Today Zombie Columbus (ZC) and Graalx2 give us an overview on the hotly discusses changes to the Legendary Item system.

Graalx2 starts off by addressing one of the major issues with the system, that being the total randomness of it.  With the addition of the Legacy Replacement Scrolls, you will be able to create the item you want but at a potentially higher time investment.  There are some restrictions on these scrolls though:

  • The LI must be at least level 30 before the option to retrieve one of these scrolls
  • Can only replace legacies of the same class – so now hunter bonuses on guardian items
  • Can only replace legacies from the same weapon type, so you can’t move a weapon bonus to a class item
  • Can only replace legacies of the same category
    • what used to be pool A and B are now Major and Minor legacies

Another change is that upon identification, all legendaries will have 3 Major legacies with another minor (small chance of a major) legacy coming at the level 10, 20, and 30 reforges.  Finally, going forward there will only be one type of experience heritage rune as opposed to the level 65 and level 60 ones.  However, don’t go stocking up as current runes will remain unchanged.  But this may potentially bring back to prominence those lovely bounty runs in Esteldin!

The other major change to the system is the Relic system that ZC explains.  Following on the theme of removing the randomness, relics were changed in 2 major ways:

  • Consolidated the relics from 9 tiers to 6 and reduced the amount of time to get to that top tier
  • Added “Shards” which is a LI currency

One of the biggest issues with the initial announcement was existing runes, here’s how they will behave:

  • they will be automatically unslotted as well as remain unchanged
  • Your existing tier 7’s, 8’s, and 9’s will keep their same stats
    • but you can do potentially cooler things with them
  • There is mention that some relics may have new slots, so we’ll have to see how that plays out as essentially one that you had in the Gem (middle slot) may now be a Setting (first slot) which could potentially cause some issues for people.

The relics themselves will be a bit different as with 10 relics for each of the 6 tiers, all stat distributions will be the same for each tier but at increasing strength.  All current methods of obtaining relics will remain in the game, and there’s also a new Unique set of relics available at level 55, 60, and 65 “sizes.”

Relic combination has changed a bit in that you need less to combine for a higher tier (as I explained previously) as well as criticals now produce Shards as opposed more higher tiers.  This again provides a more methodical approach as opposed to the hit or miss of the previous system.  Although I believe now this may render the horseshoe totally useless 🙁

In addition to combining relics, you can now Refine relics which will basically convert them into Shards as well as the chance to produce a heritage rune.  And our beloved high tier relics will refine for a hefty amount, so you might want to stock up on those “crappy” high tiers while you can.

This next section gets into the whole gold sink idea in that since things are easier to obtain, they had to increase the cost of all the systems including combinations (750 silver for top tier currently on Bullroarer) but did provide an option to remove relics via the store.  I don’t really have an issue with in-game gold, but I’m not sure I like the idea of coming out and saying we had to make this more expensive but are providing an out via the store.  But hey, some people have in-game money and some have out-of-game money, so to each his own I guess.

Coming back to the Shards, they can be used in not only to replace the gold cost for legendary item interactions but also in the melding process.  Melding is essentially the legendary item crafting system that will allow you to create items from Shards:

  • Every relic of every tier can be created using a relic of that tier and shards
  • Unique relics can be made with different stats then the other relics
  • Scrolls (I’m assuming the damage type scrolls) can be made
  • Unidentified legendary items can be made

I’m a little confused by that last part, as it appears they’re moving Legendary Items from the crafting system to the new melding system, which further diminishes the point of crafting at all.  Hopefully there’s some balance in place, but we shall wait and see when the next pop hits on Bullroarer, but certainly join in on the discussion if you have thoughts..