A short introduction to the Rune System and what Runes to get first.
What are Runes?
Your Equipment has Sockets. You can put Runes into those Sockets if they share a Color. White Runes can go into any Socket. Any Rune can go into White Sockets. The benefit of equipping a Rune into a Socket are additional Skill Points for the abilities of your Class and Rune Points of the Rune’s color. White Runes only give Skill Points and are inferior. There are also Transc. Runestones which gives a direct effekt when socketed. Stuff like HP Absorption or Critical Hit Increase or more Vitality.
The 6 Colors
Red – Assault – Offense
Orange – Control – Specialized Offense and Crowd Control
Yellow – Fate – Utility
Green – Support – Support
Blue – Protection – Defense
Violett – Awakening – Buffs that come with a Debuff
Red is quite easy explained with more DMG, but more DMG is found on a lot of those and sure you think Support is all about Healing and Protection is all about getting tanky, but that is not quite true.
I’ll recommand getting the first 2 levels of Assault and Awakening ASAP aswell as the first Level of Support since it can really change quite a lot, depending on what you are lacking right now. I disadvise going into Fate early. The greatest Boni there are very far away, while Assault and Awakening get their first really great Boni on the first 2 levels and the first level Support is also great.
Awakening has 4 Skills on the first level, letting you choose between
DMG+ Defense-
Movespeed+ Attackspeed-
Defense+ Critresistance-
CooldownReduction+ Skillpoints-
While the next 3 let you choose between
Compensate Weakness – removing the Penalty of the first Level
Strength Enhancement – giving you additional 50% of the first Level
Winning Move – doubling the first Level
which can result in Ultra Classcannon Builds with Winning Move or free Movementspeed or Defense with Compensate Weakness or just the right amount of Skillpoints for decent Coolddown Reduction, whatever it is it gives you really powerful boni that are more than just more DMG from Assault
A few words to Control. The first levels and quite a few of them give you Boni to a certain way of attacking (Projectiles, Ground AoEs etc.) and if you decide to go only on one certain way of dealing DMG this is definetely something you wanna look into, but personally I tend to use a lot of different skills and don’t wanna go heavily into it.
Progressing further
After that you can and should individualise on whatever you want, I like the third level in Assault, but it is not that needed anymore. Support gets more supporty, Protection gets more tanky and uses a lot of Shields and both of them look like they can be really big and beneficial when invested heavily into it. Control, Awakening and Fate give you interesting alternative ways of playing all with their ups and downs and are great if you really wanna specialize into something. Only Assault seems to fall of rather quickly after the first great 2 levels.
But how do you progress?
There are a few ways of getting more Rune Points resulting in more Rune levels. The 2 common ones is through equiping more Runes and through upgrading them.
To equip more runes, you need more slots in your gear. This can be achieved by enhancing your gear. Every 4 +level the piece of equipment gets a new rune slot.
To upgrade runes, you first need to polish them. This costs a bit of gold and a bit of powder which can be gained by dismantling equipment or runes you don’t need any more. When the rune is maxed out you can use 2 of the same kind (the second doesn’t need to be upgraded) to get one rune of a higher Tier.
Thanks to aqua for his great guide, all credit to his effort. you can also read the original guide fromĀ Steam Community. enjoy the game.