How to respec your character in Elden Ring

If you haven't learned how to respec your character in Elden Ring yet, you should really give it a shot. Respeccing is an easy, relatively low-cost way to completely reallocate all of your stats, letting you transform from a dextrous weakling to a beefy barbarian with a single menu. The feature has existed in previous Souls games, but it's been a somewhat confusing process in the past.

Thankfully, Elden Ring's respec is pretty simple, and utilizing it becomes more important as you face some of the late-game Elden Ring bosses. Or you might want to respec just to try out any number of the cool weapons or armor sets you find littered throughout the Lands Between. In this Elden Ring respec guide, I'll explain how to do it, and where to find the item you need.

How to respec in Elden Ring

To unlock the ability to respec, there are two things you need to do: 

• Beat Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon in the Raya Lucaria Academy in Liurnia
• Find a Larval Tear

After you defeat Rennala you'll be able to interact with her and choose the "rebirth" option. This is where the Larval Tear comes in, and you'll pay one of these items each time you want to reallocate. Luckily there's no shortage. You just need to know where to look.

When should you respec in Elden Ring?

Allocating upgrade points in Elden Ring is a pretty major decision, because whatever you decide to focus on, you really should specialize in something. The way that armor and weapons scale means that your points are best spent on the one or two stats that compliment them. That said, priorities can quickly shift when you find a cool new weapon or encounter an impossibly hard boss. Here are a few scenarios where it makes sense to respec:

When you find a really cool weapon that you can't use...
This is a great use of a Larval Tear, but you should make sure that you really like the weapon first. I spent my first 30 hours pouring everything I had into Vigor and scaling my two Uchigatanas with Dexterity. Then I found the Moonveil Katana, which requires a whopping 23 Intelligence to even use. After mulling it over and watching some gameplay with it, I decided it was worth cashing in the tear.

When a hard boss fight calls for different stats...
Elden Ring makes it pretty easy to choose whatever armor/weapon you like best a develop a build for it, but sometimes a boss fight will just completely counter it. If you primarly swing a fire sword, it won't do you much good against the Volcano Manor's God-Devouring Serpent, for example.

An earlier fight that you should look out for is Starscourge Radahn in Caelid. It's one of the first major skill checks of the game, and going into it with a mediocre health pool puts you at risk of dying to a single attack. We recommend having at least 30 Vigor by the time you fight him, and if you don't, then it might be time to cash in a Larval Tear.

Elden Ring Larval Tears: Where to find them

The easiest place to get a Larval Tear early on is in the Village of the Albanaurics in the south of Liurnia, in a big cave set into the lake cliffside. Head in here and up into the village itself. Once you've passed Nepheli, you should come to a place with lots of enemies located around some stone sarcophagi. The tear is lootable on a body there.

Later in the game, you start finding more of them by defeating some well-hidden enemies, buying them from merchants, or destroying a few particularly annoying sentient boulders.

Here's a (likely incomplete) list of Larval Tears we've found and more discovered by the Fextralife Elden Ring wiki:

Limgrave, Liurnia, and Caelid Larval Tears

• [Limgrave] Agheel Lake South: East of this site of grace, you'll find a wandering Undead Soldier that will transform into a Lesser Runebear when provoked. Defeat it to collect a Larval Tear
• [Liurnia] Boilprawn Shack: Another disguised enemy, this time a Grafted Scion pretending to be a Giant Lobster. You'll find this one northwest of the Boilprawn Shack on your way to the Rose Church.
• [Liurnia] Caria Manor: A single Larval Tear can be purchased by a merchant named Pidia, but they're not easy to get to. After defeating Royal Knight Loretta and reaching Ranni's Rise, head to the southern cliff edge and look for a path to drop down onto rooftops. You'll end up on the upper level of the room containing the Manor Lower Level site of grace, where you'll find Pidia. Their Larval Tear costs 3,000 runes.
• [Liurnia] Caria Manor: Just east of the Caria Manor is a graveyard full of skeleton enemies. Here you'll find a ghost that will disappear when you interact with them. After they disappear, they'll drop a Larval Tear as well as some scholar robes.
• [Caelid] Cathedral of Dragon Communion: Another disguised enemy, this time a giant Troll pretending to be an Undead Soldier. Head to the creepy Cathedral of Dragon Communion and follow the cliffside northwest to find the lone soldier waiting for a beating. Defeat them to collect the Larval Tear.

Underground Larval Tears

• Siofra River: One Larval Tear is purchasable from the Nomadic Merchant in the Siofra River underground area. You'll find this seller just west of the Worshipper's Woods site of grace, in the same area as those pesky enemies that shoot very fast arrows.
• Nokron, Eternal City: The first Larval Tear in Nokron is a freebie sitting on a corpse in a building just seconds away from the first Nokron, Eternal City site of grace. Go to the main courtyard and head slightly southeast to find the building.
• Nokron, Eternal City: After heading down the steps between two buildings in that same courtyard, you'll see a gazebo in the next area with another Larval Tear sitting on a corpse. (Be careful though, more of those slime monsters are waiting to drop on you from above.)
• Nokron, Eternal City: The last one Larval Tear in this trio is earned by defeating the Mimic Tear boss encountered soon after the gazebo if you keep heading southeast.
• Night's Sacred Ground: This one is earned by defeating the sentient boulder enemy in the Night's Sacred Ground, the second chunk of the Nokron city north of where you first enter. This enemy is in the same church where you can find the Mimic Tear Spirit Ashes, so be sure to grab that while you're there.
• Nokstella, Eternal City: Another sentient ball, but this one attacks on a bridge pretty early in the Nokstella area. You won't find this one until you've reached Nokstella, the underground area on the northwest side of the map. The elevator leading here first becomes available after progressing through the Elden Ring Ranni quest.

Later game Larval Tears

• [Altus Plataeu] Woodfolk Ruins: This one is being held by a Lion Guardian disguised as another Undead Soldier. Old trick, stronger foe. The Woodfolk Ruins sit in a nondescript spot west of the halfway point of the outer Leyndell wall, but it's easy to find if you follow the road north of the Rampartside Path site of grace that also sits along the outer wall.
• [Mt. Gelmir] Road of Inequities: A Colossal Wormface enemy disguised as a charred corpse is holding this Larval Tear in a camp found just northwest of the Volcano Manor. Follow the smell of corpses just past the Road of Inequities site of grace and you should find it in seconds.
• [Mountaintops of the Giants] Consecrated Snowfield: A Runebear disguised as a smaller soldier enemy is holding this Larval Tear. You'll find them on the northeast edge of the Consecrated Snowfields area when you first arrive up the grand lift, between the first site of grace and the Consecrated Snowfield Catacombs.