What New Runes Are Introduced In Diablo 4 Season 7? – Mechanics Explained & Farming Methods

Caesar

As we all know, Runes and Runewords are back in Vessel of Hatred expansion for Diablo 4. You can use a combination of Runes to enhance your equipment, these Runes can be transformed into Runewords and give you additional abilities, and serve as important consumables for crafting specific Mythic Unique Items.

This feature was well received in DLC, so the developers chose to continue using it in Diablo 4 Season 7. So here we will talk about a series of new Runes available to players in the new season. If you are a new player who has just joined Season 7, it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand the mechanism. We will take you through everything you know about Runes and Runewords and how to farm them. By the way, you can only access and use Runewords if you own Vessel of Hatred DLC.

New Runes In Season 7

Runewords are a pair of connected Runes, a Rune of Ritual and a Rune of Invocation, that work together to trigger a desired effect. Rune of Ritual determines the number of Offerings created by Rune to enhance the paired Rune of Invocation and the conditions required to create it. Rune of Invocation adds effects that trigger specific actions, using Offerings as fuel.

Two new Runes of Ritual and one new Rune of Invocation have been added to D4 S7. The value of Offerings for some Runes has also changed, and minor balance adjustments have been made.

The specific effects of the new Runes are as follows:

  • Igni: You can store 25 Offerings every 0.3 seconds, and you can gain stored Offerings by casting non-basic skills.
  • Nagu: Maintain at least 1 active Summon for 5 seconds and gain 100 Offerings every 6 Summons.
  • Chac: Can summon Druid’s Lightning Bolt, which can be used to attack nearby enemies, and costs 20 Offerings.

With more Runes, there are more Runeword combinations, allowing you to tailor your play style and optimize your character’s potential!

How To Unlock Runewords?

But to use them, you need to first unlock Runewords mechanic during Vessel of Hatred main questline.

During Madman, Crowned Quest, you will speak with Ormus in Council Chamber. After speaking with him, you will receive a briefing on Runewords mechanic, as well as a set of initial Runes to start experimenting with.

How Do Runewords Work?

Runewords are created by inserting two runes into a piece of equipment: a Rune of Ritual and a Rune of Invocation. The label for Rune of Ritual appears at the bottom, while Rune of Invocation has a slot at the top for combining runes together.

Runes of Ritual, highlighted in yellow, generate Offerings when you do certain actions, such as using dodge or casting an Ultimate. Runes of Invocation, highlighted in purple, activate various powerful effects or buffs when you reach a certain Offering threshold. For example, a Rune of Ritual might give you 75 Offerings every time you dodge, while a Rune of Invocation might give you 2.5 Primary Resources after generating 5 Offerings. So with this Runeword, every time you dodge, you gain resources.

Additionally, some Runes of Invocation have Overflow effects. Overflow occurs when you generate more Offerings than the offerings required to trigger Rune of Invocation. In these cases, you need to make sure Rune of Ritual generates more Offerings than the Invocation effect requires.

Example: Rune of Invocation, Ton casts Sorcerer’s Meteorites, and its Overflow effect is to increase the amount of Meteorites generated. It does require 20 Offerings to cast, though. So if you pair it with a Rune of Ritual that generates 5, 10, or 20 Offerings, you won’t get more than 1 Meteorite whenever it’s generated. The trick here is to pair it with a Rune of Ritual that generates 100, 200, or even more Offerings to increase the amount of Meteorite it generates through overflow offerings. This will give you a much bigger effect on your investment.

How To Apply Runewords?

This Runewords system is extremely customizable, even allowing individual classes to use abilities they wouldn’t normally be able to use. For example, a Spiritborn can trigger Barbarian’s War Cry, a Rogue can use Sorcerer’s Mystical Frost Nova, a Sorcerer can use Spiritborn’s Concussive Stomp, and all the class and ability combinations in between through runes.

Since Runewords are made up of two parts, and they are slottable Diablo 4 items, you must have a piece of gear with two sockets in order to craft a Runeword. This means that only gear such as Helm, Chest, Legs, and Two-Handed weapon may be infused with a Runeword. All other item types can only have one socket at most, and a single rune cannot work on its own.

You must equip 2 runes in a 2-socket item in order for them to have an effect. It is recommended that you increase the number of sockets on your gear at a Jeweler by visiting Jeweler in any large town and switching to Add Socket tab. It requires some consumption of Diablo 4 gold and materials, but it will help you meet the 2-socket requirement for a Runeword.

When you combine a Runeword made up of two runes, you will notice a purple square on the buff bar next to your life. This purple box will fill up as you generate Offerings. When you fill up the box, the associated Runeword effect will trigger.

If you have two Runewords equipped, you will get two separate boxes in the current buff list that track the accumulation of each Runeword Offerings. You should note, however, that you can only equip up to two pairs of runes at a time, so you can only have two Runewords active at the same time. And you can’t equip the same rune twice, which means if you have two Runewords equipped, you can only use four different runes.

About Runes

Runes you own can be found in Socketables tab, where they stack with runes of the same type and can be traded. If you happen to find some really rare runes that don’t happen to be useful to you, you can definitely trade it with a player who needs it and earn a ton of Diablo 4 Gold!

Runes can be removed at a Jeweler, or simply replace a rune for free by dragging a new Rune of Invocation or Ritual to the appropriate slot.

If you recycle an item that contains a rune, the rune will return to your Socketables inventory tab. If you want to keep the rune, don’t sell an item with a rune inserted to a vendor. Note that once it drops from Buyback screen, it is lost forever!

If you have too many copies of a single rune, you can combine three of the same runes at a Jeweler to create a new rune, giving you a chance to get the rune you want. The new rune will always be different from the rune you traded, and when using Magic or Rare runes, you even have a slight chance to get a rune of a higher rarity.

Runes are also used in Mythic Uniques crafting to create specific Mythic Unique Items instead of random items.

How To Collect Runes?

Runes drop from various sources, such as Dungeon Bosses, Campaign Bosses, Dark Citadel, Helltide chests, Whisper caches, Treasure Goblins and Seasonal rewards. However, there are some guaranteed sources.

1. Kill World Bosses

Defeating World Bosses is guaranteed to drop at least 3 runes, which is an excellent source of runes because you can get multiple runes at once, so you should definitely participate when the event is about to start. Don’t miss World Boss event. It only happens every 3 hours and 30 minutes, and you can see in advance when the next World Boss will spawn, so you can set up camp for it.

2. Defeat Uber Bosses

Fighting Uber Bosses is another good way to collect runes, as there is a high chance that they will drop runes after being defeated. However, summoning them requires boss summoning materials, so you need to collect these Diablo 4 Materials before you can collect runes on the super bosses.

3. Open Whisper Caches

Whisper Caches will also drop at least 1 rune regardless of the type of cache. You can effectively obtain these treasure chests by completing bounties on Tree of Whispers, which does not take long. This method can steadily and relatively quickly accumulate runes. However, it remains to be seen how the quality of the cache affects the rarity of the runes obtained, and it is speculated that legendary caches may give better chances for legendary runes.

4. Clear Stronghold

The first time you clear a Stronghold in Vessel of Hatred, it will drop a rune, and the rune that is guaranteed to drop is only Magic quality. While these Magic runes may not seem that valuable at first glance, they are very useful. This is because Magic runes usually provide a lot of offerings in simple conditions, such as drinking a bottle of healing potion, casting dodge, casting ultimate skills, etc.

You can also consider farming Strongholds to collect some lower-level runes and possibly trade them for rare or legendary variants. This also makes Strongholds more valuable than you think. However, you cannot use the same character to clear the same Stronghold repeatedly.

5. Bartering Vendor

You can keep an eye out for bartering vendors, they may provide you with Augment Caches in their inventory, there is a small chance that these Augment Caches contain runes, so if you have extra Pale Mark, you can try your luck. However, you need to upgrade Aldkin to Rapport ranks 8 to unlock Augment Cache in the bartering vendor inventory.

6. Complete Kurast Undercity

Finally, offering Tribute of Harmony in Kurast Undercity will allow you to drop runes when you complete the dungeon and reach at least Attunement Rank 1. This method provides rare certainty for rune acquisition, guarantees that you get 100% of the runes at the end of Kurast Undercity dungeon, and increases the probability of high-level runes appearing.

The above is the addition, change and farming method of Runewords in Diablo 4 Season 7. The reasonable use of Runewords mechanism will help you better customize the build that suits your own play style. However, please note that you can only use it after you own Diablo 4 DLC!

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