What do 'Lore' and 'Treasured' indicate?Follow

Treasured - It's a tier of the item, this usually indicates the item quality, and this is how they would be listed from the low quality to the best:

Handcrafted

Treasured

Legendary

Fabled

Mythical

Now, this is not saying that any handcrafted or Treasured items are not good, however the higher tiers of Legendary, Fabled, will usually have better stats on them. I have never seen a Mythical Item as of yet.


Lore - I know if a item is 'lore' you may only have one of that item, in your inventory, bank, or equipped.

The lowest tier for items is common, which are dropped and sold by NPC vendors. I believe they do not have any label. Handcrafted is substantially better than common.

When the tradeskill revamp goes through items crafted from rare materials will be going from Legendary to Treasured quality, and they will be put under a new tier label of "Mastercrafted". This has already been done in T7, you can see for example that rare Xegonite Armor is no better than T6 rare Cobalt. All tiers will be getting an equivalent nerf.

I'm starting to rant about this and get off topic.

...curse SOE for marginalizing the tradeskill classes that make gear! <cry> ...

Sorry!

...grumble...

I can't stop! Help!

I like the no-subs system too, for everything but grinding out levels. You can level faster making stacks of subs than you can just making final items. It will be nice to whip out no-subs items for lower tiers whereas before it wasn't worth the time and effort.

Yes, stats on rare crafted items are going down. However, existing items will be grandfathered and remin untouched. Only new items made after the revamp will have the nerfed stats. So if you want some rare equipped gear (armor, weapons or jewelery) - get them now.

This is part of the new Itemization scheme. Apparently T6 Cobalt armor was better than some T5 Fabled (raid) gear. Hardcore raiders were horrified, apalled, miffed and embarrased that they "had to" buy Cobalt to stay on top until they got their new Fabled raid gear, and that non-raiding commoners might be running around in equal or better gear than they had. SOE decided rare crafted gear must be nerfed so Fabled gear from the previous tier is always better than anything but Fabled gear from the current tier. T7 gear was the start, and the same itemization will be carried across all tiers.

You also see that they're increasing the quality (more legendary) and availability of dropped and quested gear in every tier, working from the bottom up. Quests have been and are being added and new loot tables set in dungeons (Blackburrow and Wailing Caves, for example) that reward awesome stuff. This only further reduces the comparative desirabilty of crafted items.

IMHO they went overboard appeasing a small percentage of the player base, the raiders. And it had to be them because no one else was complaining. It seems to me that if Fabled gear from the previous tier has to be better than anything but Fabled gear from the current tier, that Fabled gear has to improve by a wider and wider margin with each new tier. This will put that gear too far ahead of what anyone but top-tier raiders can get. By all accounts Fabled gear is already overpowering against regular solo and group content and that problem is only going to get worse.

This also means raid content will have to be made more and more difficult such that non-raiding players in the top teir who wish to start will not be able to perform in raids with the best gear available outside of raiding, forcing them to go back and raid previous tiers just to be able to function. Obviously the number of people interested in doing that will be limited, making the raid scene more and more of an exclusive (albeit shrinking) club of those who have been doing it all along from the original release.

I predict this itemization scheme giving preference to raiding and fabled gear will not be able to support itself and a wholesale revamp of raid content and Fabled gear will be necessary in a year or two.

If its LORE equipment, and you have something better, there's no reason to hang on to it.