Skill Runes

Runes in Diablo 3 are small items that are socketed into skills, not items. The runes grant special bonuses to the skill. There are many types of runes, all found in various quality levels, and they work across skills; each rune will (in theory) work in every skill, adding something similar to the skills.

Runes

The most recent look at a rune came in a screenshot released on March 30, 2009. This is a minor hydra rune, with "minor" being a modification of "Hydra Rune." All that's known about this one can be seen in the caption, that it "Increases skill quantity." It was previously revealed that the hydra rune was previously known as the "multistrike" rune, and the function appears to be the same, with a bit more evocative a name. Hydras, besides being a Sorceress skill in Diablo II, are the multi-headed dragons of Greek mythology, creatures capable of regrowing two heads in the place of each head that was chopped off.

Hydra runes are known to add bounces to a Witch Doctor's thrown Skull of Flame spell and to increase the Chain of the Wizard's Electrocute spell. Since each rune is (as best we know) going to work with every active skill, the hydra rune would presumably add extra hits to all sorts of other skills.

D3 Runes vs. D2 Runes

Runes in Diablo III are nothing like the Runes found in Diablo II. In D2 there were 33 kinds of Runes, which were small items that had no use on their own, but that could be placed in item sockets to add various bonuses to the item. Certain combinations of runes could also be used to create RuneWords, very powerful items with pre-set stats.

In Diablo III, Runes are still small objects that must be placed in sockets to take effect, but in D3 the sockets are in skills, not items. (Items may also have sockets, but runes won't be used in them if they do.) Active skills have sockets in the skill tree interface, and when a valid rune is placed into the socket, the skill gains an appropriate bonus, depending on the type and quality of rune used. Bonuses vary greatly, depending on the skill and the type of rune used, and include such things as extra hits, extra damage, increased spell duration, and many more. In addition, Diablo III will have fewer runes, with a final number somewhere around 5 different kinds.

Rune Function

Rune Socket

Skill Runes in Diablo III improve a character's active skills in various creative ways. Runes don't just add damage; they modify the skill in some way, making it more powerful and fun to use, as well as allowing for character customization. Runes can be used very strategically; different runes in the same spell will do things. For example: the Wizard skill Blizzard would gain different benefits from different runes. A few hypothetical Blizzard bonuses: more falling projectiles, longer duration, more damage per projectile, longer chill time, better to/hit, better chance of critical hit, and so forth. Also, each of those types of bonuses would be increased in power by the quality of the rune used, allowing for a huge variety of potential bonuses and play styles.

As of the BlizzCon 2008 demo:

Active Skills had sockets for runes
None of the Passive skills had sockets.
No skill had more than one socket.

It is not known if any of this will remain that way in the final game.

Runes can be removed from sockets at any time and without any penalty. Theoretically, players could juggle their runes around constantly, sticking in a multi-strike rune to deal with big mobs, changing to a power rune to up the single target damage before a boss battle, and so forth. It's likely that Blizzard will take steps to limit this "rune juggling", perhaps forcing players to return to town before they can change the rune socketed in a spell, putting a cool down time on resocketing the same skill, limiting the number of times a particular rune can be socketed, or even causing runes to lose quality when unsocketed.

As of BlizzCast episode 8 (30th of March, 2009) [1] Runes and Rune Sockets have become Horizontal Rectangles, as seen in the image on top and in the image to the right.

Function Examples

The D3 Team gave several examples of rune functions during a panel at BlizzCon 2008 when Skill Runes were first revealed as a game feature. (Watch the demonstration on YouTube.)

Wizard's Mirror Image

Mirror Image Skill: This skill, from the Conjuring Skill Tree, creates a duplicate of the wizard, which is capable of moving around and using spells to attack monsters. (It's not just a decoy or an illusion.)
- Hydra/Multistrike Rune: Socketing this rune would increase the number of duplicates. Higher quality levels of the hydra/multi-strike rune would presumably add more duplicates.
- Force/Power Rune: Socketing this rune would increase the hit points of each duplicate, and increase the spell's duration.

Wizard's Teleport Skill

Teleport skill: This skill, from the Arcane Skill Tree, teleports the Wizard to the targeted location. The spell isn't quite as quick as it was in Diablo or Diablo 2, since the Wizard leaps up into the air before vanishing, and appears in the air, then falls down to earth.

With Striking Rune: Adds damage to targets near where the Wizard appears, functioning something like the Barbarian's Leap Attack skill.

With Hydra/Multistrike Rune: Creates a temporary duplicate of the Wizard that will attract enemy fire and will fight and deal damage as well. (This seems to be basically a free way to cast Mirror Image when you Teleport.)

Witch Doctor's Skull of Flame

Skull of Flame skill: The Witch Doctor lobs a flaming skull, grenade style, which explodes on impact, dealing substantial fire damage to nearby targets.

With Hydra/Multistrike Rune: Socketing this rune causes the flaming skull to skip along the ground, like a stone over water, bounding and creating multiple explosions. Higher quality runes would allow additional bounces.

With Force/Power Rune: Socketing this rune adds a firefield property to the Skull of Flame, creating a small patch of flame on the ground that persists after the skull's explosion and damages any monsters that cross over it.

Wizard's Electrocute

Electrocute skill: This skill, from the Storm Skill Tree creates a strand of lightning that locks onto an enemy like a beam weapon, dealing steady lightning damage. It will chain to a second enemy if one is in range, dealing damage to both.

With Hydra/Multistrike Rune: Socketing this rune allows the lightning to chain to multiple targets.

With Viper/Lethality Rune: Socketing this rune causes some of the monsters killed by Electrocute to explode in a nova, dealing damage to other nearby enemies.

Rune Types

Skill Runes will be found in a variety of types. Known runes:

Energy Rune
Viper Rune (named Lethality before)
Hydra Rune (named Multistrike before)
Force Rune (named Power before)
Striking Rune

(Players have spent a lot of time thinking up other types of runes, and discussing their potential benefits.)

More runes will almost certainly be added during development as the team thinks of useful types to include in the game. The team won't be adding a lot of odd types of runes, though; D3 Lead Designer Jay Wilson has stressed that runes must add a useful function to multiple types of skills. The D3 Team wants all the runes to be useful to all classes, so they won't add runes that just boost one type of skill, or one character's skills. They have to think up rune bonus properties that work across the board, so there are probably not going to be 50 types of runes. (Utility doesn't equal equality, since not every skill can receive exactly the same level of improvement from every rune.)

Rune Quality Levels

It's been stated that runes will have various levels of quality, in a fashion somewhat akin to the different quality levels of gems in Diablo II. At BlizzCon 2008, Jay Wilson said there were 5 or 6 quality levels of runes (Minor being the lowest quality), but that the number could go up or down during development. Higher qualities of runes will (of course) be dropped by higher level monsters, and the higher qualities will be much rarer. The function of each type of rune will not change at higher quality; instead the bonuses will be increased.

The D3 team hasn't yet revealed much information about how item crafting will work in D3, other than to say that they won't have any Horadric Cube-style converting items. We therefore know nothing about the potential for runes to be upgraded by type, though it's certainly possible that something along those lines could be implemented.

BlizzCon 2009

If any of the first six steps are changed, (and they will be) then the outcome will be fully scrapped.

During the BlizzCon 2009 Diablo 3 panel on August 21st, Jay Wilson "The Mad Overseer" talked about skills runes, why aren't they in the GamesCom demo or in the demo at BlizzCon?, where are they now? and the process of creating a rune.

They stated that while runes are a very important system to them and that they are a key element in their customizing goals, they have disabled them from demo builds because not all skills can be customized with skill runes, causing confusion to the players. They want players to experience the rune customizing system "in its entirety".

Then they explained the creation process of making a rune, and how making any changes at all to the first steps will scrap the end results entirely, as can be seen in the image on the right.

Rune Storage

At the BlizzCon 2008 demo, runes were stored in an inventory grid on the skill tree menu; not in the normal inventory. There were 10 rune slots below the skill trees. It's not known if they will still be stored there in the final game, if there will be ways to increase the number of slots, or if they can be stored in the inventory instead.

Trivia (Rune History)

What do you really know about runes? The ones from our world come from the ancient Vikings, and their "futhark" (equivalence of our 'Alpha Bet(a)') (which again come from the even more ancient Tibetan Yantras). They allegedly hold magic powers, and the magicks of the 'runa' are still practised today. These practices, called "Seden", are of course done mostly as a pastime, but some forms of the old runes were used in proper form as late as early 20th century in the 'Dalarna' area of Sweden...

In Sanctuary, however, runes are magically inscribed symbols. Though their use has changed slightly in the last 20 years, they used to grant (sufficiently prepared) items magical properties. For sages of these runes, magical RuneWords would be created to remake a mundane item into a Runic Item, with powers competing with magical artifacts.

Besides the fact that these supposedly ancient runes hold great and mystic powers, we know little about them. Who created them or how they are created is unknown. They seem to attract demons of different kinds, as they are often found on their corpses. If the runes are of demonic origin is not known either. They could have been the simple writing language of the first inhabitants of Sanctuary, who themselves were more powerful than Demons or Angels. Whatever the origin, they are of great use to heroes wishing to dethrone Diablo or Baal.

References