Runes are probably the coolest new type of item feature in the Expansion.
They are small, socketable objects, like Gems, but are much more complicated in function.
Introduction
Runes all look more or less like the samples you see to the left; small gray objects with various
symbols and squiggles on them. It's unknown if the markings mean anything in any language, or if
they are just whatever the Blizzard artists made up. All 33 runes look different, so in theory you
could memorize them and not need to hover on one to know what it was. Impress your friends!
They also have a weird squishy sound when dropped or placed in Inventory, as though they were
organic items, rather than the rocks they look like.
Runes have some very nice properties when socketed. A wide variety of properties, and all 33
of them do different things in different item types. We have every rune listed with their
properties on the Runes Stats page, in the top left navigation table.
So glorified gems? Not hardly. The real power of Runes comes in the Rune Words.
These are special combinations of Runes that create Unique-like items with enormous bonuses.
Making a Rune Word is tricky though. You must have:
- The exact Runes
- The correct item type.
- With the correct number of sockets.
- And insert the Runes in the correct order.
There are only a few Rune Words known thus far. Blizzard is keeping them secret,
and will be including a few with the Expansion, and adding more on the Realms over time,
sneaking them in so no one can find them by snooping in the game code. Once they are
discovered and become widely known, they will be put into patches and then players can
download them and access them offline.
Runes FAQ
The most often asked questions about runes and things most often misunderstood about them. This listing was initially on this page, but it grew long enough to be its own page. You can see it here, and it's in the top page navigation table as well.
Rune Scarcity
Runes are not like gems, they are not dropped in equal amounts. They are more like items, there are common runes, and there are runes that you'll find once in your character's life, if that often. Runes drop pretty regularly, you'll often find several a game, but only the common ones. The less common runes are very hard to find, and the rarest of them all are virtually imaginary.
We were told by Blizzard North that during development the most powerful/rarest type of rune (Zod) will be set to drop around 1 for every 600,000 of the most common type Rune. Obviously this is far far rarer than anything in Diablo II now, much rarer than Rare Exceptional items or Unique items. This figure is subject to change during development though, as all figures are.
So how do Runes generate? A quick overview of how the game decides which items to drop when is needed.
* When you kill a monster, the game picks a treasure class based on the monster's level.
* A random roll takes place, and the game either drops an item from that treasure class, drops nothing, or goes down to a lower treasure class.
* Once in the next lower treasure class it can again drop an item from that treasure class, drop nothing, or move to the next lower treasure class.
* It will continue calculating what to drop until selected an item, or selecting to drop nothing at all.
* For runes there are 17 treasure classes, with Zod being in the highest. There is always a very high chance when killing a monster of that level that nothing at all will drop, or that you'll get nothing from the highest treasure class. So if you kill a monster and it picks Runes treasure class 17, 99.99% of the time it will drop down to Runes 16, which has Cham and Jo in it, and 99.98% of those times it'll drop down to Runes 15, and it'll keep dropping down till it picks a rune to drop.
In single player D2X v1.08 1 out of every 137 million dead mlvl 90 non-boss monsters will drop a Zod, on average. Better get into a Hell game and get started, eh?
Full listing of comparative Rune scarcity from most common to least common. Thanks to Johan and Ensign. These are not exactly accurate, but they are close enough to give you an idea how seldom you'll see the higher level Runes.
El = 144,238
Eld = 96,159
Tir = 69,209
Nef = 46,139
Eth = 43,530
Ith = 29,020
Tal = 32,998
Ral = 21,999
Ort = 21,133
Thul = 14,088
Amn = 11,822 Sol = 7881
Shae = 6028
Dol = 4019
Hel = 2899
Io/Po = 1933
Lum = 1343
Ko = 895
Fal = 606
Lem = 404
Pul = 267
Um = 178 Mal = 115
Ist = 77
Gul = 48
Vex = 32
Ohm = 19
Lo = 13
Sur = 7.2
Ber = 4.8
Jo = 2.4
Cham = 1.6
Zod = 1
This is a comparison, so you'll find 1 Zod for every 144,238 El's. Figures subject to further tweaking before the final game. Initial figures we heard from Blizzard North months ago were more like 1 Zod per 600,000 El's. So either they made Zod's more common or scaled all the rest less common.
Which Runes are Best?
This is a certainly open to debate. Runewords are very large and complicated animals, and you have to compare one of those to a magical socketed or Rare or Unique or Set item of the same type. But how about the individual Runes, which of them is best in a given item type?
Well, what would you say if asked which Gems were best? This is easier to determine since there are only seven of them and they have simple, similar effects, but it would still be largely an issue of what you wanted to boost. You have a helm with one socket, do you want to add Strength or Dexterity or Mana or mana regeneration? Or something else?
If the question is complicated for seven Gems, how about thirty-three Runes, all of which do very different things in different items? But there are 33 Runes, all do different things in different types of items, and they can possibly stack up to give very impressive totals in multi-socketed items. It's too involved a topic to get into here, but we have a page with that sort of info on it. Part strategy guide, part info resource, you can view it here. It's linked from the navigation table on top of this page as well.
RuneWords
A powerful pre-beta Rune Word
This is where Runes really become awesome. A "RuneWord", also called a "Runic Item", is the term for an item that has been socketed with special Runes in the correct order, and has morphed into a massive item with stats Blizzard designers pre-designed.
Pre-beta, does not work in the final game. This Rune Word, "Blood JoBerElUm" indicates the name and the runes used. The four runes in this, in the order they need to be socketed are Jo, Ber, El, and Um. Note the first letter in each Rune is capitalized, making them easier to tell apart.
A Runic Item is basically a unique item, since the bonuses are the same for the same Rune Word each time. They vary though by the base item they are placed in. Once you socket the runes, the item will gain a special name in golden letters, and will have substantial bonus stats modifying the item's normal stats. For this reason you want to get the best base item possible to socket, though finding one with the correct number of sockets can be quite difficult.
The socketing an item quest can help there, but since that quest only puts the maximum number of sockets into an item, it's useless if your Rune Word requires and item with less than the maximum possible, which is often the case.
In addition to the Rune Word bonus, you still get the bonuses of the individual Runes in the item. It can be hard to keep track of the individual Rune bonuses since only the Rune Word displays, so you might have to look up the stats on a chart, or just remember them.
Appearance
Runes in an item look like this. Not real impressive, no glowing purple or flashing colors of even transparencies, but what matters is the bonus, not what the item looks like, right? Blizzard might modify the appearance somewhat also, since they agree that it's less than visually striking.
An interesting note, if you look in your Diablo II manual on the first page with the logo, there is background art with odd symbols and such. Lots of these are identical to the symbols you see on Runes in the game. This was first noticed by BamaTick, who spotted Eth, Tal, Ral, El, Dol, Sol, Amn, Thul, Ko, Ith, Sol, Po, and Hel just on that page. There are lots of other bits of Rune art through the manual, could any of them show actual RuneWords, in the order of the artwork?
We think probably not, that the Bliz artists did the art for the manual and then when the time came during D2X development that they needed little symbols for the Runes, they reused some of the art that was already done for the manual since it was fitting. However if you are motivated to prowl through the manual and see if you can find any exact Rune combos, you could let us know.
Some to try based on art from the D2 manual. Do this at your own risk, we aren't saying they'll work and would be very surprised if any of them did. JoKoLoPo. PoLoJoKo. LoKoPoJo. DolSol. And of course the manual doesn't say anything about what sort of items they might work in. You can't get more than 3 sockets in helms anyway, so those are out for the first three here.
Discovering New RuneWords
Blizzard was planning on recipe scrolls in the Expansion. These were going to be dropped very rarely by monsters, and they would have Rune Words and new Horadric Cube recipes on them. However this idea has been abandoned, so now there won't be any way to find new recipes other than by snooping through the game files, or waiting for Blizzard to release the info.
Another idea was to have some NPCs reveal new recipes and Rune Words as quest rewards, and this does happen with the second quest in Act Five, but that's just the same Rune Word and Runes every time, so isn't really that big a deal.
However none of the in-game methods for revealing new Rune Words are going to make the final game, so you'll need to check the news to learn the new stuff. People who play offline are at a disadvantage in getting news of recipes, and also in terms of finding the runes all on their own, since they can't trade for them. However when Runes are enabled for the single-player game we can see them in the game code, so info about those will be posted quickly.
Runes Translated
Not really part of the game, but with all of the languages on earth, it's inevitable that some Runes and RuneWords will translate to mean things in other languages, slang, literary references, fantasy names, etc. We have a page with these collected from reader submissions, and yes, they are meant to be taken just for amusement. Click here to see them.