Skill Runes

Crimson rune.

Runes are small items that can be socketed - one each - into any skill, but not into traits or into items, as could runes in Diablo II. Diablo III's skill runes grant special bonuses to the skills with which they are used, altering their effects and generally enhancing them, although runic enhancements may dramatically alter a skill's utility.

There are five types of runes, and seven levels of rune quality. Some type of bonus or alteration is typical of each one, such as the Crimson Rune's added damage, though these vary quite a bit between different skills.

The runes' naming scheme has changed several times during development. The current iteration was devised in early 2010, and made public in May 2010 when Bashiok revealed the names as Crimson, Indigo, Obsidian, Golden and Alabaster. This change coincided with considerable changes to their effects.

All seven levels of each rune can be dropped by monsters; unlike with gems, crafting by Artisans is not required to create the highest quality runes, although it is doable.

• See all news related to runestones in Diablo III.

Rune Functions

The five Runes.

Runes have no function on their own, other than beautifying your inventory. They are only useful once they're socketed into a skill, where they alter the skill's function and often improve it. However runic alterations may make a skill less suitable to a particular use. The Wizard's skill 'Ray of Frost,' for instance, produces a straight beam that deals damage and slows enemies instantly at any range when un-runed, but produces a swirling, 360-degree field of sleet in the Wizard's immediate vicinity when under the effect of an Indigo rune, or deals less damage but has a greater slowing effect when under the effect of an Obsidian rune.

The functions of the runes are not entirely predictable in a given skill. Their bonuses vary widely and wildly, and all rune functions are custom assigned by the devs; none of them are simply +x damage, or +X casting speed. (Gems provide those sorts of predictable bonuses when socketed into items.) Creating and implementing the rune effects was a tremendous amount of work for the developers and artists; there are nearly 120 skills x 5 runes in each.

While the rune functions can not be entirely known in advance, it was thought that they would have general properties that transferred across skills. This may no longer be the case, as it seems the developers are shuffling the bonuses around unpredictably, probably in an effort to make the different types of runes equivalently useful.

Prior to Blizzcon 2010, runes (which had different names at the time) were generally accepted to do the following:

• Alabaster rune: Wild card functions.
• Crimson rune: Generally provides +damage and/or fire damage.
• Golden rune: Generally reduces the resource cost.
• Indigo rune: Generally provides multishot in some form.
• Obsidian rune: Wild card functions.

Higher Level Rune Functions

Runestone levels

Each type of rune has a set function in every skill, and the functions do not vary with the rune quality. For example, an Indigo Rune adds multishot to Magic Missile; higher level Indigo runes don't change that function, they just increase the number of projectiles. More points in skills may sometimes partially duplicate the bonuses provided by one or more runestones, but generally the improvements are distinct.

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? Bashiok: 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 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.

There are seven quality levels of runestones, roughly distributed so that 1-3 are found as a character progresses through Normal, 4-5 are found in Nightmare, and 6-7 are found in Hell. Higher level runestones can be distinguished by additional points around their perimeters. It's not known how rare high level runestones will be, but as powerful as they are, most players expect them to be fairly scarce.

Skill Function Changes

All runes offer improvements; any skill with any rune is better than the same skill with no rune. That said, each player will want to pick runes that add the sort of bonuses that best fits their play style.

The new rune effects come with new visuals in every case, but with every skill there is at least one rune that doesn't change the basic function of the skill. Such runes will increase the damage, lower the resource cost, etc, but without radically changing the graphic or basic function.

This assertion was partially disproved by the five runestone effect videos, since several of them show graphical changes to every runestone, along with at least partial changes in function.

Runestone Scarcity

The issue of runestone scarcity is still up in the air. The most recent info about it came from a Bashiok forum post in January 2011.

Question: Are all five runes equally as rare or is one or more types rarer than others?

Bashiok: 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.

Prior to the early-2010 reworking, when runes changed from strict functions to the more varied color/substance names, it was clear that some runes would be much more sought after than others. For instance, Power runes were obviously going to be more desirable and useful than Energy runes. This is not necessarily the case, now that rune functions are so varied.

Furthermore, the devs seem to have scrambled around the bonuses for each type. Crimson runes are usually +damage and/or fire, but not always, (see the example of Crimson in Hydra below). The developers can easily use server stats to see which runes are being used the most, and in which skills, and either nerf some of those bonuses, buff other bonuses to make other runes more popular, or just switch around where the bonuses come from.

For example, if the Alabaster rune has 5 really popular uses, and the Golden rune has only 2, they could simply switch 2 of those very popular Alabaster bonuses to Golden, instantly changing the rune values. This would not be a good hotfix, since it would ruin the rune bonus in their skill for thousands of players. If a change this drastic were planned, it would have to be done with a patch/ladder reset, so that only newly-found runes after the patch would have the change, while older ones in the non-ladder economy would continue to work as they always had.

Easy Socketing

The interface for runestone socketing.

Runestones will be freely swappable once socketed. Players can take out runes and put in new ones whenever they wish, without any cost or risk of losing the rune. The D3 Team has committed to rune switching being easy in the final game, but they have said there will be some sort of limitation, purely to prevent macro-switching exploits.

They want changing runes to be easy and forgiving, but not something that can be automated to do in a second with a third party program. Players could use that to change runes constantly, using one for crowd control and another for big damage to a single target, for instance.

That's something the developers think is cheesy, so they're not going to allow it. How they'll stop it hasn't been detailed, but it could be something as simple as requiring players to return to town before being able to change out runes.

Confirmed Runestone Examples

While one or two rune properties are known (or can be easily guessed) for most skills, we only know all five rune bonuses for a few skills; ones that Blizzard has revealed in panels or interviews.

Plague of Toads

Plague of Toads rune options.

The rune functions for Plague of Toads, a Witch Doctor skill were revealed during a panel discussion at Blizzcon 2010. The basic skill has the Witch Doctor throwing out several toads, which hop forwards in erratic, Charged Bolt-esque fashion.

• Alabaster rune: The toads also blind enemies.
• Crimson rune: Flaming toads add fire damage to their attack.
• Golden rune: Reduced cost per cast.
• Indigo rune: Changes the skill to a rain of toads, which fall down on the targeted location.
• Obsidian rune: Summons a single, huge, stationary frog that uses a sticky tongue to capture and consume monsters in one gulp. It spits out the treasure and items. The mega-toad can eat Champions (possibly only at higher/highest rune level?), but not bosses or (presumably) bigger enemies.

Poison Dart

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

• Alabaster rune: Blows out a face-biting snake that stuns the target
• Crimson rune: Adds fire damage to the poison dart.
• Golden rune: Steals mana with each dart hit.
• Indigo rune: Fires multiple darts.
  • Level One: Two darts.
  • Level Two: Four darts.
• Obsidian rune: Slows the poisoned target.

Hydra

Hydra skill rune effects.

The rune functions for Hydra, a Wizard skill were revealed during a panel discussion at Blizzcon 2010. The basic skill summons a fiery dragon that breaks through the earth and spits firebolts at nearby enemies.

• Alabaster rune: Turns the Hydra purple and the damage type to Arcane.
• Crimson rune: Turns the Hydra blue and the damage type to a short-range chilling frost spray.
• Golden rune: Creates a giant hydra that deals higher damage via AoE Firewalls.
• Indigo rune: Turns the hydra blue and the projectiles to lightning balls that never miss.
• Obsidian rune: Turns the hydra green and the damage to a splashing poison acid.

This Hydra information was revealed at Blizzcon in October 2010. It shows changes even since August, when one of Hydra's rune effects was a faster/multishot, instead of the Acid element.

These bonuses also show how unpredictable the effects are. By previous knowledge and logic, Crimson should be the +damage/firewalls effect, since it generally adds damage and/or fire effects. Possibly the developers are shuffling rune bonuses around randomly, in order to make the runes equivalently useful. Rather than, for instance, allowing Crimson to be the most useful and Golden the least, on the whole.

Throw Weapon

The rune functions for Throw Weapon, a Barbarian skill, were revealed during a panel discussion at Blizzcon 2010. The basic skill is a ranged attack in which the Barbarian is able to hurl his weapon with distance and accuracy. The weapon magically reappears in his hands after each toss.

• Alabaster rune: Enemies struck by the weapon grow confused.
• Crimson rune: Adds damage to the thrown weapon.
• Golden rune: Throws a monster corpse rather than the weapon. Less range, but bigger damage.
• Indigo rune: Adds ricochet, allowing the weapon to strike multiple targets.
• Obsidian rune: Throws a stunning hammer, rather than the equipped weapon.

Runestones in Video

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

Rune Crafting/Upgrading

The D3 team has confirmed that the Mystic will have some crafting recipes to create new runes, though there are no details yet, other than that they will use old Runes in the process.

It will also be possible to salvage unwanted runes for magical materials, or even to make new runes from scratch via the Mystic's crafting recipes.

Rune Names

There are five types of runes in Diablo 3. Their names have changed at least twice during development. The original names were very straight-forward, describing what the runes did. They then changed to a slightly evocative set of names, but that proved too limiting when their functions were overhauled in early 2010, and the names changed again, to their current substance/mineral/color names.

The list below traces their name changes over time, left to right, from the earliest to the current.

• Unknown > Energy Rune > Golden rune
• Lethality Rune > Viper Rune > Obsidian Rune
• Multistrike Rune > Hydra Rune > Indigo Rune
• Power Rune > Force Rune > Crimson Rune
• Unknown > Striking Rune > Alabaster Rune

Rune Name Evolution

Blizzard's Diablo 3 community manager shed some light on the reason for the mineral/substance name changes in 2010:

Bashiok: The runes have really just been renamed to allow us greater flexibility in what they do so we’re not creating a weird detachment from what they’re called and the effect they provide. For example what was the multi-strike rune going to do for ... say, Slow Time? And does that match what the name implies, or what you would assume? Probably not.

A few days later, he elaborated:

Bashiok: ...the purpose of renaming them was... to remove a strict theme. I’m not aware of any rune effects we’ve shown being removed, I think all those still exist just the way they were shown. Just instead of multi-strike/hydra, it’s called Indigo, and while for a lot of skills it still has a very multi-strike theme, it’s not a rule dictated by the name.

Every Rune Works in Every Skill

Jay Wilson has stressed that runes must add a useful function to multiple types of skills, since every type of rune will be socketable in every action skill. (As far as we know.) This leads to some odd and creative design decisions, since while it's obvious what most runes will do in most skills, there are some exceptions. Consider what a rune that adds multiple hits or damage does for a purely defensive/shielding skill? Or a movement skill like the Wizard's Teleport?

The D3 Team wants all the runes to be useful to all classes, so they did not add runes that just boosted one type of skill, or one character's skills. They had to find general function bonuses that worked across the board, which is why there are not fifty types of runes. Instead there are just five rune types, though even with just 5, their functions change quite a bit from skill to skill, in many cases.

Rune Tool Tips

Nondescript description.

As of the Blizzcon 2010 demo, no rune gave any useful information when hovered over. They simply said, "socket in skills for a special bonus." However, when you click to pick up a rune and hover that over a skill with an open socket, an informative tool tip pops up, explaining in clear terms what the rune will do for the skill.

This isn't always enough to know clearly just how useful the rune will be; experience or screenshots/information on websites (such as this wiki) will be necessary to really understand the strengths and weaknesses of each rune in each skill.

Pick up a rune and mouse it over a skill and the tooltip will tell you how it affects the skill. The UI does a good job of informing you how each rune interacts with each skill.

These tool tips were in for the Blizzcon 2010 PvM demo, but most players found that runes still had to be experimented with. For instance, one rune in Magic Missile said the projectile became a homing missile. This sounded good, but when tested the rune just let the Missile change direction, once, and not in a direction the player could control or predict. The effect sort of allowed the Wizard to shoot around a corner, but not very accurately or consistently, and it was not useful to shoot past front row monsters to hit the mages in the rear, since there was no way to make the Missile target the desired enemy.

Not all rune effects are unimpressive, and most are huge ugrades over the base skill, but just reading the description on the tool tip is in no way sufficient for players to make an informed choice. Players will want to read the rune descriptions in this wiki, view movies of the rune effects, and try the runes out themselves, time permitting. Ultimately, the rune tool tips will likely be of most use as a memory aid, reminding players of the rune functions they've seen previously.

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.

Archived Runestone Information

Information further down this page details rune development. It may not be relevant any longer, but should be of archival interest.

Original Rune Functions

Old style

Jay Wilson described the five types of runes during an interview from BlizzCon 2009. The quoted sections below are Jay's words:

"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."

These functions have largely remained in place, though the names of the runes has shifted twice since then.

Hydra: The First Five Rune Example

The first good example of how runes were going to work in the final game came from Jay Wilson at Gamescom 2010.

Jay Wilson: One of my favorites is on the Wizard. She has a skill called Hydra, which is largely the same as it was in Diablo 2. Fiery (dragon) heads that shoot fireballs. Depending on which rune the Wizard sockets in that skill, the dragon heads change elements, and it’s a major change. Their entire appearance is altered. They can become poison heads, which shoot bolts of poison that leave pools of acid on the ground. There are lightning heads that shoot Chain Lightning. Cold heads that shoot Frost Bolts that slow enemies. Another rune makes for a bigger fire attack, where the head just breaths a cone of flame.

Jay did not list what all five runes did in Hydra, and his explanation left fans confused. Where were the three elemental damage types coming from? Nothing like that seemed to fit wit the previous rune functions.

This confusion was largely cleared up a few days later when Bashiok spoke privately to Diii.net about this issue, and explained most of the questions left by Jay's new info.

From his words, we were made to understand that in Hydra, the five runes provide: 1) extra damage (with a changed fire form), 2) Multistrike (rapid fire), 3-5) the 3 elemental properties. Extra damage and multishot are consistent with previously known rune functions. One of the elementals comes from the wildcard rune, and the other comes from what used to be the Energy rune. That rune now functions as a second wildcard in many skills, since changes to the resources made the mana-saving property obsolete. (Plus it just wasn't cool enough, in most instances.)

So the only unexpected rune bonuses in Hydra are the 4th and 5th elemental modifiers. The +damage, +multishot, and one elemental damage type would have been expected. The other two would more predictably have granted an Arcane Power cost reduction and some sort of critical hit or death effect bonus. That they were changed to grant elemental bonuses just goes to show how much variability and variety the Diablo III team is putting into the runes.

Rune Storage

At the BlizzCon 2008 demo, runes were stored in an inventory grid on the skill tree menu; not in the normal inventory.

They are now stored in the main inventory, and like runes should stack, to save on inventory space.

Rune Appearance Evolution

Hydra rune, March 2009.

As of BlizzCast episode 8 (30th of March, 2009) 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.

Rune 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.) The rune names have all changed since this time. The rune/skill functions have not all changed, but they have been modified somewhat. See the sections further up this page, or on the individual skill pages, for current/accurate information.

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.

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

Striking rune adds damage to the Wizard's teleport.

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.)

Multistrike creates multiple wizards with 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. Different runes affect this skill in different ways. Here are a couple of examples as presented during a BlizzCon 2008 panel discussion.

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.

A multi-strike rune adds multiple hits.

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.

A force rune adds duration to the flames.

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.

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

Multiple targets are hit with the Hydra rune.

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.

Lethality rune adds AoE damage to enemy deaths.

BlizzCon 2009

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

Skill Runes were not enabled at BlizzCon 2009, for reasons Jay Wilson elaborated on during an interview after the show:

Diii.net: They’re still being reworked and you don’t have any further comment?

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.

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.

Every active skill -- we define an active skill as a skill that you have to click to activate -- can have all five runes affect it. Each rune will change the function of the skill. Some of the changes are minor, there are some cases where there's not much appreciable effect. And then some cases are much more drastic, where for example with Ice Storm or Blizzard, one of the things we're playing around with, this halo of frost whips around her and anyone that moves through it takes damage. That adds on to the effects that Ice Storm already does. So there's a whole bunch of different... the basic idea is to capture that dream of, I'm gonna customize my skills. Even though you and I have the exact same skills, we don't play the same because our skills are different. And then throughout the game, the runes will upgrade in power. So that will just increase and amplify the effect that they have.

Further Reading

You can find out more of the essential information about Diablo I and Diablo II runes in the Diablo 2 Wiki.

Diablo II Runes

• Runes - The main page for D2 runes.
• Rune FAQ - All your questions about runes are answered here.
• Rune list - All the runes in Diablo II, and how you can create a Zod rune from a fourteen trillion Els.
• Runewords - See how runewords work.
• Sockets - Get to know more about the socket mechanic.

Diablo I Runes

The Diablo I expansion, Hellfire added "runes" as a trap-like type of item. Read more about them in the Diablo I Runes article.

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...

Diablo 2 Runes

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.

Media

Various images of Runestones and Rune Effects.

• 

  Rune Socket]

• 

  The since-renamed Hydra Rune.

• 

  Crimson rune, August 2010 design.

References

• BlizzCon 2008