Runes are too rare to justify use

The league reveal was exceptionally exciting because of the all the new quality of life features and fun town management simulations. What I was most excited for and am most excited for every league is building new characters using temporary power increases due to league mechanics. This league it was Runecrafting. I saw all these amazing enchantments that require Time and Power Runes that are build enabling and exciting and then saw how few Time Runes i've seen all league (0 Power 10 Days in).

I wanted to, like other league mechanics, leverage runes while leveling and then use them to increase my characters power beyond what is normally available with that level of investment. You can do this reasonably on a second character as you already have runes, the first character will not get enough runes fast enough to keep up with replacing your weapon every 10 or so levels to enjoy the power. In the late game when you have your build finally coming together and you want to use Runes you realize you do not have a good enough weapon to justify the cost.

Question:
Why are Rune costs so high (4 Power, 88 Life, 88 Sun for example) when most players will not be able to leverage the power due to their applicable weapon being too weak to justify it?

Fix:
Allow Shipping and League Bosses (Pirate, Knight, Bandit) to drop Weapons pre-enchanted with runes. Lower the costs of Power Runes crafts to only require 1 Power Rune (So that they are exciting to find instead of "ooh 4 Divines").
Allow Recombinators to guarantee moving Enchants. Disenchanting Runecrafted items should return a small amount of the runes used aside from Power Runes (These should remain rare).

Basically, I just want to be able to focus on the league mechanics rewards and be rewarded. Currently it feels like Standard + Trade Improvements and free Currency (Which is a powerful albeit boring reward). For 3.25.1 please make Rune Crafting more accessible and usable at all levels of play and all points of progression. Nothing is worse than getting Runes and having no excitement to use them because the crafts are too far out of reach or once I can do the craft not have a worthy weapon as I may only get to craft "Projectiles Return to You" on 1 Weapon the entire league at current prices.

No they're LARGE power increase.

WORK for it.

"

Coconutdoggy wrote:

No they're LARGE power increase.

WORK for it.

I'm usually in this camp, but power runes are stupidly rare. I've gotten 1 so far. Also I still havent found the black knight boss. I have killed the mapper dude and the pirate dude a lot.

If I play at this pace (i cant) for another month I can maybe get 1 enchant.

Well the price is reasonable for the big power boost you get out of the enchants.

You could always farm currency along side the way and buy the missing runes for your enchant.
It's worth to mention that the power and accessibility is balanced around trade league and not ssf or small private leagues.

there are a couple "cheap" one depending on build.

like phys as extra and the one that gives fire dmg per % resist. like 4 power runes.

didnt see anything for phys melee though with time or power runes

"

Pashid wrote:

Well the price is reasonable for the big power boost you get out of the enchants.

You could always farm currency along side the way and buy the missing runes for your enchant.
It's worth to mention that the power and accessibility is balanced around trade league and not ssf or small private leagues.

While this is true, its a shame that a lot of the time cool things that are added may as well not exist if you don't intend to play sctrade.

Its one thing to know your chances of getting a mageblood is pretty low unless you have 10+ hrs a day to play. but basic additions to the new league mechanics not being available is a shame.

New toys are usually meant to be enjoyed. I think everyone remembers how fun vengeant cascade was.

The point of this post isn't that the power isn't worth the cost it is. The problem is that you cannot leverage the power without already having a high investment item otherwise its wasted. Say you want the Tormented Spirit Wand Enchant, if your wand is going to be replaced later you may as well not get the enchant. Power being rare is fine, power being pointless until you already have power is a waste of time. Crucible League let you enjoy the new modifiers during the campaign and get powerful ones even. The hard part in crucible was getting a strong tree on a strong weapon but crappy trees on crappy weapons was allowed. Spending Runes on crappy Enchants for a Crappy Weapon introduces a real opportunity cost to fun that feels bad.

The price is a part of the issue but having a crafting league mechanic be locked behind extreme RNG (Or Trade) (Not just the Rampage mod like in crucible but half the list of enchants) isn't fun.

The main driver for retention for me is novelty driven by League Mechanic's and their borrowed power. If I farm and trade up to get 4 Power Runes for the Fire Trigger craft I can't put it on any old axe or else I waste it, I don't get to experiment with the league mechanic. Powerful Crafts on crappy items makes crappy items exciting and perfect items still god-tier. These costs feel much worse than Lake of Kalandra reflecting pools because they don't drop naturally to begin with in the league mechanic. -40 Lightning Res + 200 Life on a bad ring was fun to see. -70 Lighting Res + Perfect Stats on a OP ring was fun to see.

Let me play around with the strong crafts often on bad weapons cheaply via having pre-enchanted items drop from League content. And then let me brew by having cheaper Power Rune costs. Personally, I wish there was a useful choice between sending Ore or Food currently Food is strictly better in every situation yet Ore is what I interact with all the time in gameplay yet I get 1-5 Runes either way when what I want is a Random Two-Handed Sword with 20% Minion Damage Enchant on it or some other silly item just so that I can try to build around the league mechanics loot without opportunity costs.