Sockets and enchantments are both reached through crafting, but they are different acts. Socketing prepares an object or location to hold a rune. Enchanting directly transforms an item, rewriting its name and statistics without needing a rune to remain installed.
Combining Runic Tools with Blacksmith Tools attempts to make a socket. With only the two tool sets selected, the current room is targeted. With a third item selected, that item is targeted instead. The attempt costs an action and consumes the Runic Tools whether it succeeds or fails. A consumable cannot be socketed.
The socketing chance begins at 10%, then adds the character's current mana, capped at 60%. Strong magical reserves make the cut cleaner, but never certain.
Once a card has a socket, a rune can be placed into it from inventory. The rune leaves inventory and becomes the active source of the card's magical effect.
Placing a new rune removes whatever was previously held in the socket. Replacing a rune is a destructive commitment, not a free swap.
A socketed item reads the rune's school and the host item's category. The same rune does not mean the same thing in every object. Weapons turn runes into force; armour turns them into protection; utility items turn them into survival resources.
Invocation raises strength. Illusion improves dodge. Defense raises defense. Fire, water, and necromancy become fire, ice, and dark strength respectively.
Invocation protects against dark. Illusion improves dodge. Defense raises defense. Fire, water, and necromancy become fire, ice, and holy defense respectively.
Invocation grants health. Illusion grants mana. Defense grants defense. Fire grants fire defense. Water grants stamina. Necromancy grants dark defense.
When the central location card is socketed, the room becomes a magical environment. Its rune affects any relevant action performed there. The dungeon does not care who benefits: player attacks, enemy spells, heat, water, and spell costs are all resolved from the active room aura.
Increases fire damage by 10% per rune quality, warms the room by twice its quality, and burns away standing flood water over time.
Increases ice damage by 10% per rune quality and chills the chamber by twice its quality. In flooded or cold places, this can become a survival concern.
Increases dark damage by 10% per rune quality, making shadowed attacks and necromantic effects more dangerous in the room.
Increases acid damage by 10% per rune quality, strengthening venomous strikes and corrosive magic inside the chamber.
Increases holy damage by 10% per rune quality. Prayer carved into the floor makes sacred force more severe.
Halves illusion spell costs and gives the room a 5% per quality chance to stun each enemy as location effects process.
Doubles player defense calculations while active. It is a room-scale ward, strongest when the player can hold ground inside it.
An anti-magic rune on any socketed card in the room can seal spellcasting for that location, overriding normal magical freedom.
Enchanting is direct transformation. Runic Tools without Blacksmith Tools attempt to enchant an item. The roll compares d100 against the character's current mana: a successful roll mutates the item, while failure consumes the attempt and does nothing useful.
The enchantment succeeds when the roll is less than or equal to current mana. Characters with deeper magical reserves are better enchanters, but the craft remains unstable.
Enchantments can add strength, defense, health, mana, spellcraft, melee, ranged, stamina, sneak, elemental damage, insulation, comfort, lower weight, or multiply value.
Some enchanted items gain a lore origin. Elven, Dwarven, Orcish, Halfling, Drow, Heffith, and Human origins bias the roll toward different families of effects.
Every enchanted item carries a small curse risk. A cursed item may become difficult or impossible to remove by ordinary inventory handling.
Enchanting a scroll changes it into a spellbook-style object that grants the original spell. It is a different kind of magical preservation from memorising a spell.
Successful enchantment marks the item as special. Special enemies can also drop enchanted loot, so runework is not the only path to magical equipment.