The Best Build for D2R Rune Farming

Rune farming is one of the most exciting elements of Diablo 2 Resurrected. Runes are the most seeked items, since runewords are the most powerful items in the game. However, they are also the most expensive ones due to the rarity of high level runes. The chances to find a High rune like Ber or Jah is incredibly slim, close to 1:1million when killing a random monster on Hell difficulty. This guide is dedicated to explain the best ways to farm runes and get your preferred runewords as soon as possible. Read our Rune Farming Guide for efficient rune farming if you haven't yet!

Farming with the right build

The key to successful rune farming is to have a build that's designed to get runes as fast as possible. There is no better build for this purpose than the Lightning Sorceress (build details in the link).

While lightning sorcs are not the cheapest, if you aim for maximum farming efficiency, they are your best bet. The lightning sorc is the fastest teleporting class , no other build can compare even amongst other sorcs, as it's the only build capable of reaching the 200% faster cast rate breakpoint, allowing for 7 frame teleport cast and 11 frame lightning cast. 

Players have a variety of methods for farming runes in the game. In this guide I will stick to the two most popular methods.

Farming The Countess

Amongst all monsters, The Countess (a superunique monster in Act1 Tower Cellar Level 5) has the highest chance to drop runes up to Ist with an incredible 1:287 chance. For comparison, the second highest drop chance for Ist is from Andariel at 1:10k. Unfortunately she does not drop higher runes frequently, and the highest one she can drop is Lo. However, she is still your best bet to get runes up to Sur, simply by upgrading Ists to Guls, Guls to Vexs, Vexs to Ohms, Ohms to Los, and Los to Sur. Overall you will need 32 Ist runes for a Sur rune. The Lightning Sorc build is not only ideal for it's fast teleportation ability, but also because the Countess is Cold and Fire Immune, but never Lightning immune.

In order to farm The Countess effectively, you should learn the different map layouts of The Black Marsh, so you can get to the Tower Cellar as quickly as possible. Once in the Tower, there is a simple rule on how to find entrances to the next level: Always move to your left after entering a new level. And if moving left is not possible, move 4 times to your right (which will still result as left). The entrance to the next level will be on your left every time.

Farming the Cow Level

If you want to get the highest runes in the game, the best option is to kill as many monsters in a short period of time as possible. There is no way around it, if you are looking for a Ber, Jah, Cham or Zod rune you need to kill hundreds of thousands of monsters, or run Bosses tens of thousands of times.

The Cow level has 350-450 Cows on average, and it's the highest monster density area in the entire game. Cows also have a relatively good chance of dropping runes, and they are never Lightning immune. With a high level Chain Lightning you will be able to rip through them in no time.

Conclusion: Use a Lightning Sorc and farm The Countess or the Secret Cow Level ;)

If you decide not to farm for hundreds of hours, you can quickly buy runes from our D2R Store.

Related Guides

Ultimate Mercenary Guide | D2R Rune Farming Guide | 4 Socket Monarch Farming Guide