Summoners War – How to Rune a Monster by Hand

Guide on How to Rune a Monster by Hand

By Your helpful helper Fam.

Runing a monster isn’t easy at all, I understand that, but it’s a vital part of playing Summoners War and you shouldn’t try to skip it. I don’t know if there is a really perfect way of runing monsters (plural, the best way of runing a single monster is still SWOP) but I’ll show you what I learnt from the pro (which is Yak btw, also got treated into a drink by him when he taught me that, thanks my goat).

Let’s rune a Kro as an example, which is the hardest monster to rune for your Giant team.

Step 1: Deciding What Set You Want to Use

One important thing to know as beginners is that while specific sets don’t matter in PvE, we need to have some kind of stat sets instead of broken. Most of our PvE damage dealers should be runed with some combinations of Energy and Blade runes, maybe we can have some DD built on decent Fatal/Blade sets it’s not gonna be our default options as beginners. Playing around Energy and Blade runes give more flexibility when choosing runes.

We’ll choose between Energy, Blade and Intangible sets to put on our Kro, like this:

Step 2: Choosing Your 2/4/6 Rune and Get a Basic Outline of How Your Monster Look Like

The next thing we do is define which stat you need for the most and sort your runes by that stat priority. As for Kro I’m sure the hardest part of runing him is gettting that 100% crit rate, so we pick crit rate as our priority. Then we just choose between our runes, value the one that have some decent rolls on crit rate substat, and preferably have some hp%, spd, atk%, def%, crit dmg substats.

So after choosing for a while, we pick these three runes to put on Kro.

Step 3: Filling Out Other Stats with Slot 1/3/5 Runes

Slot 1/3/5 runes only come with one main stats and that give you a tons of choice to put the flesh on the skeleton you built with 2/4/6 runes.

We start looking at Kro and analyze the stat distribution. He is just 50% crit rate, we’ll need to fill that out with more crit rate stat and a Blade set. He also lack some EHP so we also looking for hp% stat and fill in one more Energy set. And lastly he is lacking a small amount of spd so I’ll keep an eyes out for them too (for real beginners that are trying to build your first Kro, that spd is fine).

Therefore I’ll keep crit rate and hp% as my priority and keep eyes on Spd substats, then Atk and Crit dmg stats to give Kro more damage, then maybe some Accuracy as Kro is a good debuffer for Raid 5 too. Slot 3 have no atk stat so it’s very helpful in giving you tanky stats btw, I’d advise you choose it then choose slot 1. We’re gonna save slot 5 for last as slot 5 with no stat restriction will be the one that fill out your remaining desired stats.

Also note that 100 crit rate isn’t absolute. A 98% crit Kro with +1500 atk is better than a 100% crit with +1300 atk.

We look once again as we choose that slot 5 rune. If your Kro is missing some kind of stats this is where we fill that in, our Kro here fortunately have enough crucial stat (that 12% crit rate can be filled by a random Blade rune), so I’m looking for more crit dmg and atk%.

Step 4: Decide if You Are Satisfied by the Build and Perfecting It

We’re 90% done with this Kro now, let’s take a look at him like how an artist look at his painting before polishing it. Is it going the way he want? Is there a certain part he feel can be redraw a bit better? Maybe he made a piece of shit out and it’s time to scrap everything and restart. That’s totally fine, now there’s an opportunity for new ideas. Maybe your Kro is too squishy and you have a 20 crit rate slot 2 Hp% rune? You have some nice Guard runes and thinking about Blade/Blade/Guard Kro? You want Kro to be on Fatal/Blade? Go for them.

There’s no perfect way to rune monsters, you’re reading a guide not a law book. Try replacing any rune(s) including the 2/4/6 runes. They can still be replaced to give you the desired stat, just harder than replacing 1/3/5 runes. And don’t forget you can get free stat from artifacts.

Once you feel satsified by the build, you can start perfecting it using gems and grinds. Our Kro is perfect for all PvE rune you gonna use him in, he is somewhat tankier than what he usually need so it’s a good choice to gem some tanky stat into offensive stat.

Some Note on Runing Other Monsters

Other DDs like Raoq, Verde, Vero, Spectra are runedd with the same mindset as above. For support and PvP bruisers things are a bit different because the hardest stat to get is now Spd, you don’t need 100% crit rate on them and crit bruisers like Tesarion, Perna and siege defs Carcano enjoy running slot 4 crit rate runes.

For fast siege/arena offense nukers you need both spd and 100% crit rate so they are harder to runes than other monsters, they however don’t need any tankiness so it’s still possible to rune them by hand. You can use SWOP to rune your favorite nuker the best way possible.

I’ve Tried Everything but Still Can’t Rune the Monster

Your only choice is just keep farming and follow our beginner guides, instead of trying to take a shortcut by using “stronger” monsters or going through some more “optimal” progression guides you learn somewhere.

I’ve seen many beginners built Tyron, Lucifer, Teshar, DoT teams… because “the guide don’t work, I built that monster and he helped me get through it”, or farming Dragon because “Dragon teams are easier to set up and faster than 3 minutes Giant teams”. Sure Tyron does help you clear ToAH easier then what, does your godly built Tyron help you farm SFAH, rifts, R5,… Ofc not because your runes are still just as bad as before and you aren’t ready for these dungeons. Your progression got harmed because you spent your precious early-game resource on that Tyron, or worse maybe some “professional” tell you to build Sath, Rica, Thrain,… It’s like that story when a man snipped off a butterfly cocoon to help it get out faster but that butterfly could just crawling around the ground, because it wasn’t ready to fly.

Our guides are written with not only maximum effiency in mind, but also in a reasonable increasing in difficulty. NBAH is at the end because it’s the hardest rune dungeon, while your first GBAH teams are runed on free newcomer sets. You aren’t supposed to find a way to eliminate your struggles. They are meant to strengthen you, preparing you for the harder steps ahead. Only through that accumulation in strength will you be able to fly.

Thanks for reading the guide, I hope it was helpful to you!