Throne and Liberty has countless progression systems – some are immediately apparent and some are hidden. The Rune System is one of those slightly hidden progression systems that is pretty deep and quite grindy, however it also provides a lot of character power. It is important to understand the basics of Runes and Rune Synergies to roll, slot, and level up your runes correctly and to avoid crucial mistakes that will force you to waste valuable resources such as Rune Hammers. This article provides a beginner-focused overview of everything you need to know about the Rune System – from unlocking rune slots to achieving rune synergies to getting and leveling up your runes.
What are Runes and Rune Synergies?
In Throne and Liberty, runes play a crucial role in customizing and enhancing your character’s gear, ultimately boosting your character’s offensive and defensive stats.
Each rune provides specific small buffs and, while completely negligible at first, these stats grow as you level up your runes (up to lvl 60), eventually providing a lot of character power from each individual rune.
There are three different types of Runes in Throne and Liberty, each serving a unique purpose:
Attack Runes: Boost your attack power, critical hit rate, or other damage-related stats.
Defense Runes: Enhance your character’s survivability with increased defense, health regeneration and resistances.
Support Runes: Provide benefits such as faster cooldown times, increased movement speed, or other non-combat bonuses.
The runes can be slotted into Epic quality (Purple) gear, specifically into your Weapons and Accessories to achieve Rune Synergies. Rune Synergy is a combination of three different runes and the order in which they are slotted determines the effect each Rune Synergy will provide. These synergies are extremely important as you start exploring the Rune System because they provide a lot of character power early on.
There are three levels to Rune Synergies:
- Gray Synergy: Can be achieved with a mix of any quality runes as long as all three runes are slotted – gray synergy will only provide one effect based on the order of runes.
- Green Synergy: All three slotted runes need to be of at least Green quality – the synergy will provide two effects based on the rune order.
- Blue Synergy: All three slotted runes need to be of Blue quality – the two effects will be at their maximum power.
Slotting Runes into Gear
To enable the Rune effects and Rune Synergies, you need to first slot them into your gear. Each purple Weapon and Accessory can have three rune slots that need to be opened first and then potentially re-rolled to achieve a designated rune synergy. Rune slots will require Rune Hammers to unlock and re-roll. Here’s how to activate the rune slots on your equipment for the first time:
- Unlock Rune Slots: Navigate to the Rune Management menu and click the Rune Hammer icon to unlock rune slots initially.
- Determine your Rune Synergy: Decide which rune synergy best fits your class and playstyle.
- Re-Roll Rune Slots: Click the small Rune Hammer buttons to achieve your desired synergy.
- Slot the correct Runes: Double-click on your highest rarity Runes to slot them in the rune slots.
How to Get Rune Hammers?
Rune Hammers are required in order to unlock Rune Slots on your Weapons and Accessories. You need one Rune Hammer to unlock each slot on a Purple T1 Accessory, two Rune Hammers for each T1 Weapon slot and four Hammers per T2 Weapon Rune Slot. Currently there are several ways to obtain Rune Hammers in Throne and Liberty. You can purchase a limited number of Rune Hammers (10) each week from the Contracts Coin Merchant. Additionally, Rune Hammers are available as rewards in the premium Battle Pass, the Battle Pass special “Star Shop” and Weekly Missions.
For those who prefer crafting, Rune Hammers can be made using Rune Fragments, which you can easily obtain by dissolving any unwanted runes in your inventory. Finally, you can purchase crafted bundles of 10 Rune Hammers from the Auction House for Lucent.
Acquiring and Upgrading Runes
Runes can be obtained through various in-game activities, including dungeons, World Bosses and Weekly Missions. It is important to understand that whenever you acquire a rune, the game will “watermark” the level of that particular rune and you will never drop a lower-level rune again. So if you dropped a Melee Hit level 4 rune, the next time a Melee Hit rune drops for you it will be level 5.
Now that we understand how Rune Leveling works, here are some ways to get and upgrade your runes:
- Run Challenge Co-op Dungeons regularly: This is the main way to “grind” Runes and rune levels – a special version of T2 Dungeons where difficulty increases as you push Challenge Tiers higher and higher. These dungeons do not consume your Dungeon Tokens, but instead will only drop Runes as rewards. Green Runes start dropping from Tier 6, while Blue Runes only appear from Tier 11 and onwards. To guarantee Blue Runes, your team would need to push and farm Tier 14 dungeons.
2. Just completing various in-game activities will also reward you some Runes, so make sure you are showing up to World Bosses and Dynamic open-world Events.
3. Weekly Missions is another way to get Runes – complete as many Weekly Missions as you can to have a wider choice of rewards once the week is over.
4. You can Dissolve your unwanted runes and eventually craft a Rune box from the Rune Fragments you saved up.
5. Currently in Korea the Premium Battle Pass also includes a lot of Rune boxes, but this could completely change for the Global Throne and Liberty release – we will have to wait and see.
Rune System Showcase
If you want to see additional details on Runes or would prefer a video walkthrough, please check our Rune System explainer video below. It showcases everything you need to know about Runes, Rune Synergies, and Rune Leveling with video examples included for every step of the process.
We hope you found this Throne and Liberty Rune System guide useful. Now learn how to Craft and Trait your gear, or pivot completely and learn all about Cooking in Throne and Liberty!
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