[[File:Runes5.jpg|left|thumb|115px|The five Runes.]]Runestones come in five types, and a particular kind of bonus or alteration is typical of each. For instance, the [[Crimson Rune]] often generally adds damageor a fire effect. However the effects that runestones have vary greatly with the skills themselves - a skill that doesn't deal damage may not gain a damaging effect from a Crimson Rune, but rather be altered in some other way.

[[File:Runes5.jpg|left|thumb|115px|The five Runes.]]Runes have no function on their own, other than beautifying your inventory. They are only useful once they're [[socket]]ed into a skill, where they alter the skill's function . All runes improve the base skill effect, and often improve itin every known case any rune is better than no rune at all. However runic alterations  That said, a rune'd skill may make not be an improvement over the base skill in every situation -- using a rune to change a [[fire]] attack to a [[cold]] attack (as the [[Crimson]] rune does to the [[Hydra]] skill less suitable to ) would obviously be a particular usepoor choice against cold resistant monsters.  The Wizard's functions of each type of rune in each skill 'Ray of Frostvary widely. While the early runestone system had fairly predictable bonuses -- certain runes added +damage,' for instanceor multishot, produces a straight beam that deals damage and slows enemies instantly at any range when unor lowered the resource cost in almost every skill -runed, but produces a swirling, 360-degree field the complexity and variety of rune effects grew steadily over the course of game development. Devising and implementing the effects of sleet in the WizardRunestones was a tremendous amount of work for Diablo III's immediate vicinity when under developers and artists; there are nearly 120 skills in the effect of an Indigo runegame, each with a basic function which is modified in at least four or deals less damage but has a greater slowing effect when under the effect of an Obsidian runefive totally different ways by each runestone. 

<blue><font color="#FFFFFF">Will the increase in rank continue the change that the first rank made to the skill? For example, with the WD blow dart skill, the alabaster runes turn the dart into a snake. What does a higher ranking alabaster rune do?</font><br><b>Bashiok:</b> Yes, the mechanic stays the same for the rune type in all ranks (more or less). It simply increases in power. For the Alabaster-in-Poison Dart example I’m actually not sure the increase in effect, but it likely plays off of the stun effect (higher ranks stun the target for longer). Runes that reduce cost reduce even more cost as the rank increases. A rune that would cause multiple projectiles would fire even more projectiles as the rank increases, etc.  It’s not necessarily a hard and fast rule though that the increase must only be one thing. Maybe it means more projectiles AND ups the damage a little to make sure it remains competitive with other runes or skills. It has to be a somewhat fluid system.</blue> 

::'''Question: '''<blue><font color="#FFFFFF">Are all five runes equally as rare or is one or more types rarer than others?</font><br>::'''<b>Bashiok:''' </b> That’s a good question, I can see how that could be justified. I don’t know what the plan is there, I’ll have to ask. My gut is that it would be too much to keep some type of rune ‘power rating’ in mind when altering drop rates, especially post-release where patches could jumble them around a fair bit. “This rune sucks now but it’s still the rarest!”  Also, ideally, each rune type will be equally viable to different people and builds. Saying one is more powerful than another would mean we’re probably balancing them to be, and that’s not the case.</blue> 

===Rune Storage===In It's not known if the Mystic can upgrade the quality of runestones though, as the Diablo III demo at [[BlizzCon 2008jeweler]] runes were stored in a seperate can by combining three [[inventorygems]] grid on of the skill tree menu rather than in same type/level to create one of the normal inventory. They are now stored in the main inventory, and can be stacked to save spacenext higher level.

[[Image:Runestone_ui.jpg|frame|left|The [[interface]] for runestone socketing.]]Socketed runestones will be freely swappable. Players will be able to replace runestones at any time, at no cost and without risk of losing the runestone. The [[D3 Team]] has committed to easy runestone swapping in the final game, but they have said there will be some sort of limitation, purely to prevent macro-switching exploits. They want swapping to be easy and forgiving, but not something that can be done automatically by a third party program, which could lead to constant, effortless switching, which they think of as contrary to their intended style of play.  The team has not yet revealed what form this limitation will take, but it could be something as simple as requiring players to return to town, or to use one of the [[Artisans]] to switch out runes.

While one or two rune properties are known (or can be easily guessed) for most skills, we Blizzard has only know revealed all five rune bonuses runestone effects for a few skills; ones that Blizzard has revealed in panels or interviews. There may yet be additional changes to these effects, as development continues up to and even after release.

The rune functions for [[Poison Dart]], a [[Witch Doctor skill]], were revealed during a panel discussion at Blizzcon [[BlizzCon 2010]]. The basic skill is a fairly slow-working spell that fires a single poison dart that deals poison damage and some [[DoT]].

==Runestones In VideoRunestone Videos==

In May 2011 Blizzard released a set of five videos, one for each of the classes, demonstrating various runestones in a single skill each.