I took a break from Diablo 4 for about two years and just logged back in. I noticed all my gear is now labeled as legacy items, which has me worried that my previous progress might be pointless because newer, better gear is out there now. I’m playing a corpse explosion necromancer with five ancestral unique items equipped. Can someone explain what this legacy gear means and whether I need to start farming all new stuff to stay competitive?
4 Answers
FYI, corpse explosion necro builds haven’t been super effective lately, except for some specific stuff like damage multipliers on certain gear. If you want, I could help you farm some fresh gear on eternal, but depending on our time zones it might be tricky. The community is pretty helpful though, so I’m sure you’ll find assistance easily once you start getting back into it.
Yeah, over the past seasons, the developers revamped a lot of the gear. Legacy items got capped at item power 540, while new gear for max level characters drops at 750 or even 800 in the higher difficulties. Plus, affixes and legendary effects have been tweaked up — there’s tempering now to customize what stats you get on your legendaries and better gems. So your old build might not perform as well anymore, and you’ll probably want to farm new equipment to get access to the latest bonuses and abilities.
Basically, legacy items are your old gear that’s been locked in its current state. The game updates have changed how items work, so your legacy stuff won’t be upgradeable or temperable anymore, but you can still use it if you want. However, many unique items got reworked and upgraded, so the new versions you can find dropping now are generally better if you want to catch up with current standards.
Don’t worry too much, your old character isn’t useless. The eternal realm tends to be a bit like a graveyard for old gear — nobody expects you to keep legacy items forever. If you want, you can keep playing with what you have for fun, but to be really competitive or efficient you’ll want to get some new legendary gear with the current power levels and affixes.
That explains why I’ve been feeling weaker even with my unique gear. Sounds like I need to dive back into farming and learn the new systems.