These glowing golden eyes are one of Elden Ring’s last mechanics that we know pretty much nothing about. With the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC on its way, it would be a shame to leave it unexplained.

Myths

There’s a bunch of theories trying to explain what turns out to be the rarest occurrence on Elden Ring, but as far as reliable information goes, we basically have zero.

Until today, what we knew so far is that golden eyes are a special buff enemies can spawn with that will make them drop five times the amount of Elden Ring Runes they usually would.

In the case of late game enemies or bosses, that can mean big numbers. Contrary to what you might find online, golden eyes do not increase the damage an enemy deals. That was simply a skill issue. It’s also not more likely to happen at night or during golden rain. It’s much simpler than that.

Feversoul

To understand the inner workings of this mechanic, we have to deep dive into Elden Ring Spaghetti code where we can find these so-called SoulDropUp function.

For the average viewer, this means that every time you rest or travel, there is a 0.5% chance for normal and a one percent chance for bigger and tougher enemies to spawn with golden eyes. For the fellow nerds, pause here.

Limitations

In order to find out which enemies can have golden eyes and which ones can’t, I simply set the Feversoul chance to 100% and walked around the lands between for a little. As you would expect, NPCs, bosses and boss minions, enemies with no eyes or heads, dragons and most of the wildlife can’t have them either.

Exceptions

Many bosses that appear as normal enemies, however can, such as the Black Knife in Leyndell. For some weird reason, undead Mariners, Tree Spirits and Grafted Scions can have them and so can flowers, hands and my personal favorite - the golden eyed slug. But really hands?

Not all enemies like to show off, though, like the small envoys (Oracle Envoy), who can get them, but they have no eyes, so you cannot really see it. Pumpkin's heads are ashamed and just hide them below their helmet. I don’t even know what fungal pods are supposed to be, and both worm faces and Erdtree Avatars can have them, but it’s inside their neck.

And it doesn’t help that even just seeing two golden eyed enemies at once is about as likely as getting 5 out of 6 in the lottery or you becoming a member.

Secrets

As I said in the beginning, golden eyes are a special effect. So, by coding it onto any given enemy, I can force them to spawn with golden eyes, no matter what. This is where things get crazy.

In this version of Elden Ring, every enemy has golden eyes, no matter if it’s technically possible or not if it makes sense or not. It just works, so let me show you some of my personal highlights.

Every horse now has golden eyes, such as Dragonlord has 4 golden eyes, Gargoyles only have one golden eye, Elden Beast just looks very goofy and Melina is an absolute nightmare......

Best Rune Farm

Bosses consisting of two entities, such as the final boss, get the golden eyes bonus twice, meaning a totally you get 10 times the amount of Elden Ring Runes at the end, which combined with the max rune gain setup. 

Please note: If you use code "CSCCA", you can also get 5% off.