Elden Ring: How to get the Glintstone Key

Elden Ring's second major Legacy Dungeon, the Raya Lucaria Academy, is a fascinating location filled to the brim with useful consumables, plenty of runes, and valuable weapons and spells — especially if you're a sorcerer. However, you're not able to enter the academy when you first reach it due to a magic barrier that blocks your progress. There's no way to pierce this barrier with any of your weapons or spells; the only way through is with a special Glintstone Key. And while a small map fragment located next to the barrier provides a decent hint about where to find one, the key's location is still difficult to track down.

If you're not sure where to find the Glintstone Key, don't worry. We've prepared a small guide that goes over everything you need to know about it, including where it is and what potential threats you'll have to face when you try to get it.

Elden Ring: Glintstone Key location and how to get

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While Elden Ring doesn't make the process of getting the Glintstone Key very clear, it's pretty easy to do. All you have to do is travel to the small island to the west of the Raya Lucaria Academy. There, you'll find the Glintstone Dragon Smarag miniboss sleeping on the ground in a bed of large blue flowers. You don't have to fight this boss to get the Glintstone Key, but you do need to run around him and grab the Glintstone Key off the corpse behind him.

Once you have the key, you can either choose to stay and fight him or run away out of his range. If you're going to run away, we highly recommend using your mount, Torrent, to do so since he's much faster than you are on foot. Note that even if you die to Smarag after getting the Glintstone Key, it remains in your inventory — you don't need to go back and get the key again.

Elden Ring is finally here, and it's available for $60 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, and PC. It's one of the best Xbox games you can play right now if you're a fan of challenging RPGs, and we strongly recommend it.