Sandbox:U30.3 Low Level LI Conversion

This is a sandbox page, it contains ideas that may not accurately reflect the game as it currently plays. It's a collection of mainly screenshots and examples from one character of mine. It's likely that some of these mechanics will change in the near future which is why I didn't put it in the main Legendary Items page. Acatlover2 (talk) 02:26, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

This is my level 69 hunter who is mainly a Guilded Woodworker among my alts. He has the following attributes that make him a good choice for testing the low level conversion process:

He is not the lowest level user of LIs, but somewhere in the middle of the range 50-86.
In a couple of levels, he will be eligible to reforge again so I don't have to wait long to find out what that does.
He is well geared because I've had time at his level to make him everything he could possibly need, and had extra motes and marks to buy him excellent armor and offhand upgrades. He is one of the alts I used to join Big Battles with and he has set bonuses on his jewellery even.
He doesn't have a bridle at all yet, and he hasn't quested as much as he might have, which leaves a lot of XP available to him in Mirkwood and Stangard/Brown Lands. He's not "stuck" without a bridle.
His current LI's are both maxed and level 70. Hardly anyone would bother to use Remembrance on this level, but he does have nice relics too. I neglected to get him crafted relics though he could've made them. Still, they should yield very good returns for appraisal.
His other 4 LI's are what you'd expect, partially leveled, no relics, third age. And they have a range of LI advancement levels, 11, 41, 42, 57.
This is about as ideal a situation as you could hope for at low levels.

Narrative

If you log in any time after October 13, 2021, when Update 30.3 was released, about a month before the Gundabad expansion was released, your Legendary Items will no longer advance and there will be a new LI system to convert to permanently. One of the challenges of the new system is that people with legendary items below level 100, and not imbued, can find themselves having to budget carefully during this process. Careful budgeting was not necessary for level 116 and above, in my experience, and all characters 121 and higher received the most current LI traceries available at the time. So, a guide for lower levels is needed.

It's difficult to make such a guide though, because it's probably going to change. The lowest tier of Legendary Items is available to characters from levels 45 through 85. When the tracery is purchased, it begins at level 51 and may be enhanced to item level 95 (with rare enhancements) or 125 with other bonuses or Mithril. In addition, this is the time when the character would pass through Rohan, gaining the ability to fight on horseback. The Legendary Item, Bridle, is gained around level 71 traditionally. That part of LoTRO is not yet updated yet. This guide seeks to provide a snapshot in time, just after the update, to form a baseline for the changes coming.

Like all guides, the steps are the same:

Appraise existing items, perhaps not all at once.
Go to the Gobeth Teithian, the Archive of Traceries in Rivendell
Use the Ancient Scripts to buy new type Legendary Weapon and Class Item
Reforge the (Item) of Legend (new LI) to scale it up to your level. This changes mainly the DPS at this point.
Search the library's book shelves for your Class, Heraldry and other Traceries and purchase what you can, budgeting with the materials you have. Be careful to choose your Level carefully from the choices.
Buy Traceries you want, as many as will fit the slots in your reforged new LI.
Enhance Traceries using Yellow, Purple, Teal, and Gold Enhancements.
Compare old and new LI's by equipping them alternately. You must equip both as a set, old and new can't be mixed.
Decide which set gives you better results.

Appraisal and Reforging

The first thing I noticed was appraisal was much more limited compared to level 121+ characters. For my level 130 alts, I had stopped levelling additional LI's because I didn't need the shards or the relics anymore. But I knew from the forums that I should put a few LIs there before this update and level them up. So I did. I didn't spare that thought for my lower level alts who are mainly crafters. Low level alts did level LIs and gather relics and shards in preparation for the day when they would need to make level 100 relics, the first "forever" relics until Doomfold and Mordor. Now that whole strategy is no longer needed.

What this means is, lower level characters have a range of advancement in their "extra LIs" they don't usually have LIs at level 60 advancement. I started appraising with one of the "good LIs" and one of the lowest advanced LIs. There is a comparison showing the huge difference. Even so, I was able to finish making the new LIs without appraising every weapon I have on this well geared character. I'm not sure why I feel instinctively that I should wait to appraise later. Maybe because appraisal is a one time benefit that will never happen again. My tendency has been to be as careful as possible about this process. I was able to keep two weapons un-appraised. We'll see if it does me any good.

You will generally always be able to buy the weapon, but the cost of Reforging can be significant. Here's a simple reminder that if you're short of cash, crafting materials and crafted coffee and buffs like food and battle scrolls can refresh your gold supply over a couple of weeks. Infused Garnet, Sapphire, and Adamant are currently selling well, so if you farm them for your own use (for developing your new LIs via Dolven View instances), sell some at the auction house too.

The results of reforging in my case, slightly lowered my DPS. I'm not sure I understand why. Low level hunters don't need a nerf and this wasn't a nerf anyway. At the end of the process many character stats are buffed, not nerfed. But a lot of players will see that number go down, even a little and have an instant cold water feeling. Since this is the 5th character I had converted, I did have a lot of faith that I'd be overall better off at the end. I'm not sure I'd have that faith if this was my only character. But that situation is, admittedly, unusual, most people have been playing LoTRO for many years.

Traceries, Care and Feeding

Concepts:

Legendary Items are reforged to scale them to your level as your character advances.
Traceries are "fed" Enhancements to scale them up and make them stronger as your character finds Enhancement Runes through game play rewards.

Mithril coins may be used to advance traceries faster, just as before, but will no longer advance the DPS or main statistic.

You must be careful when choosing traceries to match your level, and the quality you are willing to pay for in Ancient Scrolls and, at this level, Khazad-Dum Tracery tokens. The quality types from least to best are: Yellow / Uncommon, Purple / Rare, Teal / Incomparable, Gold / Legendary.
Don't overthink traceries and levels. You are buying level 50 traceries that start at item level 51 and you will probably have mainly Rare Enhancements to bring them to item level 95. You can get lost in details here, but it's designed to be intuitive.

Basics

You'll need to remove both your old LI's or it will be hard to know how much progress you're making. Before you do, it's a good idea to get a screenshot of your stats and drop it in an image program for reference. Put your LI's in your bags for now.

Once reforged, equip both new LI's even if they have no traceries yet. Then drag one LI to the flame beneath your boots on the Character screen (Press C). This opens the new LI panel. In my case I had 5 tracery slots available on each weapon, one Heraldry, two Class (Mastery), one Craft, and one Power.

Note that it's very hard at all levels now to get Critical Defense, the cooldown from the old Legacy for Press Onward has been significantly nerfed, and some mechanics are at this point, experimental, such as... does the Light Damage Tracery (Craft) increase all my skills if I use Light oils? I don't know, so I chose that to find out. I did my best to get some survivability at low levels while being mainly damage. I switched to the bubble tracery instead of press onward. I'm very concerned that there doesn't seem to be a way to keep the mitigation and evade/block/parry legacies that I had on my bow.

Choose your traceries carefully for level and quality, while budgeting your scripts (see math below). Make sure than any traceries which say "Unique Use" are truly unique (you can't use more than one at the same time). Drag them to the slots on your new LI. Then drag Enhancements to each Tracery to upgrade it.

Math

Traceries at low level are surprisingly expensive in tokens needed. An Incomparable Heraldry Tracery, level 50, costs a Shattered Khazad Dum Tracery and 1,200 Ancient Scripts. Other than Heraldry, most traceries are around 600 Ancient Script, and at level 69, I needed 10 Traceries total. If I assume an average of 800 AS x10, that's 8,000 AS needed just to convert my LI's to item-level 51 Traceries. Then the 44 Enhancement Runes needed to go from 51 to 95... x10... equals 440 probably Rare Enhancement Runes needed. I had almost enough from one maxed old LI, and three not maxed LI's. I made one mistake buying a Tracery, mistakes will happen, and one of my Traceries is 75, not 95 because I ran out. But that's pretty decent considering I still have two weapons to appraise. I'm waiting until I'm 71 and can reforge to get my next big batch of Enhancements and Scripts.

Comparisons Before and After

This did provide a buff to Critical Chance, Physical Mastery, Morale and Agility. So that's all good. However, the comparison is very much status quo in comparison to the big buff I got on my level 130 and level 116+ characters. Previous to this LI upgrade I would never have attempted to discover the Fall of Khazad Dum raid door by myself with a Rune Keeper, but my RK got there with only one careless mistake. The Critical Defense issue is extremely dangerous to high level characters in light armor, and I fixed that with some armor changes. Low level characters have less to worry about with CD, but not nothing.

You can see the complete comparison of both LIs, of old and new types, and the character stats with the new LIs in the image at the right. I also took a picture showing the helm I was wearing compared to the enhanced heraldry statistics.

Overall, this was a much more difficult conversion process, but it did yield some nice buffs.

Level 71 Reforge

The effects of just switching to the new LI system was an overall improvement in damage and, as a result, survivability. If I stood there like a dummy, I could die, but any on level content was easy as long as I was paying attention. Even skirmish bosses... they were a threat, but not much of one. And that's not usual for a levelling Hunter, but I will skip any commentary on fragility comparison of DPS classes. Suffice it to say that it was much more fun than usual to play a skirmish by myself (I use Bannerguard). That was before I had reforged, at level 70. After the reforge, I'm going to head for harder content. I don't want to break anything by attempting to start Rohan now, so I'm off to the Brown lands, and if that's not bad enough, Limlight Gorge or Isengard.

Observations

The new LI system is an overall buff.
The cost of Reforging at level 71 was 2 gold 610 silver, for each LI. You could just do the main weapon for the bigger DPS buff, but at this level, you'd lose a Tracery slot. Check the main Legendary Items page for details on when you gain new Tracery slots.
Reforging changed the item level of the LI, the DPS, and gave me an additional tracery.
This time the tracery is Mastery (class specific)
Taken together, these changes are a significant boost and You should reforge as soon as you can after you convert to gain the benefits.
The tracery stats did not change at all with reforge, that won't change until a new LI is made.
I notice more and more quests giving good rewards such as a gold (random) tracery for the end of Book Quest series.

These seem to be sensitive to the class of the character opening them.
It seems restrictive to get a random tracery reward that you may not be able to use, but the Ancient Scripts are usable by all alts.

Note that Ancient Scripts are account wide and are capped at 10,000.

If you upgrade a Tracery SLOT, the upgrade stays, even if you swap what tracery is there. A 95 Tracery, swaps to another 95 Tracery. There is no need to keep using Enhacement Runes. The Enhacement is on the slot, not the Tracery. Consider a Carry-All.
I don't know if I noticed before that DPS may have been scaling on the old LIs, but the new ones compare favorably to the current calculation. The DPS won't change again in the new system until the next time you reforge.
It's a significant problem that we have no titles. Even if I'm 130, can I damage Sarnúr mobs without Ancient Dwarf damage type? Honestly not sure. See Great Protection. There are still open questions.

In short, the new system is workable, but that shouldn't lead to complacency. We had a kludgy old LI system, don't let this new system become the new kludgy LI system. Most of the problems are fixable. The new system is tolerable. But of course the point is to let go of the old shackles by switching to a high quality new system. Let's be optimistic.