More info is out on legendary relics coming to Guild Wars 2, including future plans and how legendary rune owners will be compensated.
All of this comes as the next Secrets of the Obscure update is “coming soon” and ArenaNet is planning to announce that date sometime in the near future. When that expansion dropped back in August, one of the changes was the addition of relics as a new gear category. With that addition, the team removed non-attribute bonuses from runes, leaving those who had already crafted some legendary runes with less than they had.
Up until the legendary relic’s release, anyone who has crafted at least one legendary rune will unlock automatic access to a legendary relic for free. You’ll get 100% of legendary relic progress as a bonus if you already crafted a rune, making things good to go quickly. There will be no bonuses for crafting more than one rune, as the team had been considering, but ultimately scrapped for balance. The eligibility period for crafting a rune in time ends when the legendary relic is released.
The legendary relic is coming in this next update, and when you acquire one, you’ll be able to equip it on all the characters on your account simultaneously, this lets you swap between the relic effects without having to manually swap things. ANet has taken things up a notch and announced that Secrets of the Obscure is just the beginning for relics and legendary relics in particular. There’s a big change involved, particularly in light of the company’s 2019 change that allowed existing legendary equipment to be usable by anyone, regardless of expansion ownership. Going forward, expect a change.
“However, from a rewards, economy, and experience-design standpoint, we think it makes sense to ask players to actually engage with new content in order to make use of its new combat offerings. So, for relics only—and starting with the fifth expansion—new relic effects will need to be unlocked within each expansion in order to be accessible via legendary relics.”
Legendary relics will have all Secred of the Obscure relc effects unlocked and will be usable on multiple characters, as well as the new effects coming in the third update to the expansion coming much later. Yet. consider this a transitional phase, as the fifth expansion is set to be announced sometime later this year.
