What is a “high rune”? - player considerations

Hey y’all, this is again a complex topic, but d2r seems to be getting a surge of new players so I wanted to offer some advice, especially to those offline, but also open it up to online players (I remember what it was like living with an ‘economy’).

So to start I think we can all agree ‘low runes’ are anything from

El to

Dol (

Eld,

Tir,

Nef,

Eth,

Ith,

Tal,

Ral,

Ort,

Thul,

Amn,

Sol,

Shael). Some people make the distinction of what can drop from normal or nightmare countess, but come on… who plays d2r for the mid-game?! (Sorry speed runners, but for everyone else we just suffer through late normal and early nightmare to get access to good gear!).

Some define low runes going up to

Lem because

Pul runes are the first to only need 2 to cube up to the next level. I think this is a good distinction.

However, I personally collect runes starting at

Lum for 3 reasons: lums and higher start to get rare (

Io and below can usually be found consistently), they start to be important for higher level rune words, and cubing lesser runes starts to get tedious (I’ve cubed up from lums to ists fairly regularly, a gem mule is needed!).

Anyways, “mid runes” start at

Pul, and go to…

Gul because they can drop from

The Hellforge quest? And anything higher than

Gul is a “high rune”? I would argue not (depending on the situation).

So I think it’s important here to define your play style before defining what a “high rune” is:
-online non-ladder I’d say there’s an argument for

Ber and higher to be high runes (your not relying on drops, but trading right? And there’s 10x the population in non ladder compared to ladder)
-online ladder I’d say there’s 2 options, first half of the ladder (6 weeks),

Vex and up are high runes, after that probably

Ber and up.
-offline: sorry guys but

Sur and up are high runes offline, up to

Lo takes a number of hours of lk, trav or cow runs, while

Sur and higher are quite rare… days of play before you should expect a drop.
-high level traders / pvp’ers: you guys have your own community, I don’t even think high runes even count as currency for you (if you have more than 5 Bers to spend on a single trade you’re a high roller - congrats)


Does this make sense? A “high rune” has always been subjective to me, and now as I’m offline it’s much harder to define that compared to online players

Let us know what you think!

Sry there was 1

Ist and higher and 1

Vex and higher but I had to add

Sur and higher. So I’ll add those up at the end

I think the jump from

Vex to

Sur is too much. I count HR starting around

Ohm. Something you have to pay for that is required for staple gear (such as CtA).

Ohm and

Lo are necessary to get off the ground and into real endgame territory.

And I would answer that way for all play modes. But that's just me.

It is a bit of an arbitrary call and the question really is "what are you classifying them for?".

Traditionally, a high rune has technically been defined as

Vex or higher, based on the fact that they are significantly harder to obtain than the ones below that cutoff. Or more accurately, "they required massive random luck while farming". This is from back in the day where everyone and their mom kept rushing for forge to get runes up to

Gul relatively easily but beyond that, you were stuck as you couldn't cube them up yet. And even after the cubing for higher runes was introduced, it was a ladder only thing. That did give you a very clear cutoff in terms of "common vs. rare" but thanks to rampant cubing of everything everywhere nowadays, that really doesn't hold up as much anymore.

The question is hence what the purpose of the classification is, the answer to which is probably different for everyone.

"only runes higher than XYZ are worth picking up" will differ (massively) depending on your general level of Wealth. Some start at

El, some at

Lum, some don't bother below

Ist, some (like me) don't even have item labels showing in pug games anymore.

"i'm looking to sell this for X high runes" is something that pops up surprisingly often in trades but honestly makes no sense today as it puts everything past the cutoff on even Ground. If you're asking for 4 high runes and say "high runes start at

Ohm!" only to then decline an offer of 2

Ber and pick 4

Ohm instead because "4 HR > 2 HR", you're shooting yourself in the foot in terms of actual value, solely because of some completely unfounded, arbitrary grouping of runes (fun fact: that's an actual, real-world example I've seen happen).

"only runes XYZ are worth keeping/muling" is basically the same as picking them up.

"anything below XYZ will be cubed up" pretty much follows the same lines as well.

Other than the original definition which had a very clear cut-off in terms of difficulty to obtain, it all is now extremely subjective and I would argue to the largest extent quite pointless.

The only thing I can still see as an argument (and kinda use myself) is "

Ist or higher" because if you're looking to keep a stash tab full of varied trading runes and assign 1 row/column each to the top runes, you get the top 10 which has you starting at

Ist. But even that is based on some very arbitrary and subjective decisions.

Agreed, very depending on people.

I for one split in 4 groups :

1 -

El-

Shael : low - useful for most but little value - but in bulk can serve (Spirit /Insight packs, crafting...)
* -

Dol - can go above or below
2 -

Hel-

Fal : low-mid - these have no real value but are here there and more rare than group 1.

Hel IS useful though.
* -

Lem - can go above and below
3 -

Pul-

Ist : mid - start of values, very useful for trading.
* -

Gul - can go above or below
4 -

Vex+ : high.

I think this is more practical due to the weird situation of

Dol-

Fal which are the least useful runes (except

Hel) but much more rare than until

Shael.
And the "Edge" runes

Dol/

Lem/

Gul are really "soft" edges that can go either way depending on people.

To me, high runes are

Ohm+

To me, low, high, or mid runes are useless terms. There are runes I pick up, and others I don’t. Their relative values are based on rune word utility and the trade market. Would never trade asking for X high runes. Rather we are specific in what we desire. I want 2

Ber, 1

Jah, 2

Lo, etc.