Rune Modifiers

Rune Modifiers are special tags at the very end of the rune description that have effects that benefit the spell only once (adding more of the same rune won't increase the effect unlike for instance the raw power of the rune which can be added on multiple times).

Modifiers can be extremely powerful and have very useful effects.

Power and Flux
A rune can have a plus (+) or minus (-) to power or flux. This will increase or reduce power/flux once in the spell along side any power increase from the same rune. So if a rune costs 5 flux and has 6 power and a modifier of +3 power the total will be 5 flux and 9 power. However if you continue to add the same rune again it will only add 6 because the modifier will only trigger once.

eg. (6+3)+6+6+6 etc.

When reducing power it can only go down to 0. Flux however can only be reduced to 1. So what this basically means is that you cannot make hp negative and cause healing that way and you cannot make negative flux either. Also no spell can be cast for free (certain artifacts allow you to use health instead) but will cost at least 1 flux. (Technically Blood and Fluxfeed together make a free spell but the hp is still borrowed and if your hp hits 0 in that time you can die).

As well as these bonus' they can also be linked to other runes. For instance a rune may have a +6 power with Cloud runes in which case for the modifier to work you must have at least one cloud rune in the spell. If the rune itself is a cloud rune then the modifier will always trigger making it more desirable. While this is a good thing it can also be bad for instance if a rune has a -10 power with Offensive runes you may want to avoid putting Offensive runes in the spell to make sure the modifier does not trigger.

As a good example the Alchemist's starting rune: emp costs 8 flux which is quite high for a ranged rune and has a modifier of -12 flux with Cloud runes. This really encourages you to use the rune with cloud runes (as per the Alchemist's description as the spells become very flux costly without them.

Percent modifiers
Some of the most powerful modifiers are the percent ones. Percent modifiers always relate to the power of the spell. Instead of increasing power once by a number they effect the total power of the spell. A +20% to power will increase the power of the spell by 20% extra of what it already had. Quite a number of Artifacts have +100% bonus' to power however with costs which counteract the gain. For instance the artifact Greed has a +100% increase to power but doubles the flux cost of the spell.

Important to note is that for Percent modifiers to be effective you must have some power to increase to begin with. A +100% increase to 0 damage will still do 0. A +100% increase to 4 damage will do 8 and to 100 it will do 200 etc. Therefore to get the most out of your spells you need to carefully increase damage and % to get the best results. Percent modifiers seem to be more rare the basic power increases. Like previously mentioned they can also be connected to rune types say +40% power with Block runes etc and need that type of rune to be present. This can be frustrating if you don't want to make a Block spell. When diminishing the power which is something you don't usually want to do you cannot go below 0.

Turns to effects
Turns to effects is a very interesting modifier as it increases or decreases the length of status' based on the relevant rune property. This modifier effects the following status' only:

Burn, Powerful, Enemy Weakness, Regeneration, Haste, Slow.

It does not effect Poison as it's turns are based on the Hp deduction of the spell and it does not effect any of the permanent status removed by C as their duration is infinite or helpless as this is infinite until you take damage.

Basically a rune can have +3 turns to effects in which case whatever status' it inflicts upon the target be they good or bad, as long as they are from the list above they will have an extra 3 turns. In the same way if you have -3 turns to effects whatever the duration would have been will now have minus 3 turns. Most likely an oversight by the developer the modifier can go into negative numbers. If you put a status into negative numbers it will last for ever. If regeneration gets put into negative turns you will be healed for every turn after as the game minus' the number from a negative number. So -1 minus 1 is -2. To undo this effect you will need to recast a similar spell which does not result in negative turns.

It can be relatively rare however to find enough negative modifiers to make a working negative status spell. With certain artifacts Regeneration and Powerful can become exceptionally powerful using negative status, see Broken Combinations.

As with the other modifiers these can also be connected to other runes for instance +4 turns with Offensive Runes.

Artifact Modifiers
For Artifact modifiers it's best to look at the Artifact Page itself as they can do all kinds of things. Artifacts may have the standard usual kind of modifiers like an increase in the percentage of power but can also have all kinds of other modifiers that are unique to that rune. Most of the Artifacts' powers are Modifiers and will increase a rune's power only once.