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Runes: Crafting, Capacity and Slotting
Socketing is gone from the launch game. Runes are not, quite.
The short version
- The rune system was removed completely before the 16 September 2026 launch.
- In the beta, exceptionally rare Legendary Runes could be socketed into the Carried Item held by an Aniimo for superior stats, including large damage increases.
- Random rune slots are gone. Carried items no longer roll them, which is a deliberate simplification of the carried item system.
- The Holo-Battle Sim runs at several difficulty levels and grants weekly rewards of runes, used to upgrade carried items.
- How those two things sit together is not settled, so plan around the item, not around slots.
If you came to runes expecting a socket puzzle, the short answer is that there is no puzzle. The rune system was removed completely before the 16 September 2026 launch, and random rune slots went with it. Carried items no longer roll them.
That leaves one live thing worth knowing. Runes still turn up as a weekly reward from the Holo-Battle Sim, listed as material used to upgrade carried items. Same word, different job.
This page is about what that means when you are actually equipping an Aniimo: what socketing used to do, what the weekly rewards are for, and why the capacity question you are probably about to ask does not have an answer in the launch game.
What socketing did, and when it stopped
In the beta, exceptionally rare Legendary Runes could be socketed into the Carried Item held by an Aniimo. The payoff was superior stats, including large damage increases, which made a Legendary Rune one of the bigger single upgrades you could make to a creature. That system was removed completely before the 16 September 2026 launch.
Random rune slots went too. Carried items no longer roll them, which simplifies the carried item system: an item is what it is when you get it, and there is no second roll layered on top deciding how much you can bolt on. "Beta Builds vs Launch: What Carried Over" is the place to read about how that removal fits alongside the game's other beta-to-launch changes. For the purposes of this page, it is enough to know the socket is not there to fill.
16 September 2026
Launch date the rune system was removed before
Runes as a weekly reward from the Holo-Battle Sim
The Holo-Battle Sim is where runes still appear. It runs at several difficulty levels and grants weekly rewards of runes, and those runes are described as being used to upgrade carried items. That is an upgrade material, not something you slot in and take out again.
So you have two true statements sitting next to each other: socketing is gone, and runes are still a weekly payout attached to carried item upgrades. How those resolve into one system is not settled. Treat the weekly rewards as worth collecting and leave it there. The practical version is simple. Run the Sim at the difficulty you can clear reliably, take the weekly runes, and spend them on the item rather than trying to build a rune loadout that the game no longer supports.
Capacity, merging and the questions that no longer apply
Anything you may have planned around slot capacity is off the table. There is no per-item slot budget to manage, no merging of lesser runes into better ones, and no decision about which of a creature's sockets gets the good rune, because the system those ideas belonged to is not in the launch game.
That changes how you evaluate a carried item. In the beta you could look at a mediocre item and see potential, because a Legendary Rune could carry it. Now the item's own stats are the whole argument. If it is not good on its own, nothing you add later will fix it.
Where to start
Do not build a carried item around runes. There is nothing to socket, nothing to merge and no capacity to plan around. Bank the Holo-Battle Sim's weekly runes, treat them as upgrade material for the item itself, and judge a carried item on what it does rather than on what you were hoping to slot into it.
Nothing on this page has been re-checked against the released game yet.