Within Elden Ring, there are plenty of different weapons for players can use to battle their way through the Lands Between. But to make these weapons stronger, you're going to need some materials to upgrade them.
Here we'll show you what these materials are and where to find them early on in the game.
What are Smithing Stones?
Souls games have always had their fair share of upgrade materials. In Dark Souls, players use variations of Titanite to enhance their weapons. In Bloodborne, they use Bloodstones to make their weapons more ferocious. In Elden Ring, you'll need Smithing Stones to enhance your standard weapons.
In Dark Souls, however, to upgrade your weapons, you graduate from shards to chunks, and slabs for the final +10 upgrade. Elden Ring however is slightly different. Rather than finding different upgrade materials, you'll need to find larger variations of the same shards to enhance your weapons all the way to +25.
Where can you find Smithing Stones?
Like most upgrade materials in the Souls series, you'll find the odd Smithing Stone lying hearing and there around the world. Usually, they'll be seen glowing like a regular item, just waiting to be picked up. While the corpses across early Limgrave are scarce on the Smithing Stone front, one location, in particular, will have Smithing Stones to spare.
There are also plenty of ways for players to farm these materials to build a stockpile up and prepare an entire arsenal of weapons for some dangerous boss fights. The Limgrave Tunnels are effectively a Smithing Stone mine, with enemies that are weak to strike and magic damage. The tunnels themselves are just south of the Gatefront Ruins and will provide players with a great store to get their early weapons upgraded and ready for battle.