Rune System Guide

Runes are an end game gearing progression system, that is, like many other things, very poorly explained in game and you probably have no idea how it actually works.

VIDEO GUIDE

WHAT ARE RUNES?

• Opening your inventory and on the bottom left opens the rune management system. You will notice that runes can only go into both weapons, necklace, belt, bracelet and both rings. They cannot go in any other gear piece.
• There are 3 types of runes and 3 tiers of runes. Attack runes, which are indicated with a red icon, defense runes, indicated by the blue icon and support runes indicated by the yellow icon. Each rune has stats that can be leveled and upgraded. Each of the 3 types of runes can also be in 3 tiers, gray, green and blue. Upon placing eligible gear pieces into the rune management tool, 3 sockets with hammer icons will appear under it. To unlock the socket you need a rune hammer
• Rune fragments are obtained by dissolving runes but it is also RNG how many you get. There is also a rune synergy list that shows different bonuses each gear piece can have. Now that you understand the basic concept of the rune system, let's talk about how you can actually farm and upgrade them.

HOW TO UPGRADE RUNES?

• Runes can be obtained through different events, world boss, open world dungeon farming, but the easiest, fastest and most consistent way is to farm challenge dungeons. Each week 2 dungeons are in the rotation and each dungeon has 30 different tiers of difficulty. There is no entry limit and you can farm them infinitely. These are T2 dungeons and bosses that have increased difficulty, more mechanics, harder damage and more HP. There is no matchmaking so you need to create a party.
• Each tier also increases gear score requirements and rewards. The good part is that you do not need to clear every single tier to unlock the next tier. For example, if the party leader has cleared tier 5, you can instantly go into tier 5 boss without clearing lower tiers. Defeating a boss will award you with 1 RNG rune chest, for a specific gear piece.
• The runes are connected, which means to level up a specific rune, you need to get that exact same rune, with the same stats to have a chance at leveling it up. Leveling up isn’t always 100% guaranteed. Each time the same rune drops, it has a chance to go up by 1 level, or stay the same level.
• Gray runes can be leveled up to 20, green runes to 40 and blue runes to level 60 and it’s all done automatically, with RNG, as soon as the rune lands in your inventory.

RUNE WATERMARK

Each rune that drops in your inventory has a hidden system called ‘watermark’. For example, if you dissolved blue level 3 support rune with weaken chance, next time you drop any gray, green or blue rune, with those exact stats, that rune has a chance to become a level 4 blue rune. This means that rune level is saved on your character, and it doesn’t reset when dissolving, so you do not need to stack runes in your inventory. Keep the runes you want to use and dissolve everything else. This is important to know for farming.

HOW TO FARM RUNES?

• Start by farming tier 5 boss until most of the gray runes have built up watermark level 20. After that move to tier 10 and farm until most of the runes become green until around level 25-30. After that you can move to tiers 11-15 which drops blue runes and can turn any level 25 green rune into a level 26 blue rune. Even if leveling up fails, if you drop a blue rune, that level 25 green rune will turn into level 25 blue rune. If you already got lucky and somehow managed to get three lower level blue runes that you want to use, you can farm them with lower tier bosses, but keep in mind that to level up a rune, it cannot be equipped.
• That's why it is important to farm the watermark level of every possible rune to 20, then to 40, so you can start getting high level blue runes only. Useful runes are kept in the inventory during farming, and equipped when you are done, as resocketing them doesn’t cost anything.
• Farming levels are important as dissolving higher level runes gives more rune fragments needed to craft rune hammers. It is a very slow and very grindy process, but with the watermark system you don’t have to worry about dissolving useless runes. You have to dissolve them to craft rune hammers that will be needed to reroll sockets, which are very important for the rune synergy.

WHAT IS RUNE SYNERGY

• The rune synergy offers different stats for each gear piece and it varies depending on the color of the equipped runes, meaning you will want to equip 3 blue runes. But not just any 3 blue runes.
• First you start by using a rune hammer to unlock 3 sockets. Each socket has a random chance to unlock attack, defense or support socket. To get the synergy you want, the sockets need to be in order shown next to synergy in this list. If the sockets are not in order, you can use rune hammers to reroll them, until you get the desired outcome.
• Now that you have perfect 3 sockets in order for the synergy, you need runes that can go into these sockets. If you just want the synergy, you can equip runes with any stats, but you will want to aim for the runes with the best stats for your build and your character. All 3 runes can be level 1, but you should aim for blue runes.