New LotRO Dev Diary Discusses Legendary Item System Revamp

The mad rush of change continues to roll out in the form of href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro">the Lord
of the Rings Online Developer Diaries. The href="http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/1054-update-2-legendary-item-system-remvamp-developer-diary">Latest
One, by Ken "Graalx2" Burd and Brian "Zombie Columbus"
Aloisio, detail a number of forthcoming changes to the legendary item
(LI) system.

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.

Some of the highlights of this new system: 

Heritage Runes (the item XP "pills") are no longer split
into 2 types. All new Heritage Runes will work on all levels of
legendary items. Runes that are in the player's inventory prior to the
update will not be changed. Relics will no longer be returned to the stockpile when
reforging a LI. To safely remove slotted relics, players will need to
buy a scroll from the LotRO Store. There are only 6 tiers of relics instead of 9, and 10
"normal" relics per tier. Additional relics can be crafted with the
"Transmuting" system (which Zombie Columbus calls "Melding" in the dev
diary). Combining relics to get higher-tiered ones is still a
random crap-shoot, which now costs more coin at higher tiers but
requires fewer relics. To get a tier 6 relic, for example, requires
combining 3 tier 5 relics. The system is just as random, but better
relics are easier (if more costly) to get. To somewhat offset the coin
cost, relics can be "refined" into shards, which are meant to be a
separate "currency" for the LI system, and can be used to craft special
relics with the "Transmuting/Melding" system. Deconstructing a level 30+ LI nets the player a legacy
scroll. This scroll can be made from any legacy currently on the
deconstructed weapon, and can be used on any LI of the same type for
the same class. For example, a Hunter deconstructing a level 30
crossbow can get a legacy scroll of + Bleed Damage, which can be
applied to either a Hunter bow or Hunter crossbow, but not to a melee
weapon or a LI belonging to any other class. This is awesome because it
means that any crafted LI is viable, even if it originally IDs with
crap legacies.

In general, the intent is to reduce the amount of grinding
required to get suitable LIs and relics, and to give players a better
measure of control and specialization. The system is currently active
on Bullroarer for beta testing for anyone who wishes to try these new
systems out for themselves. 

More details are given in the href="http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/1054-update-2-legendary-item-system-remvamp-developer-diary">Update
2: Legendary Item System Revamp Dev
Diary.