Runes 101

[Krinkle]

please someone teach me what runes are, how many I have, what the different Valkyries do when they're in charge of runes, what spending a rune does, if spending that rune is permanent, if it's ever worth magicking up more runes, if it's just a good idea to turn runes into pretty red and blue orbs all over the map.

I don't understand runes. At all. It seems to be a very important game mechanic! There is no information on them in game.

I really want to know if spending a defense rune increases their defense all game, all round, or literally just now whoops it's gone now you didn't get hit RIGHT THEN so it did nothing.

Runes clearly change things in game. For instance rune mages: sometimes they have 2 charges of phantom, sometimes just one. Is this related to how many runes they have? Or who is in charge of the runes?

[Imperium]

It seems a little odd way they did it, but I will tell you what I know so far.

Each unit has 3 rune symbols above his abilities on his turn, they are runes of attack, defense and luck, by clicking on each on you activate it, depending on what you picked an attack, defense or critical chance bonus. It seems it does it for a single turn.

Alternatively there are units with rune skills, such as runemage, so you can sacrifice a rune to use one of the skills suck as phantom, or that crazy laser beam skill. Cool thing about these skills is that you can replenish number of runes the unit has by using certain skill in runemagic tree giving them way more runes. The number of runes runemage has also increases power of his rune skill.

As for Valkyrie controlling the runes, I don't have a clue, I suspect its for the Auto combat.

I don't see any sort of rune counter, or limit but im level 57 and I never ran out of runes for rune magic or anything, and all the troops runes reset every new battle.

I kinda use similar setup as I did for Armored princess which is Paladin, Priest, Inquisitor, Archmage and Runemage so nothing on my side ever dies and I don't really rely on runes at all, maybe someone with more rune experience can add things :)

[deudam]

Does it means you can add attack/defense or critical hit odds on one unit during one turn of a combat without actually spending anything?
Let's say I should use attack or Luck increase as much as possible on my archers.
And when i set a tank unit in defense, I should enhance it with defense rune, as well since the cost is 0.

I will try to dig a bit on this part in the game and I come back here for new comment.

[sjpaladin]

I think luck runes give you a chance of an extra turn for that unit when used. I rarely use any but attack runes.

Runes are also used for certain spells (for example 'gift', which lets you recharge limited use or cooldown abilities).

From what I understand about the valks, each troop has a certain number of runes (for example 2), each battle. If valk a is in charge you could have 1 attack and 1 luck, if valk b is in charge, you could have 1 attack and 1 defence, if valk c is in charge, you could have 1 defence and 1 luck.

I never cared about them enough to figure out exactly which valk does what for rune distributions, because with a few abilities, awards, and skills, you will have the max number of runes each battle anyway.

You should use runes whenever they will make a difference, as there is no reason to save them, unless you want to use them for a spell that requires them (gift is a great spell though).