This an old idea from mainly korean grind mmos.

To help with the vr progression on items make combining items possible to make it the next vr level.
For example take 2 vr14 hawks eye helmets and combine them to one vr15 item. Make sure that they are exactly the same as in color and whether it is bound or not. Put the appropriate cost. Whether it is at a special crafting station that costs money or whether the combining requires a dreugh wax or a nirncrux stone (or something like it) or one of the new IC stones. Make it only possible in the middle of SO so that you need to take guards or something like that. make it really really difficult but make it possible. It will really help take some of the sting of adding new levels and prevent rage against the RNG gods. Because getting one master dagger is awesome. Getting 6 of them in a row sucks big donkey balls!