Leveling up in Elden Ring is a little different from how you do it in other games. In any other traditional game, the game will automatically keep leveling you up as you accumulate XP. In Elden Ring, it does not work like that. You will have to manually level up your character. Leveling can be done only at sites of grace and that too only after you have encountered a specific NPC. This guide shows how to start leveling up in Elden Ring as soon as you can.
How to Level Up in Elden Ring
To be able to level up, you will have to encounter an NPC named Melina. Melina will appear after you have rested at three sites of grace in the open world (Sites of grace inside caves & Dungeons don’t count). The simplest three sites of grace in Limgrave that you can rest at are marked in the picture below. You can reach these three places without even having to engage in combat.
As soon as you enter Limgrave, you will see the first site of grace next to an NPC as shown below. Go north from here and the second one will be inside a ruined church kind of structure as shown below. From there, go further north and you will find the third site of grace in the Gatefront as shown in the second picture below.
Upon resting on the third site of grace, an NPC named Melina. She will tell you that from now onwards, you can summon her by grace to turn runes into strength. Basically, she is saying that from now onwards you will get the option to level up while you rest on the site of grace.
With the level-up menu, you can spend runes to level up your attributes. With each Attribute increase, your level rises by 1. As your level rises, so does the number of runes required for your next attribute increase.
To level up, you will need Runes. You will get runes every time you defeat an enemy. Once you have enough runes, quickly go to a site of grace and level up because if you get killed before leveling up, then you will lose all your accumulated runes. You will get one chance to get back the runes that you dropped, but if you die again, you will lose all your runes forever. So, level up as soon as you can once you have enough runes.