Runewords Explained in Diablo 4 Patch 2.0 - Everything You Need to Know
Blizzard ended this week's Developer Update Livestream with an exciting surprise announcement — Runes and Runewords are coming to Diablo 4 in Patch 2.0 — Runewords offer fun, game-changing effects by combining individual Runes to create something far greater than the sum of its parts!
Though Runewords in Diablo 4 are quite different from their Diablo 2 counterparts, Blizzard has promised that they will capture «the soul of Diablo 2 Runewords,» so veterans of the series can expect to feel right at home mixing and matching various Runes together. Runes are a new socketable item coming to the game in Patch 2.0 that, when paired together, create Runewords. Unlike its predecessor, items in Diablo 4 have no more than two sockets, so this time around players will be selecting only two Runes to craft their Runewords — Runes of Ritual and Runes of Invocation. For a complete list of all Runewords in Patch 2.0, please refer to the following article:
All New Runewords in Patch 2.0
Crafting Runewords
Think of Runes of Ritual as the «prefix,» while Runes of Invocation are the «suffix.» The new Runeword system effectively allows players to craft their own spells with a series of if-then statements (ie: if this happens, then that happens) — another way to look at this system is a series of causes and effects. Runes of Ritual determine the action players must execute to cause the Runeword to trigger, and Runes of Invocation determine its effect. For example, the Ritual Rune YUL reads: «Cast a Skill with a Cooldown» and the Invocation Rune GAR reads: «Gain Critical Strike Chance for 5 seconds» — by combining these two Runes, players can create the Runeword YulGar, as shown below.
Additionally, there are several Rune-specific rules that players will want to keep in mind when crafting Runewords:
Runeword Rules
- Runes are tradable
- Runes are stored in the new «Socketable» inventory tab
- Runes stack in the player inventory
- Players may only equip 2 Runewords at a time, and
