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Sindusk

PSA: Rune Mechanics

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Hi everyone, it's been a while since I've played Wurm, but I've recently returned and began to dig into some of the newer content that's been implemented.

 

A lot of players have extremely misguided ideas of how runes work. I've heard that applying a usage speed rune on a weapon increases it's swing timer. Another is that using an enchant power rune on a statuette increases the power of enchants you cast, and similarly using a success chance on a statuette would increase your chances of casting successfully.

 

I've spent the last few hours diving into the code of Wurm Unlimited to understand the mechanics of runes as best I can, and my results are incredibly disappointing. In an effort to stop players from wasting their time applying runes incorrectly, I'm going to go ahead and dispel all the rumors about how runes work with certain items, and clarify their actual use cases. To start, I will clarify a few of the common misconceptions that I've heard:

 

  • Usage speed does not affect weapon swing timers. Although I have not checked specifically, I believe this also implies that it does not increase the speed at which bows fire. "Bows use 10% speed rune but theres a cap on firing speed so it just means you can shoot max speed longer before waiting for stam" [Thank you @Oblivionnreaverfor clarifying this interaction.]
  • Applying any rune to statuette, including skill gain, enchant power, and enchant success, does nothing for your casts or channeling. Instead, you must apply the enchant power or success to the item you are enchanting for it to apply.
  • Vehicle speed does not affect horse gear such as horse shoes and saddles. On another note, damage reduction also does not affect the damage taken from horse shoes and saddles when equipped on a horse.
  • Rarity increase does not work for items you improve with. For example, applying rarity chance to an awl will not give you a higher chance to make something rare when improving using the awl. Instead, you now have a 10% higher chance of making that awl rare when you improve it.
  • I found no evidence of rarity increase working for items that are used for creation. For example, applying a rarity rune to a small anvil and using the anvil to create items will not give a higher chance of the created item to become rare. The only references I found in the code for the rarity runes were under the methods for "improve" "polish" and "temper" (interaction explained above) - nothing for creation.
  • Improve chance does not work for items you improve with. Instead, you must apply the rune to the item you are improving in order to obtain the bonus. More quality when improved also works this way.

 

On the reverse side, here's a few interactions which actually do function as it seems they should:

 

  • Usage speed on an improvement item does reduce the time for the improvement to take place.
  • Usage speed, when used on an item for creation (eg. small anvil), will apply the speed boost. You can also double this up by applying it to the material used in creation (eg. iron lump). Recipe creation works identically.
  • Resource gathering QL works with the following items:
    • Pickaxe (Mining)
    • Butchering Knife, Shovel (Butchering)
    • Scissors (Shearing)
    • Shovel (Digging)
    • Sickle (Forestry)
    • Rake, Scythe (Farming) [Rakes do not work because hands are used for harvesting if not using a scythe. Thank you @Oblivionnreaver.]
    • Hatchet, and any other item that you use to chop a tree down with (Woodcutting)
  • Skill increase works on items similar to Circle of Cunning or Blessings of the Dark. If CoC or BotD work to increase skillgain, the rune should as well.

 

Finally, the decay rune works a little bit differently than the rest.

 

  • Decay reduction works on parent items. For example, a barrel with the decay reduction rune will reduce the decay of everything inside, as well as itself. However, the rune can apply only once throughout all parents. For example:
    • You have a ship - no rune.
    • Inside the ship is a raft - decay reduction rune.
    • Inside the raft is a barrel - no rune.
    • Inside the barrel is a backpack - decay reduction rune.
    • Inside the backpack is a silver lump - no rune.
      • In this scenario, the ship takes full decay. The raft, as expected, has reduced decay. Equally, the barrel inside the raft also takes reduced decay, inheriting the rune from the container above. The backpack also has decay reduction, but the rune it has is wasted. It could inherit from the raft that it's contained in. Finally, the silver lump also has decay reduction, inheriting the rune from the raft.

 

I hope this post helps clarify how runes function. I'm a bit disappointed in the lack of choice, resulting in basically just skill gain and usage speed runes being useful for improvement items. I was hoping rarity or QL increase runes could be more enticing for application to improvement items, but sadly they do not work as I thought they would.

Edited by Sindusk
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Wait. How do "skill increase" work? Does it increase your skill gain while using the item?

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1 hour ago, Hailene said:

Wait. How do "skill increase" work? Does it increase your skill gain while using the item?

Yes. Exactly that. It's just another version of CoC/BotD's skill gain increase.

 

EDIT: On second glance, it doesn't function "identically" to CoC/BotD, it seems to operate differently. It's application/use cases are the same, though. For example applying it to a hammer will increase skill when you use the hammer to imp or create. However, how it actually affects skill gain is a little different, and I don't understand how it fully interacts at this time.

Edited by Sindusk

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Rakes arent used for harvesting your hand is so 10%ql doesnt work on it, only scythe can use 10ql. Bows use 10% speed rune but theres a cap on firing speed so it just means you can shoot max speed longer before waiting for stam. Melee has no timer bar so thats why rune doesnt work.

 

Does doubling woa for creation work like doubling runes does?

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1 hour ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

Rakes arent used for harvesting your hand is

 

rakes are used for harvesting lol...

i've been misled for years

Edited by Huntar

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4 minutes ago, Huntar said:

 

rakes are used for harvesting lol...

Nope only scythe is used for harvesting,  anything not using scythe is harvested by hand, and wont use rake ql coc woa rune etc. 

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5 minutes ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

Rakes arent used for harvesting your hand is so 10%ql doesnt work on it, only scythe can use 10ql. Bows use 10% speed rune but theres a cap on firing speed so it just means you can shoot max speed longer before waiting for stam. Melee has no timer bar so thats why rune doesnt work.

 

Does doubling woa for creation work like doubling runes does?

Upon closer inspection, everything stated here is correct. I'll update my original post to remove rake as an option.

 

It does appear that you can double up creation speed using WoA similarly to doubling up runes, yes.

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1 hour ago, Hailene said:

Wait. How do "skill increase" work? Does it increase your skill gain while using the item?

no, it does not.

what he is referring to should be the "increase skill level bonus on skill checks (x%)" runes.

 

whenever the system does a skill roll to decide on the result of an action it has a 'bonus' value.

this value can come from different factors. channeling for example gets it granted initially based on the areas faith bonus, whereas most skills actions dont get a bonus value straight away.

as a next step every skill roll then derives an additional bonus from its parent skills, such as smithing for blacksmithing, which will be added on top of the possibly existing bonus.

overall, however, this bonus can not exceed the number 70 by normal means.

if, however, you have the skill level bonus rune attached to your item and the item is actually considered a tool by the action done the bonus value will be multiplied by 1.05 or 1.1 which allows for a possible maximum of 77 now.

then this bonus aswell as the possibly existing tool alter your effective skill, and that changed effective skill is used to determine the actual result.

 

so no, it does not increase skill gained while using the item, it only changes the resulting roll meaning it may or may not be benefial to your skilling which is completely dependant on what you do how and probably impossible to just give a rule of thumb about.

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6 minutes ago, Arium said:

so no, it does not increase skill gained while using the item, it only changes the resulting roll meaning it may or may not be benefial to your skilling which is completely dependant on what you do how and probably impossible to just give a rule of thumb about.

 

That what my original interpretation of the rune was. But it seemed like the OP said something to to the contrary.

 

So which is true?

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29 minutes ago, Hailene said:

 

That what my original interpretation of the rune was. But it seemed like the OP said something to to the contrary.

 

So which is true?

Arium is correct. I wasn't able to read the code as clearly as I wanted to the first time around and he has clarified how it works. Without knowing how skill checks work I was presumptuous with how it functioned.

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So I activate my rake to tend, but it's useless to activate my rake when harvesting?

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3 hours ago, Finndar said:

So I activate my rake to tend, but it's useless to activate my rake when harvesting?

Correct. You can harvest with a rope active.

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11 minutes ago, zigozag said:

What about horsegear and usage speed runes?

Usage speed only effects tools with action timers.

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so which runes would make sense now on improving tools, like hammer, awl, leather knife and so on????

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13 minutes ago, Rocky said:

so which runes would make sense now on improving tools, like hammer, awl, leather knife and so on????

Usage speed is best, weight or damage taken work too. Skill level bonus doesn't add anything worthwhile last time i checked.

Edited by Oblivionnreaver
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Do runes like gathering QL work on beehives? What runes do work on hives?

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