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There are five types of runes, each of which can be found at seven levels of quality. Each type of rune provides a general sort of bonus, such as the Crimson Rune's +damage/fire, though these vary quite a bit between different skills, and are slightly randomized in order to make all of the runes desirable.
The names of the runes have changed several times during game development. The final (?) name change was made in early 2010, and made public in May 2010 when [[Bashiok]] <ref>[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/new-skill-rune-names-revealed/Bashiok forum post] - Blue Tracker, May 2010</ref> revealed the rune names as [[Crimson]], [[Indigo]], [[Obsidian]], [[Golden]], and [[Alabaster]]. Considerable, but not total, changes to their bonuses came with that name change.
Runes occur at 7 quality levels, of which the highest levels extremely rare. All seven levels can be found<ref>[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/runestone-info-galore/Bashiok forum post] - Blue Tracker, January 2011</ref> from [[monster] drops; unlike with gems, [[crafting]] upgrades with the [[Artisans]] are not required to create the highest level runes. This may change during further development, of course.
* See all [http://diablo.incgamers.com/categories/category/runestones/ news related to runestones in Diablo III].
==Rune Appearance Evolution==
[[Image:Rune-minor-hydra1.jpg|frame|Hydra rune, March 2009.]]
As of BlizzCast episode 8 (30th of March, 2009) <ref>[http://www.diii.net/blog/comments/blizzcast-8-live-with-diablo-iii-goodies/BlizzCast] - IncGamers, March 2009</ref> Runes and Rune Sockets were horizontal rectangles, as seen in the image to the right. Previously, runes and their sockets had been square-shaped.
A more recent image, from August 2010, is seen to the left. Runes are now round, like marbles, and bear striking glyph graphics. In light of this change, it's assumed that the sockets in skills are now round as well.
::'''Jay Wilson: '''They’re not being reworked, we had tons of skill runes on the Wizard and the Barbarian but they were so spotty across the entire class we thought it would be more confusing to show them off than to not. So we just disabled them all for the BlizzCon build. But they’re all still there and they work just fine.
During another interview, Jay Wilson explained the creative 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. <ref>[http://pc.ign.com/articles/101/1017305p1.htmlJay Wilson Interview]- IGN, June 2009</ref>
::'''Jay Wilson: '''Well, the system is similar for every class. What we did is we broke down five basic runes. Each rune has a general type of effective pluses. One tends to be more damage-oriented. One tends to multiply effects, splits projectiles or bigger radiuses, things like that. One tends to be a very energy-efficient rune, so you cut down cost or in some way increases the benefit of the skill, so you get more for less. One tends to be more focused on death effects, critical effects. And one of them we call just... the weird rune, which is our grab bag for anything unusual we want to stick on.
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* [[BlizzCon 2008]]
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