Guild Wars 2

I’m having a hard time figuring out how runes work. I have a pair of gloves that says:

Minor Rune of Flaming Legion 1/2
1 – 10 power
2 – +5% burn duration

The bonus #1 is blue and #2 is grayed. So this implies the gloves have one rune attached to them and if I attach another I’ll get the bonus #2 right?

The problem is whenever I replace the glove the rune disappears, I mean I hover the mouse over it in my inventory and it says “Minor Rune of Flaming Legion 0/2”. I’ve never attached the rune to the gloves, it came with them as far as I remember.

Also I’ve already seen armor pieces that say “Minor Rune of Whatever 4/2” and it’s red.

What does it mean?

Is this a bug or am I missing something?

I can only tell you the way that it works for me as an example (not using real item names):

Recieve item: Strong epaulets of Dwayna (Minor rune of Dwayna already on the shoulders)

Craft or Buy another Minor rune of Dwayna

Add the second Minor rune of Dwayna to the leggings (while you’re wearing them).

Now it should list you as having 2/2 as long as you’re wearing both articles of clothing.

Lets say that you then add the rune of Dwayna to two other pieces of clothing – that’s when you’ll see the Red stacking 4/2 – meaning that it’s applied too many times and that you’re simply not benefitting anymore (I believe, someone else can confirm since this last bit might be wrong).

Hope this helps you figure out whether you’re seeing a bug or not. I couldn’t from your description since it sounded like you could have been taking the item off or adding the second rune on top of the first.

Thx for the explanation Thellena, I didn’t know they stacked in different pieces of armor.

What puzzles me tho is that I’ve never applied any runes, just gems. Do some armors pieces come with runes?

I’ll have to check it again if there’s any piece of armor with that rune.

Gems can be applied to armor as they are a general upgrade type. Runes are specific to armor, those can’t be applied to weapons or jewelry.

The rune tooltip you get states how much active runes of that type you have. Thus, if you wear the gloves, they state 1/2 because they apparently have a rune. While in the inventory, they state 0/2 because your active/worn armor does not have any runes of that type in it.
There are 3 qualities of runes, “minor”, “major” and “superior”, which give (respectively) up to 2, 4 and 6 boni. Thus, if you want all effects of a superior rune, you have to apply one to each of your 6 armor parts to get 6/6.

Yes, some armors come with runes and if you try to gem them it will destroy the rune that they came with. It can be very confusing.

Alright I get it now. Thank you guys.