What it is
The Legacy system is Forever's answer to a question Classic never addressed: what remains once a character is done? Levelling your twelfth alt here does not start from nothing - the progress sits on the account, not on the figure.
The split behind it matters, and it is the whole trick:
- Earned account-wide. Legacy Points count for all your characters.
- Spent per character. Each figure allocates those same points on its own, in its own trees.
A point your warrior puts into a gathering perk is not used up for the mage. The mage makes the same choice again - and may make it differently.
How points are earned
Through Legacy Challenges, and the arithmetic behind them is now on record: there are 65 challenges across six categories, and each one you complete awards exactly one point. That is where the 65 comes from - it is not an estimate but the sum of the tasks.
| Category | Points | For what |
|---|---|---|
| Classes | 27 | Reach levels 25, 45 and 60 with each class |
| Tradeskills | 18 | Skill 150, 225 and 300 in the non-gathering professions |
| PvP | 12 | Honor ranks, battleground reputation, seasonal journey |
| Dungeons | 3 | Bosses across three level brackets |
| Raids | 3 | Specific raid bosses |
| Adventure | 2 | Explore the whole world, finish the dungeon questline |
That is the actual idea: what gets rewarded is what you do while playing anyway, only counted across characters rather than within one.
It unlocks with your first point - for most players when their first character hits level 25. There are other ways in: skill 150 in a non-gathering profession, or exploring the entire world map.
Alts are not required
The categories are cut so that a single character can reach up to 29 points: 3 from levelling, up to 6 from tradeskills, 12 from PvP, 2 from Adventure, 6 from dungeons and raids. That sits above the spending cap of 16 - so a player who never rolls an alt can still fill a character out.
The 27 class points, by contrast, only go to someone who touches every class. They are the reason 65 sits so far away from 29.
The three trees
There are three at launch, and Blizzard words it explicitly as a beginning - not as a complete list:
| Tree | Direction |
|---|---|
| Professions | Crafting, gathering and everything attached to it |
| Adventure | Being out in the world, levelling, travel |
| Resourcefulness | Handling resources and overhead |
The perks, all 21
At first Blizzard had named only three. The full list is out now - seven per tree:
- Professions: Working Overtime, Bountiful Harvest, Bartering, Performance Bonus, Master Chef, Luremaster, Dedicated Study.
- Adventure: Well Rested, Thrill of Adventure, High Alert, Field Guide, Field Medicine, Talented, Frequent Flier.
- Resourcefulness: Gourmand, The Quick and the Dead, Reinforce, For Great Honor, Permanence, Diplomat, Reagent Economy.
Three of them are worth a second look:
- Well Rested - increases the rested experience you gain.
- Bountiful Harvest - increases the materials you gather. The same talent shows up under professions: in Forever, gathering yield depends not only on the profession but on this as well.
- Reagent Economy - removes reagent requirements from class abilities.
The last one is more than convenience. Anyone who ever restocked candles, feathers or symbols in Classic knows how much time sits inside that single talent.
How the perks sit in the grid, how many ranks they carry and what they do in numbers is in the Legacy calculator - but that comes from the data build, not from this announcement.
The numbers at launch
A character may spend 16 points at launch. But up to 65 can be earned.
The gap is deliberate, not a slip in the arithmetic: keep completing challenges and you accumulate beyond the spending limit - and those points do not lie idle. They feed the Legacy Rewards track, which goes by the points you have earned rather than the ones you have spent. Four things hang there at launch, all cosmetic:
- Replica Ironforge Air Rifle (toy)
- Spectral Bear Cub (pet)
- Spectral Bear Tabard
- Reins of the Spectral Bear (mount)
That Blizzard intends to raise the spending cap comes on top of it: banked points then become spendable ones.
In practice that means you can misplan, but you cannot waste anything.
In the beta
On 1 October Blizzard announced that "in a future week of the Beta" every tester gets 16 Legacy points, so the system can be tested without first levelling several classes and clearing dungeons, and that the grant should stay in place until the beta ends. Sixteen is exactly the launch spending cap - testers get the full budget a character has at launch, and nothing beyond it. No date yet.
Hardcore counts separately
Hardcore arrives after launch and brings 12 challenges of its own. The direction is one-way: what you complete in Hardcore also counts in every other ruleset - but not the reverse. Achievements from outside do not show up in Hardcore.
What is meant to grow
Blizzard describes the system as built to expand, and names specifically: new challenges, new perks, additional ways to spend points, higher spending caps, new columns inside the existing trees, and possibly entirely new trees.
What is not known yet
What a reset costs. That it is possible is settled: Blizzard's class deep dives of 30 September say talents are changed at a class trainer in one of the major cities, "including Legacy talents". The price is not. A figure of 10 gold is going around; it is not backed by anything, so we do not carry it as fact - and the 1 silver the beta currently charges for a first respec is, by Blizzard's own note, "temporary for the Beta only". How the price will work at launch Blizzard described to TechRadar: it will "climb quickly and only decrease once per week". Whether the same applies to Legacy talents was left open, but "some increased re-spec utility" may come to them in the future. There is still no figure.
Also open is how the trees are laid out: Blizzard names the 21 perks but neither ranks nor values nor their order in the grid. What the calculator shows for that comes from the data build and can still change during beta.
How many points a challenge awards used to sit here as an open question. It is answered: one.