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Items in Ascend: Hand of Kul fall into two categories: Runes and Boosts. While both item types can be purchased from the menu store, only Runes can be collected from chests throughout the world; boosts must be acquired by spending souls.

Runes

Runes are modifiers that can be affixed to equipment for additional damage, protections or effects. Weapon Runes run the spectrum from common to rare, adding the potential for on-hit effects or enhancing the base statistics of your character. Armor runes also range from common to rare, piling on protections, increasing your characters base attributes or adding resistances to specific forms of magic and the chance to outright negate spells. Below you’ll find a collection of all runes currently available in Ascend: Hand of Kul, their costs and some quick tips regarding their usage. For more information on runes on how they can be best used with equipment, visit the Equipment section of this guide.

Weapon Runes

Flame

 

Rune of Flame – “Add 5% to Fire Chance. Burning enemies take damage over time.”

Cost: 3,000 Souls

Fire chance percentage is the probability of igniting enemies, dealing slight damage over time with a weapon attack. This rune best compliments a fast weapon type for increased effect chances per second.

Frost

 

Rune of Frost – “Add 5% to Freeze Chance. Frozen enemies take damage and move slowly.”

Cost: 3,000 Souls

Frost chance percentage is the probability of slightly slowing enemies with a weapon attack. Despite the description, there is no visible damage done when the effect is triggered. This rune best compliments a fast weapon type for increased effect chances per second.

LIghtning

 

Rune of Lightning – “Add 5% to Lightning Chance. Shocked enemies are stunned for a duration.”

Cost: 3,000 Souls

Lightning chance percentage is the probability of stunning  enemies, interrupting any attack they’re in the process of performing and dealing slight damage over time with a weapon attack. This rune best compliments a fast weapon type for increased effect chances per second.

Smithing

 

Rune of Smithing – “Add 5% to Critical Strike Chance. Critical Strikes inflict double damage.”

Cost: 5,000 Souls

Critical Strike chance is the probability of dealing double the damage of the weapon attack. This rune compliments both a fast weapon type for increased damage output per second, as well as a slow weapon type to maximize damage potential when fighting enemies with small windows of vulnerability.

Magic

 

Rune of Magic – “Increase Magic Damage by 10%”

Cost: 6,000 Souls

Magic Damage is the base damage your character does with spells. As this rune directly modifies your base statistics, it compliments all weapon types.

Strength

 

Rune of Strength – “Add 3% to Melee Damage.”

Cost: 7,000 Souls

Melee Damage is the base damage your character does with weapon attacks. As this rune directly modifies your base statistics, it compliments all weapon types.

Explosive

 

Rune of Explosive – “Add 5% to Detonate Chance. Detonations create an area of effect attack that knocks back enemies.”

Cost: 8,000 Souls

Detonate chance is the probability of causing a small explosion, damaging and knocking back your target and adjacent enemies with a weapon attack. This rune best compliments a fast weapon type for increased effect chances per second.

Speed

 

Rune of Speed – “Increase Attack Speed by 10%”

Cost: 9,000 Souls

Attack Speed is the base speed with which your character delivers weapon attacks. As this rune directly modifies your base statistics, it compliments all weapon types.

Titan

 

Rune of the Titan – “Add 7% to Melee Damage.”

Cost: 15,000 Souls

Melee Damage is the base damage your character does with weapon attacks. As this rune directly modifies your base statistics, it compliments all weapon types.

 

Armor Runes

Extinguish

 

Rune of Extinguish – “Add 25% to Dark Resistance. Chance to completely negate Dark Spells, and fire damage.”

Cost: 2,000 Souls

Dark Resist percentage is the amount of damage your character can mitigate from Dark-aligned and fire-based damage sources, along with a chance to completely negate spells and damage of this type. This rune is of greatest benefit in Dark-aligned dungeons or fighting Ascended Caos.

Warmth

 

Rune of Warmth – “Add 25% to Void Resist. Chance to completely negate Void Spells, and freeze damage.”

Cost: 2,000 Souls

Void Resist percentage is the amount of damage your character can mitigate from Void-aligned and freeze-based damage sources, along with a chance to completely negate spells and damage of this type. This rune is of greatest benefit in Void-aligned dungeons or fighting Ascended Caos.

Grounding

 

Rune of Grounding – “Add 25% to Light Resist. Chance to completely negate Light spells, and prevent lightning damage.”

Cost: 2,000 Souls

Light Resist percentage is the amount of damage your character can mitigate from Light-aligned and lightning-based damage sources, along with a chance to completely negate spells and damage of this type. This rune is of greatest benefit in Light-aligned dungeons or fighting Ascended Caos.

Protection

 

Rune of Protection – “Add 5% to Max Armor”

Cost: 4,000 Souls

Max Armor is the total amount of your character’s physical protection, which mitigates physical damage. This rune is effective in all areas of the world, as the majority of damage sources are physical.

Magic Shell

 

Rune of Magic Shell – “Add 25% to Magic Resist. Chance to negate non-alignment spells such as witch doctor attacks.”

Cost: 6,000 Souls

Magic Resist percentage is the amount of damage your character can mitigate from non-alignment magic-based damage sources, along with a chance to completely negate spells and damage of this type. This rune is effective against basic enemy magic users like Witch Doctors and Shamans.

Cure

 

Rune of Cure – “Add 25% to Acid Resist.”

Cost: 7,000 Souls

Acid Resist percentage is the amount of damage your character can mitigate from acid-based damage sources. This rune is effective in the Arkan Moors zone, where acid-based enemy variants first appear and cause potentially lethal acid and poison damage with basic attacks.

Health

 

Rune of Health – “Increase Max Health by 10%”

Cost: 10,000 Souls

Max Health is the total number of health points for your character. This rune is effective in all situations.

Dodging

 

Rune of Dodging – “Add 5% to Dodge Chance.”

Cost: 12,000 Souls

Dodge Chance percentage is the chance to the dodge incoming enemy attacks, completely negating the damage. This rune is effective in all situations, especially when trying to maintain a high combo multiplier.

Tower

 

Rune of the Tower – “Add 10% to Max Armor.”

Cost: 15,000 Souls

Max Armor is the total amount of your character’s physical protection, which mitigates physical damage. This rune is effective in all areas of the world, as the majority of damage sources are physical.

Boosts

Boosts are powerful, temporary buffs that enhance your character in a number of ways. When purchased, boosts are active for their specified amount of time, but only while you are actively playing. This means the Boost duration will stop ticking down while you’re logged off, paused, or in the menu systems. In addition to the standard duration boosts listed below, there are week-long versions that provide the same benefit for an entire week at a much greater cost. However, these week-long boosts continue to deplete while you are not logged into Ascend – meaning their cost-effectiveness is totally dependent the amount of time you play during that period.

Shield of the Gods

 

Shield of the Gods – “Completely protects you from Crusade Spells, and disables your use of Crusade Spells for 30 minutes.”

Cost: 1000 Souls

The Shield of the Gods Boost is effective in all situations, especially if an enemy player continues to Banish or use Curses in dangerous situations.

Run Speed Boost

 

Run Speed Boost – “Run Speed boost for 30 minutes.”

Cost: 2000 Souls

The Rune Speed Boost is effective in some situations, primarily when delving dungeons for chests while bypassing enemies. Its effectiveness depends entirely on how much you’re constantly moving.

Attack Speed Boost

 

Attack Speed Boost – “Attack Speed boost for 30 minutes.”

Cost: 4000 Souls

The Attack Speed Boost is useful for increasing your swings per second, which lends itself well to situations where you’re trying to quickly build a combo multiplier.

Health Point Boost

 

Health Point Boost – “Health increases or 30 minutes.”

Cost: 5000 Souls

The Health Point Boost is effective in any situation where you’re not able to escape combat and regenerate health naturally, primarily: fighting Apex or getting grabbed by an Ogre.

Magic Cooldown Boost

 

Magic Cooldown Boost – “Spell Recharge boost for 30 minutes.”

Cost: 6000 Souls

The Magic Cooldown Boost is useful for casting more spells in a shorter span of time. It’s useful when using area-of-effective spells for farming due to their long cooldowns, or delving dungeons many levels higher than you since spells will be your primary source of damage output.

Light Mask

 

Light Mask – “Allows the player to enter Light dungeons for 30 minutes.”

Cost: 8500 Souls

The Light Mask Boost is used to disguise your alignment for entering Light dungeons if you’re not aligned to that God.

Dark Mask

 

Dark Mask – “Allows the player to enter Dark dungeons for 30 minutes.”

Cost: 8500 Souls

The Dark Mask Boost is used to disguise your alignment for entering Dark dungeons if you’re not aligned to that God.

Void Mask

 

Void Mask – “Allows the player to enter Void dungeons for 30 minutes.”

Cost: 8500 Souls

The Void Mask Boost is used to disguise your alignment for entering Void dungeons if you’re not aligned to that God.

Gear Protection

 

Gear Protection – “Protects the durability of your gear for 30 minutes.”

Cost: 10,000 Souls

The Gear Protection Boost is not initially useful given its high cost and short duration. However, as players collect higher level, better quality equipment, and harvest souls more quickly, the cost of this Boost can often outweigh any repair costs accrued in that amount of time.

Double XP Boost

 

Double XP Boost – “Experience Boost for 30 minutes.”

Cost: 15,000 Souls

The Double XP Boost is useful during higher levels when farming experience toward Ascension given its high cost and short duration. It becomes much less cost-effective to purchase if you’re not farming experience in a stationary location, as any time moving and not spent actively killing something diminishes your return on the investment.

Witching Hour Boost

 

Witching Hour Boost – “Magic damage increases for 60 minutes.”

Cost: 20,000 Souls

The Witching Hour Boost is a temporary addition to the lists of Boosts and is not cost-effective with the exception of a few specific scenarios: delving dungeons many levels higher than your character where spells become the only source of damage output, or fighting enemy Ascended Champions. Do not purchase this boost when farming or traversing the world. The additional souls that can be harvested per minute, thanks to the added damage, almost never covers the hefty cost of the boost.