EverQuest Legends: Spell Upgrades, Pet Upgrades & Focus Items

Game Jawn Official Dev Stream — July 10, 2026

Another week, another EverQuest Legends Dev Stream Breakdown. Where last week a lot of the talk was spend on nostalgia and everyone's past experiences, this week the focus was geared more on mechanics and the work being done on spell upgrades, pet power scaling, etc., and even featured some new insights into how some of the more complex systems actually work behind the scenes. 

Preorder beta is live until July 21st. Launch is confirmed as imminent. All systems discussed here are still in flux and subject to change before launch.

This week the team consisted out of: 

•      Damien "Moth": Lead QA, EverQuest Legends,  Host

•      Jeff "Seitoko": Art Tools Engineer, Game Jawn, panelist

•      Robyn: Project Manager, Game Jawn, panelist

•      Brasse: Community,  question wrangler

How the Spell Upgrade System Works

The biggest focus of this stream was the spell upgrade system and how it currently works in practice. At its core, upgrading spells functions similarly to upgrading gear using motes, but with one twist. There is no  limit on what rank mote you can use to upgrade a spell.  For items you can not use base lower tier motes on items already upgraded past a certain level, forcing you to look for bigger level motes. With spells you can throw 150 Rank 1 Motes into it and every one contributes toward the next rank. Moth demonstrated this live on stream, burning through a stack of Infinitesimals on a Drain Spirit spell and hitting Rank 5 in real time.

The spell upgrade system functions identically to item upgrades at the mechanical level. You open the spell inspect window, place a Mote ( or stack of motes) into the upgrade slot, and confirm. The core currency is infinitesimal potential motes (the lowest-tier Mote), but any rank of Mote can be used directly.

The damage values shown in upgraded spell tooltips currently are static and incorrect. The actual damage is calculated correctly on the back end. The team confirmed they want to fix this but it requires a significant code overhaul.

What actually changes when you upgrade a spell depends on the type of ability? 

For damage spells, upgrades increase damage, but also increase mana cost, cast time, and cooldown. This creates a risk versus reward balance where stronger spells require more commitment.

For healing and support spells, upgrades reduce mana cost and improve usability with faster casting and recovery times, making them more efficient tools rather than raw power spikes.

For damage-over-time spells and buffs, duration increases as you rank them up, which is a major quality of life improvement for sustained play.

When you upgrade a CC spell like Mesmerize or Charm, the level cap of what you can affect increases by one level per rank. At Rank 10, you can affect targets up to 10 levels above the spell's base cap. There is no rule preventing players from charming mobs higher level than their own character.

"We saw a streamer charming Level 55 bees. Normally the Enchanter's highest charm tops out at level 51. Those bees make disloyal but powerful pets."
 — Seitoko

Spell upgrades are for casters

The spell upgrade system is explicitly designed as a caster progression tool. In classic EverQuest, casters were strong early (new spell = large power jump) while melee scaled harder over time. Spell upgrades give casters a late-game scaling path. Decisions that appear restrictive and  not increasing buff potency, not allowing weapon proc upgrades, etc.  exist specifically to prevent the mechanic from benefiting melee builds.

Combat Innate Procs (Vampiric Embrace, Instrument of Knife)

For spells used as combat procs such as Vampiric Embrace or Instrument of Knife , the proc fires at half the buff's rank. Upgrade a spell to Rank 10; the buff is Rank 10, but the proc fires at Rank 5. This is intentional. In the demo during the stream M0th used Vampiric Embrace with a base proc hit for 59 magic damage at level 47. After upgrading to Rank 6 ( the proc becomes Rank 3), it hit for 69 which is an approximate 17% increase. All from just a handful of mid-tier Motes spent on a level 7 spell. This pretty drastic improvement that opens up the choice to upgrade early and not wait till you reach the highest level of the spell in the spell line.

Pet Upgrades.  Levels, Caps & Caveats

Pet spells are upgraded exactly like other spells. Each rank adds one level to the summoned pet. Each rank of a pet spell increases the summoned pet’s level by one. So upgrading a pet spell to Rank 8 effectively creates a pet that is eight levels higher than its base version. This means that a Cackling Bones spell at Rank 8 that normally summons a level 37 skeleton will summon a level 45 skeleton. 

However, for these summoned pets there is a hard cap: your character level minus one. A level 50 character can never summon a pet above level 49 regardless of Mote investment. This applies to all pet spells including high-tier ones like Invoke Death.

At this moment, each rank provides: +6% max health, +1 base damage, and scaled improvements to skills and stats. The team also confirmed separate adjustments to pet skills (offense, defense, dodge, blunt) as independent dials from pet level.

The team acknowledged that even despite these new improvements, Beastlord warder pets are still flagged as currently underperforming and confirmed this is actively being addressed.

New Feature: The pet stat window is now live in-game. Players can inspect their pet's actual stats directly.

Pet focus items. Not just a level boost

The area of pet focus items gets a little confusing and the team worked to try and shine a light on how stats are affected when applying them. When a focus item (like the Encyclopedia Necrology for Necromancers, or the Elemental Mastery staves for Mages) says it adds one level to your pet, players assume it's a simple +1 to the level number. That is not what is happening.  A focus item summons a completely different version of the NPC, with its own unique stat line. That alternate pet can have significantly higher hit points, better attributes, different proc rates, and potentially a different spell book etc. all before any Mote upgrades are applied.

This "focus effect applies first." approach had many players seeing this as  as a negative. The reasoning is that if focus applies first and the level cap prevents the pet from leveling higher (player level -1), then what is the point?

Seitoko elaborated more on this and pointed out that this order is actually beneficial. Because the pet focus applies first, summoning the upgraded NPC version  comes with already improved stats.  The spell upgrade ranks then add their per-rank bonuses on top of that this already better foundation. Six percent health applied to a larger base number yields more health. At the level 49 cap, the focus item may not grant an extra level, but it provides a measurably stronger pet because the NPC has a better underlying stat block.

A third way to upgrade items is coming

Prompted  by a community question asking about a promised third upgrade option for items, the team lifted the veil on what this would be. It is called "weekly upgrade token" or "raid upgrade token".  Once per week completing a raid and collecting the bonus loot grants a special upgrade token. This token bypasses all Mote XP calculations and restrictions and pushes any item or spell from its current rank to the next rank in a single use. This is the equivalent of 512 Motes' worth of investment for a rank 9 to rank 10 jump. Part of the inclusion of this first option is to designed to ensure all players can experience fully maxed gear without grinding Motes exclusively.

Mote economy and drop rates

Players have been so far not able to get their finger on how mote drops work and what triggers them, sometime a 4 hour dungeon delve can come up with some confusing and disappointing low results. In order to help players understand more of how to go get motes in the most efficient way, the team confirmed  a the Mote drop multiplier system for the first time on this stream.

It is important to know there is a randomization in place so some times you get better results then others regardless. However there are some ways that allow you to increase your chances.  First of all rare and names mobs have double (2x) mote drop rates, Raid targets will have triple(3x) chance for mote drops. Multi-class mobs such as you see in higher tier zones ( D2-4) multiple independent drop pool entries equal to number of classes.

Lastly it is important to know that all these factors stack together, so a 3-class named mob on D3 sees double the base chance across all three pool entries.

Additional undisclosed factors around mob level relative to character level also exist but the team gleefully left these for the community to discover.

Clarification  Motes are not intended to be tradable. The current tradability of low-tier Motes is a bug. All Motes will be no-trade.

A quick note on bards and rogues

The word for bards right now, is to proceed With Caution!

Current bard song upgrade behavior is not intentional design, its caster upgrade logic is bleeding through by accident. And as a result, spells such as Denny's Disruptive Discord, currently does receive damage increases .

Currently their Single-target damage and DoT songs receive upgrade damage benefits where AoE radius-based damage songs do NOT currently upgrade. 

The goal is to full review the class and bards will receive their own dedicated and thoughtful design adjustments. So keep in mind that what's in beta now may not survive to launch.

As for our sneaky friends, rogue poison upgrades through the Mote system are not currently planned. However, the team will evaluate this decision and the need to change course, based on balance data as the game develops further. They note that a second tier of poisons with additional procs was recently added to the game to help out these sneaksters.

Community Questions Rapid Fire : 

• Upgrade preview UI : Actively planned, not yet in game. High community demand.
• Live damage value tooltips : Requires code overhaul, eventually planned.
• Tier 3 Focus Effects (Spell Haste 3, Mana Preservation 3) : In consideration, not yet added.
• Bard-specific upgrade design :  Planned. Current state is a placeholder.
• Buff/debuff potency increases : Not currently happening. Under future consideration.
• Damage shield upgrades: Currently no. Seitoko will check with design.
• Rogue poison upgrades: Not planned now. Data-dependent.
• Beastlord pet focus item:  Doesn't exist yet. Team wants to add one.
• Spell research tradeskill: Intentionally removed. Will not return in classic form.
• Pet class selection:  Not planned for launch. "Not a yes, not a no."
• Spell line-wide upgrades:  Explicitly not planned. Team wants upgrade choices to feel meaningful.
• Cosmetic spell rank effects (visual tiers):  Not planned, but the restored classic three-tier spell particle system provides existing visual progression.
• Spells becoming rituals at max rank : "A cool idea we've talked about." Not confirmed.

Final thoughts

Throughout this dev stream their was a strong message about the design goals of the new spell upgrades and mote functions. Spell upgrades are not just a power increase, they are a way to define how you play. Pets are not just companions but scalable systems with multiple layers of optimization. And most importantly, the game is clearly leaning into player-driven builds rather than rigid and preset progression paths. If this is the direction going into launch, there is a lot here for both classic EverQuest veterans and newer players to sink their teeth into. 

* GeeksVsGeeks is partnered with EverQuest Legends as part of their Creator Programme.*

DadGeek (Rob) is the co-founder of GeeksVsGeeks. He is a product of the eighties and never let go of his geek interest and hobbies no matter how often someone told him to stop. His love for gaming and all things geek has been part of his parenting style and permeates throughout the whole family. A family of Geeks vs Geeks