Ranni the Witch’s questline runs through six regions, seven boss fights, and roughly fourteen discrete steps — and at five specific moments, one wrong click permanently closes a door. Not a “reload your last save” inconvenience. A door that stays shut for the rest of that playthrough, sometimes without so much as a warning message.
Most walkthroughs list the steps in order and bury the failure conditions in a separate “things to avoid” section at the bottom, disconnected from the moment they actually matter. This one doesn’t. Every Point of No Return below sits inside the step where it happens, flagged before you can walk into it.
Verified against the current 2026 build of Elden Ring. Recent patches have been stability and bug-fix passes, not quest-logic changes — this sequence is unchanged whether you’re running the base game or Shadow of the Erdtree installed. If you’re on Steam Deck or ROG Ally, our Elden Ring Steam Deck settings and ROG Ally settings guide are worth a glance before you sink another 15+ hours into this — the platforming sections in Nokron and Ainsel River expose frame pacing issues that don’t show up in open-field combat.
Quick Start: The Ranni Questline in 10 Steps
Skim this before you start. Each step expands below with exact locations and the Point of No Return that lives inside it.
- Rest at Church of Elleh at night, before or shortly after getting Torrent, to meet “Renna.”
- Beat Royal Knight Loretta at Caria Manor, then climb Ranni’s Rise in the Three Sisters (Liurnia).
- Talk to all three spectral servants — Iji, Blaidd, Seluvis — before you leave the tower. (Point of No Return #1 and #2 live here.)
- Find Blaidd at Siofra River Well, then Seluvis’s Rise, then Sorceress Sellen at Waypoint Ruins.
- Defeat Starscourge Radahn at Redmane Castle — do this before triggering the festival any other way. (Point of No Return #1 resolves here.)
- Retrieve the Fingerslayer Blade from Nokron and hand it to Ranni. (Point of No Return #3 lives here.)
- Get the Cursemark of Death from the Divine Tower of Liurnia via the Carian Inverted Statue.
- Reach Ainsel River through Renna’s Rise, talk to the Miniature Ranni doll three times, then kill the Baleful Shadow for the Discarded Palace Key.
- Grab the Dark Moon Ring from Raya Lucaria’s Grand Library, then beat Astel in the Lake of Rot.
- Fight Blaidd (again) outside Ranni’s Rise, collect 10 Starlight Shards in the Cathedral of Manus Celes, and place the ring on Ranni’s body.
Budget real time for this: even skipping every optional pickup, you’re looking at four boss fights (Loretta, Radahn, the Baleful Shadow, Astel) plus a second Blaidd fight, spread across five different regions. Most of that overlaps with progress you’d make on the main path anyway — Radahn and Rennala both gate other content besides Ranni’s quest — but Nokron, Ainsel River, and the Cathedral of Manus Celes exist almost entirely for this questline and won’t show up if you’re speedrunning straight to the final boss.
Are You New, Casual, or Going for 100%?
Same quest, three different levels of care needed.
| Player Type | Priority |
|---|---|
| New to this quest | Do not talk to anyone at Redmane Castle or activate any Altus Plateau grace point until you’ve spoken to all three servants at Ranni’s Rise. This single rule prevents 90% of the timing-based lockouts. |
| Casual / one clean run | Skip Seluvis’s own side content entirely. Give Ranni the Fingerslayer Blade the moment you have it — you lose one talisman, not the ending. |
| Completionist | Finish Seluvis’s full questline (including his ending) before handing over the Fingerslayer Blade, and collect all 10 Starlight Shards in the Cathedral even though they’re not required — they’re the only copies of that item in the game. |
Phase 1: Church of Elleh to Ranni’s Rise
Rest at the Church of Elleh Site of Grace at night, and a spectral figure calling herself Renna appears with the Spirit Calling Bell and Lone Wolf Ashes. Miss this and you can still buy both items from the Twin Maiden Husks at the Roundtable Hold — the quest doesn’t actually start until step two, so this first meeting is flavor, not a requirement.
The real entry point is Ranni’s Rise, the middle tower of the Three Sisters in northwest Liurnia, behind Royal Knight Loretta. Climb to the top and Ranni reveals herself and asks you to become her agent.
Point of No Return #1: The Radahn Festival Clock Is Already Running
Here’s the mechanism that catches people who explore Altus Plateau early: activating the Grand Lift of Dectus, resting at any Site of Grace on Altus Plateau, or talking to Jerren at Redmane Castle all independently start the Radahn Festival. Once that festival is live, Blaidd relocates to Redmane Castle and refuses to leave until Starscourge Radahn is dead — which means he’s unavailable at Siofra River Well, and Ranni’s questline stalls until you go kill Radahn anyway.
Decision tree: If you haven’t touched Altus Plateau yet, talk to all three servants at Ranni’s Rise first, then proceed normally — you’ll never see this problem. If you’ve already started the festival, the fix is the same either way: go to Redmane Castle, fight through to Radahn, and kill him. Nothing is permanently lost; you just do the boss fight before the quest dialogue instead of after.
Point of No Return #2: Don’t Touch Anyone in That Tower
Iji, Blaidd, and Seluvis all appear as spectral projections on the tower’s lower floor. Attacking or killing any of them — or attacking Ranni herself — before she falls into her extended slumber later in the quest is a permanent failure state. The questline doesn’t just pause; it locks, and the only way back in is an NPC absolution from Miriam at the Church of Vows in Liurnia, which resets your reputation but doesn’t undo a kill if the servant is already dead.
I fed Ranni the wrong thing on my first run — more on that in a second — and the absolution trip cost me maybe ten minutes. A dead Blaidd costs you the rest of the questline. The tower encounter feels like flavor dialogue. Treat it like a boss room instead: don’t swing your weapon at anything in it.
Phase 2: The Three Servants, Radahn, and Nokron
Blaidd waits at Siofra River Well and sends you to Seluvis’s Rise for an introduction letter, which you carry to Sorceress Sellen near Waypoint Ruins. Sellen’s explanation is the actual lore reason you’re about to fight one of the game’s hardest early bosses: Radahn’s gravity magic is physically holding the stars in place, and Nokron — the buried city you need for the next several steps — only opens once that gravitational lock breaks.
Return to Blaidd, trigger the Radahn Festival at Redmane Castle, and defeat Starscourge Radahn. This isn’t a side objective you can put off — it’s the mechanism that physically unlocks the next zone. A star falls into Limgrave near Mistwood the moment he dies, cratering the ground and opening a path down into Nokron, the buried Eternal City that doesn’t exist on the map until this exact trigger fires. Drop into the crater, work your way to the Night’s Sacred Ground area past the Ancestral Woods Site of Grace, and pull the Fingerslayer Blade from a chest at the foot of a giant corpse.
Point of No Return #3: The Blade Locks Seluvis Out, Not Ranni
Handing the Fingerslayer Blade to Ranni turns Preceptor Seluvis into a lifeless puppet on the spot — his own side questline, and the unique Magic Scorpion Charm talisman it rewards, become permanently unavailable. Ranni’s main path is unaffected either way; this is a side-content lock, not a main-quest one, which is exactly why it’s easy to miss the significance of. If you want the charm, finish Seluvis’s full arc first. If you don’t care about one talisman slot, hand over the blade immediately and move on — there’s no wrong choice here, just a choice you should actually get to make instead of triggering by accident.
Phase 3: Cursemark of Death, Ainsel River, and the Dark Moon Ring
Use the Carian Inverted Statue reward at the Carian Study Hall to access the Divine Tower of Liurnia, where Ranni’s original, burned body holds the Cursemark of Death. From there, the waygate at the top of Renna’s Rise drops you into Ainsel River Main, an underground zone most players never find without this quest pointing them there.
Rest at the Site of Grace, talk to the Miniature Ranni doll three times, and she reveals the Baleful Shadow’s location beyond the Nokstella Waterfall Basin. Kill it for the Discarded Palace Key, then use that key on a chest inside Raya Lucaria’s Grand Library — the same building where you fought Rennala — to pull out the Dark Moon Ring. If you haven’t beaten Rennala on the main path yet, do that first; the chest is inside her post-boss chamber, so this step overlaps with regular story progress rather than being Ranni-exclusive. You’ll need the ring in the next phase just to leave the boss arena, so don’t skip ahead without it.
Phase 4: Astel, Blaidd’s Last Stand, and the Cathedral of Manus Celes
Cross the Lake of Rot in Ainsel River (Bloodhound’s Step or the timed pillar-button route both work) to reach the Grand Cloister, and interact with the stone coffin to fight Astel, Naturalborn of the Void. The Dark Moon Ring is what actually opens your exit from the arena afterward — without it, you’re stuck.
Head back to Ranni’s Rise and Blaidd is waiting outside, hostile. This isn’t a bug: he’s a shadow beast created by the Two Fingers to guide empyreans, and Ranni completing her ascension by defeating Astel triggers a compulsion in him he can’t fight off — his own dialogue mid-fight is “I’m part of her very being! I could never betray her!” while he’s actively trying to kill you. You’re not required to fight him to technically finish the quest, but he blocks the ground route back into the tower, so in practice almost everyone ends up killing him. Winning drops the Royal Greatsword plus three of his four armor pieces — Blaidd’s Armor, Gauntlets, and Greaves. The helm isn’t a drop at all; it’s a separate pickup near Seluvis’s Rise, and skipping it is the single most common reason people end up with an incomplete Blaidd set in their inventory.
Past Ranni’s Rise, the path opens to the Cathedral of Manus Celes. There are 10 Starlight Shards scattered here — 9 inside the cathedral proper, 1 outside near a stone monument to the north — and they’re entirely optional, but they don’t exist anywhere else in the game, so completionists should sweep the building before moving on. Drop through the hole near the Site of Grace, follow the tunnel to Ranni’s dormant body, and place the Dark Moon Ring on her finger.
Ranni returns to full size, names you her consort, and hands over the Dark Moon Greatsword before vanishing. That’s the questline complete. The ending itself still needs one more trigger.
Triggering the Age of Stars Ending
After you defeat the Elden Beast at the end of the game, don’t touch Fractured Marika. A blue summon sign appears on the ground near her instead — interact with that, and the Age of Stars ending plays instead of the default one. You can do this even if you already beat the game once with a different ending on this character; the summon sign shows up on any run where Ranni’s questline is complete.
Before you get there, go to the Site of Grace at the top of Ranni’s Rise and talk to the Miniature Ranni husk if you haven’t already — it unlocks an alternate line of ending dialogue (“Dear Consort” instead of the default “Fair Consort”). Small detail, easy to miss, free to grab.
Point of No Return #5: Frenzied Flame Ends Every Other Ending, Including This One
Accepting the Frenzied Flame from the Three Fingers in the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds permanently locks you out of every standard ending — Age of Stars included — in favor of the Lord of Frenzied Flame path. There’s no absolution for this one; it’s a deliberate, irreversible branch, not a mistake state. If you’re mid-Ranni-questline and curious about the Frenzied Flame content, finish Ranni first or use a separate character.
FAQ
Do I actually have to fight Blaidd, or can I avoid it?
You can technically avoid triggering the fight by not approaching him at Ranni’s Rise, but you can’t finish the quest without eventually passing through that area, and he’s positioned to intercept you on the ground route. Nearly every completed Ranni playthrough includes this fight whether the player set out to do it or not — treat it as mandatory in practice, optional in theory.
Is the Magic Scorpion Charm worth finishing Seluvis’s quest for?
It’s a niche pick — a talisman that boosts damage against enemies below 20% HP, useful mainly for execute-heavy caster builds, not a build-defining item most players will miss. If you’re already planning to explore Seluvis’s Rise fully, sequence it before the Fingerslayer Blade handoff. If you’re rushing toward the ending, skip it without regret.
Why does Seluvis’s potion mess things up if it’s an official quest item?
Seluvis hands you the Amber Draught specifically to give to Ranni, framing it as helping her cope with a personal loss. It’s actually a corruption attempt — feeding it to her triggers a disappointment reaction and requires the Church of Vows absolution to undo. The quest hands you a betrayal disguised as an errand, which is exactly why so many first-time players walk right into it.
Can I still get the Age of Stars ending if I already beat the final boss with a different ending?
Yes, as long as Ranni’s questline itself is fully complete (Dark Moon Greatsword in your inventory is the tell). The blue summon sign near Fractured Marika appears on any subsequent playthrough of the final boss fight, not just the first one, so you don’t need to start New Game Plus just to see it — you can simply refight the Elden Beast.
I killed Blaidd but I’m missing a piece of his armor set — what happened?
You’re missing the helm, and that’s expected: it doesn’t drop from the fight at all. It’s a separate item pickup near Seluvis’s Rise in Liurnia, easy to walk past because nothing points you to it the way the rest of the questline does. If you want the full set, backtrack there before you consider the quest visually “complete.”
Sources
Verified against: Elden Ring Wiki (Fextralife) — Ranni the Witch; Elden Ring Wiki (Fextralife) — Cathedral of Manus Celes; Game Rant — Ranni Full Quest Walkthrough; FinalBoss.io — Complete Guide to Ranni the Witch Questline; Attack of the Fanboy — Age of the Stars Guide. For more of the buried lore this quest sits on top of, see our guide to every Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone location — useful for upgrading the Dark Moon Greatsword the moment you get it.
I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.