Greetings Pilots!
Our upcoming free update, Incursions, is bringing quite a few changes to EVERSPACE 2 including a major change to Legendary equipment along with how this gear can be found.
Legendaries have mostly been exclusive to endgame content with the exception of a few granted as quest rewards. With the addition of so many new Legendary items in Incursions, we want pilots to find more of them during the campaign without jeopardizing game balance significantly.
A new "Radiant" class of Legendaries will be introduced with this update, allowing seasoned players to enjoy the new Incursions endgame content by offering additional room for gear improvement. Radiant Legendaries are stronger versions of the Legendary gear type with variable attributes that are roughly comparable to current Legendaries, but can potentially be even more powerful.
In the update, regular Legendaries will be weakened slightly compared to the ones available right now. Now, we know many of our veteran pilots have been stashing away Legendaries to use in a variety of ship builds and we don’t want your hard work to be diminished. All Legendaries currently in player possession will automatically be converted to Radiant Legendaries in the Incursions update. All those hard-earned Legendaries will remain roughly the same strength, suffering little-to-no nerf.
Reliquaries are another new addition coming in the Incursions update that can be found after completing an Incursions event. These are container items pilots keep in their cargo hold that can only be opened by finishing rifts or by investing Tears of the Mad—they guarantee a Legendary item reward and are the only way to acquire Radiant Legendaries.
Note the Lunacy and stat differences!
These new Reliquary items come in two forms, a generic type that contains a random Legendary item, and rarer specific types that contain a Legendary item of a particular category (Cargo Unit, Sensor, or Plating for example).
Normal and Radiant Reliquaries require specific minimum Lunacy amounts to unlock and yield respective rewards. If a lower Lunacy is chosen instead, Tears of the Mad can be used to pay the difference. Once a rift is cleared, the item contained in the Reliquary will drop alongside the rest of the loot rewarded by the rift. If you find you're collecting more of these than you can open, Reliquaries can be dismantled for Tears of the Mad.
Beyond the Legendary item reward, Reliquaries are also a source of positive affixes applied to rifts called Blessings. Each Reliquary comes with a Blessing that will provide boons to the player while they are inside the rift that boost ship stats, increase rewards, modify secondary weapons, and add other bonuses. Normal Reliquaries provide normal Blessings, while Radiant Reliquaries provide both, a normal and a radiant Blessing.
Another major change coming is the distribution of Legendaries. With the exception of a few quest rewards, most Legendaries can only be found in ancient rifts or through nightmare gameplay. With Incursions, pilots will have more opportunities to discover Legendaries outside of Rifts—new Legendary Signal Decoders will now drop after Incursion events, opening up challenging High-risk Areas with powerful rewards including Legendaries, Legendary catalyst blueprints, and new crafting components. Legendaries will also have a very small chance of dropping in Rare and Superior High-risk Areas.
We keep saying Incursions! What are these things anyway? You’ll find out soon! Stay tuned for more!
Lee and your dedicated ROCKFISH Games Team