With Patch 1.10.0, the new progression system of the runes came to the global servers of Throne and Liberty. Although the developers have addressed some criticisms compared to the Korean version, the runes are still not well received by many players in their current form.
What are the runes about? The colored gemstones, which come in various rarities and variants, can be used to enhance the equipment of the heroes in Throne and Liberty. To do this, you need to unlock rune slots by investing Sollant and ensure that the type of socket fits your gem.
Through the runes, you can optimize your attack power, resilience, and support abilities. You can farm runes through activities such as the dimension test of co-op dungeons, world bosses, certain events, and weekly missions for co-op dungeons. You can find more details in our guide Runes Explained Compactly.
Those who want to use the best possible runes need to plan many more hours in Throne and Liberty:
No Pay2Win, but very time-consuming
How does the community rate the system? When the runes were introduced in August 2024 in the Korean version of Throne and Liberty, the system had clear Pay2Win elements. However, Amazon Games removed those for the global version of the MMORPG. Yet even the new version of the runes is facing a lot of criticism.
Ayio34 sparked a lively discussion with his post on Reddit. His conclusion: “Farming the rune levels is disgusting.” In his view, it’s just frustrating to invest several hours only to end up with another level for a rune.
In a second post on Reddit from Ecool272, there is further discussion that the grind is severely affected by the high difficulty of the dungeon content. The normal level-50 dungeons had already driven some people out of the game. The more difficult T2 dungeons and dimension tests only exacerbate this.
Here are some more voices from the community:
- PrimordialTimelord agrees on Reddit: “What a ridiculous grind.”
- linkerko3 criticizes how difficult it is to farm runes with random groups (via Reddit): “This update honestly made me leave the game. I had a lot of fun, and fun is the reason I play games, and this isn’t fun anymore.”
- Lurking_Poster writes in his post on Reddit: “I just wanted to point out that farming the runes is a min/max area. It’s designed to be a huge grind for the top 1 percent of players. That doesn’t mean that you can’t still keep up fairly well without them!”
- Idebenn is annoyed (via Reddit): “I find the content rather unpleasant than fun. The gameplay mechanics are unbearable, and there is a high degree of randomness. The people in the groups are often unbearable as well, and whenever something goes wrong, blame starts and kicks happen.”
- Allekzp fears on Reddit: “Runes will exclude people from future content; parties, guilds, etc. will start looking for people with high-level best-in-slot runes and high equipment values. Values that can only be achieved with high-level runes.”
How do you evaluate the new progression system of Throne and Liberty? Are you still having fun with the grind, or have you checked out? Let us know in the comments! If you are looking for content with less time investment in Solisium, you can check out the new world event: Starbloom Solstice – all information about the Christmas event of Throne and Liberty
