What is the Legacy System?

Patch 1.2, which went live in April 2012, introduced a new Legacy System that allows players to create family trees of characters. Once the first character completes act one of their class quest, you'll be able to create a Legacy Last Name. This surname will be shared across all characters on that server. Like the name you gave your character, the last name must also be unique.

How does it work?

Getting to level 50 will unlock that character's race for all classes you create thereafter, bypassing the regular class and race restrictions. This means that if you were to play a character to level 50 with all the races, you can choose any race to be any class, forgoing the initial restrictions.

You don't have to actually do it for all races, as some of the race unlocks can be purchased through in-game currency. For unlocking new skills, you'll still need to level a class to 50.

What does Legacy do for me?

To make things clear, the Legacy system is designed to give great benefits to alternate characters, not your current level 50. So be sure to mail the Legacy construction kit to an alt, as it is useless to your level 50 character.

Through the Legacy system, you can mix and match a certain class' innate skill with another class' innate skill -- with some limitations, of course. For example, a Bounty Hunter that can shoot Force Lightning can be entirely possible. All you have to do is relate a Bounty Hunter to a level 50 Sith Inquisitor.

But your Bounty Hunter won't suddenly become a true force-wielder. Every class has a heroic moment ability which requires the presence of a Companion to activate. Only by using these heroic moment abilities will you be able to access the cross-class Legacy abilities.

That essentially means you can only use the abilities out in the questing world; Legacy abilities won't work in a full group or in a Warzone, most likely.

What are the bonuses exactly?

Once you've established your Legacy, all characters on that server will not only share the Legacy but also contribute to the player's Legacy Experience Points, which in turn affect the Legacy Level.

The higher the Legacy Level, the more bonuses and perks are unlocked, including new abilities, emotes, items, and new species in future character creation.

legacy vendors

Legacy vendors will be located at your Capital planets and will offer new weapons and armor sets for your alts. However, these special vendors only take a new special token that can be found as random loot or certain quest rewards.