You know what always strikes me when we go into a new season and you start with nothing?
You’re very helpless for a long time.
Since this game is heavily based on items as a supporting force and many skills you play towards only take effect at 24/30 and with increasing EQ, you have a lot of problems with new chars.
Not that I don’t appreciate a certain amount of progression, but you’re still busy trying not to struggle quite as much and the game doesn’t offer the atmospheric calm world density of a D1 to move tactically through the stages in survival mode.
This is where the rune words come into play.
How do you think it would feel to find runes as early as level 3 that allow you to build simple rune words that have a purpose, so to speak, to help yourself rpg-wise.
It would be important, however, that these runes are also found quite well, so that you do not need a high char again, which then farms runes. The game should work on its own, but not overdo it.
These new rune words for chars from level 3 - 23 should adapt well to the corresponding difficulties. In no case should it cause everything else to be useless, or too strong.
But there are so a few small bonuses that would improve the life and the whole also still in the sense of the game by using the rune words mechanics.
So let’s say you build a runeword for your act 1 mercenary that increases his life by 35, his resistances by 10 and gives him 4% HP leech for his armor.
This is not OP, nor does the low damage make the merc immortal.
Or just manaleech is always nasty. A few % or more mana per kill would be helpful, and not just level 13 through TIR runes… Let’s rather build a useful runeword at level 5, than to bang everything full of Tir runes in chest, head and shield, which you only find later anyway, so you have to rely on higher chars again.
Most importantly, it’s fun to build your own starting rune words for your classes that are useful for survival.
So as I said, it should not be an exaggeration. It’s more about seeing the runewords as more than just the coolest high-end variants, but to build them in the interest of the game world and the players for the low-level area wisely into the system, without blowing up the existing principle.
Do you have useful ideas, for an implementation, so that it integrates well into the action, without the one must first again with high chars ran. The sense should arise, with the rune system to be able to help themselves, but still not sets and yellow items etc. to lever out. But fun enough and useful enough to help themselves out of the game.
I hope I have brought this across halfway understandable.