Runewords are back Diablo 4: The Vessel of Hate. These ancient runes can be placed into your gear to summon evil powers, ranging from critical chance buffs to classes normally found on other classes. It's not as robust as Diablo 2's Runewords system, but Diablo 4 lets you experiment with some absurdly powerful combinations.
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Use the Warlock's Teleport ability, the Barbarian's various war cries, or the Necromancer's hexes to create the ultimate build. Or leverage these runes to fix some of your build's weaker stats like cooldown reduction or critical chance. Regardless of how you use them, Runewords is an incredibly powerful system and something you should use in every build.
What are runes?
Runes are a new type of slottable item introduced in The Vessel of Hate. A single rune alone does nothing, but installing two runes on the same object will create a file Runic word. These runewords trigger powerful effects, ranging from stat boosts to activating other classes' abilities. If you want to use the Warlock's Teleport ability as a Necromancer, Runewords makes it possible.
You can find runes in almost all endgame content: Nightmare Dungeons, Whisper chests, flagship bosses, and Kurast Undercity. Once you have a stash of runes, you can talk to any jeweler in town to transmute three of the same rune into a new random rune.
How do rune words work?
A runic word is made up of two types of runes: ritual and invocation. Ritual runes generate offera resource used in the process of activating a Runeword. These runes typically generate an offering based on an action performed, such as drinking a potion or casting an ultimate ability. Rarer variants tend to have easier activation conditions.
Runes of invocations spend offering to trigger an effect. Some examples include summoning spirit wolves, increasing critical chance, or activating another class's ability. Stronger abilities absorb more offerings and are usually tied to rarer Invocation Runes.
You can only have two Runewords active at a time.
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Creating a runic word
Creating a runic word is quite simple. Socket a ritual rune AND an invocation rune in the same object. Ritual runes act as the generator, and your invocation rune is what you spend. If done correctly, an icon should appear above the skill bar with the created runeword. The icon background will slowly fill as you generate the offer. Once full, the Runeword will automatically activate and restore your offering.
If you want to change your runeword, you can simply remove the runes from your equipment in your inventory; a visit to the jeweler is not necessary. We recommend that you enter your Runewords in your helmet, bulletproof vest or trousers as they only have gems that increase stats. Weapon gems tend to have large damage multipliers, while jewelry gems boost your armor and resistances. The opportunity cost of putting runes on your armor is minimal compared to other slots.
Every runic word
All ritual and invocation runes available in the Vessel of Hatred can be found in the table below. Remember this you can only have two combinations of active runes on your equipment.
All ritual runes
All invocation runes
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