Question for the Dev Team Concerning Traceries

[LagunaD2]

And this is the problem. I do NOT have the time nor the will to play end game on every character I ever make. You again point to dailies/weeklies. I want to know where I can get AS and traceries in a high enough amount through landscape story questing.

Crafted weapons should be fine then.

[wispsong]

Crafted weapons should be fine then.

Sadly, will classes do not have that option. No books, RK items, staves. My mini might be able to get away with it.

[Pontin_Finnberry]

Do traceries stop functioning when a character exceeds the maximum level stated on the tracery?

Thank you for helping.

yes, as traceries have a maximum level, if you are say level 95 that is last level your current traceries will be effective, so once you hit level 96 you will need start getting new traceries, now your Legendary item should still be able to deal damage, you just won't get any benefits from the old traceries until you get new ones, at least this is how i understand it, I haven't been to this point yet.

[Starsmith]

Sadly, will classes do not have that option. No books, RK items, staves. My mini might be able to get away with it.

Possibly the "reward track" that hasn't been instituted will be the solution. Quests all over the place are still granting Legendary XP and they probably aren't going to change that since Legendary Item XP is being repurposed for this "reward track"

+Cord of the Rings Friday Stream + Vastin Interview Summary: 9/10/2021, September 10th 2021

Question: Once these new LIs debut, you won't be able to get the Old LIs?

- Vastin Answer: "All the old stuff is gonna stop dropping pretty much. The only major thing from the Old System that is gonna keep dropping are the iXP, you are gonna get iXP from things that gave you iXP before and the iXP Runes are going to continue to drop. There is going to be a period where that's not very useful, might as well bank them. There is a plan, it won't be for the immediate Launch of 30.3 but with 31 were gonna be introducing this Reward Track that Players can use that will eat their iXP. Your Weapon no longer eats you iXP directly in this System because you just level it up with Reforging but there will be this new UI called the Reward Track, Legendary Reward Track which eats your iXP and gives you a Reward every x beats and that will tend to be Runes, Traceries, Tracery Tokens, and other LI Goodies and occasionally Non-LI related Goodies but mostly LI stuff."

[wispsong]

Possibly the "reward track" that hasn't been instituted will be the solution. Quests all over the place are still granting Legendary XP and they probably aren't going to change that since Legendary Item XP is being repurposed for this "reward track"

Sounds very RNG to me. And I won't be buying Gundabad before it's in the store. So maybe my lower characters can benefit from it.

[auximenes]

yes, as traceries have a maximum level, if you are say level 95 that is last level your current traceries will be effective, so once you hit level 96 you will need start getting new traceries

I think the intent is that you'll have already acquired some traceries that will work in the next level range before you get to the point where the ones you already have are deactivating.

[Starsmith]

Sounds very RNG to me. And I won't be buying Gundabad before it's in the store. So maybe my lower characters can benefit from it.

That's my hope. One reason I'm holding off judgement on the grindyness of the new items, since it's obviously not finished yet. The IXP rewards are certainly not going to be good enough for anyone to max their weapons out, but I am at least somewhat optimistic that they'll let people who just do quests and landscape get something decent out of it.

[Braer]

Unless the 50 to 100 landscape environment changes after this you can still ignore LIs, like you could before, but flame/save any traceries you find along the way for AS or the ability to make some when needed at 100+. Only if it starts to matter do you you need to invest in them.

The landscape player should recognise that there are landscape difficulty instances now you can do duo/solo set to the bottom of your "range" and get traceries/enhancements. Discover and try out Stair solo at 130 (no choice) for an easy one. Stop thinking they are the exclusive domain of raiders/groupers. More landscape with a roof and no others about getting in you way and killing your mob before you can tag them. Having an Epic Quest tag gets you motivated to go into an instance, consider it an investment to better prepare to do Epics of the future.

They'll be easier to do so long as you don't step into the next "range" and have to do them on level as it seems to stand now. If you have enough to proceed after appraisals then you can figure out what you might need in terms of Ancient Scripts for replacements nearing the 140 cap and do some of these until you have all you need for bartering the next tier. Never buy enhancement with Scripts, just the next tracery tier up getting slotted will up the slot's rank.

[Hephburz-2]

So when you level up during a fight, you suddenly end up with a powerless LI, as all traceries are switched off?
Must be even more fun than suddenly dropping my Hytbold gear in the thick of a fight some years ago...

Well. Yes. But you will have between now and the release of the expansion AFTER Gundabad, to change your traceries where necessary, if all else fails you can go and buy the purple ones for AS.

What about characters who just got their LI, playing the game to cap, maybe reaching 140 end of next year. How do they get 121-140 traceries? Remember, before they start MM they will get lower traceries. We look at this from our appraised LI goodies, but new characters to this and higher ranges will not have that advantage.

So. You need to keep in mind these level ranges overlap, we have 121-140 traceries and with Gundabad we will have 131-50 traceries, so the levels 131-140 will overlap between tiers 13/14, meaning either will be good enough to use. Currently, there are several book and unique line landscape quests that drop tracery boxes (although these provide you with a random tracery rather than being a tracery selection box, which, imo should be changed), you can also find them from weeklies and dailies. There is some belief that the new "reward track" type system will also reward traceries.

If you do not particularly care about having specifically "teal or better" traceries on your LIs, then buying the equivalent green or purple traceries for ancient script only should be very cheap, but yes, this will mean you are more than likely going to have to play through some form of group content in order to acquire enough, but it shouldn't be a hell of a lot. Similarily if you do not care about enhancing the traceries, especially now, changing a tier 13 to tier 14 tracery will automatically take the item level from 400 to 450.

[Braer]

Sounds very RNG to me. And I won't be buying Gundabad before it's in the store. So maybe my lower characters can benefit from it.

Normally it's higher level characters making it easier for lower level characters with the resources they have compiled. For you it could be the traceries you find questing on lower levels supplying the scripts you need for the 131+ game so long as you save enough on that char for the 100+ switch over.

[Frisco]

Imagine if, on our old Imbued LIs, every level cap the legacies just disappeared, and we had to level a bunch of trash LIs just to re-find the legacies to put the exact same ones back on at a slightly higher level of effectiveness.

That's about how fun this new system is, grinding with massive RNG, disenchanting the litany of traceries that *nobody* should ever add to their weapon (and shouldn't really exist in the first place, if the devs actually played LOTRO), only to get a small amount of currency.

[monk_tbd]

Imagine if, on our old Imbued LIs, every level cap the legacies just disappeared, and we had to level a bunch of trash LIs just to re-find the legacies to put the exact same ones back on at a slightly higher level of effectiveness.

If this would have saved me the scrolls and crystals grind I would be all for it.
And btw the legacies would not have disappeared every level cap but only the second level cap increase after the current one.

[Brutis]

The Tracery will no longer offer its bonus, whether you want to call it "deactivated" or not is up to you I guess. The end result is the same. The iLevel of the Tracery would still have a maximum usage level regardless of how it interacts with enhancement runes.

This explains why I have to switch to my old LIs when im doing Big Battles. I think this is a unrefined system.

[Steelfist]

What about Rune Keepers Stones, we only have Frost damage, will we be getting Fire/lightning damage stones?

[Hephburz-2]

What about Rune Keepers Stones, we only have Frost damage, will we be getting Fire/lightning damage stones?

Stone damage is only relevant to your melee auto-attacks. The skills themselves have their own damage types which are irrespective of the stones damage type.

[Frisco]

If this would have saved me the scrolls and crystals grind I would be all for it.
And btw the legacies would not have disappeared every level cap but only the second level cap increase after the current one.

Yeah, at least we lost the crystal grind, even if the SoE/ehnancement grind was a wash. Though they could probably have easily found a way to get rid of crystals on imbued LIs and tied weapon damage to character level.

This explains why I have to switch to my old LIs when im doing Big Battles. I think this is a unrefined system.

They messed up the scaling on new LIs, it's not due to deactivated traceries. The item level is set to 1. Like beginner weapon. They fixed it kind of, but you'll have to wait for your next reforge, which could be months for some people.

[Faudyen]

When you say that a tracery "will no longer offer its bonus" that means that all the stats on it will be set to zero, correct? Or do you mean that there is some set amount that stays and some additional amount that is a "bonus" that goes?

For example:

-x seconds to skill cooldown
+ 10,000 tactical mastery
+ 1000 will


Since enhancement runes only effect the last two stats, are they the "bonus" or is the whole tracery the "bonus?"

I think you are saying that the whole tracery will effectively get reset to zero stats (all three numbers) but this isn't totally clear. Will a tracery "losing its bonus" be obvious when you look at it? Will it turn red or something like that?

Thank you for asking this, this is exactly what I am confused about as well

[Waylock]

If you leave it untouched that long, no, it won't be powerless. It will lose the traceries, but not the main stat of the item itself. For example, my hunter's bow will lose quite a bit of physical mastery, vitality, crit rating, and individual skill bonuses, assuming I leave it untouched until the next level cap, but it will never lose the 4666 DPS. Unlikely to be great fun to lose that in the middle of a fight, but not *powerless*.

OK, it might be my lack of understanding (English is not my primary language).

You say that traceries will function into the next level range? Or that there is overlap, and you can upgrade them before you hit the limit?
In that case it's indeed less of an issue than your equipment falling off.

Still, on a minstrel or rune keeper, the base DPS of your weapon is totally irrelevant; all your power comes from the bonuses of your traceries

[auximenes]

You say that traceries will function into the next level range? Or that there is overlap, and you can upgrade them before you hit the limit? In that case it's indeed less of an issue than your equipment falling off.

It works like this:
If your tracery is from the level 121-130 range then it will be active through the 131-140 range but will de-activate when you hit level 141.

[Starsmith]

OK, it might be my lack of understanding (English is not my primary language).

You say that traceries will function into the next level range? Or that there is overlap, and you can upgrade them before you hit the limit?
In that case it's indeed less of an issue than your equipment falling off.

Still, on a minstrel or rune keeper, the base DPS of your weapon is totally irrelevant; all your power comes from the bonuses of your traceries

Yes, the traceries will function into the next level range. If you are playing on a Legendary server and your level cap is, for example, 120, you'll be able to obtain traceries that stop functioning at 131. In such a case, the next cap on a legendary server will be 130...which means you will have a good chunk of time to get new traceries that will function until 141 before the level cap is extended to 140 and you are at risk of your traceries deactivating.

This means that practically speaking, if you are playing actively, the only time you'll encounter deactivating traceries is if the servers are at a different level cap than the levels you are passing through. Players on live who just start out with their legendaries might have their traceries deactivate at 96 if they don't get any new ones, but 45-96 is a good long stretch. Players playing the most recent content, whether in legendary servers or live, should not have to worry too much about their traceries deactivating.

[Daniyel]

So essentially, we have to remake our LI's by replacing/upgrading all the traceries every level cap increase going forward, like we used to do before imbuement at the 60, 65, 75, 85, 95, and 100 caps?
The difference being now that we get to keep the ranks of the Tracery SLOTS themselves, so we don't need to re-apply enhancement runes/scrolls of empowerments/crystals.

But, the big headache of the traceries/legacies rebuilding process seems to have come back. that was an advantage of imbuement, we only had to do that once at the beginning and for 7 years from 2014-2021 all we had to do was put on crystals, scrolls, and 4 relics, rather than almost a dozen traceries.

I'm not sure how much an improvement this is TBH. certainly, it is an improvement for new players, alts, returning players, but over time those new players and returning players will hopefully transition to regular/consistent players and it overall seems like more work, just in the sense of having to get the class-specific traceries and other traceries every time the level cap goes up (with exception of this upcoming Gundabad release, thank you so much for making the exception!)

[Fegefeuer]

So essentially, we have to remake our LI's by replacing/upgrading all the traceries every level cap increase going forward, like we used to do before imbuement at the 60, 65, 75, 85, 95, and 100 caps?
The difference being now that we get to keep the ranks of the Tracery SLOTS themselves, so we don't need to re-apply enhancement runes/scrolls of empowerments/crystals.

But, the big headache of the traceries/legacies rebuilding process seems to have come back. that was an advantage of imbuement, we only had to do that once at the beginning and for 7 years from 2014-2021 all we had to do was put on crystals, scrolls, and 4 relics, rather than almost a dozen traceries.

I'm not sure how much an improvement this is TBH. certainly, it is an improvement for new players, alts, returning players, but over time those new players and returning players will hopefully transition to regular/consistent players and it overall seems like more work, just in the sense of having to get the class-specific traceries and other traceries every time the level cap goes up (with exception of this upcoming Gundabad release, thank you so much for making the exception!)

I think you are wrong about how enhacement runes work (although maybe I'm also wrong but I think not). Basically enhancement runes are completely skippable because this is the "catch up" mechanic. As far as I understand, for example, Morgul traceries go until 449 rank or whatever you want to call it (I know it's until 499 for transition sake but keep reading), but as I say, Morgul traceries start at rank 400, and Gundabad traceries will start at rank 450 (afaik). This means that you can slot Morgul traceries and add enhancements until 449 or just slot Gundabad traceries and they will be 450 and no need to add any runes. So in the future, next tier will start at rank 500 and you can completely skip Gundabad. The fact that enhancement runes upgrade the slot and not the tracery is so the progress done in the tracery is not lost if you replace it.

So basically if we understand traceries = legacies and enhancement runes = scrolls, then they made the scrolls grind optional, but now the grind is having to grind the "legacies" like in the old times, with the difference that in old times, legacies came by default and if you wanted your desired legacies you just needed to deconstruct a few LIs and done, you can have it done in just 1h or even less if you are lucky. In new system you need to grind +10 traceries, and you are forced to do it because if not, then your LI will become what we could call a "normal weapon", like just dps but nothing else. This is basically a nerf in comparison with imbued system but I guess they have to force people to grind no matter what. People is still kind of blind because the system is new and they have kinda free weapons but give it time. It is a help for returning players who want to play again with the main and they are years behind. But it's a pain for people with many alts. Just imagine having to farm +10 traceries with 10 characters ...

@Soltasword who just posted while I was writting this "I see a mad rush to the store to buy the xp-disabler in the near future. Now if we only had a second pocket to carry that in." - bought 8 stones of tortoise when getting the new LIs

[soltasword]

And this is the problem. I do NOT have the time nor the will to play end game on every character I ever make. You again point to dailies/weeklies. I want to know where I can get AS and traceries in a high enough amount through landscape story questing.

At the moment, you can't. The drop rate for traceries on landscape is completely abysmal. And the only way to get AS to replace your USELESS traceries is to get those traceries to begin with. But unless you run instances, raids, dailies/weeklies every single day, you won't get enough AS to replace your now USELESS traceries when you need to if you just play landscape. So, say hello to just running instances and goodbye to doing landscape. I see a mad rush to the store to buy the xp-disabler in the near future. Now if we only had a second pocket to carry that in.

[wispsong]

At the moment, you can't. The drop rate for traceries on landscape is completely abysmal. And the only way to get AS to replace your USELESS traceries is to get those traceries to begin with. But unless you run instances, raids, dailies/weeklies every single day, you won't get enough AS to replace your now USELESS traceries when you need to if you just play landscape. So, say hello to just running instances and goodbye to doing landscape. I see a mad rush to the store to buy the xp-disabler in the near future. Now if we only had a second pocket to carry that in.

It probably won't be a problem before 151, maybe even later because I still have plenty of AS from appraisal. But it worries me.

[Flaxie]

@Soltasword who just posted while I was writting this "I see a mad rush to the store to buy the xp-disabler in the near future. Now if we only had a second pocket to carry that in." - bought 8 stones of tortoise when getting the new LIs

While they have only used them rarely, most, if not all, of my chars have the tortoise stone. Thank goodness, as my changed circumstances prohibit spending money on the game. I would truly be SOL if I had to go get them now.