A new addition in New World’s Update 1.7 is a new equipment slot for Heartrunes, a newly added combat mechanic. This guide tells you everything you need to know to unlock and start using Heartrunes.

The Guide is up-to-date for Patch 1.9.2

What are Heartrunes

Heartrunes are functionally ultimate abilities for your character, they are not bound by weapon and can be used however you see fit. They have a variety of effects but are mostly damage centric.

While some may not deal insane damage, there are a number of practical effects that can allow you to deal additional damage directly.

While you may only have one of these equipped at any given time, their potent effects can make them very worthwhile options.

They also get greater effects as you upgrade them from Rare-grade Heartrunes having no additional effects and lower damage, up to Legendary Heartrunes that deal additional damage and apply additional effects.

Heartrune Prerequisite Quests

The first major requirement to be able to use Heartrunes is to gain access to the Brimstone Sands area. This can be accessed after completion of the Main Quest “Strider of the Sands”.

Strider of the Sands can be accepted in Shattered Mountain by Syndicate members, Ebonscale Reach by Marauder members, and Great Cleave by Covenant Members.

After gaining access to the Brimstone Sands, you must complete the main quest up until you’re sent to the Great Shrine of Thoth Point of Interest (POI). Upon reaching this area you can complete the side quest “The Antiquarian’s Dream” from Perrin Mercier, which will allow you to access the teleporter at the top of the Great Shrine of Thoth.

While this isn’t a required quest, we highly recommend completing it for easier return access later if needed, as you’ll be able to fast travel to the Great Shrine of Thoth and teleport here instead of spending several minutes walking any time you need to return. In addition, you also get another Ancient Glyph to use in the Brimstone Sands.

To complete “The Antiquarian’s Dream” quest, you’ll have to make your way over to the ‘The Aquaduct Excavation’ POI. We recommend having the “Unraveling the Mystery” Main quest active while doing this, as you’ll be able to complete a quest step along the way.

Drop down from here on to the upper part of the Aqua Anuket POI, you’ll likely see the quest item for the “Unraveling the Mystery” main quest glowing.

Collect it and follow this path along the top of the structure until the very end.

At the very end of this structure, carefully drop down below to reveal and collect the Ancient Glyph, Wetzuu.

With this collected, you can now return to Perrin Mercier who is waiting at the Great Shrine of Thoth.

How to unlock Heartrunes

The teleporter you unlock by completing “The Antiquarian’s Dream” will send you to the ‘The Palace of Nekhbet’ where you can begin the “Secrets of the Heartgem” quest to unlock Heartrune. You can just walk here, but it’s a long hike from the nearest fast-travel.

This quest starts by sending you to the ‘Great Wall of Nebet-Het’. You’ll be asked to find the entrance to the POI.

There are two entrances, and you can either enter from the Northeast, or South East side of the POI.

You’ll need to make your way to the top of the wall by following a couple of sets of stairs before you make it to this rubble pile.

Climb up the right side of the rubble pile shown below to quickly reach the top of the wall.

You’ll then be asked to go to the highest point of the POI, which just has you going up the large staircase shown below.

At the top, you are greeted with an Ancient Glyph unlock, this one being Tsadzui. This Glyph will allow you to teleport between ‘The Palace of Nehkbet’ and ‘Great Wall of Nebet-Het’ POIs using Glyph Teleporters.

More importantly for now, it’ll allow us to access a room hidden below us, to reach the Heartrune Chamber.

Once we head below and open the hidden passage there will be a teleporter in this room. Take it to reach the Heartrune Chamber.

Once in the Heartrune Chamber, interact with the scale and wait for the lengthy animation to play and you’ll have completed the quest and unlocked the Heartrune Slot.

Return to the quest NPC to claim your reward, a Minor Heartrune of Cannon Blast.

Where to get Heartrunes

There are currently six different Heartrunes available: Bile Bomb, Cannon Blast, Dark Ascent, Detonate, Grasping Vines, and Stoneform.

Almost all Heartrunes require you to defeat bosses to collect, or collect Materia from the respective Expedition that it can drop from to craft. You will however earn a Minor Heartrune of Cannon Blast from the unlock quest.

To obtain the Minor Heartrune of Bile Bomb, you can earn it as a drop from Simon Grey, the final boss of the Starstone/Amine Expedition. Alternatively, it can be crafted with 8,000 Amrine Materia.

You’ll be given a Minor Heartrune of Cannon Blast from completing the introductory quest. You can also obtain it from Admiral Blackpowder, the final boss of the Barnacles and Black Powder Expedition, or via crafting using 8,000 Barnacles Materia.

To obtain the Minor Heartrune of Dark Ascent, you can earn it as a drop from Isabella, the final boss of the Tempest’s Heart Expedition. Alternatively, it can be crafted with 8,000 Tempest Materia.

To obtain the Minor Heartrune of Detonate, you can earn it as a drop from Heru, the final boss of the Ennead Expedition. Alternatively, it can be crafted with 8,000 Ennead Materia.

To obtain the Minor Heartrune of Grasping Vines, you can earn it as a drop from Alluvium Marl, the Caretaker; the final boss of the Garden of Genesis Expedition. Alternatively, it can be crafted with 8,000 Genesis Materia.

To obtain the Minor Heartrune of Stoneform, you can earn it as a drop from Chardis, the final boss of the Lazarus Instrumentality Expedition. Alternatively, it can be crafted with 8,000 Lazarus Materia.

How to upgrade Heartrunes

Heartrunes are upgraded solely by the Stonecutting Skill, which does need to be at level 200 to craft required items like Runestones.

Upgrading to Major (Epic)

The first set of upgrades will make the Heartrune Epic Rarity Increase its Gear Score from 500 up to 540. The Crafting requirements are the same for every Major Heartrune costing: The Minor Rune, 5 Runestone, 5 Gypsum Orbs, 5000 Umbral Shards, 5 Corrupted Lodestones, and 3 Sulfur.

This also adds the first of two additional effects for the Heartrune, in the form of perks on the Heartrune. The upgrades you get here is static, and you’ll get the same result every time. Below is a quick Table of the additional Effects.

Upgrading to Greater Heartrunes (Legendary)

As we get into Greater, or Legendary Heartrunes, there are actually four different variations, which affect the second perk applied. These four varieties are called Brutal, Cunning, Greater, and Stalwart.

Crafting A version of a Heartrune will always cost: The Major Rune, 10 Wooden Coins, 10 Gypsum Orbs, and 10 Sulfur. Additionally, they will require a more common resource in large quantities, based on Heartrune you’re upgrading and which variety you choose to upgrade to. These resources are as follows:

• 20x Fish Oil for Bile Bomb
• 1,000x Saltpeter for Cannon Blast
• 1,000x Feathers for Dark Ascent
• 20x Pristine Sapphires for Detonate
• 1,000x Thorny Vines for Grasping Vines
• 5x Runestone for Stoneform
• 5x Corrupted Loadestone for Brutal prefix
• 50x Vials of Suspended Azoth for Cunning or Greater prefixes
• 5x Writ of Adventure for Stalwart prefix

As a note, Cunning and Greater share the same resource as Stoneform is the only Heartrune with a Greater prefix, which replaces Cunning.

Brutal Heartrunes

Brutal Heartrunes typically offer an offensive bonus, with an additional cost to you. This cost is often reduced duration or removal of an effect. Below is a table of the effects granted by the Brutal Prefix.

Of the Brutal effects, Cannon Blast and Dark Ascent seem to have the least downsides, while also increasing the benefit of the Major perk as well. Grasping Vine comes with an easier-to-mitigate penalty, but could be useful in War-like scenarios. Detonate and Stoneform are the biggest losers here, as while they have decent effects, they come with huge downsides that make the heartrune worse overall.

Cunning and Greater Heartrunes

These are being put together since by all means, they are the same upgrade. Cunning and Greater offer a variety of effects, which is usually a buff or debuff. Some of these have a downside, but not all of them. Below is a table of the effects granted by the Cunning prefix.

Of the Cunning and Greater effects, all but Grasping Vines have great potential. While Grasping Vines can be powerful in some situations, it’s a bit lacking due to the need for absolute focus on rooted targets for any effect. Comparatively, the other heartrunes just add entirely passive effects which complement the previous passives and the base skill.

Stalwart Heartunes

Stalwart Heartrunes focus entirely on defensive and healing effects. All of these come with some form of reduced outgoing damage penalty, to balance their defensive nature. Below is a table of the effects granted by the Stalwart prefix.

All of the Stalwart Upgrades definitely have their use for Tanks, Bruisers, or DPS looking for a bit of extra survivability. Most Bruisers and DPS will likely prefer the other variants, but these will still remain an option if you really just need that extra defensive layer.

How to use Heartrunes

After being unlocked and equipping a Heartrune, this enables yet another keybind for the brand new skill (Default is the ‘G’ Key). Upon pressing the skill button, you’ll enter the animation for your selected Heartrune while emptying its Heartrune Gauge.

While Heartrunes have powerful effects that can assist you in a variety of ways in combat, they do have their limitations. They require recharging, which means you’ll have to refill the Heartrune Gauge shown above the skill hotkey.

Heartrune Gauge is gained exclusively through dealing or taking damage. This often means Heartrunes will be more effective on DPS or Tanks. Supports are taken into account here, as the amount of damage isn’t as relevant as the hits themselves. All of the Heartrunes also charge at seemingly equal speed, so that will not influence which are better either.

Which Heartrune Should You Use

The answer to this varies a bit, but here are some general guidelines for PvE and PvP that you can use to figure this out.

PvE Guidelines

For PvE, your options are much less strict overall. There’s more flexibility in what you can do with them, but there are still some stand-out choices we’ll highlight below and why we think they work the best.

For DPS players, I highly recommend the Cunning Variant of Detonate or Brutal Cannon Blast. Cunning Detonate is great for weapons that have strong burst potentials like Blunderbuss, Bow, Greatsword, Hatchet, and Musket. Brutal Cannon Blast is better for the Slower Weapons that lack that burst potential, or as an all-rounder option for anything.

For Tank Players, you could really use just about anything. Stalwart Stoneform is a really solid defensive option for the regen it provides. Greater Stoneform is a really great damage mitigation option. Brutal Dark Ascent can be a great combination of damage and burst healing as well. You can also consider the general option of Brutal Cannon Blast for an AoE Aggro tool. You should however, absolutely avoid Brutal Grasping Vines, as the Stamina Regeneration penalty will hurt you quite a bit if used improperly.

For Support Players, You’ll generally want to stick with Stalwart Stoneform, Brutal Grasping Vines, or Stalwart Bile Bomb. Stalwart Stoneform is a great way to protect yourself if you have mobs going after you for any reason. Brutal Grasping Vines allows you to help your group clear out enemies faster, by applying the 20% Rend Effect. As a Support, you shouldn’t need to use your Stamina all too much, so the penalty won;t bother you the same way as it would for a tank. Stalwart Bile Bomb is interesting in that it acts similar to Void Gauntlet’s Essense Rupture skill. This can allow for more supportive potential while not entire losing on that potential healing, but you would however be giving up the Stamina recover it also provides..

PvP Guidelines

PvP will likely be more strict as to what gets used, especially in large-scale PvP. We’ll highlight what we believe to be the best options and why. Though this time, we’ll be highlighting just specific heartrunes rather than combinations of heartrune and playstyle. On the opposite side, the brutal version should never be used in PvP, as most of its value will come from sticking the Bile Bomb to a target and having that lingering cloud follow them.

Bile Bomb will be seen a lot, specifically the Cunning variant. This powerful upgrade allows it to not only deal AoE Damage, but 30% Disease for 8 Seconds, 20% Slow for 3 seconds, and 30% Exhaust for 8 seconds. This combination will make it incredibly potent for Wars and other large-scale PvP encounters.

Stoneform will likely be a common one. The damage reduction and crowd control immunities it provides can make it insanely hard to take someone down. The Greater form of this takes this to another level by adding even more damage reduction. Similarly, the Stalwart Version will be similar in strength due to the regen effect it offers.

Dark Ascent will be a strong offensive option for all varieties of PvP as a multi-tool of sorts. It can be used to evade with its sudden upward movement, deal damage with the slam down, and even provide some burst healing. Each of its upgrades also increase its utility providing additional damage with Brutal, Slows with Cunning, or even a Fortify effect with Stalwart.

Grasping Vine by itself is already strong as a 3 second Root. However, only the Cunning variation makes any sense to use here. While a frontline tank may not want to use it due to the Stamina Penalty, a Bruiser or other damage deal very easily could use it to turn the tides of a large-scale PvP fight.

Cannon Blast is the last one that’s likely to be used, and I could see supports or key players running it for the utility it has. Stalwart might be the most commonly used option, as Knockdown can set up for a lot of damage. Cunning and Brutal both offer good AoE potential as well, which can work wonders in larger fights.

While Detonate may see some use, it’s mostly going to be limited to the Cunning variation. Though it will also be much harder to get value out of compared to PvE. It’ll still probably be the same weapons that use it, but some weapons may just use it for the base effect of 30% Haste if they lack the movement speed to chase people.

If you are looking for more about the New World 1.7 update, check out the Greatsword Guide and Best Builds, find out how to access the Brimstone Sands region and learn to craft Runeglass Gems.

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