After spending 500 hours in the game, I started noticing an issue with legendary items.
Once you reach the endgame, you basically forget about 90% of the crafting system because everything gets replaced by legendaries. You stop paying attention to item bases or their unique properties — all you’re doing is hunting for T6-T7 affixes.
This issue has become even more noticeable in the latest cycle, especially with the introduction of guaranteed crafting for specific affixes, which takes away much of the purpose of crafting itself. (This is particularly obvious when looking at online builds where 90% of the gear consists of legendaries with just one useful affix.)
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I actually came up with a possible solution to this problem — though I admit it could make the gameplay loop more complex for some players.
The idea is to flip how Legendary Potential works.
What do I mean? Instead of transferring affixes from a rare item onto a unique — do it the other way around, similar to how it works with set items (even though barely anyone uses that system right now).
This would allow players to grab that key “build-enabling” mod from a unique item — while keeping much more flexibility in crafting:
• You’d still be able to roll for a good base,
• Add experimental affixes,
• Seal affixes you want, etc.
In the end, the final item would remain unique — but with more depth and customization. It would make characters feel stronger and create new opportunities for the in-game economy (or even RMT — which I don’t support — if it ever comes back).
Of course, this is not the solution — just one possible way to address the issue (though for some players, it might not even feel like a problem at all).
Apologies if anything I wrote was unclear. English is not my native language, and I used ChatGPT to help translate my thoughts.
I’d be really interested to hear what you think about this
Most Uniques are trash without LP that’s why everyone is hunting for 2+LP uniques because at or 3 LP uniques become better then perfect bases you craft with just adding on top what you already have.
It’s just a normal thing for this kind of games that there is a loothunt and a BiS system in place so you can always chase down whatever you think you need. Then again the game is so easy (if you play a half baked usefull build) that reaching 600C isn’t an issue and the main problem isn’t the gear or minmaxing but keeping the motivation untill you hit 300C+.
Uniques don’t exist in all bases. So in many cases, having a right base T7 exalted item is better than a random 4LP unique that does little for your build.
That is why you very rarely (if ever) see any build that is all legendaries. Because in many cases, having a legendary is worse.
In most builds you run 3-4 exalted pieces. Sometimes with a crafted set affix in them.
In some builds you even only run just 1-2 legendaries.
Some Uniques have exclusive bases which are part of why the unique is exciting and good
Things like Sealing are meant to be mutually exclusive with legendary items (same as Champion and Set Affixes).
This would be very strong for certain uniques that only have ones speicfic important affix and possibly be useless or bad for uniques that are good as a whole with multipels affixes coming together.
I think this could be a nice optional thing (maybe a specific woven echo that does it this way, instead of the “regular” way. So people can choose if they wanna do it for a specifc Item.
But I personally think the legendary system is not in as a bad state as many people make it to be. I think Set and Champion Affixes already are doing a decent job, we just need more of these and possibly buff some of them more and add more.
We just need more competition for Legendaries.
(crafted) Set and Champion Items are essentially exalted items in most cases (maybe rare early in progression).
I think once sets are i na better place (they need a bit mroe buffs) and we get enough champion affixes for almost every build or archetype this will get a lot better on its own already.
Maybe also add new Woven Echoes that make Champion Affix crafting a bit easier and determinsitic, because its very very hard to get a specific champion affix on a specific sub type.
???
Seriously?
That was true in 0.8, but it hasn’t been for years.
Look at the builds on lastepochtools. For 1.2.5, no build uses less than 4 legendaries. There is 1 build with “only” (ah ah) 4, 3 builds with just 5. The overwhelming majority has between 6 and 9. 3 builds use 10, 3 others use 11.
Results would be similar if you extend to all builds for 1.2.
Last Epoch has become legendaries-only at least since 1.1, probably 1.0. Hopefully the new systems will change that, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Edit: OK, I misread your post, you said 3-4 EXALTED, not legendaries. That sounds about correct. And, in my opinion, a real shame. Uniques should be used scarcily, just for their special effects.
Uniques should be unique. The droprate for uniques is out of hand for a long time. They are to easy to get in general and to hard to get with more then 2LP. There is nothing unique about an item rarity that drops every other minute.
