This is my first guide, so forgive me if it's somewhat rough, but i'm going to do my best. Fictorum is a gem of a game, but i was very frustrated trying to find any information on this game, so I decided to take it upon myself to get some sorely needed information out there about it. This guide specifically is about runes, which ones you should look out for, ones you should use if you've got nothing better, and runes you should pretty much never use. Please make sure that the rune is one that you can use with your spell before you buy it: such as affinity to the element/projectile vs AOE Etc...

If you want to see what the spell icon looks like in game refer to the screenshots on the bottom of this guide.

These are the runes you should always use if you have them available.

Chain Reaction: Great because when it hits an enemy, it leaps over to the next nearest enemy, and it will do this indefinitely as long as there are nearby enemies to get hit. This rune pairs well with Multi-shot, Storm, or seek.

Storm: Drops tons of the spell this is attached to from the sky that rain down over a massive area. on its own it may not hit all the enemies you hope, but if you pair this with sentinel it will drop towers everywhere that will attack the nearest enemy. if you don't' have sentinel yet, chain reaction or seek can make it behave just fine, without any supporting runes though, storm just drops a lot of the spell all over at random, and may or may not hit any enemies. Be careful about using this rune early on however, because it uses a ton of mana.

Sentinel: Creates a tower that fires projectiles at nearby enemies. This spell is great because you can run around, and let enemies chase you while they slowly get gunned down by your towers, and the enemies AI don't make it a priority to destroy the tower or avoid the projectiles. This pairs really good with storm, creating an army in a second that obliterates everything nearby. If you dont have storm, it also goes really well with chain reaction or seek, but pairing it with wrath could be good too on one of your secondary spells, creating a tower anytime an enemy is hit, but can no longer be auto-cast.

Wrath: Fantastic to use on one of your secondary spells, it loses the ability to be directly cast anymore, but it will be auto-cast anytime anytime any of your other spells hits an enemy. This is great to pair with Sentinel to spawn a tower every time an enemy gets hit, or with a trap rune, the trap will be laid at your feet making it difficult for melee enemies to get near you while you retreat, or for them to sneak up on you if you're stationary. This is a great rune to use during boss fights on your secondary spells, because you'll only be spamming one of them anyways you may as well get a little extra firepower out of the other spells.

These are runes that are pretty good, preferred over the other runes assuming you dont have access to S class runes.

Multi-shot: Creates multiple projectiles, effectively turning your spell into a shotgun. Pairs really well with chain reaction, seek, storm, bounce. I personally use this rune on my primary spell even in the end game for dealing with stragglers my larger storm AOE spells might miss just because it deals a ton of damage at close range even without shaping.

Order: This rune creates projectiles out of your main spell as it flies through the air, and will actively seek out nearby enemies as it goes by. Works better on slow moving projectiles, otherwise they may not have enough time to spawn out of your main projectile. This rune is preferred over any B or C Rune, but it always ends up being replaced by a S class rune as soon as i have them available.

Bounce: causes the projectile to bounce around after hitting any surface, better to use on slow moving projectiles. Good to pair with Multi-shot or Spread. If you have seek or chain reaction available, replace this rune with either of those. This rune can be fun to use with storm, but seek or chain reaction is preferred to be used with that over this.

Pain: Similar to wrath, it will make a spell auto-cast any time you get hurt, but you can no longer directly cast the spell. Wrath is better than this, because Pain only activates when you take damage, which is something you never want to do because of how hard it is to heal. this rune should be used at boss fights on your secondary spells since that's where you're most likely going to take the most damage, but should be replaced with doom if you're not in a boss fight, or preferably just replace both with wrath as soon as that's available.

Doom: Auto-casts the spell any time you kill an enemy, replace this rune with Pain during boss fights since you're not likely to kill anything, but preferably just replace both with wrath as soon as you have it unlocked.

Seek: This rune causes the spell to lock on and move towards the nearest enemy to it. This rune is very powerful if paired with storm. If paired with multi-shot you can kill bosses pretty easy with it. I would however replace this rune with chain reaction if I have it available, as this rune would end the spell when it kills an enemy, but chain reaction would continue the spell after killing an enemy and leap towards the next nearest enemy.

These runes are generally situational and I would only really use them if you have nothing better, its not that these runes are bad, they're just really mediocre or have very specific niches.

Persist: Enemies take more damage over time., not super useful.

High Explosive: cause a bigger explosion radius., causes more splash damage.

Pierce: Projectile penetrates through enemy hitting any enemies behind them.

High Velocity: Increases the speed a projectile flies, can be useful on painfully slow projectiles, also somewhat increase the range of the projectile.

Magic's Reach: Massively extends the range of the projectile, good for sniping, especially towers.

Slow: Makes enemies hit by this spell slow down, it's okay paired with trap spells, but i would literally prefer just about anything else. The only reason this made B tier is because it doesn't add any negatives, just doesn't add much of a positive. again, try to use like anything else you have available.

Stun: Pretty much the exact same thing as slow, it is slightly better because it actually locks enemies in place for a few seconds rather than just slowing them down, but i would prefer just about anything else.

Spread: Basically like a slightly less useful version of Multi-shot, it creates multiple copies of your projectile, but spaces them evenly apart rather than a close cluster. It looks good on paper, but trying to aim at anything mildly far away makes aiming difficult as you'll probably only hit them with one of the projectiles anyways, at really close range it does perform moderately okay, but you generally don't want enemies to get that close to you.

Manifest: I haven't used this rune all that much, it has wildly different effects depending on the element of the spell used, but it generally just creates a puddle on the ground where the projectile lands that will damage enemies for like 10 seconds over time. I've found this rune somewhat rare, and by the time i find it I generally have much better runes anyways. Might be good for trap spells, but again I haven't used it very much. *Edit* After a recent corruption only play-through I learned that if this is used on corruption spells it creates zombies out of corpses that will attack your enemies. though this is cool, it's only useful on corruption spells, and if you're achievement hunting you wont be able to take advantage of this effect very often, and also sometimes the zombies bug out and attack you as well, which doesn't seem to be intended.

Efficiency: Lowers the mana cost of the spell, could be useful in the very very beginning when you don't have much mana regen, but it's preferably to use anything else to boost you damage intead of wasting a slot with this, because you should be focusing on mana regen on your gear anyways.

Nova: Makes your AOE spells bigger, and do more damage, but removes all range from them and makes your body act as the center of the spell every time. This could be somewhat useful with trap spells, but trap spells aren't something to rely on much outside the early game anyways.

Echo: Makes you cast the same spell twice in a row, try to use anything else.

Trap: This rune has a really niche use. It can only be used on AOE spells, and will turn the spell into a circle on the ground that when an enemy walks on it, will activate the spell. Could be useful in the early game, lay down a few of these, and run away, and as enemies chase you they'll activate them and their numbers will gradually get worn down as they pursue you. Could be interesting to combine with storm, but I mostly use it with wrath on one of my secondary spells, that way while one of my sentinel towers guns them down, I can run away and have an additional way of killing pursuing enemies.

Familiar: A worse version of Sentinel, it creates a small ball that floats and follows you around, launching the spell it's attached to at nearby enemies. I don't find it super useful because the range it can detect enemies is much smaller than i would like, and it struggles to lay down enough firepower on its own to keep enemies away from you.

Chaos: Any projectile this is attached to will launch smaller projectiles in random directions and the main projectile travels. Best on slow moving projectiles, decent if paired with seek.

Massive: Makes projectile hit box bigger, cause more splash damage, slows down projectile speed slightly. Meh.

Spiral: Similar to Order and chaos, but I personally find it less useful than either of them because it releases its projectiles in a rotation clockwise around the main projectile, beginning on the left. Because of this, unless you're using the slowest projectiles in the game, it will pretty much just dump all of it's extra projectiles out the left side, or straight up, and the main projectile will normally collide with its destination before the spiral reaches the right.

Fury: Spell is automatically cast any time you cast any other spell, but can no longer be manually cast. It essentially doubles the number of projectiles you use, but there are other runes that do that better.

These are runes I would never use, even if have them available, it's best to just sell these ones as soon as you get them, don't bother using them at all, and make sure they don't get auto-equipped by mistake.

Abandon: Spell loses damage, but you can hold down the button to cast it continuously. Not worth it, especially since you lose damage on it, even just 2 basic spells are enough to kill most enemies, full auto is just unnecessary and a huge waste of a rune slot.

Drain: a percentage of damage done to your enemies is added to your stamina bar. This rune would be S tier if it added to your health bar instead, and would actually make the blood rune viable, but because it adds to stamina its just not ever worth using this rune. Your stamina restores pretty quickly already, even somewhat in the early game. This rune is just a waste of a rune slot, don't bother with it.

Implosion: deals a very small % of your splash damage as damage over time every .1 seconds for 2.5 seconds. I've never used this rune, but I've never bothered with it because it increases the mana cost by like 70% on average, just not worth it for a little extra damage, runes that increase the number of projectiles are far more valuable than runes that increase the damage of a single projectile.

Blood: Do not ever use this rune, it is not worth it. It increases the damage of your spell, by sacrificing some of your hp every time you cast it. Health is already really hard to recover in this game, the damage increase is never worth the damage you take from using it. If you use this rune with the wrong runes, it could literally kill you.

Stamina: Use your stamina energy to power this spell instead of using mana. Not worth using, because if you're playing right you'll have a lot of mana regen anyways, and you'll need your stamina to run around while you're casting spells. This rune would be a huge waste of a rune slot.

I hope you all found this guide useful, Here are some snapshots of what each of the runes looks like in game, so you can know the icon of the runes you should hunt for, and the ones you should avoid. Thank you for reading.