In Elden Ring, poison is no joke. When you’re getting poisoned, a green bar will appear on the screen and it will start to fill. When that bar fills completely, you are poisoned, and your health will now be draining until you can either cure it, rest at a Site of Grace, or let the effect wear off naturally. I’ve honestly not been able to wait out a full poison cycle, so I’m not sure how long they last, but it’s a really long time (I burned two Flasks of Crimson Tears +1 on a poison cycle and still didn’t see the end of it before I found a Site of Grace).
So waiting it out just isn’t an option. That means you’ll have to rest at a Site of Grace. And if one of those isn’t nearby, well, you’re going to have to cure the poison yourself. Thankfully, Elden Ring lets you do that.
Note: I’ve also created a guide for curing blood loss, and you can find that here. If you’re specifically looking to cure poison, then read on, my friend.
How do you cure poison?
There is an item that cures poison called Neutralizing Boluses. You can either buy these little earthy balls from the appropriate merchant (more on that later), or craft some yourself. But before you craft them, you’ll have to find the recipe.
Where do you get the recipe for Neutralizing Boluses?
Before you can craft the Neutralizing Boluses, you need to acquire the Armorer’s Cookbook [2], which can be purchased from the Nomadic Merchant in West Limgrave. This is the same merchant who will straight-up sell you the Neutralizing Boluses, which is why I held off on revealing his location in the previous section.
He’s actually located not far from the Stranded Graveyard, where you first begin the game, but he’s really easy to miss because he’s in a somewhat hidden location.
To find him, go to the coast to the west of the Stranded Graveyard. You’ll need to use Torrent to make some pretty big drops down in order to get there. When you get to the correct location (shown on the map above), you’ll see a massive piece of cliffside that has broken off and fallen onto the shore. The Nomadic Merchant is hiding underneath it.
The Nomadic Merchant will sell you the Neutralizing Boluses for 600 runes a piece (he has five of them), or he’ll sell you the Armorer’s Cookbook [2], which also costs 600 runes.
How do you craft Neutralizing Boluses?
Once you have the Armorer’s Cookbook [2], you can open up your crafting menu and craft Neutralizing Boluses to your heart’s content. Well, until you run out of ingredients, I suppose.
The ingredients you’ll need are:
- Herba
- Cave Moss
- Great Dragonfly Head
The Cave Moss will be the easiest at this point, since the Nomadic Merchant is just southeast of the Coastal Cave, which has Cave Moss inside it. Cave Moss glows green, so it’s easy to spot.
As for the Herba, the item description just says “Found in thickets and elsewhere,” which is incredibly unhelpful. That makes it seem super easy to find, when it’s actually rarer than you might expect. Thankfully, I found a couple locations where you can find it:
and Herba has a light green glow to it, like this:
That leaves us with just the Great Dragonfly Head, which is the hardest of the three ingredients to acquire. To get this, you’ll have to kill those giant dragonflies that you’ll see darting about the world. I usually find two in the little pond north of the Church of Elleh, and a few more on the southern tip of Agheel lake (both locations are marked on the map below).
These can be a bit tricky to kill because they dart around quickly enough to dodge ranged attacks (including magic) and they oftentimes hover above your head where you can’t melee them. The good news is that I think the drop rate is pretty darn close to 100% (or else I’ve just been super, super lucky).
Herba, Cave Moss, and Great Dragonflies will all respawn when you rest at a Site of Grace, so you can farm these like crazy once you’ve found some good spots.
And that’s how you craft Neutralizing Boluses to cure poison in Elden Ring. Good luck, fellow Tarnished!
