The latest developer diary is up and it’s all about changes to the Legendary Item system. I’m liking what I’m hearing so far as the changes appear to increase the value and strength of these items, while also making the whole process of leveling them a bit less grindy. Looking across the LOTRO blogosphere, it seems to be going over pretty well with others too (Jaxom, Merric).
I really recommend reading the entire article (there’s some nice details for Champions in there, for example), but here’s some interesting bits:
“The experience needed to move from level 30 to the maximum level of 60 (all Legendary Items regardless of Age have a max level of 60 now), is dependent on the Age of the Legendary Item. Every level from 30 to 60 is now a flat amount of experience; Third Age LI require 20,000 experience per level, Second Age take 40,000 and First Age require 80,000.”
“With Siege of Mirkwood, each class’s set of legacies has been updated. The weakest legacies have been removed and will no longer be added to new legendary items, while other weaker legacies have been improved. Additionally, each class has gained a handful of new legacies.”
“Every legendary item now has a fourth relic slot. This slot will only hold a new type of relics that are not part of the relic combining system but are instead created by Crafters. Each craft can make relics that give a bonus to a particular stat, morale or power. In addition, all crafters can make Greater Crafted relics once they reach Supreme Master rank. These Greater Crafted relics can only be used by the Crafter that made them and give a small bonus to Melee, Ranged, Tactical or Healing skills.”
“A new Tier of relics has been added to the relic combining system after Tier 8. These new relics give the same style of bonuses as the other relics.”
“We will be introducing a new set of heritage runes which can be used on all legendary items with Siege of Mirkwood.”
There will also be some new scroll types to apply to your Legendaries, which I think is pretty exciting:
Scrolls of Empowerment: “These scrolls allow the player to upgrade the Tier of any Legacy of their choice on one of their Legendary Items. There are no limits to the use of these scrolls other than availability and having a Legacy available to be upgraded.”
Legacy Exchange Scrolls: “These scrolls allow the exchange of one existing legacy for the Legacy on the scroll. So far the Wise have only been able to decipher scrolls that grant Legacies that increase basic Statistics, Might, Vitality etc.”
Scrolls of Delving: “These scrolls increase a Legendary Item’s maximum advancement level by 10 up to level 70. No item experience is granted. The extra ten levels have to be earned. Only one of these scrolls can be used on any one Legendary Item. A legacy upgrade reforge is granted at level 70. Legendary Items from level 60 to Level 70 are treated as having reached maximum level for deconstruction purposes.”
Scrolls of Renewal: “These scrolls reset the legendary points spent on the item to zero allowing the player to re-spend the points in any manner.”
These scrolls can be found as loot or may be awarded during deconstruction. The scroll that could allow a Legendary to reach Level 70 is interesting, mostly because it gives you one final chance to reforge it.
A quick post to direct you towards Ten Ton Hammer’s video interview with LotRO boss Jeffrey Steefel. Its 40+ 14 minutes (and now works!). The video provides a ton of clarification to the confusion of the expansion press release. Additionally you get sneak peeks of:
Dol Goldur (cool raid, but he states that you “will need a tonne of radiance to get through here”)
Mirkwood (mist/fog in creepy woods!)
maps (looks big, but could be deceptive)
travel route to Mirkwood (boat from Lothlorien-Mirkwood)
mount system (you can talk to NPCS from your mount and visually-emote from your horse!)
shared storage (via Vault keeper)
combat is more “punchy” (class moves over-riding auto-attack)
legendary items (4th runic slot is for craftable runics!)
skirmishes (each player creates just one skirmish NPC-partner which are highly customisable; skirmishes you enter from anywhere in the world;l you gain skirmish points for participating and completing tasks which can be used to upgrade your NPC-partner)
For now that is all I can share as the video cut off, but it is worth watching yourself: http://www.tentonhammer.com/ (then find the video sneak peek; direct linking doesn’t work)
Firstly, a quick introduction! My name is Isy (another of Tony’s new MMeOw writers!), and in-game, I am part of the relatively quiet EU server of Gilrain. I have been playing for over a year, and while in the past I have deemed myself to be a ‘casual’ player, I would probably now be better described as a “casual/hardcore” hybrid, having recently joined a more raid-active kin, owning a Level 60, full-radiance Captain, and a Level 60 Rune-keeper. Like many in the player-base who have reached the so-called “end-game” content (and are getting just a wee bit miffed with repeatedly running instances to possibly win some radiance armour, just to access a raid in the hope of getting lucky on even better radiance armour), I like to know what is around the corner. Call it spoilers, call it curiosity… for me, tracking down information or speculating over rumours whets my appetite for LotRO’s future and gives me something to look forward to.
As such, I wanted to share some information that should interest high-level characters who enjoy crafting — especially those of you who can’t stand the radiance gating! Introducing: 2nd Age Legendary crafting!
This week’s featured player guide is Pyroburn’s Legendary Items Guide. It covers everything you’ll need to know about finding, deconstructing, identifying and forging. There’s even a list of relics at the end for those of you interested in knowing what’s out there.
It’s definitely a good place to go for instructions on this new system. I skimmed through it since I’d like to attempt to figure out some things for myself, but it’ll be a good resource when I inevitably have an issue.
You may recall that the Mines of Moria site had a little teaser about being able to create your own Legendary Item in Flash. It always said “Coming Soon!”, but today I checked it out and it’s up and running. This might have been mentioned in one of the Developer Diaries, but I don’t remember seeing it.
While the site obviously handles this differently than the game will, it’s still fun to mess around with. You can pick between an axe, hammer or two-handed sword and then apply Legacies and Relics. These are both assigned randomly, each featuring its own name, stat boost and icon. The ones you wind up with appear to affect the actual appearance of the weapon.
From there you can pick a title, which also gives the weapon a glow. For example, Storm-hammer surrounds the sword with purple haze and Fell-slayer surrounds it with flames. I assume the same will be true in-game, which should be pretty cool. It’s always fun having glowing items in MMORPGs for reasons I’ve never quite figured out. They just look more powerful even if they’re not.
Finally, you name it. When you’re all set you can save the Legendary Item as a JPG, e-mail it to your friends or embed it with HTML. Unfortunately the JPG doesn’t show off any of your weapon’s glow, but I’ll take what I can get.
