Ashes of Creation: Legendary Equipment Overview

Here’s a breakdown of what legendaries are and where they come from. Deep look on legendary items, their acquisition, benefits and comparing them to what legendary tier items are in other MMOs. 

What are LEGENDARIES in MMOs?

Once you have reached the highest level a game has to offer, power creep from armor and weapons does not stop there. From max level, armor and weapons begin growing in power through an item quality system which is represented through color. The colors usually follow 2 types of spectrums. World of Warcraft follows a simplified color gradient for their item quality starting at white then green, blue, purple and final is orange. However Guild Wars 2 follows a slightly more logical one starting at white followed by blue, green, yellow, orange, pink and purple which follows a more wavelength based spectrum pattern. As the colors ascend, their power increases until finally capped at their final tier where item level starts to come into play. Ashes of Creation is not going to be a game with free epic loot just for playing a bad version of flappy bird. Instead we could expect Ashes of Creation is going to follow a system slightly closer to Black Desert Online which has a very loose item quality system gaining more of their power from an enhancement mechanic which is closer to a crafting artisan skill. 

Image result for ashes of creation armor and weapon

LEGENDARIES in Ashes of Creation

Legendary items in AOC will most likely be 90% crafted with many steps required to go through before you can finally craft its final form. 

Guild War’s 2 whole endgame revolves around these legendary items which there are 2 for each weapon type. You’re required to follow a huge quest chain collecting various items from all over the world which fleshes out the law of these weapons. Crafting it up through various stages which increases in power each time you do it until eventually you complete the crafting quest chain to create what is called a precursor for the specific legendary that you want. Once that’s done you slap it together with 3 other very hard to obtain items and then you will get your legendary fully fleshed out with lore and flavor. It’s a very satisfying journey especially when the weapon that you have at the end of it all looks as good as these. Intrepid have stated that as you unlock these legendary recipes from world bosses, it will also unlock legendary lore chapters which hopefully play out similarly to Guild Wars 2. 

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LEGENDARY items in Ashes of Creation 

Steven of Intrepid said that legendary materials and recipes will be dropping from world bosses too. Which perfectly backs up the method that I think would benefit Ashes of Creation the most when it comes to their legendary acquisition. This is a system that’s commonly used in Black Desert Online through their latent aura drops which is just basically an item that drops every time you participate in a world boss. Once you obtain a hundred of them, you can hand them in for that specific boss’s weapon which is Black Desert Online’s equivalent of a legendary weapon for simplicity’s sake. We can expect that AOC will have something to this, meaning killing a world boss will yield a certain amount of guaranteed loot to all that participated in the form of legendary materials. Which will allow players to progress their crafting of legendary weapons essentially making it so going to kill the world bosses will always be worth the time. To craft these legendary pieces, you will probably require the skills of a Master Crafter

BEYOND Legendary

In Ashes of Creation, an enchanting system will be featured which sounds very similar to the enhancement progression in Black Desert Online. It essentially requires special rare stones which you use on your gear to power it up. The whole system is an RNG based system that is complete aids and I don’t know any person who enjoys it. However Steven has said that the enchanting artisan skill will have an RNG based system similar to this. 

Another incentive to motivate people to participate in world boss fights could be a similar legendary quality material used in enchanting. To push the enchant levels further or perhaps use them to remove some of the RNG chants related to the enchanting. Just an idea because everybody hates RNG. 

Image result for ashes of creation rare stones

VISUAL PROGRESSION

Raise your hand if you also hate the cosmetic stores in MMOs. These are toxic towards the player base and a detriment to the content in the game. The visual progression of legendary items is discussed here because despite Guild Wars’ 2 legendaries looking far superior to any item in the game, back at launch, as the game has aged they’ve started adding some items to the cosmetic store which look way better than some legendary items. Which is completely toxic to a game that’s supposed to be all about visual progression, like Guild Wars 2. Steven stated that our legendary armor and weapons will have a significant upgrade to visual appearance which is great news. However, the way something looks is subjective. For some, a transmog around a legendary is fine but not for others thus would get options from a cosmetic store. This completely removes that visual progression from their experience because they can just buy it. Steven and the team addressed the cosmetic store many times and what they are currently offering is just re-skins of what’s already in the game. 

Image result for ashes of creation transmog legendary

Video chapters:

00:00​ Intro

00:51​ What are Legendaries?

02:36​ Legendaries in Ashes of Creation 

04:47​ Pretend the Title Said: Acquisition

06:11​ Beyond Legendary

07:37​ Visual Progression

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