Thread: Down the drain - Last year's LI system revision

A while ago now we had a revamp of the legendary item system, here are excerpts from the dev diary.

With the decrease in combination requirements and number of tiers, we have a much shorter relic grind.

With all this consolidation, it will be significantly easier to get top tier relics.

This went live a year ago, since then, well, I've lost track of how many new tiers were added, but with the latest "top tier relics" requiring heaps of those "short grind" relics, heaps of gold to combine plus an extremely large amount of shards to make, we're now back to a grind that's possibly even worse than before the "revision", only you never had to do it all over again every time you acquired a new legendary item before.

To offset this, we’ve increased the gold cost of all the Legendary Item systems and removed the ability to remove relics safely from Legendary Items. We want relics to be things you gain and then spend (either by slotting or Refining), not things you keep around forever. However, the existence of the LOTRO store lets us offer Scrolls of Removal which will safely extract relics. We consider this to be a perfect kind of convenience for the store to sell; it is not required or needed for normal gameplay, but spending Turbine Points on it will give you a boost.

Scrolls of removal are now supposed to drop in-game also, but of course, as with stat tomes, the chance of that happening is ridiculously low and then it's only from scaled instances as opposed to instances you most likely run.

Now that the relic grind is back in all its splendor, Scrolls of Removal are hardly mere "convenience", they are required and needed for "normal" gameplay.

My alts are gathering dust currently, I can level them up, I can gear them up, I can get them new legendary items, I can get their new legendary items all the right legacies, I can level it all up, I might even cope with the scrolls of empowerment grind, but I can't for the life of me go through the insane relic grind *again*. Instead I'm not playing my alts. For that matter, I got a first age symbol for my main a while ago, crafted a nice song book that has since been in my bags entirely unused because it's got no bloody relics.

Various Scrolls that enhance your Legendary Items can also be made, and Melding can even create unidentified Legendary Items! All such items will be bound to your character. Our plan is to extend the recipes available in the Melding tab in future Updates as players decide what they like and don’t like about these changes.

The idea was that you could get your scrolls of delving etc from shards. Plain stupid shard costs have made this entirely void though.

---------------------

I think the LI system "revision" has failed to live to its promises, and spectacularly so. I would like to encourage Turbine to rethink its approach here, most notably on the following:

- Relic removal. This was never such a great idea to make it store-only, it certainly isn't now. Scrolls of Removal should be readily available in-game.
- New tiers. Ok, why not, but making requirements (gold, lower tier relics, shards, whatever) grow exponentially is an extremely bad idea. Over 3,000 shards to make one relic ? I don't think so.
- Scrolls from shards. Their costs has never been anywhere near reasonable and that should be addressed.

Well written. This grind is neither fun nor an efficient use of my time.

/signed

/signed. Wouldn't bother me at all if they got rid of LI's altogether.

Equendil, you've expressed my sentiments pretty spot-on. The reasoning you expressed is precisely why I don't play my alts anymore, and a big part of why I rarely log onto my main either. The cool-downs on crafted relics, while I see why they are in place, annoy the #### out of me when I'm trying to build up my shard bank. What happens now is I'll log in, maybe do the crafted relic gig, and then log back out after everything is on cooldown with the intent of logging back in a week later to repeat the process. However, over the weeks, I find that I just don't really give a care to log back in for such ridiculous purpose. However, none of this matters because if the Devs really had one iota of concern for this they wouldn't be so confoundedly extreme in relic creation/combination requirements. What would it cost them to allow LIs to continue leveling when level-caps are increased? What is so hard about not turning a deaf ear to the populace over years? I'm truly frustrated over this as well as forum complaints over unresolved bugs. I've fairly reached an attitude of apathy toward Lotro. I'm sad, but bored. Gonna go practice some drums and spend time with family. Good luck making any kind of difference, Equendil. +Rep for the effort, though.

I want to begin by saying that I am only working my second character through Moria now, so I am probably not as far along in this "grind" you speak of as you are, but frankly I have not had any problems with the LI system, besides being somewhat confusing at first. I do not feel as though I am grinding for relics for them. But then, I do not feel that I have to have my weapon immediately maxed out when I open it; if others prefer to find, identify, and max a weapon very quickly, perhaps it would feel more like a grind to them.

The LI system was flawed from the start. There is nothing legendary about a weapon if you swap it out every two levels. Crafted items last longer than that! The most amusing part, to me, about the LI system is that the drop rate of legendary items is waaay higher than the drop rate of green vendor trash weapons. It's gotten to the point where the rare trash green item drops actually attracts my attention, I examine it and try to guess what class it's made for, and sometimes laugh at the odd stat combinations. The pure novelty of vendor trash compared to the waves of legendary items excite me more about them than the legendary drops. That's when I realised the system had truly failed to do what it set out to do.

I long for the days of empty promises from Turbine for the second phase of a planned two-phase revamp. Alas, it never came and even the promises stopped, leaving us with just hopeless despair.

You are right- the relic system now is far far worse than the old one. They added substantial complexity for no gain. The old system, while random, was at least incredibly simple. I don't see any value at all in the new system. You are right- the grind is substantially higher as well, but the gain from getting two additional relic tiers is so incredibly low that I don't know of anyone that even bothers with it. Between the marginal gains, the costs, and the complexity, they've almost managed to make relics irrelevant.

Originally Posted by Bitza

I want to begin by saying that I am only working my second character through Moria now, so I am probably not as far along in this "grind" you speak of as you are, but frankly I have not had any problems with the LI system, besides being somewhat confusing at first. I do not feel as though I am grinding for relics for them. But then, I do not feel that I have to have my weapon immediately maxed out when I open it; if others prefer to find, identify, and max a weapon very quickly, perhaps it would feel more like a grind to them.

The issue is that, when you're leveling up and first getting LI's, they're such a massive improvement over *not* having them (especially for the laughable non-legendary class items) that it's hard not to love the system. Even T1 relics in the three non-crafted slots can give you a massive boost in important areas.

When you hit cap, though, LI's are one of the most important ways to develop your character. Group content is difficult to the point where certain legacies are *expected*, rather than optional, and the difference between "getting some nice bonuses" by slotting whatever relics and seriously improving your character by slotting the *right* relics is substantial. Legacies are even more important; I can't even imagine a champion running with a legendary weapon that didn't have the +50% crit magnitude (on all skills!) legacy maxed out. Hell, that one legacy blows every single one of our class traits out of the water by a huge margin.

At cap, the costs of actually upgrading these things is insane. Leveling trash LI's up to get the right legacy scrolls for your "real" items is pretty easy - no complaints there. However, the shards you need to meld things vs. the shards you get from refining is hilarious. I think Scrolls of Greater Empowerment cost something like 14,000 shards to meld, when you get ~200 shards per T6 relic. I can get 1-2 T6 relics per run of Stoneheight. So that's around 100 Stoneheight runs to get enough shards to make ONE empowerment scroll, when you'd most likely need a dozen or more to max out the legacy tiers on ONE LI.

The problem is just ludicrous, Zimbabwe-like exponential inflation of costs. The gap between costs of 65-and-under relics and scrolls and 65+ ones is enormous (even at the skirmish camp). While the grind to get your LI's up to par right now is already incredibly daunting, especially for classes that need a bunch of them (let alone people with tons of alts), if the trend continues and we need 50k shards to make level 85 scrolls, it will be completely soul-crushing.

The relics grind is absurd and broken in it's present form, bad turbine, very poorly implemented. It is also needlessly expensive and time consuming, who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to have to combine all lower tier relics into higher tier relics individually with a confirmation for each one? I did this recently and I had to do hundreds of relics combines to obtain the ones I wanted.

making good relics for me was easy really I had enough t7's for get the t7 I wanted in both and since nothing matches the t6 extraordinary relics I put in the other 2 slots. As far as shards are concerned if you level 4 crafters to max and max guild you can make 2-3k relics just from refining crafted relics per character and there is not much effort involved in getting the mats for the relics really. T8 relics to me offer little in the way of stat gain to justify bothering to make them and t6 relics are easy to make if you just do skirmishes especially duo's. Group skirms will give several relic packs per run easily from drops. Then you do the 2 galtrevs and the isen dailies and get more relic packs. Now greater empowerments yeah that is ridiculous for sure.

Originally Posted by gelleg

making good relics for me was easy really I had enough t7's for get the t7 I wanted in both and since nothing matches the t6 extraordinary relics I put in the other 2 slots. As far as shards are concerned if you level 4 crafters to max and max guild you can make 2-3k relics just from refining crafted relics per character and there is not much effort involved in getting the mats for the relics really. T8 relics to me offer little in the way of stat gain to justify bothering to make them and t6 relics are easy to make if you just do skirmishes especially duo's. Group skirms will give several relic packs per run easily from drops. Then you do the 2 galtrevs and the isen dailies and get more relic packs. Now greater empowerments yeah that is ridiculous for sure.

I agree. The relic grind was much worse before RoI, and they made it even easier after update 6 (relic combos routinely give more than one relic). I used to HATE grinding relics, but now I don't even pay attention to it and can get the special tier 6 relics and the tier 7 and 8 without too much effort. And they should just remove the option to get greater empowerment scrolls since the shared cost is absurd.

Personally I've never felt the need for relic removal scrolls. I just slot a T5 or whatever in each slot and I'm good to go. When the next item shows up, throw in another T5. Yes it's a long grind to get a bunch of T8 relics... so I don't do it. I'm not grinding for days to get another +3 to my main stat, thanks anyway. Scrolls from shards do have crazy costs too... so I don't buy them. My legacies are pretty decent as-is, I don't feel the need to spend hundreds of gold on empowerment scrolls to max them out.

You can complain about the hamster wheel, or jump off it.

Actually I think that with U6 the grind lessened..sure they added T8, but on the other hand you get Fused T5/6 relics everywhere and combining gives you a much higher output

What I think is really needed is to adjust the relics to the stats we have. At 65 Relics made around 1/3 of your total offence rating, now it´s rather 1/8.

I´d like to see the highest +mastery relics add 1500 with Rohan and the ones we have now (T8) should be scaled to 1200 (Gem of Charity and Rune of Power)

I've already got one character to the cap, and I didn't think the relic grind was bad at all. It was the grind for scrolls of greater of empowerment that was disgusting and horrendous.

Originally Posted by TheOrcsBane

I've already got one character to the cap, and I didn't think the relic grind was bad at all. It was the grind for scrolls of greater of empowerment that was disgusting and horrendous.

I feel the same. Greater SOEs are a nasty grind. My first thought when I won the lottery for a Greater Symbol of the Eldar King was wow, cool! Second thought was aw man, another 12 GSOE and a greater delving needed :/

I have more than enough relics/shards/etc. Heck, solo stoneheight @ 75 gives you 10 T4 relics and a bunch of IXP pills, levelling items to 60 while doing whatever you think is fun gives you a pile of T5s. And crafted relics are good source for shards. What it does all do is give me less incentive to alt, as the multiplication of (what is to me) a reasonable grind for one character by X gets unreasonable soon enough...

The "legendary" system is why I'm not playing any more. I can stand levelling my character, I can stand farming for a drop. I hate leveling a weapon or grinding for relics that will be obsolete the next expansion.

Yes turbine didn't follow through on their promises

Yes it is a grind to get legendaries weapons and items maxed

No, I can't see myself putting relic grinds at the top of the "I quit" list. It's so easy to get relics from tier 4 (stoneheight, any lvl 65 instance), tier 5 (fangorn, pits, dargnakh, foundry, draigoch), tier 6 ( ToO t1 & t2), and tier 7(draigoch, ToO t2) relics. And yo ucan pass them off to alts. It's so easy to get tier 7's, and decon tier 7's into shards.

I would put greater scrolls of empowerment at the top of the grind list. but one foundry/roots run nets about 1 Greater Scroll of Empowerment worth of medallions, so i really don't complain about that either.

Meh, it's not that bad to me, but I agree turbine didn't make legendary system feel legendary.

Originally Posted by mrfigglesworth

Meh, it's not that bad to me, but I agree turbine didn't make legendary system feel legendary.

It might depend on how often you've done it. I had four toons at 60, got them equipped. Then took them all to 65, and got them equipped. Now I am looking at 75. *sigh*

Every other MMO I have played, you get to max level, equip your toon for raiding, raid, kill the boss, win the drop, and you're equipped. It might take a long time, but then you are done until the cap is raised.

In LotRO, winning the drop is just the start for legendary items.

What I'd like to see in the next LI revision is this:

Cosmetic Legendaries. The idea is that you can use any same-type weapon to display the appearance of your legendary item - like what we already have with armor pieces. The appearance and name would be the same (set or slot based like the durrent cosmetic set system perhaps?), while the "stat weapon" would be changed every few levels - with the applied title scroll sticking with the cosmetic look, not the "stat weapon". That way, you could have the "same" weapon with you for ages. Personally, I like the looks of some level 30-40 swords - and I would pay a lot to have them cosmetically equipped - without the blind and shine of weapon damage types.

So far... I was ok with t6, t7, and now t8. What I don't like is how occasionally you'll more than triple the cost for a measly +40 tactical mastery(as going from extraordinary rune of power to great river rune of power). That is ridiculous. It's such an insignificant gain.

Originally Posted by Draykfyre

So far... I was ok with t6, t7, and now t8. What I don't like is how occasionally you'll more than triple the cost for a measly +40 tactical mastery(as going from extraordinary rune of power to great river rune of power). That is ridiculous. It's such an insignificant gain.

So don't get t8 relics.. Lord knows I don't, though this is partly because the t6 extraordinaries are great for both my hunter and my warden.

Having said that, I will sign this thread as well, precisely because the stat increase for t8 relics is pathetic compared to the melding cost increase.

/signed! The thread is a bit old but I was going to write a post myself and found
so many threads. The amount of threads on this topic is quite impressive!
And the LI system is still so, so frustrating!!! Why?

-The randomness on legacies are insane. It's not fun. (this is the biggest problem with the system now!)
-The grinding for a good LI is even more random and insane and not fun!
-The system is far to complex.
-There is very little info in the game about the LI system!!!
-The "cost," the amount of shards and relics needed are insane too.
-The Legendary Items doesn't feel legendary at all! (They drop as loot
and even the good ones, that you put a lot of work in, will eventually be deconstructed.)

So many people writing in this forums have come up with really good ideas on how to improve the system.
and so many seems to almost have given up. They have either stopped complaining or stopped playing or both.
They say that turbine wont change it cause they're making lots of cash. Well maybe so.

I want to say, don't stop writing. Don't stop complaining!!!

And Turbine (if you read this. probably you wont) two things;

1/Keep in mind that (almost) everyone that complains does that because they like the game!
They want to play the game! Otherwise they wouldn't even bother writing all this posts.
Maybe you are making a lot of money now. But the "fan base" are unhappy. They will leave.
I don't have any numbers so this might be incorrect, but to me it seams like the amount of
players are decreasing. At least on my server. (of course not only because of the LI system.
there are lots of other games to compete with) But I believe this could be one of the main reasons.

2/There is a BIG difference between a frustrated player and a happy player. BOTH will by items in store!!!
but for different reasons. One of them will eventually leave the game.

The LI system was never designed with any kind of longevity or expansion in mind. Each new addition or adjustment just adds more grind and noone in their right mind will ever say that grinding is fun. New tier means more relics needed to upgrade and adjustments like the relic removal going to the scrolls means you need to grind even more for those and the other scrolls.

Relics are too prone to the RNG system rather than weighting the upgrade process to suit the class doing it.

New additions like the bridles are half baked, bridle relics need regular relics plus shards instead of the common sense nuking of a bridle.

Costs of things looks to have been done by a different person for each tier, that or they just pulled numbers out a hat and multiplied the number of months until the next expansion.

At which point when the system went live did you actually get a weapon that levelled with you other than the first couple of levels inside moria. If it did level with you we'd all still be using and levelling our original weapons, adjusting relics and whatnot as we go.

Originally Posted by Moneydie

If it did level with you we'd all still be using and levelling our original weapons, adjusting relics and whatnot as we go.

This is exactly what I thought the LIs would be when I first came across them. I remember buying a third age bow for my hunter when she was still in her 30s, anticipating the time I could use it. Man, was I sorely disappointed when it didn't meet those expectations. A weapon that stays with you all throughout would truly be legendary. As it is, it's nothing but trash waiting to be replaced.

LIs really should follow suit in the Skirmish soldier or Warsteed progression, something that you can actually customize and "grow" with you. Beyond the time sink and insane cost that people are reporting, it seems really dumb that you discard a weapon that is supposed to be "legendary" all the time, and destroy even more in the course of leveling.

I'd prefer to see the entire system scrapped for random drops, crafted weapons and barter rewards that are tailored to individual classes again. Either that or seriously consider unifying all the different leveling/customization options for characters, soldiers, steeds and weapons into a similar UI and structure.

I think this would allow people to really become attached to their weapons, and allow you to carry it through all of your adventures. Make the entry point the same, you get your first taste in Moria, start leveling the weapon, slot skills and stats, allow the addition of relics to further increase stats (much like other games allow you to slot gems). Allow the application of scrolls for damage types, etc.

Overall the system could be a lot more engaging and get people to feel invested in their weapons as yet another character type.

I dont even think relics and the whole shard business is explained throughly enough, because to be honest, I still to this day have no clue how to not randomly gain shards ...and gain them when I want.

I have to agree with the OP and the sentiments of others here.

Originally Posted by GingerAj

I dont even think relics and the whole shard business is explained throughly enough, because to be honest, I still to this day have no clue how to not randomly gain shards ...and gain them when I want.

1) Craft the barter items to turn in for Crafted Relics at your Crafting Guild Leader.
2) Barter for those relics at your Guild Leader and decon them so they end up in your relic "pool".
3) Go to a Relic Master and then Refine the crafted relics that you do not need.
4) Do this regularly and you will amass a decent amount of shards. Doing it across multiple characters will let you get even more, and a lot faster.

Alternately, you can do the following:

1) Do fast and easy instances to gain the relics and item xp runes. First boss of Stoneheight is a good example. Fast, easy and you can just keep repeating it over and over.
2) Once you have a large amount of Sealed relics to decon and a nice pool of item XP runes, go to town on deconning the relics and leveling up legendary items to max (always to max level 60 now because you get higher tier relics on the decon) then deconning the LIs
3) Now you have a large amount of relics in your relic "pool". Now forge the relics using the autocombine up until tier 4 or 5.
4) Now refine the relics until you have enough shards that you need.

/signed.

The LI system is ridiculously over complicated, time consuming and uninspiring. Its also very demotivating to level any alts that you have.

Originally Posted by FlareAsh

/signed.

The LI system is ridiculously over complicated, time consuming and uninspiring. Its also very demotivating to level any alts that you have.

I used to think that. Then I stopped leveling my main at L80 in Rohan, and I'm leveling another alt instead. This is the same pattern as I did in Isengard, when I eventually got to cap in time to quit again and never do the dungeons. So I think at first it's demotivating for alts, then it's demotivating for mains, causing you to prefer to level alts instead of getting to cap.

I erm... eh...
wut guys?


Item to Receive Items to Trade
Scroll of Greater Empowerment 935 Marks 84 Medallions

Doesn't sound horrible guys.
Not at all.

Am I missing something? Was this thread done pre-rohan?

Originally Posted by Krazus

I erm... eh...
wut guys?


Item to Receive Items to Trade
Scroll of Greater Empowerment 935 Marks 84 Medallions

Doesn't sound horrible guys.
Not at all.

Am I missing something? Was this thread done pre-rohan?

Holy thread necro batman.

Mind you, riddermark scrolls of empowerment cost about twice that. But running Durchest a few dozen times will solve those problems, and get your crystals and symbols too. Heck, running the Yule Festival daily on some alts got me enough marks for a few scrolls.

Still was sad to decon my level 75 first age. I was attached to it, and would sentimentally rather had an upgrade path for it rather than trash my "legendary" item...

Originally Posted by DelgonTheWise

Holy thread necro batman.

Mind you, riddermark scrolls of empowerment cost about twice that. But running Durchest a few dozen times will solve those problems, and get your crystals and symbols too. Heck, running the Yule Festival daily on some alts got me enough marks for a few scrolls.

Still was sad to decon my level 75 first age. I was attached to it, and would sentimentally rather had an upgrade path for it rather than trash my "legendary" item...

I agree! I'm sure we could come up with a "grindy" method (therefore TP-able method, i know you turbine) to further increase our Old level 75 legendaries into 85 themselves, instead of deconing them. Seriously how, in lore perspective, could we trash our beloved weapon so earnestly? Why??

I am in agreemenet with your opinion.

Originally Posted by DelgonTheWise

Still was sad to decon my level 75 first age. I was attached to it, and would sentimentally rather had an upgrade path for it rather than trash my "legendary" item...

Originally Posted by Krazus

I agree! I'm sure we could come up with a "grindy" method (therefore TP-able method, i know you turbine) to further increase our Old level 75 legendaries into 85 themselves, instead of deconing them. Seriously how, in lore perspective, could we trash our beloved weapon so earnestly? Why??

I think this is the whole beef with the LI system; what's "legendary" about a weapon that lasts from maybe a couple hours to maybe a couple weeks? They "grow with you" (Turbine's initial selling point for the LIs) for awhile, if you choose not to trade in your current one for any of the myriads of legendary weapons dropping off mobs from Moria onwards. Those darn orcs sure do have a lot of legends among them! It's got a blade? Legendary!!! (So they can't tell staves from swordpoints. They're orcs.)

I was sad to decon my first ever legendary weapon, let alone any of the higher level ones I worked to make good for my characters. It burst the bubble of my dream about legendary weapons.

Originally Posted by Abiyah

I think this is the whole beef with the LI system; what's "legendary" about a weapon that lasts from maybe a couple hours to maybe a couple weeks? They "grow with you" (Turbine's initial selling point for the LIs) for awhile, if you choose not to trade in your current one for any of the myriads of legendary weapons dropping off mobs from Moria onwards. Those darn orcs sure do have a lot of legends among them! It's got a blade? Legendary!!! (So they can't tell staves from swordpoints. They're orcs.)

I was sad to decon my first ever legendary weapon, let alone any of the higher level ones I worked to make good for my characters. It burst the bubble of my dream about legendary weapons.

I still remember the excitement a number of my friends and I had when Moria launched regarding getting legendary items. One member of our group bulled straight into Moria and was running around in there mostly by himself while the rest of us were still out in Eregion.

After a few hours of listening to him describe his finds on Vent - namely, that he was getting an LI drop about every 2-3 minutes - we realized that perhaps legendary items weren't going to be quite as cool as we were hoping. (None of us had been in Moria beta, so we weren't already disillusioned.)

T6 and extraordinary relics are still viable imo

As countless others have said, the poopy increases from t6 to t8 do not, even if you had a million years to spare, justify the exponential increase in shards required to meld.

T8s / great rivers need to be made much easier to get, much stronger, or some combo of both.

Keep in mind this is the first time I've paid serious attention to my LIs for my main toon - but when I consider the amount of time I've put into tweaking my belt (2nd age) and my sword (a 3rd age until I get a symbol of c...) I cringe when I consider a raise in level cap because it means starting all over.

When I got to the point of the game to get my first LI - it was disappointing to figure out how quickly I'd be decon-ing those items for new ones. I really wish they'd made the system in such a way that I could tweak and upgrade my original LIs as I went through the game.

It can get very pricey very quickly to max out your LIs - but it doesn't have to if you pace yourself and don't get too obsessive about having the top tier right off the bat or multiple LI sets. At least that's how I'm looking at it.

But - it is what it is. I can at least hope that we're a year or so away from a level cap increase and I can enjoy the LIs I've been working on for a long time. Until 1st age LIs come around...

Originally Posted by DelgonTheWise

Mind you, riddermark scrolls of empowerment cost about twice that. But running Durchest a few dozen times will solve those problems, and get your crystals and symbols too. Heck, running the Yule Festival daily on some alts got me enough marks for a few scrolls.

How many to run Durchest a few dozen times for one character? I have 8 characters. No way I am doing Durchest 100 times.

Originally Posted by keeker_ks

But - it is what it is. I can at least hope that we're a year or so away from a level cap increase and I can enjoy the LIs I've been working on for a long time. Until 1st age LIs come around...

After having gone thru this effort with Moria and Mirkwood, I am burned out on this system. I never went beyond a level 75 3rd age. I doubt I will have or use a level 85 second age.

Originally Posted by Yula_the_Mighty

After having gone thru this effort with Moria and Mirkwood, I am burned out on this system. I never went beyond a level 75 3rd age. I doubt I will have or use a level 85 second age.

After doing it twice - I'd be burned out too I think. It's the novelty of gearing out for the first time that's made it significantly less painful both in the time and marks/medallions/shards/gold invested.

Ask me how I feel a level cap raise or two from now and I'm sure I'll be right there with you!