What are Runes in Throne and Liberty? As with many loot-based games, there are layers of progression when it comes to gear. Unsurprisingly, Throne and Liberty is no exception, and the MMO has a special end-game upgrade system for top-tier gear that revolves around a farmable resource known as Runes.
While you won’t need to worry about Runes for now if you’re new to Throne and Liberty, it’s good to be aware of the content you’ll engage with as your journey through the MMO progresses. In this guide, we’ll teach you what Runes are, how to get them, upgrade them, and much more. Read on to learn everything you need to know about Throne and Liberty Runes.
What are Runes in Throne and Liberty?
In Throne and Liberty, Runes let you incrementally upgrade compatible items – belts, bracers, necklaces, rings, and weapons – providing stat bonuses depending on which of the three types – attack, defense, or support – you slot into your gear. A maximum of three Runes can be inserted into a piece of gear. Runes also synergize with each other, granting a special bonus based on their configuration.
Runes come in three different rarities – common (gray), uncommon (green), and rare (blue). A Rune’s level can be improved over time – grays max out at level 20, greens at level 40, and blues at level 60. Don’t expect to max them out quickly, though. As an end-game mechanic, Runes require some serious grinding to get the best out of them – one way NCSoft’s ensuring you keep your server hours up as you progress through Throne and Liberty’s hardest content.
Runes can be acquired through several means, but can’t be socketed until a Rune Hammer is used to unlock the item’s Rune slots. Now, let’s dig deeper into the various concepts briefly laid out here.
Throne and Liberty Rune Types
There are three types of Rune in Throne and Liberty:
- Attack (Red)
- Defense (Blue)
- Support (Yellow)
As the names suggest, each Rune type provides bonuses related to their typing. Attack Runes will bolster stats like Hit and Critical Hit. Defense Runes boost the likes of evasion and regen. Support Runes, meanwhile, increase your resistances and cooldown reduction.
How to get Runes in Throne and Liberty
There are four main ways to get Runes in Throne and Liberty:
- Challenge dungeon farming
- Events
- Open-world dungeon farming
- World bosses
Of the four options available to you, we’d highly recommend getting a group together and farming challenge dungeons. These are modified versions of Tier 2 dungeons that are rotated in pairs each week, providing up to 30 levels of difficulty that you can earn progressively better rewards from clearing.
The best part of challenge dungeons is that they don’t have an entry cost, and can be farmed repeatedly without cut-off. Unfortunately, these aren’t matchmade instances, but if you’ve got some pals or guildies who also need to farm, you’re good to go. You’ll want to set your party leader as the player who has cleared the most floors, as you’ll be able to collectively skip the lower ones, even if other party members haven’t beaten them.
While Rune drops are completely RNG, this method provides the most consistent farming method. As for why you’ll need to farm Runes at all, we’ll be explaining that in our next section on leveling your Runes.
How to upgrade Runes in Throne and Liberty
In Throne and Liberty leveling Runes requires finding an exact copy of the Rune (sans rarity) you’re trying to upgrade, down to the substats. This means that if you have, for example, a rare (blue) weapon support rune with Weaken Chance on it that you want to level, you’re going to have to wait until another gray, green, or blue one with those specific specs drops for a chance to upgrade. Yes, we did emphasize chance because there are no guarantees that an upgrade will take place.
The upgrade process itself is automatic, meaning the level-up roll will occur as soon as the Rune drops. If successful, congrats! You’re one step closer to maxing out your best-in-slot rune. If unsuccessful, your Rune will simply remain at the same level. Boo. The probability of leveling up a Rune progressively decreases the more you upgrade it. You can check out said probabilities here.
Something super important that you should be aware of is that Runes have a secret (and very useful) leveling mechanic called ‘watermarking’ that your inventory will be thankful for. Rune levels are account-bound, so even if you accidentally dissolve a high-level piece the next time you get a Rune of the same spec, it’ll drop at that level. This means you can freely dissolve the Runes you aren’t actively using and still make progress towards leveling the undesirables.
When farming Runes, it’s best to focus on upgrading all of your gray Runes to level 20 at challenge dungeon Tier 5 before moving on to farming greens at Tier 10. Then, once you’ve gotten all your greens to level 40, it’s time to farm blues at Tier 15. This is generally the most efficient way to level them, though we’ll be sure to revise our recommendation should a better method materialize.
How to unlock Rune sockets in Throne and Liberty
Now that you have some Runes to your name, it’s time to start socketing them into your gear. Before that, though, you’re going to need to unlock your Rune sockets using a Rune Hammer. Corresponding with the Runes themselves, you can get attack, defense, and support sockets.
Unfortunately, the socket type is an RNG roll, meaning you can roll anything from three sockets of the same type to a complete mix. Additionally, socket probability is weighted differently across the three types:
- Attack – 10%
- Defense – 30%
- Support – 60%
While things are looking bleak if you want to do the big DPS, the saving grace is you can at least reinitialize (reroll) the sockets at the cost of more Rune Hammers. When Runes were first introduced, NCSoft had a scaling penalty system in play that upped the Hammer cost based on how many times you reinitialized. This has since, thankfully, been removed, making it far more F2P-friendly.
How to get Rune Hammers in Throne and Liberty
The most consistent way to get more Rune Hammers is by crafting them for 100 Rune Fragments. Dissolving Runes yields Rune Fragments, so you’ll easily generate a healthy quantity of hammers as you’re farming. You can also get Rune Hammers by buying them from the Auction House or Contract Coin Merchant (ten per week max), as well as from battle passes and weekly rewards.
Throne and Liberty Rune synergies
Throne and Liberty Rune synergies provide a bonus stat boost depending on the order in which they’re socketed. Synergies require all three slots to be unique, making for six possible combinations:
- Attack/Defense/Support – Grants Strength and Critical Hit Damage Reduction
- Attack/Support/Defense – Grants Dexterity and Attack Speed
- Defense/Support/Attack – Grants Wisdom and Debuff Duration Reduction
- Defense/Attack/Support – Grants Perception and Shield Block Penetration Chance
- Support/Attack/Defense – Grants Bonus Damage and Boss Bonus Damage
- Support/Defense/Attack – Grants Damage Reduction and Boss Damage Reduction
Synergies can be activated with Runes of any rarity, though using higher rarity Runes will grant a bigger bonus. For example, the common Attack/Defense/Support combo grants one Strength and 2% Critical Hit Damage Reduction, while the uncommon version offers two Strength and 4% Critical Hit Damage Reduction. To get the improved bonus, all three runes need to at least be of that rarity.
And that’s all you need to know about Throne and Liberty Runes. For more Solisium content, check out our Throne and Liberty weapon tier list to find out the best specs right now. Don’t forget to keep an eye on our Throne and Liberty codes guide to stay abreast of all the latest freebies.