Rune Central

Rune Descriptions
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Rune of Strength (1)

All of your attacks do double damage.

Rune of Regeneration (2)

Your health and armor both regenerate up to their normal limits or
instantly restore them by activating your rune. Rune is removed
upon activation.

Rune of Resistance (3)

You only take half damage from any attack. This applies both to
your health and to your armor.

Rune of Haste (4)

Your attacks happen faster or go farther or the like. The axe,
shotgun, super shotgun, grenade, and rocket fire twice as fast,
nails fly twice as fast, and the lightning gun reaches twice as
far.

Rune of Environmental Protection (5)

The most obvious effect of this rune is that water, slime and
lava, which normally hurt you, heal you instead. It also
protects you from many of the other runes and various conditions
which normally would be harmful.

If you've got this rune then the rune-use button acts as a super
jump if you're in a liquid. This can be used to get out of lava
and slime that the level designers didn't expect you to survive.
Point yourself up out of the liquid and hit the button a few
times in quick succession.

Rune of Flight (6)

With this fine rune you can fly (hover, really). Stay away from
the ceilings and walls as you dodge and you are very hard to
hit.

Berserker Rune (7)

All of your attacks do 6x as much damage, but all damage you
sustain hurts 3x as much as normal. Plus, you get to quiver and
bleed in a disturbing manner.

Rune of Recall (8)

Activate rune-use and you'll set your recall location. Go
elsewhere and press it again and you'll teleport to your
location. You place your location somewhere else by pressing
rune-use twice, this will forget your old location so you can
set a new one.

Electric Rune (9)

You zap anybody who gets too close to you. Each zap uses up a
cell, the rune comes with 10 of them, plus you generate 1 every
5 seconds.

Rune of Cloaking (10)

You never make any noise. Also, if you don't attack and aren't
hurt for a few seconds, you become invisible (as with the ring
of shadows).

Rune of Divine Wind (11)

You explode when killed, doing a fair amount of damage and so
often taking some other players out with you. If you activate
your rune via rune-use, you explode much more violently,
gibbing anybody within line of sight. You don't lose a frag
for activating the rune.

Death Spots (12)

When you activate this rune you place a multicolored death spot
which will arm in a few seconds. The spot will kill anybody who
touches it (including you, so be careful). Beware of somebody
with vengeance hitting your death spot!

Holorune (13)

Activating this rune leaves a holographic image of yourself
behind. The image stays in place but otherwise is animated just
as you are. The image goes away after 30 seconds. You can have
up to 5 holograms active at a time.

Orb of Death (14)

An orange orb replete with yellow spots orbits around you. It
does a huge amount of damage to any of your foes that it contacts.

Blink Rune (15)

This is a semi-random teleport. It teleports you onto objects
around the level. You can normally use it often, but if you
keep using it to quickly it will require some time to recharge.

This rune puts a bubble over your head. I'm not sure why.

Rune of Camouflage (16)

If you stand still, don't fire, and aren't being hurt, you are
completely invisible, not even your eyes show. You can still
look around without becoming visible. This rune is a camper's
delight.

Rune of Uncontrollable Jumping (17)

Everybody is so happy to see you that they jump for joy, though
there are red slippers overtones. Also known as the rune of
dancing. "Now you will dance for me."

Action Movie Arsenal (18)

Just like Arnold in the latest big budget shoot-em-up, you have
a virtually inexhaustible supply of ammunition. (All of your
ammo is replenished at a steady rate.) In addition, when you
become full of any particular type of ammo, you're given the
guns which go along with it. It is a fine thing to pull
out a lightning gun in one of the episode one levels.

In Lithium hook mode, having all weapons and ammo gives you the
hook.

Vampiric Rune (19)

When you damage other players, you get their health. (You don't
get back the damage you do to their armor.) You can go above
100 health this way, but your health above 100 rots away very
fast. Normal health boxes, which normally give you 15 or 25
points of health, only give you 5 points when you're a vampire.

If you leech enough some health after you die (by hurting somebody
with a grenade you fired before you died, for example) to bring
your own health back above 0, you come back to life! This only
works if you're still dead, of course, so don't respawn too quickly
when you die while you have this rune.

Rune of Shielding (20)

When you press the button you're rendered invulnerable for 3
seconds. (Your opponents can tell this has happened both by
the invulnerability fading sound and by the yellow dots which
surround you.) The shield takes 4.5 seconds to recharge after
use. If you press the button while the shield is recharging
it will activate again as soon as it can. (If you press the
button a second time before it activates, the pending activation
is canceled.)

Rune of Good Health (21)

Your maximum health value is 666, plus you get 100 health just
for picking up the rune.

Rune of Radioactivity (22)

When you press the button you drop a radiation point. After it
arms in a few seconds, it does damage to any of your foes which
it can see (save those with radiation runes or enviro suits).
Additionally, if you are within its zone of influence and you
haven't gotten rid of the radiation rune, it heals you.

You can have three of these spots extant at a time. You can't
drop them within sight of each other, but if you try you can set
it up so that two or even three radiation points have overlapping
fields in certain areas. This is very powerful.

Switch Rune (23)

Point at another creature and activate the button and you'll
switch with them. You'll swap positions, health, armor, ammo,
items and powerups, but not runes.

Ice Traps (24)

Pressing the button with this rune creates a freeze trap which
will arm in a few seconds. Anybody who touches this trap
(including you) is frozen in place for an excruciatingly long
while. If nobody touches the trap for a couple of minutes it
disappears. You can have 6 traps active at once.

Gravity Rune (25)

Pressing the button drops an orange globe which attracts
everything but you and (if in team mode) your teammates.
Pressing the button again recalls the gravity well. If you
place it right the other players will be sucked into orbit
around it. It's usually possible to escape the orbit, but it
can be tricky. This rune can also be very useful for denying
your opponents access to certain key items, such as the red
armor in The Ogre Citadel.

The Teleport Shuffle (26)

Aim a little above the floor at some distant point and press
the button and you'll (usually) be teleported there. (I'll be
working on the code to make this easier to use.) Additionally,
point it at a player and you have a chance of telefragging
them. If the dice don't roll in your favor for the telefrag,
you'll switch places with them.

Impact Rune (27)

Your attacks move people around much more than normal, your
attacks do a little more damage than normal, and if you touch
somebody you'll do a bunch of damage to them. You'll have a
spike over your head so the other players can know to try to
stay away from you.

Rune of Vengeance (28)

You get an enormous bleeding head. As if that weren't enough,
any damage people do to you is visited right back upon them, and
if that kills them, you get the frag.

Shub Hat (29)

You're surrounded by a holographic projection of Shub-Niggurath.
After you get past the surprise factor, this is useful both
because it can be deceptively hard to hit somebody wearing a
shub hat, and because the other players won't see which way
you're facing and when you're firing.

Rune of Repulsion (30)

Most things in the game, including players, projectiles and
death spots, are repulsed away from you. It is a lot of fun to
use the grenade launcher when you have this rune.

Phasing Rune (31)

You can walk through walls. You'll have to experiment a little
to get the technique down, get close to a wall and activate your
rune. If you should fall in the lava, activate your rune to 'blink'
to a new location.

Shambler Helper (32)

You'll get a pet shambler of your very own. He'll follow you
around and attack anybody he sees (including your teammates
right now, I'll be fixing that). If you press the button or if
he absorbs too much damage he'll teleport to you.

Rune of Dual Recall (33)

This is another teleport rune, this one teleports you back
to the last place at which you activated it. Telefragging
is a popular attack with this rune, but it's also great for
getting out of a fight to someplace where you can juice up,
then teleporting back into the fight. This maneuver is
called "the pause that refreshes." This rune puts an
upward-pointing spike over your head so your opponents know not
to let you get close.

Rune of Weirdness (34)

Little bubbles float off of you (or are pushed off, if you press
the button) and wander randomly. If your enemy touches one
he'll experience one of a variety of unpleasant effects for a
while. When you die you give off a bunch of bubbles all at
once.

Phoenix Rune (35)

When you are killed you respawn right where your body landed,
with all your items and 15 seconds of quad damage. You can do
this three times.

When somebody dies with the phoenix rune they don't drop a
backpack. Watch for that and don't run over their body (or
gibbed head) lest you be fragged when they respawn. Also,
when you die, you can't respawn using the fire button. There
will be a warning message to indicate such.

Rune of Floating Spiky Death Cloud (36)

A large cloud floats above you, randomly giving off little spiky
balls which bounce and cause a lot of damage if they hit an enemy.

Rune of Fire Walking (37)

You leave spots of fire behind when you walk. The fire does a
lot of damage to your foes.

Grappling Hook (38)

This rune gives you a grappling hook. See the section on the
grappling hook for details.

Rune of Athletics (39)

This allows you to swim further, and the button performs a
really big jump. I'd like to have it let you run faster,
but I don't think there's a safe way to do that in POQ.

Lumberjack Rune (40)

Being a hale and hearty sort accustomed to a fit life in the
wilds of Canada, your maximum health is 250 rather than the
paltry 100 allotted lesser men and women. Also, of course, you
work with your axe much more effectively. It does a lot more
damage, and you've got a longer reach with it. As a bit of a
bonus, your attacks do a little more damage than normal, as with
the impact rune.

Houngan Rune (41)

When you activate this rune you'll place a camping zombie slave.
The zombie will stay right where you put him and attack anybody
who comes near. He's more robust than the zombies found in the
normal game, he can't be killed (even with rockets) and he gets
up faster when you knock him down. He also reacts to enemies
faster, fires more frequently, does more damage with each flesh
whack, and is more accurate at targeting. You can have three
zombie campers. If you try to place a fourth you'll really just
move the one you'd placed least recently.

A houngan is a Vodun (aka Voodoo) priest.

Rune of Armor Piercing (42)

Your attacks ignore your opponent's armor. This is nice both in
that it lets you kill them more easily (most people die with
just 1 rocket), and in that there's more armor left for you when
they die. This is a powerful rune, but not so bad as you might
at first think, mostly because when you damage yourself you
pierce your own armor.

Rune of Self Preservation (43)

This rune is a rocket jumper's delight. When you've got it
your own attacks don't hurt you. (This is nicer than the buggy
teamplay 1 rules, not even your armor is affected.) This lets
you be a real menace with the BFG and (on servers which haven't
disabled it) underwater discharge.

Zen Monk (44)

You're mostly invulnerable if you stand still if you haven't
attacked for a few seconds. You're still vulnerable to kamikaze,
berserk, lumberjack axe, and BFG blast/hit attacks. Damage doesn't
move you around. You're not affected by most kinds of splash damage.
Plus, of course, you don't take damage from falling.

Human Torch (45)

Lava doesn't hurt you (though you can still drown in it if you
stay submerged), but water does. Bumping into people can set
them on fire (but it lasts longer than the fire caused by
bumping into a non-torch burning person). Flaming weapons
(alt 3 and 4) don't hurt you, and attacks you do with them do
more damage. You can toss flaming traps which ignite people
when they're triggered.

Pack Rat (46)

You can pick up extra runes and carry them around. (You don't
actually use them, you just carry them.) This helps you in
several ways:

- If you pick up enough, you get bonus frags for every kill.
By default you get 1 bonus frag for each 33% of the runes
which you're holding, so with the default maximum of 16
runes you'll get 1 bonus frag per kill if you have 6 to 10
runes, 2 bonus frags for 11 to 15 runes, and 3 bonus frags
for each kill if you've got all 16 runes.

- The runes you hold are kept out of the game, so it gets
harder for the other players to get runes. Of course, that
will make you a juicy target for the runeless multitudes.

- In team games, you can give the runes to your teammates.
Use your rune-delete key to drop the runes you're carrying.
(Use it a second time to actually delete the pack rat
rune, in which case you can pick up one of the runes you
were holding.)

- As you pick up each rune, the name of that rune is displayed.
This makes pack rat useful as a rune finder, when you find the
rune you want, just drop it, delete pack rat, and pick up your
new rune!

You can't pick up a rune if you killed the owner (that would
make it too easy for good players).

Rune of Good Armor (47)

When you have this rune all the armor you get counts as red
armor, plus you can hold a ton of the stuff.

Quake won't display an armor value over 255, though. So, I've
set it to use the armor color to give you an idea of how much
armor you've got. If you have this rune then your status bar
shows green armor for armor values from 0 through 255, yellow
armor for 256 through 511, and red armor for 512 through 767.
In other words,

color on status bar actual amount of armor
------------------- ---------------------------
green displayed value
yellow displayed value + 256
red displayed value + 256 + 256

No matter what color is displayed, the armor you've got works at
80% absorption, just like red armor.

Rune of Quad Damage (48)

Activating this rune gives you quad damage for a few seconds. As
with the shield rune, there's a delay while the rune recharges
before you can activate it again.

Jack of All Runes (49)

You get the abilities of a number of other runes but in less
potent form. It gives you some of the features of regen, good
health, resistance, strength, haste, piercing, and action movie
arsenal.

Super Blue Stuff (50)

Also known as The Glun Gun, launch a glob of blue glue that locks
a player down for a little bit before releasing. Your opponent can
still pivot and fire.

Blizzard Rune (51)

Send out a blast of cold air that freezes everyone in site. The
storm only lasts a second or two but it's enough to get off the
first shot! You can pick up ice traps for a longer burst.

Rune of Thor (52)

Supplies you with a lightning gun and 50 cells. Your ammo will
rapidly increase until weapon is full. Your BFG range also
increases.

Sniper Rune (53)

Activate your rune to gib just about anyone. You start off losing
health with each activation. Your potential health loss will
increase with every kill. There is no recharge time!

Sonar Rune (54)

Activate your rune to detect the 4 closest players within a set
radius. You emit a sound after each pulse, and when a player is
detected, they too emit a sound.

Anti-Packs Rune (55)

Drop backpacks that remove ammo and weapons from your enemies. The
backpacks will bleed to indicate they are not standard backpacks.

Telefrag Deflect Rune (56)

Deflects most telefrags!

Bouncing Betty Rune (57)

Also known as cluster grenades. You launch a single grenade which
after a second spawns multiple clusters of grenades. A real
crowd pleaser!

Tornado Rune (58)

Launch a massive tornado that sucks you, and everyone else into its
center. If you touch the center you will be gibbed.

Lithium Hook (59)

This isn't a standard rune, it's the quasi-rune used to give you
a grappling hook in Lithium hook mode. You can use impulse 159
to get a Lithium hook in rune cheating is turned on.