Quick idea for runewords [D4]

General Discussion
1

Build-your-own runewords, basically:

  • White items can have up to 3 sockets.
  • Blue items can have up to 2 sockets.
  • Rare and up one socket only.
  • Each rune has an effect;
  • Each sequential rune pair on an item has an effect.

Example:

  • 3 socket white armor;
  • “A” rune with fire resistance;
  • “B” rune with cold resistance;
  • “C” rune with increased defense;

Let’s say I add them in ABC order on my armor, my item would become:

  • Fire resistance (from A)
  • Cold resistance (from B)
  • Increased armor (from C)
  • Half frozen duration (From AB)
  • Chance to cast ice nova when struck (From BC)

Another example:

  • 2 socketed weapon with increased damage;
  • “D” rune with life gain on kill;
  • “E” rune with resource gain on kill;

Adding both to the item, it gets:

  • Increased damage (from the item);
  • Life gain on kill (from D)
  • Resource gain on kill (from E)
  • Monsters rest in peace (from DE)

Just thought the idea was cool while also adding usability for the lower rarities of items

1 Like
2

That would be useful in the act with those that revive haha.

It is not a bad idea itself, rather seems a bit complicated on first thought.

For example, let’s say we have A, B, C, D, E, F runes.

What you say is “each two letter combination has its own effect”, right? That would mean “AB” or “BA” is the same, right?

So, if we build these, besides A, B and C we get:

  1. ABC - “AB” & “BC” or CBA - “BC” & “AB”
  2. BAC - “AB” & “AC” or CAB - “AC” & “AB”
  3. ACB - “AC” & “BC” or BCA - “BC” & “AC”

So, if we have the A, B and C rune we could possibly create 3 different items, but this is less than the standard case of 6 permutations: ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, CBA.

Now, if we add the case where you can build same letter runeword like:

  1. AAA - we get double “AA” effect
  2. AAB - we get “AA” & “AB”
  3. ABA - we get double “AB”

And so on… It’s again less variation than standard runeword case, but I like the freedom one might receive from such system. Maybe this could get extended to 4 sockets too.

ABCD - “AB”, “BC”, “CD” bonus effects.

Let’s say then I am after particular combination effect from AB and EF, then I could combine them in:

  1. ABEF - getting bonus “BE”
  2. BAEF - getting bonus “AE”
  3. ABFE - bonus “BF”
  4. BAFE - bonus “AF”

And choose a bonus effect from the above 4. Such runeword then would most often include:

  • 4 basic rune effects
  • 3 combination effects

For a total of 7 item properties. Runewords would be powerful, maybe being able to wear only one such item? Interesting idea, it could definitely work with more tuning.

1 Like
3

I had only really considered the pairs of different rune and ignoring order (AB = BA), due to the amount of possible combinations.

The double pair(like in ABA with 2 ABs) could be interesting in some cases, but would either require more planning for the combination effects or there would be quite some useless ones when doubled.

I’m not sure how many modifiers is the max they are considering for D4 but it seemed to be lower(from watching the demo), that’s why I mentioned 3 sockets max.

4

Mythic item had 8 properties.

This means 7 property runewords (4 sockets) would be great one wear item like the mythic.

Btw, I myself posted how they could implement the D2 type of runewords. Check it out if interested.

5

I think white items would still be obsolete in your model. Unless runes are weaker for rares and above.

6

Or runeword itself discards other item stats.

7

Maybe then we can have a mythic that has no effects but 4-5 sockets.

The idea would be so that since anything above blue has a single socket max they wouldn’t be able to complete runewords