Protip: an easy way of obtaining new runes

[Shrinkshooter]

Didn't realize this until today, when I started using a weapon that has wither damage.

Any enemies that drop runes either are, or are almost, guaranteed to drop them if you engage in a grievous attack while all their health is withered. That's when your guy uses the Umbral lamp to kill them and not a weapon.

You don't need a weapon with wither damage to do this, you simply need to Soulflay an enemy when their health is low enough. If you do that, and manage to strike them (or their soul) enough times before the Flay ends, which causes all their health to be withered, they are immediately placed in a guaranteed stagger state. If you perform a light attack on them in this state, you'll kill them with the lamp, and a rune will drop. This is good to do against the really tough enemies because they have some good ones.

I know the tutorial at some point said something about performing a grievous strike against a withered enemy, but it really got lost in all the information noise that they front-loaded the game with. Moreover I checked the tutorial entries again and I didn't see anything mentioning this mechanic either, so either I'm delusional and just lied to you, or the popup I thought I saw talking about this wasn't entered into the rest of the entries.

[Rena Ichigawa]

And its so dang satisfying when you do it to bigger enemies.

[Kashra Fall]

Get a bow, use wither arrows. Proceed to do wither shots to them (It does not do HP damage.) get them to about 35%, soul flay, hit 2 or three times, wait, execute. Rinse repeat process =P.

[Rubyeyed]

I totally missed that. Well, f**k no wonder I have only 1 rune in my inventory and it doesn't even fit the socket. Thanks for the post.

[Shrinkshooter]

Originally posted by Rubyeyed:

I totally missed that. Well, f**k no wonder I have only 1 rune in my inventory and it doesn't even fit the socket. Thanks for the post.

To be clear, you don't NEED to do this in order to get runes. They have a chance to drop from any enemies that carry them even on normal kills. It just doesn't happen often.

As a warning: if you attempt to perform a light attack too soon after you've staggered them, the game thinks you're continuing your attack combo and will perform a normal attack. Really stupid oversight by the devs but explains why half the time when you attempt to execute an enemy, you just smack him instead. So if you want to execute with the lamp you need to wait a moment. I usually attempt to walk forward and when I see the animation of that I know my combo is ended. Not foolproof though.