As an in-game item that has been around since Diablo 2, runes have always been popular in Diablo series. This is because they can be inserted into various weapons and equipment with slots to create Runewords, which provide them with further combat buffs.

Runewords is essentially a highly customizable trigger and effect enchantment that changes depending on the currently inserted Ritual and Invocation Rune. And in Diablo 4’s new DLC Vessel of Hatred, which was launched in October this year, runes are still an important prop that can help you no matter what class you play.

Based on this, we will introduce you to how to farm runes effectively in Vessel of Hatred.

1. Defeat DLC Campaign Bosses

First, when you reach Kurast Bazaar in Vessel of Hatred campaign and complete main quest Fundament of Faith, you will unlock the rune system and receive a large amount of Diablo 4 Gold and the first rune bounty. You can then officially start earning runes in this expansion.

In DLC’s campaign, you will encounter many story bosses, each of which is guaranteed to drop at least one rune when defeated, but you can only complete each campaign once on a fixed character. Fortunately, you can also trade runes between characters. So if you complete the campaign on an alt, you may get new runes to share between your characters.

2. Complete Kurast Undercity Activities

Kurast Undercity is a new feature in DLC that can be reused, and it gives you a lot of control over the rewards for successful runs. Kurast Undercity is timed, and if you beat the timer, you will get the rewards you want, which include runes.

Before Kurast Undercity officially runs, remember to use tributes, which will appear randomly during the run and throughout Sanctuary. Among all the tributes, there is a Tribute of Harmony, which guarantees that you will get 100% of the runes at the end of Kurast Undercity run, and increases the probability of high-level runes appearing.

3. Kill World Bosses And Participate In Hatred Rising Event

In DLC and Season 6, killing world bosses and hunting down Season 6 boss Realmwalkers can earn you some runes. The classic world bosses spawn once a week and provide corresponding rewards, but you can farm Realmwalkers repeatedly to get rune drops continuously.

Realmwalkers will continue to spawn in random areas throughout Sanctuary a few minutes after the last one is defeated. Initially, you cannot harm it and must follow it along a predetermined path through a fixed area. Waves of enemies and elites will spawn along the way, and you need to defeat them, and then you will be rewarded with a certain number of runes. You can also get runes from the final Seething Realm boss after completing each Realmwalker event.

4. Clear Strongholds For The First Time

When you clear a stronghold for the first time in Vessel of Hatred, your character will receive a huge XP boost and a bunch of items, including runes. This also makes the stronghold more valuable than you think.

Based on the season mechanism of Diablo 4 series of games, you can also let your character clear each Stronghold for the first time in Season 6, even if you have completed them with other characters in previous seasons. However, you cannot use the same character to clear the same stronghold repeatedly.

5. Open Whisper Caches

In Sanctuary, you will see icons representing Whisper, so you can get Grim Favors by completing these special objectives. When you have obtained 10 Grim Favors, you can go to Tree of Whispers in Hawezar to select the reward treasure cache. There are many caches of options available in Tree of Whispers, but no matter which cache you choose as your Whisper reward, it will include a rune.

Compared to other ways to get runes in Vessel of Hatred, Whisper caches are more RNG-based. Therefore, we recommend that you do not make completing Whispers a priority, but passively complete Whispers during Helltides and other world events.

6. Eliminate Elites

In addition to the above 5 ways to farm runes in DLC, there is another way to get runes that covers almost all content and activities in the game, which is to defeat elite enemies. No matter what event you play in Vessel of Hatred, there is a small chance that elite enemies will drop runes when they are defeated after unlocking the relevant system.

Although the chance is small, please be sure to keep an eye on the ground when participating in events with a lot of elites and remember to pick up the runes. If you keep killing elites in Nightmare dungeons, farming Pit, and try to play Dark Citadel, or Helltide events, you are more likely to find runes faster than farming in the open world. Because there are more elites for you to kill in these activities.

I believe you have discovered that the above 6 methods are not only applicable to farming runes in Vessel of Hatred, but some of them are also applicable to Season 6. I hope these contents can help you get enough runes to make your game character more powerful through enchantment. Thank you for reading.