Let me walk you through reaching mohgwyn palace - there's actually a really interesting reason why we have two different paths to get there. The quickest route (and this is something a lot of players miss) involves working with white mask varre, who you'll meet right at the start of your journey. After beating godrick and chatting at roundtable hold, you'll find him at rose church in liurnia, and here's where things get interesting - the game is testing your loyalty to the two fingers (this choice affects some late-game story beats).

You'll need to do three invasions when varre gives you the festering bloody fingers, but here's something helpful - if you're playing offline, you can just invade magnus at writheblood ruins once instead. When you get the lord of blood's favor, you'll need some maiden's blood (there's actually a specific lore reason for this). You can find a dead maiden at either the church of inhibition or chapel of anticipation, and this ties into the game's broader themes about faith and sacrifice.

Now, there's another way that opens up much later (which makes sense from a progression standpoint). You'll need both halves of the haligtree secret medallion - one's in the village of the albinaurics, and the other requires defeating commander niall at castle sol. Once you've got those, the grand lift of rold opens up a hidden path to the consecrated snowfield, where you'll find a portal near yelough anix ruins.

Just remember, while varre's path lets you access this area super early (around level 30-50), the enemies here are balanced for much higher levels, so don't feel bad about coming back later if things feel too tough. The palace approach ledge-road, by the way, becomes one of the best rune farming spots in the game (those sleeping albinaurics never knew what hit them).