Rune Knights

Rune Knights is a cooperative, third-person hack-and-slash action RPG focused on character customization, crafting and combat. You kill monsters to level up, collect loot, craft weapons and armor, and fight through procedurally generated and hand-crafted levels filled with enemies and bosses. You can play solo or in online co-op with up to four players, and solo play is also available offline.

Build your character

Rune Knights has 8 mixable classes, listed as 11 in the overview, and lets you invest in any skill tree as you level. The description lists 11 skill trees, over 100 unique talents, more than 200 unique skills, over 120 talents and 60 powerful abilities. You can quickly respec to try another build or adapt to loot you find. Characters can reach level 30, which takes about 4–5 hours; the overview estimates around 20 hours per character and notes that players may want to make more than one level-30 character.

Equipment affects both your stats and your abilities: each piece grants an ability that becomes available when equipped. You can craft and upgrade gear with special items that drop from enemies or can be bought in Town, changing its skills and rerolling its mods, sometimes into powerful Legendary mods. More than 150 Legendary items offer distinctive ways to shape a build, and some only drop from the most powerful enemies. You can also customize your character’s appearance and stats.

Each skill tree has its own Super ability. These charge as you kill enemies and grant a short burst of great power when activated. Weapons include dual-wielded weapons, swords, hammers, staffs, shields and bows, with bows gaining damage from headshots. The overview also says you can play as a summoner and dual-wield shields.

Fight together

In co-op, squads of up to four can combine their builds and abilities to develop synergies and face increasingly difficult enemies. You can recruit AI-controlled Companions with the same customization options as your character, equip them with found gear, and adjust their talents and flask effects. You can trade items and currency with allies in the game.

Enemies and endgame

The game includes over 60 enemy types, including 15 unique bosses and 15 powerful Elite enemies. Crusades let you set the difficulty in exchange for greater rewards, and success can unlock Raid bosses with distinctive, challenging encounters. Infinite Arena pits you against waves of increasingly difficult enemies and bosses, with a place on the leaderboards at stake. These activities can all be played solo or with a party.

Hardcore mode

In Hardcore mode, characters are permanently deleted when they die. Hardcore characters have a separate gold collection and stash, shared with other Hardcore characters, and can trade only with one another.