Legendary Runes are upgrades that can be placed in your Armor and underwater headgear to give you additional stats that will help improve your build. They share the same stats as the Superior Runes, and they only serve one purpose, and that is convenience.
Legendary Runes don’t have a special effect like other legendaries do, but they are also much cheaper, and hey, you can copy them to any of your characters free of charge.
Legendary Runes benefits
Given that we are dealing with legendary items here, you are looking at a decent chunk of gold and time investment. However, this is all for a good cause as the benefits outweigh the cost, here is a list of perks you would get off of a Legendary Rune.
- You can remove them without using an Upgrade Extractor.
- The properties can be changed at any point in time.
- Using the Legendary Armory, you can copy the runes onto any character in your account.
How to get Legendary Runes in Guild Wars 2
These items are exclusively obtained from the Mystic Forge by placing the following four items there.
- Gift of Runes
- Gift of Craftsmanship
- Gift of Condensed Magic
- Gift of Condensed Might
The Legendary Armory can accomodate a maximum of 7 Runes, one for every piece of armor that you can equip, and the underwater headgear.
If you crafted Legendary Sigils before, then you can probably tell that they share almost the same gifts with the exception of the Gift of Runes.
Gift of Runes
Crafting a Gift of Runes can be done by placing four items in the Mystic Forge. Those items are the following.
Mystic Aspects
These Aspects can either be crafted, or purchased at the Trading Post, but they can be quite expensive.
Before you can craft a Mystic Aspect, make sure you are at least rank 75 in one of those crafting disciplines:
Moreover, you need to own the recipe that can be purchased from so many vendors all over Tyria for 
Once you’ve obtained the recipe, go back to any of the crafting stations mentioned above, and start crafting the Mystic Aspects using the following material:
- 10 Piles of Lucent Crystal
- Crafted in any station using 10 Lucent Motes that can be obtained from salvaging sigils.
- Charm of Brilliance
- Charm of Potence
- Charm of Skill
All three charms can be purchased from the trading post, or obtained by salvaging runes from Minor to Superior.
Mystic Clovers
Mystic Clovers can be a bit hard to come by because they can’t be obtained abundantly, and you either have to spend a lot of gold or time to get them. With the introduction of Secrets of the Obscure though, we now have more than enough ways to get this material, here are a few:
- Gambling at the Mystic Forge using one or ten of the following materials
- Obsidian Shards
- Mystic Coins
- Globs of Ectoplasm
- Mystic Crystal
- PvP and WvW Repeatable and Non-repeatable reward tracks
- Buying them from Fractals of the Mists
These are just to name a few, and you can check out a more thorough list on the dedicated Clover guide.
Globs of Ectoplasm
You can either buy Ectos at the Trading Post or by salvaging rare and exotic items.
Obsidian Shards
- Purchased for or converted from various currencies
- Acquired from PvP Reward Tracks and WvW Reward Tracks
Check the wiki for more information on how to get Obsidian Shards.
Gift of Craftsmanship
To get a Gift of Craftsmanship, you have to trade certain items to vendors called Faction Provisioners who can be found in major cities all over Tyria. This gift can be time gated if you don’t have the necessary materials to obtain it.
Most Faction Provisioners will only allow you to buy one Provisioner Token per day. However, if you have any of the following material lying around, then you can use them to buy an infinite amount of tokens per day:
- Lump of Mithrillium
- Charged Quartz Crystal
- Glob of Elder Spirit Residue
- Spool of Thick Elonian Cord
- Charged Quartz Crystal
Gift of Condensed Might
The Gift of Condensed Might can be obtained by placing four other gifts in the Mystic Forge. Those gifts, along with their materials are displayed in the below table.
Note that you have to purchase the gift recipes from Miyani who is located next to the Mystic Forge in Lion’s Arch for 
| Gift | Material |
|---|---|
| Gift of Fangs |
|
| Gift of Scales |
|
| Gift of Claws |
|
| Gift of Bones |
|
Gift of Condensed Magic
Similar to the Gift of Condensed Magic, the Gift of Condensed Might will also require you to purchase four recipes from Miyani for
| Gift | Material |
|---|---|
| Gift of Blood |
|
| Gift of Venom |
|
| Gift of Totems |
|
| Gift of Dust |
|
Once you have the Gift of Runes, the Gift of Condensed Might, the Gift of Condensed Magic, and the Gift of Craftsmanship, head over to the Mystic Forge either in Lion’s Arch or the Wizard’s Tower, and place them all there then hit the Forge button.
Just like this, you are now done with your first Rune. All you have to do now is repeat that process six more times, and you will be set for life when it comes to runes.
How to change rune properties
Changing properties on Legendary Runes is very straightforward. Simply right-click the item in quest, and press on the Customize button. From there, click on the rune itself and choose from the list of options on the right panel.
