so the jump from “almost maxed” to “fully maxed” needs fewer stones in absolute terms. The catch is that Somber Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones are scarcer than the regular version, so this shorter ladder isn’t necessarily faster to complete.

Myth: Farming Runes Eventually Gets You the Stones

No amount of rune grinding produces these materials. Runes buy regular Smithing Stones through bell bearings and pay the one-time Gostoc price, but the bulk of the pool is locked behind bosses, chests, and questlines that have nothing to do with your rune count.

Myth: Bell Bearings Eventually Sell the Ancient Tier

They don’t. Somberstone Bell Bearings only supply Somber Smithing Stones 1-9, and the regular Smithing-Stone Bell Bearings stop one tier short as well. Buying out every bell bearing in the game still leaves the final upgrade gated behind exploration and quests.

Myth: DLC Weapon Scaling Works the Same Way as the Base Game

It doesn’t. Shadow of the Erdtree’s Scadutree Blessing system sits alongside the +25/+10 ladder, not on top of it, so maxing a weapon does not substitute for collecting Blessings once you’re inside the expansion’s content.