Legendary Progress

Legendary Items

Complications: I've read several times that the new legendary system is "more complicated" than the old one. This is generally followed by a quick explanation on how the imbuement process was "so simple" to understand. However, I'm here to say that the new legendary system adapts a process that not only solves a bunch of problems of the old system but also helps ease new players into the experience. Let me preface that none of the three processes - Moria Legendary System, Imbuement System, or Tracery System - are easy to understand. There are a lot of moving parts! So I figured I would take the time to review each one and what changed. If you wish to see a full bulleted list on why the LI system is better, check out the next blog post.

Both Old Legendary Systems

Systematic: Over the years, there were a ton of issues that cropped up in both the non-imbued and imbued legendary systems. Let's cover a few of them:

Crystals of Remembrance: There was an option of adding a very hard-to-get scroll to both legendary items (and Bridles) to add a 7th legacy. This item had a level range and was usually only obtainable by the roll of the dice in instances or hobbit presents. The item was so rare that they offered it for 995 Lotro Points and as an incentive for the Legendary Riders of Rohan Bundle. In recent years (from Mordor onward), I highly doubt anyone saw one drop anywhere. There is only one obtainable from landscape and that is in Book 3: Chapter 7: Osgiliath Overrun.
Locked Legacies: When you are trying to setup "the perfect legendary items," there is a long list of things to make sure of beforehand. For starters, you have to discover what legacies are available. This usually meant going to https://lotro-wiki.com/ and looking through all of them. You'd have to make sure that the legendary item you were building had the right number of major or minor legacies that you could replace. Then you'd have to find the specific legacy depending on which legendary item it was tied with.
Legacy Choices: This has been perhaps the most controversial topic as many feel like they should have been given "awesome" legacies to choose from. I'm not real sure what they mean by that. There were enough different legacies to choose from. However, it quickly became apparent that there were definitely some odd choices. The stat legacies that where highlighted heavily with Mirkwood didn't scale and therefore quickly abandoned. Nearly every class received legacies that didn't correspond well with their available skills. For example, hunters received various melee-specific legacies when their entire gameplay style is all about avoiding close combat as much as possible.
Scaling: Another huge problem that kept cropping up is how certain legacies became less beneficial over time once the level cap increased. It isn't hard to identify these as they only increased the rating of a certain skill or stat. For example, a burglar has a legacy that increased the critical rating for Surprise Strike. What sort of effect that has overall for the skill can be quite difficult to figure out.
Ages: In the early years, what color your legendary item was showed others your current progress in the game - third ages were generic, second ages were at least difficult to craft, and a first age was obtainable from whatever was endgame at the time. Since then, the tokens and shards necessary to craft these items were added to the Skirmish Camp for a trifle amount. The "rarity" of having such an item didn't seem important anymore. This was only compounded when the imbuement process started. They allowed people to obtain First Age weapons from the Roving Threats barterer and craft an item using a First Age Symbol from Central Gondor Epilogue (which was changed so it no longer required kindred status). However, some had learned that the maximum value of both the Second Age and First Age were identical. This poses the question: Why would people discriminate others for having a Second Age if the only difference between the two is the fact that one required a handful of items more?

Pre-Imbued Legendary System

Moria System: When the expansion first came out, people were excited about this legendary system that would help them build up two items as they progressed through the game. It was complex, greatly so. Learning how to gain items that would contribute to their skills was a vast overtaking. We tend to forget that this game came out in 2007 (11 years after Google). Let's check out a couple of these systems:

Relics: There are four holes available on a legendary item for everyone to slot. These include a rune, gem, setting, and crafted relic. These items were generally obtained through the Skirmish System as many of these were introduced in Moria and Mirkwood. As time progressed, these items became a little more rare to get a hold of. One thing the system relied on was the ability to refine or meld relics in order to get the one you needed. This process was expensive as it required multiple relics and a small fee whether you were combining them into a higher tier or morphing them into the one you needed using (purple) shards. Although you could use this process for three of the slots, the fourth one required you to have a specific craft to make. On top of that when bridles came out, this allowed you to make certain mounted combat relics that could fit all four slots (mind you that each one could only be equipped once since they were marked unique).
Items: One of the things the early system allowed you to do is build up your legendary equipment using Star-Lit Crystals. During the Moria-Mirkwood era, Small Star-Lit Crystals dropped quite frequently. Their loot was largely-based on the roll mechanic. This pushed the primary stat of your legendary items a total of three times (with three stars visually displayed). Unfortunately, it felt as though the droprate of these crystals decreased over time. To make matters worse, the Scrolls of Empowerment weren't so easy to collect either. When Helm's Deep came out, your options included spending 1,368 Marks & 173 Medallions from the Skirmish Camp, using 28,440 (purple) shards from the Relic-master, or exchanging a whopping 250 Westemnet Iron Coins per scroll. These coins were so difficult to obtain that in Update 18.1 they made the exceptional case of adding 5 coins as a reward for completing each West Rohan Task roughly three years after the expansion was released (November 2013 - May 2016).
Leveling: A person generally forgets how difficult it was to figure out how to level-up every single element of the old legendary system. A lot of the numbers seem arbitrarily made. They chose level 60 to be the maximum. They allowed people to use a Scroll of Delving to get your legendary item up to level 70. How many points could you contribute per legacy tier? How high can you build up your rank for each legacy per Scroll of Empowerment? What sort of items do you get when you break down a legendary item? What level does a legendary item have to be when you deconstruct it in order to obtain a legacy? Many of these questions and others were only known through trial-and-error (and sometimes with the assistance of information from others).

Imbuement System

Item System: Although some people might blame Standing Stone Games for this system, they weren't the ones running the show at the time. The imbuement process came in with Update 16: Ashes of Osgiliath in May 2015. Turbine didn't hand off the reigns until December 2016 - a few months after they completed Bingo Boffin questline, introduced Belfalas Housing, and Update 19: March of the King (North Ithilien). However, many point towards to how the system was handled after it was added to the game. So what made this process complicated? Let me cover a few things:

Lack of Information: Although the old system had a complete questline that provided you with a couple of half-developed legendary items to level-up and equip using the forges from Thorin's Hall or Rivendell, the new system had one full page of text from a speech bubble question on the Relic-master. There were no quests that revealed or explained how the imbuement process worked. The only hints the player had was if they received Imbued Legacy Replacement Scrolls from the quests in and around Eastern Gondor or realized there weren't any legendary items higher than level 100. Although most of the important information was printed out - like a sentence in bold print telling you to contribute all points beforehand and that you are allowed to preview how legacies transformed before making the permamant change - much of the process was still unknown. Many players weren't sure if things like Scroll of Delving or Crystal of Rememberance would be better applied before or after the process. Although there were a few lines explaining that you would still be able to adapt most items afterwards, many people were sweating over small stuff since the process was so permament.
Relics: The entire process of working with these items from the Relic-master had all but disappeared. Instead of a crafted system, the company had chose a more barterer approach. It first started with Mordor where you could either collect disenchanted dust from any of the items you collected through the region (which stopped dropping in landscape right after the "Ash Farms" began before the expansion was offered for lotro points) or through the raid. Later, they adapted the items to be exchanged from the zone barterers. As for the crafted relics, well, that's a completely different story. The level 120 crafted relics were only obtainable after getting items from Anvil of Winterstith T2 or above, and the level 130 crafted relics were added roughly two years later to the guild master. (January 9, 2019 - 20 October 2020).
Star-Lit Crystals: While it was possible to run through the old system without ever using any Star-Lit Crystals on your legendary items, the imbuement system depended on it. Instead of being able to pick-up higher level items to increase your primary stats, now the only way to increase your damage was by contributing as many of these crystals as you could onto your weapon. For those with healing abilities, they had to increase their primary "healing rating" following the same suit. With the rise of difficulty of the Mordor expansion, many people felt utterly hopeless as they progressed through the landscape without ever using these items on their legendaries. Although Scrolls of Empowerment were less important, a character's survival depended on whether or not they doubled their damage output from 250 dps to 500 dps. Considering that each crystal added around 100 dps, it was very important to keep adding one Star-Lit Crystal to each item every other level. If you weren't doing at least 2100 dps on your weapon stepping into Minas Morgul expansion, you would find yourself in a heap of trouble. By the time Blood of Azog was released, a standard legendary item would consume around 25 Star-Lit crystals each and increased your output to around 3,300 dps. While advancing towards level 120, these Star-Lit crystals were difficult for casual players to obtain. Only a small supply could be obtained while advancing through the quests at level 100 and 130 (nothing available in between). Otherwise, one could be obtained from a full day's work at a festival, exchanging Stars of Merit through the Epic Battle system, or bartering tokens from Throne of the Dread Terror T2. The droprate was still pretty low in all standard group activities. They did allow people to spend Motes of Enchantment, but it was far too little and far too late. It was added to Update 26 when Wells of Langflood released on April 23, 2020 and the crystals bought only increased your maximum potential in preparation for the Mordor expansion.
Scrolls of Empowerment: Unlike the Star-Lit Crystals, Scrolls of Empowerment were much easier to obtain. On top of the large list of places to obtain the crystals, a player could also obtain them exchanging commodations in Ettenmoors, gaining a few from the featured instance, or a vast number of dailies stretched all across Gondor. Sadly, there weren't any places to obtain these items from the scope of Mordor or beyond. They "fixed" the problem by adding them to the dailies in Wastes, Strongholds of the North, and Vales of Anduin, but again it was far too little and far too late. It was added in Update 28.3.1 of this year (February 1, 2021).
Class Problems: There was yet more issues that were present in the old system that grew exponentially when you began stacking the numbers. Hunters had a rare case where they were presented two legendary weapons. The problem is that any Star-Lit Crystals applied onto the melee weapon increased their melee damage, which as discussed earlier was unnecessary. Champions were known to be a class that would weapon swap in order to benefit from both a one-hander and a two-hander, but now they were essentially being told to try and make do with one legendary weapon overall or pay the extended penalty of making a third legendary item. Somewhere along the way - probably Update 22.2 on June 4th, 2018 - Shield Rank stopped working on the Guardian's Belt. Despite the cries of many guardians on the forums, nothing was done about it. Although these three examples were ones I encountered, there are bound to be more samples of neglect found in the other classes.

Tracery System

The Unknown: The interesting thing about the new LI system is that it isn't entirely in the game yet. It works and there is a process, but a lot of people are scared that their hard work into the old system will become moot. So let's cover some of these changes and see why there is such a problem.

Investment: The biggest thing we must approach with caution is the fact that some people spent money on the legendary system. There were a lot of things you could pay Mithril Coins or lotro points on. These can include buying any of the previous legendary items, advancing the ranks on the legacies, or paying for the option to have more than 6 legendary items slotted. One might say that everyone knew a time would come where we might have to replace what we earned in the game. Another might quote certain phrases stated years ago on how this legendary system was meant to be a permanent addition to the game. We could also make the counter-argument that everyone also knew an LI Revamp was going to be included for a series of years now. Unfortunately, this means that certain sacrifices must be made in order to benefit from a better system.
Stockpile: This leads to the second issue at hand. When switching over to a new system, there will always be a large sum of players who keep a steady supply of items on hand when something new comes out. Sometimes, this can be good. In others, it can also be disasterous. If a person decided to hold onto a stack of Star-Lit crystals in the hopes that they would be extremely useful, they will be presented with a semi-useless stack of purple Enhancement runes. These runes cannot be used for anything other than increasing the stats inside an appropriate tracery slot. In theory, people felt that the "rarity" of a Star-Lit crystal would give them something more than what constitutes as two Scroll of Empowerments. Sadly, the new system obliterates the need for such crystals and converted them to their primary function: increasing the stats in the legendary items. We still do not know what is in store for all our other items, but we do know that there were advantages to holding onto things like Essence Reclamation Scrolls, Imbued Legacy Replacement Scrolls, and Crystals of Rememberance.
Progression: Another huge complaint I keep seeing, since we still do not know how everything will convert, is not knowing what we are supposed to do in order to maximize our legendary items. This is coming from raiders and casuals alike. Raiders want to know the quickest and easist way to get the best items at any given moment and casuals are worried that they will no longer have an option to return to the state they were in before now that there isn't a chance for them to have their legendary items maxed out. However, the perception for both players is a fallacy. The Tracery system is built on the barebones of advancement. This means that you will gain a new tracery slot in every level range so that you will always need new Enhancement runes and new traceries. In order to obtain the best traceries, a person will be forced to run an instance at the peak of the level range. This prevents casuals from building "over the old maximum" while still giving raiders an option to "be rewarded from completing difficult content." I have a feeling there is more to these changes than they initially told us.

2021-10-28