How Crafting and Rune Work in Caves of Lore

This guide will describe some of the more esoteric mechanics that are either never fully explained or that will take you time to piece together from lore throughout the game. Some of the relatively more hidden information is marked by spoilers.

Crafting Weapons and Armour

• The blacksmith who performs weapon and armour crafting can be found in Emerisk, coincidentally enough at the forge.
• To enter the crafting menu, talk to the blacksmith and click on the backpack icon on the left.
• Alternatively, you can click on the shop sign that appears when you enter his home. This is useful when the blacksmith is sleeping.
• You can change the metal that a particular weapon is made from by selecting the weapon from the inventory, clicking on the new ore type on the right, and then clicking “forge”.
• Different metals have different properties:
  • Iron is standard.
  • Silver damages undead.
  • Corundum increases regular damage compared to both iron and silver.
• You can continue to improve a weapon with additional chunks of ore to increase minimum damage (iron), decrease the weight/strength requirements (silver) or increase max damage (corundum).
• The same applies to armour, with iron and corundum increasing the amount of protection offered.

Enchanting Items

• The enchanter is Kazimar the mage, initially of Kilandraur.
• To enter the enchanting menu, talk to the enchanter and click on the backpack icon on the left.
• To obtain a stock of enchantments to work with, you need to strip them from already enchanted items.
• Once this is done, the enchantment effect will appear in the list on the right.
• These enchantments can then be applied to another item by using a portion of your available Manatite ore.
• You can also choose to amplify an existing enchantment, again using Manatite.
• Each item may have up to three enchantments placed on it.

Runes and Moongates

This section will describe the basic mechanics hopefully without giving too much away in terms of secrets. With that in mind, I will focus on summarising the exact information that the game will ultimately provide to you into one place. However, since part of the fun is piecing together this information from lore found throughout the game, I would not recommend looking at this up front.

Moons

• The orrery in the top left of the interface displays the progress of the moons in orbit.
• The indicator on the left notes which moons are currently in effect.
• Both images are numbered as to describe which indicator represents which moon.

Orrery

Indicators (3 moons)

Indicators (1 moon)

Miala (#1)

Gammon (#2)

Tethrys (#3)

Runes

• There are a number of runes that can be found inscribed on the floors and walls throughout the land.
• Some of these runes represent the moons as described in the images above. These runes will be lit when the respective moon is at its zenith.
• Once all moon runes in an area are lit, a secret will be revealed. For moon runes, the specified moon may have to be the only one in effect in order to activate it.
• Hidden within the library is a spell that will allow you to lock a lit rune in place, irrespective of the position of the moons. This is helpful when there are a number of runes attached to a specific secret. This spell gains the ability to lock an additional rune every three levels.
• The other runes have a distinct meaning, as described in the images below. Sometimes these runes will only become apparent by casting Arcane Sight.

Absence

Arcane

Barrier

Fae

Hidden

Moongate

Pathway

Pointer

Speak

Moongates

• Moongate runes indicate the presence of a hidden magical portal.
• Each portal is tied to one of the three moons. Similar to the moon runes, that specific moon must be at its zenith to activate the portal.
• All other light sources must be extinguished also, although the Fae seems to be excluded from this.