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.

Any thoughts or hopes for the future?