How do I transfer gear between characters?

[magritte]

I feel like I must be missing something here, like a party inventory screen. It seems that when you replace an item with a new one, the old one just vanishes. It would be really helpful to be able to outfit your younger generation of heroes with second hand gear.

[Chaoslink]

You can’t. Since weapons and armor are saved to your character’s legacy at the end of the campaign, allowing them to swap wouldn’t make much sense as you’d just be taking your veteran’s stuff to give it to the new guys and leaving your legacy character with nothing. Item management like this is a very important thing to balance in the game. If you want new armor or weapons for your new guys, save materials from the end of the previous act so you can visit a town after recruiting the new guy and craft their gear with those materials.

[magritte]

Well, I suppose I can see having first level characters with maxed out equipment a balance issue if the monsters stayed at the same level, but as it is, it seems like the game will get harder and harder over time. Calamities increase with every chapter, and characters become less effective as they get old, so I don't see how the later generations can be viable.
It seems like eventually it'll be like trying to play the final maps in Baldur's Gate II with first level characters.
Is the idea to model the game on arcade games where the game always ends in failure at a certain point?

[Chaoslink]

You either need to stop doing every single tile and rush the objectives to stop your veterans from retiring or you need to mix new and old characters into a party and stop giving gear to the older guys that’ll not make it to the endgame and give those items to the newer guys instead. You’re also kinda expected to recruit legacy heroes that are already leveled up later game to still have those higher level characters.

[Du-Vu]

Yeah, you can always see a character's retirement age, and the game does expect you to plan around it somewhat. To start phasing in the younger generation eventually.

[pi73r]

In most campaigns you will be swimming in gear and you will have more than you'll ever need anyway. I usually got 10 characters equipped with at least t2 gear on all slots possible and just sending all new gear to scrap.

[magritte]

I guess I don't quite follow how this legacy heroes thing works. Is the introductory story not typical of how games normally go? With the 10+ year gap between chapters, it's hard to see how any character could possibly live long enough to fill up all their gear slots. They're already pushing 50 at the beginning of chapter 3.

[Du-Vu]

The 10-year gap is typical. Depends on how thoroughly you explore the map and how big the map is. Different classes also have different retirement ages. Default is 50-ish, so new warriors will usually retire after Act 3, but hunters get a +10 bonus and mystics +20, respectively (iirc). Legacy characters keep their gear, including artifacts (though they get downgraded) and can stack bonuses to retirement age. So it all builds on itself. The intro story is typical, but a bit simplified, and you don't have legacy characters to build on yet.

Bit of a learning process, but you're getting there.

[Chaoslink]

Yeah, running a few generic 3 chapter campaigns can help a ton towards getting a legacy group to pick from. Some of the main campaigns require legacy characters to start as well. I’ve had warriors in their 70s still fighting strong. You just have to get lucky with certain effects that increase their retirement age or plan around their retirement and invest less into them.