Is it possible to make Zod+Cham more useful without adding more OP runewords? For example make useful cube recipes that consume Zods. Perhaps letting splitting of higher runes into lower ones by consuming a Zod (an-anti combine recipe). Zods are rare enough that this would only be used to split jahs into bers and cham into jahs and it won’t happen very often. Zod and cham value would be tied to ber/jah value and since they are rarer I think they should be on-par in value. Plus it feels like too many end-game runewords now require ber or even 2 bers. This would even out the distribution for high-runes such that they all have value.
The addition of new runewords are always tricky. If the item is too weak then it’s as if it doesn’t exist. But no one wants another Grief situation where a runeword makes all melee weapons useless. We already have spirit which dominates shields to the point no unique shield have much value beside HoZ. Enigma just makes almost all armor look useless in comparison and the previously mentioned grief. I’m happy if case-specific runewords like Dream are added but it’s very difficult to predict how the community will use specific items and builds. I don’t think it’s good to have a must-have helment runeword for example.
Cube recipes would make Zods+Chams valuable without changing the power level of players. Once you buff player power, you may need to consider monster power relative to the player power for example and the game is already not a challenge for full builds. Plus cube recipes consume the runes and act as a currency sink removing the rune from circulation.