Runecrafting Guide

This guide talks about the Runecrafting tab of the Runecrafting skill. Runecrafting is also an enchantment name. Try not to get confused. Click here for a guide on Clothweaving and Affixing

This guide is intended to help players understand the intricacies of Runecrafting. This is not a beginner's guide, it is intended to be a min-max 'tips and tricks' guide for players wanting to make the most out of runecrafting.

Gear and Enchants

Generally speaking, there are a few items you must have for peak runecrafting efficiency:

• A piece of jewelry with Haste. Ideally, you would use a  Prismatic Necklace due to the fact it adds effective runecrafting levels (also don't put haste on a ring you'll get bullied).

• One of every Talisman (to increase passive essence gain).
• The full Runecrafter's Robe set:  Runecrafter's Robe Hood,  Runecrafter's Robe Top, and  Runecrafter's Robe Bottoms.
  • You can replace any one of the enchants with Essence Concentration 1, but this is only recommended if you take Essence Concentration Expert.

•  Ancient Runic Chisel with Engraving (try to get the legendary chisel for 8 slots; it's worth it).
  • Swapping out Engraving for Fibrous Fabrication depending on what you want to do can save you lots of money in the long run and is usually worth the cost of crafting the scrolls.
• Runecrafting on your boots/gloves if you choose to use engraving on your chisel (try to get to 7 slots; it's worth it).
• 3  Apprentice Runic Chisel, with the bonus gathering essence, bonus combat essence, and bonus production essence affixes (to equip when you are not runecrafting, so you can get an extra 3 essence)

• A  Cloak of the Void.
• Enlightenment on your boots/gloves (optional but recommended sometimes).
•  Dwarven Manufacturing Pendant or  Elven Logistics Pendant (optional, I prefer the elven pendant).
• A good mining set (optional, for mining  Rune Slate).

Interestingly enough, unless you want to use Scholar for more mastery XP, you don't need a ring at all for anything in this skill, as the  Prismatic Ring does not give you runecrafting levels like its necklace counterpart does.

General Priority List

From most important to least important:

1. 1 of every Talisman.
2. a couple Chisels, affixed with bonus essence.
3. Enlightenment: for use during other tasks if you have a free slot or want to grind essence.
4. Runecrafting on gloves/boots: Conserving essence early is very important.
5. Necklace with Haste: buy it if you can't craft it, it's more than worth it.
6.  Runecrafter's Robe Hood,  Runecrafter's Robe Top, and  Runecrafter's Robe Bottoms
7. Cloak of the Void: You'll probably get a Void Portal Anchor while you try and grind the armor, but if not don't sweat it and move on.
8. Ancient Runic Chisel: By now, you should, in theory, have your legendary Chisel.
9. Elven and Dwarven Pendants.

Priority for Augmenting

Aside from the Runecrafter's Robe set and Ancient Runic Chisel, augmentation doesn't do much for Runecrafting.

You should soulbind and augment your Robes until you run out of Academy Wards, as it is twice as cost-effective to augment per Runecrafting level than the Chisel (30 Runecrafting Shards for +1 Runecrafting Level vs 300 Shards for +5 Levels)

Augmenting your Dwarven Manufacturing Pendant, Elven Logistics Pendant, Cloak of the Void, and Prismatic Necklace all increase your effective runecrafting level as well, and I would augment them in the order presented.

Leveling

The fastest way to gain Runecrafting XP is through runecrafting. You gain 25 XP per rune created, so if you make 8 runes per action then you get 200XP per action. For the highest XP/hr, you need the highest effective level of runecrafting you can get, a max of 8 levels of Essence concentration on your chisel, 6 levels of haste on your Necklace, a dwarven pendant, and Cloak of the Void. With 200 effective levels and this setup, you get 19 runes per action and an action speed of about 2.59 seconds, equaling an estimated 1390 runes an hour and 660,231 XP/hr. This can be increased to 1,452,509 XP/hr with 6 levels of Scholar. Wow.

Runecrafting Dungeon

The Runecrafting dungeon is very useful in progressing through the runecrafting levels, and can make you some money from the dungeon's rare drops

The Academy drops three major things that we care about:

1.  Academy Wards: This is the material used to make the Runecrafter's Robe set, also sells for not bad amounts of money.
2.  Void Portal Anchor: This is used to make the Cloak of the Void and sells for an absurd amount of money.
3.  Dwarven Manufacturing Pendant: Surprisingly, this doesn't drop from the Dwarven Key dungeon, and increases your speed at the cost of increased material cost. Also sells for not bad.

Each key also drops 25  Runecrafting Shard, which is equal to about 2 hours of Runecrafting. Since shards are time-gated, this should be used when you want to push for an extra level on your Legendary Chisel or get your Runecrafting gear up to the max.

Talents

When it comes to talents, if you are not going to go all in on Runecrafting, you can narrow down your options to these few:

• Runecrafting Master: an increase in Runecrafting (Enchantment) and Engraving levels is always good and this one is decently cheap.
• Runecrafting Grandmaster: the exact same as Runecrafting Master, adding another level.
• Essence Concentration Expert: This fully counteracts the negative effects one level of Essence Concentration and a bit of a 2nd level, allowing you to gain more xp and runes faster. More on the calculations of this in the crafting runes section.

I would NOT recommend Essence Concentration Master if you are not fully specializing in runecrafting, as it provides less Essence Concentration reduction than its Expert counterpart (1.5x less) for 12 talent points (2x more).

Essence

Essence is one of 2 materials needed to craft runes. Essence is an interesting resource as it is a bit awkward to obtain compared to other production skills. Normally, players who mainly use production skills purchase resources to produce them and sell them for a profit, as it saves more time (and therefore money) than gathering said resources themselves. However, the only way to purchase essence is to buy and consume Talismans, which reward random amounts of essence and are not very profitable if at all.

Essence is gained naturally through completing actions of other skills, and the amount you get per action is the same everywhere. This means that an action that takes 1s and an action that takes 10s reward the same amount of essence. The few exceptions to this rule are Smithing and Cooking. The amount of fire essence you get from Smithing is multiplied by the intensity you are smithing at (ie. at 3 base essence and smithing at 5 intensity you gain 15 essence per action). Preparing always gives you normal amounts; Cooking gives +1 multiplier every 7 difficulty levels, starting at difficulty 7 (ie. X2 at diff. 14, X3 at diff. 21, etc.); Brewing (Alchemy) gives X2 for rare, X3 for epic, and X4 for legendary potions. You do gain the essence from failed cooking actions with no penalties to essence gain.

The base amount of essence per action is 3, and can be increased in many ways, up to a maximum of 25 per action:

• +6 from consuming a Talisman
• +6 from Talisman Talent
• +7 from 7 levels of Enlightenment
• +3 from Bonus Gathering/Combat/Production Essence Chisel Affix

Since most essences reward the same amount per action, we want to complete actions as fast as possible. This means that for non-combat essence farming you should always have a Haste 6 Necklace with Quick Gatherer and Quick Producer Affixes, the full skilling set and legendary tool relevant to the skill you are doing, and a Cloak of the Void.

Here is the fastest way to gain each type of essence. Most are either not profitable, not worth your time, or not worth the investment as most utilize the lowest tier area with high level gear. I've tried to include other options for making your time worth it if you really need the essence. I do strongly recommend you go do what you want and play the game and have fun because even that will generate essence.

Essence	Rune Market Value	Fastest method of Obtaining
Air Essence	498	Idling! Idling gives you double air essence, otherwise you gain air essence passively over time while doing other activities.
Earth Essence	399	Mining Clay Pit. Gathering does not affect essence gain, as it isn't completing another action, but when combined with Destructive Testing 8 and Scholar you can get a lot of Mining XP per hour.
Fire Essence	940	For this one I'll give you a couple options The fastest way to gain fire essence is by Smithing bronze bars at City Forge with 7 (8 with Overheating) intensity and Inferno 11 (7 from gloves/boots, 4 from potions). However, this loses you money as bronze bars don't even sell for more than one copper ore. Preparing carrots, mushrooms, and wildberries with Inferno 11 can result in multiple actions very fast. You can also use Blitzing with this for more cooking ingredients, but note that Blitzing procs do not reward essence, as they don't complete an action. Mithril Bars at Forge 2 Intensity 10 with Inferno 11. Not the fastest by any means but it is the fastest that's also really profitable. You could also try Gold Bars at the same forge and intensity with Inferno 11 as its similar in profitability and only a tad bit slower
Water Essence	900	Fishing in the Shallow Pond with high reel power from Reinforced Line 12 (8 from Tacklebox, 4 from potions), and Speedster Fishing, Instant node finding, and Reeling (or Prepared) Affixes
Blood Essence	1,800	While multi hit attacks would seem the best for getting high amounts of hits, you aren't always guaranteed to hit the max amount of enemies and get the most value out of them. It is instead better to focus on enemies with large hit points, in areas like the Chaos Wastes or Valley of Giants, to maximize your time hitting them and not waiting in between waves. (Note: attacks that deal no damage, such as Parry This! and Bestial Camouflage still give essence and are usually instant, so include as many as you can) (Note 2: essence is only gained when an enemy dies, so if you can't kill an enemy, you gain no essence). I recommend the Empowered Bestial Dagger with speed and haste affixes, Defender, and Shawl. While they don't have the highest attack speed or damage of all weapons, they have access to multiple fast attacks and a chance to decrease attack delay by 25% from the set bonus, giving them a high amount of actions per hour.
Death Essence	800	Fighting in zones with waves of multiple enemies is extremely effective as the time between waves is around 2 seconds, the same amount of time you could be getting another kill in, but only if you can guarantee a one shot. For this I simply recommend the Farm around difficulty 5, with the Empowered Bestial Dagger with speed and haste affixes, Defender, and Shawl for the set bonus for faster attacks. I will say, while grinding the Farm is the best for death essence (and Farm Fiend Achievement), it is otherwise a waste of time as the drops aren't very valuable.
Chaos Essence	713	The exact same as Blood essence.
Nature Essence	1,300	Farming any single slot (30m) seed with water totem and coalescing totem should be done at all times, even when you are doing other activities. For an active method, Foraging in Grasslands with Speedster Foraging Affix.
Mind Essence	660	Again, strategy is similar to blood and chaos, but instead of essence based off of hits and then gained on kill, essence is gained on cast of a magic ability. This means that you just want to use any magic ability with a lower speed or equal speed to your auto attack (the one with no cooldown). The Elder Wand has the fastest magic attack speed of all magic weapons, is cheap to Affix with Haste and Speed, and does low enough damage to hit multiple times before killing, giving you more essence per hour.
Cosmic Essence	124	Runecrafting!! You should craft Cosmic runes last when runecrafting because runecrafting any rune grants cosmic essence (even crafting cosmic runes!) and we love funny big number.

Rune Slates

At higher levels,  Rune Slate starts to become the more expensive component of crafting runes. An effective way to get rune slates fast is by mining at the Slate Spires with a Bag of Holding, to gain the max amount of rune slates per action.

When runecrafting, you will always consume an amount of rune slates equal to the number of runes you craft in that action. There is an exception with the Elven Logistics Pendant and Dwarven Manufacturing Pendant, which reduces/increases the amount of rune slates used in one action by 20%/25% while keeping the number of crafted runes the same. Engraving is also very useful for saving runes as it gives you a chance to not consume rune slates.

Crafting Runes

For the highest efficiency when Runecrafting, we want the lowest essence per rune, and the highest number of runes per action. The amount of essence used per action is as follows:

$400*{\frac {1}{1+Runecrafting}}*(1+EssenceConcentration-EssenceConcentrationExpert)*{\frac {1}{1+DwarvenManufacturing-ElvenLogistics}}$

As you can see, Runecrafting, Essence Concentration, and your Pendant of choice are all multiplicative of one another. The Talent, Essence Concentration Expert, is additive with Essence Concentration, but can only subtract from Essence Concentration (ie. if Essence Concentration is 0 then Essence Concentration Expert does not apply).

The number of Runes crafted per action is determined by the formula:

${\frac {EffectiveRunecraftingLevel}{20}}+Talisman+EssenceConcentration$

If the result of the formula isn't a whole number, the decimal is turned into a percent chance to create another rune.

To get the most efficient Runecrating actions, you need as high of an Effective Runecrafting Level as possible, Runecrafting (Enchantment) 13 (7 from boots/gloves, 4 from potions, 2 from talents), Essence Concentration 2 (2 from Runecrafting armor), Essence Concentration Expert 5 (3 from Essence Concentration Expert Talent, 2 from Essence Concentration Master Talent), Engraving 10 (8 from chisel, 2 from talents), and Elven Logistics Pendant. Death runes almost always sell for the most, and chaos and blood essence seem to be the cheapest to use with scholar.

Extra Tips and Advice

Runecrafting is not a skill that will get you rich quick, but comes in slow waves, as most of your money from this skill will come from selling runes and cloth in mass and runecrafting dungeon drops. Affix Warding is more for personal upgrades (at least until people stockpile Runic Dust and start taking warding item requests). Therefore, I would not recommend going all in on Runecrafting as your main source of income, but rather as a side income/passive income that you come back to every week to get rid of all your essence from doing other activities and sell it. If you want, you can supplement your thirst for runecrafting content by doing combat, as it seems like the easiest way to get Runic Dust, and high levels of essence.

- guide written by Tongs19, a man who used to buy his runes and cloth.