Methysis Rune: Poison Over Time

What this page helps you decide: whether to run Methysis alongside Burn or instead of it while you are levelling.

Methysis is the rune most likely to be missing from whatever list you read first. It gives a chance on hit to poison the target, dealing damage at fixed intervals for a duration, with the proc chance, the duration, the interval between ticks and the tick damage all scaling with rune level. Mechanically it belongs with Burn: both are damage-over-time effects, both follow the rule that a single rune maintains a single instance of its effect, and both are strongest during the opening phase of the game for the same reason, which is that a fixed contribution is a large share of a small damage total and a small share of a large one. It is stocked at the grocery like the others, appears in the Cave of Runes drop pool like the others, and returns the same 100, 60 and 40 percent by slot.

Poison and burn are the same shape with different words

The two damage-over-time runes are described almost identically in the source, with one difference in the field list: Methysis has a published tick interval concept where Burn is only described as damage over a duration. Neither has an actual number for that interval at any rune level. Everything else lines up. Both proc on hit at a level-scaled chance, both run for a level-scaled duration, both deal level-scaled damage per tick, and both maintain exactly one instance per rune. That means the honest recommendation is to run both rather than to pick, and to add a second copy of whichever one rolled better if you want a third instance. The gold cost is the same either way, because enchant pricing depends only on rune level.

The fourth rune problem

There are four runes. The rune template on one wiki and the item list on the other both carry Burn, Frost, Corrode and Methysis with matching effect descriptions, and one third-party database carries all four as well. A second third-party site publishes only three, dropping Methysis and renaming Corrode to Corrosion. If you started with that page you would build around three effects and never know a fourth existed, which matters because Methysis is a levelling rune and the levelling phase is exactly when a player is most likely to be reading a quick guide. It is also worth noting that the grocery snapshot on the shop page lists Methysis alongside Frost and Corrode, so the game itself is selling a rune that some guides say does not exist.

What a full Methysis kit costs to assemble

Buying and fitting three level 3 runes is a fully priced exercise, which makes it a useful benchmark. Three runes at 3,000 gold each is 9,000. Fitting each of them at the level 3 enchant price of 4,800 is 14,400. The total is 23,400 gold for a complete three-slot kit at level 3, returning 2.0 times a single weapon-slot copy across the three positions. At level 5 the enchant side rises to 21,600 and the total depends on how you obtained the runes, since the shop is only documented as stocking level 3. Compare that against the blessing page, where the expected gold to take a single item from nothing to plus twelve is around 500,758, and a full rune kit starts to look like the cheapest upgrade in the game.

Step-by-Step

1. Run Methysis and Burn together rather than choosing between them. They are separate effects with separate instances, so two runes give you two damage-over-time sources rather than a wasted slot.
2. Keep both on fast weapons and armour early. Proc chance has no internal cooldown, so application rate follows attack speed directly.
3. Fit at level 3 if you are buying rather than farming. The grocery stocks a level 3 Methysis at 3,000 gold and fitting it costs a further 4,800.
4. Plan to replace it later. The published progression is damage over time early, Corrode on weapon and helmet with Frost or Burn on the body at the endgame, and Methysis is not in that final layout.
5. Check the rune count on any guide you read. A list showing three runes is missing this one, which is the single most common error in third-party coverage of this system.

Data Tables

Both descriptions come from the rune page, last edited 2026-07-29. The highlighted row is the only substantive difference the sources record between the two.

Shop price from the shop page snapshot and enchant price from the enchanting ladder. The totals are our arithmetic. For scale, the expected gold to bless one item to plus twelve is roughly twenty-one times this figure.

FAQ