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The Runeword system is another nifty feature introduced to Diablo 4 in the Vessel of Hatred expansion. It’s let you combine Runes and socket them in your equipment to borrow abilities from different classes, summon animal spirits, boost movement speed, reduce your cooldowns, and plenty more powerful abilities besides. They are essentially souped up Gems and are conducive to even more intricate build tweaking, especially with the new Spiritborn class.
How to unlock Runewords
To unlock Runewords, you need to complete the Fundament of Faith quest in the Chapter 2 of the Vessel of Hatred campaign. When you report back to the council in Kurast, Ormus will give you a Kurast Armory Cache containing several starter Runes. An on-screen pop-up will also walk you through the basics.
How to use Runewords
To activate a Runeword, you need to slot a Rune of Ritual with a Rune of Invocation on the same piece of gear. They work in tandem with the Rune of Ritual acting as a trigger and the Rune of Invocation as the effect. Here’s a breakdown of how the two Rune types work together:
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Rune Type | Colour | Effect |
---|---|---|
Rune of Ritual | Yellow | Generates Offering when you perform a specific action such as evade, drink a healing potion, cast your Ultimate, and so on, as explained in the Rune description. |
Rune of Invocation | Purple | Triggers a specific action, passive, or buff when you’ve accumulated the required amount of Offering from the Rune of Ritual such as invoking a spirit, restoring Vigor, or boosting Critical Strike Chance by a set percentage. |
Open up your inventory and click on the Socketable tab. Here, you’ll see all the Runes you currently have. Hover over a Rune then drag and drop it onto a piece of gear like armor, boots, a weapon, and so on. Repeat for the second Rune to activate the Runeword. Once combined, the cause and effect chain will trigger automatically as you quest and explore.
Note that you can only use Runeword on pieces of gear with two slots and can only have two Runeword pairs activated at any given time – two pieces of gear with Runewords. If you happen to come across three copies of the same Rune, you can craft a brand new one of a potentially higher rarity by combining them at the Jeweler. There’s an 85% chance it will be of the same rarity and a 15% of a higher quality Rune.
Should you need to unsocket a Runeword combination, visit a Jeweler, select the Unsocket tab, click on the pliers icon on the left and then on the gear with the Runeword you want to deactivate. The Runes will return to the Socketables portion of your inventory.
How to get Runes
You can get Runes as drops from World Bosses, Strongholds, story bosses, Whisper Caches, elite enemies, and as rewards for completing the Kurast Undercity timed-dungeon. Kurast Undercity is by far the most efficient way to farm as you can use Rune Tributes to significantly increase your chances of getting Runes when you defeat the dungeon’s final boss.
All Runewords list
Below, you’ll find a full list of all the Runes of Ritual and Runes of Invocation available in the Vessel of Hatred expansion:
Runes of Ritual
Rune | Rarity | Offering Gain | Requirement |
---|---|---|---|
Cem | Magic | 75 | Cast Evade |
Yax | Magic | 200 | Drink a Healing Potion |
Cir | Magic | 50 | Cast the same non-Channeled Skill 3 times in a row |
Zan | Magic | 75 | Cast an Ultimate Skill |
Moni | Magic | 25 | Cast a skill after moving – 0.25 sec Cooldown |
Neo | Rare | 200 | Deal damage after not taking any within 2 sec – resets if Invulnerable |
Feo | Rare | 1000 | Become Injured or Crowd Controlled – 10 sec Cooldown |
Noc | Rare | 10 | Inflict a Crowd Control that isn’t Slow or Chill |
Poc | Rare | 5 | Spend 5% of your Maximum Resource |
Kaa | Rare | 2 | Lose 1% of your max Life |
Yul | Legendary | 50 | Cast a Skill with a Cooldown |
Xol | Legendary | 150 | Evoke power from another class |
Tam | Legendary | 25 | Cast a non-Channeled Core Skill |
Ahu | Legendary | 10 | Lucky Hit: Up to a 100% chance against Injured enemies |
Lith | Legendary | 25 | Stand still for 0.3 sec |
Bac | Legendary | 50 | Travel 5 meters |
Runes of Invocation
Rune | Rarity | Offering Requirement | Cooldown | Effect/Skill/Buff |
---|---|---|---|---|
Gar | Magic | 25 | 1 | Gain 2.5% Critical Strike Chance for 5 seconds, up to 25% |
Lum | Magic | 5 | 1 | Restore 1 Primary Resource |
Tec | Magic | 100 | 1 | Evoke the Barbarian’s Earthquake, dealing damage to enemies in its radius |
Tun | Magic | 100 | 1 | Evoke the Rogue’s Stun Grenades, Stunning, and dealing damage to enemies |
Teb | Magic | 100 | 1 | Evoke the Necromancer’s Abhorrent Iron Maiden, counterattacking damage from enemies and Healing you when they die |
Ton | Magic | 20 | 1 | Evoke the Sorcerer’s Meteorites, dealing damage to enemies |
Tal | Magic | 100 | 1 | Evoke the Spiritborn’s Pestilent Swarm, dealing damage to enemies |
Tun | Magic | 100 | 1 | Evoke the Rogue’s Stun Grenades, Stunning and dealing damage to enemies |
Ceh | Magic | 100 | 1 | Summon a Spirit Wolf to attack enemies for 8 seconds |
Que | Rare | 300 | 1 | Evoke the Druid’s Earthen Bulwark, granting a Barrier |
Qua | Rare | 50 | 1 | Gain 7% Movement Speed for 5 seconds, up to 30%. |
Wat | Rare | 100 | 1 | Evoke the Necromancer’s Horrid Decrepify, Slowing enemies, reducing their damage, and letting you Execute them |
Qax | Rare | 400 | 1 | Your next non-Basic Skill cast spends all of your Primary Resource to deal up to 100% increased damage |
Xal | Rare | 200 | 1 | Gain 20% Maximum Life for 6 sec |
Zec | Rare | 200 | 2 | Reduce your active Ultimate Cooldown by 2 sec |
Ner | Rare | 600 | 6 | Evoke the Rogue’s Countering Concealment, gaining Dodge Chance, Movement Speed, Unstoppable, and Stealth |
Qax | Rare | 400 | 1 | Your next non-Basic Skill cast spends all of your Primary Resource to deal up to 100% increased damage |
Mot | Rare | 150 | 1 | Gain a shadow from the Rogue’s Dark Shroud, reducing damage taken per Shadow |
Lac | Rare | 800 | 1 | Evoke the Barbarian’s Challenging Shout, reducing your damage taken. |
Tzic | Rare | 250 | 1 | Evoke the Spiritborn’s Concussive Stomp, dealing damage, and Knocking Down enemies |
Kry | Rare | 300 | 1 | Evoke the Spiritborn’s Vortex, dealing damage, and Pulling In enemies |
Thul | Rare | 400 | 1 | Evoke the Sorcerer’s Mystical Frost Nova, inflicting Freeze and Vulnerable onto enemies |
Vex | Legendary | 1000 | 1 | Gain +3 to all Skills for 7 sec |
Xan | Legendary | 800 | 1 | Your next Skill will be a guaranteed Critical Strike and Overpower |
Ohm | Legendary | 600 | 2 | Evoke the Barbarian’s War Cry, increasing your Movement Speed and damage |
Jah | Legendary | 400 | 2 | Replace your next Evade with the Sorcerer’s Teleport, blinking further, dealing damage, and becoming Unstoppable |
Eom | Legendary | 100 | 1 | Reduce your active Cooldowns by 0.1 sec |
Yom | Legendary | 500 | 5 | Evoke the Druid’s Petrify, Stunning enemies and granting 100 Resource |
Diablo 4
- Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X
- Genre(s): Action, Action RPG, RPG