Rune Basics
Runes give your heroes extra stats, and some stats that are difficult to acquire any other way, such as damage resist or boost.
In addition to the stats they give directly, runes have these attributes:
- Alignment of light or dark, indicated by the colour of the rune stone.
- Rarity of grey, blue, purple, or yellow as shown in the border around it.
- Level displayed on the top right of the rune.
Runes of the same alignment used together can create a rune set out of three or five runes. Each hero has eight rune slots; three for light runes, three for dark runes, and two for either. So as sets are always three or five runes of the same alignment, that means each hero can have a light set and a dark set, and one of those sets may be five runes.
General tips:
- The level of a set will be equivalent to the level of the lowest rune within the set.
- The active set cannot be controlled manually if your runes can make more than one set, and the game will not preference higher level sets over lower, so you may have to avoid using certain runes if they cause this issue
- Don’t waste mastercraft, wait for level 10 temple or it will make level 1/2 runes
- Don’t waste an orange ritual, wait for temple level 6 to get useful purple runes
Just starting out with runes – After unlocking temple at party level 23:
- General sets and loose runes will give a few bonus stats
- Just use the auto-fill option, it’s not worth any more effort
- Switch to exclusive sets as soon as possible for level 4/5 set bonuses they have
Exclusive sets – When you start getting level 4 purple runes:
- Get light and dark three rune exclusive sets on each hero before five rune sets
- A level 4 three rune set is more important than a level 3 five rune set
- At level 5 light and dark sets are exactly the same
- At level 6 and 7 choose your combination of sets based on the level 6 bonus
- At level 8 and 9 also consider which skills you would like to enhance if you can create the exclusive sets specifically for your hero
Yellow exclusive sets – When you have level 6 or greater yellow runes:
- Provide the same set bonuses as the grey exclusive sets
- Will almost never be the right choice until level 7
- Below level 8 the only benefit is that yellow runes will have higher stats on the runes. Compare stats gained from yellow runes vs set bonuses lost if your set will be lower level
- At level 8 and 9 yellow sets should always be the the better choice over grey if they are specifically for your hero
- At level 8 and 9 yellow sets on a different hero will have better stats from the yellow runes, but lack the level 9 skill bonus of a purple hero specific set, trade offs may vary by situation
Rune Sets
All sets can be worn by all heroes and will provide the listed benefits.
All sets of the same type give the same effects, except for the hero skill boost on five rune exclusive sets which only the correct heroes can benefit from.
Look up the the various sets in the rune section of the museum.
General sets come in three and five rune varieties:
Three rune sets contain Five rune sets contain
3 grey; or (add blue, grey) 1 blue, 4 grey; or
2 blue, 1 grey (add grey, grey) 2 blue, 3 grey
| Level | Dark (3) | Light (3) | Dark (5) | Light (5) |
| Lv. 3 | ATK Boost 5% | HP Boost 5% | ATK Boost 6% | HP Boost 6% |
| Lv. 6 | HP Boost 5% | ATK Boost 5% | HP Boost 6% | ATK Boost 6% |
| Lv. 8 | Shield for 10% max HP | ATK Strength buff 18% at start | Restore 10% of damage as HP | 15% HP to all allies on death |
| Lv. 9 | DMG Res. 5 | DMG Boost 5 | DMG Res. 6 | DMG Boost 6 |
Exclusive sets come in three and five rune varieties and grey and yellow rarities:
Three rune sets contain Five rune sets contain
1 purple, 2 grey; or (add purple, blue) 2 purple, 1 blue, 2 grey; or
1 purple, 2 yellow (add purple, blue) 2 purple, 1 blue, 2 yellow
| Level | Dark (3) | Light (3) | Dark (5) | Light (5) |
| Lv. 3 | ATK Boost 5% | HP Boost 5% | ATK Boost 6% | HP Boost 6% |
| Lv. 4 | DMG Res. 30 | DMG Res. 30 | DMG Res. 35 | DMG Res. 35 |
| Lv. 5 | HP Boost 5% | ATK Boost 5% | HP Boost 6% | ATK Boost 6% |
| Lv. 6 | Shield for 10% max HP | ATK Strength buff 18% at start | Restore 10% of damage as HP | 15% HP to all allies on death |
| Lv. 7 | DMG Boost 30 | DMG Boost 30 | DMG Boost 35 | DMG Boost 35 |
| Lv. 9 | – | – | <Hero Skill 1> | <Hero Skill 1> |
| Lv. 8 | – | – | <Hero Skill 1> | <Hero Skill 1> |
| Lv. 9 | – | – | <Hero Skill 2> | <Hero Skill 2> |
(Yellow five rune sets give two skill boosts compared to purple sets one skill boost)
Grey and yellow runes are direct counterparts, so every yellow set is identical to a purple set with the matching yellow runes replacing grey runes.
Set variants can be more specifically referred to by the colour of their most important rune, as this turns out to be unique for all three rune sets with five rune sets being an extension of the three rune combination by two runes.
Sets for Multiple Teams
Combinations for five rune sets cannot be easily made with trial and error, so it’s often back and forth looking at the set combinations to work out which ones will work.
The limitation is pretty much always the purple rune pairs themselves.
Each purple rune can only pair with two of the other five purple runes, but the valid pairs form a circle, like this… → →
Two runes that are next to each other will form valid rune sets, and any two runes not next to each other will never form a set. These pairings are the same for light and dark rune sets!
Based on this you can just assign your purples to heroes and quickly rearrange them, then use trial and error to find a blue and two greys that works, or look up one of the runes when ready to complete the set to see which blue and greys will work via museum or tapping the rune from your bag.
For example, with these 8 runes placed in order:
You can pretty quickly see that four pairs can be made in only two ways:
OR
Handy to know: runes are displayed in bag in clockwise circle order starting from
Rune Stats
Runes provide stats for your hero, and all runes will have one primary stat.
The primary stat is guaranteed to be the same on any rune of the same inscription and always increases with every level of the rune.
Runes will also have random stats, two on grey and blue runes, three on purple and yellow runes.
For each level of a rune the primary stat and one of the random stats will increase by one level. For this reason, runes can be optimised (min-maxed) into one stat to the exclusion of the others. Min-max of runes often provides more total stats than otherwise.
This is because higher levels in a stat provide greater jumps in power than the lower levels.
An Angel rune has ATK and DEF as the random stats, and they scale identically.
At level 6 it could have DEF 20 + ATK 220, or it could have DEF 60 + ATK 110.
That’s 240 stat points if min-max, and only 170 stat points if roughly equal.
For any rune, the tables in the following sections show the value of the primary stat at that level, and the maximum of a random stat at that level if that stat were increased at every level of the rune. A rune that has the maximum in one random stat must have the minimum in all others!
Rune Upgrading
To min-max your runes with the least effort, focus on upgrading only those runes that are optimised for a useful stat.
You can identify these runes easily because they will have a minimum value in other stats regardless of level, as the perfectly min-maxed rune will want to raise the preferred stat on every level up, leaving the other stats at their beginning level.
For grey and blue runes, speed things up by going through them once to put a lock on all the runes that are optimal for a stat – in this case, the other random stat is minimum.
Grey runes look for minimum – 20 ATK, 20 DEF, or 180 HP
Blue runes look for minimum – 20 ATK, 20 DEF, or 220 HP
Purple runes look for minimum – 30 ATK or 30 DEF, but not both!
With these locked upgrading is now simple, aim to upgrade locked runes first knowing that they are already ‘perfect’ and check if they remained so after upgrading. If not, then remove the lock so they can be consumed by another rune upgrade later.
When crafting new runes you can glance at the stats on the creation screen and lock any optimal runes so that your collection is always organised.
While no absolute stat gains are made by optimising for boost or res on purple runes, you can still optimise away from ATK and DEF and lock the runes that have only one of ATK or def at a low value. As boost and res are quite powerful stats with tradeoffs that have no clear best choice it is still worth looking at the purple runes you choose to upgrade.
Grey Runes
The weight of stats between the grey runes is not quite equal on DEF.
The light grey (DEF) runes have more primary DEF than the dark grey runes have primary ATK, yet they both have identical values of the opposite stat.
| Dark Grey (ATK) | Light Grey (HP) | Light Grey (DEF) |
| Fallen, Dominion, DeathResistance, Devil | Angel, Sovereign, Tranquility | Protection and Demon |
| Primary: ATKRandom: DEF, HP | Primary: HPRandom: ATK, DEF | Primary: DEFRandom: ATK, HP |
| Dark Grey (ATK)LVLATKDEFHP1302018025030280390604804170110890523014011606350220178075003102520879049039509940590474010169010506760 | Light Grey (HP)LVLHPDEFATK128020202460303037806060414201101105185014014062850220220740403103108632049049097590590590101083010501050 | Light Grey (DEF)LVLDEFATKHP140201802703028031206048042201108905290140116064402201780763031025208980490395091180590474010169010506760 |
| Max ATK+DEF or ATK+HP ATK+DEF has less total stats than light grey DEF+ATK | Max HP+DEF or HP+ATK | Max DEF+ATK or DEF+HP Primary DEF stat is boosted disproportionately |
Blue Runes
Blue runes provide the same three stats as grey runes, ATK, DEF, and HP.
The weight of stats between the blue runes is not equal however, with the Fate rune receiving primary grade DEF stats despite it being a random stat.
As such, optimising for HP+DEF should be done only on Fate runes and not Devotion runes.
| Dark Blue (ATK) | Light Blue (HP) | Light Blue (DEF) |
| Destiny and Burn | Fate | Devotion |
| Primary: ATKRandom: DEF, HP | Primary: HPRandom: DEF, ATK | Primary: DEFRandom: ATK, HP |
| Dark Blue (ATK)LVLATKDEFHP14020220270403603120706104220130111052901801450644027022307630390315089806104940911807405930101690 | Light Blue (HP)LVHPDEFATK1 402025707040397012070417802201305232029018063750440270750506303908791098061099490118074010 1690 | Light Blue (DEF)LVLDEFATKHP14020220270403603120706104220130111052901801450644027022307630390315089806104940911807405930101690 |
| Max ATK+DEF or ATK+HP | Max HP+DEF or HP+ATK Primary boosted HP in addition to boosted DEF as though it were primary | Max DEF+ATK only DEF+HP is trivially worse that Fate HP+DEF, giving same DEF but less HP |
Purple Runes
All purple runes use the same five possible stats, ATK, DEF, HP, DMG Boost, DMG Res.
One of ATK, DEF, or HP will be the primary stat based on the inscription, which will be enhanced compared to the other stats and is guaranteed to rise with every level.
There will also be three random stats from the four remaining and these random stats grow at the same rates on all purple runes.
DMG Boost and DMG Res level linearly, so no additional stats are gained optimising them against each other. It may still be worthwhile if maxing one stat on the hero is the goal however.
DEF and ATK are generally less useful than DMG Boost and DMG Res, it’s worth attempting to optimise runes to have minimal DEF and ATK in favour of a higher Boost and/or Res stats.
| Dark Purple (ATK) | Light Purple (HP) | Light Purple (DEF) |
| Treasure, Rime, JudgementAxiom, Magic, Violence | Chalice, Frost, Judgement | Justice, Divine Word, Power |
| Primary: ATKRandom: 3 ∈ DEF, HP, Boost, Res | Primary: HPRandom: 3 ∈ DEF, ATK, Boost, Res | Primary: DEFRandom: 3 ∈ HP, ATK, Boost, Res |
| Dark Purple (ATK)LVLATKDEFHPBoostRes1503029022280504303331701008504443302001670555520320 666750 777980 8881180 999 10 | Light Purple (HP)LVLHPDEFATKBoostRes1460303022269050503331370100100444267020020055542003203206666040 7777910 8889490 999 10 | Light Purple (DEF)LVLDEFHPATKBoostRes1502903022280430503331708501004443301670200555520 320666750 777980 8881180 999 10 |
| Max ATK+Boost or ATK+Resor ATK+Boost+Res | Max HP+Boost or HP+Resor HP+Boost+Res | Max DEF+Boost or DEF+Resor DEF+Boost+Res |
Yellow Runes
Yellow runes aren’t going to be viable or relevant for a long time to come!
Dark Yellow (ATK)
| LVL | ATK | DEF | HP | Crit | Dodge | Boost | Res |
| 1 | 240 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | ||
| 2 | 520 | 320 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 3 | |
| 3 | 600 | 370 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 4 | |
| 4 | 790 | 490 | 5 | 5 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 6 | |||||
| 6 | 7 | 7 | |||||
| 7 | 8 | 8 | |||||
| 8 | |||||||
| 9 | |||||||
| 10 |
Light Yellow (DEF)
| LVL | DEF | ATK | HP | Crit | Dodge | Boost | Res |
| 1 | 240 | 2770 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | |
| 2 | 520 | 320 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 3 | |
| 3 | 600 | 370 | 5160 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| 4 | 5 | 5 | |||||
| 5 | 6 | 6 | |||||
| 6 | 7 | 7 | |||||
| 7 | 8 | 8 | |||||
| 8 | |||||||
| 9 | |||||||
| 10 |
Light Yellow (HP)
| LVL | HP | ATK | DEF | Crit | Dodge | Boost | Res |
| 1 | 240 | 240 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | |
| 2 | 7190 | 320 | 320 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| 3 | 8260 | 370 | 370 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| 4 | 9800 | 5 | 5 | ||||
| 5 | 6 | 6 | |||||
| 6 | 7 | 7 | |||||
| 7 | 8 | 8 | |||||
| 8 | |||||||
| 9 | |||||||
| 10 |
