Wildstar Runecrafting Guide

Hey everyone, Lannister here and by popular request here is my New Player’s Guide to Runecrafting.

----------Goals / Table of Contents----------

There’s a lot to cover with runes and I want to make sure that a brand new player can walk away from this guide with a solid grasp of how they work. This guide is primarily aimed at the new player who might not have a lot of access to money or materials and is not raiding. Also, since every class can play DPS and it is the most popular role by population, this guide will be from a DPS perspective. This guide will also be a lot more about information than action, although I will include a section at the bottom to address this.

• Runecrafting: Why Bother?

• Gathering Materials: Everyone, get in here!

• Rune Slots in Gear: What are these slot things?

• Rune Basics: General info about runes

• Set Runes: Let’s talk about sets baby

• Class Set Runes: Stay classy Nexus

• Ok now what do I do with this information?

----------Runecrafting: Why Bother?----------

Gear in wildstar have empty spots for runes which provide a lot of stats. In a lot of gear around half the stats can come from runes! For example: You may notice with the Prestige PvP gear that you can use Gladiator’s Enhancers to increase the quality of the piece. This may have led you to assume that the stats would increase, which is wrong. Instead each enhancer only unlocks an additional rune slot for the piece. This sounds bad and is if you have no runes, however if you do have runes this can be extremely powerful.

----------Gathering Materials: Everyone, get in here!----------

You can gather materials for runecrafting by salvaging gear, finding fragments, or purchasing them on the auction house. You’ll generally need several fragments for one rune (e.g. 8 superb rune fragments for each superb rune.) You can craft runes at a runecrafting station but you can insert runes anywhere.

----------Rune Slots in Gear: What are these slot things?----------

You may have seen rune slots in your current gear and wonder what they are. Well if you Ctrl + Right Click the item and select Edit Runes then you can see a bit more details. Rune slots each have an element (Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Logic, Life) and only runes of the same type can go into that slot. The one exception to this rule is Fusion runes, which can go in any slot and we’ll talk more about those later. Lots of gear that has slots can unlock an additional slot for gold, this is generally a good idea if you plan on using that piece. Also you can pay gold to randomly roll the associated element of the slot or service tokens to directly change the slot. RNGesus may or may not help you here.

----------Rune Basics: General info about runes----------

Every rune has four qualities: element, effect, rarity, and item level.

*Element - this dictates what rune slot type the runecan go into

*Effect - this is the stat, or in the case of fusion runes effect, that the rune provides. These stats are organized by element (e.g. fire - crit hit chance, earth - crit hit severity, air - strikethrough)

*Rarity - you could also think of this as the color of the rune. Just like your gear you can have different rarity runes, from blue to orange. Typically the rarer runes provided increased bonuses in sets.

*Item Level - also just like gear, runes have item levels. These item levels are easily communicated with you by the Prefix name of the rune or rune fragment (e.g. Basic, High, Superb) At level 50 if you start salvaging gear you’ll get mostly High or Superb rune fragments.

You can craft a rune for almost every stat you can find on gear and these are what you normally find while leveling up. If you’re a fresh 50 and can’t afford/find High/Superb+ runes for your gear just yet then lower item level basic runes are better than nothing.

Special Note: Fusion Runes: Fusion runes are unique because they can go into any element rune slot but are locked to a certain piece of gear. For example as you’re leveling up you may receive a Fusion rune that gives you bonus experience that can only be put into your leg piece. Generally you’ll want to figure out what Fusion rune works best for you for each slot.

----------Set Runes: Let’s talk about sets baby----------

So this is probably the part that you’ve been waiting for. If you’ve skipped to this part then and are confused then go up one section.

When you’re on the runecrafting panel you’ll notice that the middle section is titled ‘Create Set Runes’ and is used for crafting sets. Every rune set in the game has set bonuses which are earned by wearing multiple* of the same type of rune in the same piece of gear. Some of these sets are class specific and we’ll talk about them in the next section. For now let’s talk about the normal sets and for our specific example let’s use the Havoc set.

The Havoc rune set is available from runes ilvl 40 (Refined) to ilvl 120 (Divine) and is comprised of three types of runes:

• Strikethrough (Air)

• Critical Hit Chance (Fire)

• Multi-Hit Chance (Water)

and provides the following set bonuses:

• 2 Power: 0.17% Max Health

• 3 Power: 0.20% Critical Hit Chance

• 4 Power: 0.45% Multi-Hit Chance

• 5 Power: 0.25% Critical Hit Chance

• 6 Power: 0.55% Multi-Hit Chance

As you can guess you want to be able to get as many of these extra bonuses as possible. However, even the best gear only has 5 rune slots and you want to use 1 fusion at least it seems impossible! That’s where rune rarity comes in.

Improved rarity runes count for 2 runes. So that means that if you put 1 High Havoc Rune: Critical Hit rune that is purple rarity in a piece of gear you will unlock the 2 Power set bonus.

An important thing to note though is that you can only have ONE rune of a certain level, quality, and type!

If you want to put another set rune in that gear it has to have a least a different level, quality, or type. So you could have High Major runes of all the different stats for the set, a High Major and minor runes of the same stat, or High Major and Superb Major of the same stat.

That last piece is the complicated part. Go back through it if you didn’t understand. You can combine lots of runes from the same set, as long as none of them match another rune in the gear 100%.

Last and most importantly you can stack the same set multiple times across your gear! However the set only counts runes in the same item, so you can’t put 6 individual minor runes across all your gear to activate a set.

----------Class Set Runes: Stay classy Nexus----------

Last but not least, Class Runes are special sets that have special bonuses for specific classes only. For PvE you won’t have to worry about these until you get into raiding, so let’s talk about PvP runes!

For this example let’s use the Warrior’s set called Brawler, it is comprised of three types of runes:

• Strikethrough (Air)

• Critical Hit Chance (Fire)

• Critical Hit Severity (Earth)

and provides the following set bonuses:

• 2 Power: 0.18% Critical Hit Chance

• 3 Power: 0.80% Critical Hit Sev

• 4 Power: When you land a class CC action on your target, deal X Tech damage to the target every 1s for 5s and restore that amount as health. Generate 5 Kinetic Energy per tick. Stacks 3 times

• 5 Power: 0.30% Strikethrough

• 6 Power: 0.28% Critical Hit Chance

• 7 Power: 1.20% Critical Hit Sev

• 8 Power: Leap and Bum Rush grant a Stalwart for 4s (Stalwart: Reduce CC Duration by 40%)

[Note: PvP rune bonuses 4 & 8 are disabled in non-pvp environments]

8 piece set bonuses in 4-5 rune slots?! How are we going to do that? This is easier than you think. Yes, most gear pieces only have 5 rune slots and there are fancy fusion runes that you want to use so it’s more like 4, however shoulders do not have any fusion runes so that’s a full 5 slots there. (Legs and boots also don’t have crafted runes and the good runes for them can be extremely pricey.) So you can use 1 of each Major Superb Rune (each counts as 2, they’re orange rarity) and 2 Minor Superb Runes to get you a total of 8 Power(3 Majors @ 2 Power each + 2 Minors @ 1 Power each) for the bonus. Note that you’ll definitely not have the orange runes at the start but they can be obtained from the Superb Runecrafting bags.

Class rune bonus are limited to 1 per active set of gear.

----------Ok now what do I do with this information?----------

Okay that was a lot of stuff, but what can you do to apply this knowledge?

• figure out what stats you want (googling for class guides)

• figure out if you can make any sets that will give you bonuses in these stats

• reroll rune slots for the elements you need

• craft runes to go in these slots, don’t craft a ton at first because you’ll make mistakes so take your time

• use tools like the Rune Planner in the sidebar

• have fun!

And that’s basically all I know about runecrafting in wildstar. I’d like to thank all the Wildstar team for making a great game and content creators out there documenting it for us to learn. I’d also like to thank my guildes in <Heroes> on Warhound for helping me figure some of this stuff out. Also thanks to CKJester for his rune spreadsheet.

Runes can be crafted at an engraving station and their is 7 rune types:

• Air
• Earth
• Life
• Logic
• Fire
• Fusion
• Water

Depending on the rune, crafting a rune as a cost this generally includes rune fragments and elemental signs. Rune set bonuses has a higher cost of materials due to rarity of gathering the required materials.

Basic Runes

Basic runes (Stat Attribute Runes) gives you primary stats (Such as Finesse, Insight and Brutality etc.) and secondary stats (Such as Critical Hit Rating, Strikethrough Rating and Deflect Rating etc.) this allows your character to become more powerful at dealing damage to your adversaries or healing your team members.

The cost of crafting a basic rune varies between different runes, but they generally requires the following materials:

• 3x Rune Fragment
• 1x Intricate Rune Fragment
• 2x Basic Elemental Sign
• 1x Greater Elemental Sign

These runes can be place in all item types including PvE and PvP, however PvP stat attribute runes has slightly different rules. PvP runes can only be placed into PvP items that contains PvP Power and Defense ratings.

You can read more about the Basic Runes and discover which element provides you with your primary and secondary stats.

Set Bonus Runes

There are currently 4 different types of set bonus runes these are:

• General Rune Sets
• Class Rune Sets
• Eldan Rune Sets
• PvP Rune Sets

A set bonus rune contains an additional bonus for when you collect certain amount of runes of the same set. The rune includes a bonus and stat attributes. These runes has a higher cost of materials due to rarity however they can be superior once your have achieved the bonus. You do not have to, have all of the set bonus runes in the same item, it can be spread across all of your items that you have equipt.

A set bonus rune can be broken down into 2 parts. Using the image on the right as an example of a Spellslinger class rune set.

Focused Surge Rune of Finesse

• Focused Surge = The name of the set bonus.
• Rune of Finesse = The stat attribute this rune will apply.

For the first bonus to apply we need 6 Focused Surge type runes. This can be gained from a combination of multiple different rune elements such as Fire and Water etc. The stat attribute does not have to be the same for the bonus to apply, only the first part.

You can also see which bonuses you have activated on your character profile user interface by clicking on "Set Bonuses", beware though if you replace an item that contains one of these runes you may have to re-craft that rune to retain the bonus.

Weakened Runes

Weakened runes are a new type of runes coming in a future patch in Wildstar. This allows you purchase cheap runes from a vendor. This is intended for players that are leveling their characters to level 50 as they would be replacing their items more frequently.

You can read more about the Weakened Runes and discover which element provides you with your primary and secondary stats.

To be able to add runes to your items, your item must contain at least 1 rune slot. Depending on the item you can have anywhere from 0 to 6 rune slots.

There are 8 different types of rune slots:

• Air
• Earth
• Life
• Logic
• Fire
• Fusion
• Water
• Omni

Each Rune Slot Type can only be filled by a corresponding rune of the same rune type, such as a water rune can only fit into a water slot. The exception to this rule is the Omni rune slot, you can place any rune type into this rune slot. If an item contains two or more of the same rune slot type, you cannot put more than one of the same rune in that item but you can however have the same rune in more than one item.

Such as: If your item has 2 Fire rune slots, you cannot put in 2 Fire: Runes of Finesse. If your item has 2 rune slots, 1 being fire and the other being Fusion, you can put in 1x Fire: Rune of Finesse and 1x Fusion: Rune of Finesse.

Additional Rune Slots

Each additional rune slot comes automatically locked on the item, you have to unlock the slot on the engraving station, this will cost you in game currency. The additional runes within the same item also degrades, meaning that the stat from the rune lowers depending on which slot you place the rune in.

• 1st Rune Slot => 100% of the stat.
• 2nd Rune Slot => 78% of the stat.
• 3rd Rune Slot => 66% of the stat.
• 4th Rune Slot => 57% of the stat.
• 5th Rune Slot => 51% of the stat.
• 6th Rune Slot => 47% of the stat.

An Example of this:

If you place a Rune of Finesse in:

• The 1st rune slot this would give you 18+ Finesse.
• The 2nd rune slot this would give you 14+ Finesse.
• The 3rd rune slot this would give you 12+ Finesse.
• The 4th rune slot this would give you 10+ Finesse.
• The 5th rune slot this would give you 9+ Finesse.
• The 6th rune slot this would give you 8+ Finesse.

Depending on your class will depend entirely on what Runes you should choose. The easiest answer to the question is to simply determine your specialisation: Are you DPS, Healing or Tanking? If you know the answer to that, it should steer your choices for Runes fairly easily.

For example, my Medic is DPS specialised and requires Tech to obtain Assault Power. My entire focus to maximise his damage output is to obtain Assault Power and Tech based Runes across any of the elements. The primary Rune Set I’m aiming for is 12/12 Full Charge Rune of Critical because it provides additional Assault Power when I Energize, while my other runes will be entirely Tech based. The beauty of the Rune system is the fact anyone can do it and the very best Runes are available straight away. I will reiterate however that to become fully “Runed up” you’re going to need a significant quantity of money. For the very best setup you’ll be looking at around 8 Platinum.

Apart from the basic paths, there also is Cooking, which can be used by everyone, and Rune Craft that always you to craft Runes, which you can then use to buff your equipment.

To craft a rune, you first need the components. The complete list is always displayed in the rune crafting window, when you use the crafting table for runes, which is called the Engraving table.

After you interact with it, there appear two tabs. the first one, called "Create Runes" is for crafting the runes. All of them have been divided, according to the type of slots, in the items, that they can go into. Then, according to their own categories.

The important term here is the "Rune Set". Some of the runes add skills that the more runes with this skill you have, the stronger it is. Some have changes, every rune, and they only require only three of the type, to achieve the highest level but, there also are ones that require, as many as twelve.

After you have created a rune, you need to equip it. Access the next window and equip your rune into the slot of the same type. You need to remember that the water rune cannot be placed in the fire slot. Additionally, the slots "Open" and "Locked" are different from each other. They are different in that the locked slot first needs to be bought for coins.