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Elden Ring: Erudition Gesture location & how to solve the Converted Tower puzzles

by RPG Site Staff on 09 March, 2022

The world of Elden Ring is full of activities and things to do - bosses to beat, weapons, armor, and spirit ashes summons to collect - and, here and there, some puzzles to solve. One such puzzle, repeated twice, requires a specific gesture: Erudition. 

The Erudition Gesture is used as a puzzle-solving device that’s used in conjunction with the Karolos Glintstone Crown in order to unlock the secrets of two towers in Liurnia, the magical-focused region of The Lands Between. These towers, the Converted Tower and Converted Fringe Tower, hold valuable loot that is well worth going after, especially for those who have a character class of a mage & magic persuasion. 

On this page, we help you through the quest by explaining:

How to get the Erudition Gesture by giving Sorcerer Thops a spare Academy Glintstone Key

May Erudition Guide Thee - but how? The puzzle requires a specific gesture.

If you’ve been exploring in a proper manner, the chances are that you’ve stumbled across the Church of Irith, a small church ruin located just north of the exits of Stormveil Castle that spit you out into Liurnia. This is home to Sorcerer Thops, who is an academy student that’s been locked out. He’s also a sorcery vendor. 

Anyway, Thops wants a Glintstone Key. There's a whole mini quest built around this, where you follow a Meeting Place Map to get a Glintstone Key from northern Liurnia of the Lakes in order to gain access to the Academy, but even when you’re done with it, you can’t give that key to Thops. You need to find a second.

To get a second Academy Glintstone Key, you need to head back to where we started before: the Debate Parlor Site of Grace. Head back into that Courtyard. From the direction of the Site of Grace, you’ll want to head to the middle-left - just before the area where you can go to get the Glintstone Crown, described below. You’ll want to climb up some rubble, to an area where there’s a bunch of grunts, and a mage inside a small room. Climb the stairs on the left to an area with a single sword-yielding grunt and two mages. Clear this balcony out. 

The stairs you must jump down to in order to access an optional area of the Raya Lucaria Academy dungeon.

At the far end of this balcony, you’ll see a staircase below, as pictured above.

Jump over this balcony, follow the path around while killing the enemies, and you’ll reach another balcony that overlooks rooftops. Jump down onto the rooftops:

Clambering across the rooftops of Raya Lucaria can lead to a spare Glintstone Key, needed for the Erudition Tower quest.

From here, follow these rooftops around. They lead to a bunch of loot items including Runes, a rare Imbued Sword Key for the Four Belfries, many enemies, and ultimately a Glintstone Key, found on a chandelier inside the building that’s marked on your map as the Church of the Cuckoo.

You can’t access the chandelier from the ground floor, but from these rooftops you can climb in through a window and then drop down the wooden rafters in order to reach the body hanging from a chandelier to get the spare Glintstone Academy Key.

With that done, you can fast travel back to the nearest Site of Grace, the Lake-Facing Cliffs. 

Give the Glintstone Academy Key to Thops and he’ll teach you the Erudition Gesture as a result. You might think you're ready to open those towers - but there's one more item you need first...

How to get the Karolos Glintstone Crown

Getting the Karolos Glintstone Crown is a key step in completing the Erudition Guide Thee quest.

The first item you’ll need in pursuit of this side quest in the Karolos Glintstone Crown, which is only found in the Raya Lucaria Academy, the Legacy Dungeon that leads to Rennala, master of the Elden Ring character respec and one of the lords who you’re aiming to kill in order to take their Great Rune on your quest to become Elden Lord.

For what it’s worth, we generally recommend going to this Legacy Dungeon second, after completing Stormveil Castle, which is guarded by Margit the Fell Omen. Once you’re ready, however, get into the dungeon and make your way to the Debate Parlor Site of Grace, which is guarded by a fiery wolf boss, the Red Wolf of Radagon. 

From the Debate Parlor Site of Grace head out of the double doors to reach a large courtyard. This is really pretty much the halfway point of the Academy, and it’s a key location for unlocking both the crown and the gesture. 

To find the Karolos Glintstone Crown, from the exit from the Debate Parlor, you’ll want to look forward and to the left. At the back of the courtyard area there’s a left-hand fork with a small Erdtree that’s guarded by a large enemy which swings axes. This enemy looks worse than it is - just approach it carefully. You can also risk just running past and around it if you want.

Follow this left fork. At the end of it, you’ll find a small crab hiding among some grass with telltale magical blue glintstones embedded into its shell. Kill this crab and you’ll receive the Karolos Glintstone Crown as a guaranteed loot drop. Now it’s time for the next phase of this quest…

If for some reason you cannot get the Karolos Glintstone Crown, there is one other item that works the same way in Elden Ring: the Witch's Glintstone Crown. This is obtained by completing the Sellen questline, a lengthy side quest that requires some progression to complete.

How to solve the Converted Tower & Fringe Tower puzzles: Erudition Guide Thee

Performing the Erudition gesture in front of the Tower Statue breaks the seals and lets you pick up rewards.

There’s two towers in the Liurnia area that have puzzles built around the two items we’ve just grabbed. Both towers offer a simple clue: Erudition guide thee! or May Erudition Light the way! The end result is the same, however.

To be clear, there’s two towers:

  • The Converted Tower is in the south-west of Liurnia, just west of the lakes, on the ledge that ruins the length of the area, flanking the lake.
  • The Converted Fringe Tower is found in north-eastern Liurnia, not far from the Minor Erdtree of that area.

In both cases, to solve the Erudition Tower puzzle you need to perform the Erudition gesture while wearing the Karolos Glintstone Crown, which functions as a helmet. Perform the gesture in front of the statue in each tower.

Doing so has a different effect in each tower. In the Converted Tower, it creates a ghostly magic ladder that you can climb to get a Memory Stone. In the Converted Fringe Tower, it opens a doorway which leads to an enemy, then an elevator that lifts you to two powerful magic spells. There's a few other sealed towers in the game, like Chelona's Rise, but this method only unlocks these two.

It’s worth noting that you can ‘cheese’ the Converted Tower and clamber it with Torrent - but it’s impossible to get into the Converted Fringe Tower without completing the quest steps outlined in this guide.