Socketing & Upgrading Runes (the Runesmith)

A rune doesn't go straight onto your gear — it has to be charged, then gambled into a socket at the Runesmith. This page walks the full workflow: opening a socket, charging with Ancient Energy, the apply-chance roll, and combining runes upward.

Step 1 — open a socket

Your gear needs a socket before any rune can go in. Add one by dragging a Rune Socket Expander onto the item.

Expanders are tiered, and a tiered expander only fits gear at or below its own tier:

Each item has a hard cap of 1 socket. The only way past that is the Runic Overload dungeon enchant, which raises the ceiling to 2 — and 2 is the absolute maximum, no matter what. Corrupted items can never gain new sockets.

Step 2 — charge the rune

Before a rune can be socketed it must be fully charged with Ancient Energy. Drag energy onto the rune to fill it. The amount needed scales with the rune's rarity:

A rune that isn't full can't be socketed, so top it off first.

Step 3 — the apply-chance gamble

Socketing is not guaranteed. Every rune carries an apply-chance, and higher rarity means a lower chance to stick. At the Runesmith:

• Success sockets the rune into your gear.
• Failure destroys the rune and consumes the energy you charged it with.

There's no pity and no refund — weigh the odds before you commit a high-rarity rune.

The Runesmith GUI

Open the Runesmith in the Dungeon Hub to do two things:

• Socket — drop in your gear and a charged rune, then confirm to take the apply-chance roll.
• Upgrade — combine 3 runes of the same rarity into 1 rune of the next rarity, rolled at a random effect. Epic is the highest combine target — Legendary and Mythic runes are drop-only, so you can't craft your way to them.

Resonance

A Mythic "of Resonance" rune is special: socketed alongside other runes, it makes every other rune on that item more effective, rolling between 100% and 120% of their normal value. On an item with the Runic Overload second socket, that's a strong pairing.

Reading the socket in tooltips

The socket block you see in an item's tooltip is purely a display of the runes stored on the item. If a tooltip rebuild ever hides the block for a moment, don't panic — the runes keep working; only the readout is briefly missing.

See Runes for what each rune does, Enchants for how Runic Overload and other dungeon enchants are applied, and Currencies for where to farm the energy you'll spend charging.

Version history

v2.0.0

• Runes are socketed via the Runesmith in the Dungeon Hub — add sockets with tiered Rune Socket Expanders, charge the rune with Ancient Energy, then take the apply-chance gamble.
• Combine 3 runes of the same rarity into 1 of the next rarity (up to Epic); Legendary and Mythic are drop-only.
• The Mythic "of Resonance" rune amplifies the other runes on the same item.