Where do I get runes/where do they drop?

I'm lvl 31 and so far the only rune that I have is one that dropped from starter chest. Where do they drop? I'm also curious about where do you get trinkets from.

 

Trinkets (both the rune and the jewel variety) drop from any random mob. You'll fill up your slots for each type of trinket soon enough, well before you've got too many runes & jewels to fill them.

Runes drop from random mobs, but only on Infernal+ modes ... until tomorrow, after release 248 is on the live servers, when runes can drop on difficulties as low as Painful.

Some events include runes or jewels as progress bar rewards. Unfortunately, that doesn't include the high-frequency events: New and Full Moon, Desert of Essence, Terrifying Shadows.

You can also buy runes from some of the vendors.

My two newest low level toons on the test server struggle with Painful, maybe can do Excruciating, so have a grand total of 1 rune between them. But that lone rune came from a recent Painful run, so there's hope .

 

Thanks for explanation, I appreciate it.

Yeah, scaling dungeons are absolute nightmare for starting characters, even on painful I have to take on one tiny group of cannon fodder at the time and then wait for my health/steam to regenerate from low and the more I level up the worse it gets. So far I managed to get throught painful dungeon maybe twice.

 

I've been playing a bit of all 4 character types, but mainly focus on my SM and RA toons.

When you get to ~level 35, you'll have access to all 4 turrets. I personally never used the tactical turret, but instead experiment with different combinations of the other three, mechanical, tesla and machine gun.

Consider mixing in the dwarf-in-a-box to distract the mobs and/or the oil slick to slow them down.

With my weakest SM on the test server, I often have to resort to dropping a tesla or machine gun turret (or both if I have enough steam built up) in the middle of the mobs, running around in circles to keep them running into each other and staying mostly with the circle of the tesla. It sucks, not being able to slow down enough to take even a single shot, but you will eventually get a bit stronger and won't always have to apply what feels like cowardly albeit practical tactics.

Alternately, if the terrain helps funnel the mobs into a single line, I'll activate the machine gun turret and try to keep the mobs away from me but still in line of fire with the lure of the dwarf-in-a-box. If need be, I'll bob and weave to confuse the mobs while the machine gun chips away at their health.

Also, as you progress even further, there are some specialty skills on the far right of the skill tree that will come in handy, especially the skill that heals you as long as one or more turret is damaging mobs.

I'm not completely sold on the Mastery skills, but on my higher level SMs I put points into the Mastery of Poison. I find that element the most damaging from elite mobs, more than fire, lightning, etc. Mastery gives you a 50% boost in resistance for the element you choose. Poison also adds a bit of short-lived (2 seconds) poison damage from several skills that you're likely to use frequently. So I'm getting a boost in defense and offense with Poison. Again, this aspect of your character development is still down the road (level 45? 50? Sorry, don't recall at the moment).

The biggest impediment to character development is the lack of Ancient Wisdom drops (r248 which was installed last night supposedly increases drops, somewhat). You can gain a ton of offensive power and/or buff up you defensive prowess through the Wisdom tree, but it can take weeks to climb a Wisdom level whereas you might gain an Experience level or even two in a single game session. That sucks as the mobs will get stronger every time you go up an Experience level, but you won't be gaining a corresponding boost from Wisdom (or gems, or runes, or jewels, or equipment) at the same pace.

Enchantment transfer crafting will help you some once you've gained the ability. That requires you to complete a series of equipment crafting achievements (see the Achievements tab in the Journal window). I highly recommend that you melt every gear drop that isn't immediately useful; you need some gold, too, but try to avoid selling gear until at least the time you can start transferring enchantments.

Note that the higher the level of the gear you craft, the more glyphs of power it will cost. It's boring, but consider farming lower levels for at least part of every gaming session, using the junk gear to do junk crafts to eventually get that achievement.

Have fun!