Legendary Item System Revision

From the initial release of the Legendary Item system there have been many players that wanted more control over their Legendary Item’s Legacies. With Mirkwood, we responded to these concerns with Pool A/Pool B legacies that reduced the randomness of Legendary Items. However, there was still the possibility of getting Legacies that mismatched a player’s style of play, wasting all the effort spent acquiring the Legendary Item. This new system revision will give a player almost complete control over the Legacies -- if a player is willing to invest their time.

This control is given by Legacy Replacement Scrolls; these scrolls can be acquired through the deconstruction of a Legendary Item that has the desired Legacy. The Legacy Replacement scroll can then be used to replace a Legacy on any Legendary Item.

Legacy Replacement scrolls have several restrictions:

* The Legendary Item to be deconstructed must be at least Level 30 before a player is given the option of extracting a Legacy.
* The Legacy to be replaced must be from the same class as the extracted Legacy. No moving Hunter legacies onto Guardian Legendary Items.
* The Legacy to be replaced must be on the same type of Legendary Item from which the Legacy was extracted. No moving legacies from weapons to class items.
* Lastly, the replaced Legacy must be of the same category as the extracted Legacy. Legacies are now categorized as "Major" and "Minor" legacies. These categories are the same as the previous Pool A and Pool B categories.



So, on identify, a Legendary Item will have three Major legacies and will add a Minor Legacy (with a small chance of a Major Legacy) for the first three reforges. We hope that this change will finally give players the control they've always wanted.

You'll notice I said three Major legacies when a Legendary Item is identified. This is because we have standardized the number of legacies to always identify with three legacies. No longer will a player be forced to deal with a two Legacy Second Age item. The other general change is that we have eliminated the two tiers of Item XP heritage runes. From now on, all Heritage runes can be used on any Legendary Item; existing runes are unchanged.

We have also expanded the LOTRO store to include all existing Legendary Item scrolls, as well as giving a player the option to purchase two additional Legendary Item slots.

The relic system has also been completely re-written, but I’ll leave it to our favorite undead explorer to explain about that.

[Shift to Zombie Columbus]

The changes to the relic system have the same goals as the Legacy changes: allow for more player control and less randomness. We did this in two ways. First, we consolidated the relics, reduced the number of tiers to six and reduced the amount of time it takes to get to the top tier. Second, we added “Shards,” a Legendary Item currency that binds various parts of the system together.

Before getting into the details of those changes, we'll briefly discuss how these changes will affect current players:

When logging in after Update 2, all of your relics will have been automatically unslotted from your legendary items. The stats on all these relics, and all relics you have acquired, will remain the same. Relics of tier 7, 8 and 9 will be considered tier 6 for Melding purposes (more on that later) but will Refine (more on that later too!) at higher rates than normal tier 6’s. Lastly, the slot a few relics could go in may change, based on which stats the relic modifies. The net result will be that you can keep what you have now and the high tier relics you’ve collected can be reimbursed for big rewards.

Before Update 2 there were six relics per tier in nine tiers. In Update 2, we are cutting the number of tiers down to six, and increasing the number of relics per tier to 10. Instead of each tier being a new set of stats, the same 10 stat distributions will be available in all tiers at increasing potency. Most stat combinations achievable with the old relics will be available, as well as some new stats that weren’t available before. All ways of gaining relics, including existing “Sealed” or “Fused” relics, will output the new relics. In addition to all this, we are launching with nine “Unique” relics, available in level 55, 60 and 65 sizes. These unique relics are created through Melding (I’ll talk about this later), and will compliment the already varied mix of 10 relics per tier, allowing for significant customization options.

So, how did we reduce randomness? The number of relics required to combine has gone down for higher tiers, and we replaced the “critical combinations” with a chance to gain Shards (more on those later! I swear!) The old critical combinations gave players a chance to get relics of a higher tier than the one they were combining towards. While good in theory, getting unlucky streaks of missing too many critical combinations could cause tier 9 relics to feel very far away. Now, it’s a much faster and consistent trip up to top tier. Additionally, Melding (I really, truly promise that I will tell you more later!) allows tiered relics to be changed into exactly the relic you wanted of the same tier.


With the decrease in combination requirements and number of tiers, we have a much shorter relic grind. However, we want players to feel that gaining more relics is always valuable. Therefore, we added the Refine tab to the Relic Master. The Refining process destroys the relic and grants you some amount of Shards, based on the tier of the relic. As mentioned, tier 7, 8 and 9 relics from the old system will Refine for a significant amount. In addition to Shards, Heritage Runes (items that grant boons of IXP) can sometimes be gained. Higher tier relics will grant more potent Runes.

With all this consolidation, it will be significantly easier to get top tier relics. To offset this, we’ve increased the gold cost of all the Legendary Item systems and removed the ability to remove relics safely from Legendary Items. We want relics to be things you gain and then spend (either by slotting or Refining), not things you keep around forever. However, the existence of the LOTRO store lets us offer Scrolls of Removal which will safely extract relics. We consider this to be a perfect kind of convenience for the store to sell; it is not required or needed for normal gameplay, but spending Turbine Points on it will give you a boost.

Next up are Shards, the new Legendary Item currency which will be added to the Wallet. I’ve mentioned above the two ways Shards can be generated; Refining relics and critical relic combinations. These Shards have two purposes. First, they can be spent in lieu of gold for all of the Legendary Item interactions. This greatly offsets the gold increase mentioned above and should cause the entire system to feel more unified. Second, they are the main resource used for Melding. (Is it getting funny that I keep swearing to talk about Melding later? I hope so.)

And so, we finish up with Melding. At the Relic Master there will be a new “Melding” tab where you will find a list of various Melding recipes. These recipes combine Shards and sometimes relics of specific tiers into many different products. Every relic of every tier can be created by simply melding a relic of the same tier and some Shards. No longer will you have to constantly combine relics in the hope of getting the one you wanted! Special “Unique” relics with different stats than then normal tier 1-6 relics can also be made, which will allow you to pick and choose the combination of stats you want from the Legendary item.

Various Scrolls that enhance your Legendary Items can also be made, and Melding can even create unidentified Legendary Items! All such items will be bound to your character. Our plan is to extend the recipes available in the Melding tab in future Updates as players decide what they like and don’t like about these changes.

Yes, we understand it’s a lot. Our hope is that these modifications will make Legendary Items be more consistent, less time consuming and feel like it’s reasonable to build towards more than one Legendary Item without going crazy.

Lastly, since this may have been a little overwhelming (I tend to go overboard sometimes), here is the basic flow of the new relic system:

1. Collect Relics
2. Combine relics to higher tiers (occasionally get bonus Shards)
3. Slot relics into LI items
4. Refine spare relics into Shards (occasionally get Heritage Runes)
5. Spend Shards and Relics on Melding
6. Mail Zombie Columbus your spare gold