User:Fanchen/Legendary Items

Legendary Items are special, class-specific, equippable items that can be customized to suit the player's combat style (as opposed to standard weapons and equipment that have unchangeable stats). Legendary Items can be improved throughout the game, allowing them to become more powerful together with the player character. Each class can equip 2 Legendary Items: a weapon and a class-specific item. Legendary Bridles are planned but have not been introduced yet, which likely means that completing the introductory quests for Mounted Combat is not currently possible.

Obtaining Legendary Items

Legendary Items are introduced during Vol. II, Book 1. The first Legendary Weapon will be acquired by completing the Vol. II, Book 1, Chapter 9: A Weapon of the Elder Days instance, while the first Legendary Class Item will be acquired by completing the Vol II, Book 1, Chapter 13: Khazad-dûm at Last! instance. While these quests are meant for level 50 characters, they can be completed as early as level 45.

After Vol II, Book 1, Chapter 12: The Watcher in the Water, characters gain access to Gobeth Teithian, the Archive of Traceries in Rivendell, where Traceries and Enhancement Runes can be bartered for.

Legendary Weapons can only be equipped to the main weapon slot of each class, so dual-wielding legendary weapons is not possible. Every class can equip a legendary item in the class-specific item slot. The exception to this are Hunters and Wardens, who use a second legendary weapon instead of a legendary class item. However, this does not allow them to dual-wield legendary weapons: If two legendary weapons are used, one of them has to be a one-handed weapon and the other one a Javelin (Warden) or a Bow or Crossbow (Hunter).

Improving the item

Legendary Items can be used immediately after acquiring them. There are, however, several ways to increase their power, described below. While reforging can be done every couple of levels, it only changes the damage value for weapons or the passive stat of class items (like Incoming Healing). Legendary Items have a number of slots that can take items called Traceries, capable of improving a variety of stats or skills.

Reforging

Legendary items can be reforged at a Forge-master at certain levels, improving the damage stat of the weapon and sometimes increasing the amount of available Tracery slots. A legendary item can be reforged once in each level range shown in the table below. There is no benefit or drawback to reforging earlier or later, the effect on the weapon is the same. It is also possible to skip level ranges.

Legendary Items start off with three available Tracery slots at level 45: Two Word of Mastery and one Word of Craft. Reforging the item gives access to the Heraldric Tracery slot.

Weapon reforged at level	Number of Tracery slots
	Weapon					Class item*
	Heraldric	Word of Power	Word of Mastery	Word of Craft	Total	Heraldric	Word of Power	Word of Mastery	Word of Craft	Total
45-55	1		2	1	4	1		2	1	4
56-60	1	1	2	1	5	1	1	2	1	5
61-65	1	1	2	1	5	1	1	2	1	5
66-70	1	1	2	1	5	1	1	2	1	5
71-75	1	1	3	1	6	1	1	3	1	6
76-80	1	1	3	1	6	1	1	3	1	6
81-85	1	1	3	1	6	1	1	3	1	6
86-90	1	1	3	1	6	1	1	3	1	6
91-95	1	1	3	1	6	1	2	3	1	7
96-99	1	1	3	1	6	1	2	3	1	7
100	1	1	4	1	7	1	2	4	1	8
101-104	1	1	4	1	7	1	2	4	1	8
105	1	1	5	1	8	1	2	5	1	9
106-110	1	1	5	1	8	1	2	5	1	9
111-115	1	1	5	2	9	1	2	5	2	10
116-119	1	1	5	2	9	1	2	5	2	10
120	1	1	6	2	10	1	2	6	2	11
121-125	1	1	6	2	10	1	2	6	2	11
126-130	1	2	6	2	11	1	3	6	2	12

*including Hunter's Bow and Warden's Javelin

Slotting Traceries

There are four different types of Traceries available. Some of them only become available once the Legendary Item has been reforged at a high enough level.

Heraldric Traceries

Each Legendary Item can equip one Heraldric Tracery after it was reforged once.

Word of Craft Traceries

Each Legendary Item starts out with one slot for a Word of Craft Tracery. Reforging the weapon at level 111 or above adds a second slot. These traceries increase a single character stat, like Critical Rating. Some of these traceries also provide a set bonus when more than one of the same tracery is equipped.

Word of Power Traceries

Legendary Weapons can slot up to two Word of Power Traceries, while Legendary Class Items and Legendary Bows and Crossbows can slot up to three.

These traceries are unique, which means that no two identical Word of Power traceries can be equipped at the same time, even on different legendary items.

Word of Mastery Traceries

These traceries are class specific. Each Legendary Item can slot two of them immediately. At a high enough level, up to six of these traceries can be slotted in an item.

Like Word of Power Traceries, Word of Mastery Traceries are unique.

Tracery Quality

Traceries are available in four different qualities (also called rarities): Uncommon, Rare, Incomparable and Legendary. While traceries of a higher quality are better, some benefits they bring don't improve with quality. Generally, the first attribute shown in the tooltip improves with quality, but does not change with the item level of the tracery. The second attribute, usually increasing a character stat like Physical Mastery or Critical Rating, does not increase with item quality. Instead, it increases by raising the item level of the tracery.

An example of how this works for the Brawler's Helm-crusher Cooldown tracery, which has two attributes, one of which improves the cooldown of the Helm-crusher skill, and the other the Physical Mastery Rating:

Tracery Range	Attribute	Ungewöhnlich	Selten	Unvergleichlich	Legendär
45-95	Helm-crusher Cooldown	-4.8	-5.4	-6	-6.6
45-95	Physical Mastery Rating	+275	+275	+275	+275
86-105	Helm-crusher Cooldown	-4.8	-5.4	-6	-6.6
86-105	Physical Mastery Rating	+675	+675	+675	+675
101-115	Helm-crusher Cooldown	-4.8	-5.4	-6	-6.6
101-115	Physical Mastery Rating	+966	+966	+966	+966
106-120	Helm-crusher Cooldown	-4.8	-5.4	-6	-6.6
106-120	Physical Mastery Rating	+2100	+2100	+2100	+2100
116-130	Helm-crusher Cooldown	-4.8	-5.4	-6	-6.6
116-130	Physical Mastery Rating	+3849	+3849	+3849	+3849
121-140	Helm-crusher Cooldown	-4.8	-5.4	-6	-6.6
121-140	Physical Mastery Rating	+12247	+12247	+12247	+12247
131-150	Helm-crusher Cooldown	-4.8	-5.4	-6	-6.6
131-150	Physical Mastery Rating	+26454	+26454	+26454	+26454

Improving Traceries

Enhancement Runes can increase the item level of a Tracery. These runes can be acquired in different ways; depending on their rarity, they might be quest rewards or be looted from boss chests. They can also be bartered for at the Archive.

For each Tracery level range (see table below), there are four Enhancement Runes with different rarity: Uncommon, Rare, Incomparable and Legendary. Applying any of these runes increases the item level of the tracery by one. However, depending on the rarity of the rune, it has a different cap for the item level.

An example: For the level range 106-120, any Enhancement Rune can bring the item level of a tracery up to 315. Bringing it up to 330 requires at least rare runes, while incomparable runes can bring it up to 340 and legendary runes are necessary to max it out to 349.

The item level of a tracery can not be increased indefinitely: At certain points, replacing the tracery with one of a higher level will become necessary. However, there is some overlap on the level ranges of different traceries.

An example: A tracery is obtained and equipped at level 45. The item level of this tracery is 51 at first. During the leveling process, some enhancement runes are found and applied to the tracery, increasing its item level to 100. This tracery would cease to give any benefits above level 95. However, from level 86 on, traceries for a higher level range can be found and used to replace the existing tracery. Once this is done, the item level of the tracery will be at 126, no matter the level it was at before. When a tracery with an increased item level is replaced with a different tracery of the same level range, the item level is retained.

The level range 121-140 is a special case: Traceries of this level range can have their item levels increased up to 499 instead of 449.

Tracery level range	Tracery item level
45-95	51-125
86-105	126-200
101-115	201-299
106-120	300-349
116-130	350-399
121-140	400-499
131-150	450-499

Table of Legendary Items

Class	Traceries	One-handed Weapons								Two-handed Weapons							Secondary Item
Class	Traceries	Axe	Club	Dagger	Hammer	Mace	Sword	Spear	Staff	Rune-stone	Battle Gauntlets	Great Axe	Great Club	Great Hammer	Great Sword	Halberd	Secondary Item
Beorning	Traceries																Carving
Brawler	Traceries																Stein
Burglar	Traceries																Tools
Captain	Traceries																Emblem
Champion	Traceries																Rune
Guardian	Traceries																Belt
Hunter	Traceries																Bow, Crossbow
Lore-master	Traceries																Book
Minstrel	Traceries																Songbook
Rune-keeper	Traceries																Satchel
Warden	Traceries																Javelin

Canon/Lore

There are many examples of Legendary Items in Tolkien's works, including:

Narsil, the sword of Elendil that cut the ring from Sauron's hand, later reforged as Andúril and wielded by Aragorn in the War of the Ring
Sting, the sword found by Bilbo in The Hobbit and later passed to Frodo
Glamdring, the sword Gandalf used to fight the Balrog of Moria
Orcrist, the sword found by Thorin Oakenshield after defeat of the trolls. *Thorin wielded an Axe in the Battle of Five Armies, but Orcrist was laid upon his tomb by the Elvenking.

Other named Legendary Items in the Lord of the Rings Online include:

Dúnachar, Golodir's sword

Other Legendary Items existed in Middle-earth throughout the ages; a more complete listing can be found on Wikipedia.