Runite Ore

Runite ore spawns only in the Scorned Wilderness, and you need an adamant pickaxe to mine it. There is no second location and no lower-tier substitute, which makes the whole rune tier gated behind the region 1.0 added rather than behind a skill number.

That region is not a landmass. It is floating islands reached by killing the elemental dragons guarding the gateways, so "go mine runite" means clearing the endgame content first. Expect the ore to be one of the last things you unlock, not a mid-game milestone.

Making rune bars

Luminite is the unusual half. Every other bar from steel upward burns three coal; rune swaps that for luminite, which the wiki calls "a catalysing material that can help to make rare metals." It comes from luminite deposits, also Scorned Wilderness only, also adamant pickaxe. So both halves of a rune bar come from the same region and neither can be stockpiled in advance.

What rune bars actually unlock

This is the part worth knowing before you decide rune is a melee player's problem. Rune bars feed:

• Blacksmith's Bench: the rune weapon line (sword, greatsword, dagger, mace, warhammer, scimitar, greataxe), rune helm, platebody, platelegs and shield, plus the rune pickaxe, spade, logging axe and watering can.
• Armour Bench: the Ancestral hat, robes and leggings, and black dragonhide pieces.
• Fletching Bench: rune arrows, rune bolts, rune crossbow limbs and the magic longbow and shortbow.
• Mystic Forge: the black dragonhide body, which alone wants 10 rune bars.

So the best ranged armour in the game, the best ranged weapons, and the only endgame magic set all run through the melee tier's metal. A pure ranged or magic character does not get to skip rune; they get to arrive at it by the same road. The rune pickaxe is on that list too, and it is the only pickaxe that mines every node in the game, so the tier pays for its own farming.

The one thing rune does not get you is the top weapon slot. The Rune Greataxe at 196 to 343 damage still out-damages the power 9 Dragon Scimitar, and the scimitar is not craftable from anything: it comes out of the Queenslayer's Reward Pack for killing Kuldra. See endgame gear for how the two top tiers divide up.