LotRO's Update 16:
Ashes of Osgiliath brings not only a new region to the game, but a
new LI system as well. This system, called "Imbuement" is
designed to make your LIs grow as your character does, so no need to
discard and rebuild every time the level cap rises. Whether this
succeeded or not is not the subject I am covering today. This is a
factual, picture-supported walkthrough of the new system, with the
aim of informing players about the changes, enabling them to more
easily make choices about their LIs.
There is something
fundamentally important to understand about the imbuing system. The
better your LI is before imbuing, the more IXP it will cost to trick
out your item at the beginning. But this also means less cost in
terms of other LI enhancements such as Scrolls of Empowerment, etc.
Another thing that is important to understand is that an imbued LI
will surpass the abilities of a non-imbued LI long before it is
completely tricked out, and this can be done just by spending IXP.
Before you imbue
your Legendary Item, you should first make sure that the item is at
least level 30, so they have 6 legacies unlocked. If you imbue before
the item is level 30, you can still obtain 6 (or even 7) legacies,
but it will require a Crystal of Remembrance per legacy instead of
having to use at most one Crystal if you just wait til level 30.
The next thing you
should do is make sure your LI has the legacies you want on it. It is
possible to change out legacies upon imbuement, but it requires a
Legacy Replacement Scroll, so it's better to try and lock in your
legacies before imbuement. OPTIONAL: use a scroll of Delving, level
your item to 70, use 3 Star-lit Crystals and a Crystal of Remembrance
to get your 7th legacy. None of these are necessary to
imbue, but will make things less hectic for you at the beginning.
If you are happy
with your LI's legacies, and are interested in imbuing your item, go
to your vault and grab your IXP runes. You will need a lot, roughly
6-8 of the 938.000 runes per item to begin with. Examples shown are
using a Loremaster Staff of the First Age, but all items work the
same way.
The Forge-master is
who you want to see in order to get this started. Talk to him and
you'll notice he has a new option: Imbue Legendary Item. When you
click on this, a new window will pop up that looks like this:
You can use the
arrows to click through until you find the LI you wish to imbue. Once
you have the correct LI selected, you can click imbue. This is the
point of no return. You cannot un-imbue an item once it is imbued.
The most you can do is destroy it, so be sure you are ready.
This is what you are
looking at:
1. Hasn't changed,
that would be your LI's name and title.
2. The imbued LI's
xp bar. The first number is the total amount of accumulated tiers
thus far; the number on the right is the total possible (without
adding any items). As you can see, this LI has a lot of room for IXP.
3. The xp bar for
each legacy.
4. The number of
accumulated/total possible tiers for your main legacy. On weapons,
this is damage rating. On class items, it's whatever was at the top
before (healing rating, incoming healing, etc.)
5. The number of
accumulated/total possible tiers for all other legacies.
6. Looks like this
weapon can still acquire one more legacy.
7. If you want to
replace a legacy or disable this LI's ability to accumulate IXP,
here's where you go.
Before continuing,
let's compare the LI before and after imbuement, no points spent, no
work put into either:
Now as you have
probably noticed, some legacies have different numbers of
possible tiers unlocked. If you mouse over the box you'll get
Current max tier
refers to the current tier your LI can go to, and unlockable tiers
tells you how many tiers are left to unlock before that legacy is
capped. Each legacy's unlock total is determined by how good the LI
was before imbuing. A Tier 1 legacy under the old system starts out
at 1/25, meaning it can gain 25 tiers through IXP before another tier
needs to be unlocked. You can unlock 10 tiers for a total of 35, all
of which are filled by IXP. A tier 2 legacy starts at 1/26, etc., up
to a tier 6 which starts at 1/30. If the LI has had a Scroll of
Delving used on it, that unlocks a tier for every legacy, so all
legacies move up one, meaning your Tier 6 legacy will start at 1/31.
The one that is
different is your main legacy. This one starts out at 1/15, and can
go up to tier 25 before capping. There are several things that affect
the number you start with for your main legacy. If your LI was a
Third Age, with no Star-lit Crystals or Scrolls of Delving, you start
at 1/15 with 10 tiers to unlock. A Scroll of Delving brings it up 1,
as do each Star-lit Crystal. A Second Age with no Star-lits or Scroll
of Delving starts at tier 2/16, and a First Age starts at Tier 4/19 –
the higher the age of the LI, the more tiers start unlocked. So yes,
your Third Age can become as good as a First Age, with a little more
work put in.
Here's what we get
when we first start dumping IXP runes into the LI.
As you can see, each
legacy gets the same amount of XP. There is no way to shut off or
disable an individual legacy from leveling. However, this also means
you don't have to spend points on your LI. That's right, no more LI
reset every time there's an update.
Now, I decided to
add a Crystal of Remembrance to gain my 7th legacy. So I
use my crystal and get
The list on the
right is all the possible legacies I can put in that slot. Notice the
lack of majors and minors: those no longer exist. If you wanted to
put in the effort, you could make every single legacy a former major.
So, new legacy added
It starts out as
though it was a Tier 1 legacy with no Scroll of Delving used. This is
why it's important to use your Scroll of Delving after your legacies
are all set, but if you don't all it costs you is some effort.
Ooooh, they turned
silver! And the numbers say they're full!
This means you have
put as much IXP into your LI as you can without unlocking new tiers.
So it'll be time to start unlocking tiers here in a moment. But
first, let's replace a legacy. (Note: this is for demonstration
purposes only! If you really want to replace a legacy, consider doing
it earlier in the process.)
Get your Legacy
Replacement Scroll (new item for this update; old legacy scrolls will
NOT work on imbued items!), use it and you get
I'm replacing that
Lightning Skills Critical Rating legacy. So I click on it, and then
go to the list on the right to find what I'm looking for, then
replace it. Now I have to dump IXP into the new legacy.
So the next thing
I'm going to do is start unlocking tiers on legacies. For your main
legacy, this is done using Star-lit Crystals. The old cap of 3 is
lifted, you can use as many Star-lits as necessary. For the other
legacies, this is done using Scrolls of Empowerment. I unlock all the
tiers, add a liberal amount of IXP, and get
Ooooh look, now
they're gold! That means they have reached their limit and I can do
nothing more with those legacies. There's still the rest, though...
Well, let's look at
the results here. Picture on the left is the LI with all the points
dumped into it before imbuing. Picture on the right is the same LI
after hitting the soft cap, before dumping any Star-lit Crystals or
Scrolls of Empowerment in.
As you can see, there's a fairly
significant different in power, and that was obtained through IXP
alone! You can improve your LI without spending a single mark, gold
piece or TP. But of course you can go further if you wish!
Something to note:
each legacy does indeed have a picture of a mithril coin next to it.
Yes, you can unlock every last tier of every last legacy by using
mithril coins, if you wish. Happily, you can also use ingame items to
do the same thing. You can completely max out your LI without
spending a single mithril coin or TP.
So very quickly here
let's go over what ingame items work on these imbued LIs. Scrolls of
Delving add a single unlocked tier to every legacy at once, but like
before can only be used once per LI. Scrolls of Empowerment add a
single unlocked tier to one legacy, like before, and have unlimited
uses. Star-lit Crystals add a single unlocked tier to your main
legacy, which is a bit like it worked before, but now they have
unlimted uses instead of 3. Crystals of Rembrance still add a new
legacy to your LI as before, up to 7 total legacies. So if you do
accidentally imbue an item before it hits level 30, you can still get
7 legacies, but it'll cost you multiple Crystals of Remembrance. Your
old legacy replacement scrolls no longer work; you will have to
obtain a new item just added to the game called Legacy Replacement
Scroll. Relics, titles and IXP all work like before and use the same
items.
Should you choose to use Mithril Coins, here's the cost for that. To increase the tier of one legacy (Scroll of Empowerment), it's 29 Mithril Coins. To increase the main legacy (Star-lit Crystal) it is also 29 Mithril Coins. To unlock a new legacy (Crystal of Remembrance) it's 99 MC. Replacing a legacy (Legacy Replacement Scroll) will cost you 50 MC. Scroll of Delving is still 195 TP, and again can only be used once.
Questions? Come find
me. I'll see what I can do to answer them.
