The Forge: Runes Tier List & Guide [Farming, Best Runes, & More]

Runes are one of the most essential parts when upgrading your kit in The Forge, and slotting them in can be extremely expensive, especially for pickaxes. Therefore, it’s important that you know what each rune does, which ones are the best, what sub-stats to target, and other important details. You’ll learn all that and more in our ultimate The Forge runes guide and tier list below!

The Forge Runes Tier List

BEST RUNES

S

Miner Shard

Luck

Miner Shard

Swift Mining

Miner Shard

Mine Power

Drain Edge

Rot Stitch

VERY GOOD RUNES

A

Briar Notch

Rage Mark

Chill Dust

DECENT RUNES

B

Miner Shard

Yield

Blast Chip

Frost Speck

BAD RUNES

C

Venom Crumb

Flame Spark

Ward Patch

Ranking Tiers Explained

• S Tier: The best runes you can have in The Forge, with OP passives and stat buffs.
• A Tier: Very good runes that work well regardless of your build.
• B Tier: Decent runes that will buff your DPS/mining by a bit.
• C Tier: Bad runes that don’t provide enough boosts to warrant using them.

In the tier list above, you can see the general power ranking of runes in The Forge. Miner Shard only applies to pickaxes and affects only your ore-mining performance. Other runes can be applied to armor/weapons, depending on their effects. Drain Edge is generally the only good rune for weapons, while Rot Stitch is the best rune for armor. All others can be useful, but you’ll be mostly deciding which one you use based on the sub stats (we explain those further below).

All Runes in The Forge – Farming Locations & What They Do

In the table below, you can find all runes in The Forge Roblox experience, their effects, which enemies/quests they drop from, and which gear they are usable on. Note that the Miner Shard rune can have only one of the 4 possible effects, and can not have any sub stats.

Rune	Effect	Drops From	Usable On
Miner Shard	One of These: Yield I: 4-10% chance to drop 1 extra ore from mines. Luck I: 7-16% overall Luck increase. Swift Mining I: 5-16% increased Mine Speed. Mine Power I: 5-16% increased Mine Damage.	Delver Zombie Bomber	Pickaxe
Drain Edge	Life Steal I: Restores 5-13% of Physical Damage dealt on hit.	Reaper	Weapon
Blast Chip	Explosion I: Explode with a 10-20% chance on hit, dealing 15-30% DMG.	Bomber	Weapon
Flame Spark	Burn I: Deal 5-10% DMG as fire per second for 1-2s. 15-25% chance on hit.	Deathaxe Skeleton Elite Deathaxe Skeleton Reaper Blazing Slime	Weapon
Venom Crumb	Poison I: Deal 5-10% DMG as poison per second for 1-2s. 15-25% chance on hit.	Unobtainable	Weapon
Chill Dust	Snow I: Slow enemy MOV SPD and ATK SPD by 5-10% for 1-2s. 15-25% chance on hit.	Unobtainable	Weapon
Briar Notch	Thorn I: Reflect 5-10% physical DMG taken (caps at 5% max user HP; 0.05s CD).	Deathaxe Skeleton Elite Deathaxe Skeleton	Armor
Rage Mark	Berserker I: Boosts PHYS DMG and MOV SPD by 25-30% for 3-5s. Activates below 35% HP (50-60s CD).	Elite Rogue Skeleton	Armor
Ward Patch	Shield I: Reduce incoming PHYS DMG by 5-15%. Has 5-15% chance per received hit.	Tutorial Quest	Armor
Frost Speck	Freeze I: Freeze enemies for 1-2s with a 5-15% chance when receiving a hit.	Unobtainable	Armor
Rot Stitch	Bad Smell I: Deal 5-15% poison DMG for 1-2s, fearing enemies. Activates below 35% HP (15-20s CD).	Unobtainable	Armor

All Rune Sub Stats

Every rune in The Forge, except for the Miner Shard, can also have a sub stat, giving you additional stats. These are rolled randomly when you obtain the rune and can’t be changed later. In the table below, you’ll find all the possible sub stats, their effects, which type of rune they can appear on, and how good they are (rating column).

How to Use Runes in The Forge

To apply or remove runes from your gear in The Forge, you’ll need to visit the Runemaker NPC located in each major town. You can increase the rune slots of your gear pieces via Enhancement (every 3 levels will give the gear +1 rune slot). The price of applying/removing a rune depends on the base price of that gear piece. Here is how adding/removing runes works:

• Attaching Runes:
  1. Select a piece of gear.
  2. Click on the desired rune in the middle area of the rune menu.
  3. Click on Attach below the rune’s description on the right.
• Detaching Runes:
  1. Select a piece of gear with a filled rune slot.
  2. Click on the filled rune slot on the bottom left of the gear piece image on the left.
  3. Click on Detach below the rune’s description on the right.

Useful Tips for Runes

• Rune Master Achievement: You can farm this achievement by attaching/detaching a rune on the cheapest possible piece of gear ($10 Stone Dagger rune attach + detach costs $220). It isn’t cheap to max out a Critical Chance achievement this way, but it is the quickest.
• Save Runes With Good Sub Stats: Most runes’ effects except Drain Edge aren’t important, so look at their sub stats when deciding which to use. A +15% Attack Speed boost will be 10x better than a max roll Flame Spark without a sub stat.
• Don’t Attach Weak Runes to Pickaxes: If you don’t have a good rune to attach to your pickaxe yet, don’t waste money attaching a random one. It’s just too expensive, and you’ll be losing money and stats this way.
• Don’t Detach Runes From Pickaxes: Since pickaxe rune detachment is expensive as well, it’s 10x better to farm another max-rolled rune than to spend $30,000-$40,000 detaching one.

The Forge Runes FAQ

And that does it for our The Forge rune guide and tier list. For more info about the game, do check out our The Forge races tier list, The Forge Goblin King quest guide, and The Forge Bard’s Lost Guitar quest guide.