Legendary Items in Gundabad

[Vastin]

So, now that we've all gotten a quick look at the new Legendary Item system, I'd like to highlight a few points about how we expect it to advance moving forwards.

With our initial release, the Reforge Cap for the weapons started at 449, which is the top of our current item level range. Moving into Gundabad of course, there will be a new range of levels and equipment available, and your legendary items will be able to reforge to follow those advancements, and I'd like to elaborate a little bit on how that works.

As you reforge weapon, its advancement is limited by your character level (this limit advances every 5 levels usually), but when you are playing in the cap level range, it is ALSO limited to roughly match the ilevel of the gear available - so for the initial release of Gundabad, that should be about 465. As new releases occur (new instances or endgame questing regions) that push the average ilevel of gear upwards, so too will the reforge cap increase, allowing you to advance your Legendary Items further.

We'll also be working to create new traceries to find and play with - in particular more development of the Words of Craft and their intended set bonuses, which weren't quite ready in time for our initial release. We'll also be releasing the Legendary Reward Track with Gundabad as another dependable source of LI Runes, Traceries and such. We'll certainly be tinkering with things like drop rates and in-game sources of these materials.

Oh, and bugfixes and class balance tweaks in response to new Legendary Item metas of course. We've already got some critical fixes lined up, in particular the corrected Tracery Drop Tables for Runekeepers. Sorry about that one.

The other significant one atm is that Traceries are intended to Bind to Account - not Character. That will change retroactively for all of them, so you don't have to worry about any that you earn before that fix arrives.

-Vastin

[hunter4215]

Any confirmation on where the gold traceries are supposed to actually drop as this list seems a bit weird and inconsistent? Any plans for 3 mans? Is gold coming from t3+?

• Barad Guldur T2C (Boss 3 Chest)
• Ost Dunhoth T2C Ivar/Gortheron Wing 1 in each
• Halls of Black Lore T3+ (Boss 3 Chest)
• Houses of Lamentation T3+ (Boss 4 Chest)
• Remmorchant T3+ (Boss 3 Chest aka Rhukor)
• Amdan Dammul, The Bloody Threshold T5 (Boss 2 Chest)

And is the disenchanting of gold traceries working properly? Example: I can disenchant my Hunter's gold block rating just into ancient scripts, am I supposed to be able to get Cracked Morgul Tracery. I don't think anyone in-game has found where these actually come from.

[Fantomex]

And is the disenchanting of gold traceries working properly? Example: I can disenchant my Hunter's gold block rating just into ancient scripts, am I supposed to be able to get Cracked Morgul Tracery. I don't think anyone in-game has found where these actually come from.

Did the same with my Champ's gold Parry Rating WoC and got nothing. If it's RNG whether you get a token or not from disenchanting, that would be nice to know.

[hunter4215]

Did the same with my Champ's gold Parry Rating WoC and got nothing. If it's RNG whether you get a token or not from disenchanting, that would be nice to know.

I sure hope so. At least with the old system, I could guarantee the legacies I wanted and the farm pool was really easy with just using third ages and item XP. I don't think many are excited about farming a lvl 65 "scaled" instance 100 times to get block rating on a character you can't block on.

[Irin19]

The other significant one atm is that Traceries are intended to Bind to Account - not Character. That will change retroactively for all of them, so you don't have to worry about any that you earn before that fix arrives. -Vastin

Except that if you put a character-bound tracery in a carry-all it will bind that carry-all to that character.

The fix is to figure out which tracery it is, remove it from the carry-all and the carry all will revert back to BoA.

[Maelon]

With our initial release, the Reforge Cap for the weapons started at 449, which is the top of our current item level range.

-Vastin

If the reforge cap is 449, why do teal enhancement runes only allow us to elevate traceries to 440? Is there a gold enhancement rune that will elevate traceries to 449? If there is, how would one acquire such a rune? Or is the only currently available mechanism to advance traceries from 440 to 449 mithril coins?

[JiiPee]

If the reforge cap is 449, why do teal enhancement runes only allow us to elevate traceries to 440? Is there a gold enhancement rune that will elevate traceries to 449? If there is, how would one acquire such a rune? Or is the only currently available mechanism to advance traceries from 440 to 449 mithril coins?

Because 441-449 you can advance with gold tier enhancement runes or with mithril coins. Where to get gold tier enhancement runes, I do not know.

So there is 4 tiers of enhancement runes and they all have own limit how far they can push.

Green tier 401-415? (Not actually sure what green cap is)
Purple tier 401-430
Teal tier 401-440
Gold tier 401-449
Mithril coins 401-449

[Gorikon]

Hey Vastin, thanks for the update. May I ask for two more changes?

1) Traceries that drop from older scaling instances are Bind to Character on aquire. The ones we get from newer instances (starting with Ered mithrin) are fellowship tradeable, then bind to character. When changing traceries to Account Bound, can you make the new drops in older instances fellowship tradeable too?

2) T2 Challenge Chests from older instances still contain stuff for old Legendary Items (Fused Relics and such). Please put a few new goodies there. There are some T1 Challenge chests too (e.g. School / Library of Tham Mirdain). Since T1 challenge is more of a "challenge", these could contain lower tier items.

[Telcharan]

Because 441-449 you can advance with gold tier enhancement runes or with mithril coins. Where to get gold tier enhancement runes, I do not know.

So there is 4 tiers of enhancement runes and they all have own limit how far they can push.

Green tier 401-415? (Not actually sure what green cap is)
Purple tier 401-430
Teal tier 401-440
Gold tier 401-449
Mithril coins 401-449

I have exactly one gold enhancement rune. It dropped from a teal enhancement rune box, which I believe I got from one of the quests when I finished the Battle of Azanulbizar quest line. So not exactly a sustainable or repeatable source, but at least it proves that they exist.

[Vastin]

I have exactly one gold enhancement rune. It dropped from a teal enhancement rune box, which I believe I got from one of the quests when I finished the Battle of Azanulbizar quest line. So not exactly a sustainable or repeatable source, but at least it proves that they exist.

So, regarding some of the drops you aren't seeing, or are seeing rarely:

The broken and cracked traceries have very few sources at all atm (I think it's just a handful of quest rewards?), as we're reserving them as high end rewards and wanted to get a sense for the drop rates and patterns of the more common stuff before we start putting them into more regular circulation. They will never be common or particularly easy to get, esp the legendary versions.

The legendary runes are also going to be pretty difficult to get. Right now I think they only drop in some rather high tier raid difficulties? We'll be adding sources for those for non-raiders as well and playing with drop frequency/amount, but we're starting out with them being overly rare to begin with.

All of these will be showing up with some frequency in the Legendary Reward Track, which we're working on right now for Gundabad - but we'll also be playing with sources and tinkering with drop frequencies/amounts as we go.

-Vastin

[Nubja]

The broken and cracked traceries have very few sources at all atm (I think it's just a handful of quest rewards?), as we're reserving them as high end rewards and wanted to get a sense for the drop rates and patterns of the more common stuff before we start putting them into more regular circulation. They will never be common or particularly easy to get, esp the legendary versions.

Out of curiosity, which quests? I've not seen these anywhere.

[shino047]

It's looking like an insanely massive grind to fully max out an LI.
We have like 12 traceries per item, 24 per set, 48 if your class needs a 2nd set. And how many of the legendary enhancement runes do we need per tracery exactly? If we need like 10 (really hope it's not more), and if we can earn say 10 per week, that would take 48 weeks so almost 1 year to max 2sets of LIs for ONE character. And if you have all 11 classes like me, even if they all used just 1 set of LIs that will be 2640 gold enhancement runes needed to max out all so even if you could earn 10 per week that would take like 5 years lol

edit:sorry if my math is incorrect XDthere's a high chance

[TobiasEstForte]

It's looking like an insanely massive grind to fully max out an LI.
We have like 12 traceries per item, 24 per set, 48 if your class needs a 2nd set. And how many of the legendary enhancement runes do we need per tracery exactly? If we need like 10 (really hope it's not more), and if we can earn say 10 per week, that would take 48 weeks so almost 1 year to max 2sets of LIs for ONE character. And if you have all 11 classes like me, even if they all used just 1 set of LIs that will be 2640 gold enhancement runes needed to max out all so even if you could earn 10 per week that would take like 5 years lol

edit:sorry if my math is incorrect XDthere's a high chance

10 per week? You'd have to actively avoid playing rune sources to get a number like that. There are far more sources for runes compared to empowerment scrolls and they're not tied behind instance locks. For gold enhancement runes, the question is if you're really a player who needs them. Either one isn't running that content that requires it, or is skilled enough to complete that content without those final 9-10 levels. It's only going to result in extra morale as it effects stats only.

[DKenny]

10 per week? You'd have to actively avoid playing rune sources to get a number like that. There are far more sources for runes compared to empowerment scrolls and they're not tied behind instance locks. For gold enhancement runes, the question is if you're really a player who needs them. Either one isn't running that content that requires it, or is skilled enough to complete that content without those final 9-10 levels. It's only going to result in extra morale as it effects stats only.

I would then flip that around. If something far less than the maximum is sufficient for most players under the new system, why was it necessary for them to max the legacy tiers on imbued LI ? Someone, for conversion purposes, showed a process by steps for pre-imbued LI to max imbued LI. With doing nothing but imbuing and adding ixp he had ~50 tiers on each legacy unlocked already. Why are players constantly making apples to oranges comparisons between the imbued and new LI systems? Effort required should be compared between max imbued and max new LI. If a middling new LI is adequate for a player, then a middling imbued LI is the comparable, in which case the grind for the imbued would be reduced by hundreds of empowerment scrolls.

[wispsong]

I would then flip that around. If something far less than the maximum is sufficient for most players under the new system, why was it necessary for them to max the legacy tiers on imbued LI ? Someone, for conversion purposes, showed a process by steps for pre-imbued LI to max imbued LI. With doing nothing but imbuing and adding ixp he had ~50 tiers on each legacy unlocked already. Why are players constantly making apples to oranges comparisons between the imbued and new LI systems? Effort required should be compared between max imbued and max new LI. If a middling new LI is adequate for a player, then a middling imbued LI is the comparable, in which case the grind for the imbued would be reduced by hundreds of empowerment scrolls.

I think you do not understand that alone having to get the crystals was a grind which I would never have put another character through. There is a difference of having 1 or 2 characters to keep up or being an altoholic who is not much interested in any repetitive content on EVERY character who enters Mordor. This new LI, the dps grows actually with. I hope there is a better way to get needed/wanted traceries then for essences but overall it seems to me they are less potent then legacies and therefore less important to level up. The old system was also way more complicated for new players.

I doubt their will be more effort required for most min/maxers since they already play the content where the better traceries will drop.

[DKenny]

I think you do not understand that alone having to get the crystals was a grind which I would never have put another character through. There is a difference of having 1 or 2 characters to keep up or being an altoholic who is not much interested in any repetitive content on EVERY character who enters Mordor. This new LI, the dps grows actually with. I hope there is a better way to get needed/wanted traceries then for essences but overall it seems to me they are less potent then legacies and therefore less important to level up. The old system was also way more complicated for new players.

I doubt their will be more effort required for most min/maxers since they already play the content where the better traceries will drop.

Regarding "more complicated", I agree it was to initially set up. However, once set up all that was required was to add star-lit crystals and empowerment scrolls when they increased the max legacies tiers. About half of the dps legacy tiers were unlocked for free. We'll just have to agree to disagree with regard to the grind required for crystals. It was IMHO far far less than the grind for empowerment scrolls, given that far fewer crystals were required and they were available from festivals as well as other sources. I never had a problem with the dps on imbued LI for multiple characters, but when it came to empowerment scrolls, alts needed to feed the main so that at least one character could have a fully max ILI. That of course will no longer be possible under the new system.

[l6rp24e57]

With our initial release, the Reforge Cap for the weapons started at 449, which is the top of our current item level range.

Mr. Vastin, what about other level ranges? I see that 130 reforge into 449, which is THE HIGHEST item level of lvl 130. Meanwhile, from what i encountered myself, 105 char reforges into item lvl 250 (which is NOWHERE NEAR MAX item level of the 105 cap, which is 282 ilvl), 103 char (i assume they use the reforge ilvl of level 100) reforge into ilvl 215 (which is ABOVE any item level available at 100/103, as the max item level for level 100 is 204 (gondor epic legendary cloak), and the 213 ilvl is where 105 itemization begins.
That, and i didnt yet contact my mates from tortoise kin to figure what reforges did they get for their below 100 chars.

What is this? Biased towards 130? Carelessness?

Will we see this disparity gotten rid of?

[ENDrain]

1. Here's hoping that new LI-related currencies only exist for transition and will not become another currency.

The broken and cracked traceries have very few sources at all atm (I think it's just a handful of quest rewards?), as we're reserving them as high end rewards

Oh well... Please allow us to store broken Traceries in Premium Wallet then if they're here to stay.

2. Here's hoping that chat linking will be fixed for new LIs. Currently linking a new LI in chat displays an non-Reforged LI with two Mastery and Craft slots, and Traceries in these slots.
Here's also hoping that Character Inspection Legendary Item tab will be upgraded for the new system. It's been abandoned since Imbued LIs.

3. Here's hoping that the new LI UI is temporary and will be upgraded in foreseeabe future.

• It's rather cumbersome having to drag your LI elsewhere whenever you need to tinker with it.
• Then there's this long thin menu with jumpy scrolling that behaves unpredictably and sometimes lands in the middle of a Tracery, so you have to adjust the view manually.
  There is not enough window expansion allowance to fit everything at once, and if it were there then there wouldn't be enough screen space to fit everyting. Even on my 2K monitor, and it's not like LotRO prioritizes 4K gaming (UI scaling is broken, playing in 4K is practically impossible unless there's a workaround I don't know about).
• It's also not convenient to have to drag Tracery or Enhancement Rune on the slot. It would be nice to have classic interfacesfor respective actions (adding or upgrading a Legacy) updated to the new system.
• I also want to point out that the new LI UI currently does nothing to explain how Tracery upgrading really works. You can't even see Socket Level without a Tracery equipped.

All of the above is easily fixed by upgrading Legendary Items screen. You can use left side to display Tracery Sockets with their levels and slotted Traceries with their Bonuses. You can add tabs to the left side and group Traceries by Socket Type to avoid overly long lists. You can use right side to show Traceries and Runes in inventory and to offer quick interaction with them.



The last but not the least is that LI tooltip suffers from excessive length as well. I tried to lower resolution on Bullroarer client with a 12-slot LI - the tooltip took almost 1100px out of 1200px in height. This is going to become a problem pretty soon for a lot of people.
I realise that the new LIs inherit Socketed Armor tooltips, but it would be better if LI tooltips were reworked in something resembling of classic or Imbued LI tooltips.

4. Here's hoping that all sorts of classic LI appearances will at least be perserved as such (appearances) or may even be revitalised. There are 60 FA LIs (bartered for Nimrodels in 21st), Filikul LIs, crafted LIs.
Here's also hoping that there going to be more interesting LI appearances in the future.
Here's also hoping that some legacy LI barter currencies like Khuzdul Tables will be either revitalized, converted or removed; not just left behind.

5. Here's hoping that classic character bound LIs will be made possible to put into Vault.