Runewords return to the franchise in Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred

Runewords are a popular, “fondly remembered” power feature that originated in Diablo 2, and to some serious excitement, they’ll be making a comeback in Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred. Blizzard’s goal is to retain the soul of Diablo 2‘s Runewords — combining socketable components to create more powerful items — while leaning into what’s “unique and cool” about D4 to implement this version. Here’s everything we know about the iteration of Runewords coming in Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred.

What are Runewords?

Runewords augment player gear, creating unique “spells” or power-ups through gear with two sockets — Chest, Leg, and Two-Handed weapon slots. They are crafted by combining two types of Runes — Runes of Ritual specify the player’s action that will trigger the Runeword, and Runes of Invocation define the effect. The team provided an example — the Yul Legendary Rune of Ritual says the action will trigger when you cast a skill with a cooldown, and the Gar Magic Rune of Invocation grants 2.5% Critical Strike Chance for 5 seconds, up to 25%. When you add both to a piece of gear by socketing them, you get “YulGar — Pugilistic Precision,” where every time you cast a skill with a cooldown, you gain 2.5% Critical Strike Chance for 5 seconds, up to 25% Critical Strike Chance.

Some of the most potent Runes of Invocation unlock the powers of other classes. Each class will share two skills and one aspect via Runewords, with some casting improved versions of the existing skills. However, you’ll always cast the best possible version if you have upgrades to those skills. Some examples demoed during the stream included the Jah invocation rune (replaces your next Evade with Sorcerer’s Teleport) on a Necromancer and a Yom invocation rune (casts Druid’s Petrify, stunning enemies and increasing your Critical Strike Damage against them).

Players will be capped at having two Runewords equipped. However, you cannot equip the same Rune twice, and Runes can only be paired with an opposite type. If you have two “Yul” runes, you cannot put one in two different pieces of gear, and it would have to be paired with a Rune of Invocation. Runes are removable — unlike D2, Runewords will not permanently alter an item and can be reused in an upgrade piece. Runes are also tradeable and will be stored in a new “socketable” tab in your character inventory.

Runewords work with the Offering resource system

Runeword effects are powered by a unique resource system called Offering. Your Runes of Ritual generate Offering that the linked Runes of Invocation consume — the more demanding rituals gain more Offering, and the more powerful invocations cost more Offering. However, there is the possibility of generating more Offering than the invocation requires — this is referred to as Overflow. Overflow will generate bonus effects proportional to the Overflow amount. Going back to our example of YulGar — Yul generates 50 Offering, but Gar only costs 25 Offering, creating an overflow of 25 Offering (or an extra ‘cast’), so you’d gain two Gar stacks from a single cast of a cooldown skill.

Rune Crafting is also coming

Also pulling from the D2 setup is Rune Crafting — you can combine three of the same Rune to create a new rune. The crafted rune will be different than the runes combined. However, when you combine magic and rare Runes, you have a chance for the resulting Rune to be the next highest rarity, so combining three rare Runes could result in a different legendary rune.

Finally, and most interestingly — Runes will open up another route to Mythic Uniques. Mythic Uniques can be crafted at the Jeweler by combining specific Runes with a Resplendent Spark. Presumably, the Runes involved will be incredibly rare, and the items will still be locked behind Resplendent Sparks from existing rewards or Mythic Unique drops. Still, it’s a win!

This is available to test in the Diablo 4 patch 2.0 PTR, which runs from September 4 – 11 for PC Battle.net players. Around midday on Friday, late game content and Runewords will be unlocked to test. The PTR will also have a vendor who will allow you to beef up your character for end-game testing with leveling, upgrades, gear, legendary powers, and glyphs.

Runewords are only one of many big game changes coming with Vessel of Hatred: read the full patch notes  (all 17,000 words of them) if you want all the details. But Runewords will be exclusive to folks playing Vessel of Hatred, so it may be worth considering the expansion if this is a feature you loved from earlier Diablo. We’ll see you on the PTR!