Rune Upgrade strategy

Hello All.

Im wondering about rune upgrading if it's worth it or one should use them for trades instead.

Sofar i have upgraded all low level runes up to

Ral lvl 19 to maximise

Ral runes available for

Caster Amulet. (No luck yet in getting a proper one sadly)

Then i have upgraded Runes from

Ort lvl 21 to

Ko lvl 39 runes, so i now got 3

Fal runes.
Thats from playing this game from around mid december 2024 so close to two months.

I have also upgraded two

Mal runes to one

Ist. That was a one time thing though.
I have two

Ist currently, so I need 4 more for a 6 socket sword.

Now i think that it maybe would be better to trade

Hel runes and above instead of upgrading them.

What strategy are you people using with regard to runes?

I keep

Ral and

Hel. I also keep the runes for Spirit and Insight to keep for re rolls and then sell those perfect rolls or keep them if i want the item. You can also sell in packs for HRs. sounds like your on the right path.

if u r crafting:

Tir to

Nef for

Blood Gloves

Tal for

Ral

Dol for

Hel (v. tradable)

Blade Of Ali Baba w. 2

Ist mucho cheaper,,,

edit:
never thought of trading low runes...


any market for

Dol ?

Just came back to D2 after maybe a year+

Why cube

Shael and

Io?

Also noticed

Mal is at parity

Ist: why is that? Old stable price was

Ist =

Mal

Um

TohJah wrote: 1 month ago

Also noticed

Mal is at parity

Ist: why is that? Old stable price was

Ist =

Mal

Um

Rune values have dropped and been "compressed" a lot over the last year or more. Meaning that all runes on NL are just lower valued and closer to each other in value than they used to be for like the first half of D2R's existence. It was

Mal

Pul for a bit, and

Mal

Lem. Eventually, the accepted difference in value between

Mal and

Ist became small enough that a lot of people simply accept them 1 for 1.

Jah is also only like 8

Ist today on NL, it used to be upwards of 30. I suppose it's a natural consequence of inflation. NL never resets and there's a constant influx of ladder items with each ladder reset (even though a lot of ladder items simply vanish because the owners don't care about them).

On ladder it's

Mal

Um for

Ist for the first couple of weeks at least, though you will see some desperate people looking to downgrade from

Ist to

Mal accepting just a

Mal for it. Point being, values after reset start out around what they used to be on NL a long time ago, and slowly suffer the same fate of value dropping and relative value compressing.

What I do nowadays

1 - I keep all runes from the runewords I'm planning to do in a near future / next Character
2 - I keep 1 extra copy of each rune (in the case of a unplanned necessity... specially the lower ones, up to

Lem)
3 - I keep 1-2 "rune set" for utilitiy operations that I do from time to time (like

Recipe: Fully Repaired Armor or

Recipe: Add Sockets to Normal Weapon)

Extra ones, because of space...

- up to

Tir: upgrade on cube
-

Nef: craft

Blood Gloves
-

Eth to

Tal: upgrade on cube
-

Ral: keep for trade (generally

Ist)
-

Ort: craft

Hit Power Gloves
-

Thul: upgrade on cube
-

Amn: craft

Hit Power Ring or

Safety Ring
-

Sol: craft

Blood Ring
-

Shael to

Dol: upgrade on cube
-

Hel: keep for trade (generally

Ist/

Lo)
-

Io to

Fal: keep for trade (generally

Perfect Gems)
-

Lem and beyong: keep for trade (generally items / crafiting or higher runes)

ShadowHeart wrote: 1 month ago

TohJah wrote: 1 month ago

Also noticed

Mal is at parity

Ist: why is that? Old stable price was

Ist =

Mal

Um

Rune values have dropped and been "compressed" a lot over the last year or more. Meaning that all runes on NL are just lower valued and closer to each other in value than they used to be for like the first half of D2R's existence. It was

Mal

Pul for a bit, and

Mal

Lem. Eventually, the accepted difference in value between

Mal and

Ist became small enough that a lot of people simply accept them 1 for 1.

Jah is also only like 8

Ist today on NL, it used to be upwards of 30. I suppose it's a natural consequence of inflation. NL never resets and there's a constant influx of ladder items with each ladder reset (even though a lot of ladder items simply vanish because the owners don't care about them).

On ladder it's

Mal

Um for

Ist for the first couple of weeks at least, though you will see some desperate people looking to downgrade from

Ist to

Mal accepting just a

Mal for it. Point being, values after reset start out around what they used to be on NL a long time ago, and slowly suffer the same fate of value dropping and relative value compressing.

Thanks! Make sense... then I feel the biggest rune winners through this massive multi-year compression are either

Mal or

Um (

Jah is likely the biggest loser - yes, I remember the 30+

Ist days!)

Pul might be a step lower and take too much inventory...

Beyond runes, through so many cycles (I played D2 legacy), I regard charms as the best store of value - especially the perfect small charms e.g. 3/20/20, 5/20, etc. Very efficient inventory too.
Only downside is liquidity - bid-offer can be very wide and takes long time to sell for best price

I normally never sell such charms but keep a bunch of runes for liquidity

Knappogue wrote: 1 month ago

TohJah wrote: 1 month ago

Just came back to D2 after maybe a year+

Why cube

Shael and

Io?

Also noticed

Mal is at parity

Ist: why is that? Old stable price was

Ist =

Mal

Um

Shael and

Io are not very desirable since the more popular runewords don't use them. Its hard to sell them and you need large batches making it not very cost effective with how much space they take up.

Mal is very popular due to how frequently people make and re-roll Grief and Call To Arms.

Um is arguably the same price as

Ist since you can trade 9

Um for a

Jah and you can trade 8

Ist for a

Jah.

Thanks! Now I have better sense of the rune market

Good to know (I was specting more than 30 for the bulk )

Unfortunately I don't find low runes too frequently nor have much free space...

Recently took me a lot of time to recover my "extra

Eld" (that I ended up spending on a unplanned Faith )

Knappogue wrote: 1 month ago

fredkid wrote: 1 month ago

Extra ones, because of space...

- up to

Tir: upgrade on cube

FYI In-game you can get:
30x

El sells for

Lo
30x

Eld sells for

Lo

I generally cube as much as i can up to

Hel.
I just do not have the inventory space to do anything else.

I basically have the 3rd shared stash mostly filled with just runes anyway.

FULCRUM75 wrote: 1 month ago

I generally cube as much as i can up to

Hel.
I just do not have the inventory space to do anything else.

I basically have the 3rd shared stash mostly filled with just runes anyway.

I have same issue.

Thanks for all the great inputs. Greatly appreciated.
i could quote almost all post, but it will mess up this thread, so consider this a quote on all posts.

I think my rune strategy will be something like this
-

El to

Tir upgrade to get more

Nef
-

Nef: Craft

Blood Gloves
-

Eth to

Tal upgrade to get more

Ral
-

Ral: Craft

Caster Amulet
-

Ort to

Dol upgrade to get more

Hel
-

Hel: Trading
-

Io upgrade to

Lum
-

Lum to

Zod: Trading and own usage.

I also generally try to keep one of each rune in stash.
So i upgrade rune

El when i have 4, leaving one in Stash and soforth.

Finaly i try to plan runewords to make sure i got the Runes to make them when i have the proper Item and character is RDY to use it.

Knappogue wrote: 1 month ago

TohJah wrote: 1 month ago

Just came back to D2 after maybe a year+

Why cube

Shael and

Io?

Also noticed

Mal is at parity

Ist: why is that? Old stable price was

Ist =

Mal

Um

Shael and

Io are not very desirable since the more popular runewords don't use them. Its hard to sell them and you need large batches making it not very cost effective with how much space they take up.

I recently bought Shaels and Ios on Ladder to stockpile Cures and Hustles for my Nonladder Chars and/or to trade them after Ladder ends

So even those runes might sell for quite some value.

Chap wrote: 1 month ago

I also generally try to keep one of each rune in stash.

Yeah, that's how i used to do it.

But once you start getting multiple

Shael,

Sol,

Amn and upwards, especially if you don't happen to have the right chipped gems to cube any of the excess, you run out of space very quickly.

Here is what I do:

• I try to keep permanently 1-4 runes from each type in my stock (I have one mule for these runes) in case I want to make a rune word or I need them for an important trade
• I have mules with up to 3 rune types from
  El to
  Sol to sell them in packs of 20-60 for high runes
• Currently, I only cube
  Shael to
  Dol.
  Io to
  Fal I try to sell but you need to be patient to find a buyer
• I now also assemble collections for Spirit because I already have 6 monarchs with 4 open sockets - of course you can sell the rune collections, too
• So far, crafting has been too exhausting for me, as you need a lot of items for it and the "rewards" seem, at least to me, too small in comparison. I'd rather farm charms etc. in the relevant areas and sell my runes and gems But this is just me and I can also understand why people have fun with crafting.
• Before cubing runes up my advice is to always check the market. I remember I once sold 20
  Tir for
  Jah because almost none were on the market.