What sort of areas to search for runes?

bigbri2k5 · July 2015

So I know you find ore near rocks, wood near trees, plants in grassy areas etc but I cannot for the life of me seem to figure out where runes are supposed to spawn. I've quested for several hours today with it being weekend and only managed to find a dozen or so during my travels. The problem is I don't know whether I'm looking in the wrong places or if I'm in the right sort of places but they've already been farmed. It's making it almost impossible to keep enchanting at a similar place to my leveling.

As a side note, is enchanting supposed to be much harder than the other crafts? smithing/woodwork/clothier have tons of nodes, and worst comes to the worst you can raid a few merchants and decon the gear. Alchemy and provisioning both have tons of places to get mats and they have skills that let you craft more from the ingredients. Enchanting seems to be the odd one out.

Khenarthi · July 2015

Enchanting does take much longer than the other crafting skills to level - and Enchanting xp was buffed a few months ago. You would not believe how painful it was to level in the beginning. ..

Anyway there's no specific place for the rune nodes to be, but I normally find the located near the base of trees and rocks/cliffs. The best places for them are the starter islands of each alliance but bear in mind you only find low level potency runes there, so the only runes you will actually look forward to finding are the aspect and essence ones. Even so, I'd ask yiu to avoid cherry-picking runes otherwise sooner or later the only runes to be found are the ones no one wanted to pick (this is also why sometimes you find a lot of wormwood but no columbine, for example).

helediron · July 2015

I suggest you take the Keen Eye passive. It helps to locate nodes because it adds a glow on top of a node. I guess you play on console, so pc addons won't help you. In which area you are now?

Picking runes while questing isn't effective. Dedicate some time for collecting and farm the same area repeatedly. If some place looks promising, take a look of the map and make a route which takes about 15 minutes to run. The route should be long enough to allow respawns. After few rounds you start to remember rune locations. Keep looking around to find new nodes and adjust the route. You should also eventually locate nodes others have picked or you can declare a part of the route really empty. In few days you should get rather good picture where to farm.

BTW, if you see someone running in same area and picking runes, ask in chat if they are willing to exchange runes. Best way to level enchanting is with a buddy. Make runes for your buddy to deconstruct and vice versa. It could be a start of a beautiful friendship.

bigbri2k5 · July 2015

@Khenarthi Don't worry, I always loot everything. It comes in handy when I inevitably get bored of my first character and begin leveling a bunch of alts. Might take a trip back to the starter island then and see what I can get.

@helediron I'm on pc, and I already have HarvestMap added. I already have two points in keen eye, but the weird thing is I don't need it for the other professions. Thanks to my odd graphics set up nodes tend to render sooner than their surroundings which makes them stand out. I can see things as small as nirnroot from probably 60 to 80 feet away. But for whatever reason runes are harder. If @Khenarthi is right and they spawn next to rock formations and trees that might explain it since major thing like that render sooner than things like the foliage that wood and plants tend to be found near.
I know gathering while questing isn't optimal, but everytime I found a node I took a minute to search the area looking for more. I only ever find them alone though, which is why, at the moment, I can't really farm them. As for location I'm currently finishing up Greenshade, but since my Enchanting is lagging behind I might be better off farming in the area before (Grahtwood?)
Would it be worth trying to farm glyphs to deconstruct instead of the runes? It wouldn't help me supply my alts much, but if I could find them in decent enough numbers it might at least keep my enchanting skill at pace with my leveling.

FancyTuna8 · July 2015

runes are definitely in 2's and 3's some places. Starter island definitely; if you are in DC, the Wyrd tree in Glenumbra has a lot of nodes for runes, and I've found a nice little path or two for them surrounding Wayrest (that also gets good ore and wood and alchemy.)

Tarukmockto · July 2015

Another trick to Rune harvesting is to wait until it is night in game and then concentrate on rune farming. They really stand out when it's darker out in the world. I also find lots of them along the shorelines.