If you’ve fought the Mad Pumpkin Head in Elden Ring, you’re probably jealous of his awesome headgear. And you should be; that dude is one stylish Headless Horseman-looking fellow. But what if I told you that you could be that stylish too? All you have to do is find yourself the Pumpkin Helm.
Of course, that’s no small task. This is a pretty rare piece of equipment. I should point out that some people report getting the helm from the Mad Pumpkin Head himself (who you’ll fight in the Wayward Ruins), but it’s not a 100% drop rate.
Thankfully, there’s a really easy spot to farm for it. Simply go to the Saintsbridge Site of Grace, which is to the east of Stormveil Castle. The exact location is shown on the map below.
Here you’ll find a bridge (the titular Saintsbridge), and on that bridge is a non-boss version of the Mad Pumpkin Head. The run from the Site of Grace to the bridge is super short, so you can zip in, kill the Pumpkin Head, then zip back to the Site of Grace and reset the whole thing.
I used the Glintstone Pebble spell to whittle his health down, so I didn’t even have to get close to him. Each run — from the time I rested at the Site of Grace to the time I rested there again — came in at about 30 seconds, though I did manage to get my faster runs down to 22 seconds. The biggest factor in determining your speed is which direction he’s facing — if he’s facing away from you, his health just melts away, but if he’s facing toward you, his helm blocks a majority of the damage.
As I mentioned earlier, the Pumpkin Helm is a ludicrously rare drop. I forgot to keep track of the exact number of tries this took me, but I’d estimate somewhere between 30-45 minutes of pure Pumpkin Head farming. Thankfully, this guy drops a Sanctuary Stone every time you kill him, and on rare occasions he’ll also drop a Smithing Stone [1]. He also drops 276 runes, so if you get your runs down to 20 seconds, you’d be earning 828 runes per minute. That’s not the fastest rune grind in the game by any means, but it’s a nice byproduct of having to farm this guy for 45 minutes (or even more than that).
Now, I love this thing for the aesthetic, but let’s take a look at the stats.
Weight
- 12.3
Damage Negation
- Physical – 7.0
- VS Strike – 5.9
- VS Slash – 6.7
- VS Pierce – 6.7
- Magic – 4.6
- Fire – 4.7
- Lightning – 5.2
- Holy – 4.5
Resistance
- Immunity – 27
- Robustness – 42
- Focus – 44
- Vitality – 18
- Poise – 9
I’ve been playing the Prisoner class, and the Prisoner Iron Mask still has slightly better stats (the Prisoner Iron Mask is no joke, folks). But the Pumpkin Helm is still the best helm I’ve found so far in the Limgrave area, so non-Prisoners will definitely want to seek it out — and even Prisoners should pick this up for the stylishness of it all.
And that’s how you get the Pumpkin Helm in Elden Ring. Good luck, Sleepy Hollow residents!
I seemed to have quite a bit of trouble getting it from him but after roughly 144 kills I finally got 1!
Yikes! For me, it took about 45 minutes, and then I killed a random Pumpkin Head later in the game and got a second one without trying. I was like, “Dang…”
ive killed 202 i havent got one. i hate this game
I got one on my 2nd kill. Didn’t realize it was this rare.
Yeah, some folks are getting super lucky, but others are having to grind like crazy for it. I guess that’s just RNG for you.
There are more Pumpkinheads later on in the game, so you can always just wait and try to get the helm later, but if you want it early in the game, this is the best spot that I know of. The helm is super heavy, but it looks awesome and the stats are pretty killer for early to mid-game.