Raedwulf
24 Nov 2008, 15:09
Legendary Items
Rise of Isengard hasn't changed too much that affects this guide. Obviously there are now Items that require you to be above L65 to equip, but LI's themselves are pretty much the same. Some classes have had some legacies revised or replaced, and the changes to classes themselves may make you re-think which legacies you want in one or two cases. But this guide doesn't cover that anyway, so only minor revisions of the guide this time...
As we all know, Legendaries are customisable items that gain experience as you do. All Legendaries are class specific, each class having two different types available. Everyone has a Main-hand melee weapon (which may be 2-handed) & a Class item. The Class items are Tools, Emblem, Rune, Belt, Bow, Book, Book, Bag, & Javelin for BRG, CPT, CHM, GDN, HNT, LM, MNS, RK, & WDN respectively (so yes two classes actually get a second weapon). There is NO off-hand weapon / shield in the system, & it doesn't seem likely that there ever will be.
They are freely available, dropping regularly as loot, and come in 3 flavours, Third-, Second-, and First-Age. They can also be crafted and Third Agers can be bartered for. There are also Heritage Runes that grant xp, barter items that can be exchanged for new Items & Baubles to further buff your items, as well as special Infused Gems that allow you to do quests for Titles, and Titles can now also be acquired from Faction vendors too, if your rep is sufficient. ALL Legendary fluff is Bind on Acquire; only the Items themselves are Bind on Equip, so it’s only they that can be freely exchanged / sold / etc.
How's this thing work then?
Looted items range from L51-equippable upwards. However, any Legendary Item must be identified by a Forge-master before it can be equipped, and you can ONLY do this after you have completed Vol 2 Book I to gain access to Moria. Once you have, you can use any Forge-master in the world; it doesn’t have to be just those in Moria.
Since Legendary items gain experience from kills (many quests also give IXP as part of the reward), it’s as well to make sure that completing this book is more or less the first thing you do once you're high enough to be able to complete the requisite quests (L45). Running around Eregion killing stuff is all very well, but your Item might just as well be gaining XP with you, eh? Oh, plus part way through Vol 2 Book I you get your first Item (an unrestricted one that can be identified at Thorin's Hall or Rivendell, before you have access to Moria), which you then have to level to 10 & re-forge before you can get in.
Once you’ve identified an Item, you can Equip it (if you’re high enough, natch) & it becomes Bound. You can, of course, only equip one of each type at a time. However, your IXP is split between up to 6 Bound items that you are carrying (with another 2 slots available as purchases from the infamous LOTRO Store). This works in a similar way to regular fellowship XP does, so every extra item you are carrying multiplies the total amount of IXP by 1.2 before it is divided between the available items. In other words, when you are carrying a single bound Item, it earns 100% of the base IXP, but when you are carrying 2, they each earn proportionally more e.g. 60% of the base IXP, not 50% each.
Although you can disable leveling on individual items in order to speed the leveling of others, it can make sense to carry as many items as possible (see the section on All That Is Gold…). If this were strictly the fellowship XP formula, the maximum of 6 gives you 249% of normal xp split between the 6. The complete sequence is 1 Item: 100%; 2: 60% each; 3: 48%; 4: 43.2%; 5 & 6: 41.5%. Yes, those last two figures are correct, because 6 is 1.2 times bigger than 5, the same as the XP multiplier; which means it’s stupid to level 5 items, since you might as well level 6, if you can! However, the numbers don't quite seem to work out that way. I haven't sat down & done the maths yet, but the basic principle is functional. It's just the actual percentages seem to be slightly different. I have no stats at the moment for the ixp split if you are levelling 7 or 8 items.
Only those LI's that are slotted into the tabs of your Legendary Items Screen (default key shift+I, I’ve bound mine to the semi-colon for ease of access) are capable of gaining IXP. It's worth noting that you cannot remove a Bound item from the Legendary panel, only change the tab that it's on. Nor can you place a Bound LI in your vault. You can't equip / bind more than 6 (or 8, if you're willing to spend TP) at one time, & the only way of getting rid of one is to Deconstruct it. You can also apply Heritage Runes to your Items to give immediate boosts to IXP. Runes are often gained as loot; either from mobs (low value) or boss chests (medium value); or as quest / deed rewards (medium to high value). Later on, Deconstruction will also provide you with Runes, proportionate to the ixp in the item you've broken and provided it is at least L11.
Except for the two Epic quest LI's, all items can, initially, be levelled to 60. Scrolls are available that will allow you to progress them another 10 levels. All items, regardless of their Age, require the same xp to reach L30. After that, it's 20 / 40 / 80K per level, depending on whether the item is 3rd / 2nd / 1st Age. The other important thing to note is the Equippable Level (EL) of the item. With the advent of Mirkwood and the changes that brought, including the raised level cap, there is a sharp divide between LI's whose EL is L60 or less, and those whose EL is 61 to the cap (75 currently). Baubles can be applied to anything, regardless of its EL. Other stuff, such as unlock scrolls, are either more expensive to acquire for 61+ items, or unusable on an item the wrong side of the split.
With Isengard, there is, happily, no longer a distinction on ixp runes, unless they were already in existence. In othere words, the ixp rune you get from breaking aby L11+ LI can be applied to any LI. However, the legacy scroll that you receive from a L31+ LI will still be restricted, so it's probably still not worth levelling a 60- LI very far if you're beyond that level yourself.
Your initial pair of LIs (the ones gained from the Epic) are exceptions to the above. They have no EL, though you'll have to be at least L45 to get the quests in the first place, they can only be advanced to L40, they cannot be unlocked any further, and they have (or had) a bias towards being given more Legacies at a higher Tier than found, made, or traded-for LIs.
The last thing to say for this section is that Third Age items are always quite freely available. Second & First Age items are also around, though appropriately more rare. First Agers are only available from barter, certain high-end instances, and nowadays can be crafted (if you can lay your grubby little mitts on the necessary "special" ingredient); Second Agers ditto, but may also drop very infrequently as random loot too.
Rise of Isengard hasn't changed too much that affects this guide. Obviously there are now Items that require you to be above L65 to equip, but LI's themselves are pretty much the same. Some classes have had some legacies revised or replaced, and the changes to classes themselves may make you re-think which legacies you want in one or two cases. But this guide doesn't cover that anyway, so only minor revisions of the guide this time...
As we all know, Legendaries are customisable items that gain experience as you do. All Legendaries are class specific, each class having two different types available. Everyone has a Main-hand melee weapon (which may be 2-handed) & a Class item. The Class items are Tools, Emblem, Rune, Belt, Bow, Book, Book, Bag, & Javelin for BRG, CPT, CHM, GDN, HNT, LM, MNS, RK, & WDN respectively (so yes two classes actually get a second weapon). There is NO off-hand weapon / shield in the system, & it doesn't seem likely that there ever will be.
They are freely available, dropping regularly as loot, and come in 3 flavours, Third-, Second-, and First-Age. They can also be crafted and Third Agers can be bartered for. There are also Heritage Runes that grant xp, barter items that can be exchanged for new Items & Baubles to further buff your items, as well as special Infused Gems that allow you to do quests for Titles, and Titles can now also be acquired from Faction vendors too, if your rep is sufficient. ALL Legendary fluff is Bind on Acquire; only the Items themselves are Bind on Equip, so it’s only they that can be freely exchanged / sold / etc.
How's this thing work then?
Looted items range from L51-equippable upwards. However, any Legendary Item must be identified by a Forge-master before it can be equipped, and you can ONLY do this after you have completed Vol 2 Book I to gain access to Moria. Once you have, you can use any Forge-master in the world; it doesn’t have to be just those in Moria.
Since Legendary items gain experience from kills (many quests also give IXP as part of the reward), it’s as well to make sure that completing this book is more or less the first thing you do once you're high enough to be able to complete the requisite quests (L45). Running around Eregion killing stuff is all very well, but your Item might just as well be gaining XP with you, eh? Oh, plus part way through Vol 2 Book I you get your first Item (an unrestricted one that can be identified at Thorin's Hall or Rivendell, before you have access to Moria), which you then have to level to 10 & re-forge before you can get in.
Once you’ve identified an Item, you can Equip it (if you’re high enough, natch) & it becomes Bound. You can, of course, only equip one of each type at a time. However, your IXP is split between up to 6 Bound items that you are carrying (with another 2 slots available as purchases from the infamous LOTRO Store). This works in a similar way to regular fellowship XP does, so every extra item you are carrying multiplies the total amount of IXP by 1.2 before it is divided between the available items. In other words, when you are carrying a single bound Item, it earns 100% of the base IXP, but when you are carrying 2, they each earn proportionally more e.g. 60% of the base IXP, not 50% each.
Although you can disable leveling on individual items in order to speed the leveling of others, it can make sense to carry as many items as possible (see the section on All That Is Gold…). If this were strictly the fellowship XP formula, the maximum of 6 gives you 249% of normal xp split between the 6. The complete sequence is 1 Item: 100%; 2: 60% each; 3: 48%; 4: 43.2%; 5 & 6: 41.5%. Yes, those last two figures are correct, because 6 is 1.2 times bigger than 5, the same as the XP multiplier; which means it’s stupid to level 5 items, since you might as well level 6, if you can! However, the numbers don't quite seem to work out that way. I haven't sat down & done the maths yet, but the basic principle is functional. It's just the actual percentages seem to be slightly different. I have no stats at the moment for the ixp split if you are levelling 7 or 8 items.
Only those LI's that are slotted into the tabs of your Legendary Items Screen (default key shift+I, I’ve bound mine to the semi-colon for ease of access) are capable of gaining IXP. It's worth noting that you cannot remove a Bound item from the Legendary panel, only change the tab that it's on. Nor can you place a Bound LI in your vault. You can't equip / bind more than 6 (or 8, if you're willing to spend TP) at one time, & the only way of getting rid of one is to Deconstruct it. You can also apply Heritage Runes to your Items to give immediate boosts to IXP. Runes are often gained as loot; either from mobs (low value) or boss chests (medium value); or as quest / deed rewards (medium to high value). Later on, Deconstruction will also provide you with Runes, proportionate to the ixp in the item you've broken and provided it is at least L11.
Except for the two Epic quest LI's, all items can, initially, be levelled to 60. Scrolls are available that will allow you to progress them another 10 levels. All items, regardless of their Age, require the same xp to reach L30. After that, it's 20 / 40 / 80K per level, depending on whether the item is 3rd / 2nd / 1st Age. The other important thing to note is the Equippable Level (EL) of the item. With the advent of Mirkwood and the changes that brought, including the raised level cap, there is a sharp divide between LI's whose EL is L60 or less, and those whose EL is 61 to the cap (75 currently). Baubles can be applied to anything, regardless of its EL. Other stuff, such as unlock scrolls, are either more expensive to acquire for 61+ items, or unusable on an item the wrong side of the split.
With Isengard, there is, happily, no longer a distinction on ixp runes, unless they were already in existence. In othere words, the ixp rune you get from breaking aby L11+ LI can be applied to any LI. However, the legacy scroll that you receive from a L31+ LI will still be restricted, so it's probably still not worth levelling a 60- LI very far if you're beyond that level yourself.
Your initial pair of LIs (the ones gained from the Epic) are exceptions to the above. They have no EL, though you'll have to be at least L45 to get the quests in the first place, they can only be advanced to L40, they cannot be unlocked any further, and they have (or had) a bias towards being given more Legacies at a higher Tier than found, made, or traded-for LIs.
The last thing to say for this section is that Third Age items are always quite freely available. Second & First Age items are also around, though appropriately more rare. First Agers are only available from barter, certain high-end instances, and nowadays can be crafted (if you can lay your grubby little mitts on the necessary "special" ingredient); Second Agers ditto, but may also drop very infrequently as random loot too.