Runes (List of All Runes, How to Use, and Tips) - Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Runes are a type of equipment that you can attach to your Lyrium Dagger. Unlike your normal pieces of gear, these don’t offer any stats, but instead give you a passive and an active effect. These offer bonuses to that will help further customize your build.

In this guide, we will go over how to find Runes, as well as how to use them!

How to Find Runes

Before you can start finding Runes, you will first need to find the Lyrium Dagger. Luckily this will happen fairly early on in the story — simply complete the quest The Singing Blade, and the dagger will be yours.

Once you have the dagger, Runes can be a bit rare, but finding them is simple — they can drop from just about anything in the world. On top of this, some Merchants will sell a Rune as well. It’s worth noting that unlike your other equipment, Runes cannot be upgraded in any way, so you will not find duplicates of your Runes in your travels.

It’s also important to know that if you do find a Rune, it will not pop up in the center of your screen like what happens when you find other equipment, so you will need to keep an eye on your loot to see if you’re getting a new Rune.

List of Runes

Below are all of the different Runes you can find in the game:

Rune	Active Effect	Passive Effect
Besiege	Light and Heavy attacks are no longer penalized vs. Barrier for 20 seconds.	+10% damage vs. Barrier
Crystallize	All enemies within 10 meters are Frozen.	+10% Frozen Duration
Defy	Take no damage from your current target for 10 seconds.	Take 10% less damage while at Low Health
Diminish	All enemies within 6 meters are Weakened.	+10% Primer duration
Divert	Enemies disengage from you and attack your Companions instead for 10 seconds. Does not affect some of the strongest boss enemies.	Health +10%
Dominate	All generated Resource is converted to Ultimate for 10 seconds.	+10% Ultimate generation
Electrify	All of your weapon attacks deal Electric damage for 20 seconds.	+10% Electricity damage
Escalate	Your next ability is greatly enhanced, dealing much higher damage or increasing efficacy.	+10% Ability damage
Fortify	You gain Invulnerable.	+25% Invulnerable duration
Glaciate	All your weapon attacks deal Cold damage for 20 seconds.	+10% Cold damage
Hemorrhage	All weapon attacks apply Bleeding for 10 seconds.	+10% Bleeding Duration
Hunger	Your weapon attacks leech 25% of their damage for 10 seconds.	10% Leech Effectiveness
Overflow	Your current Potion’s additional effects are applied.	+1 maximum Potions
Pierce	Your damage gains +100% Penetration for 10 seconds.	+10% Penetration
Ravage	Deal 50% more damage vs. health for 20 seconds.	+10% damage vs. health
Refresh	The durations of all applied Advantages are reset.	+10% Advantage duration
Regroup	All of your Companions’ Ability cooldowns are refreshed.	+10% Companion Ability Damage
Scorch	All of your weapon attacks deal Fire damage for 20 seconds.	+10% Fire damage
Scourge	All of your weapon attacks deal Necrotic damage for 20 seconds.	+10% Necrotic damage
Shatter	Ranged attacks break through enemies’ guard for 10 seconds.	+10% Ranged attack damage
Upend	All of your defensive Resistances become offensive damage bonuses of the same type for 10 seconds.	+5% all Resistances
Vivify	Your Ability cooldowns are refreshed, and your next ability is free.	+10% Resource Generation
Withstand	You gain Immovable.	+25% Immovable duration

Active vs. Passive Effect

Every Rune has both an active and passive effect. The active effect will be an extra boost given to your character for a limited time. It’s important to know that even though you can equip up to 3 Runes, you cannot have all 3 active effects up at the same time — when one gets used, all of your Runes go on cooldown, preventing you from using them until the time is up. The exact length of the cooldown will depend on the Rune you used.

The passive effects, on the other hand, are small bonuses that will always be in effect. These can be used to either enhance some of the strongest parts of your build or help out with some of your shortcomings. Unlike the active effects, all 3 of your Runes’ passive effects will be up at all times, so feel free to mix and match passives!

Best Runes to Use

The best Runes to use will be very subjective to what kind of build you have.

If you’re focusing on a specific element or stacking Status Effects, you’ll want to use something like Scorch or Scourge — an additional way for you to inflict elemental damage.

If you’re going for a more defensive build, Upend is a fun choice for boosting all of your Resistances and then turning them all into elemental damage as an active effect. Meanwhile, Defy offers some backup on low health (or a boost to a Low Health Build), but also makes you invulnerable against your targeted enemy for 10 seconds.

Some other great Runes for general damage would be stuff like Dominate, Escalate, or Vivify, boosting your Abilities or Ultimates, or Pierce, which enhances your Penetration damage.

Note some more unique effects, too, like on the Overflow rune which gets you an additional Potion slot, but also lets you apply your Potion’s additional effect as an active ability — it can be an unexpected boost to builds focused on cycling Potions.

How to Use Runes

In order to use a Rune, you will first have to equip it. To do this, simply go to the Character menu, and you will see a picture of your Lyrium Dagger to the right with 3 sockets. Click on one of these sockets to equip one of your Runes. Once they are equipped, the passive part of the Rune will always be in effect.

To use the Runes in battle, you first will have to pick the equipped Rune you want to use — you can cycle through your Runes by pressing /. When you’re ready to use it, hold either / or /, then press /!