Runes of Magic: Guide to Player-made Runes

The Essentials

Runes are an essential part of Runes of Magic (ROM).  Go figure. *Wink*  There are several types and they have different purposes.  This post is going to discuss the runes that are used for enhancing your gear.

Runes drop randomly from mobs located throughout Taborea.  If you notice a particular type of rune is dropping from mobs where you’re completing quests, you should note the location and mob if it’s one you might need in the future.  I haven’t seen any rune databases on the internet yet.  I’m sure they’ll eventually start cropping up given the importance.

Base runes can be attached to your armor by right-clicking the rune then left-clicking the item you want to enhance.  Only items with rune slots can be equipped with runes.  Think gems and gem-slots from World of Warcraft or talisman from Warhammer Online.  Placing a rune with a stat that is important to your class into EVERY AVAILABLE SLOT is the minimum every player should do to enhance their performance.  If you’d like to increase the effectiveness and impact of runes on your gear then you can transmute multiple runes into something more powerful.

The Arcane Transmutor

You use the Arcane Transmutor (AT) to produce player-made runes.  Somewhere between levels 8 and 10 you should receive a quest that concludes with enabling your AT.  The AT is located on your backpack tab.  Once you’ve unlocked your AT, you’re ready for embarking on the journey to produce customized more powerful runes.  Warning: The names of items – different items using same names or very similar names, can be confusing so read things carefully before using your resources.

As an example, Resist Magic runes provide increased magic defense.  The amount of increased defense is determined by the tier of the rune that is produced. Recipes to produce runes don’t change across tiers.  Therefore these recipes can be used to create any tier rune.  The only requirement is that all of the runes must be the same tier and that will be the tier of the final product.

To produce runes you use the Arcane Transmutor (AT) which is accessd from your backpack.  The AT requires charges to work.  The charges can be purchased with Phirius Tokens that are received by doing Daily Quests.  Handing in 30 tokens will get you one charge.  Doing the maximum 10 Dailies per day will net 100 tokens which will yield 3 charges.  I don’t consciously do Dailies and I have thousands of tokens at any given time.  Your other option for purchasing charges is by using the Item Shop.  Unless you make rune production your crafting profession, which I think is a viable option, you shouldn’t need to purchase AT charges from the Item Shop.

Basic Steps

Creating runes can be confusing the first few times.  There is a great guide on the forums that has many of the known rune recipes.  I found the notation used counter intuitive for me and am showing a different notation for devising the recipe components needed.  This may seem more Greek to the average person.  After I rewrote them for myself, I noticed that I was using a programmatic structure/syntax which is probably why I was more comfortable with it having been a component developer in a past life.

Before you start producing runes follow these steps:
1.    Get the recipe needed from the guide on the forums
2.    Assemble the components (runes)
3.    Count the number of combines needed
4.    Validate that you have enough AT charges for all combines
5.    Arrange the rune combines side by side and in order in your bag

The mechanics of producing the runes is the easy part:
1.    Open you backpack
2.    Drag the runes indicated by the recipe into the AT
3.    Click confirm
4.    Rinse-Repeat for all the combines to yield the final product

See I told you the steps to produce runes are straight forward.  Understanding the recipes and getting the necessary runes is the hard part.  Let’s look at three different production scenarios from the simplest to something more difficult.

Easiest Runes to Produce

The easiest runes to produce are what I call tier bumping runes (TBR).  This is achieved by taking 5 runes of the type (name) and same tier, and combining them in the AT.  This will produce a single rune of the next tier.  For example, 5 Endurance T1 runes will produce one Endurance T2 rune.

To produce a TBR, you simply open the AT and drag a stack of 5 runes into an empty square.  Click “confirm” and you produce a rune of the next tier.  You can now slot that rune into any piece of gear that is of the same tier or less.  Unfortunately, the produced rune isn’t 5 times the stats of the original runes.  Heck it’s not even 2x the stats.  I’ve read on the forums that runes received a huge nerf some time back which is being revisited.  Personally, I would expect at least a 2x factor for consuming 5 runes and hope the planned adjustments move closer to that ratio.

You might be asking yourself, that if combining five runes that give +5 to some stat only produces one that gives a +7 increase, why the heck would I do that?  I asked myself that very question until I had 20 and 30 copies of runes clogging up the bank and chests in my house.  I quickly decided I'd take the +2 extra points and reduce the space being consumed by all those runes.  Later on, I learned about producing multi-stat runes and base runes with my overstock.  Regardless, if you have empty slots on your gear and are in possession of excess runes, you might as well produce a TBR and socket it into your equipment.

More Sophisticated Rune Production

For something meatier let’s look at producing multi-stat runes. First up is Resist Magic which provides increased defense and stamina.  The production steps do not change.  It’s getting the runes, having the charges and doing the combines in the AT that require effort.  Translating the formulas into an ingredient list is what can be confusing.  Remember that the guide I mentioned earlier uses a different notation which you might find easier to use than mine.  I didn’t like the hopping back and forth through the document.  For me it was easier to produce an expression that listed everything required.

Ultimately, you need to combine a Guts rune with a Rouse rune, in order to produce a Resist Magic rune.  However, the game doesn’t drop Guts or Rouse runes.  These are player made runes that you’ll have to create yourself or purchase from another player.  My formula assumes that you’re creating all of the runes needed yourself.

Base Requirement
RESIST MAGIC = GUTS + ROUSE

Requirement showing sub-combines needed
RESIST MAGIC = Guts (Magic + Resistance) + ROUSE (Endurance + Quickness)

The runes inside the parenthesis are dropped in game by mobs.  Most players have a ton of the runes you see in the parenthesis in my formulas.  If you’re missing one, they can usually be purchased off the Auction House for less than a few hundred gold.  Alternatively, you can create them if you happen to have the component runes available, as you’ll see me do in the last example.  For now, I’m assuming you have the base runes required.

Steps:

1. Put Magic, Resistance, Endurance and Quickness runes in bag
2. Confirm that you have 3 AT charges available
3. Open the AT
4. Drag Magic and Resistance runes into empty AT squares
5. Click Confirm.  This yields the Guts rune.
6. Drag Guts rune back to your bag
7. Drag Endurance and Quickness runes AT
8. Click Confirm.  This yields the Rouse rune.

At this point you have created two special runes – Guts and Rouse. 

9. The final step is to drag both of them into the AT and click “Confirm” to produce the Resist Magic rune.  The Resist Magic rune will provide magic defense and stamina.  How much is determined by the tier.  You can now attach this to any piece of gear that has an available rune slot.  Using RMT drills you can add a rune slot to an item that doesn’t have one or increase the number of slots to 2 on an item that had 1 slot before.

More Complicated Example

For a more complicated example let’s look at creating a very popular rune called Potential.  Potential runes increase all stats by a factor that is determined by the rune’s tier.  In my example, I’m producing Potential II which is a T2 rune that adds +4 to all stats.  However, the formula would remain the same regardless of the tier you’re creating.

Base Requirement
POTENTIAL = ANGER + MAGIC DAMAGE

Sub-combine requirements
ANGER = Excite (Vitality + Power) + Triumph (Endurance + Mind)

MAGIC DAMAGE = Guts (Magic + Resistance) + Excite (Vitality + Power)

Requirement showing sub-combines needed
ANGER (Excite (Vitality + Power) + Triumph (Endurance + Mind)) + MAGIC DAMAGE (Guts (Magic + Resistance) + Excite (Vitality + Power) = Potential

Ingredient List
•    Vitality x 2
•    Power x 2
•    Endurance
•    Mind
•    Magic
•    Resistance
•    Transmute charges x 7

To create Potential II rune in the AT

1.    Combine Vitality + Power to make Excite
2.    Combine Endurance + Mind to make Triumph
3.    Combine Excite + Triumph to make ANGER
4.    Combine Magic + Resistance to make Guts
5.    Combine Vitality + Power to make Excite
6.    Combine Guts + Excite to make MAGIC DAMAGE
7.    Combine ANGER + MAGIC DAMAGE to make POTENTIAL

Note: When I did this combine I was short one Power rune.  My first step was to create one since I had the components on hand, instead of farming or purchasing one off the Auction House.  In the AT I combined Vitality + Resistance to make the second Power rune I needed then I followed the above steps.  The second picture in this post shows a combine where the resulting rune will go to the bottom to be combine with something else.  That's how I used a two spare runes to create the second Power rune I needed.

Runes are a basic component of gear enhancement in Runes of Magic.  It’s the bare minimum effort that every player should exert toward increasing the versatility and power of their class.  Along with Talent Points, runes provide additional opportunities to customize your class to fit your play-style.  There are more advanced enhancements possible via runes such as Fusion and Power stones which I’ll cover some other time.

There is also lots of gold to be made or saved, depending on your point of view, by producing runes.  Simple single-rune combines go from 1K to 5K gold on the Auction House.  That compares with selling resource stacks needed to purchase elite skills for 5K each, where you've harvest a few hundred nodes to make that 5K.  Simple T2 multi-stat runes like the Potential II rune created in my example goes for 25K to 30K gold.  I didn't purchase a single item to make the rune.  It only required knowledge, looking through my constantly growing store of runes and some AT charges that were paid for using Daily Quest tokens.  If you're not into the traditional crafting professions you could earn yourself a nice living and save thousands of gold by producing multi-stat runes.