I’ve been playing on and off for many years and never dabbled too much into rune words, but when I found a Tir and a ral rune form the countess I got exited. I found a staff, (Imp Call, Gnarled Staff). A staff with exactly 2 sockets and put in first the tir rune then the ral rune. Imagine my dispointement when the Runeword read TirRal instead of leaf and did NOT give all extra juicy buffs I was expecting. Is it because I used a 1 * 4 staff instead off a 1 * 3? The guide only said to not use orbs.
It doesn’'t matter using 1 * 3 or 1 * 4 staff.
But the staff have to be in grey color.
I expect you used a blue one.
I used a yellow one, with poisen dmg, +1 to FN and charges of telekenises and 10 coldresist. I didn’t know it had to be grey. I still have 1 tir rune I guess I can try and farm for another Ral rune and try again with a grey staff.
Magical (blue) items don’t work with runewords.
Also rare (yellow), set items (green) and uniques (gold) will don’t give the runeword bonusses.
Farmed the last run and lvled up to lvl 19 so I could use it. Despite beeing halway through Nightmare with 2 other chars back in day, (original diablo, not remastered), I never made a runeword before. I just used them as gems.