Improvement idea:

[RiverBummer]

Ok what energy are you putting into a rune? Its experience you add to runes not energy. I mean if you can add some sort of energy to a rune i clearly need schooled.

And are you suggesting once you have a level 10 purple rune and then add 121k more experience to it, it should become a level 1 yellow rune?

The game has a combination of "currencies" in its economy: coinage, credits, time (which includes good/bad luck as well as inefficient play/idle time), gems and to some degree equipment too.

When I say "energy in" in this discussion I mean it as a sort of rune currency that is fungible for game coinage - which is itself fungible for all the above things I mentioned (gems in particular) as well as a user's time (not working and making money and opportunity loss of at least minimum wage if could be gainfully employed ).

Runes do not seem to give any extra benefit except in quantums of rune "levels". You don't get any credit for intermediate level energy put-in through absorption of other runes (coinage derived) between levels - they just add up and accumulate/store till next level threshold triggers. When you absorb a rune you are adding energy to it (game coins - which come from time spent chasing Noble Lady, or lucky last hit in Baal Events or purchased by migration of real world currency to gems or credits etc. in fair etc. or from stealing from other players).

Adding energy is FUNDAMENTAL to rune progression - that's what the entire rune inheritance-absorption mechanism is all about. Come on...

YES - once I get a level 10 purple rune and add the equivalent amount of time-energy (its a probability distribution we can for now just call "effort") that is the equivalent proximate to a level 1 yellow/gold it SHOULD auto-progress.

AFTER so much "effort" put into a purple or cyan rune it really SHOULD auto progress to the next tier up once it reaches its level limit (10+). This would be just smart design too in the event of a really unlucky random number sequence generator that might otherwise just push ever more players out of game to say "the heck with this BS". But now we're creeping into another topic all together.