The Forever beta's cheap, powerful runes are Season of Discovery leftovers, not a new feature
· ForeverDB
A vendor selling cheap rune engravings with strong effects has turned up in the Forever beta client files. The runes are Season of Discovery content left in the game data. Blizzard has already noted fixing an issue that made a Season of Discovery rune ability visible, and has not announced runes for Forever.
What was found
On October 6 a player, Turevaryar, posted on r/wowforever a link to a "Rune Vendor" on Wowhead that appears to sell "runes" for next to nothing, each with a powerful effect. The post asks whether it is "too good to be true".
Player and datamine-site report, not a Blizzard change or statement.
The runes are real items in the Forever beta client files. The example in the post, Earthen Rune, is an item level 10, required level 1 green whose only text is Teaches you a new Engraving ability. It teaches Engrave Pants - Way of Earth, which engraves your pants with the Way of Earth rune. In our data the item is tagged as Season of Discovery content.
The client tooltip for the Way of Earth rune reads: while Rockbiter Weapon is active on your main hand and you have a shield equipped, you deal 65% increased threat, gain 30% increased health, take 10% reduced damage, gain 6% reduced chance to be critically hit by melee, and Earth Shock taunts targets, gains a separate cooldown from your other Shock spells and drops to melee range. The downside is a large range cut to Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Chain Heal, Healing Wave and Lava Burst.
The Reddit poster quoted that range cut as 20 yards. The beta client files say 653 yards, which looks like an untuned placeholder rather than a finished value. We list both.
These are Season of Discovery runes
Rune engraving is a system from WoW Classic's Season of Discovery, where you engraved pieces of gear with runes to gain extra abilities. Earthen Rune and Way of Earth are Season of Discovery items, and they carry that tag in our data. Finding them in the Forever client files does not mean Forever uses the system. Leftover data from earlier Classic projects often sits in the files without being switched on.
What Blizzard has said
Blizzard has not announced runes or engraving for Forever. It has said the opposite in passing. The September 24 beta development notes, posted by Kaivax, list this fix:
Fixed an issue that made a Season of Discovery rune ability visible. Kaivax, Community Manager
In other words, Blizzard treats a Season of Discovery rune showing up as a bug to be fixed, not a feature to keep. That fits the data we see: the runes are present but marked as Season of Discovery, and at least one was being hidden.
Speculation. We cannot tell from the files whether any rune works in the beta, whether a vendor is actually reachable in-game, or whether Blizzard plans to add engraving later. The reason: whether an item is sold and whether its effect is active are decided on Blizzard's servers, which the game files don't show. Treat the "rune vendor" as datamined leftovers until Blizzard says otherwise.
What it means for players
You may see these runes and a rune vendor on datamine sites, but there is no sign they are a planned part of Forever, and Blizzard has been hiding at least one of them. Don't build plans around cheap, powerful runes. If this changes, it will come from a Blizzard post, and we'll update here.
Sources
- WoW Forever Beta Development Notes – Updated September 24 (posted by Kaivax)
- Runes - Too good to be true? (r/wowforever, Turevaryar)