Who is the Loathsome Dung Eater in Elden Ring?

There are plenty of intriguing characters that you can meet during your time in the Lands Between, but perhaps the most interesting, and terrifying, in Elden Ring is the Loathsome Dung Eater.

This NPC doesn’t appear until you make your way to the Roundtable Hold after reaching the Altus Plateau. But you might not find the character until after you’ve explored all of the various rooms it has to offer. Even if you find the Dung Eater and progress with their questline, though, that might not explain all of the questions you have surrounding the character.

Below, you can see exactly who the Loathsome Dung Eater is and why they’re so feared by Elden Ring players.

Loathsome Dung Eater location in Elden Ring

The Loathsome Dung Eater first appears at the Roundtable Hold when you reach the Altus Plateau in the Lands Between. Once this happens, you can return to the hold and speak to Roderika, who says there is “howling and wailing of spirits in fear of the curse. I can ever hear the repulsive, twisted malison itself.” Roderika is referring to the Dung Eater appearing at the hold.

You can find the Dung Eater in the room beyond the Twin Maiden Husks, where his spirit is resting on the floor, surrounded by dead bodies. At first glance, the Dung Eater doesn’t look like anything special as he’s wearing some Omen armor and doesn’t look strong enough to move. But after speaking with him, you’ll learn that he’s not the friendliest of characters.

The only way to progress the Dung Eater’s questline in Elden Ring is to speak to him while holding a Seedbed Curse in your inventory. If you have one, the Dung Eater tells you to find his real body beneath Leyndell, Royal Capital. He also gives you the Sewer-Gaol Key, which unlocks his cell in the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds underneath the capital.

By going there, you can speak to the real Dung Eater and further progress his questline. The questline culminates with you fighting the character at the Outer Moat, which results in him returning to the Roundtable Hold. You need to give him five Seedbed Curses, at which point he’ll give you the Mending Rune of the Fell Curse in addition to the Omen armor set.

Loathsome Dung Eater backstory

Throughout the entire questline, you’re likely asking yourself about who this mysterious character is that’s so interested in curses. Well, the Dung Eater is actually a Tarnished, like yourself, who is vying for control of the Elden Throne. But his motivations aren’t at all similar to yours or anyone else’s at the Roundtable Hold.

The Dung Eater is actually a serial killer who kills and defiles his corpses, cultivating a Seedbed Curse out of them. This curse makes it so that when his victims are reborn again, they’re born with a curse, which is widely believed to be the Omen’s Curse. It’s also implied the Dung Eater is related to the Omen, as referenced by his armor. The Dung Eater desperately wants everyone in the world to have this curse so it’s not seen as a plague, but rather something that everybody has to live with. This desire to give everyone a curse was apparently instilled in the Dung Eater via a vision he had.

For his crimes when he was alive, the Dung Eater was hung in front of a large crowd. Of course, as a Tarnished, he was simply revived at a Site of Grace after his hanging. To make sure he couldn’t commit any more crimes, he was thrown into a cell in the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds below the Royal Capital.

When he appears at the Roundtable Hold as a spirit and you go through his questline, the Dung Eater realizes his previous vision was wrong. It’s not him that’s supposed to infect the world with a curse, but the Tarnished, a.k.a. you. The Dung Eater also realizes he’s just a means to help the Tarnished achieve this goal, which is why he keeps defiling his own body with the Seedbed Curses you give him. Eventually, all of this defilement leads to the creation of the Mending Rune of the Fell Curse, which costs the Dung Eater his life but gives you the chance to carry out his will.

If you decide to use the Mending Rune of the Fell Curse at the end of Elden Ring, the entire world will be cursed.

Does the Dung Eater actually eat dung?

The final question that many players have in regard to the Dung Eater is how he got his name. Many players believe the name is a literal representation of what he did when he was alive. This theory is backed up by the fact that all of the Dung Eater’s victims have their Seedbed Curses placed somewhere around their genitals.

But another theory on how Dung Eater got his name is that the angry mob at his hanging threw dung at him before he was hanged. Thus, he would have eaten dung before he was “killed.”

It’s not exactly clear why the Dung Eater is called what he is, but one thing is for sure, and that’s the “Loathsome” part of his name is completely justified.