Eterra Monthly: Oct. 2024 Edition
The Immortal Emperors campaign for power has been halted. As immortal soldiers occupied Eterra, a large resistance was staged to fight back. The battle began on September 19th and raged until October 20th. This resistance has since succeeded against the occupying undead army, and the Immortal Empire was forced to retreat. Resistance leader Yulia had this to say, The travelers are a force to be reckoned with and they are here to stay. The Emperor is welcome to press his influence whenever he wishes, but we will always push back! Our reporters attempted to reach her for further comment but have yet to receive anything more. The travelers who fought so tirelessly found a way to rub salt in the immortal wound, by claiming replicas of the Emperors own Crown and have been flaunting them before him. The Emperor however, was conveniently unavailable for comment. Is this the last we will see of the Immortal Empires forces? Only time will tell.
October 20th marked the end of the Immortal Uprising Event and the battle was incredible! Travelers from around the world came together and duked it out with the Emperors forces including a new type of soldier, The Loyalist Undead. An elite unit of the skeleton army that packed a punch and everyone felt it. As the event came to a close, Travelers have been encouraged to check the Cosmetic Shop for a free gift for their efforts, stashed within. If you havent collected your own Immortal Crown, its not too late. This item will remain available to all event participants, free of charge. With the end of the event came Patch 1.1.7.6. The new patch reverted a handful of changes made available by the event, and adjusted the effects of several others. For full details, read the Patch Notes Here .
Patch 1.1.7 was given a small hotfix for the month of October titled, Hotfix 1.1.7.7. It was treated as an addendum to patch 1.1.7.6. The hotfix note reads as follows: Fixed an issue that would cause the Felled Woods terrain to load incorrectly As the issue was not accompanied by any additional fixes, the information was later added to the end of the 1.1.7.6 patch notes, rather than being given its own page on the Forums.
And now for an Osprix eye view of things happening in Eterra. Over in the Felled woods, our weather team has noticed an anomaly involving thick fog and an ethereal floor causing a bit of a stir. Travelers are encouraged to Wait Im getting word that the fog is clearing and the ground has returned to its original solid state. Well Traveler, feel free to explore to your hearts content. We apologize for the false alarm. On to more pressing news. Several teams have come together with a few ideas regarding Twitch Subscription rewards they feel are a little over due. The team has put out a voters poll found HERE . Players are encouraged to cast their votes in regards to what they would like to have access to during Twitch streams. This poll will be open until November 11, 2024 11:00 AM CT after which it will be locked and the team will get to work adding the winning Emotes to the channel.
Travelers its that time again where we cast one of your builds in the Spotlight of Glory! This month we have something to warm up your gameplay after chilling out with the White Walker build last month. This months spotlight goes to
The Smelters Wrath Worldsplitter Forge Guard is a hard hitting, Harbinger deleting, Tank doused in napalm. Unlike the White Walker Cryosplosion that focused on stacking Frostbite, Smelters Wrath consumes enemies in a cone of fire, doubling your armor, and increases its own range the longer it charges. Couple this with smashing a Worldsplitter into a legendary 2-handed axe that increases Fire Melee damage, and Mana as well as mana regen, and your Forge Guard will be a walking combustion engine, melting its foes with minimal effort. Now this build does benefit from a few other important items such as Titan Heart, Shattered Chains, Siphon of Anguish, and Eterras Path, but the rest is really up to you. This does require some extra effort in item farming as opposed to the showcase from last month, but we think thats what makes this build shine; showing the power of both gameplay preferences. You can check out the Build Guide Showcase by Dr3adful and hear more about it in their own words. The Build guide has also been made available on Lastepochtools.com so feel free to dig around and light the fires for your own Smelters Wrath.
You, the players, have asked and we delivered. You may have seen us showcase a handful of our EHG staff on social media, but weve decided to expand on this initiative a little more, just for you. I got the opportunity this month to sit down with David Chen, one of the Producers here at EHG. David has been with EHG for about a year and a half, and he was more than happy to talk about his role in the studio. [table][tr][td] Tell us a little about your job and what it includes. Im a producer here at EHG, basically that comes down to making sure that the features we work on get done. So, its a lot of planning, organizing, making sure people are doing what they need to be doing, and making sure that bottlenecks and obstacles are taken care of. What inspired you to get into game development, and how did you end up at this studio? Well, the studio is a different question, I think, apart from getting into games in general. Getting into games: basically at school, when I was in college, I was an electrical engineering major with a software focus. Then I was looking for jobs and I just found an opening for an engineer at a game company called Stormfront Studios. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I can do games for a living. Because, you know, I grew up playing games and always loved it. So, I applied for that, I got it, and Ive pretty much been in the games industry ever since. For EHG specifically, at the time I was just looking for a good position and a good place that I could join, and EHG popped up. I checked the game out. It was awesome that it was already in early access so I could actually just play the game and see where things were. I was really impressed by the game and met with the people. They seemed like a great group of people to work with and it just happened to work out. How does working at an indie studio differ from working at a larger studio? Ive actually found that the indie studio is not so different from a big studio where Ive also worked. I think a lot of it just depends on how the teams are built. For some reason, the team here at EHG is relatively similar. The big difference is the remote aspect of it. I found just making a game remote is so different from when everyone is at a physical studio at the same time. That communication is just a very different vibe and on top of that, were distributed around the globe. The team chemistry and the bonding is very different. You cant just turn around and talk to someone and ask a question. Youve gotta ping them, hope that theyre online, and look at your pings at the same time to get an immediate response. You just have to adjust how you work a little bit differently. How do you balance working from home with your home life? I think its just a matter of being responsible for a lot of it, right? I mean, the nice thing about going into work is you go home and it can be a clear delineation between work and home life. Its very different when youre always checking Slack for work and I think a lot of thats just the decision you make for yourself of like, All right, this is how Im going to draw my boundaries for work life balance. and its very much on you. Hopefully, youve got a manager who understands and is on the same wave length as you in terms of when youre on, when youre off, and its kind of the expectations of the job. For me, its worked out pretty well. I find that Im pleased with both my work life and my home life right now. So, I think whatever balance it is that I figured out, its at least working for me. How do you balance creativity with practical constraints like time, budget, or technical limitations? My role as a producer, I find works a lot better when I approach it from a practical standpoint. We have so many just amazingly talented, creative people that I let them ask to do the creative side of things. Its on our designers and our creative folks to ask for crazy ass stuff. Thats how you achieve greatness, by not caring about how hard something is or how long somethings going to take, because it gets the conversation started. But there has to be that balance, in terms of making sure we can actually get the work done on time; that were not completely rearchitecting the game to get something done. And so I bring that counterweight to the creative side of things. And if you set it up with a team of people, where that conversation is open, that its not antagonistic, then you realize that everyones working towards making a great game. Then you find that balance in between, and youre able to come up with something that is awesome, is fun, and doesnt burn out the team to get done and keeps the game stable. All the things that have to be kept in mind in addition to How awesome would this be? Whats the biggest lesson youve learned while working in indie game development? I think it all comes down to communication. So, communicate often, communicate early is really something that just kind of works both in life as well; but certainly in games. You need everyone to be on the same page. Everyone needs to reach alignment and if you can do that, then youll be in pretty good shape. Related to that also is to be honest. You can do that without being cruel. If something isnt working, if a deadline isnt going to be reached, if something painful is coming up, it still behooves you to be honest and open about it as early as possible because it gives the team a chance to react to it. The longer you put it off, the harder it is to do something about it. So, you really gotta bite the bullet and just make things clear from the beginning that, if somethings going wrong, you have to communicate it. So, thats something I found. Its better to be honest than to try to spare feelings by hiding it. You dont want to do that. In my role especially, a lot of what I try to do is let the whole team know This is what were doing. This is why were doing it. Give them an opportunity to respond. You want to communicate it as many times as you can, because everyone takes information in differently. And thats kind of it. Just communicate, let people know whats going on and, youll be in pretty good shape. How do you stay motivated and creative, especially during long or difficult projects? For me, it really just helps to have good people. I thought, at least in my career, that if I like the people Im working with, then that is really what motivates me to want to continue to do a good job, to do right by them. More so than anything else, It helps out Last Epoch. Its a fun game. I dont play all the games that I work on in my spare time but, certainly I do with Last Epoch because its just a fun game at the end of the day. But really its the people and knowing that Im helping them succeed; and thats kind of where I get my kicks. What kind of feedback from players do you find most helpful or motivating? I like a healthy dialogue of You guys are doing great. That certainly helps motivate you to know that youre in the right direction. I think constructive feedback is always useful because we recognize the games not perfect. There are problems with it and its good to know what people think we should be focusing on. It depends on how its worded; it helps if you can be honest without being a dick about it and so I think that as long as you do that, its always great to hear from the players. You assume positive intent, right? You know that theyre trying to make the game better. They want to have fun with it and we want them to have a good time also. Whats a feature or design choice youre particularly proud of in one of the games youve worked on? Most of what my job is has been outside of the creative side of things. Really, whenever the game gets out the door on time and in a fun state. If the game shifts and if we were able to ship most of what we wanted to in it, then that gives me a good sense of satisfaction. What advice would you give someone who wants to get into this industry? Youve got to work well with others, I think, is really what it comes down to at the end of the day. You can be the best engineer, the best artist, the best whatever, but if youre a jerk and no one wants to work with you, dude, you make it so hard. Its a team effort and youve got to be a team player if you want to make a game with a group of people. Obviously, technical acumen and being good at your job is certainly important, but I think even more important is the culture fit. You want to be someone that people want to work with. Is there anything else youd like to tell our readers? Just, really, thanks for playing the game. We see the appreciation and love that we actually get from the community, and it feels really good. And if its making you happy, then weve done our job right. [/td][/tr][/table] A big thanks again to David Chen for talking with us. Join us to meet a new member of the EHG studio every month, and get an inside look at what its like to be a part of Eleventh Hour Games. This has been Eterra Monthly, a report on the happenings and changes in the world of Last Epoch. If youve made it this far and are enjoying Last Epoch, we ask that you please take a moment to leave us an honest review on Steam. We hope you have enjoyed this months report and will see you all again soon!
[ 2024-10-31 16:00:40 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers to the Eterra Monthly October 2024 Edition! Weve got a fully loaded report for you today, so buckle up, and lets get started.
A New Dawn for the People
The Immortal Emperors campaign for power has been halted. As immortal soldiers occupied Eterra, a large resistance was staged to fight back. The battle began on September 19th and raged until October 20th. This resistance has since succeeded against the occupying undead army, and the Immortal Empire was forced to retreat. Resistance leader Yulia had this to say, The travelers are a force to be reckoned with and they are here to stay. The Emperor is welcome to press his influence whenever he wishes, but we will always push back! Our reporters attempted to reach her for further comment but have yet to receive anything more. The travelers who fought so tirelessly found a way to rub salt in the immortal wound, by claiming replicas of the Emperors own Crown and have been flaunting them before him. The Emperor however, was conveniently unavailable for comment. Is this the last we will see of the Immortal Empires forces? Only time will tell.
Patch Review
October 20th marked the end of the Immortal Uprising Event and the battle was incredible! Travelers from around the world came together and duked it out with the Emperors forces including a new type of soldier, The Loyalist Undead. An elite unit of the skeleton army that packed a punch and everyone felt it. As the event came to a close, Travelers have been encouraged to check the Cosmetic Shop for a free gift for their efforts, stashed within. If you havent collected your own Immortal Crown, its not too late. This item will remain available to all event participants, free of charge. With the end of the event came Patch 1.1.7.6. The new patch reverted a handful of changes made available by the event, and adjusted the effects of several others. For full details, read the Patch Notes Here .
Hotfix Rollout
Patch 1.1.7 was given a small hotfix for the month of October titled, Hotfix 1.1.7.7. It was treated as an addendum to patch 1.1.7.6. The hotfix note reads as follows: Fixed an issue that would cause the Felled Woods terrain to load incorrectly As the issue was not accompanied by any additional fixes, the information was later added to the end of the 1.1.7.6 patch notes, rather than being given its own page on the Forums.
Eyes on Eterra
And now for an Osprix eye view of things happening in Eterra. Over in the Felled woods, our weather team has noticed an anomaly involving thick fog and an ethereal floor causing a bit of a stir. Travelers are encouraged to Wait Im getting word that the fog is clearing and the ground has returned to its original solid state. Well Traveler, feel free to explore to your hearts content. We apologize for the false alarm. On to more pressing news. Several teams have come together with a few ideas regarding Twitch Subscription rewards they feel are a little over due. The team has put out a voters poll found HERE . Players are encouraged to cast their votes in regards to what they would like to have access to during Twitch streams. This poll will be open until November 11, 2024 11:00 AM CT after which it will be locked and the team will get to work adding the winning Emotes to the channel.
Build Spotlight
Travelers its that time again where we cast one of your builds in the Spotlight of Glory! This month we have something to warm up your gameplay after chilling out with the White Walker build last month. This months spotlight goes to
The Smelters Wrath Worldsplitter Forge Guard is a hard hitting, Harbinger deleting, Tank doused in napalm. Unlike the White Walker Cryosplosion that focused on stacking Frostbite, Smelters Wrath consumes enemies in a cone of fire, doubling your armor, and increases its own range the longer it charges. Couple this with smashing a Worldsplitter into a legendary 2-handed axe that increases Fire Melee damage, and Mana as well as mana regen, and your Forge Guard will be a walking combustion engine, melting its foes with minimal effort. Now this build does benefit from a few other important items such as Titan Heart, Shattered Chains, Siphon of Anguish, and Eterras Path, but the rest is really up to you. This does require some extra effort in item farming as opposed to the showcase from last month, but we think thats what makes this build shine; showing the power of both gameplay preferences. You can check out the Build Guide Showcase by Dr3adful and hear more about it in their own words. The Build guide has also been made available on Lastepochtools.com so feel free to dig around and light the fires for your own Smelters Wrath.
Meet the Team
You, the players, have asked and we delivered. You may have seen us showcase a handful of our EHG staff on social media, but weve decided to expand on this initiative a little more, just for you. I got the opportunity this month to sit down with David Chen, one of the Producers here at EHG. David has been with EHG for about a year and a half, and he was more than happy to talk about his role in the studio. [table][tr][td] Tell us a little about your job and what it includes. Im a producer here at EHG, basically that comes down to making sure that the features we work on get done. So, its a lot of planning, organizing, making sure people are doing what they need to be doing, and making sure that bottlenecks and obstacles are taken care of. What inspired you to get into game development, and how did you end up at this studio? Well, the studio is a different question, I think, apart from getting into games in general. Getting into games: basically at school, when I was in college, I was an electrical engineering major with a software focus. Then I was looking for jobs and I just found an opening for an engineer at a game company called Stormfront Studios. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I can do games for a living. Because, you know, I grew up playing games and always loved it. So, I applied for that, I got it, and Ive pretty much been in the games industry ever since. For EHG specifically, at the time I was just looking for a good position and a good place that I could join, and EHG popped up. I checked the game out. It was awesome that it was already in early access so I could actually just play the game and see where things were. I was really impressed by the game and met with the people. They seemed like a great group of people to work with and it just happened to work out. How does working at an indie studio differ from working at a larger studio? Ive actually found that the indie studio is not so different from a big studio where Ive also worked. I think a lot of it just depends on how the teams are built. For some reason, the team here at EHG is relatively similar. The big difference is the remote aspect of it. I found just making a game remote is so different from when everyone is at a physical studio at the same time. That communication is just a very different vibe and on top of that, were distributed around the globe. The team chemistry and the bonding is very different. You cant just turn around and talk to someone and ask a question. Youve gotta ping them, hope that theyre online, and look at your pings at the same time to get an immediate response. You just have to adjust how you work a little bit differently. How do you balance working from home with your home life? I think its just a matter of being responsible for a lot of it, right? I mean, the nice thing about going into work is you go home and it can be a clear delineation between work and home life. Its very different when youre always checking Slack for work and I think a lot of thats just the decision you make for yourself of like, All right, this is how Im going to draw my boundaries for work life balance. and its very much on you. Hopefully, youve got a manager who understands and is on the same wave length as you in terms of when youre on, when youre off, and its kind of the expectations of the job. For me, its worked out pretty well. I find that Im pleased with both my work life and my home life right now. So, I think whatever balance it is that I figured out, its at least working for me. How do you balance creativity with practical constraints like time, budget, or technical limitations? My role as a producer, I find works a lot better when I approach it from a practical standpoint. We have so many just amazingly talented, creative people that I let them ask to do the creative side of things. Its on our designers and our creative folks to ask for crazy ass stuff. Thats how you achieve greatness, by not caring about how hard something is or how long somethings going to take, because it gets the conversation started. But there has to be that balance, in terms of making sure we can actually get the work done on time; that were not completely rearchitecting the game to get something done. And so I bring that counterweight to the creative side of things. And if you set it up with a team of people, where that conversation is open, that its not antagonistic, then you realize that everyones working towards making a great game. Then you find that balance in between, and youre able to come up with something that is awesome, is fun, and doesnt burn out the team to get done and keeps the game stable. All the things that have to be kept in mind in addition to How awesome would this be? Whats the biggest lesson youve learned while working in indie game development? I think it all comes down to communication. So, communicate often, communicate early is really something that just kind of works both in life as well; but certainly in games. You need everyone to be on the same page. Everyone needs to reach alignment and if you can do that, then youll be in pretty good shape. Related to that also is to be honest. You can do that without being cruel. If something isnt working, if a deadline isnt going to be reached, if something painful is coming up, it still behooves you to be honest and open about it as early as possible because it gives the team a chance to react to it. The longer you put it off, the harder it is to do something about it. So, you really gotta bite the bullet and just make things clear from the beginning that, if somethings going wrong, you have to communicate it. So, thats something I found. Its better to be honest than to try to spare feelings by hiding it. You dont want to do that. In my role especially, a lot of what I try to do is let the whole team know This is what were doing. This is why were doing it. Give them an opportunity to respond. You want to communicate it as many times as you can, because everyone takes information in differently. And thats kind of it. Just communicate, let people know whats going on and, youll be in pretty good shape. How do you stay motivated and creative, especially during long or difficult projects? For me, it really just helps to have good people. I thought, at least in my career, that if I like the people Im working with, then that is really what motivates me to want to continue to do a good job, to do right by them. More so than anything else, It helps out Last Epoch. Its a fun game. I dont play all the games that I work on in my spare time but, certainly I do with Last Epoch because its just a fun game at the end of the day. But really its the people and knowing that Im helping them succeed; and thats kind of where I get my kicks. What kind of feedback from players do you find most helpful or motivating? I like a healthy dialogue of You guys are doing great. That certainly helps motivate you to know that youre in the right direction. I think constructive feedback is always useful because we recognize the games not perfect. There are problems with it and its good to know what people think we should be focusing on. It depends on how its worded; it helps if you can be honest without being a dick about it and so I think that as long as you do that, its always great to hear from the players. You assume positive intent, right? You know that theyre trying to make the game better. They want to have fun with it and we want them to have a good time also. Whats a feature or design choice youre particularly proud of in one of the games youve worked on? Most of what my job is has been outside of the creative side of things. Really, whenever the game gets out the door on time and in a fun state. If the game shifts and if we were able to ship most of what we wanted to in it, then that gives me a good sense of satisfaction. What advice would you give someone who wants to get into this industry? Youve got to work well with others, I think, is really what it comes down to at the end of the day. You can be the best engineer, the best artist, the best whatever, but if youre a jerk and no one wants to work with you, dude, you make it so hard. Its a team effort and youve got to be a team player if you want to make a game with a group of people. Obviously, technical acumen and being good at your job is certainly important, but I think even more important is the culture fit. You want to be someone that people want to work with. Is there anything else youd like to tell our readers? Just, really, thanks for playing the game. We see the appreciation and love that we actually get from the community, and it feels really good. And if its making you happy, then weve done our job right. [/td][/tr][/table] A big thanks again to David Chen for talking with us. Join us to meet a new member of the EHG studio every month, and get an inside look at what its like to be a part of Eleventh Hour Games. This has been Eterra Monthly, a report on the happenings and changes in the world of Last Epoch. If youve made it this far and are enjoying Last Epoch, we ask that you please take a moment to leave us an honest review on Steam. We hope you have enjoyed this months report and will see you all again soon!
Music of Eterra | An Interview with EHGs Lead Composer
[previewyoutube=0EAg7lEhosg;full][/previewyoutube] How are you doing today? Im doing great, thanks for asking! Given your work on Movies like Immortals, how did you get into composing for Games? I met a guy at a party No really. I had worked on lots of film and TV projects, but had always wanted to work on games, but no one would give me a shot. When I score, I dig deep into the story to then elevate it through music. With games, theres a direct connection to the audience, who are the main character. Writing music that can move them and emotionally enhance the choices they make in the game is a great deal of fun. So it was something I always wanted to do and this guy I met liked my work, and after a few projects together, he hired me to write music for an Adventure Time Virtual Reality game. I later gave a talk about the experience at the Game Developers Convention (GDC) and that jumpstarted my game music career and set me on a trajectory to work more in games the following years. Is there much difference between the process for Movies and Games? Yes, since video games are non-linear, the pacing is largely controlled by the player, you have to compose music in adaptable loops. Sometimes, I see the music as the heart of the player as it moves through the world and story. For some big boss battles, the music will get more intense and change sections as the battle progresses, based on the health of the boss. With Aberroth, the music had to transition to new musical styles based on the era of the timeline that was being presented. Is there anything youve worked on, youd say really impacted or influenced how you compose? Composing music for the Rise of the Necromancer expansion for Diablo III really opened up my eyes to the joys of composing dark music in ways that Ive never worked before. Id light a candle, and turn all the lights off in the studio in order to channel the dark energy of the game. Its a practice that I still use when working on Last Epoch.
[previewyoutube=VgbX-B3i7zs;full][/previewyoutube] So how many instruments do you play, and how many did you learn just for Last Epoch? I play many instruments but for Last Epoch, I also took up the lute and the tagelharpa to give the Last Epoch soundtrack an ancient, archaic feeling. Those were new for me and they were exciting to learn. How did you go about finding the right Vocalist and what made Ffion stand out? She was brought to my attention through the magic of the YouTube algorithm! Her voice is evocative and otherworldly, and thats what grabbed me. She had already done an album of music in Old Norse, with excellent pronunciation. It was masterfully done and made her the perfect voice for this project. Why Old Norse? Its amazing, Ffion does an amazing job, though what inspired that decision and how did they learn it? We wanted to use a language that was no longer spoken today, that transported you to a forgotten time, and the gritty sound and rough texture of Old Norse pulled me into the Last Epoch landscape. The words have a powerful feeling, the accent is always on the first syllable, which gives it a very strong drive. I took phrases and individual words from Old Norse texts that that thematically banded together the melody I had composed with the story. Currently its only used only used in the Main Theme, however across many other tracks found in game we have several talented vocalists who contributed to bringing that same epic feeling to our newest Boss fights.
[previewyoutube=R3dW6h91TRY;full][/previewyoutube] So Harbingers and Aberroth, two big new inclusions! Was this a daunting challenge or an exciting one? I love a good challenge, and especially one that involves writing angry music, so I jumped right in. Strong themes are very important throughout Last Epoch, so I made sure that each harbinger had a recognizable theme and instrumentation. The Brute Harbinger is large and intimidating, so I used a deep sounding male choir singing long tones, with the parts sung by Mason Lieberman to enhance the brutish feeling. The Agile Harbinger is more nimble and the music is faster paced with violins playing short notes throughout. Given these fights can last a long time, how do you compose a track for that? As you fight Aberroth, you transition through all of the different eras of the game, and the music had to match. So, the aboriginal chanting of the Ancient Era gives way to the elevated tones of the Divine Era to the distorted sounds of the Ruined Era, as the background imagery changes each time the fight escalates. The music gives that perfect sense of This is not an easy fight, how do you go about grabbing that feeling and portraying it? As the Monolith is the setting for this expansion, we decided to compose many new tracks to accompany the player on their journey through it. The music is similar in style to the music for the End of Time, but it differs in that it has an underlying sense of tension since you are about to do battle. This Monolith track features Rachel Hardy on vocals. What is the process of Mastering a track? Mastering a track involves assembling and editing a track from its component parts. Since the game has to play the audio files so that they loop and react to what the player is doing, the music has to be written in a certain way and chopped up properly. Once the track has been reassembled, the individual sections have to be balanced and processed to maximize the volume and make all the tracks consistent in loudness so the listener doesnt have to turn up and down the volume with each track. When do you know or feel like you are done with a track? When I get chills from listening to it, and the audience is transported to another place and time.
Thank you for joining us today, and thank you Erik and Ffion for your time! Keep your eyes and ears open for our next Blog Post where well be talking to one of the many great teams that help build the world of Last Epoch!
[ 2024-10-25 16:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! Welcome to the first in a series of behind-the-scenes Blog Posts, each focusing on one team or area of Last Epochs development! Today the Lead Composer for Eleventh Hour Games, Erik Desiderio, is here answering questions about what went into creating the iconic Last Epoch Theme song, how they get in to the mindset to portray the very feeling of moving through Eterra and what goes in to getting the music game-ready!
Forging a path
[previewyoutube=0EAg7lEhosg;full][/previewyoutube] How are you doing today? Im doing great, thanks for asking! Given your work on Movies like Immortals, how did you get into composing for Games? I met a guy at a party No really. I had worked on lots of film and TV projects, but had always wanted to work on games, but no one would give me a shot. When I score, I dig deep into the story to then elevate it through music. With games, theres a direct connection to the audience, who are the main character. Writing music that can move them and emotionally enhance the choices they make in the game is a great deal of fun. So it was something I always wanted to do and this guy I met liked my work, and after a few projects together, he hired me to write music for an Adventure Time Virtual Reality game. I later gave a talk about the experience at the Game Developers Convention (GDC) and that jumpstarted my game music career and set me on a trajectory to work more in games the following years. Is there much difference between the process for Movies and Games? Yes, since video games are non-linear, the pacing is largely controlled by the player, you have to compose music in adaptable loops. Sometimes, I see the music as the heart of the player as it moves through the world and story. For some big boss battles, the music will get more intense and change sections as the battle progresses, based on the health of the boss. With Aberroth, the music had to transition to new musical styles based on the era of the timeline that was being presented. Is there anything youve worked on, youd say really impacted or influenced how you compose? Composing music for the Rise of the Necromancer expansion for Diablo III really opened up my eyes to the joys of composing dark music in ways that Ive never worked before. Id light a candle, and turn all the lights off in the studio in order to channel the dark energy of the game. Its a practice that I still use when working on Last Epoch.
Lute Drops and Finding Ffion
[previewyoutube=VgbX-B3i7zs;full][/previewyoutube] So how many instruments do you play, and how many did you learn just for Last Epoch? I play many instruments but for Last Epoch, I also took up the lute and the tagelharpa to give the Last Epoch soundtrack an ancient, archaic feeling. Those were new for me and they were exciting to learn. How did you go about finding the right Vocalist and what made Ffion stand out? She was brought to my attention through the magic of the YouTube algorithm! Her voice is evocative and otherworldly, and thats what grabbed me. She had already done an album of music in Old Norse, with excellent pronunciation. It was masterfully done and made her the perfect voice for this project. Why Old Norse? Its amazing, Ffion does an amazing job, though what inspired that decision and how did they learn it? We wanted to use a language that was no longer spoken today, that transported you to a forgotten time, and the gritty sound and rough texture of Old Norse pulled me into the Last Epoch landscape. The words have a powerful feeling, the accent is always on the first syllable, which gives it a very strong drive. I took phrases and individual words from Old Norse texts that that thematically banded together the melody I had composed with the story. Currently its only used only used in the Main Theme, however across many other tracks found in game we have several talented vocalists who contributed to bringing that same epic feeling to our newest Boss fights.
Composing for Chaos
[previewyoutube=R3dW6h91TRY;full][/previewyoutube] So Harbingers and Aberroth, two big new inclusions! Was this a daunting challenge or an exciting one? I love a good challenge, and especially one that involves writing angry music, so I jumped right in. Strong themes are very important throughout Last Epoch, so I made sure that each harbinger had a recognizable theme and instrumentation. The Brute Harbinger is large and intimidating, so I used a deep sounding male choir singing long tones, with the parts sung by Mason Lieberman to enhance the brutish feeling. The Agile Harbinger is more nimble and the music is faster paced with violins playing short notes throughout. Given these fights can last a long time, how do you compose a track for that? As you fight Aberroth, you transition through all of the different eras of the game, and the music had to match. So, the aboriginal chanting of the Ancient Era gives way to the elevated tones of the Divine Era to the distorted sounds of the Ruined Era, as the background imagery changes each time the fight escalates. The music gives that perfect sense of This is not an easy fight, how do you go about grabbing that feeling and portraying it? As the Monolith is the setting for this expansion, we decided to compose many new tracks to accompany the player on their journey through it. The music is similar in style to the music for the End of Time, but it differs in that it has an underlying sense of tension since you are about to do battle. This Monolith track features Rachel Hardy on vocals. What is the process of Mastering a track? Mastering a track involves assembling and editing a track from its component parts. Since the game has to play the audio files so that they loop and react to what the player is doing, the music has to be written in a certain way and chopped up properly. Once the track has been reassembled, the individual sections have to be balanced and processed to maximize the volume and make all the tracks consistent in loudness so the listener doesnt have to turn up and down the volume with each track. When do you know or feel like you are done with a track? When I get chills from listening to it, and the audience is transported to another place and time.
Outro
Thank you for joining us today, and thank you Erik and Ffion for your time! Keep your eyes and ears open for our next Blog Post where well be talking to one of the many great teams that help build the world of Last Epoch!
The Immortal Uprising: End of Event Wrap-up
Over the course of the event, weve been closely monitoring feedback and thoughts regarding features introduced with The Imperial Uprising, such as the event buff modifiers. Originally, we had planned to simply remove the temporary buffs, and Loyalist Undead packs with the end of the event. In this feedback weve seen very positive responses to some of the buffs, and many requests for some of the effects to remain in place. The much beloved Loot Lizards, as well as the new shrines were always planned to stay after the event, and will continue to be able to be found in-game. We also want to clarify that the Cycle Refresh which started with the event will be continuing through to patch 1.2 - the refreshed Cycle does not end with the event. We want to cover some of the changes were making in response to your feedback, all of which is immediately in effect with the end of event patch released today. The temporary event buffs and Loyalist Undead packs have been removed as planned, though were making some changes to Item Faction Favor costs and Rank requirements (these are buffs), as well as some changes to the Loot Lizards. For the full patch notes, please check out the Patch Notes post here: Last Epoch Patch 1.1.7.6
Weve been watching players excitement around higher drop rates and the ability to interact with factions more frequently with more expendable favor. In response to this feedback, were lowering many favor costs and reducing the Reputation required to advance Faction Ranks. With these changes, we want players to keep the feeling of advancing factions quicker and offer more opportunities for interacting with their chosen faction.
The other big area of excitement we saw from players aside from the Item Faction buffs was the increased access to Unique item drops. So, while the temporary Random Unique Item drop rate buff is being removed, were including adjustments to Loot Lizards, bringing the Unique Item drop rate back to similar rates as seen during the event. Patch 1.2 will be introducing many additions that will give players exciting new ways to target desired loot alongside the new content being added at that time, though these changes should help provide more opportunities for Uniques overall, including immediately before patch 1.2 arrives. We have reduced the overall spawn rate of Loot Lizards, and adjusted the chances for each type of Loot Lizard to spawn, as well as their loot pools to make them more rewarding when you do encounter them for an overall buff. Updated Loot Lizard occurrence rate changes (values are for level 90+):
As promised from Yulia, your efforts in quelling the uprising are being rewarded with a unique event cosmetic. While the Immortal Emperor was busy lashing out at his failing Loyalists, Yulia was able to access his personal stash, and commandeer his very crown for you.
This cosmetic can be acquired by visiting the MTX shop in-game and redeeming it to your cosmetics inventory (for no cost). As with all cosmetics, this cosmetic is currently only available in Online mode.
One of the changes were making internally in preparation of 1.2 is upgrading our Unity engine from 2019 to 2021, this gives our teams a lot more development tools and features to work with. The engine upgrade will be releasing before 1.2, however with such a significant code change, this means the end of the event patch will be the last patch for a short while. To be clear, todays patch will not be the last patch before 1.2. Patches will be on hold until we can release the engine upgrade, and not have to replicate changes to the 2019 version in order to release them to the live client. This will of course mean things will feel a bit quiet on the development side while were hard at work behind the scenes, so were also going to be stepping up our communication even further with a whole host of posts coming before 1.2. This includes our new Eterra Monthly newsletter, blog posts covering what different departments are up to and interviewing team members, as well as blog posts covering features coming in Season 2! Thats right, weve also heard the feedback regarding the naming for our major content patches (eg. 1.2) and will as of this very moment, in this very sentence, at this very time of the year, localized entirely within our community, be changing that naming convention to Seasons, starting with patch 1.2 being referred to as Season 2. While we may still use the patch number in specific places, we hope this convention change to Seasons will help to clear up misunderstandings regarding what is a Major content patch, and expected to be the start of a fresh Cycle. Join us later this week for our next blog post as we talk about the Music of Eterra, and have a QA session with our Lead Composer, Erik Desiderio. Until then Travelers, May Gregory the Grole grant you safe travels as you protect Eterra
[ 2024-10-21 16:05:48 CET ] [ Original post ]
Victory Travelers! Thirty-one days after the Immortal Emperor let loose his loyalists legions into the world, the uprising has successfully been quelled. With a total of 760,523,009 skeletons slain, the Immortal Emperor has realized their grave error and been forced to pull his forces back to standard deployments. To reward your efforts in stopping this uprising, Yulia has managed to acquire a special item from the Emperors personal stash for you, which you will be able to claim from the in-game MTX shop (at no charge) to add to your cosmetic inventory. This marks the end of the Immortal Uprising Event. We hope everyone enjoyed all the event had to offer, and with Eterra returning to a more peaceful state, we wanted to go over whats happening in the trenches, and what to expect as we continue onwards to 1.2
End of Event Patch
Over the course of the event, weve been closely monitoring feedback and thoughts regarding features introduced with The Imperial Uprising, such as the event buff modifiers. Originally, we had planned to simply remove the temporary buffs, and Loyalist Undead packs with the end of the event. In this feedback weve seen very positive responses to some of the buffs, and many requests for some of the effects to remain in place. The much beloved Loot Lizards, as well as the new shrines were always planned to stay after the event, and will continue to be able to be found in-game. We also want to clarify that the Cycle Refresh which started with the event will be continuing through to patch 1.2 - the refreshed Cycle does not end with the event. We want to cover some of the changes were making in response to your feedback, all of which is immediately in effect with the end of event patch released today. The temporary event buffs and Loyalist Undead packs have been removed as planned, though were making some changes to Item Faction Favor costs and Rank requirements (these are buffs), as well as some changes to the Loot Lizards. For the full patch notes, please check out the Patch Notes post here: Last Epoch Patch 1.1.7.6
Favor and Reputation Changes
Weve been watching players excitement around higher drop rates and the ability to interact with factions more frequently with more expendable favor. In response to this feedback, were lowering many favor costs and reducing the Reputation required to advance Faction Ranks. With these changes, we want players to keep the feeling of advancing factions quicker and offer more opportunities for interacting with their chosen faction.
- Reduced Faction Gambler item costs by around 35% on average and made them more varied.
Circle of Fortune
- Reduced the cost of most prophecies by around 30% (this varies case by case due to aggressive rounding).
- Reduced the cost of Exalted Helmet, Boot, and Relic prophecies by slightly more than 30%.
- Reduced the cost of Legendary Potential prophecies by around 50% in total.
Merchants Guild
- Bazaar purchase Favor cost changes:
- Idols cost 600 (from 800)
- Experimental affix tiers add 300 to Magic and Rare item costs (from 400)
- Set items cost 240 + 4 x level requirement (from 300 + 4 x level requirement)
- Uniques with 0LP cost 800 + 4 x level requirement (from 1200 + 4 x level requirement)
- Uniques with LP cost 3000 + 1000 x LP^2 + 40 x level requirement (from 4000 + 1500 x LP^2 + 40 x level requirement)
- Legendaries cost 6000 + 1000 per affix tier + 40 x level requirement (from 8000 + 1500 per affix tier + 40 x level requirement)
- Exalted items cost 2000 + 200 per T6 affix + 1400 per T7 affix + 400 per Experimental affix tier (from 2500 + 250 per T6 affix + 1500 per T7 affix + 600 per Experimental affix tier)
- Listing costs remain at 25% of buy costs with a minimum listing cost of 150.
- Rank Requirements
- Measured from previous Rank, not cumulative;
- Rank 3 requires 2000 reputation (from 3000)
- Rank 4 requires 7500 reputation (from 11500)
- Rank 5 requires 20000 reputation (from 37500)
- Rank 6 requires 40000 reputation (from 75000)
- Rank 7 requires 70000 reputation (from 125000)
- Rank 8 requires 110000 reputation (from 200000)
- Rank 9 requires 180000 reputation (from 300000)
- Rank 10 requires 320000 reputation (from 500000)
- Rank 11 requires 500000 reputation (from 750000)
- Rank 12 requires 800000 reputation (from 1100000)
Loot Lizard Changes
The other big area of excitement we saw from players aside from the Item Faction buffs was the increased access to Unique item drops. So, while the temporary Random Unique Item drop rate buff is being removed, were including adjustments to Loot Lizards, bringing the Unique Item drop rate back to similar rates as seen during the event. Patch 1.2 will be introducing many additions that will give players exciting new ways to target desired loot alongside the new content being added at that time, though these changes should help provide more opportunities for Uniques overall, including immediately before patch 1.2 arrives. We have reduced the overall spawn rate of Loot Lizards, and adjusted the chances for each type of Loot Lizard to spawn, as well as their loot pools to make them more rewarding when you do encounter them for an overall buff. Updated Loot Lizard occurrence rate changes (values are for level 90+):
- 4% fewer yellow and purple lizards.
- 27% fewer blue lizards.
- 25% more white lizards (the ones with orange beams that give Uniques).
- 7% more big green lizards.
- Loot Lizards now wait 40 seconds after last taking damage before burrowing underground to escape (increased from 20 seconds).
- Lizards drop 2 fewer shards on average.
- Yellow, purple, and green lizards drop slightly more Exalted items than before.
- White lizards drop slightly more Unique items at level 60+.
Event Cosmetic Reward
As promised from Yulia, your efforts in quelling the uprising are being rewarded with a unique event cosmetic. While the Immortal Emperor was busy lashing out at his failing Loyalists, Yulia was able to access his personal stash, and commandeer his very crown for you.
This cosmetic can be acquired by visiting the MTX shop in-game and redeeming it to your cosmetics inventory (for no cost). As with all cosmetics, this cosmetic is currently only available in Online mode.
Continuing to 1.2
One of the changes were making internally in preparation of 1.2 is upgrading our Unity engine from 2019 to 2021, this gives our teams a lot more development tools and features to work with. The engine upgrade will be releasing before 1.2, however with such a significant code change, this means the end of the event patch will be the last patch for a short while. To be clear, todays patch will not be the last patch before 1.2. Patches will be on hold until we can release the engine upgrade, and not have to replicate changes to the 2019 version in order to release them to the live client. This will of course mean things will feel a bit quiet on the development side while were hard at work behind the scenes, so were also going to be stepping up our communication even further with a whole host of posts coming before 1.2. This includes our new Eterra Monthly newsletter, blog posts covering what different departments are up to and interviewing team members, as well as blog posts covering features coming in Season 2! Thats right, weve also heard the feedback regarding the naming for our major content patches (eg. 1.2) and will as of this very moment, in this very sentence, at this very time of the year, localized entirely within our community, be changing that naming convention to Seasons, starting with patch 1.2 being referred to as Season 2. While we may still use the patch number in specific places, we hope this convention change to Seasons will help to clear up misunderstandings regarding what is a Major content patch, and expected to be the start of a fresh Cycle. Join us later this week for our next blog post as we talk about the Music of Eterra, and have a QA session with our Lead Composer, Erik Desiderio. Until then Travelers, May Gregory the Grole grant you safe travels as you protect Eterra
Last Epoch 1.1.7.6 Patch Notes
Updated Loot Lizard occurrence rate changes (values are for level 90+):
[ 2024-10-21 16:05:13 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
Event Modifiers
- Loyalist Undead enemies no longer spawn in Monoliths.
- Removed
- Increased Favor and Reputation Gain
- Increased Gold Drop Rate
- Increased Random Unique Drop Rate
Favor and Reputation
- Reduced Faction Gambler item costs by around 35% on average and made them more varied.
Circle of Fortune
- Reduced the cost of most prophecies by around 30% (this varies case by case due to aggressive rounding).
- Reduced the cost of Exalted Helmet, Boot, and Relic prophecies by slightly more than 30%.
- Reduced the cost of Legendary Potential prophecies by around 50% in total.
Merchants Guild
- Bazaar Favor cost reductions:
- Idols cost 600 (from 800)
- Experimental affix tiers add 300 to Magic and Rare item costs (from 400)
- Set items cost 240 + 4 x level requirement (from 300 + 4 x level requirement)
- Uniques with 0LP cost 800 + 4 x level requirement (from 1200 + 4 x level requirement)
- Uniques with LP cost 3000 + 1000 x LP^2 + 40 x level requirement (from 4000 + 1500 x LP^2 + 40 x level requirement)
- Legendaries cost 6000 + 1000 per affix tier + 40 x level requirement (from 8000 + 1500 per affix tier + 40 x level requirement)
- Exalted items cost 2000 + 200 per T6 affix + 1400 per T7 affix + 400 per Experimental affix tier (from 2500 + 250 per T6 affix + 1500 per T7 affix + 600 per Experimental affix tier)
- Listing costs remain at 25% of buy costs with a minimum listing cost of 150.
Rank Requirements
- Reduced the reputation needed for most Item Faction ranks. Reaching rank 9 now requires 43% less reputation, and reaching rank 12 requires 34% less reputation than before. Changes are measured from previous Rank, not cumulative;
- Rank 3 requires 2000 reputation (from 3000)
- Rank 4 requires 7500 reputation (from 11500)
- Rank 5 requires 20000 reputation (from 37500)
- Rank 6 requires 40000 reputation (from 75000)
- Rank 7 requires 70000 reputation (from 125000)
- Rank 8 requires 110000 reputation (from 200000)
- Rank 9 requires 180000 reputation (from 300000)
- Rank 10 requires 320000 reputation (from 500000)
- Rank 11 requires 500000 reputation (from 750000)
- Rank 12 requires 800000 reputation (from 1100000)
Loot Lizards
Updated Loot Lizard occurrence rate changes (values are for level 90+):
- 4% fewer yellow and purple lizards.
- 27% fewer blue lizards.
- 25% more white lizards (the ones with orange beams that give Uniques).
- 7% more big green lizards.
- Loot Lizards now wait 40 seconds after last taking damage before burrowing underground to escape (increased from 20 seconds).
- Lizards drop 2 fewer shards on average.
- Yellow, purple, and green lizards drop slightly more Exalted items than before.
- White lizards drop slightly more Unique items at level 60+.
Bug Fixes
General
- Improved character pathing across a number of scenes, improving map navigability.
- Fixed issue that prevented 'Chance to Shred Armor on Hit' from being applied to applicable base types that are class specific.
- Fixed an issue where, after dying to the boss in the Sanctum of the Architect, characters couldnt move upon respawning.
- Fixed a bug causing the incorrect player character voice line to play upon entering the Shattered Road.
Offline
- Fixed a bug that occurred in Offline mode that would cause the player to be immortal after going through a Time Rift.
- Fixed an issue causing Offline players to teleport back to End of Time when using a Town portal during a fight with Aberroth instead of exiting the boss run as intended.
Skill
- Fixed a bug where Black Arrows created by Aerial Assaults node Darkwing Fall were not able to be picked up.
- Fixed Aerial Assault not being able to go over gaps. It now behaves more like Fury leap.
- Fixed a bug causing incorrect player rotation when spamming Shield Rush with "The Rush of Sacrifice" node in Online.
- Fixed a bug where Runemaster's Hydrahedron was targeting an un-targetable ballista in the Argentus bossfight.
- Fixed an issue where the maximum companions stat would be displayed incorrectly on a Beastmaster with Artor's Loyalty or the Natural Bond passive node unlocked.
- Fixed an issue causing arrows to get stuck in the air after hitting an enemy when the player uses Flurry.
- Fixed Evade clipping through stairs and other ramps.
Visual and Text
- Fixed a bug where the fly-by indicator from Void Rahyeh in The Black Sun didnt line up correctly with its dash.
- Updated skeleton visuals, including adding a double stab animation for the Acolytes Rogue Skeleton.
- Fixed an issue where Gaspars beams hitbox did not always line up with its visuals in Online play.
- Fixed some enemies using outdated descriptions.
- For example, Void Prophets used the description of the old void prophets, "Always crits distant enemies", despite them having no such effect.
- Fixed an issue where Phoenix Shrine could block the view of Runes that Runemasters could have above their character.
- Fixed a visual bug where some fire torches appeared bright pink.
- Fixed a bug where multiple Forgotten Knights could appear on top of each other in the Shattered Road.
- Fixed an issue where the Boss Ward bar would not animate.
- Fixed a bug where in the second Quest Echo of Reign of Dragons, a VFX would never disappear during the Lightning Dragons fight. Also fixed a bug where the Lightning Dragons' shake attack would sometimes produce ability indicators that did not disappear afterwards.
- Fixed an issue where the tooltip for the 'Reduced Bonus Damage from Crits' stat was missing in the character stats menu.
Shrines
- Fixed a bug where shrines would spawn items in inaccessible areas in the Majel'ka Slums.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the Reclamation Shrine displaying the visuals for its beam.
- Fixed a bug where shrines could be placed on top of each other and other random encounters such as Nemesis in Temporal Sanctum in Online.
- Fixed cases where shrines and Nemeses could spawn in inaccessible locations in the Ice Caverns.
Controller
- Fixed an issue where the Bazaar menu could not be navigated when using a controller.
- Fixed a controller targeting issue when using Terrify.
- Fixed a controller navigation issue where you cannot navigate down from the second specialized skill in the skill slot.
- Fixed an issue where abilities couldn't be used with a controller after navigating the action bar.
- Fixed several issues with controller navigation of the Passive Tree panel.
- Fixed a bug that prevented reaching the Party panel when using a controller.
- Fixed an issue where the prompt for additional information in Skill Nodes in Skill Trees wouldnt change when using a controller.
- Fixed a gamepad-related crash that could occur while opening the radial menu.
- Improved controller navigation of the Stash menu. Pressing Y/Triangle while hovering over a tab in the stash menu now opens the configuration window for that tab.
- Fixed a controller issue where the screen keyboard showed incorrect icons, and also adjusted the size of the screen keyboard keys.
UI
- Changed the Dungeon Key & Tier Selection UI so that it no longer shows for everyone in a party, preventing confusion about whether everyone in a party had to expend a dungeon key.
- Items duplicated via Rune of Creation or Lightless Arbor now properly show their mirrored images in the Bazaar UI.
- Fixed Class Masteries descriptions appearing squished and made UI scaling improvements.
- Fixed a UI scaling issue that could lead to the minimap appearing to move outside of its frame.
- Fixed a bug with the Loot Filter rule UI where the color picker would sometimes be visible for show rules.
- Fixed a bug where the Observatory reroll constellation button could not be interacted with in some circumstances.
- Updated confirmation popup for selecting a Mastery to make it clear which Mastery you are selecting.
- Fixed the Mastery selection panel for Acolyte showing the old icon for Reaper Form.
- Fixed the Mastery selection panel and the Passive Tree side banner showing the old icon for Forge Strike.
- Fixed a bug where clicking Empower on a Nemesis panel would reopen it.
- Improved item tooltip interaction behaviour.
- CTRL then ALT shows ranges with comparison, while ALT then CTRL shows ranges without comparison.
- Fixed an issue with the close button access in tutorial tooltips where the visual button did not line up with the actual area that could be interacted with.
Performance
- Made performance improvements to the Character Select screen and several in-game scenes.
- Added further performance improvements related to opening the Stash.
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.1.7.5
Magic loyalist undead have 31% less health at level 60 and below, scaling to 18% less health at level 100.
Rare loyalist undead have 15% less health at level 60 and below, scaling to 5% less health at level 100.
Magic loyalist undead deal 7% less damage.
Rare loyalist undead deal 9% less damage
Reduced the maximum amount of magic loyalist undeads each pack can spawn with. On average this means their spawn rate is reduced by 13%
Deal 10% less damage.
Rare versions deal 16% less damage.
Unearthed Bonespike deals 14% less damage.
All these changes are mutually multiplicative, so Unearthed Bonespikes from a rare Transfusion Casket deals about 50% less damage.
Acid traps last a maximum of 15 seconds (from 20).
Magic loyalist undead throw 30% fewer acid traps.
Lightning bolts from rare loyalist undead produce 3 sparks, from 4.
Sparks from lightning bolts from rare loyalist undead last 4 seconds (from 6).
Rare loyalist undead retaliate with lightning bolts about 12% less frequently.
[ 2024-10-02 16:00:53 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
Loyalist Undead
Transfusion Casket
Acid Trap mod
Lightning Retaliation mod
Bug Fixes
- Fixed obstacle checks for dash skills, such as evade and shift, being much harsher than in 1.1.
- Prior to this fix, these skills stopped at the edge of any obstacle, meaning that you couldn't evade through small obstacles or the corners of walls.
- Fixed a bug that made buffs and debuffs (including Shrines) seem to persist between zones erroneously in Online play.
- Now those icons are shown correctly cleared from the UI on zone changes. Active buffs still carry over between zones in Offline play as before.
- Fixed a bug where Warpath cast directly by the player was benefitting from the damage bonus applied to Warpath from shrines, and this bonus also incorrectly applied even after the shrine ended.
- Fixed a bug where Warpath's echoes damaged enemies near the player instead of at the echo's position.
- Fixed certain idol affixes being missing from the Bazaar selector.
- Increased damage over time.
- Elemental resistance.
- Fixed an issue where the waypoint was flickering in Champion Gate and The Frozen Roots.
- Fixed missing images in the game guide.
- Stash Priority, Loot Lizards, Shrines.
- Fixed an issue where a white box would appear on the loading screen while transitioning between scenes.
- Fixed a bug that allowed skipping the fight with Haruspex Orian.
- Fixed a bug where killing your first Harbinger didnt always correctly count for progression in the Forgotten Knights faction.
- This caused players to join the Faction but be at rank 0 instead of 1.
- Fixed a bug where Harbingers Crest didnt block the Harbinger from spawning if a player was rank 0 in the Forgotten Knights faction.
- Fixed an issue with correctly switching between multiple controllers input.
- Fixed a case where the tooltip in the inventory would close when another player exited/entered the targeting area.
- Reduced lag spikes when encountering loot lizards.
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.1.7.4
Reduced frame-lag that would happen when switching stashes via the cycle dropdown. Also reduced frame-lag when adding or interacting with stash tabs or categories.
[ 2024-09-25 15:25:55 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.1.7.2 Notes
[ 2024-09-21 19:02:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Reworked the Isle of Storms quest, to avoid a possible progression block. The entire collect the Moon Fragments step has been removed, along with the two altars. The portal to Lagon's Temple now appears right after speaking with Liath in the Moonlit Shrine.
- Your efforts to unburden all the Loot Lizards of Eterra have been paying off! Many of the Loot Lizards are now safely back at home having been freed of their burdens. In response, the factions employing them are becoming more wary of sending their Lizards into the world.
- Blue and White Loot Lizards now start spawning in area level 12 and above. This prevents players finding Idols before having any Idol slots unlocked in normal gameplay scenarios
- Loot Lizards spawn less frequently, especially in the campaign
- Loot Lizard shrines are less common, especially in the early game
- Fewer lizards are blue, this makes the other types more common.
- All Loot Lizards, other than the blue lizard, drop more of their main types of loot.
- Lizard shrines are less common, especially early in the game
- All Loot Lizards drop more crafting materials
Bug Fixes
- Fixed item labels being spread too far apart for many users.
- Reduced frame-lag that would happen when switching stashes via the cycle dropdown. Also reduced frame-lag when adding or interacting with stash tabs or categories.
- Fixed case with passive trees where two passive points of a node would be respecced instead of only one. Also fixed a case where pressing "enter" while confirming to respec a single node would result in a respec of all nodes.
- Fixed Gambler items overlapping after refresh.
- Fixed an issue where the keybind menu could break after re-entering the game through character selection.
Hotfix 1.1.7.3
- Reverted stash tab optimization changes due to inventory graphical issues. We will continue investigating this to get a new fix out as soon as possible.
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.1.7.1 Notes
- Fixed a display bug where passives were displaying incorrectly
[ 2024-09-20 00:11:55 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a display bug where passives were displaying incorrectly
The Imperial Uprising Event is now live!
Patch notes for 1.1.7 :
https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/last-epoch-the-imperial-uprising-event-patch-notes/73753
Support:
If you are having issues with the game, the first step with Steam is always to try verifying integrity files, if that doesnt resolve the problem, or your issue is account-related, our support team will be ready and waiting right here:https://support.lastepoch.com/hc/en-us
Updates and Notices:
If problems occur, be sure to join our Discord or pay attention to our socials, as well as currently known issues as those spaces will have the most recent updates.
[/olist]
Thank you,
Last Epoch Team
[ 2024-09-19 16:00:47 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, Patch 1.1.7 - The Imperial Uprising Event is now live! Fight against the Immortal Empire over this month-long event with bonuses to Reputation and Favor gain, as well as increased Gold and Random Unique Item drops. This event also introduces Stash Tab Priority, Loot Lizards, and 28 new Shrines! A few reminders: [olist]
Last Epoch: The Imperial Uprising Event Patch Notes & Downtime Notice
[ 2024-09-17 16:03:19 CET ] [ Original post ]
The Imperial Uprising event begins Thursday, September 19th, at 11:00am CT! The Imperial Uprising begins in just two days and runs from September 19, 2024 9:00 AM through to October 20, 2024. This event introduces Loyalist Undead, Loot Lizards, the Stash Tab Priority system, Bazaar improvements, UI Scaling, and more. Were excited to kick off this event with you in just a couple of days, and share with you today the patch notes for this event patch. As previously announced, and confirmed with a community poll: Coinciding with the start of the event, there will be a Cycle Refresh. This means all current Cycle characters will be migrated to Legacy, and a refreshed Cycle will begin with fresh economy and leaderboards. Please Note: To prepare the servers for the Cycle Refresh and event start, we will be shutting down our servers 24 hours before the patch, starting Wednesday, September 18th, at 11:00am CT Full patch notes here: Last Epoch: The Imperial Uprising Event Patch Notes
The Imperial Uprising: Event Details & Poll Results
Throughout the event from September 19th, to October 20th, youll receive greater rewards to help get into the refreshed Cycle, or continue gaining strength on your already legendary characters. These modifiers will be active on Cycle and Legacy, both Online and Offline. Youll not only find more gold and Unique items, but both Merchants Guild and Circle of Fortune are offering their aid to the effort. While the war rages with the Imperial armies, you will be bolstered with:
The Immortal Uprising will be our latest event for 1.1. During the event, all modifiers, as mentioned above, will be put in place. The Immortal Emperors influence has grown too strong, and Eterra now turns to you to fight back. From the depths of his army, one voice has reached our ears and it calls to you for aid. Work alongside this liaison within the immortal forces and cull the undead army before it can grow to full strength. Travelers need not apply to join this event. Simply logging in and killing skeletons in all forms will be enough to earn your spot among the uprising. Your efforts will not go unnoticed; a reward will be granted to all who participate. Though the contact has yet to tell us what they have in store, we do know it has significant value to the Immortal Emperor. Keep your eyes on our Social Media for updates and information regarding the efforts of your fellow travelers.
With the event, Imperial forces will also be bolstered throughout the Monoliths. These undead enemies are in addition to the usually spawning enemies. This means more enemies overall, including in echoes which wouldnt usually spawn undead enemies. Within every echo, you will encounter packs of Loyalist Undead. These Loyalist Undead packs contain a rare leader and a group of magic followers. Each pack will have a new special mod from a pool of seven enemy modifiers shared with all members of the pack. Loyalist Undead modifiers may include throwing acid traps when using an ability, or teleporting near the player when engaged. Beware of the leaders in particular, as the mod effects will be much stronger for them than their followers.
The Imperial Uprising Event will also introduce Loot Lizards. These new creatures are veritable loot goblins in their treasure hoarding ways. When the Lizards were first hired, they were supposed to bring loot to you, but lets be honest, anyone familiar with lizards knows theres nothing happening behind those eyes. Theyll simply flee at the first hint of any danger. If you manage to chase them down and drop their health, youll unburden them of their luggage, allowing them to make a quick getaway. That luggage is then yours for the taking. Youll encounter five different types of Loot Lizards, each offering different loot pools. However, keep in mind that if left alone for too long, they will still manage to find an escape by themselves.
These Loot Lizards will still be sticking around after the event as a new part of the Eterran Fauna.
Also introduced with The Imperial Uprising are 28 additional new Shrines to find and activate in Eterra. Some of these new Shrines youll encounter will automatically cast player abilities, such as Hammer Throw, Chaos Bolts, Warpath, Shadow Cascade, or Flame Reave. There is a total of 15 of these ability shrines you can encounter. These skill shrines also come with added bonuses, such as additional attributes or increased area for skills. In addition, encounter a shrine for a skill you have specced into, and it will use your skill tree for an even greater effect. While these Skill Shrines can be quite powerful, they also dont last forever, so take advantage of their power while you can. As well as the new Skill Shrines, there are also several buff shrines. Among these, you will find shrines that cause meteors to rain from the sky on your enemies, call forth a phoenix to burn enemies in front of you, reduce damage taken from distant enemies, or the all-powerful new Rainbow Shrine.
You may also encounter a Shrine that generates a number of Loot Lizards, which immediately scatter upon being seen. So keep an eye on those shrines to unburden as many lizards as possible before they make their escape. Like Loot Lizards, these shrines will continue to stick around after the event.
A core game feature being introduced at the same time as the event is the new Stash Tab Priority system. This powerful Stash feature allows you to set a priority configuration for any of your tabs in your stash. With your tabs configured, quickly moving an item into stash (shift + right click or X / Square on controllers) will deposit the item into the tab matching the items properties, regardless of what tab you currently have open. You can even have multiple tabs with the same conditions. In this case, the tabs will be filled from left to right. If an item does not match any tab priorities that have enough space, it will be moved to the currently open Stash tab. This allows for easier management of your stash and quicker drop-offs to get back into the action faster. In the Stash Tab Priority system, you can define:
For all the Merchants Guild players out there, there are also several improvements to the Bazaar being added on September 19th. These changes include UI improvements to help make the Bazaar easier to navigate and improve the search functionality to increase the search power to find the items you want more easily.
Weve reworked the Affix and Subtype selection panels for more refined searches. With these new panels, youll now be able to define must have, and require one of affixes, as well as a minimum required tier, and minimum roll within the tier. With the Item Subtype selection, you can specify a minimum implicit roll. These fields can, of course, still fulfill their prior basic functionality and are fully controllable with a gamepad.
With the increased complexity of the bazaar queries, there is a limit of 5 required affixes and 10 Require One affixes to prevent illogical or too complex of searches that would take a long time to query. Another request weve often seen regarding listing items is listing directly from your Stash. This functionality will be added with the event patch, increasing the efficiency and ease of finding the right item to list. Alongside these more significant improvements, you may also notice a number of smaller improvements, such as your Favor updating immediately when listing an item, icon improvements, listing sealed affixes, and more.
On Tuesday, we released a post covering the 1.2 timeline and a Poll on the planned Cycle Refresh. If you havent had a chance to read that post, you can do so here: Patch 1.2 Timeline, 1.1 Event Updates, and Cycle Poll. With the poll, we wanted to gather some direct responses regarding whether there should be a Cycle Refresh corresponding with the Imperial Uprising Event. We want to thank everyone who turned up and voiced their opinions in the poll. Though it was only open briefly to provide enough time if we needed to change our plans, we had a much better turnout than expected. We understand this poll wouldnt reach everyone in the community, such as players who had already wrapped up their characters for the existing cycle. This means we also need to consider what community members this poll wouldnt reach and what their input would most likely be. The poll, though, still had a very large turnout and also had very strong results for what the community desires in regards to the Cycle Refresh. You can see the results for the poll below:
The answers to question #2 are something we will continue to look at (alongside discussions across our platforms) to determine how we can focus on improving the Legacy Migration experience in the future. One of the big things here we want to dive more into is why players feel their characters become irrelevant when transferring characters to Legacy, and what we can do to alleviate that feeling. With the decisive result of over 75% responses in favor of continuing with a Cycle Refresh, we will continue with our original plan of having the event kick off with a refreshed Cycle. This means that when The Imperial Uprising begins on September 19th, existing Cycle characters will be migrated to Legacy, and there will be a fresh Cycle, starting with new Leaderboards and a clean economy. The event bonuses will also allow you to progress through the Cycle much faster during the event for those starting in the Cycle, or achieve the long-term goals of your character if continuing on Legacy. We once more want to re-confirm that aside from the Leaderboard; there is no content difference between Legacy and Cycle. Legacy and Cycle have access to all the same mechanics, encounters, systems, and events. (eg. The newly introduced Nemesis encounters and Harbinger system are fully available in Legacy, as well as the upcoming Imperial Uprising Event modifiers and other additions coming with the event).
As a part of our announcement for the Sept event, we were excited to announce our work towards Steam Deck verification. However, many of you in the community were quick to share some new concerns, which caused us to pause and audit the current situation regarding the performance of Last Epoch on the Steam Deck itself. After this audit, we were able to find several places where we need to improve, which will cause us to push back the release of our Steam Deck announcement and sale. We feel its important that when we say we are Steam Deck verified, players can trust that the experience they will receive on the Steam Deck is up to snuff with our expectations for player experience. We want you to enjoy Last Epoch while on the go, and we do not want players to feel they have to compromise their experience or utilize third-party tools/adjustments to do so. There is a silver lining here: We want to ensure that we continue to support the handheld space, and for this reason, we arent going to delay the updates we already have planned for the Steam Deck. We are still planning to push the support and updates we originally planned; we just want to spend additional time tuning the player experience, receiving feedback on the current status, and improving where possible.
Whether youre participating in the cycle refresh, or continuing in Legacy, these modifiers in addition to increased enemy counts, and the new Loot Lizards, theres never been a better time to hoard loot and slay enemies. Were looking forward to sharing all of the patch details and notes on September 17th, and hope to see you join us in this fight against the Immortal Empire September 19th.
[ 2024-09-13 16:00:13 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! With the Imperial forces gaining strength and ready to begin their siege of Eterra on September 19th, weve been preparing several buffs to help you Travelers rebuke them.
Event Modifiers
Throughout the event from September 19th, to October 20th, youll receive greater rewards to help get into the refreshed Cycle, or continue gaining strength on your already legendary characters. These modifiers will be active on Cycle and Legacy, both Online and Offline. Youll not only find more gold and Unique items, but both Merchants Guild and Circle of Fortune are offering their aid to the effort. While the war rages with the Imperial armies, you will be bolstered with:
- +50% More Favor Gain (Added with community feedback)
- +50% More Reputation Gain
- As Reputation is gained from earning and spending Favor, this means youll be receiving a total of 125% more Reputation
- +50% More Gold Drop Rate
- +50% More Random Unique Drop Rate
Event Details
The Immortal Uprising will be our latest event for 1.1. During the event, all modifiers, as mentioned above, will be put in place. The Immortal Emperors influence has grown too strong, and Eterra now turns to you to fight back. From the depths of his army, one voice has reached our ears and it calls to you for aid. Work alongside this liaison within the immortal forces and cull the undead army before it can grow to full strength. Travelers need not apply to join this event. Simply logging in and killing skeletons in all forms will be enough to earn your spot among the uprising. Your efforts will not go unnoticed; a reward will be granted to all who participate. Though the contact has yet to tell us what they have in store, we do know it has significant value to the Immortal Emperor. Keep your eyes on our Social Media for updates and information regarding the efforts of your fellow travelers.
Expanded Imperial Forces
With the event, Imperial forces will also be bolstered throughout the Monoliths. These undead enemies are in addition to the usually spawning enemies. This means more enemies overall, including in echoes which wouldnt usually spawn undead enemies. Within every echo, you will encounter packs of Loyalist Undead. These Loyalist Undead packs contain a rare leader and a group of magic followers. Each pack will have a new special mod from a pool of seven enemy modifiers shared with all members of the pack. Loyalist Undead modifiers may include throwing acid traps when using an ability, or teleporting near the player when engaged. Beware of the leaders in particular, as the mod effects will be much stronger for them than their followers.
Loot Lizards
The Imperial Uprising Event will also introduce Loot Lizards. These new creatures are veritable loot goblins in their treasure hoarding ways. When the Lizards were first hired, they were supposed to bring loot to you, but lets be honest, anyone familiar with lizards knows theres nothing happening behind those eyes. Theyll simply flee at the first hint of any danger. If you manage to chase them down and drop their health, youll unburden them of their luggage, allowing them to make a quick getaway. That luggage is then yours for the taking. Youll encounter five different types of Loot Lizards, each offering different loot pools. However, keep in mind that if left alone for too long, they will still manage to find an escape by themselves.
These Loot Lizards will still be sticking around after the event as a new part of the Eterran Fauna.
New Shrines
Also introduced with The Imperial Uprising are 28 additional new Shrines to find and activate in Eterra. Some of these new Shrines youll encounter will automatically cast player abilities, such as Hammer Throw, Chaos Bolts, Warpath, Shadow Cascade, or Flame Reave. There is a total of 15 of these ability shrines you can encounter. These skill shrines also come with added bonuses, such as additional attributes or increased area for skills. In addition, encounter a shrine for a skill you have specced into, and it will use your skill tree for an even greater effect. While these Skill Shrines can be quite powerful, they also dont last forever, so take advantage of their power while you can. As well as the new Skill Shrines, there are also several buff shrines. Among these, you will find shrines that cause meteors to rain from the sky on your enemies, call forth a phoenix to burn enemies in front of you, reduce damage taken from distant enemies, or the all-powerful new Rainbow Shrine.
You may also encounter a Shrine that generates a number of Loot Lizards, which immediately scatter upon being seen. So keep an eye on those shrines to unburden as many lizards as possible before they make their escape. Like Loot Lizards, these shrines will continue to stick around after the event.
Stash Tab Priority
A core game feature being introduced at the same time as the event is the new Stash Tab Priority system. This powerful Stash feature allows you to set a priority configuration for any of your tabs in your stash. With your tabs configured, quickly moving an item into stash (shift + right click or X / Square on controllers) will deposit the item into the tab matching the items properties, regardless of what tab you currently have open. You can even have multiple tabs with the same conditions. In this case, the tabs will be filled from left to right. If an item does not match any tab priorities that have enough space, it will be moved to the currently open Stash tab. This allows for easier management of your stash and quicker drop-offs to get back into the action faster. In the Stash Tab Priority system, you can define:
- Item Type (for example, Boots)
- If only one selected item type, then you can also specify Sub types, such as Citadel Boots
- Rarity (this is also where you can choose Keys)
- If you choose Unique, you can also then specify Legendary Potential and/or Weavers Will
- Class Requirement (For example, Mage)
- Level Requirement
- Item Faction Requirement
Bazaar Improvements
For all the Merchants Guild players out there, there are also several improvements to the Bazaar being added on September 19th. These changes include UI improvements to help make the Bazaar easier to navigate and improve the search functionality to increase the search power to find the items you want more easily.
New Affix and Subtype selection
Weve reworked the Affix and Subtype selection panels for more refined searches. With these new panels, youll now be able to define must have, and require one of affixes, as well as a minimum required tier, and minimum roll within the tier. With the Item Subtype selection, you can specify a minimum implicit roll. These fields can, of course, still fulfill their prior basic functionality and are fully controllable with a gamepad.
With the increased complexity of the bazaar queries, there is a limit of 5 required affixes and 10 Require One affixes to prevent illogical or too complex of searches that would take a long time to query. Another request weve often seen regarding listing items is listing directly from your Stash. This functionality will be added with the event patch, increasing the efficiency and ease of finding the right item to list. Alongside these more significant improvements, you may also notice a number of smaller improvements, such as your Favor updating immediately when listing an item, icon improvements, listing sealed affixes, and more.
Cycle Refresh Poll Results
On Tuesday, we released a post covering the 1.2 timeline and a Poll on the planned Cycle Refresh. If you havent had a chance to read that post, you can do so here: Patch 1.2 Timeline, 1.1 Event Updates, and Cycle Poll. With the poll, we wanted to gather some direct responses regarding whether there should be a Cycle Refresh corresponding with the Imperial Uprising Event. We want to thank everyone who turned up and voiced their opinions in the poll. Though it was only open briefly to provide enough time if we needed to change our plans, we had a much better turnout than expected. We understand this poll wouldnt reach everyone in the community, such as players who had already wrapped up their characters for the existing cycle. This means we also need to consider what community members this poll wouldnt reach and what their input would most likely be. The poll, though, still had a very large turnout and also had very strong results for what the community desires in regards to the Cycle Refresh. You can see the results for the poll below:
The answers to question #2 are something we will continue to look at (alongside discussions across our platforms) to determine how we can focus on improving the Legacy Migration experience in the future. One of the big things here we want to dive more into is why players feel their characters become irrelevant when transferring characters to Legacy, and what we can do to alleviate that feeling. With the decisive result of over 75% responses in favor of continuing with a Cycle Refresh, we will continue with our original plan of having the event kick off with a refreshed Cycle. This means that when The Imperial Uprising begins on September 19th, existing Cycle characters will be migrated to Legacy, and there will be a fresh Cycle, starting with new Leaderboards and a clean economy. The event bonuses will also allow you to progress through the Cycle much faster during the event for those starting in the Cycle, or achieve the long-term goals of your character if continuing on Legacy. We once more want to re-confirm that aside from the Leaderboard; there is no content difference between Legacy and Cycle. Legacy and Cycle have access to all the same mechanics, encounters, systems, and events. (eg. The newly introduced Nemesis encounters and Harbinger system are fully available in Legacy, as well as the upcoming Imperial Uprising Event modifiers and other additions coming with the event).
Steam Deck Updates
As a part of our announcement for the Sept event, we were excited to announce our work towards Steam Deck verification. However, many of you in the community were quick to share some new concerns, which caused us to pause and audit the current situation regarding the performance of Last Epoch on the Steam Deck itself. After this audit, we were able to find several places where we need to improve, which will cause us to push back the release of our Steam Deck announcement and sale. We feel its important that when we say we are Steam Deck verified, players can trust that the experience they will receive on the Steam Deck is up to snuff with our expectations for player experience. We want you to enjoy Last Epoch while on the go, and we do not want players to feel they have to compromise their experience or utilize third-party tools/adjustments to do so. There is a silver lining here: We want to ensure that we continue to support the handheld space, and for this reason, we arent going to delay the updates we already have planned for the Steam Deck. We are still planning to push the support and updates we originally planned; we just want to spend additional time tuning the player experience, receiving feedback on the current status, and improving where possible.
Closing
Whether youre participating in the cycle refresh, or continuing in Legacy, these modifiers in addition to increased enemy counts, and the new Loot Lizards, theres never been a better time to hoard loot and slay enemies. Were looking forward to sharing all of the patch details and notes on September 17th, and hope to see you join us in this fight against the Immortal Empire September 19th.
Patch 1.2 Timeline, 1.1 Event Updates, and Cycle Poll
As always, we are working closely with community feedback to identify the best path forward for future updates to Last Epoch, and its clear that the community is eager for key improvements:expanded end-game content, better onboarding for new players, dungeon improvements, continued performance optimizations, and, of course, more balance and variety. With this in mind, and after closely monitoring the ARPG landscape for later this year, weve decided to adjust our development priorities and timelines. Instead of focusing on some of the originally planned content for patch 1.2, we will prioritize delivering on the key improvements listed above. To achieve this, well be moving much of the content originally planned for patch 1.3 into patch 1.2 and deliver a large, rescoped patch in Q1 of 2025. We acknowledge that the irregular Cycle duration is not ideal and aim for more consistent Cycle cadence going forward. However, we believe that prioritizing these high-demand updates will provide more value than adhering to a strict schedule at this stage. That said, we are going to get some great updates out to you earlier with the upcoming 1.1 Event, and we believe a Cycle reset coinciding with this release may be favorable to the playerbase.
On September 19th, we are releasing some exciting updates that (based on the feedback we received from the poll) may or may not include a fresh start to the standard environment. To remind you of some of the updates coming next week:
[ 2024-09-10 16:32:07 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings Travelers, Over the last week, we have been reading and discussing your feedback about our announced plans for the Event Cycle launching on September 19th and Last Epochs next large update targets. We want to continue this discussion with you today and get your feedback directly. We are holding a Poll for the next 48 hours regarding our Cycle Event and will act in accordance to your input. We think the details of this post are important for making an informed decision, but we want to make sure that the poll doesnt get lost in the mix. Poll Link: Cycle Refresh Feedback
1.2 Announcement
As always, we are working closely with community feedback to identify the best path forward for future updates to Last Epoch, and its clear that the community is eager for key improvements:expanded end-game content, better onboarding for new players, dungeon improvements, continued performance optimizations, and, of course, more balance and variety. With this in mind, and after closely monitoring the ARPG landscape for later this year, weve decided to adjust our development priorities and timelines. Instead of focusing on some of the originally planned content for patch 1.2, we will prioritize delivering on the key improvements listed above. To achieve this, well be moving much of the content originally planned for patch 1.3 into patch 1.2 and deliver a large, rescoped patch in Q1 of 2025. We acknowledge that the irregular Cycle duration is not ideal and aim for more consistent Cycle cadence going forward. However, we believe that prioritizing these high-demand updates will provide more value than adhering to a strict schedule at this stage. That said, we are going to get some great updates out to you earlier with the upcoming 1.1 Event, and we believe a Cycle reset coinciding with this release may be favorable to the playerbase.
The Imperial Uprising Event
On September 19th, we are releasing some exciting updates that (based on the feedback we received from the poll) may or may not include a fresh start to the standard environment. To remind you of some of the updates coming next week:
- Event Modifiers:
- NEW: Favor Gain Bonus (Community Requested)
- Reputation Gain Bonus
- Gold Drop Rate Bonus
- Random Unique Drop Rate Bonus
- Additional Undead Enemy Spawns in Monoliths
- 20+ New Shrine types
- Addition of Loot Lizards
- Dungeon Quality of Life (QoL) Updates
- Stash Tab Priority System
- Merchants Guild Search Improvements
- Undead Enemy Updates
- And More
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.1.6.2 Notes
[ 2024-09-05 19:54:00 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug which could cause Fire Aura to stop dealing damage
- Fixed an issue where targeting for skills were broken for gamepad
Last Epoch Patch Notes 1.1.6
[ 2024-09-04 21:58:24 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
Controller
- Turning is now allowed while casting skills, even if you cannot move, by pointing the left stick to the direction you want to turn.
- When using a controller the Radial Menu now opens when pressing the assigned button once, instead of holding the button. It can be closed by pressing the button again.
- Fixed Sanctuary of Eterra UI Panel not working with controllers.
- Opening the Inventory on controller now highlights the last active location.
- Added fixes for navigating the factions UI while using a controller.
- Fixed collision issues when navigating the Shattered Road.
- Improved map panning with controller. Map will now pan slower when zoomed in and faster when zoomed out. No change at default zoom level.
UI Changes
- Fixed Item Tooltip position when hovering over items on the ground.
- Fixed a bug where if the player clicked on an item within pickup range they would move to that item's location after picking it up.
- Fixed a bug that would stop you from moving when clicking a button over items dropped in the world.
- Updated Blessing swap confirmation to only play the animation if changing to a new Blessing.
- Fixed a bug where the Blessing panel could still be interacted with after confirming a selection.
- Fixed an issue where loot labels could be displayed too large.
- Fixed an issue where the "Display Damage Numbers" setting's UI checkbox would not visually toggle on, even though it was actually updating the setting.
- Removed Waypoint indicator from the Graveyard location on the World Map. This location never had a Waypoint.
- Fixed an issue where the map pan speed was not matching the mouse movement speed when zoomed in or out.
- Fixed some overlap issues with Circle of Fortune prophecy stars.
Bug Fixes
Forgotten Knight Faction
- Fixed Forgotten Knight Faction data loss bug which would occur when a formerly hardcore character dies.
- This fix unfortunately does not restore the previously lost data however the team is looking into ways to address this separately and has a log of all affected players. We will update players when this fix has been deployed.
- Fixed a bug where the Rank 7 bonus from Forgotten Knights was not granting additional Corruption per Gaze of Orobyss.
- Fixed a bug where Forgotten Knights faction could be progressed despite not meeting the Corruption requirement when killing a Harbinger. This could happen if an alt character killed a level 90 Timeline Harbinger to join the faction and that Timeline had not yet been done previously.
Monoliths, Arenas, Dungeons
- Fixed cases where Arenas would not advance to the next wave.
- Fixed several Objective and Shrine spawner issues in many Monolith zones and added spawners to fix bugs or improve the play experience of these zones.
- Added Patrol Objective spawners in Imperial Barren Slums, Imperial Warcamp and Imperial Boreal Forest.
- Added more Shrine spawn points to Bloodworks, Festering Sewers, and Hidden Oasis.
- Added more Boss Objective spawn points to Haunted Reef.
- Fixed several issues in Lightless Pits and Jagged Outskirts.
- Fixed Patrol Objective spawners in Serpentine Desert and Willow Marsh.
- Fixed Patrol spawners in the Burning Forest and Festering Sewers.
- Fixed several Spire and Player spawn points in Forgotten Graves.
- Removed Solarum Ascent and Canyon Stronghold from the Monolith pool as the designs were old and no longer fit our Monolith standards. We're making new zones with similar aesthetics to replace them.
- Void Spires no longer spawn enemies.
- Spires stop targeting the player when they have not been in combat for a short time, so these Void Spires spawning enemies would often create a situation where it was impossible for the Spire to stop targeting the player.
- Fixed an issue where the Temple Guardian in the Monolith got attacked by other enemies.
- Fixed an issue where the totems during Gaspar Husk fight were registered as allies.
- Fixed an issue where Idols in Void Harton encounter would incorrectly show where their abilities are coming from.
General
- Adjusted Nemesis functionality: If a Nemesis dies after you have died and there are no other living players in the area, it wont drop its items. This is so it can be fought again in the future to obtain those items.
- Fixed a bug where enemies killed by Lightning Bolts from Unbalanced Scale node in Smite had an incorrect on hit and death VFX.
- Improved performance for several VFX and ailments.
- Fixed an issue where having too high attack speed could cause Flurry to skip attacks.
- Fixed an issue where using a Rune of Ascendance would consume the assigned glyph.
- Fixed a bug where the upgrade button in the Forge would not show up for a certain shard when using the Rune of Refinement.
- Fixed an issue where the Doom Pulses from Celestial Doom unique staff could sometimes be destroyed by ground colliders.
- Fixed an issue where some eggs in The Coral Pools during the To Shell With It quest were not interactable.
- Fixed an issue where MTX weapon skins could be rotated the wrong way on the character.
- Fixed a bug where some visuals would display over the Bulwark of Ruin cosmetic shield
Hotfix 1.1.6.1
- Fixed an issue where the Coral Pools zone could fail to load
Announcing 1.1 Refresh & Cycle Event - The Imperial Uprising
The Imperial Uprising brings a full cycle refresh, transitioning all Cycle 1.1 - Harbingers of Ruin characters to the Legacy Cycle and giving everyone a fresh start. Ladders will be reset, and the economy will begin anew, leveling the playing field and setting the stage for new challenges and victories.
We are launching the first Cycle Event, The Imperial Uprising, onSeptember 19, 2024, 11:00 AM CSTand continuing throughtoOctober 20, 2024. This is not patch 1.2 (though we are excited to talk about that in future posts)! It is just the continuation of Patch 1.1Harbingers of Ruin with the following updates & changes being laid out. The Imperial Uprising patch will come with a Cycle Refresh. This means that all Cycle 1.1 - Harbingers of Ruin characters will be moved to the Legacy Cycle, Ladders will be reset, the bazaar will reset, and a fresh economy will commence. Abberoth, this time, will not be gated from Legacy or offline by another kill event since he was unlocked during the 1.1 Cycle. Also, as this is not the start of a new Patch Cycle but a refresh and reset of the economy of 1.1, with a bit of spice added, we are not planning to include any balance changes. During the Imperial Uprising event, players will participate by killing Skeletonsall manner of them. The Immortal Emperors head has gotten a little too big for his crown, and we must keep him in check. We will post the communitys progress on our socials so you can follow along with the culling of bones. There may even be a reward for such things. Along with those changes, the following Cycle-Wide event modifiers will be enabled for all players, including Legacy and new Cycle characters: - Increased Faction Reputation Gain - Increased Gold Gain - Increased Unique Drop Rates - Increased Undead Spawn Rates in Monoliths The cycle will continue once the month-long event has finished, but the modifiers will revert to their original state. The updates will remain, and players characters will stay in the cycle until either the next cycle event or patch 1.2.
We have heard you loud and clear about wanting an economy reset, and we agree that this is beneficial for multiple reasons. The first reason is that game difficulty should be balanced by player skill and effort, not by someones ability to exploit game mechanics or violate Terms of Service. When these things happen, we understand the frustration they can cause, and rest assured, we take it very seriously. The second reason is quality of life. We have several requests that would improve the games quality of life, and waiting for a full-cycle patch to deploy them is longer than we want the community to have to wait. While the ability to deploy Cycle changes wont always happen, this upcoming event seems like the perfect time to do so. Lastly, feedback. Quite simply, we have many things we want to implement sooner rather than later, and our players have been offering great suggestions on which we want to act. We feel a Cycle event & refresh would be an ideal way to implement some of these changes and gather feedback for other related features that we are potentially looking to move forward with in subsequent Cycles. As with all new ideas, your feedback is one of the most important things to us, so let us know what you think of these new features on our Forums and Discord.
Fans of the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and other handheld devices rejoice! As we continue to improve the overall experience for controller play, it naturally comes about that support for handheld devices is right around the corner. We are excited to announce that on September 19th, Last Epoch will be Steam Deck Verified. Thank you for supporting Last Epoch and everyone on the Eleventh Hour Games team. Without it, we couldnt be making games with you all, and it means the world to us. If you already own Last Epoch, you can continue to support its development by upgrading your copy of Last Epoch through the in-game shop! We look forward to seeing you in Eterra, Travelers.
[ 2024-08-30 15:59:49 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings Travelers!
Prepare for the Imperial Uprising Event and celebrate with an awesome sale!
We are thrilled to announce the Imperial Uprising Cycle Event, which will launch on September 19th at 11 a.m. CST and run through October 20th. Plus, we are kicking off this event with a 20% discount on all editions of Last Epoch.
Whats coming with the Imperial Uprising Event?
- Steam Deck Verification & Improvements
- New and Updated Shrines
- Quality of Life Improvements to Dungeons
- Loot Lizard Encounters
- Stash Tab Priority System
- Improvements to Bazaar Search
- Month-Long Event Modifiers
We will discuss more details in the Patch Notes for the Event Cycle & Refresh event on Tuesday, September 17th, at 11 a.m. CST.
The Cycle Refresh
The Imperial Uprising brings a full cycle refresh, transitioning all Cycle 1.1 - Harbingers of Ruin characters to the Legacy Cycle and giving everyone a fresh start. Ladders will be reset, and the economy will begin anew, leveling the playing field and setting the stage for new challenges and victories.
Imperial Uprising Event Details
We are launching the first Cycle Event, The Imperial Uprising, onSeptember 19, 2024, 11:00 AM CSTand continuing throughtoOctober 20, 2024. This is not patch 1.2 (though we are excited to talk about that in future posts)! It is just the continuation of Patch 1.1Harbingers of Ruin with the following updates & changes being laid out. The Imperial Uprising patch will come with a Cycle Refresh. This means that all Cycle 1.1 - Harbingers of Ruin characters will be moved to the Legacy Cycle, Ladders will be reset, the bazaar will reset, and a fresh economy will commence. Abberoth, this time, will not be gated from Legacy or offline by another kill event since he was unlocked during the 1.1 Cycle. Also, as this is not the start of a new Patch Cycle but a refresh and reset of the economy of 1.1, with a bit of spice added, we are not planning to include any balance changes. During the Imperial Uprising event, players will participate by killing Skeletonsall manner of them. The Immortal Emperors head has gotten a little too big for his crown, and we must keep him in check. We will post the communitys progress on our socials so you can follow along with the culling of bones. There may even be a reward for such things. Along with those changes, the following Cycle-Wide event modifiers will be enabled for all players, including Legacy and new Cycle characters: - Increased Faction Reputation Gain - Increased Gold Gain - Increased Unique Drop Rates - Increased Undead Spawn Rates in Monoliths The cycle will continue once the month-long event has finished, but the modifiers will revert to their original state. The updates will remain, and players characters will stay in the cycle until either the next cycle event or patch 1.2.
Why a Cycle Refresh?
We have heard you loud and clear about wanting an economy reset, and we agree that this is beneficial for multiple reasons. The first reason is that game difficulty should be balanced by player skill and effort, not by someones ability to exploit game mechanics or violate Terms of Service. When these things happen, we understand the frustration they can cause, and rest assured, we take it very seriously. The second reason is quality of life. We have several requests that would improve the games quality of life, and waiting for a full-cycle patch to deploy them is longer than we want the community to have to wait. While the ability to deploy Cycle changes wont always happen, this upcoming event seems like the perfect time to do so. Lastly, feedback. Quite simply, we have many things we want to implement sooner rather than later, and our players have been offering great suggestions on which we want to act. We feel a Cycle event & refresh would be an ideal way to implement some of these changes and gather feedback for other related features that we are potentially looking to move forward with in subsequent Cycles. As with all new ideas, your feedback is one of the most important things to us, so let us know what you think of these new features on our Forums and Discord.
Steam Deck Verified
Fans of the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and other handheld devices rejoice! As we continue to improve the overall experience for controller play, it naturally comes about that support for handheld devices is right around the corner. We are excited to announce that on September 19th, Last Epoch will be Steam Deck Verified. Thank you for supporting Last Epoch and everyone on the Eleventh Hour Games team. Without it, we couldnt be making games with you all, and it means the world to us. If you already own Last Epoch, you can continue to support its development by upgrading your copy of Last Epoch through the in-game shop! We look forward to seeing you in Eterra, Travelers.
Last Epoch Patch Notes 1.1.5 Redeploy
As mentioned before, here is the list of things we've added to be included in patch 1.1.5.
[ 2024-08-20 16:11:12 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, Earlier this month we released patch 1.1.5. However, a handful of unforeseen issues were discovered and we chose to rollback the game to 1.1.4 again in order to minimize impact on players. Today we will be redeploying patch 1.1.5 with the addition of a few extra changes. Below you will find all of the original patch notes that are still in effect as intended with a designated "What We've Added" section for your reading convenience.
Changes
- If a player is currently in a Dungeon run and receives a party invite, the invite will be blocked to avoid disrupting the run.
- The Inviting player will receive a message "your invite was declined"
- Fixed an instance that allowed parties to rejoin ongoing boss fights when one of them didn't respawn.
- Timeline Search now persists between Echoes.
- Now controller focuses always on the top level modal during dialogues.
- Added localization to "Dodge while evading and increased dodge rating shard" affix.
- You can now press CTRL+F when using mouse and keyboard to automatically select the active input field in your currently opened panel such as Stash or Skill Trees.
UI Changes
- Improved the positioning and layout of tooltips.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed several controller navigation problems on the dungeon doors panel.
- Fixes cases where Stash Tabs existed, but were not visible due to being in an invalid category.
- If anyone is still experiencing this after this update, please submit an in-game bug report.
- Fixed missing texture and checkpoint in The Courtyard in the Ruined Era.
- Fixed capitalization for some affix names in localization table.
- Fixed a bug preventing Necrotic Shroud and Divine Shroud glow material effect.
- Fixed a bug which caused summoned Bosses (Majasa Phase 2) to not show the correct Boss Health Bar in Online play.
- Fixed issue where the help (?) button on the Nemesis UI only searches "Nemesis" in the Game Guide, but doesn't actually open the Nemesis guide entry.
- Fixed a bug where Unique idol prophecies could drop non-unique idols.
- Fixed issue with showing tooltips when changing skills in hotbar using controller.
- Fixed a bug causing Reflect damage to not trigger Boss ward.
- Fixed a bug where Monument of Protection's added melee damage for Shield Rush was instead applying to Shield Bash.
- Fixed a bug where some minions, particularly totems, could sometimes get into situations where they would not attack despite having enemies within range.
- Added Gamepad Support for Vault of Uncertain Fate UI Panel.
- Fixed an issue where Dungeon runs would sometimes not get cleaned up properly in party play. This could result in bugs like being unable to start a new dungeon run or being unable to portal to your party members.
- Fixed invisible Forgotten Knight in the Shattered Road.
What We've Added
As mentioned before, here is the list of things we've added to be included in patch 1.1.5.
Changes
- Audio improvements to the Abomination Monolith Boss fight.
- Mastery Selection window now defaults to Select Another instead of Confirm when using a controller.
- Players can now click on the Harbingers icons on the Forgotten Knights faction panel to open the world map with the Timeline that Harbingers spawns in selected.
- Updated Lightning Web Runic Invocation VFX
- Improved performance when swapping between Stash Tabs that contain a lot of items.
Gamepad Improvements
- Controller navigation issues on Bazaar panel.
- Controller navigation on Forgotten Knight Faction panel.
- Added the ability to quickly move idols in and out of the idol inventory.
- Fixed next Era and previous Era icons swapped for the gamepad.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed certain dialogues not starting causing quests to be impossible to progress.
- Fixed issues with hovering on Minimus.
- Fixed an issue where the statues in The Courtyard could be clipped though.
- Fixed issue with being stuck in an idle animation after a loading screen.
- Fixed issue with map exit pings only displaying in the Divine Era in Temporal Sanctum.
- Fixed a bug where Tempering Blow node in Smelter's Wrath more hit damage per ignite was not capped at 150%.
- Fixed an issue where the Stash would close when entering a Town scene.
- Fixed a bug where Soul Cages were counted as bosses for Prophecies.
- Fixed a bug causing Argentus health bar and mini health/ward bar to remain after he flies away.
- Fixed an issue where item tooltips would sometimes continue displaying when UIs overlapped.
- Fixed a bug causing the Blessing tooltip does not show the roll string when comparing two Blessings.
- Fixed a bug where the Alpha Spine Hunter would have a health bar while in the introduction animation.
- Fixed a bug where Emperor Of Corpse Necrotic Explosion's VFX would not match the hitbox.
- Fixed a bug that would stop players from moving when clicking a button over items dropped in the world.
- Fixed an issue causing traversal skills to allow players to cross gaps/walls/blockers.
Last Epoch Patch Notes 1.1.5
[ 2024-08-08 16:01:39 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- If a player is currently in a Dungeon run and receives a party invite, the invite will be blocked to avoid disrupting the run.
- The Inviting player will receive a message "your invite was declined"
- Fixed an instance that allowed parties to rejoin ongoing boss fights when one of them didn't respawn.
- Timeline Search now persists between echoes.
- Now controller focuses always on the top level modal during dialogues.
- Added localization to "Dodge while evading and increased dodge rating shard" affix.
- You can now press CTRL+F when using mouse and keyboard to automatically select the active input field in your currently opened panel such as Stash or Skill Trees.
UI Changes
- Improved the positioning and layout of tooltips.
- Added an option in Settings to adjust the tooltip scale.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed several controller navigation problems on the dungeon doors panel.
- Fixes cases where Stash Tabs existed, but were not visible due to being in an invalid category.
- If anyone is still experiencing this after this update, please submit an in-game bug report.
- Fixed missing texture and checkpoint in The Courtyard in the Ruined Era.
- Fixed capitalized for some affix names in localization table.
- Fixed a bug preventing Necrotic shroud and divine shroud glow material effect.
- Fixed a bug which caused summoned bosses (Majasa Phase 2) to not show the correct Boss Health Bar in online play.
- Fixed issue where the help (?) button on the Nemesis UI only searches "Nemesis" in the Game Guide, but doesn't actually open the Nemesis guide entry.
- Fixed a bug where unique idol prophecies could drop non-unique idols.
- Fixed issue with showing tooltips when changing skills in hotbar using controller
- Fixed a bug causing reflect damage to not trigger boss ward.
- Fixed a bug where Monument of Protection's added melee damage for Shield Rush was instead applying to Shield Bash.
- Fixed a bug where some minions, particularly totems, could sometimes get into situations where they would not attack despite having enemies within range.
- Added Gamepad Support for Vault of Uncertain Fate UI Panel.
- Fixed an issue where Dungeon runs would sometimes not get cleaned up properly in party play, This could result in bugs like being unable to start a new dungeon run or being unable to portal to your party members.
- Fixed invisible Forgotten Knight in the Shattered Road.
Last Epoch Patch Notes 1.1.4
Our recent fix to cases where conditional damage bonuses were applying incorrectly had some unintended consequences, which heavily impacted specific builds in ways players could not have anticipated. To correct this, we're buffing these skills or effects to restore the power they had before this fix.
Drain Life
Disintegrate
Earthquake
Falconry
Forge Guard
[ 2024-08-01 16:01:55 CET ] [ Original post ]
Balance Changes
Our recent fix to cases where conditional damage bonuses were applying incorrectly had some unintended consequences, which heavily impacted specific builds in ways players could not have anticipated. To correct this, we're buffing these skills or effects to restore the power they had before this fix.
Witchfire
- Base damage increased from 300 necrotic and 300 fire to 600 necrotic and 600 fire.
- Grimhilde's Domain now grants Witchfire 2% more damage per 1% ignite chance with fire skills (from 1% per 1%), and 4% more damage per 1% damned chance with necrotic skills (from 3% per 1%). It now has alt text clarifying that these damage modifiers are additive with each other, but multiplicative with all other modifiers (this is not a change of functionality).
- Damned Overload's description has been updated to "You deal 2% more Damned damage to enemies per 1% missing health on you and 1% more damned damage per 2% missing health on the target" (previously stated it was giving 1% more Damned damage to enemies per 2% missing health on you). Its functionality has always matched this new description.
Earthquake
- All nodes which referenced the "initial hit" now instead describe it as the "initial slam". This is still referring to the damaging slam of Earthquake, as opposed to its Aftershocks. This clarification was made so that we could specify whether these effects apply generic more damage or specifically more hit damage. No functionality has changed in this regard, these are only clarifications.
- The Harder They Fall's description has been updated to clarify that it gives more hit damage for the initial slam (previously was ambiguous about whether it's more damage or more hit damage).
- Seismic Smash's description has been updated to clarify that modifiers to Aftershock damage on this tree apply to the initial slam (previously stated "Increases to Aftershock damage on this tree apply to the initial hit").
- Shatterquake grants 40% more hit damage to chilled or frozen enemies. It was previously described as "30% more damage to chilled or frozen enemies", and was actually giving two separate multipliers: 30% more hit damage to chilled enemies, and 30% more hit damage to frozen enemies. It was always a bonus exclusive to hits, but it being applied as two separate multipliers was unintended.
- Rupture grants 15% more initial slam damage (from 12%).
- Earthquake now has a damage effectiveness of 700% (from 350%).
- Earthquake's Aftershocks now have a damage effectiveness of 200% (from 100%).
Changes
UI
- Corrected some monster modifiers not being capitalized correctly.
Controller
- Gamepad can now navigate to Pet additional slots (the little slot that augments the pet).
- Allowed pressing R3 on a gamepad to pin/unpin quests on the map.
Localization
- Japanese, Chinese and Korean language improvements.
Skills
- Made the cooldown recovery indicator on ability icons show up when recovering additional charges, but at 65% of normal opacity.
- The off cooldown flash still occurs correctly when going from 0 to 1 charge and there's no equivalent flash when going from 1 charge to 2, etc.
Bugs
Aberroth
- Fixed an issue that allowed accessing Aberroth without having joined the Forgotten Knight faction.
Skills and Passives
Acolyte
Drain Life
- Fixed a bug where Necrotic Feast allowed you to drain mana from yourself or other players. People are friends, not food!
- Fixed a bug where Ghostflame would display incorrect active and inactive tags on the skill panel.
- Fixed a bug where Fuel of Anguish was giving critical strike multiplier per 100 missing health, instead of critical strike chance per 100 missing health.
- Echoes Inside has had its description updated, as it was contradicting its statline (it summons two additional wraiths, not three).
Mage
Disintegrate
- Fixed a bug where Lucomancer's stacks could fall off earlier than intended.
- Sun and Storms typo fix.
- Clarified that Lost Knowledge triggers on direct casts only.
- Fixed Spelling of both versions of the Talons of Grandeur blessing.
Primalist
Earthquake
- Snowcrash now probably mentions it consumes mana rather than adds a mana cost.
- Fixed a bug where Fury Leap did not use cold VFX when the skill is converted to cold.
- Thunderous Strikes typo fix.
- Locust Master no longer mentions it buffs your Locusts, as that functionality was removed.
- Now uses the same text about cooldown recovery as Warcry.
- Now correctly mentions in the description how much this heals you and allies.
Rogue
Falconry
- Side by Side now correctly says Falcon Strike.
- Removed the extra "your" from Rending Talons.
- Sundering Blows typo fix.
- Tinkerer's Combo now correctly says the effect can trigger once per 2 seconds (from twice per 2 seconds).
Sentinel
Forge Guard
- Fixed a bug where Master of Arms did not grant its +2 strength with a two handed weapon if you were wielding a spear.
- Desynchronous Charge now properly states it removes the Traversal tag.
- Dark Regression increased mana cost now properly shows as a downside.
- Champion of the Forge threshold bonus now more clearly states that it grants additional critical strike multiplier while wielding a 2 handed weapon.
- Fixed missing e in Master of Arms description.
UI
- Fixed a bug which caused The Last Ruin, The Age of Winter, or Spirits of Fire timelines to show no "current blessing" when replacing a blessing in the confirmation window.
- Fixed an issue where the login panel's title background could extend past the edge of the panel.
- Fixed the height of NPC chat messages. Multiline NPC chat messages should no longer overlap.
- Fixed a bug where a summoned crab was not highlightable, therefore players could not see the crabs name.
- Fixed an issue leading to waypoints sometimes blocking projectiles.
Loot Filter
- Fixed the display categories for "Increased Area for Melee Area Skills (of Conquest), Mana and Mana Regen (Manaforged), and Mana and Mana Spent Gained as Ward (Transfusing) affixes in the Loot Filter Rule Affix Condition UI.
Controller
- In the battle with Aberroth, if the player is using a controller, the correct health bar is displayed on the UI. Additionally, the orb in this battle is not an auto-target for the controller.
- Fixed an issue where the UI menu controller could block player movement.
- Fixed an issue with gamepad where pressing the specialize button in the skill tree sometimes would not work.
Enemies
- Reworked the Winged Fire Boss abilities that created the firelines. It should be much more fair and avoidable now.
- Made the Winged Fire Boss projectile that goes out and back destroy itself when the enemy dies.
- Reworked Avalanche spell on the Wengari Patriarch to be less punishing and gave it a new, more clear indicator.
- Fixed a bug where the Wengari Patriarch and Matriarch had ward thresholds in the monolith.
- Fixed a bug where the screen shake from the Void Horror Slam was a couple seconds late.
- Fixed a bug where the Abomination Boss death animation would not play.
SFX
- Fixed the SFX for the MTX Embermane Tiger.
Settings
- Fixed an issue where the VSync dropdown was sometimes interactable when Limit FPS was enabled. These settings are mutually exclusive.
- Fixed layout issues with checkboxes in the Graphics settings panel.
- Fixed FPS slider labels making it look like the value was negative.
- Removed checkbox for unsupported motion blur setting.
1.1 Lore Hunt Event Winners!
Travelers, The histories of Eterra have been saved, and we have many of you to thank for it. Your efforts have secured the knowledge of the land for time unknowable; but a devoted few who have proven to be true scholars of the land deserve to be recognized.
First to correctly submit the answers to all 7 questions: FatherToast has taken first place receiving the Forum Badge and in-game title of Last Archive Headmaster
)
Coming in second place, congratulations to vonGorre, receiving the Forum Badge and in-game title of Last Archive Librarian
The final podium finalist coming in third place, is Gavryngaming, receiving the Forum Badge and in-game title of Last Archive Researcher
To the remaining entries, your efforts have not gone unnoticed and for that we offer you the Forum Badge and in-game title of Last Archive Student.
In-Game titles can be found in the cosmetics menu. Please allow 24 hours for your rewards to become accessible in each of your accounts. On behalf of the Last Archive and all of us here at EHG, we would like to thank all of our participants for joining us and we look forward to seeing you all in our next event!
[ 2024-07-31 16:02:09 CET ] [ Original post ]
Congratulations!
Travelers, The histories of Eterra have been saved, and we have many of you to thank for it. Your efforts have secured the knowledge of the land for time unknowable; but a devoted few who have proven to be true scholars of the land deserve to be recognized.
1st place
First to correctly submit the answers to all 7 questions: FatherToast has taken first place receiving the Forum Badge and in-game title of Last Archive Headmaster
)
2nd place
Coming in second place, congratulations to vonGorre, receiving the Forum Badge and in-game title of Last Archive Librarian
3rd place
The final podium finalist coming in third place, is Gavryngaming, receiving the Forum Badge and in-game title of Last Archive Researcher
Top 50
To the remaining entries, your efforts have not gone unnoticed and for that we offer you the Forum Badge and in-game title of Last Archive Student.
In-Game titles can be found in the cosmetics menu. Please allow 24 hours for your rewards to become accessible in each of your accounts. On behalf of the Last Archive and all of us here at EHG, we would like to thank all of our participants for joining us and we look forward to seeing you all in our next event!
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.1.3.1 Notes
[ 2024-07-26 19:28:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
We have received a few reports of Forgotten Knight faction reputation being reset. As such we are reverting the recent change to SCF/SAF migration as the suspected cause in an effort to prevent players losing progression while we investigate.
Changes
- Reverted change: When you abandon the SCF challenge, the most progressed Forgotten Knights faction between SCF & SAF will be carried over.
Last Epoch Patch 1.1.3 Notes
Improved UX when closing panel with an item in the nemesis swap slot.
The result of these changes is that if you get one Timeline up to 300 Corruption, and then go to a fresh Empowered Timeline, completing a single Echo will create a Shade Echo next to it, that will boost that Timeline straight to 296 Corruption.
Added the following info to the death screen:
[ 2024-07-25 18:57:52 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
Nemesis
Froststeel Nemesis
- Reduced the area of the Orbiting Cold DoT ability.
Stormsteel Nemesis
- Removed rotating lightning ability.
Poison Nemesis
- Poison pool deals 25% less damage.
- Poison pool now ends when the Nemesis is defeated.
- Poison spin attack deals 14% less damage.
- The across the screen projectiles now deal physical damage rather than fire.
- The poisons inflicted by the across the screen projectiles have 50% reduced duration.
Nemesis Panel
Improved UX when closing panel with an item in the nemesis swap slot.
- If you manually press the close button while an item is in the Egg of the Forgotten swap slot, it will be returned to the inventory.
- If you close the whole nemesis panel while an item is in there (for example by pressing escape or closing the game), then the item will remain there, but the next time you open the Egg of the Forgotten panel, the swap sub panel will be open with the item visible.
Corruption Catch-Up Buffs
The result of these changes is that if you get one Timeline up to 300 Corruption, and then go to a fresh Empowered Timeline, completing a single Echo will create a Shade Echo next to it, that will boost that Timeline straight to 296 Corruption.
- Bonus Corruption based on the difference between the highest Corruption Timeline and the current Timeline is now always 95% of the difference (from scaling based on distance and being capped at 60%)
- When the difference between the highest Corruption Timeline and the current Timeline is greater than 40, or you have at least 8 Gaze of Orobyss, and the current Echo Web does not contain a Shade Echo, then completing an Echo will create a Shade Echo next to it.
Death Screen
Added the following info to the death screen:
- How much damage was dealt by the killing blow.
- How much overkill damage the killing blow had (i.e. how much damage was dealt beyond what was necessary to reduce the player to 0 health).
- Whether the killing blow was a crit.
Enemy Balance
Bitterwing and Gloomscreecher Bats
- Damage of ice breath attack scales up over the duration of the cast from 50% to 100%.
Blood Scorpions
- Deal 24% less poison damage.
Forged Soldier
- Its Flamethrower deals 11% less damage.
- Increased duration of Flamethrower attack by 30%.
- Its melee attacks are 20% slower.
- Reduced visual noise of their fire warpath ability.
- Ignites applied from its Fire Ground have 30% reduced duration
Gorgon
- Sand Twister deals 17% less damage.
Heorot
- Fixed indicator on Heorots triple ice nova attack displaying incorrectly after first cast.
- Optimized Heorots ice stab attack (performance and reliability).
Osprix Lightmage
- Holy Meteor attack range reduced by 60%.
Osprix Warrior
- Deals 12% less fire damage.
Sand Scorpions
- Added a visual indicator for the poison tail attack for theming.
- Sand Scorpions deal 24% less poison damage.
Scalebane Saboteur
- Increased the time till detonation of his thrown javelin ability by 25%.
- Changed visuals to better reflect and indicate impending explosion.
Solar Archers
- Their bow attack deals 12.5% less damage.
Spine Hunter Alpha
- Now idles for 1.3 seconds after howling.
- Reduced damage by 15%.
- Now tracks your movement slightly less well before leaping.
Spine Hunters
- Now tracks your movement slightly less well before leaping.
Storm Crawler Crabs
- Now always turn to the target before shooting their lightning beams.
- The rate of lightning beams has been reduced.
Tundra Stalker
- Reduced size by 30%.
- Damage of ice breath attack scales up over the duration of the cast from 50% to 100%.
- Their ice breath has 25% less chance to inflict Frostbite each second.
- Their leap deals 17% less damage
- Their melee attack deals 12.5% less damage
Ulatri Scavenger
- Damage of fire breath attack scales up over the duration of the cast from 50% to 100%.
- Their flame breath has 30% less chance to ignite each second.
- Reduced size by 20%.
- Reduced size of flame breath attack by 20%.
- Their leap deals 17% less damage
- Their melee attack deals 12.5% less damage
Undead Hydras
- The Snake Infection from their Poison Burst deals 25% less damage over its full duration.
Void Prophet
- Has 78% more health.
Voidfused Armor
- Grants 27% more experience.
- Grants 50% more gold when they drop gold.
- Grants 69% more items when they drop items.
Voidfused Earth
- Grants 50% more experience.
- Deals 14% less void damage.
Wengari Shaman
- Totem cast ranged reduced by 20%.
- Shield buff range reduced by 40%.
Enemy Damage over Time Balance
Wengari Spires
- Ground area deals 21% less damage over time.
Scalebane Sorcerer
- Their poison sphere spell now only applies 2 stacks of poison (from 3).
Lightless Arbor Heart Boss
- The Energy Wave no longer has 100% increased poison effect.
- The Volatile Bulbs no longer have 100% increased poison effect.
Poison Shade of Orobyss
- Its poison line attack deals 15% less poison damage over time.
Sturiax
- His phoenix spell deals 12% less damage over time.
Osprix Zealot
- Deals 12% less fire damage over time.
Headhunter Lavian and Venator Ealos
- Reduced the duration of Poison and Armor shred from their traps by 30%.
Skills
- Shield Bash SFX changed when the cooldown is removed to be less repetitive and annoying to hear in rapid succession.
- Hammer Throw's initial speed of Hammers increased which decreases over time.
- Hammer Throw now throws from the hand more reliably.
- Updated VFX for Base, Cold, and Physical versions of Avalanche
Systems
- When you abandon the SCF challenge, the most progressed Forgotten Knights faction between SCF & SAF will be carried over.
UI
- Lens tooltips are now visible when equipped in the Observatory panel.
Bug Fixes
Harbingers of Ruin
- Fixed an issue where killing the Harbingers in an Aberroth boss run would erroneously complete Kill Any Boss prophecy targets, which would drop rewards that may be missed when being sent to Aberroth.
- Experience granted by the original timeline boss is granted by the harbinger instead if one spawns. This prevents an abuse case where you could repeatedly kill the timeline boss for xp and then portal out before killing the harbinger to farm favour (from xp).
- Fixed a bug where void puddles would not dispel fire puddles they spawned on top of
Nemesis
- Fixed a bug where some of the Stormsteel Nemesis' abilities would persist after they die.
- Fixed a bug where some of the Froststeel Nemesis' abilities would be angled if cast on a slope.
- Fixed a bug where taking Replacing an Egg of the Forgotten with an MG tagged unique, could result in its tag changing to CoF if it gained legendary potential. This only occurred if the CoF bonus increased the legendary potential it gained.
Animations & VFX
- Fixed VFX and Animations for various enemies
- Fixed Aberroth's Absorbing Chaos ability (Big Donut before Timeshattering Slam) to make it fade out in the final phase, rather than instantly disappear.
- Fixed a bug with the Altar of Oblivion where the bottom section would disappear rather than disintegrate
Controller
- Fixed an issue with gamepad where toggling dropped items details did not work properly.
Enemies
Elder Gaspar
- Improved hit-box of tri-elemental beam to more tightly match visuals.
Possesed Construct in Soulfire Bastion
- Fixed a bug where sometimes their visuals would not appear.
- Added a failsafe to ensure that their entrance animation will not override any ability animations.
Ruby Captain Arjani
- Fixed a bug where entrance animation wouldnt play and played too quickly
Spirit of Grael, Son of Artor
- Fixed a bug where Spirit of Grael, Son of Artor could not be pierced by projectiles.
Ulatri Scavenger
- Fixed a bug where their Flame Breath attack didn't disappear when they died or were stunned.
Level Design
- Fixed Imperial Thetima very rarely spawning random encounters (e.g. Shrines, Nemesis) and only ever being able to spawn them in one spot.
SFX
- Vocal sounds were missing and have now been implemented for: Burning Pyromancer, Fire Lich Bone Golem Minion, Memory Vessel Skeleton, Imperial Soul Mage, Chaos Vessel Skeleton, Imperial Guard, Imperial Shadow Dungeon, Imperial Shadow
- Replaced SFX on the skill that procs when a Volatile Maw dies.
- Fixed an issue where SFX werent playing on subsequent earthquake impacts when specced into Seismic Tide.
- Revised volume of Flame Paladins vocalizations.
Skills & Passives
- Fixed a bug where Toxic Craving still applied the effects of one stack after all stacks were lost.
- Fixed a bug where Dancing Strikes's Rhythm could fail to trigger when using Windmill Ballet or Hidden Blade.
- Fixed a bug where abilities would sometimes fail to cast due to mana cost in online play, even if you had an effect from your skill tree that makes it free when out of mana.
- Fixed an issue with Ring Of Shields where the Shields were not visible.
- Fixed a bug where Runemaster's Never Late's threshold bonus was not doubling the additional critical strike chance of its buff, and was instead causing the Never Late buff to intermittently apply to spells without using a traversal skill.
Systems
- Fixed an error leading to reports of new offline characters not saving progress.
- Fixed an issue where required level to forge an item was erroneously including sealed, experimental, and personal affixes.
- Fixed a bug where a Timeline could lose stability if the player returned to the Monolith Hub after completing the first or second Quest Echo in the Timeline.
UI
- Improved cosmetics store item details, including adding a way to view which item types are supported for weapon/shield MTX.
- Fixed a bug where the main menu close button was not easily clickable.
- Fixed a bug where the player character would move to follow the mouse when dragging a scrollbar if the mouse moved outside of the UI panel during the scroll.
- Fixed a bug that could lead to garbled item labels and error spam.
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.1.2.4 Notes
[ 2024-07-23 17:18:46 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed several sources of desync issues and disconnects
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.1.2.3 Notes
[ 2024-07-21 20:49:13 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Seed of Ekkidrasi's "Endurance applies to Mana" effect using uncapped endurance. This fixes the player becoming immortal with 100% endurance and 100% of damage dealt to mana.
Last Epoch 1.1.2.2 Hotfix Notes
[ 2024-07-19 20:06:29 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where Circle of Fortune's rank 10 bonus was not applying to boss uniques from arena, dungeons, Exiled Mages, and the Shade of Orobyss. As a result of this change Exiled Mage unique drops are now randomized per player, rather than being the same for each player.
- In online play, killing a Shade of Orobyss while dead now counts as a successful kill, granting stability and resetting your echo web. You are still able to respawn and collect your loot.
- Fixed an issue causing disconnection when entering towns.
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.1.2.1 Notes
[ 2024-07-18 16:29:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Changes made to Sturiax the Burning Sky (Osprix Firemage)
- Slowed down meteor impact times by 0.3 seconds. (0.9 -> 1.2)
- Phoenix Flamethrower damage ramps up over 1 second instead of starting at full blast.
- Added a new loot filter condition called Factions that will allow you to filter for faction-specific items.
- Increased XP reward for Harbinger and Aberroth quests.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where projectiles would get destroyed by nemesis spawn locations in offline play.
- Fixed a bug where the Monolith Of Fate side quest would not progress when talking to the Forgotten Knight in the End of Times.
- Fixed an issue where the Character migration prompt could show when you have the maximum number of characters.
- Fixed a bug where Shield Bash could not recover cooldown when stunning enemies if Incinerating Blows is allocated.
- Fixed a bug which prevented Online HC characters from using blessings discovered on other HC characters.
- Fixed a bug which prevented Online HC characters from using blessings discovered on other (including dead) HC characters.
- This is retroactive and you will be able to use blessings discovered before this fix.
- Fixed the Scourge of the Depths helm and the Deep Watchers helm missing VFX.
- Fixed Crest of the Voidwalker portal MTX VFX.
- Fixed a bug resulting in an error "No translation found for tooltip..." when hovering over items.
- Fixed a bug causing CoF Rank 12 double rewards to be additive with Lens double rewards, rather than multiplicative.
Last Epoch Patch 1.1.2 Patch Notes
In the campaign nemesis does not spawn if the items were generated at least 15 levels above the zone level, or there is an egg present. Additionally, if the player interacts with nemesis in a campaign zone of a certain level, and then interacts with a nemesis in campaign zones at or below that level three more times, the nemeses will not appear for them in campaign zones of that level or below.
To prevent encountering the above Nemesis spawn protection in normal play, we have adjusted several area levels:
The team has already begun working on a large number of bug fixes and updates for a future patch. If you did not see your issue addressed this time around, rest assured it has not been forgotten. We thank you all for your patience and value your feedback.
[ 2024-07-16 18:40:50 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
Controller
- Added controller integration for Dungeon Door Panels and Boss Fight Confirmation Windows
- "B" or "Start" on Controller will now close the Nemesis panel
Visuals & UI
- Updated graphics for "Void Cultist" enemies
- Added Backer Reward painting to Arena Lobby
- Added death VFX to Weathered Statue enemies
- The mana cost displayed on ability tooltips now rounds to the nearest 0.1, rather than always rounding *up* to a whole number.
- - It still prioritizes rounding up when it's in the range (0, 0.05] and would otherwise round to 0 despite having a positive mana cost. It's important to show a positive mana cost in this case to accurately indicate to the player that the skill can't be used when below 0 mana.
- - Example: Previously, if a mana cost of a skill was 39.7, it would round the tooltip to 40. But if there was a mechanic that only happens with 40 mana cost, it wouldn't occur with that 39.7 mana cost. The skill will now display the mana cost of 39.7 mana to prevent this confusion.
- Displayed Mana Regeneration in Character sheet now rounds to the nearest 0.1 instead of rounding to the nearest whole number
- Added Indicator to Remove Only Stash Tabs
Nemesis
Nemesis Spawn Changes
In the campaign nemesis does not spawn if the items were generated at least 15 levels above the zone level, or there is an egg present. Additionally, if the player interacts with nemesis in a campaign zone of a certain level, and then interacts with a nemesis in campaign zones at or below that level three more times, the nemeses will not appear for them in campaign zones of that level or below.
Related Area Level Changes
To prevent encountering the above Nemesis spawn protection in normal play, we have adjusted several area levels:
- The Council Chambers is level 11 (from 10)
- Erza's Library is level 12 (from 11)
- The Shrouded Ridge is level 17 (from 14)
- The Ruined College is level 24 (from 23)
- The Great College is level 24 (from 25)
- The Felled Wood is level 26 (from 25)
- Soulfire Bastion, Soulfire Keep, and The Soul Furnace show on the map as level 37 (from 24, 24, and 90 respectively). This does not affect the level of the actual dungeon tiers.
Other Nemesis Changes
- Increased base nemesis spawn rate (before additional spawn rate from corruption) by 15%
- The nemesis icon is shown on the minimap at the same distance as the chat message triggers (from 67% of that distance)
Bug Fixes
Damage Conditionals
- Fixed a bug where some cases of damage conditionals applied their effects even when the conditional wasn't met. For example, Doom Herald's more damage to damned enemies while channeling was applying to enemies that were not damned.
Skills
Minions
- Fix Minions animation getting stuck after a Scene transition
Earthquake
- Fixed a bug where aftershocks would appear at your cursor location when casting Earthquake, rather than on nearby enemies
Explosive Trap
- Fixed a bug where Trapas was not applying its listed +3 mana cost
Falconry
- Fixed a bug where Side by Side could not be triggered by Explosive Trap
- Fixed a bug where Exposed Weakness could not be triggered by Explosive Trap
Flurry
- Fixed a bug where double tapping channeled Flurry could put you in a state where you are permanently Flurrying
Gathering Storm
- Fixed a bug where Excited Bolts consumed a percentage of maximum mana, instead of a percentage of current mana
Glyph of Dominion
- Fixed a bug where Runic Invocation's Power Word: Devastation was causing the glyph's hit to apply 5 frostbite stacks per Heo rune, instead of its damage over time applying 5 frostbite stacks per second per Heo rune
Reaper Form
- Players can now correctly set new skills when in Reaper form and when shifting out of reaper form
Serpent Strike
- Fixed a bug where Shattered Immunity's damage modifiers were applying as 4 separate multipliers, instead of as 2 separate multipliers
Storm Totem
- Fixed a bug where Gathering Storm's Tempest Weapon did not affect Storm Bolts cast by Storm Totem with Unmatched Storms
Controller
- Fixed a bug where "Lost Connection" popup would not focus when using a controller
- Fixed controller issue where you can't switch eras when focused on quest details
- Fixed a bug with controller navigation in the MTX Shop Panel
- Fixed an issue with navigating Item Faction ranks with a controller
- Fixed an issue where the gamepad radial menu would not show new skill and passive indicators upon leveling up
- Improved controller navigation on Choose Blessing panel
- Fixed an issue where closing a menu would also activate the Character's ability that uses the same button
- Fixed an issue where moving the left thumbstick while comparing items would move the character
- Fixed an issue where Item selection on DualShock controller shows Xbox prompt
- Fixed an issue where an unnecessary prompt would appear during the Boss fight in the Summit
- Fixed a bug where channeling skills did not count towards keeping ground item tooltips hidden.
Nemesis
- Fixed a bug which could cause a second non-functional Nemesis to appear in a scene
- Fixed being able to add duplicate new Legendary affixes with the second Nemesis empowerment
- Fixed not being able to gain suffixes with the second Nemesis empowerment
- Reduced LP rolls when adding more affixes to Legendaries with Nemesis to counter effect of fixing the no suffix bug
- Fixed a bug where the Blood Nemesis had a bloody VFX after death
Visuals
- Fixed a bug where Mage and Acolyte were holding Staves backwards
- Improved blending of Black Hole material in Alter of Oblivion
- Fixed incorrect postprocessing in the Monolith of Fate (hub), causing it to be too dark
- Disabled point light shadows in the Observatory, which was causing very heavy GPU usage on Ultra settings
- Fixed a missing Texture issue in The Outcast Camp
- Fixed an issue where player and NPC animations after a stun could desynchronize
UI
- Fixed loot filter rules tooltip showing behind the loot filter panel
- Fixed game guide link button not posting a valid link to chat
- Ladder search now returns results containing the search term rather then only those starting with the search term
- Fixed Factions Panel Title not being Localized for Circle of Fortune or Forgotten Knights
- Loot filter tutorial is now only automatically shown when there are no loot filters instead of anytime no filter is selected.
- The info button in the Choose Blessing panel now only shows the tooltip when hovered over and is not clickable.
- Fixed player faction icons not being displayed correctly for players already on the server
- Fixed several bugs with stat displays on Character Sheet
- Fixed a bug where ground loot wasn't clickable while a boss health bar was displayed
Enemies
- Fixed Misshapen Remains not dropping any loot
- Fixed a bug where the Scalebane Leader did not drop loot
- Fixed an issue with enemies that use the NPC version of Acid Flask were causing errors
Level Design
- Fixed a bug where various Monolith bridges were not interactable after completing a Timeline for the first time
- Fixed an issue where players could get stuck, and loot inaccessible in certain areas in Ritual Lake Monolith Echo Map
- Fixed a bug where an inaccessible stash appeared overlapped with the Forge in The Armory
- Fixed a bug where a respawn point in The Ospryx Warcamp was too high up
- In the Isle of Storms quest you now only need to find and return one moon fragment to the Moonlit Shrine instead of both.
What's next?
The team has already begun working on a large number of bug fixes and updates for a future patch. If you did not see your issue addressed this time around, rest assured it has not been forgotten. We thank you all for your patience and value your feedback.
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.1.1.2 Notes
[ 2024-07-13 19:17:22 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug for controller players that could cause an equipped item to drop to the ground
Last Epoch 1.1.1.1 Patch Notes
[ 2024-07-12 20:16:59 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
Aberroth is now available for Offline modes
UI
- The Sorcerer's Passive 2nd Bonus now correctly shows '1% more damage per 2 mana cost, up to 50% more'
Bug Fixes
Localization
- Evade tooltip no longer shows
twice - Improvements to French Localization
- Corrected an erroneous '=' in the Old Tome dialogue
Controller
- Fixed an issue where interacting with the Alter of Oblivion with a controller could cause a crash
Cosmetic MTX
- Void Cleaver now correctly shows which weapon this is a cosmetic for.
- Aberroth's Memento now correctly shows it's name when moused over.
- Abyssal Legend and Abyssal Vanquisher supporter pack videos have been updated
- Oblivion shot bow image has been updated to show representative VFX
- Argentum Myrmidon gameplay video update - previously it showed a level of VFX that wasn't representative
Lore Hunt Event Start!
For this event, the following criteria must be followed for a submission to be considered as an Event participant:
The first 50 participants to correctly answer all 8 riddles will be rewarded for their efforts. We look forward to your submissions!
[ 2024-07-12 16:00:43 CET ] [ Original post ]
Travelers, The time has come. The researchers have returned with the clues about Eterras history. Its up to you to decipher these clues and secure the knowledge they protect. Please remember the rules and follow them closely in order for your submission to be considered.
RULES
For this event, the following criteria must be followed for a submission to be considered as an Event participant:
- All submissions must be made using an Online character. (Cycle or Legacy is your choice)
- All submissions must have your Account Name clearly in the subject line
- All submissions must use the Lore Hunt support form Not the In-Game Support Tool
- Tickets that do not use this form will not be counted.
- Multiples of the same submission will be disqualified
- All 8 answer screenshots must be submitted via a compressed file in the same ticket.
- Screenshots must remain uncropped and display the entire UI
- Cropped screenshots will be disqualified
- Please be sure to put all eight screenshots in a folder and then right-click the folder and choose "Compressed (zipped) folder". This will compress into a zip file for us to be able to access.
- Do Not submit follow up tickets to determine answers or placement.
- All Event winners and placements will be announced after the review process has ended.
- Incorrect or disqualified submission will not be notified.
RIDDLE 1
RIDDLE 2
RIDDLE 3
RIDDLE 4
RIDDLE 5
RIDDLE 6
RIDDLE 7
RIDDLE 8
The first 50 participants to correctly answer all 8 riddles will be rewarded for their efforts. We look forward to your submissions!
Last Epoch Patch 1.1.1 Patch Notes
[ 2024-07-11 20:43:43 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! We would like to congratulate all the Travelers who have been making the push to Aberroth, and those who have managed to slay him. A special congratulations to Olio for making the world first Normal Aberroth kill. With Aberroth having been slain in the Online Cycle environment, we will now be releasing Aberroth to all Online Environments. We have run into an unexpected issue in Offline mode that prevents Aberroth from being accessed. Since todays patch also fixes a number of bugs including trade cancelled messages being sent out Town wide, Shade of Orobyss fixes, and a fix for global damage modifiers - we have chosen to release it without Aberroth for Offline Mode. For our offline Travelers - getting you access to Aberroth is currently of the highest priority. We will keep you updated as we can.
Changes
- Aberroth, Herald of Oblivion has been enabled in Online Legacy Environment
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where Event Horizon required level 100 to equip. Is now correctly level 80.
- Fixed a bug where Trade Cancelled messages could be sent to everyone on the server in some circumstances
- Fixed a bug where Shade of Orobyss Echoes do not display correct tooltip, and were instead showing the previously selected Echo
- Fixed a bug where Aberroth's Fire Black Hole would lag behind the player instead of attaching to them
- Fixed a bug where Forge Guard's Weapon Master was not granting +75% Bleed Chance as a Threshold Bonus while wielding an axe
- Fixed a bug where global conditional damage was ignoring most tags (eg. "*100% more [Spell / Bow / Throwing / Minion / DoT] damage against High Health Enemies*" was instead giving "*100% more damage against High Health Enemies*"
- Fixed a bug which could cause a delay to visually displaying enemies for a couple of seconds after loading into an Echo
- Fixed a bug where players needed to reset keybinds to Evade on a controller
- Fixed a bug where Orion and Emberwing were not displaying a health bar in Offline
- Fixed a bug where Shade of Orobyss' Fire Cone fails to appear after the second time he casts it
Last Epoch 1.1.0.3 Hotfix Notes
[ 2024-07-10 21:10:20 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug causing some Bosses, such as Orion and Emberwing or Temple Guardian, to appear invisible and not move, meaning players were relying on attack visuals to defeat them.
Last Epoch 1.1.0.2 Hotfix Notes
[ 2024-07-10 17:18:16 CET ] [ Original post ]
This is a quick hotfix to immediately address a small issue with Evade. We will have larger follow-up patches for other issues in the coming days.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that allowed people to override Evade with any skill via drag/drop from skill screen.
Last Epoch 1.1.0.1 Hotfix Notes
[ 2024-07-09 21:48:07 CET ] [ Original post ]
This is a quick hotfix to immediately address some instances of disconnects. We will have larger follow-up patches for other issues in the coming days.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug which was causing some instances of Disconnects
Last Epoch Patch 1.1 Is Live!
[ 2024-07-09 16:14:05 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings Travelers, Patch 1.1 - Harbingers of Ruin is officially LIVE! With the start of Cycle 1.1, a whole host of new and exciting things come to the world of Eterra. We look forward to seeing you in the game! A few reminders: 1. Patch Notes for 1.1: https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/last-epoch-harbingers-of-ruin-patch-notes 2. Details on Aberroth and First To Kill: https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/pinnacle-content-poll-results/71606 3. Twitch Drops: Twitch Drops unlockToday. https://twitch.lastepoch.com/ 4. Support: If you are having issues with the game, the first step with Steam is always to try verifying integrity files, if that doesnt resolve the problem, or your issue is account-related, our support team will be ready and waiting right here:https://support.lastepoch.com/hc/en-us 5. Updates and Notices: If problems occur, be sure to join our Discord or pay attention to our socials, as those spaces will have the most recent updates. Discord link:[Last Epoch - Official Community1.0k](https://discord.gg/lastepoch) You will also see awesome new supporter packs in-game, and we heard you clearly about wanting a Get Everything pack! Check out the Abyssal Legends Pack in-game for an amazing deal that includes all the awesome cosmetics available for the Abyssal Supporter Packs, plus bonus content, all in 1 pack! https://youtu.be/d6MZ3rXFOTE Thank You, Last Epoch Team
Japanese and APAC Language Announcement!
[ 2024-07-08 16:57:57 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings, Travelers! We are excited to announce some fantastic news for our APAC community regarding localization updates. This includes the introduction of a new language and significant updates to existing languages in Last Epoch. Introducing Japanese Language Support Last Epoch is dedicated to supporting our Travelers from around the world, and this mission continues in Patch 1.1 - Harbingers of Ruin! With version 1.0, Last Epoch officially launched in nine languages: English, French, German, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Latin American Spanish. We have continuously improved the quality of these localizations and are thrilled to announce the addition of our tenth language. Last Epoch is bringing Japanese language support with Patch 1.1 - Harbingers of Ruin! Japanese players will soon be able to connect with fellow Travelers, sharing stories, strategies, and experiences, all with native support in the game. However, despite our best efforts to identify and address localization bugs, there may still be a few issues that Japanese players encounter during the first few weeks. We kindly ask our beloved Japanese community to actively share feedback and report issues through our customer service and the in-game bug report system so we can resolve them promptly. We are excited to see you all in the world of Eterra! ! Chinese and Korean Localization Status Update In addition to adding a new language, we have identified and addressed several critical localization issues in Simplified Chinese and Korean that have persisted in pre-1.0 content. Specifically, some areas displayed localized strings incorrectly or mixed localized language with English in one string. We have resolved these issues and expect the remaining ones to be fully addressed, along with the Japanese language update a couple of weeks after the 1.1 release. Rest assured, the current state of localization should show significant improvements with fewer issues compared to the 1.0 release. However, if you encounter any critical localization errors, we strongly encourage you to submit an in-game bug report with the localization tag so our technical team can address them promptly. Once again, thank you for taking the time to join us in this announcement and for your ongoing support of Last Epoch. We will see you all in the world of Eterra! The Last Epoch Team
Last Epoch: Harbingers of Ruin Patch Notes & Downtime Notice
[ 2024-07-05 16:00:25 CET ] [ Original post ]
Harbingers of Ruin is releasing Tuesday, July 9th, 2024, at 11:00am CT! Check out the full patch notes here: Last Epoch: Harbingers of Ruin Patch Notes Check out the Patch Notes Overview video with Game Director Judd Cobler Here: [previewyoutube=i6CnogUkGDM;full][/previewyoutube] Welcome everyone to the patch notes for Last Epoch: Harbingers of Ruin! Patch 1.1: Harbingers of Ruin is our first Major patch since launch, and with it, have focused on some of the largest areas of feedback we received from 1.0. This means more Endgame content with a new Pinnacle Boss system, a new Random Encounter system, Hundreds of balance changes, and the much requested Evade ability. In Harbingers of Ruin you will learn more about the history of Orenthia, The Forgotten Knight, as her past catches up with her. Align yourself with the Forgotten Knights as a new Faction, as you progress through the new Harbinger system, and eventually challenge the Leader of the Harbingers His eyes are upon you Traveler, his Harbingers are coming. Please Note: To prepare the servers for Harbingers of Ruin on July 9th, we will be shutting down our servers 24 hours before the patch, starting: Monday, July 9th, 2024, at 11:00am CT Last Epoch: Harbingers of Ruin will introduce:
- New Pinnacle Boss
- Harbinger Bosses
- New Evade Ability
- Nemesis System
- New Forgotten Knights Faction
- Hundreds of Balance Changes
- Blessing Stash and Swapping
- 30 new Unique Items
- and more!
Lore Hunt Event Details
Play Last Epoch! Thats it. There is no special sign up or registration for this event. To enter, players must decipher the information provided by the Researchers. From there, you will need to track down the location of the answers and collect proof of its discovery. Screenshot proof must be submitted to the Official Last Epoch Support Team in a single ticket. All 8 screenshots must be included in a single ticket as shown below. Multiple ticket entries will be disqualified.
Travelers will find a list of riddles on July 12th, at 11:00 am CST. You must solve each riddle and find the piece of lore it describes hidden somewhere in Eterra. In arid lands where sands do sweep, Near the ocean, secrets keep. A ports bustle, trade and mirth, Hides a love of different birth. With scales and eyes that gleam so bright, A stranger slithers into sight. Her heart, once calm, now skips a beat, For them, a bond both strange and sweet. Once you have found a point of lore, open it and collect a screenshot.
After all of the riddles have been solved and screenshots have been collected, head to the Official Last Epoch Support Site and submit a Lore Hunt ticket using the special Lore Hunt form.
For this event, the following criteria must be followed for a submission to be considered as an Event participant:
[ 2024-07-03 18:00:40 CET ] [ Original post ]
The time is nearly upon us, Traveler. Each day, the darkness draws nearer and the ruin they bring with them grows stronger. The Headmaster of the Last Archive needs you if our history is ever to survive. On July 12th, at 11:00 am CST, return to the Steam News Feed to begin your quest. Join and compete against your fellow travelers as you embark on a hunt that will take you far and away from the confines of safety. The Researchers have discovered 8 clues relating to the history of Eterra and its people. It will be up to you to decipher these clues and secure the knowledge they protect. The first 50 participants to complete the event will be rewarded accordingly with all new In-Game Titles and Forum Badges.
HOW TO ENTER
Play Last Epoch! Thats it. There is no special sign up or registration for this event. To enter, players must decipher the information provided by the Researchers. From there, you will need to track down the location of the answers and collect proof of its discovery. Screenshot proof must be submitted to the Official Last Epoch Support Team in a single ticket. All 8 screenshots must be included in a single ticket as shown below. Multiple ticket entries will be disqualified.
HOW TO PLAY
Travelers will find a list of riddles on July 12th, at 11:00 am CST. You must solve each riddle and find the piece of lore it describes hidden somewhere in Eterra. In arid lands where sands do sweep, Near the ocean, secrets keep. A ports bustle, trade and mirth, Hides a love of different birth. With scales and eyes that gleam so bright, A stranger slithers into sight. Her heart, once calm, now skips a beat, For them, a bond both strange and sweet. Once you have found a point of lore, open it and collect a screenshot.
After all of the riddles have been solved and screenshots have been collected, head to the Official Last Epoch Support Site and submit a Lore Hunt ticket using the special Lore Hunt form.
RULES
For this event, the following criteria must be followed for a submission to be considered as an Event participant:
- All submissions must have your Account Name clearly in the subject line
- All submissions must use the Lore Hunt support form Tickets that do not use this form will not be counted. Multiples of the same submission will be disqualified
- All 8 answer screenshots must be submitted in the same ticket. Screenshots must remain uncropped and display the entire UI. Cropped screenshots will be disqualified
- Do Not submit follow up tickets to determine answers or placement.
Harbingers of Ruin: Quality of Life & More
In this section were covering some of the much requested quality of life updates to the most commonly used mechanics in game that should help Travelers as they progress through Eterra, even our Alt-oholics too!
Blessings can sometimes be a key piece in making a build come together. Getting just the right blessing setup with a good roll can take a while to farm. The prospect of giving that up to try out another build can be daunting enough to discourage experimentation. To remedy this situation, we have added the ability to quickly and easily change your blessings without losing progress. You will now find an NPC in the End of Time next to the Monolith of Fate entrance. Similar to the Passive Respec NPC, for a small Gold fee this NPC will enable you to swap between the Blessings your character has earned, or the minimum rolled versions of blessings earned on your other characters in the same game mode! Wait, like a Blessing Stash?
Yep! In 1.1, after defeating a Boss and unlocking new Blessings, all of those Blessing options will be saved to the Blessing Stash at their current roll values (if higher than previously earned versions). This includes the blessings which you do not select when you kill a monolith boss. You may then switch between any of these blessings without losing the roll values you earned. For Alts, this means once you have defeated a Timeline, you will be able to swap out a Blessing you have earned with any Blessing from another character that it shares a stash with. Blessings earned on other characters will be usable at their minimum roll values until a better roll is unlocked on the alt character. Pre-1.1 characters will have access to their non-equipped but discovered blessings as swap options saved at minimum roll. Any currently equipped blessings will persist as an option with its current roll saved. For Example: If Character A has earned the Grand Cruelty of Formosus Blessing with a 68% Chance to Increase Wand Drop Rate, this will be saved to their Stash. Should they earn this Blessing again at a higher value, say 85%, but choose not to take the Blessing, it will be added to their Stash at the higher roll. Once Character B (An Alt with access to the Stash) has defeated the required Blood, Frost, and Death Timeline, they will be able to equip the Grand Cruelty of Formosus Blessing at its lowest value of 50% Chance to Increase Wand Drop Rate, even if they have not earned this Blessing yet. Once Character B has defeated the Timeline and earned the Blessing, the higher value roll will be available to use. Alt characters will only have to complete the Normal version of a Timeline to access Empowered Timeline Blessings.
We understand that Ladders and competition are important to a dedicated portion of our player base, and accuracy is an integral part of those. To expand the opportunities our players have to officially challenge each other, we are adding a brand new Level Ladder to Last Epoch. This will track the race to Level 100 by showing the leading Cycle characters with the highest experience totals and a timestamp displaying when they reached Level 100! We have also added timestamps to Arena Ladders to show when a player earned their rank by defeating the most Waves.
With 1.1, we are adding a search box to the Timeline map with buttons for common reward searches. This creates a quick way to filter and search for desired Echo types and rewards, with matching nodes highlighted on the map.
Okay, okay, okay! We heard you, Loot filters are getting some new filtering options. You will now be able to add multiple affix conditions to a single rule. For example, you can have one condition for boots to only show if they have Movement Speed at Tier 6 or higher, and then another condition to also include at least Tier 5 or higher Dexterity, Vitality or Strength. You will also now have the option to show the relevant filter rule number on the end of the label names the while the loot filter is open. You will also be able to show or hide affixes that are incompatible with the item type you are creating a rule for. Oh, we are also including the much requested Legendary Potential and Weavers Will filtering. Enjoy!
Since we introduced our Item Factions, we have always wanted to provide options that suit everyones preferred playstyle and also feel rewarding. Thankfully, you provided plenty of feedback and suggestions for our teams to work with and below we are sharing the upcoming New Ranks and Changes to the Item Factions for the 1.1 Harbingers of Ruin update. Progression speed has also been taken into account when including the new Ranks, and it requires less Reputation to achieve the maximum Rank in 1.1, than it required to achieve Rank 10 in 1.0. Also in 1.1, each Rank in Item Factions also now provides +5% increased Favor gain. At maximum rank of 12, you will have +60% increased Favor gain. However experience now scales less with corruption than it did at high corruption values and Favor gain is based on experience gain. At all normal corruption values you'll be gaining more Favor than before at high ranks, but at extremely high corruption you'll be gaining less than before. Overall this means that getting to high corruption and being able to farm it efficiently is much less important for farming Favor.
While we were overall happy with where item progression is in the Merchants Guild, there were some Ranks we felt offered very little in terms of upgrades as other Ranks included all the relevant items. To make progression feel smoother, we have split these Ranks and introduced two more. These changes are highlighted below. We have also heard your feedback on the Bazaar search function and the team is currently working on updates to this system - especially affix searching - which we plan to release as soon as its ready during the 1.1 Cycle.
We heard your feedback on how Circle of Fortune felt as if it was lacking when farming Bosses and experimental items from Exiled Mages. To address this we have added two completely new Ranks that increase the amount of boss-specific loot and to increase the amount of experimental affix items Exiled Mages provide. In addition to these, Rank 12 (previously Rank 10) which duplicated prophecies has received a rework. In 1.1 instead of duplicating the rewards, the prophecy now act as if you had 2 of them, meaning it can roll different Uniques, for example instead of getting two of the same rings from a single prophecy duplication, youll now get the ring prophecy twice which will in most cases end up granting 2 different rings.
Corruption is an integral part of Last Epochs Monolith of Fate endgame system. This is a mechanic players spend a lot of time with, as it increases the amount of experience gained and the likelihood of finding rarer items, as well as unlocking the final two Blessing slots. This means becoming familiar with the Gaze of Orobyss mechanic as well, which has proven frustrating based on how it currently works. As such, we are introducing some changes to help address the most common pain points. Previously your Gaze of Orobyss had diminishing returns, in 1.1 each Gaze of Orobyss will grant 12 Corruption. This takes away the confusion over how much extra Corruption you should expect to earn per Gaze, and you no longer feel like you can waste Gaze due to the removal of diminishing returns per additional Gaze. Another thing to help manage Corruption, now only 4 Gazes will be consumed at one time. So instead of all Gazes being consumed at once, the rest will now carry over the next echo web. The amount of Gaze consumed is capped at 4 to avoid the possibility of adding too much Corruption and experiencing a sudden increase in difficulty after killing a Shade while increasing Corruption in your higher corruption timelines, which could lead to unfortunate player deaths. However, we do have a change to make that less painful too. Upon dying to a Shade of Orobyss, players will now only lose 1 Gaze of Orobyss instead of losing them all. These changes also mean that Corruption can be increased faster, as consuming a full stack of Gaze (4) in 1.1 will provide 48 Corruption which required at least 10 Gaze in 1.0. No specific changes have been made to the current Corruption catch-up mechanic. So with these new changes, increasing Corruption on your lower Corruption Timelines is now faster as well. We also know that gaining Corruption in a Party has been less than optimal, in that only the player who started the Echo would earn Gaze of Orobyss to help them increase Corruption later on. This has been changed so all players in the Party who have the required Stability to be granted a Blessing when the Timeline Boss is defeated, will also gain a stack of Gaze. These players can then increase Corruption much faster in their own Timelines.
Heres where well be highlighting a few of the many upcoming changes to various Skills and Passives. The team has taken onboard a lot of your feedback about how some skills feel outdated and have amped up their arsenal, so to speak. While the full Patch Notes will cover every single change (and its a lot), today were focusing on a few frequently mentioned cases.
Its long been a bugbear in the community that using a channeled skill stopped all Mana regeneration, especially in builds where a 0 cost channeled skill triggered another that still cost Mana, meaning players would need to ease off the gas and wait for their Mana pool to restore. For 1.1, most channeled skills which prevented Mana regeneration while channeling have been changed. They no longer prevent base Mana regeneration, however the base Mana regeneration amount (8) has been added to their channel cost. Other modifiers to their Mana costs have been adjusted where necessary to also account for this change. This change has been introduced so players that invest into Mana regeneration feel rewarded for doing so, without having a negative impact on players that have not.
All classes are getting balance updates, so dont worry if you dont see your favorite skill below. The full breakdowns of those changes will be included in the Patch Note post due out in the coming days. Today we will be focusing on a few of the skills and passive changes which will be seeing more significant changes with Harbingers of Ruin.
Disintegrate has historically been highly dependent on an unintended interaction between two Unique items: Ingvars Head, and Gamblers Fallacy. This combination allowed you to greatly overcap critical strike chance, which offered a massive multiplier to Disintegrate. This wasnt a particularly healthy interaction as the mechanic was easily overlooked considering the normal functions of the involved stats, and also meant that it was the only way to build disintegrate. With this in mind, we have updated older nodes and added new nodes in for Disintegrate and its Skill Tree to give it the power it needs inherently, and stop relying on this interaction. So while combining Gamblers Fallacy and Ingvars Head will no longer work in 1.1, Disintegrate should have many more build options available to it. The full list of changes will be included in the Patch Notes of course (over 25 change notes just for Disintegrate), though today well have a look at some of the most impactful nodes to look forward to. Base Skill The Base damage on Disintegrate has been increased from 15 to 24, and its added damage effectiveness increased from a modest 300% to a generous 480%.
Lucomancer
Hyperfocal
Flame Vent
Shield Bash as a skill is one which has been in the background for some time. Weve even noticed when people talk about melee skills, Shield Bash often doesnt even get a mention. Being a highly niche skill, and a support skill left it out of many builds. Because it provides a guaranteed stun, it requires a longer cooldown to prevent it from being overly abusable on bosses, however there was certainly a lot of space available to improve Shield Bash. In particular, one area of improvement for Shield Bash was as an offensive skill - which is receiving a lot of love for 1.1. Lets take a quick look at a few of the big improvements coming to Shield Bash to help bring it into the conversation more often. Base Skill Shield Bashs Base cooldown has been increased to 18 seconds, however stunning enemies will now quickly make Shield Bash available again by reducing the remaining cooldown by 20% when you stun an enemy. This counts stuns from any source, including other skills, not just stuns inflicted by Shield Bash itself, which should open up some fun build opportunities!
Flurry of Blows
Indomitable Force
Shieldstorm
Avalanche is a very well known skill, unfortunately for when its used by enemies rather than Shaman players. Were aiming to change that in 1.1 with over 20 changes and adjustments to its Skill Tree. As with Disintegrate and Shield Bash, theres a lot more changes youll find in the Patch Notes, though today we can take a look at a few of the big changes to look forward to. Base Skill Avalanches base functionality has been reworked: It is no longer a channeled spell by default. It now costs 50 mana and creates 1 larger boulder at the target location, followed by 10 smaller boulders around the target area over 2 seconds. It is now always targetable, and the boulders fall within a circle instead of an extended rectangle in front of the player. It has no cooldown.
Excavation
Alpine Guide
Stormcaller
Skills arent the only area receiving balance changes. Were also visiting Passives for many masteries, with a few in particular getting more attention. While none of these qualify as reworks, today we want to give you a brief look at some of the many Passive changes coming for the Sorcerer, Forge Guard, and Shaman.
Since the introduction of Experimental items, and with them the % Missing Life Gained as Ward affix on gloves, Ward has been a dominant force in the world of Eterra. In addition to this is the Runemasters ability to generate Ward, and recently, Warlock and Healing Hands ability to generate massive amounts of Ward. Its little wonder how the topic of Health vs. Ward has become such a big talking point, and we havent been blind to the conversation. While theres absolutely specific changes to be introduced to reign in some of these methods of Ward generation, this isnt the first time Ward has come up as a hot topic. Because of its nature of decaying, but otherwise being infinitely stackable, its easy for Ward to quickly fall out of line. So while were making those individual changes to outlier methods of Ward generation, were also making a more significant change to Ward overall. That change, is in the Ward Decay Formula.
The biggest thing we want to clarify with this, is this formula change is not a full on nerf. While there is certainly the potential for outliers of high Ward generation being reigned in, theres also natural, and intended methods of Ward generation which currently feel a bit too weak. As such, the change in the formula results in stronger retention of Ward when below 4,000 Ward, and to address outliers, is now a much faster decay when over 10,000 Ward. For clarity, were providing the exact formulas below: Old:
We look forward to seeing these changes make your journeys through Eterra feel even better and we thank you for all of your feedback and suggestions that help us continue to make the game our players want to see. Thank you again for your continued support and cant wait to stand shoulder to shoulder with you against the coming darkness on July 9th, when Last Epoch 1.1: Harbingers of Ruin launches!
[ 2024-07-03 16:42:40 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, Welcome to the second Pre-Patch Blog Post! Today were going to be highlighting some of the Quality of Life changes, as well as a few other changes, coming with the Last Epoch 1.1 : Harbingers of Ruin update on July 9th. While well be covering some hot topics today, fear not, the full Patch Notes will cover everything being added, changed, or fixed in 1.1! (*Looks at word count of the Patch Note post*) Make sure to set some time aside to read those.
Mechanical Changes
In this section were covering some of the much requested quality of life updates to the most commonly used mechanics in game that should help Travelers as they progress through Eterra, even our Alt-oholics too!
Changes to Blessings
Blessings can sometimes be a key piece in making a build come together. Getting just the right blessing setup with a good roll can take a while to farm. The prospect of giving that up to try out another build can be daunting enough to discourage experimentation. To remedy this situation, we have added the ability to quickly and easily change your blessings without losing progress. You will now find an NPC in the End of Time next to the Monolith of Fate entrance. Similar to the Passive Respec NPC, for a small Gold fee this NPC will enable you to swap between the Blessings your character has earned, or the minimum rolled versions of blessings earned on your other characters in the same game mode! Wait, like a Blessing Stash?
Yep! In 1.1, after defeating a Boss and unlocking new Blessings, all of those Blessing options will be saved to the Blessing Stash at their current roll values (if higher than previously earned versions). This includes the blessings which you do not select when you kill a monolith boss. You may then switch between any of these blessings without losing the roll values you earned. For Alts, this means once you have defeated a Timeline, you will be able to swap out a Blessing you have earned with any Blessing from another character that it shares a stash with. Blessings earned on other characters will be usable at their minimum roll values until a better roll is unlocked on the alt character. Pre-1.1 characters will have access to their non-equipped but discovered blessings as swap options saved at minimum roll. Any currently equipped blessings will persist as an option with its current roll saved. For Example: If Character A has earned the Grand Cruelty of Formosus Blessing with a 68% Chance to Increase Wand Drop Rate, this will be saved to their Stash. Should they earn this Blessing again at a higher value, say 85%, but choose not to take the Blessing, it will be added to their Stash at the higher roll. Once Character B (An Alt with access to the Stash) has defeated the required Blood, Frost, and Death Timeline, they will be able to equip the Grand Cruelty of Formosus Blessing at its lowest value of 50% Chance to Increase Wand Drop Rate, even if they have not earned this Blessing yet. Once Character B has defeated the Timeline and earned the Blessing, the higher value roll will be available to use. Alt characters will only have to complete the Normal version of a Timeline to access Empowered Timeline Blessings.
Ladder Improvements
We understand that Ladders and competition are important to a dedicated portion of our player base, and accuracy is an integral part of those. To expand the opportunities our players have to officially challenge each other, we are adding a brand new Level Ladder to Last Epoch. This will track the race to Level 100 by showing the leading Cycle characters with the highest experience totals and a timestamp displaying when they reached Level 100! We have also added timestamps to Arena Ladders to show when a player earned their rank by defeating the most Waves.
Monolith Timeline Search
With 1.1, we are adding a search box to the Timeline map with buttons for common reward searches. This creates a quick way to filter and search for desired Echo types and rewards, with matching nodes highlighted on the map.
Loot Filter Improvements
Okay, okay, okay! We heard you, Loot filters are getting some new filtering options. You will now be able to add multiple affix conditions to a single rule. For example, you can have one condition for boots to only show if they have Movement Speed at Tier 6 or higher, and then another condition to also include at least Tier 5 or higher Dexterity, Vitality or Strength. You will also now have the option to show the relevant filter rule number on the end of the label names the while the loot filter is open. You will also be able to show or hide affixes that are incompatible with the item type you are creating a rule for. Oh, we are also including the much requested Legendary Potential and Weavers Will filtering. Enjoy!
Item Faction Changes
Since we introduced our Item Factions, we have always wanted to provide options that suit everyones preferred playstyle and also feel rewarding. Thankfully, you provided plenty of feedback and suggestions for our teams to work with and below we are sharing the upcoming New Ranks and Changes to the Item Factions for the 1.1 Harbingers of Ruin update. Progression speed has also been taken into account when including the new Ranks, and it requires less Reputation to achieve the maximum Rank in 1.1, than it required to achieve Rank 10 in 1.0. Also in 1.1, each Rank in Item Factions also now provides +5% increased Favor gain. At maximum rank of 12, you will have +60% increased Favor gain. However experience now scales less with corruption than it did at high corruption values and Favor gain is based on experience gain. At all normal corruption values you'll be gaining more Favor than before at high ranks, but at extremely high corruption you'll be gaining less than before. Overall this means that getting to high corruption and being able to farm it efficiently is much less important for farming Favor.
Merchants Guild
While we were overall happy with where item progression is in the Merchants Guild, there were some Ranks we felt offered very little in terms of upgrades as other Ranks included all the relevant items. To make progression feel smoother, we have split these Ranks and introduced two more. These changes are highlighted below. We have also heard your feedback on the Bazaar search function and the team is currently working on updates to this system - especially affix searching - which we plan to release as soon as its ready during the 1.1 Cycle.
Merchants Guild Ranks
- Rank 1: You can sell all items, and you can buy Normal, Magic and Rare items in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Unchanged)
- Rank 2: You can buy Set items in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Unchanged)
- Rank 3: You can buy Unique items with no Legendary Potential in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Unchanged)
- Rank 4: You can buy Idols in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Unchanged)
- Rank 5: You can buy Exalted Weapons and Offhands in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Unchanged)
- Rank 6: You can buy Exalted Armor in the Bazaar or directly from other players - Boots, Gloves, Helm, Body Armor (Split from previous Rank 7)
- Rank 7: You can buy Unique Weapons and Offhands with Legendary Potential in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Previously Rank 6)
- Rank 8: You can buy all Exalted items in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Previously Rank 7)
- Rank 9: You can buy all Unique items, including those with Legendary Potential, in the Bazaar or directly from other Players. (Previously Rank 8)
- Rank 10: You can buy Legendary Weapons and Offhands in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Previously Rank 9)
- Rank 11: You can buy Legendary Armor in the Bazaar or directly from other players. - Boots, Gloves, Helm, Body Armor (Split from previous Rank 10)
- Rank 12: You can buy all Legendary items in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Previously Rank 10)
Circle of Fortune
We heard your feedback on how Circle of Fortune felt as if it was lacking when farming Bosses and experimental items from Exiled Mages. To address this we have added two completely new Ranks that increase the amount of boss-specific loot and to increase the amount of experimental affix items Exiled Mages provide. In addition to these, Rank 12 (previously Rank 10) which duplicated prophecies has received a rework. In 1.1 instead of duplicating the rewards, the prophecy now act as if you had 2 of them, meaning it can roll different Uniques, for example instead of getting two of the same rings from a single prophecy duplication, youll now get the ring prophecy twice which will in most cases end up granting 2 different rings.
Circle of Fortune Ranks
- Rank 1: Enemies have 35% chance of dropping twice as many items (Unchanged)
- Rank 2: 45% chance for Runes of Ascendance to be preserved when used on an item that requires at least Circle of Fortune Rank 1 (Unchanged)
- Rank 3: Whenever an Idol Drops, there is a 25% chance for two more to drop at the same time (Unchanged)
- Rank 4: When a Set item would drop, the whole set drops instead (Previously Rank 9)
- Rank 5: 35% chance for double item rewards from Monolith Echoes (Unchanged)
- Rank 6: Affixes are 50% more likely to be Exalted (Previously Rank 4)
- Rank 7: Exiled Mages drop twice as many experimental items (New)
- Rank 8: Uniques are twice as likely to have Legendary Potential (Previously Rank 6)
- Rank 9: T7 Affixes are twice as common (Previously Rank 7)
- Rank 10: Bosses have 150% increased drop rate for any specific rewards they have (New)
- Specific Rewards refers to any items dropped by that Boss, for example Ravenous Void dropped by The Husk of Elder Gaspar
- Bosses applies to all unique enemies that display a boss health bar.
- Rank 11: Items that would drop as Rare have 25% chance of becoming Exalted (Previously Rank 8)
- Rank 12: Prophecies grant twice as many items (Previously Rank 10 - Changed, formerly "Items from Prophecies are duplicated")
- No longer duplicates the actual granted reward, but instead considers as if you had the prophecy itself twice, meaning it can roll different Uniques, for example.
Gaze of Orobyss Changes
Corruption is an integral part of Last Epochs Monolith of Fate endgame system. This is a mechanic players spend a lot of time with, as it increases the amount of experience gained and the likelihood of finding rarer items, as well as unlocking the final two Blessing slots. This means becoming familiar with the Gaze of Orobyss mechanic as well, which has proven frustrating based on how it currently works. As such, we are introducing some changes to help address the most common pain points. Previously your Gaze of Orobyss had diminishing returns, in 1.1 each Gaze of Orobyss will grant 12 Corruption. This takes away the confusion over how much extra Corruption you should expect to earn per Gaze, and you no longer feel like you can waste Gaze due to the removal of diminishing returns per additional Gaze. Another thing to help manage Corruption, now only 4 Gazes will be consumed at one time. So instead of all Gazes being consumed at once, the rest will now carry over the next echo web. The amount of Gaze consumed is capped at 4 to avoid the possibility of adding too much Corruption and experiencing a sudden increase in difficulty after killing a Shade while increasing Corruption in your higher corruption timelines, which could lead to unfortunate player deaths. However, we do have a change to make that less painful too. Upon dying to a Shade of Orobyss, players will now only lose 1 Gaze of Orobyss instead of losing them all. These changes also mean that Corruption can be increased faster, as consuming a full stack of Gaze (4) in 1.1 will provide 48 Corruption which required at least 10 Gaze in 1.0. No specific changes have been made to the current Corruption catch-up mechanic. So with these new changes, increasing Corruption on your lower Corruption Timelines is now faster as well. We also know that gaining Corruption in a Party has been less than optimal, in that only the player who started the Echo would earn Gaze of Orobyss to help them increase Corruption later on. This has been changed so all players in the Party who have the required Stability to be granted a Blessing when the Timeline Boss is defeated, will also gain a stack of Gaze. These players can then increase Corruption much faster in their own Timelines.
Class Changes
Heres where well be highlighting a few of the many upcoming changes to various Skills and Passives. The team has taken onboard a lot of your feedback about how some skills feel outdated and have amped up their arsenal, so to speak. While the full Patch Notes will cover every single change (and its a lot), today were focusing on a few frequently mentioned cases.
Channeling Skills
Its long been a bugbear in the community that using a channeled skill stopped all Mana regeneration, especially in builds where a 0 cost channeled skill triggered another that still cost Mana, meaning players would need to ease off the gas and wait for their Mana pool to restore. For 1.1, most channeled skills which prevented Mana regeneration while channeling have been changed. They no longer prevent base Mana regeneration, however the base Mana regeneration amount (8) has been added to their channel cost. Other modifiers to their Mana costs have been adjusted where necessary to also account for this change. This change has been introduced so players that invest into Mana regeneration feel rewarded for doing so, without having a negative impact on players that have not.
Skill Changes
All classes are getting balance updates, so dont worry if you dont see your favorite skill below. The full breakdowns of those changes will be included in the Patch Note post due out in the coming days. Today we will be focusing on a few of the skills and passive changes which will be seeing more significant changes with Harbingers of Ruin.
Disintegrate
Disintegrate has historically been highly dependent on an unintended interaction between two Unique items: Ingvars Head, and Gamblers Fallacy. This combination allowed you to greatly overcap critical strike chance, which offered a massive multiplier to Disintegrate. This wasnt a particularly healthy interaction as the mechanic was easily overlooked considering the normal functions of the involved stats, and also meant that it was the only way to build disintegrate. With this in mind, we have updated older nodes and added new nodes in for Disintegrate and its Skill Tree to give it the power it needs inherently, and stop relying on this interaction. So while combining Gamblers Fallacy and Ingvars Head will no longer work in 1.1, Disintegrate should have many more build options available to it. The full list of changes will be included in the Patch Notes of course (over 25 change notes just for Disintegrate), though today well have a look at some of the most impactful nodes to look forward to. Base Skill The Base damage on Disintegrate has been increased from 15 to 24, and its added damage effectiveness increased from a modest 300% to a generous 480%.
Lucomancer
Hyperfocal
Flame Vent
Shield Bash
Shield Bash as a skill is one which has been in the background for some time. Weve even noticed when people talk about melee skills, Shield Bash often doesnt even get a mention. Being a highly niche skill, and a support skill left it out of many builds. Because it provides a guaranteed stun, it requires a longer cooldown to prevent it from being overly abusable on bosses, however there was certainly a lot of space available to improve Shield Bash. In particular, one area of improvement for Shield Bash was as an offensive skill - which is receiving a lot of love for 1.1. Lets take a quick look at a few of the big improvements coming to Shield Bash to help bring it into the conversation more often. Base Skill Shield Bashs Base cooldown has been increased to 18 seconds, however stunning enemies will now quickly make Shield Bash available again by reducing the remaining cooldown by 20% when you stun an enemy. This counts stuns from any source, including other skills, not just stuns inflicted by Shield Bash itself, which should open up some fun build opportunities!
Flurry of Blows
Indomitable Force
Shieldstorm
Avalanche
Avalanche is a very well known skill, unfortunately for when its used by enemies rather than Shaman players. Were aiming to change that in 1.1 with over 20 changes and adjustments to its Skill Tree. As with Disintegrate and Shield Bash, theres a lot more changes youll find in the Patch Notes, though today we can take a look at a few of the big changes to look forward to. Base Skill Avalanches base functionality has been reworked: It is no longer a channeled spell by default. It now costs 50 mana and creates 1 larger boulder at the target location, followed by 10 smaller boulders around the target area over 2 seconds. It is now always targetable, and the boulders fall within a circle instead of an extended rectangle in front of the player. It has no cooldown.
Excavation
Alpine Guide
Stormcaller
Passives
Skills arent the only area receiving balance changes. Were also visiting Passives for many masteries, with a few in particular getting more attention. While none of these qualify as reworks, today we want to give you a brief look at some of the many Passive changes coming for the Sorcerer, Forge Guard, and Shaman.
Sorcerer
Forge Guard
Shaman
Ward Balance
Since the introduction of Experimental items, and with them the % Missing Life Gained as Ward affix on gloves, Ward has been a dominant force in the world of Eterra. In addition to this is the Runemasters ability to generate Ward, and recently, Warlock and Healing Hands ability to generate massive amounts of Ward. Its little wonder how the topic of Health vs. Ward has become such a big talking point, and we havent been blind to the conversation. While theres absolutely specific changes to be introduced to reign in some of these methods of Ward generation, this isnt the first time Ward has come up as a hot topic. Because of its nature of decaying, but otherwise being infinitely stackable, its easy for Ward to quickly fall out of line. So while were making those individual changes to outlier methods of Ward generation, were also making a more significant change to Ward overall. That change, is in the Ward Decay Formula.
The biggest thing we want to clarify with this, is this formula change is not a full on nerf. While there is certainly the potential for outliers of high Ward generation being reigned in, theres also natural, and intended methods of Ward generation which currently feel a bit too weak. As such, the change in the formula results in stronger retention of Ward when below 4,000 Ward, and to address outliers, is now a much faster decay when over 10,000 Ward. For clarity, were providing the exact formulas below: Old:
0.4 x current ward / (1 + 0.5 x ward retention)
New:
(0.2 x current ward + 0.00005 x (current ward^2)) / (1 + 0.5 x ward retention)
Trying to be a bit more readable (and for those of us that hate Maths), the change here is going from *40% of your ward per second* to *20% of your ward per second plus 0.005% of your ward squared per second*.
This means normally lower Ward generating builds, such as Ward per second, or hybrid Ward health builds will now be able to maintain their Ward a little better, but if an outlier crops up, the base formula will help limit its impact.
Outro
We look forward to seeing these changes make your journeys through Eterra feel even better and we thank you for all of your feedback and suggestions that help us continue to make the game our players want to see. Thank you again for your continued support and cant wait to stand shoulder to shoulder with you against the coming darkness on July 9th, when Last Epoch 1.1: Harbingers of Ruin launches!
Harbingers of Ruin: Whats New?
An Evade or dodge roll mechanic has been a highly requested feature, and with Patch 1.1 it will become available for all classes and transformations! Evade provides a fast, short distance movement allowing players to quickly avoid many powerful attacks. We specifically call it an Evade rather than a dodge roll for several reasons. The first is that Dodge is already a mechanic in Last Epoch, which can lead to some confusion. The second is that Evade is not always a rolling move for all characters. First, lets talk about how exactly Evade works. All characters will have Evade available from level 1 with a default of two charges available and a four second cooldown. As your character level increases so will Evades cooldown recovery speed. So as your character grows more powerful, you can also Evade more often. Its important to note that Evade does not grant any immunity frames. It lets you more easily avoid enemy attacks, but you are still vulnerable to damage. If you Evade but are still inside an attack area, you will still take the damage. This is why we wanted to avoid confusion with the existing Dodge mechanic as Evade does not provide damage mitigation. This also helps keep some of the power and identity to movement skills, as more specialized and often safer movement options.
The most important thing with introducing the Evade mechanic is that it now allows us to assume a baseline of mobility for all characters. This doesnt mean utilizing Evade will be essential for all builds, as many players will prefer traversal abilities. Having Evade simply means we have a lowest level of possible mobility every player can be expected to have. This allows us to increase the base level of difficulty in some fights, regardless if players use Evade or another movement ability. By introducing an Evade mechanic, we also open up some build opportunities within Last Epoch. Most builds currently feel forced to include a traversal skill purely for evading incoming attacks, which has a limiting impact on potential build diversity. By providing all characters a default method to quickly avoid enemy abilities, theres not as much pressure to include a traversal skill in every build. Of course, many will still prefer one for overall speed, but it will no longer be as mandatory for survival. We also wanted to make sure that Evade wouldnt simply be replacing traversal abilities in general. As such, Evade will not have a skill tree or be assigned to a slot within the skill bar (you can still change its keybind). In addition, there will be powerful options to modify Evade, including a number of Uniques which can drastically change it. Some of these options will even replace Evade completely with a different mechanic, such as (double checking with design team) summoning a crab?
Nemesis is a new random encounter system you will encounter during Harbingers of Ruin. While 1.1s primary focus was around a Pinnacle Boss system, many players may take some time to reach that point in the game. We wanted to make sure these players didnt feel left out of 1.1, as well as introducing more systems for everyone to engage with. While Traveling throughout Eterra, during both the Campaign and Monolith of Fate, you may randomly come across this new encounter type: the Nemesis. Upon spotting one of these powerful warriors, slain by a Harbinger, with its armor circling around its body, you will be provided with an opportunity to add more loot to your hoard. Interacting with the remains will present you with a window showing several items available from the Nemesis, as well as three options on what you would like to do in regards to the items.
Banishing the Nemesis will cause the encounter to be put to rest, banishing both the current Nemesis, and the items it offers. This will provide you the opportunity for a completely new selection of items with the next Nemesis you find, without fighting the current Nemesis.
The second option you will be given is to Challenge the Nemesis. By selecting to Challenge, the Nemesis will rise from its grave to return to the fight. Should you succeed in putting the Nemesis to rest, you will receive all of the items which were displayed in the earlier UI. If you defeat the Nemesis, the next one you encounter will have a new set of items.
The final option you will be provided with is the ability to Empower the Nemesis. By selecting Empower, the Nemesis will awaken and attack you in its rage. Then upon defeat, it will flee instead of dropping its items. You will encounter this same Nemesis again next time, which will have the same items available but giving them potentially increased Affix Tiers, Forging Potential, or Legendary Potential. Empowering a Nemesis can also add new Affixes to items, including non-experimental Sealed affixes. Empowering is able to upgrade Sealed non-experimental affixes all the way to ranks 6 and 7, which hasnt been possible before. You can Empower a Nemesis twice, increasing the quality of rewards as well as the power of the Nemesis holding them. Once an empowered Nemesis has been Banished or defeated after Challenging it, the next Nemesis encountered will start over as unempowered with new items.
Nemesis can also be found with a special reward type: An Egg of the Forgotten. If you immediately challenge the Nemesis, the egg will reward a random Unique. However, you can instead replace it with your own Unique item that has no Legendary Potential. This item is then empowered through the Nemesis system, and can become a Legendary by gaining random affixes or instead even gain Legendary Potential.
And so we get into the titular system, the heart of the new Pinnacle Boss system coming on July 9th. Learn more about the history of Orenthia, The Forgotten Knight, as her past catches up with her. Align yourself with the Forgotten Knights as a new Faction, as you progress through the new Harbinger system, and eventually challenge the Leader of the Harbingers.
To gain access to the new Pinnacle boss, you will first need to challenge and defeat the Harbingers. These are new bosses which can be found deep within the Monolith of Fate. As you progress corruption in different Timelines, you will be able to encounter new Harbingers to progress your ranks within the Forgotten Knights faction and get closer to challenging their leader. Harbingers can be found in two main variants: Agile and Brute. Beyond having greatly different combat styles, the Harbingers also gain abilities from the Timelines boss, bringing unique considerations into each of the 10 Timelines. You will need to defeat the Harbingers in each of the 10 Timelines before being able to access the portal to the most difficult fight in Last Epoch to date. You also have a chance to harvest an Eye from a Harbinger upon defeating them, which you will use as a currency to access the Pinnacle Boss fight. The first 10 unique Harbingers you defeat are guaranteed to provide an Eye, with a chance afterwards. This will provide you with 10 attempts at the Pinnacle Fight when you first unlock it. Once you have defeated all 10 Harbingers, you can continue to challenge the Harbingers to gather additional Eyes for further attempts.
After defeating the first Harbinger you will begin your journey with the Forgotten Knights Faction. You will find the Forgotten Knight herself in her camp upon the Shattered Road. Here you will learn of the Harbingers and Orenthias history. With the advice from Orenthia, you will set out on your quest to track down and end that which has caused her to all but lose hope completely.
As you make your way through the Harbingers, you will progress your Rank with the Forgotten Knights Faction. This faction is available to both Merchants Guild and Circle of Fortune players, rather than being an alternative choice. As with other factions, increasing your Rank with the Forgotten Knights will grant unique Rank Reward benefits. These benefits include increasing Harbinger Unique drop chance, lucky Blessing rolls, and even an increased chance to drop a new crafting material: The Glyph of Envy.
With Harbinger Eyes in hand, and all 10 Harbingers defeated, you can make your way to the portal beyond the Shattered Road. Place an Eye upon the altar, and you will be pulled into the Harbingers Domain.
Within this domain, you will face off against the leader of the Harbingers, and servant of Orobyss: Aberroth. Your fight will take you through the four Eras, each presenting unique arena mechanics and empowering Aberroth with new abilities to further crush your hopes of facing the void.
With the release of Patch 1.1: Harbingers of Ruin, Aberroth will only be able to be challenged in the Online Cycle. This allows an opportunity for this new Pinnacle fight to be experienced and learned through natural progression rather than instantly solved by characters outfitted in the very best gear. Once the boss has been defeated in the Cycle, Aberroth will be made available to both Legacy and all Offline modes within the next business day. If Aberroth remains un-slain for the first week, we will automatically release the encounter to all environments to prevent too long of a delay for Offline and Legacy players.
Out with the old and in with the new. As some are aware, Bosses in Last Epoch, up until 1.1 had a Dynamic Damage Reduction (DDR) mechanic. One of the biggest issues with the system was little awareness about it. It wasnt a very clear system as it didnt have any sort of visual representation. It also was easy to misunderstand due to its dynamic nature, and generally resulted in feelsbad of seeing yourself doing less damage to bosses after a few hits without anything actively telling you why. While more damage per second was always still more damage per second against the boss, sometimes it didnt feel like it because of the scaling damage reduction. Dealing more damage early on could also lull you into a false sense of security with more leech from that damage, leaving you more vulnerable later into the fight.
In response to this feedback, were replacing Boss Dynamic Damage Reduction with a Boss Ward system. With this new system, as a Boss reaches pre-determined breakpoints it will gain a burst of ward that then decays over time. The longer the ward is present, the faster it will decay. The goals of this are the same as the DDR system: that bosses are given a better opportunity to exist and fight back without punishing lower DPS builds that already get this experience. As the ward decays at an accelerating rate, lower DPS builds will have less total damage necessary to cut through, while higher DPS builds will continue cutting through the ward while it decays. This means higher DPS builds will still kill bosses much faster than lower DPS builds, but it does so in a way that doesnt suddenly make bosses sponges for higher damage builds. This system also provides a much clearer visual representation of how youre actually progressing through the boss health. Previously, with DDR, because the resistance could stack up, some parts of the health bar could take longer to get through than others. This created false expectations of how long the boss was going to take to kill based on early damage. Alongside the change from Boss Dynamic Damage Reduction to Boss Ward, weve made a couple of other defensive changes to bosses. Because boss health no longer has such high damage reduction for high DPS builds, it would inherently be easier to randomly stun. As such, weve given bosses 50% more resistance to stun and freeze (effectively adding 50% more life to their calculations for stun and freeze). Weve also reduced the effectiveness of Slow and Chill against bosses to 50%, matching the effectiveness of these ailments on players. Lastly, were adding a maximum stun/freeze duration to powerful endgame bosses, such as Harbingers to increase the difficulty of CC Locking them.
A very common area of feedback we see is that it can feel very slow to progress through Monoliths on subsequent characters. When addressing this feedback, we didnt want players to simply skip Monoliths as that can lead to a worse experience especially for newer players. Alongside tweaks to stability rates, were also introducing the new Glyph of Envy with Patch 1.1. This item allows you to greatly accelerate progress through normal Timelines you have not completed yet, and add a large amount of stability to Timelines you have completed.
By upgrading an affix using a Glyph of Envy, it will have two effects. One on the item itself, and a second effect on your most recently accessed Timeline. On the item, it will upgrade the selected affix as normal. In addition, every other property of the item will be changed other than Item Type. This means a ring will remain a ring, but the three other affixes as well as the Sub Type of ring will be randomized to completely new stats. Having destabilized the item, the glyph siphons that lost stability and grants it to your most recently accessed Timeline. The bottom of the Forging window will tell you which Timeline will receive the stability. If its a normal Timeline and you have not already completed it, the glyph will grant that Timeline full stability. This allows you to immediately conquer the Timeline quest objectives. If its an Empowered Timeline or a normal Timeline you have already completed, it will instead have a moderate burst of stability added. Glyphs of Envy can only be found within level 100 zones, and drop most commonly from rare enemies and Harbingers. This helps to reduce negative UX for new players feeling forced to use them and makes progression more even. It also prevents interruption for community race events, where a sudden Glyph of Envy could completely determine the race.
Harbingers Needle is a new item coming in Harbingers of Ruin to further assist with pushing Corruption. This item is very unique, in that its the first consumable equipped item.
If this unique item is equipped in your idol inventory when you kill any Timeline boss above 90 Corruption, you will gain three additional Gaze of Orobyss for that Timeline. Upon granting the additional Gaze of Orobyss, the item is destroyed. This allows you to quickly build large Corruption boosts. For those unfamiliar, Gaze of Orobyss is a mechanic found within Empowered Timelines. This stackable bonus acquired from defeating Timeline bosses rewards additional Corruption the next time you defeat a Shade of Orobyss. We have some other improvements coming to Gaze of Orobyss to make it a smoother mechanic, but well dive more into that in the upcoming QoL post.
Patch 1.1 will be introducing 30 new Unique Items to be found and built around. Most of these will be able to be found throughout Eterra, though a select few can only be found through the new bosses. Today, were sharing a few examples of the new Uniques youll be able to find on July 9th.
Thank you everyone for taking the time to join us for todays Blog Post, covering new features coming with Harbingers of Ruin. Make sure to keep your eyes out for the upcoming post on some of the Quality of Life and other changes coming in just a couple weeks time, followed by the patch notes prior to the release of Patch 1.1 Harbingers of Ruin on July 9th at 11:00am CT!
[ 2024-06-25 16:01:20 CET ] [ Original post ]
[previewyoutube=o3PXawGtwK4;full][/previewyoutube] Hello Travelers! Last Epochs first post-launch cycle arrives in just a couple of weeks on July 9th, and we cant wait to talk about it any longer! Today, were going to be covering the big new features you can expect with Harbingers of Ruin on July 9th! For those that were with us in beta, we had previously done a hype week with smaller blog posts leading up to the patch. This time around were going to be combining everything into two big posts, todays Whats New? and a second post that will come soon covering Quality of Life, and other changes. Then as we close in on patch day, well be releasing the full patch notes for everyone to have a look through and get ready for the Harbingers! Today, lets start by jumping into the new features with Harbingers of Ruin, starting with the new Evade Mechanic!
Evade
An Evade or dodge roll mechanic has been a highly requested feature, and with Patch 1.1 it will become available for all classes and transformations! Evade provides a fast, short distance movement allowing players to quickly avoid many powerful attacks. We specifically call it an Evade rather than a dodge roll for several reasons. The first is that Dodge is already a mechanic in Last Epoch, which can lead to some confusion. The second is that Evade is not always a rolling move for all characters. First, lets talk about how exactly Evade works. All characters will have Evade available from level 1 with a default of two charges available and a four second cooldown. As your character level increases so will Evades cooldown recovery speed. So as your character grows more powerful, you can also Evade more often. Its important to note that Evade does not grant any immunity frames. It lets you more easily avoid enemy attacks, but you are still vulnerable to damage. If you Evade but are still inside an attack area, you will still take the damage. This is why we wanted to avoid confusion with the existing Dodge mechanic as Evade does not provide damage mitigation. This also helps keep some of the power and identity to movement skills, as more specialized and often safer movement options.
The most important thing with introducing the Evade mechanic is that it now allows us to assume a baseline of mobility for all characters. This doesnt mean utilizing Evade will be essential for all builds, as many players will prefer traversal abilities. Having Evade simply means we have a lowest level of possible mobility every player can be expected to have. This allows us to increase the base level of difficulty in some fights, regardless if players use Evade or another movement ability. By introducing an Evade mechanic, we also open up some build opportunities within Last Epoch. Most builds currently feel forced to include a traversal skill purely for evading incoming attacks, which has a limiting impact on potential build diversity. By providing all characters a default method to quickly avoid enemy abilities, theres not as much pressure to include a traversal skill in every build. Of course, many will still prefer one for overall speed, but it will no longer be as mandatory for survival. We also wanted to make sure that Evade wouldnt simply be replacing traversal abilities in general. As such, Evade will not have a skill tree or be assigned to a slot within the skill bar (you can still change its keybind). In addition, there will be powerful options to modify Evade, including a number of Uniques which can drastically change it. Some of these options will even replace Evade completely with a different mechanic, such as (double checking with design team) summoning a crab?
Nemesis
Nemesis is a new random encounter system you will encounter during Harbingers of Ruin. While 1.1s primary focus was around a Pinnacle Boss system, many players may take some time to reach that point in the game. We wanted to make sure these players didnt feel left out of 1.1, as well as introducing more systems for everyone to engage with. While Traveling throughout Eterra, during both the Campaign and Monolith of Fate, you may randomly come across this new encounter type: the Nemesis. Upon spotting one of these powerful warriors, slain by a Harbinger, with its armor circling around its body, you will be provided with an opportunity to add more loot to your hoard. Interacting with the remains will present you with a window showing several items available from the Nemesis, as well as three options on what you would like to do in regards to the items.
Banish
Banishing the Nemesis will cause the encounter to be put to rest, banishing both the current Nemesis, and the items it offers. This will provide you the opportunity for a completely new selection of items with the next Nemesis you find, without fighting the current Nemesis.
Challenge
The second option you will be given is to Challenge the Nemesis. By selecting to Challenge, the Nemesis will rise from its grave to return to the fight. Should you succeed in putting the Nemesis to rest, you will receive all of the items which were displayed in the earlier UI. If you defeat the Nemesis, the next one you encounter will have a new set of items.
Empower
The final option you will be provided with is the ability to Empower the Nemesis. By selecting Empower, the Nemesis will awaken and attack you in its rage. Then upon defeat, it will flee instead of dropping its items. You will encounter this same Nemesis again next time, which will have the same items available but giving them potentially increased Affix Tiers, Forging Potential, or Legendary Potential. Empowering a Nemesis can also add new Affixes to items, including non-experimental Sealed affixes. Empowering is able to upgrade Sealed non-experimental affixes all the way to ranks 6 and 7, which hasnt been possible before. You can Empower a Nemesis twice, increasing the quality of rewards as well as the power of the Nemesis holding them. Once an empowered Nemesis has been Banished or defeated after Challenging it, the next Nemesis encountered will start over as unempowered with new items.
Egg of the Forgotten
Nemesis can also be found with a special reward type: An Egg of the Forgotten. If you immediately challenge the Nemesis, the egg will reward a random Unique. However, you can instead replace it with your own Unique item that has no Legendary Potential. This item is then empowered through the Nemesis system, and can become a Legendary by gaining random affixes or instead even gain Legendary Potential.
Harbingers and Forgotten Knight
And so we get into the titular system, the heart of the new Pinnacle Boss system coming on July 9th. Learn more about the history of Orenthia, The Forgotten Knight, as her past catches up with her. Align yourself with the Forgotten Knights as a new Faction, as you progress through the new Harbinger system, and eventually challenge the Leader of the Harbingers.
Harbingers
To gain access to the new Pinnacle boss, you will first need to challenge and defeat the Harbingers. These are new bosses which can be found deep within the Monolith of Fate. As you progress corruption in different Timelines, you will be able to encounter new Harbingers to progress your ranks within the Forgotten Knights faction and get closer to challenging their leader. Harbingers can be found in two main variants: Agile and Brute. Beyond having greatly different combat styles, the Harbingers also gain abilities from the Timelines boss, bringing unique considerations into each of the 10 Timelines. You will need to defeat the Harbingers in each of the 10 Timelines before being able to access the portal to the most difficult fight in Last Epoch to date. You also have a chance to harvest an Eye from a Harbinger upon defeating them, which you will use as a currency to access the Pinnacle Boss fight. The first 10 unique Harbingers you defeat are guaranteed to provide an Eye, with a chance afterwards. This will provide you with 10 attempts at the Pinnacle Fight when you first unlock it. Once you have defeated all 10 Harbingers, you can continue to challenge the Harbingers to gather additional Eyes for further attempts.
The Forgotten Knight
After defeating the first Harbinger you will begin your journey with the Forgotten Knights Faction. You will find the Forgotten Knight herself in her camp upon the Shattered Road. Here you will learn of the Harbingers and Orenthias history. With the advice from Orenthia, you will set out on your quest to track down and end that which has caused her to all but lose hope completely.
Forgotten Knights Faction
As you make your way through the Harbingers, you will progress your Rank with the Forgotten Knights Faction. This faction is available to both Merchants Guild and Circle of Fortune players, rather than being an alternative choice. As with other factions, increasing your Rank with the Forgotten Knights will grant unique Rank Reward benefits. These benefits include increasing Harbinger Unique drop chance, lucky Blessing rolls, and even an increased chance to drop a new crafting material: The Glyph of Envy.
Pinnacle Boss
With Harbinger Eyes in hand, and all 10 Harbingers defeated, you can make your way to the portal beyond the Shattered Road. Place an Eye upon the altar, and you will be pulled into the Harbingers Domain.
Within this domain, you will face off against the leader of the Harbingers, and servant of Orobyss: Aberroth. Your fight will take you through the four Eras, each presenting unique arena mechanics and empowering Aberroth with new abilities to further crush your hopes of facing the void.
With the release of Patch 1.1: Harbingers of Ruin, Aberroth will only be able to be challenged in the Online Cycle. This allows an opportunity for this new Pinnacle fight to be experienced and learned through natural progression rather than instantly solved by characters outfitted in the very best gear. Once the boss has been defeated in the Cycle, Aberroth will be made available to both Legacy and all Offline modes within the next business day. If Aberroth remains un-slain for the first week, we will automatically release the encounter to all environments to prevent too long of a delay for Offline and Legacy players.
Boss Defenses
Out with the old and in with the new. As some are aware, Bosses in Last Epoch, up until 1.1 had a Dynamic Damage Reduction (DDR) mechanic. One of the biggest issues with the system was little awareness about it. It wasnt a very clear system as it didnt have any sort of visual representation. It also was easy to misunderstand due to its dynamic nature, and generally resulted in feelsbad of seeing yourself doing less damage to bosses after a few hits without anything actively telling you why. While more damage per second was always still more damage per second against the boss, sometimes it didnt feel like it because of the scaling damage reduction. Dealing more damage early on could also lull you into a false sense of security with more leech from that damage, leaving you more vulnerable later into the fight.
In response to this feedback, were replacing Boss Dynamic Damage Reduction with a Boss Ward system. With this new system, as a Boss reaches pre-determined breakpoints it will gain a burst of ward that then decays over time. The longer the ward is present, the faster it will decay. The goals of this are the same as the DDR system: that bosses are given a better opportunity to exist and fight back without punishing lower DPS builds that already get this experience. As the ward decays at an accelerating rate, lower DPS builds will have less total damage necessary to cut through, while higher DPS builds will continue cutting through the ward while it decays. This means higher DPS builds will still kill bosses much faster than lower DPS builds, but it does so in a way that doesnt suddenly make bosses sponges for higher damage builds. This system also provides a much clearer visual representation of how youre actually progressing through the boss health. Previously, with DDR, because the resistance could stack up, some parts of the health bar could take longer to get through than others. This created false expectations of how long the boss was going to take to kill based on early damage. Alongside the change from Boss Dynamic Damage Reduction to Boss Ward, weve made a couple of other defensive changes to bosses. Because boss health no longer has such high damage reduction for high DPS builds, it would inherently be easier to randomly stun. As such, weve given bosses 50% more resistance to stun and freeze (effectively adding 50% more life to their calculations for stun and freeze). Weve also reduced the effectiveness of Slow and Chill against bosses to 50%, matching the effectiveness of these ailments on players. Lastly, were adding a maximum stun/freeze duration to powerful endgame bosses, such as Harbingers to increase the difficulty of CC Locking them.
Glyph of Envy
A very common area of feedback we see is that it can feel very slow to progress through Monoliths on subsequent characters. When addressing this feedback, we didnt want players to simply skip Monoliths as that can lead to a worse experience especially for newer players. Alongside tweaks to stability rates, were also introducing the new Glyph of Envy with Patch 1.1. This item allows you to greatly accelerate progress through normal Timelines you have not completed yet, and add a large amount of stability to Timelines you have completed.
By upgrading an affix using a Glyph of Envy, it will have two effects. One on the item itself, and a second effect on your most recently accessed Timeline. On the item, it will upgrade the selected affix as normal. In addition, every other property of the item will be changed other than Item Type. This means a ring will remain a ring, but the three other affixes as well as the Sub Type of ring will be randomized to completely new stats. Having destabilized the item, the glyph siphons that lost stability and grants it to your most recently accessed Timeline. The bottom of the Forging window will tell you which Timeline will receive the stability. If its a normal Timeline and you have not already completed it, the glyph will grant that Timeline full stability. This allows you to immediately conquer the Timeline quest objectives. If its an Empowered Timeline or a normal Timeline you have already completed, it will instead have a moderate burst of stability added. Glyphs of Envy can only be found within level 100 zones, and drop most commonly from rare enemies and Harbingers. This helps to reduce negative UX for new players feeling forced to use them and makes progression more even. It also prevents interruption for community race events, where a sudden Glyph of Envy could completely determine the race.
Harbinger's Needle
Harbingers Needle is a new item coming in Harbingers of Ruin to further assist with pushing Corruption. This item is very unique, in that its the first consumable equipped item.
If this unique item is equipped in your idol inventory when you kill any Timeline boss above 90 Corruption, you will gain three additional Gaze of Orobyss for that Timeline. Upon granting the additional Gaze of Orobyss, the item is destroyed. This allows you to quickly build large Corruption boosts. For those unfamiliar, Gaze of Orobyss is a mechanic found within Empowered Timelines. This stackable bonus acquired from defeating Timeline bosses rewards additional Corruption the next time you defeat a Shade of Orobyss. We have some other improvements coming to Gaze of Orobyss to make it a smoother mechanic, but well dive more into that in the upcoming QoL post.
New Uniques
Patch 1.1 will be introducing 30 new Unique Items to be found and built around. Most of these will be able to be found throughout Eterra, though a select few can only be found through the new bosses. Today, were sharing a few examples of the new Uniques youll be able to find on July 9th.
Closing
Thank you everyone for taking the time to join us for todays Blog Post, covering new features coming with Harbingers of Ruin. Make sure to keep your eyes out for the upcoming post on some of the Quality of Life and other changes coming in just a couple weeks time, followed by the patch notes prior to the release of Patch 1.1 Harbingers of Ruin on July 9th at 11:00am CT!
Last Epoch 1.1: Harbingers of Ruin Twitch Drops
[ 2024-06-21 16:11:24 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings Travelers! Last Epoch 1.1 - Harbingers of Ruin is just over the horizon, and with its Launch on July 9th, we once again will be bringing two new Twitch Drops. First off: Head on over to www.lastepoch.com/twitch and make sure your accounts are correctly linked. Starting July 9th, you can head on over to the Last Epoch category on Twitch and look for users who have drops enabled. Then, watch for at least 2 hours each day on any drops-enabled stream to be rewarded that days drop! There are two cosmetic items available and they will be available three times each - in case you miss it the first or second time. You will not be able to get the same drop multiple times. Schedule: July 9th - 14th
- Tuesday July 9th - Gloomfeather Cosmetic Pet
- Wednesday July 10th - Midsummers Dream Cosmetic Back Slot Item
- Thursday July 11th - Gloomfeather Cosmetic Pet
- Friday July 12th - Midsummers Dream Cosmetic Back Slot Item
- Saturday July 13th - Gloomfeather Cosmetic Pet
- Sunday July 14th - Midsummers Dream Cosmetic Back Slot Item
The Light Before The Dark Race Event
The Headmasters at the College of Welryn worry for the history of Eterra currently scattered throughout the land; and while they have tasked the Last Archives Researchers with recovering this knowledge, they are not best suited for the trials outside of the library sorting system. In their plight, the Headmasters have now reached out to you, Traveler. Eleventh Hour Games and Last Epoch is proud to bring you a very special Lore Hunt Event! Keep your eyes on our Forums on July 3rd where we will be revealing the details of the event and how to participate. Then, on July 12th, at 11am CST, join your fellow Travelers in a race to discover the secrets of Eterra and protect this ancient knowledge before it is lost forever.
[ 2024-06-20 16:00:18 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Traveler, Today is a very special day in Eterra and we invite you to celebrate. The Summer Solstice is upon us and with it the warmth and light of the summer sun is here to guide us through to the end of the year. On this day we come together to recognize all we have achieved thus far when the celestial light illuminates the world in vibrant detail. In ancient times, more than 12,000 years ago, people celebrated the turning of the world and the life and death of the seasons. The Summer Solstice was one of the greatest celebrations, marking the day when the sun hung highest in the sky and the day was longest. This tradition has survived the test of time and is still celebrated around the world today. In many cultures, people gather for festivals in reverence of the sun and the bounty it offered. These celebrations last for three days at minimum, encouraging community and an abundance of food and drink. Bon-fire jumping was, and still is, a popular tradition and it was believed the highest jump would predict the height of the crops for the year. While we dont have many fires to jump in Eterra, we still think the Primalist would win. Once the food had been eaten and the drink imbibed, they would settle down around that bonfire to share stories and record their history as the the day drew to an end. But just as they welcomed the longest day, we must acknowledge the approach of the longest night. On the horizon, a darkness brews, a harbinger of despair that we can do little to stop. We must prepare. Eterra needs your help.
The Light Before The Dark
The Headmasters at the College of Welryn worry for the history of Eterra currently scattered throughout the land; and while they have tasked the Last Archives Researchers with recovering this knowledge, they are not best suited for the trials outside of the library sorting system. In their plight, the Headmasters have now reached out to you, Traveler. Eleventh Hour Games and Last Epoch is proud to bring you a very special Lore Hunt Event! Keep your eyes on our Forums on July 3rd where we will be revealing the details of the event and how to participate. Then, on July 12th, at 11am CST, join your fellow Travelers in a race to discover the secrets of Eterra and protect this ancient knowledge before it is lost forever.
Last Epoch 1.0.8.4 Hotfix Notes
[ 2024-06-19 16:04:58 CET ] [ Original post ]
Fixes cases where, after a shade echo, the player would have access to the incorrect timeline from the rest zone
Pinnacle Content Poll Results
We were in favor of this concept internally; it was the main reason for the survey to begin with. However, it was the kind of decision that would benefit greatly from more communication directly with the community. Well, 69.9% thought that utilizing a format like this was something they agreed with, while only 14.8% said it was something they didnt. This survey also sparked discussion in the community about potentially having Cycle-only content be restricted to Cycles for a shorter amount of time instead of the entire duration. In question 2, we wanted to know if there was any demand for a maximum period before we release the Pinnacle Boss to the Legacy and Offline environments as a failsafe in the event that the Pinnacle Boss isnt defeated. While we are confident that our community will totally smash our decided 1 week failsafe time, we wanted to ensure that there wasnt a situation where the content was withheld unintentionally.
This question definitely saw a split and not one that we anticipated from the community. Mostly a position where the No Time Limit option garnered as much of the vote as it did. We expected a smaller minority of people who liked this idea, so 30.2% was much more than expected. We also wanted to clarify that these times would only take into account working days, as our 1.1 patch release date of July 9th was not yet public when the survey was put out to the community. Internally we were quite heavily leaning towards one week. And with the data collected, it was close, but the results aligned with utilizing a one-week solution too. For question 3, we were a bit more split on how long it should take after the first clear of the Pinnacle Boss in Cycle Online before we would also release it to Legacy and Offline modes, so it was naturally a question we wanted to get the community to provide their feedback on.
The results were very close, and we considered and examined how answers from questions 1 and 2 would relate to question 3 and how those votes would be aligned to help us make the final decision. Our decision came down to The Next Working Day, and we will start working on what a timeline for this would look like. Its likely that we will choose something like 11am CST (Epoch Time, as we call it) the next working day. This means that if the Pinnacle Boss is cleared on a Friday, the next working day at EHG would be the following Monday. In question 4, we asked, Well, are there any specific game modes that would be preferable to consider it to be defeated to count for releasing it, or would any game mode be fine?.
The response to this question was very unified, and was a clear winner even when the poll data was further narrowed down to only see the results of people who liked the suggested release delay of the Pinnacle Boss to begin with. We were also heavily leaning towards this option internally. One thing to keep in mind however, is that in the future if we decide to utilize this for events or races surrounding new or old content like defeating endgame bosses, there might be restrictions such as needing to kill solo in an environment where you cannot trade with other people, or Hardcore. As always, we greatly appreciate the community supporting the work of Last Epoch, and we look forward to seeing you in Eterra on July 9th for Cycle 1.1 - Harbingers of Ruin. Thank You, EHG Design Team
[ 2024-06-14 16:08:19 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings Travelers, Last month, we released our 1.1 through 1.4 Roadmap and our plans for the upcoming 1.1 Pinnacle Boss. As always, collaboration with our community is a big factor in creating Last Epoch, and we use polls like this to help us make informed decisions. With that came the Poll discussing different ideas around the release of the new Pinnacle Boss and its timing. Well, thousands of you gave us feedback, and we are excited to share that information with you today. Our decision regarding releasing the Pinnacle Boss is as follows:
- We will proceed with our suggested plan, which involves a short delay in releasing the Pinnacle Boss to Offline and Legacy environments.
- After a week has passed since the launch of 1.1, the Pinnacle Boss will be released to all environments, even if it has not been cleared within those environments. More precisely this will happen on Tuesday the 16th.
- If the Pinnacle Boss is defeated within the first week, itll be released to all environments within the next working day. If Pinnacle Boss is defeated on Friday the 12th, itll be released to everyone on Monday the 15th, for example.
- Clearing the boss in any 1.1 Cycle game mode will count. It is also not required to be defeated solo.
We were in favor of this concept internally; it was the main reason for the survey to begin with. However, it was the kind of decision that would benefit greatly from more communication directly with the community. Well, 69.9% thought that utilizing a format like this was something they agreed with, while only 14.8% said it was something they didnt. This survey also sparked discussion in the community about potentially having Cycle-only content be restricted to Cycles for a shorter amount of time instead of the entire duration. In question 2, we wanted to know if there was any demand for a maximum period before we release the Pinnacle Boss to the Legacy and Offline environments as a failsafe in the event that the Pinnacle Boss isnt defeated. While we are confident that our community will totally smash our decided 1 week failsafe time, we wanted to ensure that there wasnt a situation where the content was withheld unintentionally.
This question definitely saw a split and not one that we anticipated from the community. Mostly a position where the No Time Limit option garnered as much of the vote as it did. We expected a smaller minority of people who liked this idea, so 30.2% was much more than expected. We also wanted to clarify that these times would only take into account working days, as our 1.1 patch release date of July 9th was not yet public when the survey was put out to the community. Internally we were quite heavily leaning towards one week. And with the data collected, it was close, but the results aligned with utilizing a one-week solution too. For question 3, we were a bit more split on how long it should take after the first clear of the Pinnacle Boss in Cycle Online before we would also release it to Legacy and Offline modes, so it was naturally a question we wanted to get the community to provide their feedback on.
The results were very close, and we considered and examined how answers from questions 1 and 2 would relate to question 3 and how those votes would be aligned to help us make the final decision. Our decision came down to The Next Working Day, and we will start working on what a timeline for this would look like. Its likely that we will choose something like 11am CST (Epoch Time, as we call it) the next working day. This means that if the Pinnacle Boss is cleared on a Friday, the next working day at EHG would be the following Monday. In question 4, we asked, Well, are there any specific game modes that would be preferable to consider it to be defeated to count for releasing it, or would any game mode be fine?.
The response to this question was very unified, and was a clear winner even when the poll data was further narrowed down to only see the results of people who liked the suggested release delay of the Pinnacle Boss to begin with. We were also heavily leaning towards this option internally. One thing to keep in mind however, is that in the future if we decide to utilize this for events or races surrounding new or old content like defeating endgame bosses, there might be restrictions such as needing to kill solo in an environment where you cannot trade with other people, or Hardcore. As always, we greatly appreciate the community supporting the work of Last Epoch, and we look forward to seeing you in Eterra on July 9th for Cycle 1.1 - Harbingers of Ruin. Thank You, EHG Design Team
Last Epoch 1.0.8 Patch Notes
Hello Travelers! Alongside today's Patch Notes, we also wanted to provide notice that on Monday, May 20th, we will be cleaning up all records of Redeemed and Cancelled auctions from the Bazaar. This means closed listings prior to the May 20th cleanup will no longer be displaying on your redeem page. With 1.1, we will be introducing an automated cleanup for this, which will remove old Redeemed and Cancelled auctions after a given time period.
Released Hotfix 1.0.8.1 to fix a bug where Runemaster Icons were not appearing, and not providing passive bonuses.
[ 2024-05-15 16:33:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
Upcoming Bazaar Sales Cleanup
Hello Travelers! Alongside today's Patch Notes, we also wanted to provide notice that on Monday, May 20th, we will be cleaning up all records of Redeemed and Cancelled auctions from the Bazaar. This means closed listings prior to the May 20th cleanup will no longer be displaying on your redeem page. With 1.1, we will be introducing an automated cleanup for this, which will remove old Redeemed and Cancelled auctions after a given time period.
Changes
- Moved the spawn point in the Keeper's Camp by the waypoint
- Gathering Storm's Friends of the Tempest now requires that the minion's tag matches Gathering Storm instead of requiring that the minion's ability's tag matches Gathering Storm. This means that, for example, if Summon Wolf has the minion lightning tag, all attacks from your wolves can trigger Friends of the Tempest. This also fixes bugs where some converted minions, such as cold Storm Crows or cold Warcry Totem, could not trigger Friends of the Tempest when Gathering Storm is converted to cold.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where specific circumstances could cause a character to instantly revive after death. This could result in a hardcore character becoming a standard character without the feedback of having hit zero health (death screen).
- Fixed a crash when a stash tab's name has a specific mix of emoji's & line breaks.
- This was caused by a Stack Overflow in the text/ui layouting.
- Fixed a bug with Ring of Shields, where having unlocked "Rush Wall" node in "Ring of Shields" skill and then using "Shield Rush" would very often result in shields having incorrect rotation.
- Fixed a bug with Ring of Shields, where after using "Shield Bash" skill with "Wall of Shields" node unlocked, the shield wall disappears immediately after being spawned
- Fixed a bug with Ring of Shields, where after using "Shield Bash" skill with "Wall of Shields" node unlocked, the shields would remain attached to the player
- Fixed a bug where Warpath could cause Ring of Shields to change distance from the player.
- Fixed a bug where removing channels in chat settings would not remove them from channel selection in the input section.
- Fixed a bug where if a player had all chat channels disabled, then tried to send a player a direct message, the message would be sent to global if they did not already have an existing conversation with that player
- Fixed Smite not triggering Healing Hands while you are out of mana if both are free and you do not have the Desperate Measures node in the Smite tree.
- Fixed floating health bar location for Gaspar Husk, Volatile Zombies, Emperor of Corpses' Volatile Zombies, and Death Knights
- Fixed a bug where Enemy Crows, and Black Sun Rahyeh were on the wrong layer resulting in some decals laying on top of them.
- Fixed a bug where prophecies would not save correctly for some players causing them to re-roll
- Fixed a bug where the waves would start themselves in The Fall of Ledria quest echo
- Fixed "armor shred" and other affixes not appearing in the affix search for certain base types
- Fixed a bug where pressing Alt after picking up an item would open its tooltip
- Fixed a bug where some Sentinel helmets would not display on the character
- Fixed a bug where you could load into Echo of a World with no floor
Update - 14:25PM CST
Released Hotfix 1.0.8.1 to fix a bug where Runemaster Icons were not appearing, and not providing passive bonuses.
Last Epoch Official Teaser Trailer | Harbingers of Ruin
[ 2024-05-10 16:02:14 CET ] [ Original post ]
[previewyoutube=Rer2_13tbao;full][/previewyoutube] The Harbingers of Ruin update comes to Last Epoch on July 9th. Join us as the fight for Eterra continues with the launch of Cycle 1.1 - Harbingers of Ruin.
Last Epoch Roadmap
Lastly, development for 1.1 is coming along nicely, and were excited to show you all of the great content, balances, bug fixes, and end-game pinnacle boss content coming along with it. Over the last few months, the community has started discussing Cycles and how content is made available to both Legacy and new Cycle characters. Our current plan for the 1.X series of patches is to bring all content to Offline, Cycle, and Legacy realms; but we also believe in allowing Cycle characters a small bit of time to attempt new pinnacle content before extremely well-geared and optimized Offline and Legacy characters have a chance to showcase just how fast they can conquer it. For a refresher, existing Cycle characters will be moved to Legacy at the beginning of a new Cycle. Creating new Cycle characters will give everyone an even playing field with an economy reset and the need to re-roll a new separate character. Cycle is also where people may compete on that Cycles leaderboards. With that said, we would love to hear from you about our currently proposed plans. Please take just a few minutes (it is 4 questions) and help us continue to grow with our community. Link to Poll: https://forms.gle/58bE39Q2uTrUZFea6 Thank you for your amazing support thus far fellow Travelers, and we look forward to seeing you once again in the world of Eterra.
[ 2024-05-07 18:00:24 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello, Travelers,
We are thrilled to give you an early look at what's coming for Last Epoch over the next few cycles!
As always, the team here at Eleventh Hour Games is dedicated to making the ARPG of our dreams, and we all know thats a process that takes time, determination, and commitment. As of this writing, we have brought on excellent new people, continue looking for more, and are developing new and exciting content faster than ever. Our roadmap continues to showcase that we have long-term plans for Last Epoch and its content, and we are excited to showcase it here today.
Heres the thing about roadmaps, though: we are striving to be one of the best and most community-centered game studios in the industry, and oftentimes the best-laid plans of Groles and Gods need to change. While this could be for a variety of reasons; the primary one is you, the community. As each new cycle is released, we plan to collaborate with the community to let you know whats being worked on, listen to your feedback and suggestions for those plans, and continuously monitor how we can improve.
Each of the items listed on the roadmap are just a few examples of key features we plan to introduce for that cycle and do not represent the only things being worked on. Rest assured; the team is working harder and developing faster than before while also expanding with many new team members to bring you the game you deserve and produce a whole host of other features we have planned beyond those listed on the roadmap!
As we move toward each new patch, we also plan to update our roadmap to keep you informed of our plans and any changes that may have been made based on feedback we hear from the community!
We plan to update the roadmap just after Update 1.2 and again after Update 1.4.
Pinnacle Content - Realm Release Timing Poll
Lastly, development for 1.1 is coming along nicely, and were excited to show you all of the great content, balances, bug fixes, and end-game pinnacle boss content coming along with it. Over the last few months, the community has started discussing Cycles and how content is made available to both Legacy and new Cycle characters. Our current plan for the 1.X series of patches is to bring all content to Offline, Cycle, and Legacy realms; but we also believe in allowing Cycle characters a small bit of time to attempt new pinnacle content before extremely well-geared and optimized Offline and Legacy characters have a chance to showcase just how fast they can conquer it. For a refresher, existing Cycle characters will be moved to Legacy at the beginning of a new Cycle. Creating new Cycle characters will give everyone an even playing field with an economy reset and the need to re-roll a new separate character. Cycle is also where people may compete on that Cycles leaderboards. With that said, we would love to hear from you about our currently proposed plans. Please take just a few minutes (it is 4 questions) and help us continue to grow with our community. Link to Poll: https://forms.gle/58bE39Q2uTrUZFea6 Thank you for your amazing support thus far fellow Travelers, and we look forward to seeing you once again in the world of Eterra.
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.0.7.3
[ 2024-04-30 19:19:27 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where the second item suffix would sometimes not display.
- Fixed an issue where item tooltip comparison always required Ctrl+Alt to see affix ranges, regardless if you had auto-compare enabled. It once again only requires Alt with auto-compare enabled.
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.0.7.2
[ 2024-04-23 17:25:58 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where ability buffering was not working online
- Fixed a bug where Bone Curse with Illusion of Pain would not fall off after 1 hit if the hit came from Chaos Bolts with Cursed Blood
- Fixed some instances of infinite loading screens when playing in a party
Last Epoch Patch 1.0.7 Patch Notes
- When portaling to a team member that's inside an echo, you will now be placed in Echo of a World with the green portal to join at the time of your choosing. - When health is a fraction of 1, it will now always round up to 1 instead of rounding off resulting in health sometimes displaying as 0
[ 2024-04-18 16:07:52 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- When portaling to a team member that's inside an echo, you will now be placed in Echo of a World with the green portal to join at the time of your choosing. - When health is a fraction of 1, it will now always round up to 1 instead of rounding off resulting in health sometimes displaying as 0
Bug Fixes
UI
- Several item tooltip fixes, including:
- Fixed a bug where opening / closing an item tooltip would have a drastic performance cost
- Fixed a bug where tooltip text could continue off the edge of the tooltip instead of wrapping
- Fixed a bug where some languages with a larger text height could be missing information on tooltips
- Fixed a bug where prefixes and suffixes had different line spacing on item tooltips
- Fixed a bug where some enemies were not displaying their top of screen health bars
Skills
- Fixed a bug where some skills, primarily traversal skills, would not work after a zone transition until using a different skill first.
- Fixed a bug where some scorpion enemies were unable to be targeted by Spirit Plague
- Fixed a bug where channeled movement skills could break if continued to be channeled after running into a wall
- Fixed a bug where every other use of Void Cleave with the Gravity's Edge node (traversal) would have its hitbox at the start of the movement
- Fixed a bug where skills could stop working after closing a panel until the panel was closed a second time
- Fixed a bug where the player's character was visible under the surface on certain locations during using of Synchronized Strike and Lethal Mirage
- Fixed a bug where Puncture's Stay of Execution, and Detonating Arrow's Aimed Shot nodes would play the VFX before the character animation when charged to max
Multiplayer
- Fixed an instance of a bug which could break all party interactions until re-logging
- Fixed a bug where players were unable to portal to other party members when both players were inside of an echo
Other
- Fixed a bug where Shade of Orobyss' "Starburst" ability would explode upon his death
- Fixed a bug where the falling rocks during the boss fight in Lightless Arbor could sometimes fail to display a telegraphing indicator before falling
- Fixed the invisible walls during the Elder Gaspar fight in The Chambers of Ruin, which could block projectiles
- Fixed a bug where Death's Embrace's Grim Harvest could trigger while at negative mana
- Fixed a bug where Enemy VFX could stop playing / freeze
- Fixed a bug where enemies would fail to play their death animation
- Fixed a bug where the B_Circle button would focus the action bar panel (skill bar) if it was previously selected
Last Epoch Patch 1.0.6 Patch Notes
[ 2024-04-10 17:04:55 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
Systems
- Added Camera Smoothing options to settings: Normal (default/current), Low, and Off
- Added functionality to Character Delete screen
- The screen will now display the character class/mastery/level
- When deleting a character, you are now required to enter the character name to confirm the deletion
Controller
- The "B" button on controller can now be used to close keybind prompts
- After binding a controller button, the cursor now re-focuses on the corresponding binding
Other
- Reduced gold turn-in reward for Desert Treasure from 20k to 2k
- Added Buff Icon for Bone Armor (Acolyte)
- Improved performance when picking up Shards
Bug Fixes
Animations
- Fixed an issue where the Mage would T-pose during some animations
- Fixed several cases of back-slot clipping and floating capes
- Fixed a bug where the Sentinel idle animation with a 2H weapon would behave as if a shield was equipped
Controller
- Fixed a bug where if a panel was opened with keyboard and mouse, further button presses via controller would activate the assigned skills through the panel
- Fixed a bug where when opening the bindings menu, or interacting with it, with a mouse, would result in the bindings disappearing
- Fixed a number of bugs with rebinding controller configuration
- Fixed a bug where players would continue to run in the direction of their last input if the game became unfocused while moving
UI
- Fixed a bug where player health bars were not appearing in offline
- Fixed a bug where Forged Weapons' health bars could be displayed at top-of-screen instead of the boss' health bar
- Fixed missing Localization in the Gifting panel for resonances
- Fixed a bug where Item Tooltips would get stuck when adding a new tab to the stash
- Chat channels are now specific to cycle/non-cycle
- Fixed a bug where Husk enemies would not have health bars
System
- Fixed a bug in offline where players would not have full health, mana, and potions after logging in or reviving
- Fixed a bug where invalid offhand items could be equipped from the forge (eg. catalyst with a bow)
- Fixed an issue where monolith quest progress would reset if you left the zone/server after starting, but before completing the quest chain.
Skills
- Fixed a bug where Bone Curse "Signet of Agony" node's resulting aura would persist after de-speccing out of the skill
- Fixed a bug where Erasing Strike's "Ravenous Void" node's void beams wouldn't move in online play
- Fixed a bug where Volcanic Orb could be cast in incorrect directions, such as flying up when the cursor was over top of a ridge line
- Fixed a bug where if you teleported back to the monolith hub or rest area while a companion was downed, the revive UI would continue to persist even after being revived.
- Fixed a bug where Manifest Armor was not benefiting from Increased Area for Area Skills stats on items the player is wearing that are applied to Manifest Armor, such as on gloves
- Fixed a bug where the Gathering Fury unique bow's chance to repeat bow abilities was applying to non-bow abilities, and could kill the player if it repeated a Falcon ability
- Fixed a bug where Boardman's Plan's chance to summon a Storm Totem on hit with Tempest Strike was not working
- Fixed a bug where triggered instances of Tempest Strike were not benefiting from the Tempest Strike skill tree
- Fixed a bug where Bone Curse's Marrow Thief node would not grant 10% less damage taken
- Fixed a bug where Death Seal's Skeletal Sheath always granted Bone Armor for a fixed duration, ignoring the duration Death Seal was active
- Fixed a bug where Firebrand's Galvanize node would disable Brand of Arcanus
- Fixed a bug where Flame Rush could cause the player to become invisible
RMT and Exploit Statement
In response to the gold exploit, we have reviewed gold activity on an account level, identifying, and banning those accounts which have been participating in illegitimate gold generation. We dont want to speak too much to how this was tracked, as it could only really serve to provide bad actors information to try to avoid detection. With this, we are aware of the concerns of legitimate accounts being falsely flagged. We are quite confident in our tracking not falsely flagging accounts, though as always you can appeal any moderation action through support.lastepoch.com. We have also banned accounts with duplicated items from the first exploit, and we have been and are continuing to process and ban all accounts linked to RMT services (both buying and selling). These regular account bans for RMT involvement are actively removing significant amounts of gold from the economy, which we expect will help bring down inflation. We are aware of the inflation which has occurred within Merchants Guild, and are discussing methods to deflate the economy again. We expect the removal of much of this gold through the bans to both those who exploited the gold bug, as well as RMT involved accounts, will help quite a bit, though we are also discussing additional actions. At this point, were not implementing any actions which were able to talk about, however if we do plan to take any actions which directly effect players we will communicate those actions.
We want to make sure were not only reacting to exploits, and are instead working on proactive measures to prevent exploits in the first place. Were making sure to act both on a technical level and on a user level. Actions were taking on a technical level are much harder to discuss, as saying what we would be doing is just providing information to bad actors on how to try to exploit after. However, we want to strongly state that we are not ignoring these exploits occurring and are taking active measures to combat them. Lightless Arbor and Runes of Creation generating legitimate duplicate items has also been contributing to the perception of item dupes. Some of this comes from awareness regarding that these legitimate duplicates are possible, as well as to what extent. It may be surprising to know that Lightless Arbors Vaults of Uncertain Fates can actually produce up to 12 duplicates of the exact same item. These legitimate duplications can produce some very suspicious-looking listings on the Bazaar. So when we talk about changes on a user level, what we mean is that we are working on not only preventing these exploits, but also this kind of confusion being generated by user experience. As our first action to help address this, we will be introducing mirrored item card graphics to help visually represent when an item is a legitimate duplicate (on duplicated items, the 2D art for the item will be mirrored / flipped). Weve also found, in general, the Merchants Guild centralizing of gold leads to a fair amount of inflation all by itself, and as such, are looking into and discussing inflation control methods such as implementing a Gold Tax on transactions in 1.1. We dont want to implement this kind of change during the current cycle as it would be a fairly fundamental change to the Bazaar and Merchants Guild. Well have more information concerning inflation counters, Tax or other, as we get closer to 1.1.
We dont think its a very controversial statement to say that abusing an exploit, ruining the game for all players is not acceptable, and that doing so should result in a ban. We also acknowledge this isnt just on bad actors, but its also our responsibility to do everything we can to prevent these exploits from being possible in the first place. With that said, we want to be clear in stating that we acknowledge the feedback from the community concerning allowing these exploits to have slipped through, and want to make sure we state that we are taking these events very seriously. We are actively investing in both addressing, and preventing these exploits, with no efforts spared, or shirking of the issues.
[ 2024-04-02 17:02:24 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, Today we wanted to connect with everyone regarding the recent gold exploit, as well as exploits in general within the online environment. We want to talk a bit about what were doing in regards to these issues, and what our plans for the future are. We take exploits within Last Epoch very seriously and ensure that any time an exploit comes up, we give it our full and immediate attention. We strictly enforce our Terms of Use when it comes to exploits and RMT (Real-Money Trading), and as such, one can expect that abusing such exploits or engaging in RMT, both buying and selling, will result in a permanent account ban. Since 1.0 has launched, we have been aware of two exploits. The first allowed duplication of items through the bazaar. We were made aware of this exploit three days after its first discovery, and deployed a fix for it the same day. The second exploit we became aware of was the recent gold exploit, which we created and deployed a fix for in less than 24 hours of being made aware of the exploit.
Current Actions
In response to the gold exploit, we have reviewed gold activity on an account level, identifying, and banning those accounts which have been participating in illegitimate gold generation. We dont want to speak too much to how this was tracked, as it could only really serve to provide bad actors information to try to avoid detection. With this, we are aware of the concerns of legitimate accounts being falsely flagged. We are quite confident in our tracking not falsely flagging accounts, though as always you can appeal any moderation action through support.lastepoch.com. We have also banned accounts with duplicated items from the first exploit, and we have been and are continuing to process and ban all accounts linked to RMT services (both buying and selling). These regular account bans for RMT involvement are actively removing significant amounts of gold from the economy, which we expect will help bring down inflation. We are aware of the inflation which has occurred within Merchants Guild, and are discussing methods to deflate the economy again. We expect the removal of much of this gold through the bans to both those who exploited the gold bug, as well as RMT involved accounts, will help quite a bit, though we are also discussing additional actions. At this point, were not implementing any actions which were able to talk about, however if we do plan to take any actions which directly effect players we will communicate those actions.
Moving Forward
We want to make sure were not only reacting to exploits, and are instead working on proactive measures to prevent exploits in the first place. Were making sure to act both on a technical level and on a user level. Actions were taking on a technical level are much harder to discuss, as saying what we would be doing is just providing information to bad actors on how to try to exploit after. However, we want to strongly state that we are not ignoring these exploits occurring and are taking active measures to combat them. Lightless Arbor and Runes of Creation generating legitimate duplicate items has also been contributing to the perception of item dupes. Some of this comes from awareness regarding that these legitimate duplicates are possible, as well as to what extent. It may be surprising to know that Lightless Arbors Vaults of Uncertain Fates can actually produce up to 12 duplicates of the exact same item. These legitimate duplications can produce some very suspicious-looking listings on the Bazaar. So when we talk about changes on a user level, what we mean is that we are working on not only preventing these exploits, but also this kind of confusion being generated by user experience. As our first action to help address this, we will be introducing mirrored item card graphics to help visually represent when an item is a legitimate duplicate (on duplicated items, the 2D art for the item will be mirrored / flipped). Weve also found, in general, the Merchants Guild centralizing of gold leads to a fair amount of inflation all by itself, and as such, are looking into and discussing inflation control methods such as implementing a Gold Tax on transactions in 1.1. We dont want to implement this kind of change during the current cycle as it would be a fairly fundamental change to the Bazaar and Merchants Guild. Well have more information concerning inflation counters, Tax or other, as we get closer to 1.1.
Closing
We dont think its a very controversial statement to say that abusing an exploit, ruining the game for all players is not acceptable, and that doing so should result in a ban. We also acknowledge this isnt just on bad actors, but its also our responsibility to do everything we can to prevent these exploits from being possible in the first place. With that said, we want to be clear in stating that we acknowledge the feedback from the community concerning allowing these exploits to have slipped through, and want to make sure we state that we are taking these events very seriously. We are actively investing in both addressing, and preventing these exploits, with no efforts spared, or shirking of the issues.
Last Epoch Patch 1.0.5 Notes
[ 2024-03-27 17:44:13 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, In today's Hotfix, we are fixing a list of things for you!
Changes
- Improvements have been made to Monolith visuals and performance along with several bug fixes
- Fixed a bug where some channeled movement skills such as Rampage could end abruptly in the Alpine Halls monolith echo
- Fixed issues with trees obscuring your view in the Hidden Oasis monolith echo
- Added a fix that will warn players when files must be verified.
- Fixed Loot filter toggle "X" sensitivity
- Fixed bugs where the following skills' damage areas were not scaling with area modifiers from their trees or from items
- Abyssal Echoes
- Dancing Strikes (not all parts of the combo were affected by this bug)
- Erasing Strike (just the initial hit, not the void rifts)
- Forge Strike
- Healing Hands
- Necrotic Mortar (from Summoned Skeletal Mages)
- Reap (from Reaper Form)
- Fixed Passive and Skill Tree localization issues
- Updated visuals for Announcement banners
- Updated Unique Reward icon in Monoliths from Ring to a generic icon
- Added missing name to Graveyard
Bug Fixes
Skills & Passives
- Fixed a bug where the player's Falcon could fail to be unsummoned after the player has died
- Fixed a bug where Warpath would cause players to become stuck in place and unable to move
- Fixed a bug where Drain Life with Blood Pact and Ghostflame with Arteries of Malice would stop channeling when at very low current health
- Fixed a bug where Healing Hands was still scaling with cast speed instead of melee attack speed when Seraph Blade was allocated
- Fixed a bug where Gathering Storm was still scaling with melee attack speed instead of cast speed when wielding a staff and Lagonian Diplomacy was allocated
- Fixed a bug where Thunder Tempests from Tempest Strike's Cloudburst Conduit could not hit enemies
- Fixed a bug where Added Spell Damage Affix with Tempest Strike did not work
- The grace period for your minions now ends when your own grace period ends
- Fixed a bug where attempts to cast minion-targeted abilities like Dread Shade on minions that were in grace period would always fail
- Fixed a bug where stationary minions would never leave grace period, resulting in them never attacking
UI
- Fixed a bug where items sold in Online mode were displaying original price in the "Buy Back" tab
- Fixed a bug preventing Defensive Conversions from displaying in the character sheet online
Other
- Fixed a bug where Soul Embers would persist after the dungeon was completed
- Fixed a bug causing Void Despair to be invisible
- Fixed an error when leaving Offline mode
- Fixed a bug where, players spawning into a new location would reveal part of the map too soon.
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.0.4.2 Notes
This change (favor cost for despair glyphs) didnt have anything to do with Merchant's Guild (MG) - at least, we werent aware of a significant issue being caused by MG players swapping to abuse this. We believe MG already has a very good pathway to Despair Glyphs with Vault of Uncertain Fates, so wouldnt have been benefiting from this prophecy by swapping. This was actually something we had decided before 1.0, that the favor cost was too low for this reward along with other adjustments in a late pass. However with the post-launch changes/fixes, this was as soon as it made its way through the pipeline with other priority fixes pushing their way ahead of it. So this was purely in regards to its own balance within Circle of Fortune (CoF). One of the discussions this has started internally is regarding review of these delayed adjustments. Our previous pipeline didnt include design looking at the final patches when they went out, so unfortunately we missed this change and re-evaluating it. We have adjusted our pipeline to try to catch delayed changes so we can be more mindful of them and consider if they should go out, or be delayed to the next cycle. TLDR: The change was made before 1.0, got stuffed in the pipeline, and just finally got out without further design review on timing. Well be keeping a better eye out for delayed changes like this.
With the Key value nerf, the impetus for it was as we had stated, that it was being leveraged by MG players with swapping factions. However, this was a change we had planned for some time, and it was really just the final push needed to prioritize the change. With the key values, originally they had a higher value on them so it gave them some value for players who didnt have any use or interest in them (never played arena). Keys were never intended to be a source of gold farming, which is something which crept up over time with them being easier to target in the Monolith. With the interactions in CoF, it was the straw which broke the camels back, so to say. We definitely agree we did not sufficiently communicate reasoning behind this change, and thats on us creating that misunderstanding. Well be making an effort to include bigger picture reasons behind changes such as this, rather than the immediate reason, as we had. TLDR: Arena Keys were never meant to be a method to farm gold, and it had reached a point of prominence that even MG players had begun to feel the need to swap to CoF to leverage it.
In regards to mid cycle changes, we had approved these changes as they dont impact moment to moment gameplay, and wont suddenly cause a build to not be able to clear a certain difficulty of content it was able to previously. The survey we had previously gone through was about those kind of build impacting changes, rather than general systems. We should also mention this is our guiding star, not our railroad. In specific scenarios we may decide another route is better, such as this Despair Glyph change not being enacted during this cycle. For these kinds of changes, we will use our best judgment, and will always be receptive to hearing feedback on them. We have also seen some feedback regarding the survey not covering bug fixes which result in buffs. The reason for this is that we have always had the intention to follow through with bug fixes that result in buffs mid-cycle, and did not feel that was controversial to be surveyed. We wont be holding back bug-fixes that result in buffs. TLDR: Our intentions with mid-cycle changes from the survey is to avoid nerfs to the power level of characters, or moment to moment gameplay. We will still do changes that are buffs. These are guides, not rules - we will exercise discretion.
As always, thank you voicing your feedback to us - it is sparking discussions about the timing of these changes, as well as communication regarding them. We hope we can clear up that both these changes were things we had been discussing for some time prior and were not just due to abuse, and help to put to rest some of the conflict were seeing.
[ 2024-03-22 18:17:26 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, In todays Hotfix, we are reverting the change to the cost of Despair Glyph Prophecies. With this, we wanted to talk a bit about why this change made it into the last patch, similar changes, and a bit more about our specific reasoning behind them.
Glyph of Despair Prophecies
This change (favor cost for despair glyphs) didnt have anything to do with Merchant's Guild (MG) - at least, we werent aware of a significant issue being caused by MG players swapping to abuse this. We believe MG already has a very good pathway to Despair Glyphs with Vault of Uncertain Fates, so wouldnt have been benefiting from this prophecy by swapping. This was actually something we had decided before 1.0, that the favor cost was too low for this reward along with other adjustments in a late pass. However with the post-launch changes/fixes, this was as soon as it made its way through the pipeline with other priority fixes pushing their way ahead of it. So this was purely in regards to its own balance within Circle of Fortune (CoF). One of the discussions this has started internally is regarding review of these delayed adjustments. Our previous pipeline didnt include design looking at the final patches when they went out, so unfortunately we missed this change and re-evaluating it. We have adjusted our pipeline to try to catch delayed changes so we can be more mindful of them and consider if they should go out, or be delayed to the next cycle. TLDR: The change was made before 1.0, got stuffed in the pipeline, and just finally got out without further design review on timing. Well be keeping a better eye out for delayed changes like this.
Arena Key Sell Prices
With the Key value nerf, the impetus for it was as we had stated, that it was being leveraged by MG players with swapping factions. However, this was a change we had planned for some time, and it was really just the final push needed to prioritize the change. With the key values, originally they had a higher value on them so it gave them some value for players who didnt have any use or interest in them (never played arena). Keys were never intended to be a source of gold farming, which is something which crept up over time with them being easier to target in the Monolith. With the interactions in CoF, it was the straw which broke the camels back, so to say. We definitely agree we did not sufficiently communicate reasoning behind this change, and thats on us creating that misunderstanding. Well be making an effort to include bigger picture reasons behind changes such as this, rather than the immediate reason, as we had. TLDR: Arena Keys were never meant to be a method to farm gold, and it had reached a point of prominence that even MG players had begun to feel the need to swap to CoF to leverage it.
Mid-cycle Changes
In regards to mid cycle changes, we had approved these changes as they dont impact moment to moment gameplay, and wont suddenly cause a build to not be able to clear a certain difficulty of content it was able to previously. The survey we had previously gone through was about those kind of build impacting changes, rather than general systems. We should also mention this is our guiding star, not our railroad. In specific scenarios we may decide another route is better, such as this Despair Glyph change not being enacted during this cycle. For these kinds of changes, we will use our best judgment, and will always be receptive to hearing feedback on them. We have also seen some feedback regarding the survey not covering bug fixes which result in buffs. The reason for this is that we have always had the intention to follow through with bug fixes that result in buffs mid-cycle, and did not feel that was controversial to be surveyed. We wont be holding back bug-fixes that result in buffs. TLDR: Our intentions with mid-cycle changes from the survey is to avoid nerfs to the power level of characters, or moment to moment gameplay. We will still do changes that are buffs. These are guides, not rules - we will exercise discretion.
Thank you
As always, thank you voicing your feedback to us - it is sparking discussions about the timing of these changes, as well as communication regarding them. We hope we can clear up that both these changes were things we had been discussing for some time prior and were not just due to abuse, and help to put to rest some of the conflict were seeing.
CHANGES
- Reverted Favor cost increase for Despair Glyph Prophecies
1.0 Launch Retrospective
Lets begin with a quick explanation of how our game works when played online. When you boot up Last Epoch and enter the game, what you see as a player is relatively straightforward; first you log in, then you select your character, and then you join a game server. Behind the scenes, though, what youve just done is communicate with and move through half a dozen online services. These services log you in, provide you with game data, and give you a server to connect to so you can play the game. You connect to this game server, but then the server itself goes out and talks to even more services to authenticate you, load your character data, and check things like your party membership. These supporting services are the backend of our game, and without them our game doesnt work. Some services are more important than others, but as a general rule, most services are required for the game to function. The good news is these services are all pretty resilient. Behind the scenes, each service is not one program but many copies of the same program. If one of the copies breaks down, the other copies keep working. Crucially, if a service is overloaded, we can fix that by just deploying more copies of the program. If our services are designed properly, we can handle any number of players; all we need to do is throw more copies at the problem. (This design applies to our game servers, too; Last Epoch has never once run out of game servers for players because theyre all interchangeable, and we can create as many new ones as we need. The closest we ever come to running out of servers is when we get a spike in players and need to wait a short amount of time for extra ones to boot up).
The designing our services properly bit is the hard part. For some of our services, its very challenging to design them in a way that actually lets us scale just by throwing more copies at the problem. If you were around for the launch of patch 0.9.0, our first multiplayer release, you saw our game go down as soon as we crossed 40,000 players. Why? The service that matches players to servers had a design flaw where it started slowing down when there were many servers available. Once about 40,000 players joined servers, the performance of the matcher got so bad that it didnt matter how many copies we threw at the problem - every copy would crash under the strain. The backend team spent much of the time between 0.9.0 and 1.0.0 hunting down and fixing these sorts of design flaws. Some flaws could be fixed easily, others required entirely new services to handle our players data in a way that could actually scale. We were given a blank check to do whatever was needed to support our launch, so the only obstacle was time. By the week before launch, we seemed to be in a reasonably comfortable spot. Everything was built, and wed performed multiple rounds of load testing on our entire backend to ensure it could handle the volume of requests we expected at launch. The results were promising, and we hadnt pulled any punches on the testing either. We were as ready as we were ever going to be for launch.
For something like a game launch, readiness is mostly about having a plan. You can have confidence that youve tested and prepared, you can have confidence that you know how your services work, but you cant have confidence that nothing will go wrong. Instead, you plan for what to do if something unanticipated happens. On the morning of launch day, we went to scale up our server matching service to the numbers we used in our tests, and to our great surprise, it refused to spin up more than half the copies we asked for. Server matching is a critical service, and in our testing, it needed a high number of copies to handle all the players we expected, so getting stuck at half capacity was a serious problem. This wasnt even the only pre-launch hiccup. In a case of unfortunate timing, our service host had an incident the night before - still ongoing at launch time - that affected us in a way that prevented us from deploying changes to any of our backend services using the tools we had relied on for months. Our ability to fix our services was killed at the same time one of our services needed fixing. We had workarounds for these problems, but they were not quick fixes. We were going to need to break apart our deployment tools and move our services around manually, but this was not something we could sneak in before the doors opened to all our players. Minutes before launch, we estimated that we could handle maybe 120,000 - 150,000 players before things started to fail, and we crossed our fingers that wed be able to resolve our issues before the player count crept too high. Well, you know how that went.
What unfolded over the next five days was a blur of emergency fixes and risk management. As it so happened, our first two pre-launch problems were only the tip of the iceberg. In software, you sometimes run into a problem called cascading failure. When different parts of a software system rely on each other, an error in one part can cause errors in all the other parts as well. This can make it look like the entire system is failing even though only one part actually is. Finding the root cause of the failure is very difficult when everything is failing all at once. The server matcher problem had caused a cascading failure in our systems. When players fail to connect to a server, they usually just try again, meaning our struggling server matcher had to deal with 2-5x the number of requests it would normally need to deal with. In many cases, players would get through the first half of server matching but would fail the second half, meaning servers would bring themselves online and then shut down again because a player never connected. Servers booting up and shutting down put pressure on our other services, and so some of those also started to fail. When we fixed the server matcher, some other services continued to fail because they had trouble recovering from the chaos. Our deployment tools still required attention, so fixing these other services was a slow and manual process. To clear up the backlog, we needed to scale some of our services way past what would have been needed had the game been working smoothly. This brought with it new challenges since cloud services have some built-in soft caps that we would never have hit under normal circumstances, and working around those caps took time and, in some cases, code changes. We identified and cleared away many of these caps before launch, but we hit new ones as we scrambled to rearrange our backend. You may be wondering, if the problem was recovering from too many players, why did we not simply have some downtime, or at least turn on player queues, to alleviate the pressure? The answer is that we did, but the problems ran deeper than the server matcher. At various points during the launch, we brought down our services, and many of you found yourselves in long queues as we struggled to keep up. Inevitably, once we started letting you all back in, we would run into problems again, and we could not clearly see what those problems were until we scaled everything up so high that the services stayed online and operational even though they were strained from other failures in other areas. Sprinkled in with our deployment woes, we had a couple of genuine code problems in our services. One of them - one of the few examples where we straight up overestimated our ability to scale - was a bottleneck in how quickly we could process requests for a single town in a single region of the world. In Last Epoch, once you reach the End of Time town, you will always load into that town when you enter the game from character select. We knew ahead of time that this bottleneck existed, but we underestimated what would happen when we suddenly fixed a broken game and hundreds of thousands of players all tried to access the same town at the same time, in the same part of the world. We thought that the server matcher would be a little slow at first, and then it would start to fix itself as more and more people got into the game. What happened instead was that it took so long to get into the game that almost no one actually succeeded, so they quit and tried again, over and over, and the problem never tapered off. This was not the kind of problem we could fix just by adding more copies of the service, so it took some emergency problem solving. Each time we found a problem and fixed it, we immediately saw improvement, but this allowed even more players to enter the game and play, which would uncover the next problem, and so on.
By Sunday, we had managed to fix, deploy, and scale our services to the point that most of our backend was handling over 200,000 players just fine, even through flurries of retries and errors. Yet amidst all the chaos, there was still some strange behavior happening on the game servers that was causing problems. During our periods of stability, when the game was up, players were able to connect to game servers, but their connections would often time-out once they got there. Every time a player joins a game server, the game server checks to see if the player is in a party. This is a simple operation, and in all of our testing, we saw that this check completed very quickly, even under heavy load. Yet our logs were telling us that checks for a players party were taking up to a minute, sometimes even longer. Over the first four days, we made a number of changes to the party service to alleviate pressure. Each fix helped for a while, but inevitably, it always slowed down again until players could no longer join servers. On day five, with all the other backend problems solved, we were able to get a more precise look at the party errors, and the culprit was a single, innocent-looking line of code. A single line of code that was supposed to be the most efficient request in our entire party service but instead ended up consuming all of the services resources under heavy load, slowing the entire service to a crawl. It took about an hour on Sunday afternoon to rearrange the party data so we could check over 200,000 players party memberships without bringing down the service. We deployed the fix, the game came back up, and its been online ever since.
This blog post is 2,000 words long, and there is still a whole lot more we could say. Internally, we have been cataloging and planning for ways we can improve, and we want to ensure that our processes moving forward include the lessons we have learned from the launch. First, we learned the hard way that our internal tooling for deploying our services was not robust enough on launch day. Our tools were too brittle (breaking when certain services went down) and too inflexible (too many manual adjustments needed in an emergency). When the system came under strain, we couldnt deploy our fixes quickly, and we usually had to cause additional downtime to do it. Had our deploy tooling been stronger, we could have gotten to a stable state much more quickly. Our top priority on the team right now is improving our tooling so we can effectively respond to situations like these. Second, our services themselves could be more flexible. We had to make many changes over the course of the launch that should have been simple configuration changes but instead required a full redeploy, which turned simple fixes into long, risky operations. This weakness was identified ahead of time and has now become a top priority to improve. Third, we need to do a better job of anticipating how player behavior affects our backend. Our testing was designed to simulate how and when our services would break, but we needed to spend more time considering how the conditions would continue to change once things started failing. Now that weve seen what happens during a fraught launch - how players put pressure on services differently than when everything is working - well be able to incorporate that data into future tests. (As an aside, our testing effort, in general, was a huge success. Despite how it may look from our launch struggles, our testing identified many other critical issues leading all the way up to the week before launch, and without those efforts, we might still be trying to fix the game to this day. Even though were post-launch, we plan to continue incorporating load testing into our regular development cadence going forward.)
With the launch behind us, were all very thankful to you players for showing so much passion for the game, despite the rocky start. EHG started from a group of gamers hoping to make the ARPG they wanted to play, and now EHG is a group of gamers hoping to make the game YOU want to play. Your passion, enthusiasm and, when deserved, criticism have continued to encourage our teams to deliver that game and push the definition of what an ARPG can be, should be, and will be. Our team could not have made Last Epoch what it is today without you, and we will endeavor to keep making the game you all deserve. Here's to a bright future, Travelers.
[ 2024-03-20 22:01:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! Todays blog is a little different from our usual fare. As most of you know, Last Epoch launched on February 21, and the reception has been amazing. In the first week after launch, over 1.4 million of you logged in to play Last Epoch. At our peak, we had just under 265,000 players all roaming Eterra simultaneously. Thats good enough for the 39th highest all-time concurrent player count recorded on Steam, and were humbled by your support and enthusiasm for the game. Theres plenty of cause for celebration, but lets not ignore the obvious: Last Epochs launch was pretty rough for the majority of you who play online. Your patience and positivity have been amazing, but it was obviously not the launch experience that you or we had hoped for. Now that the initial launch woes are behind us, its time to reflect on the experience. What happened? We put a strong emphasis on testing our servers and infrastructure ahead of time, so what did we get wrong? Last Epochs backend team is here to give you a bit of a recap of what went on during the launch.
How Our Game Works
Lets begin with a quick explanation of how our game works when played online. When you boot up Last Epoch and enter the game, what you see as a player is relatively straightforward; first you log in, then you select your character, and then you join a game server. Behind the scenes, though, what youve just done is communicate with and move through half a dozen online services. These services log you in, provide you with game data, and give you a server to connect to so you can play the game. You connect to this game server, but then the server itself goes out and talks to even more services to authenticate you, load your character data, and check things like your party membership. These supporting services are the backend of our game, and without them our game doesnt work. Some services are more important than others, but as a general rule, most services are required for the game to function. The good news is these services are all pretty resilient. Behind the scenes, each service is not one program but many copies of the same program. If one of the copies breaks down, the other copies keep working. Crucially, if a service is overloaded, we can fix that by just deploying more copies of the program. If our services are designed properly, we can handle any number of players; all we need to do is throw more copies at the problem. (This design applies to our game servers, too; Last Epoch has never once run out of game servers for players because theyre all interchangeable, and we can create as many new ones as we need. The closest we ever come to running out of servers is when we get a spike in players and need to wait a short amount of time for extra ones to boot up).
Preparing For Launch
The designing our services properly bit is the hard part. For some of our services, its very challenging to design them in a way that actually lets us scale just by throwing more copies at the problem. If you were around for the launch of patch 0.9.0, our first multiplayer release, you saw our game go down as soon as we crossed 40,000 players. Why? The service that matches players to servers had a design flaw where it started slowing down when there were many servers available. Once about 40,000 players joined servers, the performance of the matcher got so bad that it didnt matter how many copies we threw at the problem - every copy would crash under the strain. The backend team spent much of the time between 0.9.0 and 1.0.0 hunting down and fixing these sorts of design flaws. Some flaws could be fixed easily, others required entirely new services to handle our players data in a way that could actually scale. We were given a blank check to do whatever was needed to support our launch, so the only obstacle was time. By the week before launch, we seemed to be in a reasonably comfortable spot. Everything was built, and wed performed multiple rounds of load testing on our entire backend to ensure it could handle the volume of requests we expected at launch. The results were promising, and we hadnt pulled any punches on the testing either. We were as ready as we were ever going to be for launch.
The Morning Of Launch
For something like a game launch, readiness is mostly about having a plan. You can have confidence that youve tested and prepared, you can have confidence that you know how your services work, but you cant have confidence that nothing will go wrong. Instead, you plan for what to do if something unanticipated happens. On the morning of launch day, we went to scale up our server matching service to the numbers we used in our tests, and to our great surprise, it refused to spin up more than half the copies we asked for. Server matching is a critical service, and in our testing, it needed a high number of copies to handle all the players we expected, so getting stuck at half capacity was a serious problem. This wasnt even the only pre-launch hiccup. In a case of unfortunate timing, our service host had an incident the night before - still ongoing at launch time - that affected us in a way that prevented us from deploying changes to any of our backend services using the tools we had relied on for months. Our ability to fix our services was killed at the same time one of our services needed fixing. We had workarounds for these problems, but they were not quick fixes. We were going to need to break apart our deployment tools and move our services around manually, but this was not something we could sneak in before the doors opened to all our players. Minutes before launch, we estimated that we could handle maybe 120,000 - 150,000 players before things started to fail, and we crossed our fingers that wed be able to resolve our issues before the player count crept too high. Well, you know how that went.
The Next 5 Days
What unfolded over the next five days was a blur of emergency fixes and risk management. As it so happened, our first two pre-launch problems were only the tip of the iceberg. In software, you sometimes run into a problem called cascading failure. When different parts of a software system rely on each other, an error in one part can cause errors in all the other parts as well. This can make it look like the entire system is failing even though only one part actually is. Finding the root cause of the failure is very difficult when everything is failing all at once. The server matcher problem had caused a cascading failure in our systems. When players fail to connect to a server, they usually just try again, meaning our struggling server matcher had to deal with 2-5x the number of requests it would normally need to deal with. In many cases, players would get through the first half of server matching but would fail the second half, meaning servers would bring themselves online and then shut down again because a player never connected. Servers booting up and shutting down put pressure on our other services, and so some of those also started to fail. When we fixed the server matcher, some other services continued to fail because they had trouble recovering from the chaos. Our deployment tools still required attention, so fixing these other services was a slow and manual process. To clear up the backlog, we needed to scale some of our services way past what would have been needed had the game been working smoothly. This brought with it new challenges since cloud services have some built-in soft caps that we would never have hit under normal circumstances, and working around those caps took time and, in some cases, code changes. We identified and cleared away many of these caps before launch, but we hit new ones as we scrambled to rearrange our backend. You may be wondering, if the problem was recovering from too many players, why did we not simply have some downtime, or at least turn on player queues, to alleviate the pressure? The answer is that we did, but the problems ran deeper than the server matcher. At various points during the launch, we brought down our services, and many of you found yourselves in long queues as we struggled to keep up. Inevitably, once we started letting you all back in, we would run into problems again, and we could not clearly see what those problems were until we scaled everything up so high that the services stayed online and operational even though they were strained from other failures in other areas. Sprinkled in with our deployment woes, we had a couple of genuine code problems in our services. One of them - one of the few examples where we straight up overestimated our ability to scale - was a bottleneck in how quickly we could process requests for a single town in a single region of the world. In Last Epoch, once you reach the End of Time town, you will always load into that town when you enter the game from character select. We knew ahead of time that this bottleneck existed, but we underestimated what would happen when we suddenly fixed a broken game and hundreds of thousands of players all tried to access the same town at the same time, in the same part of the world. We thought that the server matcher would be a little slow at first, and then it would start to fix itself as more and more people got into the game. What happened instead was that it took so long to get into the game that almost no one actually succeeded, so they quit and tried again, over and over, and the problem never tapered off. This was not the kind of problem we could fix just by adding more copies of the service, so it took some emergency problem solving. Each time we found a problem and fixed it, we immediately saw improvement, but this allowed even more players to enter the game and play, which would uncover the next problem, and so on.
The Final Fix
By Sunday, we had managed to fix, deploy, and scale our services to the point that most of our backend was handling over 200,000 players just fine, even through flurries of retries and errors. Yet amidst all the chaos, there was still some strange behavior happening on the game servers that was causing problems. During our periods of stability, when the game was up, players were able to connect to game servers, but their connections would often time-out once they got there. Every time a player joins a game server, the game server checks to see if the player is in a party. This is a simple operation, and in all of our testing, we saw that this check completed very quickly, even under heavy load. Yet our logs were telling us that checks for a players party were taking up to a minute, sometimes even longer. Over the first four days, we made a number of changes to the party service to alleviate pressure. Each fix helped for a while, but inevitably, it always slowed down again until players could no longer join servers. On day five, with all the other backend problems solved, we were able to get a more precise look at the party errors, and the culprit was a single, innocent-looking line of code. A single line of code that was supposed to be the most efficient request in our entire party service but instead ended up consuming all of the services resources under heavy load, slowing the entire service to a crawl. It took about an hour on Sunday afternoon to rearrange the party data so we could check over 200,000 players party memberships without bringing down the service. We deployed the fix, the game came back up, and its been online ever since.
Lessons Learned
This blog post is 2,000 words long, and there is still a whole lot more we could say. Internally, we have been cataloging and planning for ways we can improve, and we want to ensure that our processes moving forward include the lessons we have learned from the launch. First, we learned the hard way that our internal tooling for deploying our services was not robust enough on launch day. Our tools were too brittle (breaking when certain services went down) and too inflexible (too many manual adjustments needed in an emergency). When the system came under strain, we couldnt deploy our fixes quickly, and we usually had to cause additional downtime to do it. Had our deploy tooling been stronger, we could have gotten to a stable state much more quickly. Our top priority on the team right now is improving our tooling so we can effectively respond to situations like these. Second, our services themselves could be more flexible. We had to make many changes over the course of the launch that should have been simple configuration changes but instead required a full redeploy, which turned simple fixes into long, risky operations. This weakness was identified ahead of time and has now become a top priority to improve. Third, we need to do a better job of anticipating how player behavior affects our backend. Our testing was designed to simulate how and when our services would break, but we needed to spend more time considering how the conditions would continue to change once things started failing. Now that weve seen what happens during a fraught launch - how players put pressure on services differently than when everything is working - well be able to incorporate that data into future tests. (As an aside, our testing effort, in general, was a huge success. Despite how it may look from our launch struggles, our testing identified many other critical issues leading all the way up to the week before launch, and without those efforts, we might still be trying to fix the game to this day. Even though were post-launch, we plan to continue incorporating load testing into our regular development cadence going forward.)
Thank You
With the launch behind us, were all very thankful to you players for showing so much passion for the game, despite the rocky start. EHG started from a group of gamers hoping to make the ARPG they wanted to play, and now EHG is a group of gamers hoping to make the game YOU want to play. Your passion, enthusiasm and, when deserved, criticism have continued to encourage our teams to deliver that game and push the definition of what an ARPG can be, should be, and will be. Our team could not have made Last Epoch what it is today without you, and we will endeavor to keep making the game you all deserve. Here's to a bright future, Travelers.
Last Epoch Patch 1.0.4 Notes
[ 2024-03-20 16:21:06 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Players can no longer stun themselves. An example of this was by using the Signet of Agony node in Bone Curse
- Replaced the XP Tome sound effect in Echo of a World
- Flagged more prophecy rewards as "rare/valuable" (which animates them to rotate and makes them slightly larger than other stars in the Constellation)
- Increased the favor cost multiplier for Glyph of Despair Prophecies
- You can no longer gain experience while in the grace period (the period of invulnerability after arriving to a new area)
- Added missing name in Graveyard
- Overhauled terrain, spawners, and shrines in the Hidden Oasis Echo Map to both improve visuals, and performance, and fix hideable issues with palms
- Overhauled visuals and added Scene Variants for Lightless Pits Echo Map
Bug Fixes
Skills & Passives
- Fixed a bug where Upheaval's "Master of the Totem" didn't buff Tempest Strike Totem damage and armor
- Fixed a bug where Storm Crow's "Arborist" didn't buff Tempest Strike Totem with Flat Spell / Melee Lightning Damage
- Fixed a bug where Swipe's "Avatar of Stone" doesn't buff Tempest Strike Totem, Warcry Totem & Upheaval Totem with Flat Melee / Spell Damage
- Fixed a bug where Storm Totem's "Fulgrite Core" wasn't providing Flat Spell Lightning damage based on character Shock Chance
- Fixed a bug where Tempest Strike's "Heorot Arsenal" node was not providing stats to the Cold Projectile that Tempest Totem shoots when each Tempest has been removed in the skill tree.
- Fixed a bug where Tempest Strike Totem, Warcry Totem, and Upheaval Totem were not benefiting from Spell Lightning Damage for Existing Totems (such as the Omen of Thunder Unique Item)
- Fixed a bug where directly transitioning from channeling Warpath to channeling Rebuke while at negative mana would not start mana regeneration.
- Fixed a bug where Fury Leap would play the landing animation in mid-air on long-range casts of Fury Leap
- Fixed a bug where the Acolyte's Wraith's weapons would drift during animation transitions
- Fixed a bug where Mirage hits on Puncture would not grant stacks of Bleeding Fury
- Fixed an issue with Acid Flask's "Alchemist Gift" throwing animation where the trap would spin in place then teleport to its destination
- Fixed a bug where Acid Flask's "Alchemist Gift" node did not have a throwing sound
- Fixed a bug where Healing Hands would not get a Fire tag when taking the Searing Light, or Skyfall Nodes
- Fixed a bug where the Spell Tag would be removed from Healing Hands with Seraph Blade when you also took Skyfall
- Fixed a bug where Ballista's "Armed Construction" node was giving 1% increased radius per dexterity instead of its listed 1% increased area per dexterity
Visuals
- Fixed a bug with the sword in the Fallen Ronin set was deforming in a weird way on the Primalist
- Fixed Terrain and floating vegetation in several scenes
UI
- Fixed a bug where some Game Guide pages couldn't be linked in chat
- Several Localization updates
Enemies
- Fixed bug where Void Despair would spawn in place for a brief second before starting its emerging animation
- Fixed a bug where the Idol (big worm) could become stuck after knocking guards off their platform in Last Refuge Outskirts
Controller
- Fixed a bug where advancing dialog with a controller would skip pages if there were multiple.
- Fixed a bug where menu options could still be selected with a controller while they are invisible/inactive on the Death Screen. This was resulting in potentially closing the respawn menu preventing you from being able to respawn.
Other
- Fixed a bug where your stats could become out of sync with the server. This could result in issues such as the client believing you had less movement speed than you did.
- Fixed a bug where Prophecies could be re-rolled on login in multiplayer
- Fixed a bug where you could not return to character select while in-game on an offline character
- Fixed a bug where Vsync was not applying during Splash Screens (this appears before the login screen)
- Fixed a bug with pickup range reliability in Multiplayer
- Fixed some instances of Gates blocking paths in the Preserved Sanctuary Echo map
- Fixed a bug which caused the game to freeze after switching inputs on the Skills panel
Known Issues
- When exiting a transform such as Werebear Form, your stat sheet may display your mana regeneration incorrectly. This is only a display issue.
- Gamblers Fallacy and Soul Gamblers Fallacy state they do not work with channeling skills
- This was wording only and functionality has remained unchanged.
- This is a change we are intending for 1.1, and the description change got through early. To be transparent, this is a change we are intending, though we are planning to go over Disintegrate at the same time providing it with buffs to compensate and stand better on its own instead of relying on this singular item interaction.
Mid-Cycle Balance Survey Recap
With over 74% of all votes in the survey crushing the other options, as well as in written feedback, the stance from the involved community is fairly clear. We should be fixing bugs which cause skills or items to highly overperform, and as such, will be doing so. This is a change from our previous stance where we didnt want to alter balance mid-cycle. Now, if its the case of a bug, we will be pushing out these fixes in mid-cycle patches.
In the case of a bug resulting in a build, skill, or item mildly overperforming, theres a much less clear stance. From written feedback, its a bit clear as to why: What is mildly overperforming? Being a bit of a vague categorization, its left up to an individuals interpretation. We have decided in this case to use case-by-case discretion. This would be based on feedback were seeing in the community, and just how far the bug results in a power shift. So we may chose to, or not to fix bugs which are mildly overperforming mid-cycle and will discuss them as they arise.
On the other hand, if a build is overperforming, but not caused by a bug, the feedback has largely weighted towards do not change. While not quite as one sided as with bugs, this is still a fairly strong sentiment from the community with over 57% voting not to make these changes. This also matches our existing stance as well, in not taking too many steps to alter balance mid-cycle. As such, well be avoiding balance changes which are not bug related, even if its resulting in a build, skill, or item highly overperforming.
As one might expect, as the power from something not bug-related becomes less impactful, the desire is even less for changes to be seen to them. Weighted quite heavily towards no changes, we agree with this stance and will not be making balance changes mid-cycle which are not bug related, and only result in the skill, build, or item mildly over-performing.
In the event that we release a change or bug-fix which was resulting in an item, skill, or build to overperform, the desire for leaderboards to reset has been quite mixed. We discussed this a fair amount, and have made the following determination: We will not reset leaderboards in this instance, however, we will instead add information to the entry to indicate when the entry occurred. The goal of this being to make the information available to identify entries which may have used a build that has since changed. We decided against a mark or icon on the entry indicating it was an overperforming build, as we didnt want these to appear as a mark of shame. We felt this was the best way to be able to allow competitive players to continue competing on the leaderboards, without taking away other players previous hard work on their builds, even if they were overperforming.
While the above answer also addresses this question, for consistency we want to show the results of all of your votes here.
To everyones surprise, it looks like almost everyone agrees that receiving notifications about upcoming balance altering bugfixes or changes is a very strong desire. As weve been showing this last week since we started getting feedback on the survey, we fully agree with this, and will start trying to provide more heads up when these changes are coming. Though with this, we will still reserve the right to not provide information regarding the upcoming change if: Doing so would result in players rushing to take advantage causing severe issues, or we could release the fix almost as fast as releasing the notification that the fix is coming So for these changes, if we feel we can release the information in full about the change, well do so. Otherwise, we may try to be more vague (such as with the Infernal Shade infinite damage bug) to limit its impact before the change, or we may withhold it completely if its something which is regularly crashing servers when its utilized to minimize its impact until we can get it fixed.
This round of discourse with the community has resulted in some great changes to our stances that were quite happy with. The two big changes here being:
[ 2024-03-14 21:09:44 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers,
In between attempting to save the citizens of Eterra, and eradicating them, almost 70,000 of you have joined in with your voices to discuss mid-cycle balance changes. The turnout for this survey has been fantastic; and further, is in addition to the many discussions here on the forums and other platforms on the topic. We want to first thank you all for your enthusiasm on this topic driving it forward.
Today, we want to share the results of the survey, as well as the decisions which have come as a result of the feedback.
For the purpose of reading the below results, the following information can help:
- Scale:
- 1 - Strongly Disagree
- 2 - Disagree
- 3 - I have no opinion on this topic
- 4 - Agree
- 5 - Strongly Agree
- When we first started the survey, the scale was in reverse. We received immediate feedback about this, and swapped it before too many results came in. While the results below do not reflect this change, we made this change very early into survey so it had minimal impact on the results
OVERPERFORMING BUGS
With over 74% of all votes in the survey crushing the other options, as well as in written feedback, the stance from the involved community is fairly clear. We should be fixing bugs which cause skills or items to highly overperform, and as such, will be doing so. This is a change from our previous stance where we didnt want to alter balance mid-cycle. Now, if its the case of a bug, we will be pushing out these fixes in mid-cycle patches.
MILDLY OVERPERFORMING BUGS
In the case of a bug resulting in a build, skill, or item mildly overperforming, theres a much less clear stance. From written feedback, its a bit clear as to why: What is mildly overperforming? Being a bit of a vague categorization, its left up to an individuals interpretation. We have decided in this case to use case-by-case discretion. This would be based on feedback were seeing in the community, and just how far the bug results in a power shift. So we may chose to, or not to fix bugs which are mildly overperforming mid-cycle and will discuss them as they arise.
OVERPERFORMING BALANCE
On the other hand, if a build is overperforming, but not caused by a bug, the feedback has largely weighted towards do not change. While not quite as one sided as with bugs, this is still a fairly strong sentiment from the community with over 57% voting not to make these changes. This also matches our existing stance as well, in not taking too many steps to alter balance mid-cycle. As such, well be avoiding balance changes which are not bug related, even if its resulting in a build, skill, or item highly overperforming.
MILDLY OVERPERFORMING BALANCE
As one might expect, as the power from something not bug-related becomes less impactful, the desire is even less for changes to be seen to them. Weighted quite heavily towards no changes, we agree with this stance and will not be making balance changes mid-cycle which are not bug related, and only result in the skill, build, or item mildly over-performing.
MID-CYCLE LEADERBOARD RESET
In the event that we release a change or bug-fix which was resulting in an item, skill, or build to overperform, the desire for leaderboards to reset has been quite mixed. We discussed this a fair amount, and have made the following determination: We will not reset leaderboards in this instance, however, we will instead add information to the entry to indicate when the entry occurred. The goal of this being to make the information available to identify entries which may have used a build that has since changed. We decided against a mark or icon on the entry indicating it was an overperforming build, as we didnt want these to appear as a mark of shame. We felt this was the best way to be able to allow competitive players to continue competing on the leaderboards, without taking away other players previous hard work on their builds, even if they were overperforming.
PARTIAL LEADERBOARD RESET
While the above answer also addresses this question, for consistency we want to show the results of all of your votes here.
NOTIFICATIONS VIA PUBLIC POSTS
To everyones surprise, it looks like almost everyone agrees that receiving notifications about upcoming balance altering bugfixes or changes is a very strong desire. As weve been showing this last week since we started getting feedback on the survey, we fully agree with this, and will start trying to provide more heads up when these changes are coming. Though with this, we will still reserve the right to not provide information regarding the upcoming change if: Doing so would result in players rushing to take advantage causing severe issues, or we could release the fix almost as fast as releasing the notification that the fix is coming So for these changes, if we feel we can release the information in full about the change, well do so. Otherwise, we may try to be more vague (such as with the Infernal Shade infinite damage bug) to limit its impact before the change, or we may withhold it completely if its something which is regularly crashing servers when its utilized to minimize its impact until we can get it fixed.
CONCLUSION
This round of discourse with the community has resulted in some great changes to our stances that were quite happy with. The two big changes here being:
- We will release fixes mid-cycle for bugs which result in an item, skill, or build highly overperforming
- We will add leaderboard functionality displaying which specific patch, or timespan an entry happened during.
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.0.3.2 Notes
[ 2024-03-14 20:11:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where you could enter a Quest Echo regardless of Stability or Quest completion state
- Fixed a bug where a Lost Cache could be opened more than once in multiplayer
- Fixed an issue where if multiple characters shared the same name, only the first character with that name was showing on the character selection page.
- Fixed a bug where killing some Timeline Quest Bosses too quickly would result in the Quest state not progressing resulting in the Timeline Quest not successfully being completed
- Fixed a bug where the benefit from Infernal Shades Purgatory could persist through multiple casts of Infernal Shade
- Fixed an issue where the Delete prompt on the character select screen would not block clicks, allowing players to change the selected character being deleted.
- Moved the online/offline switch to be behind the Delete prompt fade on the Character Selection screen to prevent changing characters while having a delete prompt up.
- Fixed a bug where logging into specific characters would result in LE-52 Lost Connection to Game Server while other characters would connect without issue
Update - 07:47 PM CT
- Fixed a resulting bug which prevented players from skipping the first two Timeline Quests in Empowered Timelines
Last Epoch Patch 1.0.3 Patch
[ 2024-03-13 16:40:20 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! In todays patch we have previously mentioned skill changes, stash tab cost reductions, audio updates and more! We plan to release more information regarding the mid-cycle balance changes tomorrow. So if youre interested in seeing the results of the survey, and our plans going forward as a result of the feedback, please keep your eyes out for that post on our forums!
Changes
Campaign
- Moved Transition to Temporal Sanctum from The Ruined Coast so its not as easy to accidentally transition after combat.
Skills
- Changed Cloud Gatherer to only apply to any individual Smoke Bomb one time.
- Wandering Spirits now has 30% more spirit reveal frequency
- Wandering Spirits now has a base of damage of 20 (from 16.2) and damage effectiveness of 200% (from 180% actual, 140% listed)
- These are compensatory buffs that were intended to be included alongside the change in 1.0 that made Wandering Spirits always fade out when the reveal duration ends, but the buff did not make it into release. Since the initial change was a nerf and did make it into 1.0, and this compensatory buff was always planned to be paired with the change, we're adding the buff in this patch instead of waiting for the next cycle.
UI / Visual
- Added Localization type to in-game bug reporting tool
- Improved player to player trade user experience so that you can no longer request a trade which requires a higher rank than the potential buyer possesses.
Audio
- Reduced the frequency of the Falcons CAWWWWs (attack vocal sounds)
- Updated audio for Healing Hands
- All chapter 6 scenes have new 2D ambient loop sfx
- The Barren Aqueduct has new music
- Soul Cage props in chap 6 have looping sounds again
- The Barren Aqueduct and Nests of the Fallen now have sounds for the running water on the ground in the aqueduct
- The large running water props in chapter 8 now have sfx
- Added looping sfx to the large rusty pipelines that cross the map
Other
- Reduced cost of Stash Tabs
- Stash tabs beyond the first 6 previously cost 10000 more than the previous tab. Now stash tabs 7 to 16 cost 2500 more than the previous tab, and stash tabs beyond the first 16 cost 5000 more than the previous tab. This results in the cost of large numbers of stash tabs being reduced by around 50%.
Bug Fixes
Campaign
- Added a failsafe to Imperial Welryn for killing the commander early or off-screen.
- Fixed an issue where you could complete all Chapter 1 quests, but do not have the first Chapter 2 quest Last Refuge
Skills & Passives
- Fixed a bug where Profane Veils Vampiric Pool gave 40% of the consumed minions maximum health as ward, instead of the listed 4%
- Fixed a bug where Runemasters passive node Sanguine Runestoness threshold bonus (15% of health regen applies to ward) was scaling with points allocated
- Flame Whip now receives 4% increased damage per point of intelligence (this affects Flame Whip casts from all sources, and previously never received attribute scaling from any source)
- Fixed a bug where the effect of Chthonic Fissure's Eradication was not doubled when the player was cursed
Gameplay
- Fixed several issues with Heorot fight including Ice Spike stopping projectiles, and being frozen not stopping actions in multiplayer.
- Fixed bug where minions were not benefiting from items when being respawned after leaving towns in multiplayer.
Items
- Fixed a bug where casting Summon Skeletal Mage with Grave Passage allocated caused the "minions transported with traversal skills" experimental affix to not bring any minions with you
- Fixed a bug where a Two-handed weapon and off-hand could be equipped at the same time
- Fixed a bug where Circle of Fortune Prophecy Lenses could be socketed into locked sockets with Shift + RMB
- Fixed bug where Wraithlord would try to consume other players minions
- Fixed bug where Spine of Malatros Flame Whips were not receiving some scaling
- Fixed a bug where Stygian Coal's more Stygian Beam Damage per 10 current mana affix did not work
- Fixed a bug where Stygian Coal's Stygian Beams were not affected by Drain Life's Horrify, Condemnation, Unholy Mass, Stupefy, Soul Blast, and Ravenous nodes
- Fixed a bug where Chronicle of the Damned's chance to reveal a Wandering Spirit on kill would cause the player's existing cast of Wandering Spirits to stop releasing spirits
- Fixed a bug where the Wandering Spirit from Chronicle of the Damned's chance to reveal a Wandering Spirit on kill always instantly faded away
- Fixed a bug where items influenced by the Rank 8 passive from Circle of Fortune would not have the Circle of Fortune tag
- They still have the "cannot be traded" tag
- Fixed a bug where Flame Whips did not benefit from Chthonic Fissure's Eradication when using Spine of Malatros
- Fixed a bug where Chthonic Fissure's Grasp of the Undying did not apply to Flame Whip when using Spine of Malatros
- Fixed a bug where only the "while cursed" benefit of Chthonic Fissure's Death From Below applied to Flame Whip when using Spine of Malatros
- Fixed a bug where Chthonic Fissure's Chronicles of Ruin did not apply to Flame Whip when using Spine of Malatros
UI / Visual
- Fixed a bug where right clicking a dungeon key upon first entering game would not open the map
- Fixed a bug where campaign prophecies could still appear while blocked
- Fixed a bug where enemies could appear invisible while playing in a party
- Fixed a bug where the gate in Soul Wardens Road wouldnt animate going down.
- Fixed a bug where The Mountain Beneath would walk through terrain in The Sheltered Wood
- Fixed bug where item tooltips could disappear when loot dropped
- Fixed some instances of players facing backwards after a scene transition
- Please continue to report any instances of this issue via the in-game bug reporter
Audio
- Fixed a bug where mousing over a vendor inventory then back to your inventory it would play the item bought sound effect
Upcoming Changes
- We will be releasing a bugfix for Infernal Shade in a hotfix later this week
Mid-Cycle Build Balance Survey
[ 2024-03-08 17:02:06 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings Travelers, As we continue our mission of collaboration with the community, we wanted to reach out and get as much feedback as we can on the topic of Mid-Cycle balance. In years past we have reached out to the community via a survey, and we found the feedback very valuable. Today, we are hoping to do the same once again. Previously, our decision on the topic of Mid-Cycle balance has been to avoid adjustments to skills and items that are overperforming but are not bugs and to avoid fixing bugs that result in those skills becoming significantly weaker. The exceptions here are bugs that cause server stability issues. To be clear, this small survey only focuses on bug fixes or balance changes that apply to overperforming skills or items. We will continue to fix bugs that result in skills and/or items receiving a buff. Things like server stability, Item Factions, or similar issues are not a part of this survey. We know that the conversation can be more nuanced than your typical agree, disagree, no opinion poll, but we also want to get the sentiment of the community at large. Please take a few minutes (its only seven questions) and let us know your thoughts. Link to Survey: https://forms.gle/4fZaNNP65oH7HFdA8 Thank You, Last Epoch Team
Last Epoch Patch 1.0.2.1 Notes
[ 2024-03-07 19:47:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings Travelers, Todays patch is centered around 2 specific hotfixes. BUG FIXES
- Fixed a bug that was causing players that die during a Dungeon run to transition and immediately disconnect from the game.
- Fixed a bug where clicking on the transition object after Fire Lich Cremorus in Soulfire Bastion Dungeon was not correctly triggering the teleport to the Soul Gambler area.
Last Epoch Patch 1.0.2 Notes
Theres one change in this patch, and another change well be releasing soon which we wanted to speak a little bit more to than just listing. These are changes to Ghostflames Spirit Kindling Node (included in this patch), and Dive Bombs Cloud Gatherer node (being released in near future).
Will existing entries be removed from the leaderboards?
The answer to this is no, we will not be removing current entries from the leaderboards. We understand this choice does have the negative effect of affecting some players motivation to push the leaderboards when theres a leader. However, theres many other negative effects if we do remove entries. Primarily, if we remove rankings in these situations, it incentivizes players to keep these interactions a secret until the very end of the cycle, making it much more difficult for us to act in time for the next cycle.
Dive Bombs Cloud Gatherer has been known and used since release, why are you only changing it now?
We were willing to live with the node being imbalanced, but it wasnt until later that we realized players were maintaining Smoke Bombs in Echo of a World as they ran echoes, which means as more and more Smoke Bombs piled up, the server becomes more unstable and eventually crashes. Were only fixing this mid-cycle due to the server issues it presents, not its balance.
Why not fix it in a way that keeps it as powerful as it currently is, but without the server issues?
Investigating a skill for appropriate balance changes thats not purely numerical takes a fair amount of time. From design discussions, to implementation, to QA, and finally merge and release. For cases like this, it unfortunately taking this time means it comes at the cost of time spent towards other bugs, or new content, when we only plan to remove it as soon as the next cycle starts.
[/olist]
[ 2024-03-06 17:03:13 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, For todays patch we have a bunch of fixes for controller, UI, skills, and more. Were also spending a moment to comment on Dive Bomb and Ghostflame. Read below for the full notes.
BUG FIXES
QUEST
- Fixed an issue where players would get the Immortal Empire quest before gaining access to that quest state of Elder Gaspar
- Fixed an issue that caused the elevator to the Council Chambers to never appear after defeating waves of monsters at the end of the Void Assault quest
CONTROLLER
- Fixed issues with interacting (such as opening a chest, or talking to an NPC) while using a controller
- Fixed an issue with mapping the Y/Triangle controller button
- Fixed issue with controller bindings disappearing when using a mouse
- Controller binding dialog can be closed by pressing the B / Circle button
- Navigation cursor refocuses the corresponding action binding button after an action is bound
UI
- Fixed an issue where once a party member enters the arena and you do NOT enter the arena, you cannot open any UI
- Fixed an issue so that Steam Required and License Required are separate errors
- Fixed issue where some enemies had no/only partial red outlines when hovered
- Fixed an issue where item tooltips displayed when the mouse was not hovering them
- Fixed issue causing no characters found to be overlaid on your character list at character selection
- Fixed inconsistent portraits for Maceth and Leyda
SKILLS
- Fixed a bug where Elemental Novas damaging area was not affected by increases to its area of effect
- Fixed issue where when returning to human form after transforming turns, the player model invisible
- Fixed most instances of a bug where channeled movement skills, particularly Flame Rush and Shield Rush, could lock the player into the movement and not visually move the player until the ability ended
OTHER
- Slightly Improved party transition times
- Fixed a visual gap in Festering Sewers
- Fixed weird visual triangles at top of screen in The Ancient Cavern
- Fixed issue with players dying prematurely by setting their actor to invincible as soon as we spawn them, then allowing grace period to overtake later
- Fixed issue with linking the game guide in chat
- Revert change from previous patch that was causing players to see other players running in place (reverted change was a fix aiming to fix players not animating when joining a scene).
CHANGES
- Require players to manually click to transition scenes during the campaign
- Various Bazaar UI/UX improvements
- Greatly reduced the sell price of Arena Keys and Arena Keys of Memory
- Arena keys now sell for 175 (from 6500)
- Arena keys now sell for 175 gold (from 6500)
- Arena keys of memory now sell for 265 gold (from 7250)
- This was done to remove the burden of optimal on MG players feeling like they needed to level up CoF and use arena key prophecies to farm gold effectively
- Added Prevention for CoF bonuses from doubling XP tome rewards in Monoliths
- This is also technically a bug fix as the XP Tome Reward isn't a direct item reward. Item Factions are not intended to have an effect on experience gains, only how items are obtained.
GHOSTFLAME AND DIVE BOMB
Theres one change in this patch, and another change well be releasing soon which we wanted to speak a little bit more to than just listing. These are changes to Ghostflames Spirit Kindling Node (included in this patch), and Dive Bombs Cloud Gatherer node (being released in near future).
CHANGES
Ghostflame
- Fixed a bug where Ghostflames Spirit Kindling could apply to the player if it had previously hit a Wraith during its lifetime and was not currently hitting a Wraith
Dive Bomb (hotfix soon)
- Changed Cloud Gatherer to only apply to any individual Smoke Bomb one time.
Autumnal Wrap & Bees Pets Update
[ 2024-03-05 20:45:37 CET ] [ Original post ]
Last week, we announced a set of cosmetics that would be given to all players who played Last Epoch before March 1st, 2024. With servers more stable, we have now set our sights on granting those cosmetics. Were going to cloak you in the Autumnal Wrap - a thank you gift we announced during the launch weekend. Youll also be swarmed by all three bee pets from the Refer-A-Friend program. These cosmetics will appear automatically in your inventory over the next few days after this weeks patch. No extra steps will need to be taken on your end. The Last Epoch communitys patience, support, and positivity during the first week meant the world to our teams. We were humbled by the sheer volume of new and returning Travelers who wanted to explore Eterra.
Last Epoch Hotfix 1.0.1.2 Notes
[ 2024-03-01 22:32:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
This hotfix resolves a couple of memory leaks occurring in Monolith and Arena scenes.
BUG FIXES
- Fixed a large memory leak that occurred in long sessions within Monolith and Arena
- Fixed a small memory leak that occurred in online play related to specific abilities
Last Epoch 1.0.1 Patch Notes
Thank you all for your continued submissions of bug reports and feedback. The team is hard at work on addressing many additional bugs, improvements, and other changes. We'll continue to release patches like this one in the coming days and weeks.
[ 2024-02-29 18:08:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
Skills
- Acolyte: Ghostflame: Fixed a bug where the ailment duration increase from Occult Embers did not apply to bleed duration when the skill is converted to physical by Arteries of Malice
- Sentinel: Smelters Wrath: Fixed an issue where its animation would break if it was the first ability used in a scene
- Primalist: Spriggan Form's Healing Totems can now have cold visuals if your Spriggan Form or Thorn Totems are cold converted
- Acolyte: Chthonic Fissure: Fixed an issue where Cthonic Fissure was causing a client performance dip.
- Fixed an issue where occasionally using a transformation skill (Werebear, Lich form, etc.) the player character would become entirely unresponsive
- Fixed a bug where the Falcon's thrown acid flasks could cause it to consume its own Falcon Mark
- Fixed a bug where Transplant was using the incorrect VFX showing some necrotic VFX at the original position
- Fixed a bug where Dive Bomb passive "Rush of the Hunt" was not scaling with points allocated
Controller
- Fixed an issue where NPCs that could not be interacted with would sometimes have an interaction prompt spawn when approached while using a gamepad.
- Fixed an issue where, when using a gamepad, it was not possible to specialize points in the Bone Curse skill tree without relying on the Virtual Cursor
- Fixed controller navigation on the Social Panel
- Fixed controller navigation on Choose Mastery panel
- Fixed controller navigation for "Quest Completed" popup
- Fixed a bug where some controller inputs on the map locked after navigating the quest list
- Fixed a bug where the Item Gifting D-Pad navigation could break if the player closed out of the Item Gifting window with an item still in it.
- Fixed a bug where Configure Stash Tabs did not work with the D-Pad Cursor
- Fixed a bug where the virtual keyboard could enter a state where it cannot be properly closed, locking the Player out of Gamepad inputs.
- Fixed a bug where Upheaval's VFX was playing when you were just summoning the totem
Misc
- Fixed an issue that would sometimes result in a disconnect on transition while in a party.
- Fixed an issue in the Forgotten Graves where the Infernal Husk patrols would fail to spawn a map marker.
- Adjusted the Music in scenes The Ancient Cavern, The Verdant Lakes, and The Ancient Forest
- Fixed bug where skipping Risen Lakes and having "Admiral's Dreadnaught" quest active or complete, then returning to Risen Lakes would make the quest "Immortal Empire" incompletable.
- Fixed bug where some enemies that join combat late were not animating.
- Fixed a bug where a Last Refuge Guard's death animation was looping
- Fixed Move Or Break Destructible left click option not working
- Fixed some clipping issues on Rogue and Acolyte, and fixed short Sentinel
- Fixed a bug where the Wraithlord would not despawn upon unequipping Wraithlord's Harbour
UI
- Fixed issue where game version was not showing new revisions
- Fixed a bug where an item label could fail to show if you were looking at another item when it dropped.
- Fixed a bug where legacy characters could show up as an incorrect hardcore character
- Fixed a bug where dodges did not display floating combat text
- Localization changes and corrections
- Fixed an issue where opening the Ladder menu did not properly close the inventory ui
- Fixed an issue where occasionally the overlay map zoom would default to extreme zoom in making it seem like the overlay map didnt work at all.
- Fixed a bug where occasionally, the gamble/purchase prompt in tooltip item appeared at a very large size
- Fixed a bug where non-equipable items (such as keys) would disappear if you tried to quick-move them to the forge
- Fixed bug where UI Elements for some passives were continuing to display after points in that passive were removed
- Corrected a layer issue with the Rogue T10 Helmet
- Fixed several Rogue and Acolyte animations
- Fixed an issue that would occasionally lead to a state where you can not see or pick up items on the ground.
- Fixed an issue where occasionally player characters would not load their gear visuals or display name (instead displaying the default name of a bear emoji)
- Fixed an issue in Thetima where quest icons above NPCs would not always update properly
Quests & Scenes
- Fixed an issue where a boulder was in the way in Lost Catacombs Monolith Echo Scene
- Added multiple failsafes for unlocking Heoborea waypoint after completing The Scorched Grove.
- Fixed object collision on railway-stop in The Osprix Warcamp
- Fixed unreachable chest in The Burning Pier
- Fixed NPC in The Burning Pier not animating
- Fixed ground texture in Forest Trails Monolith scene
- Fixed shrine placement in The Wengari Fortress
- Fixed a section of floor being visually missing in MakElka Lower District
- Fixed Alrics Cage not visually open in The Dreadnoughts Deck
- Fixed bug where If you die on the step for killing Yulia and then return to the zone later, the positions for the Soul Cages are not shown.
Changes
- Added a way to remember the last chat language selected so it doesn't always default to English, and uses the system lang the first time instead
- Added gold spawning animation
- Made performance improvements and added Scene Variants for five additional Monolith Echo Scenes, and improved performance for Welryn Outskirts
- Changed "Jump the Deck" completion to only complete when entering the next scene. This allows the quest tracker to continue pointing to the next scene if the player does not travel there for whatever reason.
- Now unlocks waypoint to End of Time after Pannion creates the Rift to chapter 2 to allow players to proceed without using the timerift
- Added check for completing Artem's Offer for players that had the quest before the previous patch.
- Added waypoint unlock for Lake Liath when you complete the Deep Harbor questline for players that leave after completing Deep Harbor, but don't proceed to Lake Liath.
- Added support for merging faction progress when leaving either Solo Character Found (SCF) or Solo Account Found (SAF) Challenges
- When you abandon a SCF character this merges the faction progress with your SAF progress.
- When you abandon a SAF character this merges the faction progress with your normal progress.
- Fixed the options in the settings panel so you can't accidentally abandon SAF as a SCF
- Switched Brigandine Boots to use T25 boots' 3D art for Primalist
- Added refresh on start function to social panel so it loads friends list on start instead of waiting for the social panel to be opened.
- Reduced size of Ulatri Scavenger's Firebreath ability
- Spriggan Form's Healing Totems can now have cold visuals if your Spriggan Form or Thorn Totems are cold converted
- Fixed a bug where the ailment duration increase from Occult Embers did not apply to bleed duration when the skill is converted to physical by Arteries of Malice in Ghostflame tree
More Fixes Coming!
Thank you all for your continued submissions of bug reports and feedback. The team is hard at work on addressing many additional bugs, improvements, and other changes. We'll continue to release patches like this one in the coming days and weeks.
Post Launch Mid-Week Update
We have a good sized bugs fixing and quality-of-live improvements patch that were hoping to deliver this week, and plan to continue releasing weekly patches. In addition to weekly patches, the team will be actively monitoring services and applying hotfixes as needed. Thank you for taking the time to report issues youve found in-game with the in-game bug reporting tool. This is the most optimal way to report issues as it also sends us your player logs and a screenshot if you choose to include it, which helps us diagnose and address issues much more rapidly. Forums and third-party sites are a much less ideal way to submit reports as we dont get this information, and its not immediately tracked in our internal systems.
We are excited to see the servers holding above the 200,000 CCU mark (concurrent users in the game at one time), and that scene transitions and queue times have gotten much shorter. There may still be shorter periods of downtime as we roll out updates to improve the reliability after our turbulent first weekend, where we had some unanticipated bottlenecks in our backend architecture. We will continue to make improvements here, including making social services (like adding friends) even snappier, focusing on scene-to-scene transition times, ensuring in-game chat is stable, making queues continue to flow smoother and faster, and more. Were going to put out some information about what happened at launch that caused the instability under load, but we want to focus our backend team on improvements for a while longer before we pull them off to help us write this up - and also give them some much-deserved rest after working through the weekend.
Localization improvements are ongoing as we focus on the quality of our translations and further coordinate with native speakers and quality assurance testing teams. We will be releasing improvements with our weekly hotfixes to address the feedback we have received so far, including quality fixes to all languages, menus, affixes, and UI errors reported for Russian, Korean and Chinese. We ask for your continued support in improving our experience in all languages by submitting reports to us by via the official Last Epoch Discord in the Localization/Translation Forum located in the Feedback and Reports section under feedback-forums or by utilizing our in-game support tool, and choosing the category Feedback
Were excited to start to share with you the future content plans we have for Last Epoch, including our next major Cycle patch, 1.1. The content coming for Patch 1.1 is designed specifically in two parts. The first, and most important part is focusing on and committing time to act on player feedback. We are wholly committed to making the best ARPG in the genre, and listening to our amazing community is a big part of that. In addition, throughout the 1.0 Cycle we intend to release quality of life and bug fix patches regularly. Secondly, as you all may know, were going to have a heavy emphasis on expanding end-game content now that weve released 1.0. For future patches we have plans to expand the monolith, bring great new itemization options, add more boss content, class and balance updates, campaign content, etc. For 1.1 specifically well be focusing on bringing some pinnacle content, or very hard fights that will give you challenges to aspire to. Well be sharing more on this and more of whats to come in 1.1 in the not too distant future. Its worth emphasizing that EHG has a strong focus on listening to the community, as its where our team came from, and we want to hear what you want to see in the future. We are active in our forums, Reddit, and social channels, so if you want to see something, please do voice it! You are not shouting into the void, nor do you have to amass an army to get us to take notice. Were there and ready to have conversations with you all.
While were continuing to receive high praise about the game itself, Steam reviews and sentiment took a heavy hit due to the initial turbulence of online services at launch. We are committed to regaining that trust by making improvements to our backend infrastructure for this amount of load and providing a great experience for online play. We take time to read your reviews and feedback on Steam, socials, and our forum and take swift action to improve the areas that we see players are dissatisfied with. We know that seeing our Steam reviews lower than theyve ever been is concerning to players who are looking forward to the future of Last Epoch, but we want to assure you that the team has always been committed to making a game you can enjoy and expect updates from for years to come. Weve seen that passion reflected back at us in the community this past week, and it has bolstered our resolve to that goal even further. Last Epoch is here to stay.
Were thrilled to see many of you enjoying the immense amount of gamepad updates weve brought for 1.0, and we have a lot of updates coming before 1.1 that will improve the experience even further, including better navigation of certain panels. We aim to release LE on console in the future so making sure that the gamepad experience is top notch is a focus for us. Thank you all for your amazing support and excitement of Last Epoch. Theres so much more to come and were thrilled to build this game for all of us ARPG fans. Well keep you all posted with more news, patches, insights, and plans shortly. - Judd | Founder & Game Director
[ 2024-02-27 18:35:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello, Travelers! Wow, what an opening week for Last Epoch. We are absolutely floored by the turnout and response to the game. Having started as an after-hours passion project from die-hard ARPG fans, were in awe that Last Epoch reached 265,000 players online at one time this weekend, the #39 highest concurrent user count recorded on Steam - ever. We appreciate you all bearing with us as the load initially gave us trouble for online gameplay, but were happy to say that were holding mostly steady above 200,000 players in-game and have made improvements each day in the backend infrastructure to support the demand. Well continue to monitor and address any issues that crop up. I want to take a moment to talk to you all about whats coming next.
INCOMING HOTFIXES/POST 1.0 PATCHES
We have a good sized bugs fixing and quality-of-live improvements patch that were hoping to deliver this week, and plan to continue releasing weekly patches. In addition to weekly patches, the team will be actively monitoring services and applying hotfixes as needed. Thank you for taking the time to report issues youve found in-game with the in-game bug reporting tool. This is the most optimal way to report issues as it also sends us your player logs and a screenshot if you choose to include it, which helps us diagnose and address issues much more rapidly. Forums and third-party sites are a much less ideal way to submit reports as we dont get this information, and its not immediately tracked in our internal systems.
ONLINE SERVICES
We are excited to see the servers holding above the 200,000 CCU mark (concurrent users in the game at one time), and that scene transitions and queue times have gotten much shorter. There may still be shorter periods of downtime as we roll out updates to improve the reliability after our turbulent first weekend, where we had some unanticipated bottlenecks in our backend architecture. We will continue to make improvements here, including making social services (like adding friends) even snappier, focusing on scene-to-scene transition times, ensuring in-game chat is stable, making queues continue to flow smoother and faster, and more. Were going to put out some information about what happened at launch that caused the instability under load, but we want to focus our backend team on improvements for a while longer before we pull them off to help us write this up - and also give them some much-deserved rest after working through the weekend.
LOCALIZATION
Localization improvements are ongoing as we focus on the quality of our translations and further coordinate with native speakers and quality assurance testing teams. We will be releasing improvements with our weekly hotfixes to address the feedback we have received so far, including quality fixes to all languages, menus, affixes, and UI errors reported for Russian, Korean and Chinese. We ask for your continued support in improving our experience in all languages by submitting reports to us by via the official Last Epoch Discord in the Localization/Translation Forum located in the Feedback and Reports section under feedback-forums or by utilizing our in-game support tool, and choosing the category Feedback
FUTURE CONTENT
Were excited to start to share with you the future content plans we have for Last Epoch, including our next major Cycle patch, 1.1. The content coming for Patch 1.1 is designed specifically in two parts. The first, and most important part is focusing on and committing time to act on player feedback. We are wholly committed to making the best ARPG in the genre, and listening to our amazing community is a big part of that. In addition, throughout the 1.0 Cycle we intend to release quality of life and bug fix patches regularly. Secondly, as you all may know, were going to have a heavy emphasis on expanding end-game content now that weve released 1.0. For future patches we have plans to expand the monolith, bring great new itemization options, add more boss content, class and balance updates, campaign content, etc. For 1.1 specifically well be focusing on bringing some pinnacle content, or very hard fights that will give you challenges to aspire to. Well be sharing more on this and more of whats to come in 1.1 in the not too distant future. Its worth emphasizing that EHG has a strong focus on listening to the community, as its where our team came from, and we want to hear what you want to see in the future. We are active in our forums, Reddit, and social channels, so if you want to see something, please do voice it! You are not shouting into the void, nor do you have to amass an army to get us to take notice. Were there and ready to have conversations with you all.
SENTIMENT & REVIEWS
While were continuing to receive high praise about the game itself, Steam reviews and sentiment took a heavy hit due to the initial turbulence of online services at launch. We are committed to regaining that trust by making improvements to our backend infrastructure for this amount of load and providing a great experience for online play. We take time to read your reviews and feedback on Steam, socials, and our forum and take swift action to improve the areas that we see players are dissatisfied with. We know that seeing our Steam reviews lower than theyve ever been is concerning to players who are looking forward to the future of Last Epoch, but we want to assure you that the team has always been committed to making a game you can enjoy and expect updates from for years to come. Weve seen that passion reflected back at us in the community this past week, and it has bolstered our resolve to that goal even further. Last Epoch is here to stay.
GAMEPAD SUPPORT
Were thrilled to see many of you enjoying the immense amount of gamepad updates weve brought for 1.0, and we have a lot of updates coming before 1.1 that will improve the experience even further, including better navigation of certain panels. We aim to release LE on console in the future so making sure that the gamepad experience is top notch is a focus for us. Thank you all for your amazing support and excitement of Last Epoch. Theres so much more to come and were thrilled to build this game for all of us ARPG fans. Well keep you all posted with more news, patches, insights, and plans shortly. - Judd | Founder & Game Director
Last Epoch 1.0.0d Patch Notes
Were still working on server stability and will continue to update our server status thread here: 1.0 Server Status Thread Server issues continue to be our highest priority and we have assigned all possible resources to resolve the server issues.These fixes come from our other teams whos skill sets do not apply to server issues such as the art and design teams, working in tandem
[ 2024-02-23 19:44:29 CET ] [ Original post ]
Server Stability
Were still working on server stability and will continue to update our server status thread here: 1.0 Server Status Thread Server issues continue to be our highest priority and we have assigned all possible resources to resolve the server issues.These fixes come from our other teams whos skill sets do not apply to server issues such as the art and design teams, working in tandem
Bug Fixes
- Added failsafe when skipping speaking to Keeper Balthas, the quest does not work in the next area
- Added failsafe for if you leave after the Drake event but before speaking with the Keeper Guard.
- Fixed a bug where Gathering Storm's Rending Vortex did not affect Storm Bolt
- Fixed a bug where Healing Hands Skyfall was not working in online
- Fixed extra idols and set pieces from CoF rank rewards not being tagged as CoF items
- Fixed bug where no matter what the player has equipped in their weapon slot, the text in the "my stall" section of the bazaar always reads as "equipped two-handed sword" regardless of what the player actually has equipped.
- Fixed a bug where Flurry was aiming upwards if you were standing extremely close to the enemy
- Fixed a bug where abilities cast indirectly by Surge's skill tree did not require positive mana to trigger
- Fixed bug when returning to character select, the echo loading UI would break and stay broken for the remainder of the session
- Fixed bug where the monolith transition VFX/SFX was played when entering the game offline.
- Fixed a bug where Avian Arsenal did not work when Falconer's Mark was consumed by a spell, bow, or throwing ability
- Removed gate that was preventing movement from The Fractured Drain to The Barren Aqueduct
- Fixed bug where Glacial Path Portal was missing
- Fixed timing of Drake sequence where voice lines were playing over top of each other
- Fixed an issue where the player could see the Drake model appear in an inactive state just before the sequence starts
- Fixed bug where "sure you have questions" line from Balthus would not play just before the bridge on the players' first play through the scene
- Texture Fixes:
- Black Wolf
- Scalebane Leader
- Soul Warden Sarcophagus closing
- Haruspex Orian Model
- Temple Guardian
- Temple Guardian Mace
- Bug Textures
- Soul Bastion Icon
- Torment Wheel Layer Correction
- Uma NPC
- Enemy Texture adjustments
- Sentinel T15 armor set
- Fixed bug were Bow item Prophecies were resulting in no items dropping
- Fixed an issue where there were no prophecies when first interacting with telescope
- Fixed a bug where Artem can fail some part of the quest return interaction process and drop his item while not completing the quest.
- Fixed a bug where keys could be removed during dungeon run starting.
- Fixed a bug where a random wall was being shown in The Lotus Halls
Changes
- Increased Online Character Slots to 25
- Advent of the Erased's ward gained when you gain or refresh Haste now has a 1 second cooldown (previously none), but now gives 30-60 ward (from 15-35)
- Optimized shadows in Last Refuge Outskirts, The Ruins of Welryn, and The Summit
- Disabled refer a friend in social panel
- Made adjustments to the Emperor of Corpses's collision to make it easier for melee to get near it and to hit it with melee attacks
- Updated logs to show death logs on client
An Update to the Refer A Friend Program
[ 2024-02-23 02:21:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
Travelers, We have heard your concerns with the current Refer A Friend system implementation and will be temporarily disabling it. Because we arent fans of letting a small issue ruin the fun for others, we will be granting everyone who owns a copy of Last Epoch all three of the bee pets. However, the teams here are very focused on getting services back up and working. As a result of us not wanting to take time away from that, we are going to hold off on granting these rewards until services are stable. Our current plan is to monitor the situation and grant all three bee pets, and the Autumnal Wrap (Cape) to everyone who owns Last Epoch no later than Friday, Mar 1st. We very much appreciate the continued support while we work through these issues. You can get consistent updates on Discord, Reddit, or our Forums. Discord: https://discord.gg/lastepoch Server Status Post: 1.0 Server Status Thread Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/
Our Gift To You & Thank You
[ 2024-02-22 00:00:21 CET ] [ Original post ]
Travelers, Thank you so much for your incredible patience as we work hard to address the ongoing issues. Your support means the world to us! As mentioned in our previous updates, we've established an active update thread on both our forums and Discord: Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/lastepoch Visit our Forums: https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/1-0-server-status-thread/62977 To express our heartfelt gratitude for your patience, we're delighted to present you with a unique token of appreciation a complimentary in-game gift for your characters: The Autumnal Wrap back-slot item. We can't thank you enough for the love and support you have shown thus far. Anyone who owns a copy of Last Epoch while we are still solving our scaling connectivity issues will automatically be awarded the Autumnal Wrap. Thank you once again to those who continue to support us, sending us your positive messages, and continuing to spread that positivity while we continue the work on getting more servers up and running. Thank You, Last Epoch Team
Server Update
[ 2024-02-21 21:52:22 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, Thank you all for the amazing support for our launch, hitting over 150,000 concurrent players! With this burst of volume, an issue was discovered within an API being used for our backend services. We immediately got into calls with several of our providers, and continue to actively be in the war room with them to get this issue resolved and get everyone online. For players who are looking for a solo experience, the fully offline mode has made it so you can get in game right away and start playing. Though, while this is available for those who are happy to play offline, we understand that's not a replacement for online play. It does not at all decrease our efforts to get players in-game online with friends and other travelers. We have an active running update on our #news channel at https://discord.gg/lastepoch, as well as on the discussions here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/899770/discussions/0/4338725580140385603/ Thank you for your patience as we get these launch jitters resolved. We're all hands on deck to get everyone in and playing the way they want. We have a whole bunch of servers ready for everyone once once we get this API issue resolved, and look forward to hearing about all your travels in Eterra!
Last Epoch 1.0 is Live!
Server Queue:
We have implemented a server queue to help support the launch. However, if youre interested in playing offline you can of course bypass any queue we end up having. You can find instructions on enabling true offline mode here: Last Epoch 1.0 Patch Notes
Twitch Drops:
Twitch Drops unlock TOMORROW.
You can find all the details you need here: Twitch Drops - What you need to know for Launch!
Be sure to link your twitch account here: https://twitch.lastepoch.com/
Support:
If you are having issues with the game, the first step with Steam is always to try verifying integrity files, if that doesnt resolve the problem, or your issue is account related, our support team will be ready and waiting right here: https://support.lastepoch.com/hc/en-us
Updates and Notices:
If problems are encountered, be sure to join our Discord or pay attention to our socials, as those spaces are where we will have the most recent updates.
Discord link: Last Epoch - Official Community
Have fun! Wed love to hear your feedback on our forum as we aim to continue improving Last Epoch alongside you for years to come.
[/olist]
Thank you again,
Last Epoch Team
[ 2024-02-21 17:03:37 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings Travelers, Today is a historic day for the Last Epoch team and everyone here at Eleventh Hour Games (EHG). What started as an after-hours passion project has blossomed into one of the most anticipated releases in the ARPG genre, and we are blown away by the support we have received. Thank You. Thank you to our families for putting up with us while we worked long into the night, and thank you to our community for supporting us even when all we had was a dream and a few vaguely Traveler-shaped pixels. We look forward to seeing you all in Eterra, atop leaderboards, and expanding across time in the Monolith of Fate. A few reminders: [olist]
Last Epoch 1.0 - Release Patch Notes & Downtime Notice
[ 2024-02-19 17:00:13 CET ] [ Original post ]
Last Epoch is releasing Wednesday, February 21st, 2024, at 11:00am CT! Welcome everyone to the patch notes for Last Epoch's Release! Its been an amazing road to this point, and its unreal to be writing patch notes without using the term Beta Patch. With this patch Last Epoch will officially be leaving Early Access. We couldnt have made it to this point without all of you, our amazing community driving the world of Eterra alongside us. We can not say it enough, Thank you. We also want to mention again here that to prepare the servers for our release on February 21st, we will be shutting down our servers 24 hours before the patch, starting: Tuesday, February 20st, 2024, at 11:00am CT While the servers are down, authentication will not be possible. If you are already playing in offline mode before we take down the servers, you should be able to continue your play session, however offline will not be able to authenticate to log in once the servers are down. This is also a good point to note that one of the features being added with 1.0 is a true offline mode, which will prevent this kind of interference with offline mode in the future. Last Epoch 1.0 will introduce:
- Acolyte Mastery: Warlock
- Rogue Mastery: Falconer
- Item Factions: Circle of Fortune and Merchant's Guild
- New Primalist Skill: Gathering Storm
- Rework to Primalist's Skill: Tempest Strike
- New Paladin Skill: Healing Hands
- Resonances
- Full Offline Mode
- Scene Variant System & Lighting Improvements
- New Cinematics
- Full Controller Support
- and more!
New Items & Affixes | Coming to Last Epoch February 21st
Boots are receiving two new Base Item types, as well as implicit changes for two other bases. The two new boot bases are both endgame boots: Citadel Boots offering Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes, and Vanguard Boots offering Effect of Haste on You.
Gloves have had three new base items added, and received changes to three existing implicits. Taking a look at two of the new implicits, the Ascetic Gloves offer cooldown Recovery Speed, while the Arcane Bracers will offer flat Mana, and Increased Mana Regen.
Belts, previously lacking diversity of selection are receiving four new Base Items, as well as changes to four existing Implicits. Today were taking a look at three of the new Belts: The Divine Girdle, offering Increased Movement Speed, the Praetorian Belt offering high Armor, and the Chain Belt offering Ward Decay Threshold.
New Armor sets means new Implicits! Taking a look at a few helms, first is the Mages new Tyrant Crown, offering Elemental Damage Leeched as Health an often in-demand stat. Next up, the Rogues Blood Visage Helm offers Increased Damage Over Time, and Bleed Duration provides a great option for the Rogues many DoT builds. Lastly, the Acolytes Necropolis Helm offers Ward Decay Threshold and Ward Gain on Kill for stronger ward retention and some ward-generation while clearing.
Along with the new Helm Base Items, the new Class specific Armor Sets also means new Body Armor Base Items! Today were looking at three of the upcoming base Body Armors as well. First, the Apocalypse Plate offering Armor, Stun Avoidance, and Increased Echo Damage when a skill is Echoed offers a great option for the Void Knights out there. Up second is the Primalists Beastmail providing Armor, Increased Movement Speed, and Health Regen offers a great body armor for Minion players who use mobility and regen to stay alive. Finally, the Acolytes Coven Robes offer Armor, Increased Cast Speed, and Mana Regen, making for a well-rounded casters body armor.
February 21st will bring with it twelve new general weapon affixes. With several classes receiving new and updated skills, were also adding an additional 33 Idol, Body Armor, Helmet, and Relic affixes to find in Last Epoch.
One area of feedback weve received is the lack of effective stats on Weapons for some builds, and in particular Minion builds. To help address this, were adding a few new affixes. Covering ten of the twelve new weapon affixes, were looking at two groups of suffixes youll be able to find on several weapon types. Increased minion damage is a stat which is in fairly high supply in Last Epoch, where minion flat damage is quite rare. So to make the weapon affix feel more impactful, weve changed the minion damage suffixes to offer flat damage to minions instead of increased damage. These will come in three flavors: Minion Melee Damage and Minion Spell Damage, Minion Spell Damage and Minion Bow Damage, and Minion Melee Damage and Minion Bow Damage. As a more general-purpose Affix, weve also added a new suffix which grants damage penetration to both yourself and your minions. This suffix is available for each of the seven damage types, though are rare, and can only be found on endgame items.
With the new masteries and skills coming on the 21st, well also be adding a number of relevant class-specific affixes. Weve offered a selection of a number of these affixes you can look forward to below.
Lastly today, were taking a look at some of the new Unique Items to look forward to in just a few days with the release of Last Epoch.
This shield offers a new way to create a retaliation build by granting Shield Throw Throwing Damage based on your Damage Reflected, as well as a chance to retaliate with Shield Throw when you block.
A new Weavers Will item coming to Eterra, Communion of the Erased doubles all stats on the belt for one second after using a potion, as well as grants additional potion slots for each Weavers Will item you have equipped.
Unarmed builds are always a common topic of discussion. While we dont have any core mechanics for unarmed combat, the last Unarmed Unique we introduced has been quite popular. We felt the Falconer had a great opportunity to add another. Synergizing with Cinder Strike and your Falcon, this new unique allows you to punch your way to victory.
This two-handed sword designed for Warlocks not only changes mechanics, but also visuals. Spine of Malatros will replace your Chthonic Fissures Spirits with Flame Whips, and grants Flame Whips additional benefits.
The last Item were having a look at today which also changes visuals, the Vial of Volatile Ice is a new unique Catalyst (Yes, Catalyst), for Rogues. This item will convert Acid Flask to Cold Damage, and grant it frostbite chance for a completely new way to build Acid Flask.
This brings us to a close for todays pre-patch blog post on new Items and Affixes coming on February 21st. Continuing to build upon existing gearing options, we feel these additions help further itemization within Last Epoch bringing us up to our release standards. We hope the increased diversity of item options will help many builds flourish, as well as create completely new build options. Make sure to join us again tomorrow as well be wrapping up the series of pre-patch blog posts with the full Patch Notes for Last Epochs 1.0 Release!
[ 2024-02-18 16:59:39 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and thank you for joining us for another pre-patch blog post! In todays post were going to be taking a look at some of the new items and affixes youll find in Eterra with our release later this week! Were expanding the range of base items for Boots, Gloves, and Belts, and with the new Armor Sets coming in as we talked about on Thursday, those will get new item base effects as well. Further, well take a look at a couple of new generic affixes, new mastery affixes, and a few of the new unique items youll be able to find February 21st!
New Item Bases
New Boots Bases
Boots are receiving two new Base Item types, as well as implicit changes for two other bases. The two new boot bases are both endgame boots: Citadel Boots offering Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes, and Vanguard Boots offering Effect of Haste on You.
New Gloves Bases
Gloves have had three new base items added, and received changes to three existing implicits. Taking a look at two of the new implicits, the Ascetic Gloves offer cooldown Recovery Speed, while the Arcane Bracers will offer flat Mana, and Increased Mana Regen.
New Belt Bases
Belts, previously lacking diversity of selection are receiving four new Base Items, as well as changes to four existing Implicits. Today were taking a look at three of the new Belts: The Divine Girdle, offering Increased Movement Speed, the Praetorian Belt offering high Armor, and the Chain Belt offering Ward Decay Threshold.
New Helm Bases
New Armor sets means new Implicits! Taking a look at a few helms, first is the Mages new Tyrant Crown, offering Elemental Damage Leeched as Health an often in-demand stat. Next up, the Rogues Blood Visage Helm offers Increased Damage Over Time, and Bleed Duration provides a great option for the Rogues many DoT builds. Lastly, the Acolytes Necropolis Helm offers Ward Decay Threshold and Ward Gain on Kill for stronger ward retention and some ward-generation while clearing.
New Body Armor Bases
Along with the new Helm Base Items, the new Class specific Armor Sets also means new Body Armor Base Items! Today were looking at three of the upcoming base Body Armors as well. First, the Apocalypse Plate offering Armor, Stun Avoidance, and Increased Echo Damage when a skill is Echoed offers a great option for the Void Knights out there. Up second is the Primalists Beastmail providing Armor, Increased Movement Speed, and Health Regen offers a great body armor for Minion players who use mobility and regen to stay alive. Finally, the Acolytes Coven Robes offer Armor, Increased Cast Speed, and Mana Regen, making for a well-rounded casters body armor.
New Affixes
February 21st will bring with it twelve new general weapon affixes. With several classes receiving new and updated skills, were also adding an additional 33 Idol, Body Armor, Helmet, and Relic affixes to find in Last Epoch.
Weapon Affixes
One area of feedback weve received is the lack of effective stats on Weapons for some builds, and in particular Minion builds. To help address this, were adding a few new affixes. Covering ten of the twelve new weapon affixes, were looking at two groups of suffixes youll be able to find on several weapon types. Increased minion damage is a stat which is in fairly high supply in Last Epoch, where minion flat damage is quite rare. So to make the weapon affix feel more impactful, weve changed the minion damage suffixes to offer flat damage to minions instead of increased damage. These will come in three flavors: Minion Melee Damage and Minion Spell Damage, Minion Spell Damage and Minion Bow Damage, and Minion Melee Damage and Minion Bow Damage. As a more general-purpose Affix, weve also added a new suffix which grants damage penetration to both yourself and your minions. This suffix is available for each of the seven damage types, though are rare, and can only be found on endgame items.
Class Specific Affixes
With the new masteries and skills coming on the 21st, well also be adding a number of relevant class-specific affixes. Weve offered a selection of a number of these affixes you can look forward to below.
Warlock Affixes
- Idol: Sickening prefix - % Increased Damage Over Time while you have an Ailment Overload
- Body Armor: % Increased Spirit Frequency with Chthonic Fissure
- Helm: % Chance for 3 additional projectiles when you directly cast Chaos Bolts
- Relic: +X to level of Profane Veil, % Increased Damage Over Time
Falconer Affixes
- Idol: Scattering Suffix - % Increased Area with Caltrops, % Chance to shred Armor on hit with Caltrops
- Idol: Winged Prefix - % Chance to deal Double Damage with Falcon Strikes
- Helm: % Increased Damage with Dive Bomb, % Increased Area with Dive Bomb
- Body Armor: +X to level of Explosive Trap, %Increased Throwing Damage
Primalist - Gathering Storm Affixes
- Idol: Reckoning Prefix - % Increased Frequency of expending Storm Strikes
- Body Armor: +X to level of Gathering Storm, % Increased Area for Area Skills
- Helm: % chance to gain a Storm Stack when you use Gathering Storm and hit an enemy.
New Uniques
Lastly today, were taking a look at some of the new Unique Items to look forward to in just a few days with the release of Last Epoch.
Sigeons Reprisal
This shield offers a new way to create a retaliation build by granting Shield Throw Throwing Damage based on your Damage Reflected, as well as a chance to retaliate with Shield Throw when you block.
Communion of the Erased
A new Weavers Will item coming to Eterra, Communion of the Erased doubles all stats on the belt for one second after using a potion, as well as grants additional potion slots for each Weavers Will item you have equipped.
Falcon Fists
Unarmed builds are always a common topic of discussion. While we dont have any core mechanics for unarmed combat, the last Unarmed Unique we introduced has been quite popular. We felt the Falconer had a great opportunity to add another. Synergizing with Cinder Strike and your Falcon, this new unique allows you to punch your way to victory.
Spine of Malatros
This two-handed sword designed for Warlocks not only changes mechanics, but also visuals. Spine of Malatros will replace your Chthonic Fissures Spirits with Flame Whips, and grants Flame Whips additional benefits.
Vial of Volatile Ice
The last Item were having a look at today which also changes visuals, the Vial of Volatile Ice is a new unique Catalyst (Yes, Catalyst), for Rogues. This item will convert Acid Flask to Cold Damage, and grant it frostbite chance for a completely new way to build Acid Flask.
Closing
This brings us to a close for todays pre-patch blog post on new Items and Affixes coming on February 21st. Continuing to build upon existing gearing options, we feel these additions help further itemization within Last Epoch bringing us up to our release standards. We hope the increased diversity of item options will help many builds flourish, as well as create completely new build options. Make sure to join us again tomorrow as well be wrapping up the series of pre-patch blog posts with the full Patch Notes for Last Epochs 1.0 Release!
Factions, Falconer, and Warlock | Coming to Last Epoch February 21st
On January 11th, we released our deep dive into the Item Faction system. Item Factions is our answer to the eternal trade debate. Offering an option to players who want trade as part of their itemization experience, and those who dont, without splitting the player base, and without being left behind the other. To read the full deep dive, you can do so here: Trade & Item Factions. Our Game Director, Judd, also made a video overview of the Item Faction system, which you can watch it below. [previewyoutube=SOo0Ule6dNY;full][/previewyoutube] With Item Factions, you can either join the Merchants Guild, which grants access to the Bazaar to trade items with other players, or join the Circle of Fortune, which grants significant item drop bonuses. We do want to mention one fairly large change to Merchants Guild weve made since the deep dive. From both the CT Program, and public discussions, there were concerns about item supply within the Bazaar. This concern stemmed from the ability to sell certain items being locked behind Reputation levels. This meant players would not be able to sell many items for some length of time, reducing selling participation. To ensure a strong item supply within the Bazaar, there is no longer a Reputation level requirement to sell any class of item. Also to promote healthy item supply within the Bazaar, Favor costs for selling items are much lower than buying favor costs, so Merchants Guild members can be a bit more free with selling items.
The Warlock makes its long awaited arrival on February 21st. With both existing Curse abilities and five new curses, the Warlock is a master of forbidden arts, twisting enemy minds and bodies. With the Warlock, we wanted the class to focus around manipulation of souls and curses. This theming can be found across the masterys abilities: from the Mastery Skill - Chthonic Fissure cracking open the ground to spew out souls, to Profane Veil, converting yourself into soul-like ephemeral fog. The Warlock is not concerned with distance or close range; they have many options at their disposal to choose the amount of risk they desire in their combat style. The Warlock focuses on debilitating their foes to enhance their own damage and combining curses, debilitations, and damage synergies to eradicate their enemies. Abilities such as Chaos Bolts and Cthonic Fissure enable the Warlock to fight from range. Profane Form may be used as an escape skill or an aggressive skill by granting it synergies for passing through enemies, either applying or reacting to applied debuffs. Soul Feast functions well at mid-range. Abilities such as Ghostflame and Profane Form enable the Warlock to enter close combat range, to apply debuffs and high-risk, high-reward levels of damage. The Warlock is focused foremost on debilitating curses and debuffs, and while direct damage does exist in the class, its slightly more niche compared to their foil, the Sorcerer. For the Warlock reveal, we partnered with the amazing people over at Icy-Veins.com , who released a number of articles detailing the various Warlock abilities and passives. Weve compiled all of these information releases below: Passive Tree Reveal: Last Epoch - Warlock Reveal: Passive Tree - News - Icy Veins Ghostflame: Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Ghostflame - News - Icy Veins Soul Feast: Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Soul Feast - News - Icy Veins Profane Veil: Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Profane Veil - News - Icy Veins Chaos Bolts: Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Chaos Bolts - News - Icy Veins Chthonic Fissure: Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Chthonic Fissure - News - Icy Veins
In the case of the Falconer, we wanted the mastery to offer an atypical minion playstyle. One where the Falcon is much more than a minion or companion but an extension of your own play. The Falconer is designed to synergize with several playstyles: melee, bow, or throwing, creating a tie between the existing Bladedancer and Marksman masteries. As Throwing is a common focus for Rogues, we also offered extra synergy towards Throwing skills in passives and synergies, and even introduced the first Trap Skill to Last Epoch: Explosive Trap. With Falconry & Falcon Strikes, the Mastery ability you gain upon becoming a Falconer, we created the very core of the mastery, the atypical minion: The Falcon. The Falcon is un-targetable, meaning it cannot take damage, scales strongly with many of your stats, and offers options to join in with your build style, be it ranged or melee. This means that, unlike many minion-type setups, the Falconer can build strongly for their own stats, with the Falcon growing in strength alongside you. The Falconry & Falcon Strikes skill offers within its tree methods to build the Falcon, many of which will apply across all actions the Falcon takes. With Explosive Trap and Net, the Falconer can ensure an unfair fight by leading enemies to their end. Or perhaps, use Arial Assault to fly into the fray with the Falcon to cut down enemies alongside your avian ally. Alternatively, you can order the Falcon forth to Dive Bomb the enemy, plummeting into a group of enemies like a feathery meteorite. The Falconer focuses on its unwavering bond with the Falcon. By sharing stats with the Falcons, the Falcon and Falconer granting buffs to each other, and coordinating their attacks together - the Falcon is far more than a minion. For the Falconer Reveal, we worked closely with all the fantastic members over at Maxroll.gg, who created created a technical deep dive into the mastery with all the passives and skill trees, as well as skill overviews. Check out the Falconer Reveal here: Falconer Reveal - Last Epoch Maxroll.gg You can also find the Falconer available in their build planner here: Falconer Reveal - Last Epoch Maxroll.gg
Thank you again to both Maxroll.gg and Icy-Veins.com for working with us on these new Mastery Reveals! Weve already started seeing a ton of great theorycrafting in the community for these masteries, and cant wait for everyone to get their hands on them. Join us for tomorrows pre-patch blog post when well be going over New Items and Affixes youll be able to find on February 21st, including both new Implicits and Uniques!
[ 2024-02-17 16:59:46 CET ] [ Original post ]
Happy Saturday, Travelers! For todays pre-patch blog post, were taking a look at information regarding the three headlining features coming on February 21st: Trade Factions, the Warlock, and Falconer! There have been a lot of new Travelers recently joining us in the final stretch to release, so for todays post, were going to be covering all of the information regarding these three big features.
Item Factions
On January 11th, we released our deep dive into the Item Faction system. Item Factions is our answer to the eternal trade debate. Offering an option to players who want trade as part of their itemization experience, and those who dont, without splitting the player base, and without being left behind the other. To read the full deep dive, you can do so here: Trade & Item Factions. Our Game Director, Judd, also made a video overview of the Item Faction system, which you can watch it below. [previewyoutube=SOo0Ule6dNY;full][/previewyoutube] With Item Factions, you can either join the Merchants Guild, which grants access to the Bazaar to trade items with other players, or join the Circle of Fortune, which grants significant item drop bonuses. We do want to mention one fairly large change to Merchants Guild weve made since the deep dive. From both the CT Program, and public discussions, there were concerns about item supply within the Bazaar. This concern stemmed from the ability to sell certain items being locked behind Reputation levels. This meant players would not be able to sell many items for some length of time, reducing selling participation. To ensure a strong item supply within the Bazaar, there is no longer a Reputation level requirement to sell any class of item. Also to promote healthy item supply within the Bazaar, Favor costs for selling items are much lower than buying favor costs, so Merchants Guild members can be a bit more free with selling items.
Warlock
The Warlock makes its long awaited arrival on February 21st. With both existing Curse abilities and five new curses, the Warlock is a master of forbidden arts, twisting enemy minds and bodies. With the Warlock, we wanted the class to focus around manipulation of souls and curses. This theming can be found across the masterys abilities: from the Mastery Skill - Chthonic Fissure cracking open the ground to spew out souls, to Profane Veil, converting yourself into soul-like ephemeral fog. The Warlock is not concerned with distance or close range; they have many options at their disposal to choose the amount of risk they desire in their combat style. The Warlock focuses on debilitating their foes to enhance their own damage and combining curses, debilitations, and damage synergies to eradicate their enemies. Abilities such as Chaos Bolts and Cthonic Fissure enable the Warlock to fight from range. Profane Form may be used as an escape skill or an aggressive skill by granting it synergies for passing through enemies, either applying or reacting to applied debuffs. Soul Feast functions well at mid-range. Abilities such as Ghostflame and Profane Form enable the Warlock to enter close combat range, to apply debuffs and high-risk, high-reward levels of damage. The Warlock is focused foremost on debilitating curses and debuffs, and while direct damage does exist in the class, its slightly more niche compared to their foil, the Sorcerer. For the Warlock reveal, we partnered with the amazing people over at Icy-Veins.com , who released a number of articles detailing the various Warlock abilities and passives. Weve compiled all of these information releases below: Passive Tree Reveal: Last Epoch - Warlock Reveal: Passive Tree - News - Icy Veins Ghostflame: Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Ghostflame - News - Icy Veins Soul Feast: Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Soul Feast - News - Icy Veins Profane Veil: Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Profane Veil - News - Icy Veins Chaos Bolts: Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Chaos Bolts - News - Icy Veins Chthonic Fissure: Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Chthonic Fissure - News - Icy Veins
Falconer
In the case of the Falconer, we wanted the mastery to offer an atypical minion playstyle. One where the Falcon is much more than a minion or companion but an extension of your own play. The Falconer is designed to synergize with several playstyles: melee, bow, or throwing, creating a tie between the existing Bladedancer and Marksman masteries. As Throwing is a common focus for Rogues, we also offered extra synergy towards Throwing skills in passives and synergies, and even introduced the first Trap Skill to Last Epoch: Explosive Trap. With Falconry & Falcon Strikes, the Mastery ability you gain upon becoming a Falconer, we created the very core of the mastery, the atypical minion: The Falcon. The Falcon is un-targetable, meaning it cannot take damage, scales strongly with many of your stats, and offers options to join in with your build style, be it ranged or melee. This means that, unlike many minion-type setups, the Falconer can build strongly for their own stats, with the Falcon growing in strength alongside you. The Falconry & Falcon Strikes skill offers within its tree methods to build the Falcon, many of which will apply across all actions the Falcon takes. With Explosive Trap and Net, the Falconer can ensure an unfair fight by leading enemies to their end. Or perhaps, use Arial Assault to fly into the fray with the Falcon to cut down enemies alongside your avian ally. Alternatively, you can order the Falcon forth to Dive Bomb the enemy, plummeting into a group of enemies like a feathery meteorite. The Falconer focuses on its unwavering bond with the Falcon. By sharing stats with the Falcons, the Falcon and Falconer granting buffs to each other, and coordinating their attacks together - the Falcon is far more than a minion. For the Falconer Reveal, we worked closely with all the fantastic members over at Maxroll.gg, who created created a technical deep dive into the mastery with all the passives and skill trees, as well as skill overviews. Check out the Falconer Reveal here: Falconer Reveal - Last Epoch Maxroll.gg You can also find the Falconer available in their build planner here: Falconer Reveal - Last Epoch Maxroll.gg
Closing
Thank you again to both Maxroll.gg and Icy-Veins.com for working with us on these new Mastery Reveals! Weve already started seeing a ton of great theorycrafting in the community for these masteries, and cant wait for everyone to get their hands on them. Join us for tomorrows pre-patch blog post when well be going over New Items and Affixes youll be able to find on February 21st, including both new Implicits and Uniques!
Healing Hands Skill Tree | Coming to Last Epoch February 21st
As a baseline, Healing hands is an ability which casts a medium sized area of effect which heals all allies, including yourself for an immediate burst, and applies a heal over time for three seconds.
Both heals from the ability scale with Increased Healing Effectiveness, as well as the nodes on the skill tree. This grants Healing Hands not only strong immediate recovery, but also provide a fairly strong heal over time to help keep yourself and allies nice and healthy. As a Paladin, Healing Hands can offer very strong competition to even Life Leech as a source of health sustain, in addition to its specialization options.
Clerics Hammer grants Healing Hands a chance to trigger on any melee attack, up to a 100% chance with the full four points assigned. This imbues all melee attacks to provide healing to all allies and yourself in the area. When combined with other options on the tree, this can also effectively convert any melee attack into an offensive spell melee attack, synergizing well with many of the Paladins hybrid melee and spell abilities.
More favorable towards ranged damage? Hand of Aurelus allows Healing Hands to instead synergize with direct Smite casts, adding its own healing area to smites. Combined with Searing Light, adding Damage to Healing Hands area of effect, Healing Hands can further augment Smite builds with the additional hit damage.
Healing Hands also adds support for Divine Bolts. By picking up the Divine Catalyst node, you will cast a number of Divine Bolts with every direct use of Healing Hands. Further, with just one point in this node, all sources of Divine Bolt will scale with the nodes in the Healing Hands tree.
Healing Hands can also be converted to a Traversal ability, charging to a target location casting Healing Hands upon arrival. This adds a 6 second cooldown to Healing Hands, however, unlike Lunge, Rahyehs Chariot does not require a target to move to.
Prefer to channel your healing powers through your blade? Taking this node will convert Healing Hands into a Melee Attack. converting Spell Damage from the tree into Melee Damage. A heavy hitting melee attack which also provides strong healing, Seraph Blade embodies the strongest aspects of the Paladin Mastery.
Who doesnt like a good Sky Beam? By assigning Unbroken Prayer, converting Healing Hands into a channeled ability, you can further specialize it into Skyfall. By paying an additional mana cost each second, you will deal additional fire damage over time while channeling Healing Hands, scorching clear a path of righteousness.
Thank you for again joining us today in this coverage of the Paladins Healing Hands skill tree. Offering potential as both a support ability, a damaging ability, triggers, or direct casting, Healing Hands offers the Paladin a number of new ways to build. Healing Hands still remains available at 5 points invested into the Paladin Tree, meaning you can also pick up Healing Hands as either a Forge Guard or Void Knight should you theory-craft such a use. Tomorrow well be recapping the coverage of Item Factions, Falconer, and Warlock for all the Travelers just recently joining us, or who may have missed the previous information releases. Then on Sunday well be covering some of the new Item bases, Item Affixes, and Unique Items coming with the release of Last Epoch on February 21st!
[ 2024-02-16 16:59:43 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome to day three of the pre-patch blog posts! Healing Hands is a skill which has existed in the Paladin tree for quite some time, without being able to be specialized. Theres various reasons we waited to create a tree for this skill, one of the bigger reasons being that we wanted this type of skill to be able to support nodes which help cooperation with other players. With our release of Last Epoch on February 21st, Healing Hands will finally be getting its long awaited skill tree. While Healing Hands at its core offers a large amount of support, focusing on healing, one should remember that the Paladin is not a back-line player. Healing to a Paladin means more than mending wounds, but also healing the world of its evils. As such, Healing Hands offers a great deal of customization for offensive ability as well, including multiple ways to make it a directly damaging ability.
Healing Hands
As a baseline, Healing hands is an ability which casts a medium sized area of effect which heals all allies, including yourself for an immediate burst, and applies a heal over time for three seconds.
Both heals from the ability scale with Increased Healing Effectiveness, as well as the nodes on the skill tree. This grants Healing Hands not only strong immediate recovery, but also provide a fairly strong heal over time to help keep yourself and allies nice and healthy. As a Paladin, Healing Hands can offer very strong competition to even Life Leech as a source of health sustain, in addition to its specialization options.
Clerics Hammer
Clerics Hammer grants Healing Hands a chance to trigger on any melee attack, up to a 100% chance with the full four points assigned. This imbues all melee attacks to provide healing to all allies and yourself in the area. When combined with other options on the tree, this can also effectively convert any melee attack into an offensive spell melee attack, synergizing well with many of the Paladins hybrid melee and spell abilities.
Hand of Aurelus
More favorable towards ranged damage? Hand of Aurelus allows Healing Hands to instead synergize with direct Smite casts, adding its own healing area to smites. Combined with Searing Light, adding Damage to Healing Hands area of effect, Healing Hands can further augment Smite builds with the additional hit damage.
Divine Bolt
Healing Hands also adds support for Divine Bolts. By picking up the Divine Catalyst node, you will cast a number of Divine Bolts with every direct use of Healing Hands. Further, with just one point in this node, all sources of Divine Bolt will scale with the nodes in the Healing Hands tree.
Rahyehs Chariot
Healing Hands can also be converted to a Traversal ability, charging to a target location casting Healing Hands upon arrival. This adds a 6 second cooldown to Healing Hands, however, unlike Lunge, Rahyehs Chariot does not require a target to move to.
Seraph Blade
Prefer to channel your healing powers through your blade? Taking this node will convert Healing Hands into a Melee Attack. converting Spell Damage from the tree into Melee Damage. A heavy hitting melee attack which also provides strong healing, Seraph Blade embodies the strongest aspects of the Paladin Mastery.
Unbroken Prayer + Skyfall
Who doesnt like a good Sky Beam? By assigning Unbroken Prayer, converting Healing Hands into a channeled ability, you can further specialize it into Skyfall. By paying an additional mana cost each second, you will deal additional fire damage over time while channeling Healing Hands, scorching clear a path of righteousness.
Closing
Thank you for again joining us today in this coverage of the Paladins Healing Hands skill tree. Offering potential as both a support ability, a damaging ability, triggers, or direct casting, Healing Hands offers the Paladin a number of new ways to build. Healing Hands still remains available at 5 points invested into the Paladin Tree, meaning you can also pick up Healing Hands as either a Forge Guard or Void Knight should you theory-craft such a use. Tomorrow well be recapping the coverage of Item Factions, Falconer, and Warlock for all the Travelers just recently joining us, or who may have missed the previous information releases. Then on Sunday well be covering some of the new Item bases, Item Affixes, and Unique Items coming with the release of Last Epoch on February 21st!
New Enemies & Models | Coming to Last Epoch February 21st
The Void Prophet will replace the current Void Clerics. Weve also reworked this enemys abilities to make them a bit more fair. There should be far fewer Travelers suddenly evaporating in the presence of Void Prophets without clear telegraphing.
A perfect example of everything is relative, the Mildly Corrupted Cultist is replacing many of the generic cultist enemies. This enemy gives a fair representation of the common result of what happens to a humanoid when coming into contact with the Void.
Of course, the prior begs the question of relative to what? The Corrupted Cultist is the result of the continued effects of the void on humanoid victims, and comes in to replace many of the ranged Cultist Enemies throughout the Ruined Timelines.
One of the new Imperial Era enemies coming to Last Epoch, the Bone Scavenger displays some of the military might of the Immortal Empire with this ambushing pack creature.
The Bone Sculptor is another Imperial enemy which you will find in the Immortal Empires Ranks. The Bone Sculptor is a necromancer, capable of creating hordes of zombies if left unattended; Though they arent afraid to get their own hands dirty as well.
Rahyehs forces are also seeing some bolstering in the coming war with the updated Flame Paladin. On top of a brand new look, the Flame Paladin will also be bringing new abilities to the field, helping them stand out from the standard rank and file.
The release of Last Epoch will also see updates to some player minion models. Today were going to have a look at three of the updates with the Primal Scorpion, Primal Sabertooth, and Primal Raptor! We know these companions well, so for these ones, well let the updated models speak for themselves.
Alongside new enemy models, were also adding 17 new armor sets across all classes in 1.0. Rather than Set Items, Armor sets are base items which have a cohesive visual model between the armor pieces. These are all part of the base game as armor you will find while playing, not MTX (purchased microtransactions). Today we are showcasing 10 of these new Armor Sets.
Thank you for joining us for day two of the pre-patch blog posts, taking a look at some of the new enemies and models coming February 21st. We hope you enjoy these visual improvements as much as we do, as the team continues to improve on our techniques and tools, continually pushing our visual standards ever further. Join us again tomorrow as we take a look at the long awaited Skill Tree for the Paladins Ability: Healing Hand!
[ 2024-02-15 17:03:28 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome to day two of the pre-patch blog posts! In todays post were having a look at some of the new and updated enemies coming to the world of Eterra on February 21st. These enemy updates also marks the point where we have officially completed changing all models in Last Epoch to fully custom created models. This is largely a visual post showing off the new models our amazing enemy design team has put together. Get your eyes ready, and mind steeled for new horrors arriving in Eterra with the release of Last Epoch.
New Enemies
Void Prophet
The Void Prophet will replace the current Void Clerics. Weve also reworked this enemys abilities to make them a bit more fair. There should be far fewer Travelers suddenly evaporating in the presence of Void Prophets without clear telegraphing.
Mildly Corrupted Cultist
A perfect example of everything is relative, the Mildly Corrupted Cultist is replacing many of the generic cultist enemies. This enemy gives a fair representation of the common result of what happens to a humanoid when coming into contact with the Void.
Corrupted Cultist
Of course, the prior begs the question of relative to what? The Corrupted Cultist is the result of the continued effects of the void on humanoid victims, and comes in to replace many of the ranged Cultist Enemies throughout the Ruined Timelines.
Bone Scavenger
One of the new Imperial Era enemies coming to Last Epoch, the Bone Scavenger displays some of the military might of the Immortal Empire with this ambushing pack creature.
Bone Sculptor
The Bone Sculptor is another Imperial enemy which you will find in the Immortal Empires Ranks. The Bone Sculptor is a necromancer, capable of creating hordes of zombies if left unattended; Though they arent afraid to get their own hands dirty as well.
Flame Paladin
Rahyehs forces are also seeing some bolstering in the coming war with the updated Flame Paladin. On top of a brand new look, the Flame Paladin will also be bringing new abilities to the field, helping them stand out from the standard rank and file.
Companions
The release of Last Epoch will also see updates to some player minion models. Today were going to have a look at three of the updates with the Primal Scorpion, Primal Sabertooth, and Primal Raptor! We know these companions well, so for these ones, well let the updated models speak for themselves.
Primal Raptor
Primal Scorpion
Primal Sabertooth
New Armor Models
Alongside new enemy models, were also adding 17 new armor sets across all classes in 1.0. Rather than Set Items, Armor sets are base items which have a cohesive visual model between the armor pieces. These are all part of the base game as armor you will find while playing, not MTX (purchased microtransactions). Today we are showcasing 10 of these new Armor Sets.
Sentinel Armor Sets
Rogue Armor Sets
Primalist Armor Sets
Acolyte Armor Sets
Mage Armor Sets
Closing
Thank you for joining us for day two of the pre-patch blog posts, taking a look at some of the new enemies and models coming February 21st. We hope you enjoy these visual improvements as much as we do, as the team continues to improve on our techniques and tools, continually pushing our visual standards ever further. Join us again tomorrow as we take a look at the long awaited Skill Tree for the Paladins Ability: Healing Hand!
Gathering Storm and Tempest Strike Rework | Coming to Last Epoch, Feb 21st
Gathering Storm will become available to all Primalists at level 2, replacing Ice Thorns. Those who have been following our posts for a while may remember we intended to remove Ice Thorns but wanted to have a new skill to implement in its place.
Strike at your enemy with a mighty lightning powered storm. When you use Gathering Storm and hit at least one enemy, you gain a Storm Stack. Every second you expend a Storm Stack to cause a Storm Bolt to strike a nearby enemy. This interval is reduced by 2% for every stack you currently have. With higher stack counts firing off Storm Bolts at greater rates, Gathering Storm is an ability that is about pressing the attack for greater reward. By the time you reach 50 Storm Stacks, there is zero delay between consuming stacks to generate Storm Bolts, so a greater stack count is always beneficial. Gathering Storm costs zero mana by default, and inherently gains 4% increased damage per point of strength to the Melee Attack, while each point of Attunement grants it +1 spell damage for Storm Bolt.
In its tree, you will find various ways to generate, spend, and manage stacks and gain different effects from Storm Stacks. Its also worth noting that old references to the Lightning ability in the Shaman Passive tree, and some of the other abilities, have been changed to Storm Bolt. All instances of Storm Bolt use Gathering Storms Storm Bolt - even when your Primal Wolves cast it. Meaning these additional Storm Bolt triggers synergize very well with Gathering Storm to create a quite frenetic storm of lightning. Lets take a look at some of the ways you can customize Gathering Storm through its skill tree.
Frostbringer converts Gathering Storm and Storm Bolts Base Damage from Lightning to Cold, and converts Shock chance to Frostbite chance. This offers a great route for those looking for more crowd control through freeze, and damage over time with Frostbite.
With Lagonian Diplomacy and a Staff, Gathering Storm can be converted completely to a spell. Striking out with Storm Bolts directly, this node allows you to put complete focus into the spell aspects of Gathering Storm, though with an added mana cost.
What would a skill about pressing the attack be without some dual-wielding support? The Two Eyed Storm node grants your Storm Stacks the ability to strike two enemies for the price of one; so long as you have a weapon in each hand.
For those that like to synergize their builds with Minions, youll also find support for this within Gathering Storm. One such node, Whirlwind Tactics, expends a number of Storm Stacks whenever you use a Companion ability.
As we covered in Novembers Dev Blog, Tempest Strike has been reworked in functionality while keeping the same theme. Tempest Strike is now a powerful high-cost combo ability which triggers a Tempest with each strike, rather than a chance for a spell effect that it had previously.
While we talked a bit about how the skill was mechanically changing, at the time we were still making changes to the ability, and werent quite ready to show the tree for it. So today, as we are covering the new Primalist Skill, we also want to show everyone some of the new skill tree options coming to Tempest Strike.
Supporting transformations, Druids Call allows you an option to turn Tempest Strike into a melee triggered ability while transformed. Im sure theres many lightning Werebears out there who just had their ears perk up at the idea of adding another skill to the repertoire.
In Tempest Strikes tree you will find a number of nodes that allow you to sacrifice one of the Tempests in order to gain attack speed. Though do be aware, removing a Tempest does not remove the corresponding Strike. Youll also find opportunities to synergize with other abilities for further spell combos, such as with the Ceaseless Typhoon node, which grants a chance to cast Tornado each time you trigger Wind Tempest in the combo.
With the Looming Gale node, you will convert Tempest Strike into a Tempest Totem which casts the three Tempests in sequence without the melee attack. This also converts the ability into a minion ability by changing it to a totem, allowing Tempest Strike to fit into other totem and minion builds.
Just want to keep it simple and add more Tempests? Weve got you covered. Granting any of the strikes a chance to cast one of the tempests means you can lash out with multiple tempests on each strike. Pick a specific Tempest to focus on, or just trigger more of all of them, the choice is yours.
Thank you for joining us for this look at some of the updates coming to the Primalist with the new Gathering Storm ability, and reworked Tempest Strike ability. We look forward to seeing all the new Primalist, and in particular Shaman builds you all come up with. We also want to take this opportunity to provide advanced notice concerning launch preparation. To get our servers set up for release, we will be taking the servers down 24 hours prior to launch. Join us again tomorrow as we look at some of the new enemy models and animation updates weve made for 1.0 as we get ever closer to the release of Last Epoch!
[ 2024-02-14 17:00:01 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, Welcome to the first blog post of the pre-patch blog posts leading up to launch! For all the new Travelers joining us for 1.0, pre-patch blog posts occur during the week before Patch Day, in which we talk about some of the prominent features coming with the latest update. We will have a post every day, culminating in the Patch Notes on February 19th. Of course, the three most prominent features coming in 1.0 are Item Factions, the Falconer, and the Warlock; however, these are certainly not the only features arriving with our release of 1.0! Back in November, we talked about some of the updates coming with 1.0 (November Developer Blog). When covering Tempest Strike, we mentioned that the change to Tempest Strikes mechanics left a gap in the Primalist class for a low cost, spammable generator. Without further ado, and to kick off these blog posts, lets start by covering the new Primalist Skill - Gathering Storm, as well as some of the new Tempest Strike features coming February 21st.
Gathering Storm
Gathering Storm will become available to all Primalists at level 2, replacing Ice Thorns. Those who have been following our posts for a while may remember we intended to remove Ice Thorns but wanted to have a new skill to implement in its place.
Strike at your enemy with a mighty lightning powered storm. When you use Gathering Storm and hit at least one enemy, you gain a Storm Stack. Every second you expend a Storm Stack to cause a Storm Bolt to strike a nearby enemy. This interval is reduced by 2% for every stack you currently have. With higher stack counts firing off Storm Bolts at greater rates, Gathering Storm is an ability that is about pressing the attack for greater reward. By the time you reach 50 Storm Stacks, there is zero delay between consuming stacks to generate Storm Bolts, so a greater stack count is always beneficial. Gathering Storm costs zero mana by default, and inherently gains 4% increased damage per point of strength to the Melee Attack, while each point of Attunement grants it +1 spell damage for Storm Bolt.
In its tree, you will find various ways to generate, spend, and manage stacks and gain different effects from Storm Stacks. Its also worth noting that old references to the Lightning ability in the Shaman Passive tree, and some of the other abilities, have been changed to Storm Bolt. All instances of Storm Bolt use Gathering Storms Storm Bolt - even when your Primal Wolves cast it. Meaning these additional Storm Bolt triggers synergize very well with Gathering Storm to create a quite frenetic storm of lightning. Lets take a look at some of the ways you can customize Gathering Storm through its skill tree.
Frostbringer
Frostbringer converts Gathering Storm and Storm Bolts Base Damage from Lightning to Cold, and converts Shock chance to Frostbite chance. This offers a great route for those looking for more crowd control through freeze, and damage over time with Frostbite.
Ranged Spell Conversion
With Lagonian Diplomacy and a Staff, Gathering Storm can be converted completely to a spell. Striking out with Storm Bolts directly, this node allows you to put complete focus into the spell aspects of Gathering Storm, though with an added mana cost.
Dual Wielding Support
What would a skill about pressing the attack be without some dual-wielding support? The Two Eyed Storm node grants your Storm Stacks the ability to strike two enemies for the price of one; so long as you have a weapon in each hand.
Whirlwind Tactics
For those that like to synergize their builds with Minions, youll also find support for this within Gathering Storm. One such node, Whirlwind Tactics, expends a number of Storm Stacks whenever you use a Companion ability.
Tempest Strike
As we covered in Novembers Dev Blog, Tempest Strike has been reworked in functionality while keeping the same theme. Tempest Strike is now a powerful high-cost combo ability which triggers a Tempest with each strike, rather than a chance for a spell effect that it had previously.
While we talked a bit about how the skill was mechanically changing, at the time we were still making changes to the ability, and werent quite ready to show the tree for it. So today, as we are covering the new Primalist Skill, we also want to show everyone some of the new skill tree options coming to Tempest Strike.
Druids Call
Supporting transformations, Druids Call allows you an option to turn Tempest Strike into a melee triggered ability while transformed. Im sure theres many lightning Werebears out there who just had their ears perk up at the idea of adding another skill to the repertoire.
Tempest Sacrificing
In Tempest Strikes tree you will find a number of nodes that allow you to sacrifice one of the Tempests in order to gain attack speed. Though do be aware, removing a Tempest does not remove the corresponding Strike. Youll also find opportunities to synergize with other abilities for further spell combos, such as with the Ceaseless Typhoon node, which grants a chance to cast Tornado each time you trigger Wind Tempest in the combo.
Totem Support
With the Looming Gale node, you will convert Tempest Strike into a Tempest Totem which casts the three Tempests in sequence without the melee attack. This also converts the ability into a minion ability by changing it to a totem, allowing Tempest Strike to fit into other totem and minion builds.
Tempest Focus
Just want to keep it simple and add more Tempests? Weve got you covered. Granting any of the strikes a chance to cast one of the tempests means you can lash out with multiple tempests on each strike. Pick a specific Tempest to focus on, or just trigger more of all of them, the choice is yours.
Closing
Thank you for joining us for this look at some of the updates coming to the Primalist with the new Gathering Storm ability, and reworked Tempest Strike ability. We look forward to seeing all the new Primalist, and in particular Shaman builds you all come up with. We also want to take this opportunity to provide advanced notice concerning launch preparation. To get our servers set up for release, we will be taking the servers down 24 hours prior to launch. Join us again tomorrow as we look at some of the new enemy models and animation updates weve made for 1.0 as we get ever closer to the release of Last Epoch!
Last Epoch & Starforge Collaboration Giveaway
[ 2024-02-12 19:32:04 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings Travelers,
Weve got some seriously exciting news to drop Last Epoch is teaming up with Starforge Systems for an awesome collaboration, and its all thanks to you, our fantastic community! Your support has been nothing short of amazing, and its time to celebrate together. Over the next few weeks, get ready for some incredible giveaways and rewards were talking Last Epoch-themed PCs, slick cases that look like they came straight from Eterra, and Platelights to add that extra cool vibe to your gaming setup. We wanted to show our appreciation, and what better way than hooking you up with some seriously cool gear?
This collaboration is all about you, the Last Epoch community, and we cant wait to share these awesome goodies with you.
Over the next few weeks, these giveaways will be popping up on our social channels, partners spaces, and even in a few new places. To help you all get the best chance at scoring one of these amazing items, we will continue to update this thread over on our forums with the information you need!
To kick things off in a fantastic way, we are giving away one of 5 decked-out PCs. This thing will come loaded with hardware, a sick custom Last Epoch print, and 5 interchangeable platelights, so you can rock your favorite class while you slay your way across time and Eterra.
Giveaway List
Giveaway #1 - Full PC, giveaway powered by VAST.
Dates: February 12th, Winner announced March 15th.
Link: https://vast.link/Last-Epoch
Link to Forum announcement: https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/last-epoch-starforge-collaboration-giveaways-master-thread
Celebrating a Milestone - 1 Million Copies of Last Epoch Sold!
[ 2024-02-09 17:51:28 CET ] [ Original post ]
We're bursting with excitement to announce that over 1 million players have joined the Last Epoch community! This wouldn't have been possible without the incredible support of each and every one of you. From the day we launched into Early Access, you've been there with us, playing, providing feedback, crafting amazing theories, and spreading the word about Last Epoch. Your passion and dedication have fueled our drive to create the best possible game, and we are truly grateful. We know this news might not be fresh, but we were hard at work getting everything ready for 1.0 and wanted to make sure we took a moment to celebrate this achievement with you, our amazing community. Thank you to everyone who has played, theory-crafted, reported bugs, shared their experiences, and simply enjoyed Last Epoch. You are the heart and soul of this game, and we can't wait to continue this journey together as we approach 1.0 and beyond!
Last Epoch launches at 11am CST, February 21st 2024
Last Epochs 1.0 Patch will become available to download via Steam at 11 a.m. Central Standard Time (USA). If you do not see the prompt to update your copy in Steam, please restart your Steam client and check again. It could take upwards of 20 minutes for the client to see the update.
Last Epochs online services will be down for maintenance and deployment 24 hours before launch. During this time, the team will be hard at work getting everything prepped.
If you have not already linked your Twitch account, head over to the link below and get your account linked. Link: https://twitch.lastepoch.com/ Twitch Drops will unlock for content creators beginning Feb 22nd at 12:01am CST and ending on Feb 26th at 12:01am CST. Each day will feature a unique cosmetic, so be sure to tune in to a drops-enabled creator each day. The following week, you will have a second chance at scoring any missing items. You will not be able to earn duplicates of these MTX items by participating a second time however.
We have an incredible support team. These are people that work for us directly, and will be standing by to help you. If you are in-game and have support needs, please use the in-game support tool by pressing the (Esc) key, and submitting a support request that way. If you have issues with your account, Please use support.lastepoch.com - The Submit a Request button in the upper right corner is a live and supported item. Please know that we expect to get a massive influx of support requests, and we will be doing our best to knock those out as they come in. If you jump on Discord or Reddit or comment on your issues in random places throughout our social spaces, we will not have the resources to utilize those spaces for direct support during our launch. We will not tolerate any amount of abuse of our support staff. It pains me that I have to say this, but please know that our community guides, codes of conduct, and terms of service apply to our support staff as well. If you are found to have been verbally abusive to our support staff, we reserve the right to revoke your access to online play. Enjoy the Game! Last on the list of things to remember. Have fun! Last Epoch is a world for you to dive into and slay your way to victory! We look forward to seeing you in game at 11am CST on Feb 21st, 2024!
[ 2024-02-02 19:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings Travelers, Here is the timeline of what to expect with the launch Last Epoch 1.0 starting on February 21st and leading through the weekend!
Launch Time - Day 1
Last Epochs 1.0 Patch will become available to download via Steam at 11 a.m. Central Standard Time (USA). If you do not see the prompt to update your copy in Steam, please restart your Steam client and check again. It could take upwards of 20 minutes for the client to see the update.
Online Version Downtime
Last Epochs online services will be down for maintenance and deployment 24 hours before launch. During this time, the team will be hard at work getting everything prepped.
Twitch Drops Begin - Day 2
If you have not already linked your Twitch account, head over to the link below and get your account linked. Link: https://twitch.lastepoch.com/ Twitch Drops will unlock for content creators beginning Feb 22nd at 12:01am CST and ending on Feb 26th at 12:01am CST. Each day will feature a unique cosmetic, so be sure to tune in to a drops-enabled creator each day. The following week, you will have a second chance at scoring any missing items. You will not be able to earn duplicates of these MTX items by participating a second time however.
Support Needs
We have an incredible support team. These are people that work for us directly, and will be standing by to help you. If you are in-game and have support needs, please use the in-game support tool by pressing the (Esc) key, and submitting a support request that way. If you have issues with your account, Please use support.lastepoch.com - The Submit a Request button in the upper right corner is a live and supported item. Please know that we expect to get a massive influx of support requests, and we will be doing our best to knock those out as they come in. If you jump on Discord or Reddit or comment on your issues in random places throughout our social spaces, we will not have the resources to utilize those spaces for direct support during our launch. We will not tolerate any amount of abuse of our support staff. It pains me that I have to say this, but please know that our community guides, codes of conduct, and terms of service apply to our support staff as well. If you are found to have been verbally abusive to our support staff, we reserve the right to revoke your access to online play. Enjoy the Game! Last on the list of things to remember. Have fun! Last Epoch is a world for you to dive into and slay your way to victory! We look forward to seeing you in game at 11am CST on Feb 21st, 2024!
Last Epoch Deluxe and Ultimate Editions
Of course, we should start by explaining these Editions and how to get them. We have an excellent little comparison graphic which shows what youll get with each of the editions:
(Please note, cosmetics are not available in offline mode.) You can also get a pretty good look at what these cosmetics look like on our website by hovering over each of the inclusions in the pack comparison. These all use the MTXs in-engine renders in an effort to display the cosmetics as accurately as possible. These Editions can be purchased directly through Steam or the in-game MTX Shop. In game you can open the MTX shop either through the flyout menu, or with the default shortcut of Shift+K and select Pre-order Editions at the top.
When purchasing through Steam, its important to note that there is a section for Packages which include this game and Content for this game. If you already own Last Epoch and want to purchase one of the Editions, we recommend the Upgrade options rather than the full packages, as the full package will not grant an additional game key.
One of the questions we saw come up, was Why are some of the items listed as being available at 1.0 instead of right away?. The reason for this is that the cosmetics have been developed using new character rigs and lighting systems coming in with 1.0, so we cant add them until all the underlying changes are added as well. Currently we dont have an option to upgrade from a Deluxe Edition to an Ultimate Edition at only the difference of cost, however were looking into routes for adding this capability. If you already own Last Epoch, or purchase any Edition of Last Epoch - Standard, Deluxe, or Ultimate before 1.0, youll also get the Golden Guppy cosmetic pet! This is the only part of the Editions that is exclusive to the pre-order and will go away once 1.0 drops February 21st.
It is important to note that Editions are separate from Supporter Packs. One of the big distinctions between these Editions and Supporter packs is that the Deluxe and Ultimate Editions will always be available for the Last Epoch and can be upgraded at any time (however, the Golden Guppy is only available if you pre-order before Feb 21st). Supporter packs are packs that get changed out with cycles. With this, we also want to confirm a few details regarding how we plan to handle Supporter Packs. To start with, Though Editions are separate from Supporter Packs; we will not be offering additional supporter packs on top of Editions with 1.0. The current supporter packs will continue to be available through to Last Epoch Patch 1.2. We dont have a date at this point for 1.2, even a very loose one, as 1.1 would come first, and right now, were still focused on 1.0. However, we will provide at least 30 days notice before any supporter pack is removed from availability, and we will also try to ensure theres an overlap of supporter packs, allowing for as much choice as possible. This does mean that unlike Editions, Supporter packs will not be available forever. Part of what a supporter pack is, is something that says, I was here when [], much similar to gift shop souvenirs. However, at the same time, we want to balance that I was here exclusiveness with fairness by providing multiple cycles for packs to be available and ensuring multiple options are available.
If you havent already, now is the best time to pickup a copy of Last Epoch by grabbing one of the editions here: Last Epoch on Steam If you are one of the amazing people that has already purchase Last Epoch the base game, and would love to continue to support the studio, then definitely consider upgrading your edition today as well! Last Epoch Deluxe UPGRADE: Last Epoch - Deluxe UPGRADE Last Epoch Ultimate UPGRADE: Last Epoch - Ultimate UPGRADE Thats all for today talking about the Editions and Supporter packs. Of course if you have any questions we will continue answering them as best we can while we continue preparing for 1.0 in just over a month! We look forward to seeing the Warlock reveal starting later this week over on Icy-veins.com, when all sorts of curtains get pulled back, and hope to see many of you there!
[ 2024-01-24 16:19:19 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers!
As many of you may have noticed, with Last Fridays Release Trailer Announcement, we also announced the release of two new Editions for Last Epoch! The new Deluxe and Ultimate editions are available both in-game and through Steam and offer a bunch of our latest cosmetics for a great value!
https://lastepoch.com/pre-order
Today, we wanted to spend a short amount of time discussing these new editions and answering some of the most common questions we saw over the weekend regarding both them and supporter packs in general.
New Editions
Of course, we should start by explaining these Editions and how to get them. We have an excellent little comparison graphic which shows what youll get with each of the editions:
(Please note, cosmetics are not available in offline mode.) You can also get a pretty good look at what these cosmetics look like on our website by hovering over each of the inclusions in the pack comparison. These all use the MTXs in-engine renders in an effort to display the cosmetics as accurately as possible. These Editions can be purchased directly through Steam or the in-game MTX Shop. In game you can open the MTX shop either through the flyout menu, or with the default shortcut of Shift+K and select Pre-order Editions at the top.
When purchasing through Steam, its important to note that there is a section for Packages which include this game and Content for this game. If you already own Last Epoch and want to purchase one of the Editions, we recommend the Upgrade options rather than the full packages, as the full package will not grant an additional game key.
One of the questions we saw come up, was Why are some of the items listed as being available at 1.0 instead of right away?. The reason for this is that the cosmetics have been developed using new character rigs and lighting systems coming in with 1.0, so we cant add them until all the underlying changes are added as well. Currently we dont have an option to upgrade from a Deluxe Edition to an Ultimate Edition at only the difference of cost, however were looking into routes for adding this capability. If you already own Last Epoch, or purchase any Edition of Last Epoch - Standard, Deluxe, or Ultimate before 1.0, youll also get the Golden Guppy cosmetic pet! This is the only part of the Editions that is exclusive to the pre-order and will go away once 1.0 drops February 21st.
Editions and Supporter Packs
It is important to note that Editions are separate from Supporter Packs. One of the big distinctions between these Editions and Supporter packs is that the Deluxe and Ultimate Editions will always be available for the Last Epoch and can be upgraded at any time (however, the Golden Guppy is only available if you pre-order before Feb 21st). Supporter packs are packs that get changed out with cycles. With this, we also want to confirm a few details regarding how we plan to handle Supporter Packs. To start with, Though Editions are separate from Supporter Packs; we will not be offering additional supporter packs on top of Editions with 1.0. The current supporter packs will continue to be available through to Last Epoch Patch 1.2. We dont have a date at this point for 1.2, even a very loose one, as 1.1 would come first, and right now, were still focused on 1.0. However, we will provide at least 30 days notice before any supporter pack is removed from availability, and we will also try to ensure theres an overlap of supporter packs, allowing for as much choice as possible. This does mean that unlike Editions, Supporter packs will not be available forever. Part of what a supporter pack is, is something that says, I was here when [], much similar to gift shop souvenirs. However, at the same time, we want to balance that I was here exclusiveness with fairness by providing multiple cycles for packs to be available and ensuring multiple options are available.
Closing
If you havent already, now is the best time to pickup a copy of Last Epoch by grabbing one of the editions here: Last Epoch on Steam If you are one of the amazing people that has already purchase Last Epoch the base game, and would love to continue to support the studio, then definitely consider upgrading your edition today as well! Last Epoch Deluxe UPGRADE: Last Epoch - Deluxe UPGRADE Last Epoch Ultimate UPGRADE: Last Epoch - Ultimate UPGRADE Thats all for today talking about the Editions and Supporter packs. Of course if you have any questions we will continue answering them as best we can while we continue preparing for 1.0 in just over a month! We look forward to seeing the Warlock reveal starting later this week over on Icy-veins.com, when all sorts of curtains get pulled back, and hope to see many of you there!
Launch Trailer: Echoes from the Void
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/990898/
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/990899/ As for the Deluxe and Ultimate Editions, these are absolutely jam-packed with incredible cosmetics and offer phenomenal value. Last Epoch leaves Early Access and Launches into 1.0 on Wednesday, February 21st, 2024. Grab an edition, and jump into Last Epoch today!
[ 2024-01-19 19:22:59 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! [previewyoutube=esrO1CocQ9w;full][/previewyoutube] Today, we are thrilled to showcase the Last Epoch 1.0 Launch Trailer: Echoes from the Void, and the opening of our updated Pre-Order Editions. Our Launch Trailer, Echoes from the Void, is the mysterious response to [Eterras CGI Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGwBxbOcLns). Along with the 1.0 Trailer Launch, we are proud to showcase our Deluxe and Ultimate editions, available for purchase now! Starting today and up to 1.0 Launch on February 21st, anyone who purchases, or has purchased, any edition of Last Epoch will get the exclusive Golden Guppy Baby Chronowyrm cosmetic pet. You read that right; if you already own Last Epoch, you will soon see the Baby Chronowyrm in your cosmetics inventory! If you already own Last Epoch and would like to score one of these editions without purchasing the game again, you can do so right here.
Deluxe Upgrade:
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/990898/
Ultimate Upgrade:
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/990899/ As for the Deluxe and Ultimate Editions, these are absolutely jam-packed with incredible cosmetics and offer phenomenal value. Last Epoch leaves Early Access and Launches into 1.0 on Wednesday, February 21st, 2024. Grab an edition, and jump into Last Epoch today!
Trade & Item Factions
Your first opportunity to join either The Merchants Guild or Circle of Fortune comes with your arrival to the Upper District of the great mercantile city, MajElka. Here, Zerrick will introduce you to both Factions and provide you the opportunity to take a look at what each has to offer. Upon selecting either Merchants Guild or Circle of Fortune, you will be guided to the Factions Central Hub: The Bazaar or The Observatory, respectively. Well dive into what each of these hubs offers below. However, lets first cover what it means to join a faction and some universal mechanics that are shared between both factions. [h2=item-faction-panel]Item Faction Panel
With the introduction of Item Factions, youll have access to a new panel in the UI that allows you to view details about your faction. By default, this panel can be accessed by using the Y key, or through the main flyout options next to your mana globe at the bottom of the screen.
On this panel, you will find all sorts of information concerning your current Faction including your current amount of Favor, your current Faction Rank and progress to the next Rank, details on what benefits you currently have from the faction, and in the case of Circle of Fortune, details for any current prophecies you have. You will also find the button to allow you to leave your current faction if you so choose and a quick button to bring you to your factions central hub. [h2=rank-reputation]Rank & Reputation
Your Rank with a Faction determines what benefits that faction is willing to offer you. To gain access to more powerful benefits, youll need to gain Reputation to increase your Rank with them through two different ways. The first is by gaining experience, such as by defeating enemies and completing quests while aligned with them. Just by going about your adventure, you will passively build Reputation with your current faction. However, for a larger boost of Reputation, youll need to participate in the Factions core mechanic. This means completing trades when aligned with the Merchants Guild or fulfilling prophecies with the Circle of Fortune.
Your reputation with a faction is never lost or spent and is also shared across your account in that game mode. This means if you rank up one character to Circle of Fortune Rank 7 on Hardcore Cycle, any of your Hardcore Cycle characters upon joining Circle of Fortune will both share and contribute to that same Rank progression. Characters in a different game mode, such as Solo Challenge, or Standard Cycle, do have their reputation separated in the same way the player Item Stash is. There are a total of 10 Ranks to achieve with either faction. Obtaining Rank ten with a faction will take some time, so while you have the freedom to change your faction at any time, youll want to find your preferred faction and stick with it to reach the most potent benefits. [h2=favor]Favor
Favor is your primary currency with the Factions. Separate from Reputation, Favor is the currency you will use to interact with the Faction mechanics, and grants Reputation when spent. With the Merchants Guild, you will need Favor to list an item to sell, or to purchase an item. With Circle of Fortune, you will need Favor to acquire Prophecies. Favor can only be earned by slaying enemies and completing quests. The amount of Favor you gain with kills depends on the experience the enemy gives, so as you push further in the game, youll find yourself earning more Favor to purchase greater rewards with your Faction.
If you find yourself in a position where you have excess favor, you can spend it with a Faction Vendor. [h2=rank-requirements]Item Faction Rank Requirements
As a member of an Item Faction, you will find many items which will have an attached Faction Rank Requirement. This can be found at the bottom of the item tooltip. For Merchants Guild, items will gain a Faction Rank Requirement when purchased through the Bazaar, or via player-to-player trade. The Rank Requirement on the tooltip of a Merchants Guild item will typically match the rank required to trade that particular item. So if you purchase a rank 4 Idol through the Bazaar, you will need to be at least Rank 4 with the Merchants Guild in order to equip that idol. The exception to this rule would be with Legendary items. If you purchase a Unique weapon with LP at rank 6, and create a Legendary with it, it will retain its Rank 6 requirement rather than increasing to Rank 8 (the rank required to sell and purchase legendary weapons). Where if you were to directly purchase a Legendary weapon, it would have a Rank 8 requirement on the item.
For Circle of Fortune, items obtained from benefits of the Faction will have a Faction Requirement. Most items that drop for you will be influenced by your Faction benefits, and thus youll find a Faction Requirement on most dropped items you find. As your various Faction benefits can influence the item in many ways, the Rank Requirement to equip the item will be based on your current Circle of Fortune Rank at the time the item drops, while never exceeding it. The maximum Circle of Fortune Faction Requirement is Rank 5. Items with Faction Rank Requirements require that you actively be in that faction to meet the requirements. For instance: You initially join Circle of Fortune, reach rank 4, and have an item which requires Circle of Fortune Rank 2. You then change to Merchants Guild. Even though if you swap back to Circle of Fortune you would still be Rank 4, you will not be able to equip that item unless you do swap back to Circle of Fortune. [h2=faction-vendors]Faction Vendors
Both Merchants Guild and Circle of Fortune members will be able to trade favor in exchange for a rewards. For those familiar with the Gambler Artem, youll find Faction Vendors share some similarities and some differences. Faction Vendors sell items with base item types exclusive to your Faction, and can generate Exalted items. Item Faction item types can be powerful early on as you gain access to them, but will be outpaced by endgame item types to prevent FOMO from faction selection. Circle of Fortune members can also purchase Lenses from their Faction Vendor, which well get to in the Circle of Fortune section.
Faction Gambling can be accessed by speaking to your Faction Leader found near the waypoint in your Faction Hub and selecting Browse Faction Wares. Youll also gain Reputation with your faction by spending Favor with your Faction Vendor. [h2=gifting-faction-items]Gifting Faction Items
Items that have a Faction Rank requirement follow the same rules for gifting as all items. To gift an item to another player, youll need to be playing in a party with that player, and the other player will need to be present when the item drops. Alternatively you can use a relevant Resonance to make the item eligible to be gifted. Gifting items does not incur any favor or gold cost and simply gives an item to another player, theres no exchange. Its important to keep in mind that while any equipable item can be gifted, the recipient of the item will still need to meet the item requirements, including the Faction Requirements, to be able to equip the item. [h1=mg]Merchants Guild
In the words of Nama, The Merchants Guild is a ship guiding you through the seas of trade in the Bazaar. The Merchants Guild offers the power of Trade. Players around the world visit the Bazaar to offer their items to trade, so finding the right item for you becomes as simple as speaking to the right person - and having the right currency. Your Rank with the Merchants Guild will determine what kind of trades youll be entrusted with. Meaning with more Reputation comes the opportunity to both obtain and sell more powerful and sought-after items.
By selecting to learn more about the Merchants Guild, you will be directed to the Bazaar, located just north of the MajElka city center. Bustling with trade carts, merchants, and stalls of all kinds, even the rarest of items in Eterra can be found within the stalls of the Bazaar for a price. In the Bazaar, you will find numerous stalls, each dedicated to a specific equipment type. The complete list of item types that will be able to be traded through the Bazaar are Helmets, Amulets, All weapon and off-hand item types, Rings, Belts, Gloves, Boots, Relics, and Idols. If it can be equipped, it can be bought and sold assuming you are trusted enough with the Guild to conduct the trade. There are some limitations, however, on buying and selling items in the Bazaar. Firstly, The merchants Guild only trades in worldly wares. This means if an item has been dropped through the providence of the Circle of Fortune, it cannot be traded. The Guild views these items as bound to their owners, and will not facilitate their trade. Secondly, The Merchants Guild maintains control over their economy by marking any items which pass through the hands of Merchants. Trade is a sacred and permanent exchange in the eyes of the Guild. After youve purchased an item from the Merchants Guild, it cannot be traded again. Thirdly, you must have built up enough Reputation with the Merchants Guild to deal in a particular item type or rarity. Not every street urchin can be trusted with the exchange of high-level goods. Finally, you will need sufficient Favor to participate in the trade to prove to the Merchants Guild that you are an active merchant in the world and are not just seeking to benefit from their hard work. [h2=mg-rank-rewards]Rank Rewards
(note: subject to change with feedback) Rank 1: Trade Basic Items. You can buy and sell Normal, Magic, and Rare items in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 2: Trade Set Items. You can buy and sell Set Items in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 3: Trade Specific Unique Items. You can buy and sell Unique items with no Legendary Potential in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 4: Trade Idols. You can buy and sell Idols in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 5: Trade Exalted Weapons. You can buy and sell Exalted Weapons in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 6: Trade Unique Weapons. You can buy and sell Unique Weapons with Legendary Potential in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 7: Trade All Exalted Items. You can buy and sell all Exalted items in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 8: Trade All Unique Items: You can buy and sell all Unique items - including those with Legendary Potential - in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 9: Trade Legendary Weapons: You can buy and sell Legendary Weapons in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 10: Trade All Legendary Items. You can buy and sell all Legendary items in the Bazaar or directly with other players. [h2=mg-buying-items]Buying Items
To buy items through the Merchants Guild, youll need to start by visiting the Bazaar just north of MajElka in the Divine Era after joining the Merchants Guild. Upon arrival, you will see numerous stalls marked on the map with an icon representing what type of item you can find at that stall. Speaking to the Stall Vendor will open the Bazaar search window. This will list all items currently for sale from Players all across the world who are participating in the same game mode, such as Hardcore Cycle. We wanted to ensure there was no obfuscation and unnecessary limitations with searching the Bazaar, so you will find a robust suite of search tools to help you refine your search for precisely the type of items you want to find. We also want to make sure theres no guesswork with what youre buying, so weve tried to make the UI for each item clearly display all the important item information, including all implicits, affixes, Forging Potential, Legendary Potential, Equip Requirements, and anything else you could want to know about the item. With the Bazaar, we wanted to make sure players have all the power they need to find what theyre looking for, so youll find options here you wont find in the Loot Filter, such as refining your search by amount of Forging Potential, or Weavers Will value. Weve also updated our Affix list to only show affixes applicable to the item, and well be rolling out this change to Loot Filters as well making finding the right affixes even easier.
Once you find the item you want, youll first need to make sure you have what you need to purchase the item, including Faction Rank, Favor Cost, and the amount of Gold the seller is asking for. So long as you meet these requirements, simply hover the item, Select Buy and youll get a final confirmation to purchase the item. Once you confirm the purchase, the item will instantly appear in your inventory, or Gift Inventory if full, ready to equip! [h2=mg-selling-items]Selling Items
To sell items through the Merchants Guild, youll want to start by visiting your personal stall. This can be accessed through any vendor in the Bazaar north of MajElka in the Divine Era and selecting My Stall on the right side of the window, or by speaking to Kubra and selecting Open my Stall. With your stall open, youll be able to view all of your currently listed items, as well as previous sales youve made. To list a new item select List an Item on the right hand of the window, which will open a small window to insert an item to sell, as well as your inventory to pull items from. To list any item, you will first need to meet the Rank requirement for that item. Upon placing an item into the window, the Merchants Guild will automatically assign a Favor cost to list the item based on the item quality, list the required rank, and provide you an input box to enter your asking price for the item. The Merchants Guild doesnt take a cut of any profits, so the Asking Price is what another player will need to pay to buy the item, and you will get the full asking price upon sale.
When viewing your Stall, you can also un-list any item by hovering over it, and selecting unlist. Its also worth clarifying while our previous overview of the Merchants Guild mentioned a limit to how many items you can list at a time based on your rank, that restriction has now been removed. Once an item has successfully sold, you can visit your stall in the Bazaar at any time to redeem the gold from the sale. [h1=cof]Circle of Fortune
The Stars Guide our Fate is the fundamental creed of the Circle of Fortune. While some see the power of coin, others dedicate themselves to intimately knowing the shape and nature of the heavens, and through it, to know the same of their future. Rather than relying on commerce to fuel their item acquisition, members of The Circle of Fortune will gain powerful benefits to their potential to find items. With access to Prophecies, they will gain the ability to peer into their future and find precisely where certain treasures await. By choosing to align with the Circle of Fortune you will be directed to visit the Observatory, located in northern MajElka in the Divine Era. The Observatory serves as the Circle of Fortunes primary hub. Here you will find your Faction Leaders and various Telescopes for observing the heavens which allow you to trade Favor for Prophecies. While much power can be found in acquiring Prophecies, The Circle of Fortune also grants exceptionally powerful passive bonuses to your item-finding abilities as you rank up your reputation with them.
Items you acquire as a Circle of Fortune member will have been guided by the stars, and as such will drop with a Faction Rank Requirement. While this requirement on items dropped for you will never exceed your current rank and is never higher than 5, it is important to note that these items cannot be traded, and when gifted the recipient must meet the rank requirement to equip the item. [h2=cof-rank-rewards]Rank Rewards
(note: subject to change with feedback) Rank 1: Enemy Item Drop Chance. Enemies have a 35% chance of dropping twice as many items. Rank 2: Upgraded Rune of Ascendance. 45% chance for Runes of Ascendance to be preserved when used on an item that requires at least Circle of Fortune Rank 1. Rank 3: Idol Drop Chance. Whenever an Idol drops, there is a 25% chance for two more to drop at the same time Rank 4: Exalted Affix Chance. Affixes are 50% more likely to be Exalted Rank 5: Monolith Echo Reward Upgrade. 35% chance for double rewards from Monolith Echoes Rank 6: Legendary Potential Chance. Uniques are twice as likely to have Legendary Potential Rank 7: T7 Affix Chance. T7 Affixes are twice as common. Rank 8: Rare to Exalted Chance. Items that would drop as Rare above level 44 have a 25% chance of becoming Exalted. Rank 9: Full Set Drop Chance. When a Set item would drop, the whole set drops instead. Rank 10: Prophecy Reward Upgrade. Items from Prophecies are duplicated. [h1=cof-prophecies]Prophecies
Prophecies are pseudo-items which can be purchased in the Observatory that cause certain item drops, or increase the odds of higher tier affixes being generated on an item when you complete the requirements listed on the Prophecy. To acquire Prophecies, start by visiting the Observatory located north of the MajElka town center in the Divine Era. Here in the Observatory, you will find four Telescopes looking North (Arctus), East (Eos), West (Dysis), and South (Mesembria). Each telescope offers Prophecies for specific item types: Armor, Weapons, Idols and Crafting materials, and Accessories, respectively.
Upon peering through a telescope, you will observe a constellation with randomly generated prophecies represented by its stars. By hovering over one of the stars, you can see details regarding the specific prophecy including the Favor Cost, the event which will trigger the prophecy, any special conditions for the prophecy, and what the prophecy will reward upon completion. The more powerful a Prophecy, the more Favor it will cost to obtain. You can view all of your current prophecies in your Faction window, accessed through the Y key by default. You can have a maximum of 48 active prophecies at any given time. Prophecies can also be discarded through the Faction panel. [h3=cof-prophecy-events]Prophecy Events
The Prophecy Event will outline what particular event needs to occur in order for the Prophecy to trigger. Some example events are Death of Chronomancer Julra, Death of an Arena Champion, Death of X number of rare enemies, or Death of X number of siege golems. [h3=cof-prophecy-conditions]Prophecy Conditions
The Prophecy Condition will outline any additional conditions that need to be met for the Prophecy to trigger. Not all prophecies have extra conditions, though as you progress to higher ranks youll find them to be more common. Some example Conditions are Monolith, Lightless Arbor, Fall of the Outcasts Timeline, or 320 Corruption. [h3=cof-prophecy-rewards]Prophecy Rewards
Fairly straightforward, this is what kind of reward will drop for you upon completing the Prophecy. Some example rewards are: X number of Rare Body Armors, X number of Exalted Amulets, Unique Weapon, or Unique Amulet (minimum 1LP) [h2=cof-lenses]Lenses
Lenses offer a method to modify your telescopes in the Observatory to further refine what kind of Prophecies you can discover. Like Item Factions themselves, Lenses have been added to the Observatory in response to Community Feedback from our Community Tester Program!
Lenses are items which can be purchased from your Faction Vendor, and then slotted into a telescope. Lenses are permanent items, so once you purchase a lens, you can slot it into a telescope, remove it, and store it like any other item - they are not consumable. Each telescope is equipped with three lens slots, unlocked at Circle of Fortune Ranks two, five, and nine. When you view the Faction shop, you will find two tabs listing lenses; Regional Lenses and Greater Lenses. Regional lenses are lenses which are specific to one telescope. For instance, an Eos Telescope Lens can only be fitted onto the Eos Telescope, and has a modifier specific to Weapon Prophecies (which the Eos Telescope Provides). Greater Lenses can be slotted into any telescope. You can add multiple of the same Lens to a telescope for an additive effect. To help get a better idea of these lenses, lets take a quick look at what some of the Lenses offer.
Focusing Lens of Idols: 15% Increased chance per rank to find Large Idols Enhancing Lens of the Unmatched: 15% increased chance per rank to find Unique Items Obscuring Lens of Battle: 100% Reduced chance for Prophecies to have Arena Events You may notice theres four types of modifiers here: Lenses which increase the chance for certain item types, Lenses which increase the chance for certain item rarities, Lenses which block certain Prophecy Activities, and finally Lenses which modify favor cost for specific Prophecy effects. This offers a lot of power to customize the randomness of prophecies and focus them on the types of items you want, as well as the activities you want to do. Theres also room for more types of Lenses to add in the future, though these will be the four types available with 1.0.
Rank 2: Unlock Increased Chance of Specific Item Type Prophecy Lenses for purchase, Unlock First Lens Slot Rank 3: Unlock Block Activity Type Lenses for purchase Rank 4: Unlock Increased chance of specific Item Rarity Prophecy Lenses for purchase Rank 5: Unlock Block High Corruption (50+) Lenses for purchase. Unlock Second Lens Slot. Rank 7: Unlock Special Greater Lens Prophecies cost 80% more Favor and have twice as many uses Rank 8: Unlock Special Greater Lens Prophecies cost 90% more Favor and have double rewards-type Rank 9: Unlock Third Lens Slot. [h1=resonances]Resonances
While resonances are technically separate from the Item Faction system, because we had mentioned them in the original Developer Blog regarding Item Factions, we felt it only makes sense to talk about them here! So lets talk a bit about Resonances with 1.0.
Resonances are a new item type which drop when youve played alongside a player for an extended period of time. Using a Resonance on an item will enable it to be gifted to that player even if they were not present when the item dropped. When a Resonance drops, it will drop with the player name in the item card to show who it enables gifting with. As you may notice from this example label, there are different types of Resonances: Obsidian Resonances, which are required for Legendary and Exalted Items, and Golden Resonances, which are required for Unique, Set, Rare, Magic, or Normal quality items. Upon picking up a Resonance, it is placed in your inventory, and will be stored into your Gifting Inventory when you Store Crafting Materials. Once stored, when you open a gifting window to a player, you will have a flyout menu to select a resonance to use for the Gift. Resonances are consumable, so pay heed to when you decide to use them!
One of the big questions we often see about resonances is How long is an extended period of time?. The answer is. it depends. The amount of time required to have a Resonance drop is slightly random, though Golden Resonances will be more common than Obsidian Resonances. We also want to make sure resonances arent used for pseudo-trading as a way to bypass the Merchants Guild requirements to trade items, so you can expect these drops to be fairly infrequent. At the current time we dont want to share exactly what the time range is, however well of course be watching feedback and adjusting it based on how people feel about them, as well as how theyre being used. [h1=closing]Closing
Thank you everyone for joining us for this deep dive into the upcoming Item Faction system, available with Last Epoch 1.0 on February 21st! If weve left any questions unanswered, please ask away in the forums below, or on our Official Discord server at discord.gg/lastepoch and we would be happy to answer! For more upcoming information, make sure to keep an eye on Icy-Veins.com starting January 25th as they dive into details regarding the Warlock Mastery, and Maxroll.gg on February 8th as they dive into the Falconer, then back to us in the days leading up to February 21st as we talk about some of the other features coming with our big 1.0 release. We hope youre as excited as we are, and well see you there!
[ 2024-01-11 17:00:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome to our deep dive into our Trade and Item Faction systems arriving February 21st, 2024, with the Full Release of Last Epoch! Weve got many exciting features to share with you today.
While we feel confident in what we are sharing with you today, these systems are being actively tested in our Community Testing program, and the details below are still subject to balance changes.
[previewyoutube=SOo0Ule6dNY;full][/previewyoutube]
[h1="a-brief-history"]A Brief History
From the launch of our Kickstarter campaign, we knew we wanted Trade to be part of the Last Epoch community, and through our time creating the world of Eterra we went through many discussions and iterations of how a trade system could exist.
As many of you know, balancing a trade system is one of the most challenging issues to tackle in a loot-based game, as it drastically impacts the item hunt for all players. Many players do not want to play an ARPG unless there is a trade economy that gives additional value to their items and enables them to create builds more reliably. Many other players voice that a trade economy ruins their enjoyment of the item hunt and dont want to participate in those types of systems at all. While Last Epoch does offer a solo challenge mode which does mean all items are found by yourself, it also limits co-op.
After polling the community and receiving thousands of responses we found that these two camps of players are divided shockingly close to 50/50.
On December 22nd of 2022, we announced our plans for the Item Gifting System as our version of trade. This was designed to fulfill what we felt was the core necessity to trade, to be able to share items with friends youre playing with, while protecting the itemization systems we had built elsewhere in Last Epoch. Thankfully, our community was great enough to let us know that we needed to do more. So we got to work.
After many design meetings and conversations with the community, Item Factions began to take shape - what we feel is a unique and exciting solution to the trade debate in ARPGs - a solution not seen before, and which we believe satisfies both sides of the conversation. Item Factions holds a place of pride for us, as its a direct showing of what can be accomplished when working closely with our community.
So the very first thing we want to do when discussing item factions is to say this: Thank You. Thank you for being part of our community, being involved in the future of Last Epoch, and continuing to push us to innovate and drive Last Epoch forward to become a great ARPG we can all enjoy.
[h1=what-are-item-factions]What Are Item Factions?
One of the most common suggestions we received - and what other games have tried - was to have different cycles for trade or trade-free. This solution wouldnt work for us as it would mean dividing the player base away from each other, increasing overhead for itemization, and balancing what would be effectively two games. So, the question became: how can we implement two different ways to find and acquire items without creating a division within the community?
The answer? Item Factions. A fully integrated solution into the lore and mechanics of Last Epoch, allowing players to make a meaningful and rewarding choice in how they want to empower their loot hunt in Eterra.
On February 21st, within the world of Eterra you will find two Item Factions:
- Merchants Guild - grants the ability to trade items with other players through the Bazaar, and player-to-player
- Circle of Fortune - grants boosts to items you find yourself through Prophecies, and passive bonuses
Your first opportunity to join either The Merchants Guild or Circle of Fortune comes with your arrival to the Upper District of the great mercantile city, MajElka. Here, Zerrick will introduce you to both Factions and provide you the opportunity to take a look at what each has to offer. Upon selecting either Merchants Guild or Circle of Fortune, you will be guided to the Factions Central Hub: The Bazaar or The Observatory, respectively. Well dive into what each of these hubs offers below. However, lets first cover what it means to join a faction and some universal mechanics that are shared between both factions. [h2=item-faction-panel]Item Faction Panel
With the introduction of Item Factions, youll have access to a new panel in the UI that allows you to view details about your faction. By default, this panel can be accessed by using the Y key, or through the main flyout options next to your mana globe at the bottom of the screen.
On this panel, you will find all sorts of information concerning your current Faction including your current amount of Favor, your current Faction Rank and progress to the next Rank, details on what benefits you currently have from the faction, and in the case of Circle of Fortune, details for any current prophecies you have. You will also find the button to allow you to leave your current faction if you so choose and a quick button to bring you to your factions central hub. [h2=rank-reputation]Rank & Reputation
Your Rank with a Faction determines what benefits that faction is willing to offer you. To gain access to more powerful benefits, youll need to gain Reputation to increase your Rank with them through two different ways. The first is by gaining experience, such as by defeating enemies and completing quests while aligned with them. Just by going about your adventure, you will passively build Reputation with your current faction. However, for a larger boost of Reputation, youll need to participate in the Factions core mechanic. This means completing trades when aligned with the Merchants Guild or fulfilling prophecies with the Circle of Fortune.
Your reputation with a faction is never lost or spent and is also shared across your account in that game mode. This means if you rank up one character to Circle of Fortune Rank 7 on Hardcore Cycle, any of your Hardcore Cycle characters upon joining Circle of Fortune will both share and contribute to that same Rank progression. Characters in a different game mode, such as Solo Challenge, or Standard Cycle, do have their reputation separated in the same way the player Item Stash is. There are a total of 10 Ranks to achieve with either faction. Obtaining Rank ten with a faction will take some time, so while you have the freedom to change your faction at any time, youll want to find your preferred faction and stick with it to reach the most potent benefits. [h2=favor]Favor
Favor is your primary currency with the Factions. Separate from Reputation, Favor is the currency you will use to interact with the Faction mechanics, and grants Reputation when spent. With the Merchants Guild, you will need Favor to list an item to sell, or to purchase an item. With Circle of Fortune, you will need Favor to acquire Prophecies. Favor can only be earned by slaying enemies and completing quests. The amount of Favor you gain with kills depends on the experience the enemy gives, so as you push further in the game, youll find yourself earning more Favor to purchase greater rewards with your Faction.
If you find yourself in a position where you have excess favor, you can spend it with a Faction Vendor. [h2=rank-requirements]Item Faction Rank Requirements
As a member of an Item Faction, you will find many items which will have an attached Faction Rank Requirement. This can be found at the bottom of the item tooltip. For Merchants Guild, items will gain a Faction Rank Requirement when purchased through the Bazaar, or via player-to-player trade. The Rank Requirement on the tooltip of a Merchants Guild item will typically match the rank required to trade that particular item. So if you purchase a rank 4 Idol through the Bazaar, you will need to be at least Rank 4 with the Merchants Guild in order to equip that idol. The exception to this rule would be with Legendary items. If you purchase a Unique weapon with LP at rank 6, and create a Legendary with it, it will retain its Rank 6 requirement rather than increasing to Rank 8 (the rank required to sell and purchase legendary weapons). Where if you were to directly purchase a Legendary weapon, it would have a Rank 8 requirement on the item.
For Circle of Fortune, items obtained from benefits of the Faction will have a Faction Requirement. Most items that drop for you will be influenced by your Faction benefits, and thus youll find a Faction Requirement on most dropped items you find. As your various Faction benefits can influence the item in many ways, the Rank Requirement to equip the item will be based on your current Circle of Fortune Rank at the time the item drops, while never exceeding it. The maximum Circle of Fortune Faction Requirement is Rank 5. Items with Faction Rank Requirements require that you actively be in that faction to meet the requirements. For instance: You initially join Circle of Fortune, reach rank 4, and have an item which requires Circle of Fortune Rank 2. You then change to Merchants Guild. Even though if you swap back to Circle of Fortune you would still be Rank 4, you will not be able to equip that item unless you do swap back to Circle of Fortune. [h2=faction-vendors]Faction Vendors
Both Merchants Guild and Circle of Fortune members will be able to trade favor in exchange for a rewards. For those familiar with the Gambler Artem, youll find Faction Vendors share some similarities and some differences. Faction Vendors sell items with base item types exclusive to your Faction, and can generate Exalted items. Item Faction item types can be powerful early on as you gain access to them, but will be outpaced by endgame item types to prevent FOMO from faction selection. Circle of Fortune members can also purchase Lenses from their Faction Vendor, which well get to in the Circle of Fortune section.
Faction Gambling can be accessed by speaking to your Faction Leader found near the waypoint in your Faction Hub and selecting Browse Faction Wares. Youll also gain Reputation with your faction by spending Favor with your Faction Vendor. [h2=gifting-faction-items]Gifting Faction Items
Items that have a Faction Rank requirement follow the same rules for gifting as all items. To gift an item to another player, youll need to be playing in a party with that player, and the other player will need to be present when the item drops. Alternatively you can use a relevant Resonance to make the item eligible to be gifted. Gifting items does not incur any favor or gold cost and simply gives an item to another player, theres no exchange. Its important to keep in mind that while any equipable item can be gifted, the recipient of the item will still need to meet the item requirements, including the Faction Requirements, to be able to equip the item. [h1=mg]Merchants Guild
In the words of Nama, The Merchants Guild is a ship guiding you through the seas of trade in the Bazaar. The Merchants Guild offers the power of Trade. Players around the world visit the Bazaar to offer their items to trade, so finding the right item for you becomes as simple as speaking to the right person - and having the right currency. Your Rank with the Merchants Guild will determine what kind of trades youll be entrusted with. Meaning with more Reputation comes the opportunity to both obtain and sell more powerful and sought-after items.
By selecting to learn more about the Merchants Guild, you will be directed to the Bazaar, located just north of the MajElka city center. Bustling with trade carts, merchants, and stalls of all kinds, even the rarest of items in Eterra can be found within the stalls of the Bazaar for a price. In the Bazaar, you will find numerous stalls, each dedicated to a specific equipment type. The complete list of item types that will be able to be traded through the Bazaar are Helmets, Amulets, All weapon and off-hand item types, Rings, Belts, Gloves, Boots, Relics, and Idols. If it can be equipped, it can be bought and sold assuming you are trusted enough with the Guild to conduct the trade. There are some limitations, however, on buying and selling items in the Bazaar. Firstly, The merchants Guild only trades in worldly wares. This means if an item has been dropped through the providence of the Circle of Fortune, it cannot be traded. The Guild views these items as bound to their owners, and will not facilitate their trade. Secondly, The Merchants Guild maintains control over their economy by marking any items which pass through the hands of Merchants. Trade is a sacred and permanent exchange in the eyes of the Guild. After youve purchased an item from the Merchants Guild, it cannot be traded again. Thirdly, you must have built up enough Reputation with the Merchants Guild to deal in a particular item type or rarity. Not every street urchin can be trusted with the exchange of high-level goods. Finally, you will need sufficient Favor to participate in the trade to prove to the Merchants Guild that you are an active merchant in the world and are not just seeking to benefit from their hard work. [h2=mg-rank-rewards]Rank Rewards
(note: subject to change with feedback) Rank 1: Trade Basic Items. You can buy and sell Normal, Magic, and Rare items in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 2: Trade Set Items. You can buy and sell Set Items in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 3: Trade Specific Unique Items. You can buy and sell Unique items with no Legendary Potential in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 4: Trade Idols. You can buy and sell Idols in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 5: Trade Exalted Weapons. You can buy and sell Exalted Weapons in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 6: Trade Unique Weapons. You can buy and sell Unique Weapons with Legendary Potential in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 7: Trade All Exalted Items. You can buy and sell all Exalted items in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 8: Trade All Unique Items: You can buy and sell all Unique items - including those with Legendary Potential - in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 9: Trade Legendary Weapons: You can buy and sell Legendary Weapons in the Bazaar or directly with other players. Rank 10: Trade All Legendary Items. You can buy and sell all Legendary items in the Bazaar or directly with other players. [h2=mg-buying-items]Buying Items
To buy items through the Merchants Guild, youll need to start by visiting the Bazaar just north of MajElka in the Divine Era after joining the Merchants Guild. Upon arrival, you will see numerous stalls marked on the map with an icon representing what type of item you can find at that stall. Speaking to the Stall Vendor will open the Bazaar search window. This will list all items currently for sale from Players all across the world who are participating in the same game mode, such as Hardcore Cycle. We wanted to ensure there was no obfuscation and unnecessary limitations with searching the Bazaar, so you will find a robust suite of search tools to help you refine your search for precisely the type of items you want to find. We also want to make sure theres no guesswork with what youre buying, so weve tried to make the UI for each item clearly display all the important item information, including all implicits, affixes, Forging Potential, Legendary Potential, Equip Requirements, and anything else you could want to know about the item. With the Bazaar, we wanted to make sure players have all the power they need to find what theyre looking for, so youll find options here you wont find in the Loot Filter, such as refining your search by amount of Forging Potential, or Weavers Will value. Weve also updated our Affix list to only show affixes applicable to the item, and well be rolling out this change to Loot Filters as well making finding the right affixes even easier.
Once you find the item you want, youll first need to make sure you have what you need to purchase the item, including Faction Rank, Favor Cost, and the amount of Gold the seller is asking for. So long as you meet these requirements, simply hover the item, Select Buy and youll get a final confirmation to purchase the item. Once you confirm the purchase, the item will instantly appear in your inventory, or Gift Inventory if full, ready to equip! [h2=mg-selling-items]Selling Items
To sell items through the Merchants Guild, youll want to start by visiting your personal stall. This can be accessed through any vendor in the Bazaar north of MajElka in the Divine Era and selecting My Stall on the right side of the window, or by speaking to Kubra and selecting Open my Stall. With your stall open, youll be able to view all of your currently listed items, as well as previous sales youve made. To list a new item select List an Item on the right hand of the window, which will open a small window to insert an item to sell, as well as your inventory to pull items from. To list any item, you will first need to meet the Rank requirement for that item. Upon placing an item into the window, the Merchants Guild will automatically assign a Favor cost to list the item based on the item quality, list the required rank, and provide you an input box to enter your asking price for the item. The Merchants Guild doesnt take a cut of any profits, so the Asking Price is what another player will need to pay to buy the item, and you will get the full asking price upon sale.
When viewing your Stall, you can also un-list any item by hovering over it, and selecting unlist. Its also worth clarifying while our previous overview of the Merchants Guild mentioned a limit to how many items you can list at a time based on your rank, that restriction has now been removed. Once an item has successfully sold, you can visit your stall in the Bazaar at any time to redeem the gold from the sale. [h1=cof]Circle of Fortune
The Stars Guide our Fate is the fundamental creed of the Circle of Fortune. While some see the power of coin, others dedicate themselves to intimately knowing the shape and nature of the heavens, and through it, to know the same of their future. Rather than relying on commerce to fuel their item acquisition, members of The Circle of Fortune will gain powerful benefits to their potential to find items. With access to Prophecies, they will gain the ability to peer into their future and find precisely where certain treasures await. By choosing to align with the Circle of Fortune you will be directed to visit the Observatory, located in northern MajElka in the Divine Era. The Observatory serves as the Circle of Fortunes primary hub. Here you will find your Faction Leaders and various Telescopes for observing the heavens which allow you to trade Favor for Prophecies. While much power can be found in acquiring Prophecies, The Circle of Fortune also grants exceptionally powerful passive bonuses to your item-finding abilities as you rank up your reputation with them.
Items you acquire as a Circle of Fortune member will have been guided by the stars, and as such will drop with a Faction Rank Requirement. While this requirement on items dropped for you will never exceed your current rank and is never higher than 5, it is important to note that these items cannot be traded, and when gifted the recipient must meet the rank requirement to equip the item. [h2=cof-rank-rewards]Rank Rewards
(note: subject to change with feedback) Rank 1: Enemy Item Drop Chance. Enemies have a 35% chance of dropping twice as many items. Rank 2: Upgraded Rune of Ascendance. 45% chance for Runes of Ascendance to be preserved when used on an item that requires at least Circle of Fortune Rank 1. Rank 3: Idol Drop Chance. Whenever an Idol drops, there is a 25% chance for two more to drop at the same time Rank 4: Exalted Affix Chance. Affixes are 50% more likely to be Exalted Rank 5: Monolith Echo Reward Upgrade. 35% chance for double rewards from Monolith Echoes Rank 6: Legendary Potential Chance. Uniques are twice as likely to have Legendary Potential Rank 7: T7 Affix Chance. T7 Affixes are twice as common. Rank 8: Rare to Exalted Chance. Items that would drop as Rare above level 44 have a 25% chance of becoming Exalted. Rank 9: Full Set Drop Chance. When a Set item would drop, the whole set drops instead. Rank 10: Prophecy Reward Upgrade. Items from Prophecies are duplicated. [h1=cof-prophecies]Prophecies
Prophecies are pseudo-items which can be purchased in the Observatory that cause certain item drops, or increase the odds of higher tier affixes being generated on an item when you complete the requirements listed on the Prophecy. To acquire Prophecies, start by visiting the Observatory located north of the MajElka town center in the Divine Era. Here in the Observatory, you will find four Telescopes looking North (Arctus), East (Eos), West (Dysis), and South (Mesembria). Each telescope offers Prophecies for specific item types: Armor, Weapons, Idols and Crafting materials, and Accessories, respectively.
Upon peering through a telescope, you will observe a constellation with randomly generated prophecies represented by its stars. By hovering over one of the stars, you can see details regarding the specific prophecy including the Favor Cost, the event which will trigger the prophecy, any special conditions for the prophecy, and what the prophecy will reward upon completion. The more powerful a Prophecy, the more Favor it will cost to obtain. You can view all of your current prophecies in your Faction window, accessed through the Y key by default. You can have a maximum of 48 active prophecies at any given time. Prophecies can also be discarded through the Faction panel. [h3=cof-prophecy-events]Prophecy Events
The Prophecy Event will outline what particular event needs to occur in order for the Prophecy to trigger. Some example events are Death of Chronomancer Julra, Death of an Arena Champion, Death of X number of rare enemies, or Death of X number of siege golems. [h3=cof-prophecy-conditions]Prophecy Conditions
The Prophecy Condition will outline any additional conditions that need to be met for the Prophecy to trigger. Not all prophecies have extra conditions, though as you progress to higher ranks youll find them to be more common. Some example Conditions are Monolith, Lightless Arbor, Fall of the Outcasts Timeline, or 320 Corruption. [h3=cof-prophecy-rewards]Prophecy Rewards
Fairly straightforward, this is what kind of reward will drop for you upon completing the Prophecy. Some example rewards are: X number of Rare Body Armors, X number of Exalted Amulets, Unique Weapon, or Unique Amulet (minimum 1LP) [h2=cof-lenses]Lenses
Lenses offer a method to modify your telescopes in the Observatory to further refine what kind of Prophecies you can discover. Like Item Factions themselves, Lenses have been added to the Observatory in response to Community Feedback from our Community Tester Program!
Lenses are items which can be purchased from your Faction Vendor, and then slotted into a telescope. Lenses are permanent items, so once you purchase a lens, you can slot it into a telescope, remove it, and store it like any other item - they are not consumable. Each telescope is equipped with three lens slots, unlocked at Circle of Fortune Ranks two, five, and nine. When you view the Faction shop, you will find two tabs listing lenses; Regional Lenses and Greater Lenses. Regional lenses are lenses which are specific to one telescope. For instance, an Eos Telescope Lens can only be fitted onto the Eos Telescope, and has a modifier specific to Weapon Prophecies (which the Eos Telescope Provides). Greater Lenses can be slotted into any telescope. You can add multiple of the same Lens to a telescope for an additive effect. To help get a better idea of these lenses, lets take a quick look at what some of the Lenses offer.
Focusing Lens of Idols: 15% Increased chance per rank to find Large Idols Enhancing Lens of the Unmatched: 15% increased chance per rank to find Unique Items Obscuring Lens of Battle: 100% Reduced chance for Prophecies to have Arena Events You may notice theres four types of modifiers here: Lenses which increase the chance for certain item types, Lenses which increase the chance for certain item rarities, Lenses which block certain Prophecy Activities, and finally Lenses which modify favor cost for specific Prophecy effects. This offers a lot of power to customize the randomness of prophecies and focus them on the types of items you want, as well as the activities you want to do. Theres also room for more types of Lenses to add in the future, though these will be the four types available with 1.0.
Faction Rank Rewards for Lenses
Rank 2: Unlock Increased Chance of Specific Item Type Prophecy Lenses for purchase, Unlock First Lens Slot Rank 3: Unlock Block Activity Type Lenses for purchase Rank 4: Unlock Increased chance of specific Item Rarity Prophecy Lenses for purchase Rank 5: Unlock Block High Corruption (50+) Lenses for purchase. Unlock Second Lens Slot. Rank 7: Unlock Special Greater Lens Prophecies cost 80% more Favor and have twice as many uses Rank 8: Unlock Special Greater Lens Prophecies cost 90% more Favor and have double rewards-type Rank 9: Unlock Third Lens Slot. [h1=resonances]Resonances
While resonances are technically separate from the Item Faction system, because we had mentioned them in the original Developer Blog regarding Item Factions, we felt it only makes sense to talk about them here! So lets talk a bit about Resonances with 1.0.
Resonances are a new item type which drop when youve played alongside a player for an extended period of time. Using a Resonance on an item will enable it to be gifted to that player even if they were not present when the item dropped. When a Resonance drops, it will drop with the player name in the item card to show who it enables gifting with. As you may notice from this example label, there are different types of Resonances: Obsidian Resonances, which are required for Legendary and Exalted Items, and Golden Resonances, which are required for Unique, Set, Rare, Magic, or Normal quality items. Upon picking up a Resonance, it is placed in your inventory, and will be stored into your Gifting Inventory when you Store Crafting Materials. Once stored, when you open a gifting window to a player, you will have a flyout menu to select a resonance to use for the Gift. Resonances are consumable, so pay heed to when you decide to use them!
One of the big questions we often see about resonances is How long is an extended period of time?. The answer is. it depends. The amount of time required to have a Resonance drop is slightly random, though Golden Resonances will be more common than Obsidian Resonances. We also want to make sure resonances arent used for pseudo-trading as a way to bypass the Merchants Guild requirements to trade items, so you can expect these drops to be fairly infrequent. At the current time we dont want to share exactly what the time range is, however well of course be watching feedback and adjusting it based on how people feel about them, as well as how theyre being used. [h1=closing]Closing
Thank you everyone for joining us for this deep dive into the upcoming Item Faction system, available with Last Epoch 1.0 on February 21st! If weve left any questions unanswered, please ask away in the forums below, or on our Official Discord server at discord.gg/lastepoch and we would be happy to answer! For more upcoming information, make sure to keep an eye on Icy-Veins.com starting January 25th as they dive into details regarding the Warlock Mastery, and Maxroll.gg on February 8th as they dive into the Falconer, then back to us in the days leading up to February 21st as we talk about some of the other features coming with our big 1.0 release. We hope youre as excited as we are, and well see you there!
Twitch Drops - What you need to know for Launch!
Week 1 - February 22nd - 25th
[ 2024-01-09 17:02:26 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Last Epoch community!
As we get closer to the upcoming 1.0 launch of Last Epoch on February 21st, its time to drop the details on what you can expect for Twitch Drops during the weeks after launch.
First off: Head on over to www.lastepoch.com/twitch and make sure your accounts are correctly linked.
Starting on February 22nd (Thursday), you can head on over to the Last Epoch category on Twitch and look for users who have drops enabled.
Four total cosmetic items can be earned, and each day will be different. The following week, starting on February 29th, each item will be available one last time in case you missed it the first go-round. You will not be able to earn two of each.
Schedule:
Week 1 - February 22nd - 25th
- Day 1 (Thur the 22nd) - Mantle of the Prophesier cosmetic back slot item.
- Day 2 (Fri the 23rd) - Green Dire-Guana pet cosmetic item.
- Day 3 (Sat the 24th) - Merchants Mantle cosmetic back slot item.
- Day 4 (Sun the 25th) - Blue Seers Orb pet cosmetic item.
- Day 1 (Thur the 29th) - Mantle of the Prophesier cosmetic back slot item.
- Day 2 (Fri the 1st) - Green Dire-Guana pet cosmetic item.
- Day 3 (Sat the 2nd) - Merchants Mantle cosmetic back slot item.
- Day 4 (Sun the 3rd) - Blue Seers Orb pet cosmetic item.
Beta 0.9.2L Patch Notes
[ 2023-12-13 18:05:33 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where mini healthbars were not appearing over enemies or minions
- Fixed a bug where Flurry would collide with friendly players and minions
- Fixed a bug which could result in a Gray Splash Screen on client start
- Fixed an issue where Lagon would not drop potions in phases 1 and 3
- Fixed a bug which would result in enemies in arena not animating properly after spawning
- This can still occur due to a different bug which we are still working on, however is far less frequent
Other
- Reduced the sizes of many textures loaded on client start. This should reduce the starting memory footprint when launching the client, as well as help the client launch a bit faster. Because this reduces the start-up memory footprint, we also expect this to help with many cases of crash-on-startup which were due to memory issues.
- Added support ticket submission to in-game bug report tool for players looking for support rather than to report an issue.
- Several backend improvements for performance improvements while playing in a party, as well as for longer game sessions
- Cleaned up a number of log events which were not logging useful information
November 2023 Development Update
Let us start by talking a bit about the Roadmap we showed with our Release Date announcement. As many of you are aware, 1.0 not only marks the release of Last Epoch from Early Access, but will also introduce Item Factions, The Warlock and Falconer masteries, and a host of additional updates! In the roadmap, we showcase the major upcoming announcements leading up to our 1.0 release on February 21st. We wanted to provide a bit more context on what to expect from each of these areas and give you a bit of a look into how Last Epoch continues to support its community, with both the Warlock and Falconer previews being community-driven exclusives that are designed to bring some awesome depth of information for these masteries ahead of their release at 1.0. As you may notice with this dev blog, this roadmap is not an exhaustive list of all news posts to expect leading up to 1.0, so you can look forward to much more insight into 1.0 before the big date. Instead, this roadmap shows the dates of when you can expect to get more information on the three headlining features for 1.0 - Item Factions, The Warlock, and The Falconer.
Fresh into the new year, keep an eye on our socials as well as here on our regular posting platforms where well be releasing a comprehensive blog post diving into Item Factions: providing information on The Merchants Guild, The Bazaar, Circle of Fortune, and Prophecies. Theres a lot of information well be sharing in this post, so look forward to getting all the info in this deep dive! As a note, to clear any potential confusion, Item Factions are launching with the 1.0 update, and not on Jan 11th.
On this date, our community member AaronActionRPG will be providing a first look at the final Acolyte Mastery - The Warlock over on Icy-Veins.com. A long-time fan of the acolyte class, a huge supporter of Last Epoch, and a great member of the community, we are excited to see what Aaron and Icy-Veins have in store for the reveal. As a note - The Warlock will be coming with the 1.0 update, and this will be an early informational look at the class.
Just over a month before Patch 1.0, the bird will be the word over on Maxroll.gg with the first look into the final Rogue Mastery - The Falconer. Weve worked with the team over at Maxroll before, and are happy to be rejoining them for this reveal leading up to release. Here, some of our hardest-going community members will be representing Maxroll for this reveal, so we know no interaction will be left unturned. Find out how the Falcon works, what kind of skills will be coming with the mastery, and what kind of stats to expect on the Falconer over on Maxroll.gg on February 8th! As a note - The Falconer will be coming with the 1.0 update, and this will be an early informational look at the class.
The big day! On February 21st, 2024, Last Epoch will be releasing with version 1.0! On this day, everyone will be able to play the Full Last Epoch experience with Item Factions, The Warlock, The Falconer, and all the other improvements weve been hard at work on! Of course, 1.0 is just the start of our journey here at Eleventh Hour Games as we plan for many years of content to come. However we cannot understate our excitement to be hitting this massive milestone, and look forward to seeing you on Launch Day!
A couple of weeks ago we invited everyone to provide feedback on things they wish they knew as a new player to Last Epoch. We would like to thank everyone for providing responses to this form, and well be going over this great feedback to find further improvements to the new player experience we can sneak into 1.0, as well as what kind of community resources we can put together to continue supporting you all in your travels. If you havent had a chance yet to provide feedback on things you wish you knew as a new player, let us know by following this link to the form: https://forms.gle/8Mg9u7e1NJcyDJph9 . Now, Lets take a look at a few of the improvements coming on the big day!
One of our major goals for the game is to improve both visual quality and performance across the board. To continue chasing this goal, we are making multiple changes to our lighting systems, shaders, and more. Historically, many of our scenes felt a bit floaty, with characters and objects not grounded in the way we would wish. A big part of this issue was missing good contact shadows and shadows in general. There are many reasons why this is not as simple to solve as it may look - the most significant reason is of course the performance. One of the systems we have improved for 1.0 is Ambient Occlusion. Our new implementation creates much more accurate contact shadows and brings much-needed depth into many of our scenes. In addition to ambient occlusion improvements, we are also adding a modern screen-space Soft Shadow system. In many scenes, where we previously did not have any shadows, player light is now the source of physical light where objects around the player properly cast shadow, which is increasing much more dramatic lightning in our scenes, while still keeping performance in check. Since this is screen space solution, it has fixed performance cost, no matter how many objects or monsters are on the screen.
In addition, we are reworking lighting in almost every scene in the game, with multiple goals in mind - to improve performance, to increase the visibility of the player, and frankly, to improve the visual fidelity of our scenes. Here is our EoT scene as an example. With new ambient occlusion, shadow system, and reworked lighting, all objects in the scene feel more grounded, the player character is clearly visible and there is a much better sense of depth.
The scene variant system is another major system we are introducing for 1.0. It is basically a set of tools and shaders which allow us to improve the visual quality of our scenes and add more variety to the game. It allows us to create dramatically different-looking scenes by using scene variant templates In the past, it was quite hard for us to create different variants of the scene, having different weather effects or changing our vegetation. In most cases, we needed to create new materials, new texture maps or assets, and decals, and combine them to achieve results we needed - which has a negative impact on performance, since it all can increase draw calls. However with shader changes, we now can change the vegetation, wetness of our surfaces, and add puddles to the scene using just shader functions. In other words, we can now have richer looking scenes, while improving performance in the process. This set of tools also allows us to create new scenes more quickly, allowing the level design team to focus on, well, level design, without trying to solve technical issues and challenges. Last, but not least, it allows us to bring much more variety into the game. For example monolith scene can look very different each time you will enter it, as you can see in some of the examples below! We have big plans for the system and you will see us utilize it more and more as the game progresses in the future.
Weve heard all of the feedback regarding the Shaman Mastery and agree. For 1.0 well be revisiting our favorite warrior of the north (sorry Grael), giving this mastery some much needed love helping to bring it up to par with the other mastery options in Eterra. With this revisit to Shaman, we wont be doing a complete rework of the mastery; However, we know some aspects of the mastery can be a bit lacking at the moment, and we decided it needed some time dedicated to it in preparation for 1.0. These changes are still a work in progress, so for todays post well just be speaking a short bit to one of the big improvements coming to Shaman with the reworked Tempest Strike skill. Well also be making changes to the Masterys Passive Tree to improve options in the tree and a new, as of yet to be disclosed skill. Expect more information in a later post!
Tempest Strike, as its currently implemented, is a spammable melee skill imbuing each strike with a chance to trigger elemental storm spells on hit, and offering elemental penetration instead of attack speed scaling. Being a hybrid skill with both attack and spell features, with the spell procs not being the most reliable, and lack of attack speed scaling, Tempest Strike has been in a fairly rough spot. As such, Tempest Strike is getting a complete rework for 1.0, keeping the same name and theme, but with completely new mechanics, skill tree, and even role as a skill.
As of 1.0, Tempest Strike will instead be a powerful high-cost combo ability. With each strike of your weapon, Tempest Strike will flow through launching penetrating icicles, creating tornadoes, and expanding rings of lightning. In its tree youll find the ability to specialize into each of these strikes making them more powerful, or removing them for other benefits. Youll also find the reworked Tempest Strike will be quite favorable to building attack speed, allowing you to rage an elemental storm through hordes of enemies with a whole new suite of animations and VFX. Speaking of storms, this change to Tempest Strike leaves a vacancy within Primalist for a low cost generator, or filler skill, tailored towards Shaman - but thats a story for another time as we get closer to 1.0.
Weve gotten a lot of feedback concerning endgame echo modifiers, as well as corruption scaling. As such, weve decided this is another great area we can add polish to with our release. In this area, there was two main pieces of feedback we wanted to address. The first is inequality and obfuscation of Echo Modifiers, and the second is the effects of scaling corruption.
With Echo Modifiers, we wanted to focus on enemy power coming less from the modifiers themselves, and more from the inherent strength of high level enemies and Corruption directly. The goal of these changes are primarily to achieve a more predictable experience in high corruption Timelines. To accomplish this weve made Echo Modifiers have shorter durations (now lasting a maximum of three echoes), and importantly made these mods no longer scale with corruption or distance from center.
As we dove into echo modifiers, there was a number of mods which scaled invisibly with corruption including enemies enraging at half health, Enemies have high speed and crit chance until approached, and enemies are deadly if not damaged recently. These mods actually scaled at the same rate as increased damage modifiers, which if you're familiar with these mods, means these quickly became extremely deadly without clearly presenting the increasing difficulty of these mods. This will no longer be the case as these will now have fixed values alongside all other mods, including the infamous increased damage mods. We're still tweaking numbers for this and testing the changes, so we're not quite ready to share numbers. These changes to Echo modifiers should make for a smoother more predictable experience, however don't expect tackling endgame scaling to suddenly be an easier task.
While Echo modifiers are getting reigned in, were also shifting some of that power from scaling modifiers directly into Corruption scaling. The difficulty modifier from corruption will now scale much more quickly meaning corruption will be the primary method of scaling difficulty, and hitting these points should be both a quicker and smoother experience. For this, we feel its important to provide some numbers here for context, however please do keep in mind these numbers are still subject to change: 100 corruption: 60% more monster damage and health (from 50%) 200 corruption: 170% more monster damage and health (from 100%) 300 corruption: 281% more monster damage and health (from 147%) 500 corruption: 505% more monster damage and health (from 289%) Corruption will now also slightly scale up the average legendary potential and weavers will values. This means item rarity from echo modifiers will increase the total number of unique item drops for more chances at Legendary potential, while Corruption will have a multiplicative effect directly increasing the chance for Legendary Potential on each Unique item which drops.
With 1.0 being such a significant point for us, features are not the only thing were working on. Were continuing to work through many of the current bugs, Improving our networking, improving performance, and addressing many balance concerns brought forward by you all. We want to ensure Last Epoch has the best launch it can for everyone, and were working hard towards that goal. With 0.9.0, we had to change a number of processes with the Community Tester program, meaning we werent able to get the program back up and running for 0.9.1, and managed to get the program up and running only just before 0.9.2. We know with this, theres been feedback and concerns regarding if there will be sufficient testing and review of these big new features coming to Last Epoch. Were happy to say that the program already started a week ago providing testing a few of these upcoming features, and have already started adjusting to feedback from these community members! Currently the program isnt accepting additional members, however we wanted to provide the reassurance that were as always committed to working closely with the community, and making sure we fulfill that cooperation and coordination for these important features. Though not limited to the CT Program, we as always will be keeping a close eye on everyones feedback as we continue on the path to 1.0 and beyond. Thank you all for for taking the time to read up on the latest goings-on here at Eleventh Hour Games. For more information concerning 1.0 and all things Last Epoch, make sure to mark the Roadmap Events on your calendar, keep tuned into our social channels, and join us on Discord at discord.gg/lastepoch for further blog posts and teasers as we work forward to the February 21st release!
[ 2023-11-17 17:00:41 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers, and thank you all for joining us for Novembers Developer Blog as we progress through the final stretch to 1.0. As many of you are likely already aware, yesterday saw the first reveal of our Cinematic Trailer for Last Epoch over on IGN. We want to thank everyone for the fantastic support we saw in regards to the trailer, its been a great morale boost to see the continued excitement for our 1.0 release. If you didnt have a chance to check out the Cinematic Trailer yet, please do so below! [previewyoutube=zGwBxbOcLns;full][/previewyoutube] Of course, on October 20th, we also announced our roadmap to 1.0, covering the main news articles to keep an eye out for, as well as our 1.0 release date of February 21st, 2024! Were all very excited for the big day and wanted to talk about both what to expect in regards to the roadmap, as well as share with you all some of the things weve been working on. Im sure youre all excited to hear about some of these things coming, so allow us to waste no more time and get into it!
Roadmap
Let us start by talking a bit about the Roadmap we showed with our Release Date announcement. As many of you are aware, 1.0 not only marks the release of Last Epoch from Early Access, but will also introduce Item Factions, The Warlock and Falconer masteries, and a host of additional updates! In the roadmap, we showcase the major upcoming announcements leading up to our 1.0 release on February 21st. We wanted to provide a bit more context on what to expect from each of these areas and give you a bit of a look into how Last Epoch continues to support its community, with both the Warlock and Falconer previews being community-driven exclusives that are designed to bring some awesome depth of information for these masteries ahead of their release at 1.0. As you may notice with this dev blog, this roadmap is not an exhaustive list of all news posts to expect leading up to 1.0, so you can look forward to much more insight into 1.0 before the big date. Instead, this roadmap shows the dates of when you can expect to get more information on the three headlining features for 1.0 - Item Factions, The Warlock, and The Falconer.
January 11th - Item Factions
Fresh into the new year, keep an eye on our socials as well as here on our regular posting platforms where well be releasing a comprehensive blog post diving into Item Factions: providing information on The Merchants Guild, The Bazaar, Circle of Fortune, and Prophecies. Theres a lot of information well be sharing in this post, so look forward to getting all the info in this deep dive! As a note, to clear any potential confusion, Item Factions are launching with the 1.0 update, and not on Jan 11th.
January 25th - Warlock Preview
On this date, our community member AaronActionRPG will be providing a first look at the final Acolyte Mastery - The Warlock over on Icy-Veins.com. A long-time fan of the acolyte class, a huge supporter of Last Epoch, and a great member of the community, we are excited to see what Aaron and Icy-Veins have in store for the reveal. As a note - The Warlock will be coming with the 1.0 update, and this will be an early informational look at the class.
February 8th - Falconer Preview
Just over a month before Patch 1.0, the bird will be the word over on Maxroll.gg with the first look into the final Rogue Mastery - The Falconer. Weve worked with the team over at Maxroll before, and are happy to be rejoining them for this reveal leading up to release. Here, some of our hardest-going community members will be representing Maxroll for this reveal, so we know no interaction will be left unturned. Find out how the Falcon works, what kind of skills will be coming with the mastery, and what kind of stats to expect on the Falconer over on Maxroll.gg on February 8th! As a note - The Falconer will be coming with the 1.0 update, and this will be an early informational look at the class.
February 21st - Last Epoch 1.0 Launch Day
The big day! On February 21st, 2024, Last Epoch will be releasing with version 1.0! On this day, everyone will be able to play the Full Last Epoch experience with Item Factions, The Warlock, The Falconer, and all the other improvements weve been hard at work on! Of course, 1.0 is just the start of our journey here at Eleventh Hour Games as we plan for many years of content to come. However we cannot understate our excitement to be hitting this massive milestone, and look forward to seeing you on Launch Day!
Other Features
A couple of weeks ago we invited everyone to provide feedback on things they wish they knew as a new player to Last Epoch. We would like to thank everyone for providing responses to this form, and well be going over this great feedback to find further improvements to the new player experience we can sneak into 1.0, as well as what kind of community resources we can put together to continue supporting you all in your travels. If you havent had a chance yet to provide feedback on things you wish you knew as a new player, let us know by following this link to the form: https://forms.gle/8Mg9u7e1NJcyDJph9 . Now, Lets take a look at a few of the improvements coming on the big day!
Visual Improvements
Lighting and Shadows
One of our major goals for the game is to improve both visual quality and performance across the board. To continue chasing this goal, we are making multiple changes to our lighting systems, shaders, and more. Historically, many of our scenes felt a bit floaty, with characters and objects not grounded in the way we would wish. A big part of this issue was missing good contact shadows and shadows in general. There are many reasons why this is not as simple to solve as it may look - the most significant reason is of course the performance. One of the systems we have improved for 1.0 is Ambient Occlusion. Our new implementation creates much more accurate contact shadows and brings much-needed depth into many of our scenes. In addition to ambient occlusion improvements, we are also adding a modern screen-space Soft Shadow system. In many scenes, where we previously did not have any shadows, player light is now the source of physical light where objects around the player properly cast shadow, which is increasing much more dramatic lightning in our scenes, while still keeping performance in check. Since this is screen space solution, it has fixed performance cost, no matter how many objects or monsters are on the screen.
In addition, we are reworking lighting in almost every scene in the game, with multiple goals in mind - to improve performance, to increase the visibility of the player, and frankly, to improve the visual fidelity of our scenes. Here is our EoT scene as an example. With new ambient occlusion, shadow system, and reworked lighting, all objects in the scene feel more grounded, the player character is clearly visible and there is a much better sense of depth.
Scene Variant System
The scene variant system is another major system we are introducing for 1.0. It is basically a set of tools and shaders which allow us to improve the visual quality of our scenes and add more variety to the game. It allows us to create dramatically different-looking scenes by using scene variant templates In the past, it was quite hard for us to create different variants of the scene, having different weather effects or changing our vegetation. In most cases, we needed to create new materials, new texture maps or assets, and decals, and combine them to achieve results we needed - which has a negative impact on performance, since it all can increase draw calls. However with shader changes, we now can change the vegetation, wetness of our surfaces, and add puddles to the scene using just shader functions. In other words, we can now have richer looking scenes, while improving performance in the process. This set of tools also allows us to create new scenes more quickly, allowing the level design team to focus on, well, level design, without trying to solve technical issues and challenges. Last, but not least, it allows us to bring much more variety into the game. For example monolith scene can look very different each time you will enter it, as you can see in some of the examples below! We have big plans for the system and you will see us utilize it more and more as the game progresses in the future.
Shaman Revisit
Weve heard all of the feedback regarding the Shaman Mastery and agree. For 1.0 well be revisiting our favorite warrior of the north (sorry Grael), giving this mastery some much needed love helping to bring it up to par with the other mastery options in Eterra. With this revisit to Shaman, we wont be doing a complete rework of the mastery; However, we know some aspects of the mastery can be a bit lacking at the moment, and we decided it needed some time dedicated to it in preparation for 1.0. These changes are still a work in progress, so for todays post well just be speaking a short bit to one of the big improvements coming to Shaman with the reworked Tempest Strike skill. Well also be making changes to the Masterys Passive Tree to improve options in the tree and a new, as of yet to be disclosed skill. Expect more information in a later post!
Tempest Strike
Tempest Strike, as its currently implemented, is a spammable melee skill imbuing each strike with a chance to trigger elemental storm spells on hit, and offering elemental penetration instead of attack speed scaling. Being a hybrid skill with both attack and spell features, with the spell procs not being the most reliable, and lack of attack speed scaling, Tempest Strike has been in a fairly rough spot. As such, Tempest Strike is getting a complete rework for 1.0, keeping the same name and theme, but with completely new mechanics, skill tree, and even role as a skill.
As of 1.0, Tempest Strike will instead be a powerful high-cost combo ability. With each strike of your weapon, Tempest Strike will flow through launching penetrating icicles, creating tornadoes, and expanding rings of lightning. In its tree youll find the ability to specialize into each of these strikes making them more powerful, or removing them for other benefits. Youll also find the reworked Tempest Strike will be quite favorable to building attack speed, allowing you to rage an elemental storm through hordes of enemies with a whole new suite of animations and VFX. Speaking of storms, this change to Tempest Strike leaves a vacancy within Primalist for a low cost generator, or filler skill, tailored towards Shaman - but thats a story for another time as we get closer to 1.0.
Endgame Rebalance
Weve gotten a lot of feedback concerning endgame echo modifiers, as well as corruption scaling. As such, weve decided this is another great area we can add polish to with our release. In this area, there was two main pieces of feedback we wanted to address. The first is inequality and obfuscation of Echo Modifiers, and the second is the effects of scaling corruption.
Echo Modifiers
With Echo Modifiers, we wanted to focus on enemy power coming less from the modifiers themselves, and more from the inherent strength of high level enemies and Corruption directly. The goal of these changes are primarily to achieve a more predictable experience in high corruption Timelines. To accomplish this weve made Echo Modifiers have shorter durations (now lasting a maximum of three echoes), and importantly made these mods no longer scale with corruption or distance from center.
As we dove into echo modifiers, there was a number of mods which scaled invisibly with corruption including enemies enraging at half health, Enemies have high speed and crit chance until approached, and enemies are deadly if not damaged recently. These mods actually scaled at the same rate as increased damage modifiers, which if you're familiar with these mods, means these quickly became extremely deadly without clearly presenting the increasing difficulty of these mods. This will no longer be the case as these will now have fixed values alongside all other mods, including the infamous increased damage mods. We're still tweaking numbers for this and testing the changes, so we're not quite ready to share numbers. These changes to Echo modifiers should make for a smoother more predictable experience, however don't expect tackling endgame scaling to suddenly be an easier task.
Corruption Changes
While Echo modifiers are getting reigned in, were also shifting some of that power from scaling modifiers directly into Corruption scaling. The difficulty modifier from corruption will now scale much more quickly meaning corruption will be the primary method of scaling difficulty, and hitting these points should be both a quicker and smoother experience. For this, we feel its important to provide some numbers here for context, however please do keep in mind these numbers are still subject to change: 100 corruption: 60% more monster damage and health (from 50%) 200 corruption: 170% more monster damage and health (from 100%) 300 corruption: 281% more monster damage and health (from 147%) 500 corruption: 505% more monster damage and health (from 289%) Corruption will now also slightly scale up the average legendary potential and weavers will values. This means item rarity from echo modifiers will increase the total number of unique item drops for more chances at Legendary potential, while Corruption will have a multiplicative effect directly increasing the chance for Legendary Potential on each Unique item which drops.
Closing
With 1.0 being such a significant point for us, features are not the only thing were working on. Were continuing to work through many of the current bugs, Improving our networking, improving performance, and addressing many balance concerns brought forward by you all. We want to ensure Last Epoch has the best launch it can for everyone, and were working hard towards that goal. With 0.9.0, we had to change a number of processes with the Community Tester program, meaning we werent able to get the program back up and running for 0.9.1, and managed to get the program up and running only just before 0.9.2. We know with this, theres been feedback and concerns regarding if there will be sufficient testing and review of these big new features coming to Last Epoch. Were happy to say that the program already started a week ago providing testing a few of these upcoming features, and have already started adjusting to feedback from these community members! Currently the program isnt accepting additional members, however we wanted to provide the reassurance that were as always committed to working closely with the community, and making sure we fulfill that cooperation and coordination for these important features. Though not limited to the CT Program, we as always will be keeping a close eye on everyones feedback as we continue on the path to 1.0 and beyond. Thank you all for for taking the time to read up on the latest goings-on here at Eleventh Hour Games. For more information concerning 1.0 and all things Last Epoch, make sure to mark the Roadmap Events on your calendar, keep tuned into our social channels, and join us on Discord at discord.gg/lastepoch for further blog posts and teasers as we work forward to the February 21st release!
Beta 0.9.2k Patch Notes
[ 2023-11-16 17:39:07 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where a Lost Cache could be looted multiple times
- Fixed a bug where simultaneously exploding Volatile Zombies creating Infernal Shades could exceed the Shade limit
- Fixed a bug where holding Shift would not prevent movement
- Fixed a bug where Region Select was defaulting to US-Central
- Fixed a bug where Exiled Mage's Mana strike was not able to reach players
- Fixed a bug where closing the in-game Bug Report tool with esc would disable game inputs
- Fixed a bug where some Osprix enemies would appear invisible in Liath's Tower
- Fixed some instances of pink particle effects
Beta 0.9.2j Patch Notes
Along with todays hotfix, we also want to provide a quick update of some of the bugs and fixes we are continuing to work on.
A fix went out for this in 0.9.2f, however withheld the patch note as we still saw a reproduction of the case internally. However, we believe this was purely internal and the fix did correctly work. If youre still experiencing blockers in offline Temporal Sanctum, please let us know.
There is a bug with two nodes in Volatile Zombie that are triggering while at negative mana. (Abilities which consume mana shouldnt trigger while at negative mana.) We have some fixes and adjustments weve made internally focused around these bugs and skill interactions which are currently planned to be released at 1.0, which well share for awareness. Please note that these changes are still subject to further change, or omission with other changes. The planned changes:
Heres a list of some of the other fixes were currently working on. Please keep in mind this is not exhaustive, but some of the more commonly reported items which are in the works.
We have deployed a fix following the patch to resolve an issue where players were unable to transition zones, or connect to some towns (such as upon log-in). If youre still experiencing these issues, please make sure you restart your client and have the latest patch. We apologize for the disruption.
[ 2023-10-27 23:09:50 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! A quick hotfix today to resolve an issue where a small number of players were unable to log in.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where some newly created characters were being generated with items using a newer version of item serialization that the live client was not able to deserialize preventing the character from loading, or any character if the item was placed in the stash.
What were Working on
Along with todays hotfix, we also want to provide a quick update of some of the bugs and fixes we are continuing to work on.
Temporal Sanctum Progression Blocker (offline)
A fix went out for this in 0.9.2f, however withheld the patch note as we still saw a reproduction of the case internally. However, we believe this was purely internal and the fix did correctly work. If youre still experiencing blockers in offline Temporal Sanctum, please let us know.
Volatile Zombie loop
There is a bug with two nodes in Volatile Zombie that are triggering while at negative mana. (Abilities which consume mana shouldnt trigger while at negative mana.) We have some fixes and adjustments weve made internally focused around these bugs and skill interactions which are currently planned to be released at 1.0, which well share for awareness. Please note that these changes are still subject to further change, or omission with other changes. The planned changes:
- Fixed a bug where Volatile Zombiess Grand Sacrifice and Effigy of Combustion could trigger while on negative mana
- Volatile Zombie changes: Dreadful Horde and Giant Zombie now only have a 10% chance to trigger their effects on indirect casts (from always triggering), such as via Awakening Presence or the Experimental Belt affix
- Giant Zombie gives 120% increased mana cost (from 300%)
Other Fixes were working on
Heres a list of some of the other fixes were currently working on. Please keep in mind this is not exhaustive, but some of the more commonly reported items which are in the works.
- Flurry collides with players and minions in online play
- Flurry is producing too many projectiles
- Weve seen reports of this still occurring since the last patch, and are re-investigating
- Flurry sometimes not hitting with very high attack speeds
- Detonating Arrow Cone is exploding in the wrong direction
- Flame Rush tracks Rune generation between skill uses
- Effigy boss (giant worm) can spawn loot off the map
- Skeleton enemies missing health bars and hover outlines
- Enemies in arena not properly animating after spawning
- Runic Invocations Unbridled Ruin not providing its damage bonus
- Teleporting back to town doesnt put you near your portal
Update - 17:42 CT
We have deployed a fix following the patch to resolve an issue where players were unable to transition zones, or connect to some towns (such as upon log-in). If youre still experiencing these issues, please make sure you restart your client and have the latest patch. We apologize for the disruption.
Beta 0.9.2i Patch Notes
[ 2023-10-26 16:03:07 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the Soul Eater Backslot was on the wrong layer causing some decals to appear on top of it
- Fixed a number of abilities that, in online play, when used multiple times in the same scene would stop working or start behaving differently. The most common occurrences of this issue were:
- Blade Shield would not spawn Shurikens after first cast in a scene, if it hit an enemy
- Flurry would generate too many arrows and Multishot procs
- Cinder Strikes first attack would not deal damage
- Fixed a bug where Town Chat would be unavailable while in a town scene
- Several bugfixes for Town reliability and connection issues
- Fixed a bug where Frost Claw projectiles would be deleted when coming into contact with Water
- Fixed a bug where Osprix Raiders would appear invisible in Liaths Tower
Changes
- Added Keybind for Force Move. This is unbound by default.
- Removed Lost Caches from spawning in Arena Echoes
Bug Reporting Tool
- Updated dropdown options to better match types of bug reports
- Replaced Severity selection with a Unable to Progress checkbox
- Added additional information to Bug Report Tool for contacting support when looking for assistance rather than submitting a report
Last Epoch 1.0 launches Feb 21st, 2024!
[ 2023-10-20 18:01:41 CET ] [ Original post ]
Travelers,
Im thrilled to announce that Eleventh Hour Games is launching the long-awaited 1.0 version of Last Epoch on February 21st, 2024. After a journey that started with the dream of uniting genre enthusiasts to create the next great ARPG and forming an after-hours team through Reddit, to holding a successful Kickstarter 18 months later, and then building Last Epoch alongside our passionate community throughout Early Access were confident in saying that weve made something truly special.
Last Epochs 1.0 launch will mark a new beginning for Eterra, and will set a new bar for quality, polish, gameplay feel, and visual excellence. Beyond 1.0, Eleventh Hour Games will bring substantial new content to Last Epoch every few months in what we call Cycles. These releases will contain additions and refinements to many aspects of the game, such as end-game content, skills, unique items, gameplay systems, quality-of-life features, etc.
We understand that February is later than we had initially targeted for this release; however, our original December timeline became a bit crowded with other studios releases, and we didnt want to force the ARPG community to have to choose. By moving our date, well also be able to take advantage of a few more months of polish for our new systems and classes, complete more bug-fixing, and reinforce our team with a restful and well-deserved holiday break.
We thank you all for your unwavering support and enthusiasm that has allowed Eleventh Hour Games to make this game for all of us. We hope you will join us in Eterra this February and invite your friends to join in a new co-op hack-and-slash experience!
- Judd Cobler
Game Director, Last Epoch
Beta 0.9.2h Patch Notes
[ 2023-10-19 21:46:25 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, Were releasing a quick hotfix to address a few issues with Towns instances. This hotfix aims to resolve issues with Town servers zombifying preventing new players from joining the Town instance. The most common incarnation of this issue was preventing players from being able to log in with characters to the End of Time within a given region.
Changes
- Fixed a bug where Town servers would sometimes zombify preventing players from accessing the Town
Beta 0.9.2g Patch Notes
[ 2023-10-18 16:28:56 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! Were releasing a quick hotfix today to resolve a progression blocking bug within Council Chambers. We are still working on a number of other bugfixes for a complete patch, but wanted to get this fix out ASAP.
Changes
- Fixed a bug where the barrier would sometimes fail to dispel in Council Chambers preventing access to The Sheltered Woods
Beta 0.9.2f Patch Notes
Thank you for your bug reports and feedback, including through our new in-game bug reporter. Were still working on addressing more issues for future patches. Here are some things were currently investigating:
[ 2023-10-05 16:07:29 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! We have a whole bunch of fixes were releasing in todays Patch. Two of the fixes we were targeting for this patch - Offline Temporal Sanctum Progression, and Ground Decals carrying over between echoes werent quite able to get in. The changes for these items unfortunately arent quite fixing them, and we dont want to delay all the other updates for them. While we continue to be hard at work on those bugs (and others), read below for all the fixes and updates out today!
Changes
Gameplay
- Fixed a bug that occasionally resulted in a duplicate player body after entering a new scene.
- Fixed a bug that occasionally prevented Rune Prisons from spawning their encounters.
Abilities
- Fixed a bug where Puncture would sometimes deal 1 damage
- Added Scaling Tags to Glyph of Dominion
- Fixed a bug where Frost Claw would leave a 'trail' on the ground when converted to Fire or Lightning
- Fixed a rare bug where some abilities could fail to hit
- Fixed a small timing issue with Runebolt
- Runebolts explosive skill tree node has had its placeholder name updated.
UI
- Fixed a bug where players were unable to Unhide Quests on the Map
- Fixed a bug where changing or disabling a Loot Filter would sometimes prevent players from closing the Loot Filter panel
- Fixed a bug where Medium Item Names was displaying Long Item Names
- Fixed a bug where clicking on quests on the Map would not always bring Players to the proper node on the Map Screen
Enemies
- Fixed ability pooling for Shade of Orobyss and Majasa
- Added ability pooling for a number of enemies to increase performance
- Fixed a bug where Exiled Mage's Mana Strike would fail to hit players
- Adjusted VFX for Winged Fire, and Dreadworm enemies
- Updated Skeletons weapon materials
Localization
- Fixed a bug where there was incorrect spacing between Hanja in Korean chat
- Added several localization updates
Items
- Fixed health recovery stacking from Death Rattle
- Fixed a bug with the Unique gloves Hand of Judgment which resulted in abnormally rolled values.
Other
- Fixed a bug that prevented some hardcore players from transitioning to softcore properly upon death.
- Implemented improvements to server stability and optimization
- Reduced matchmaking timeouts from 10min to 5min (This is not the AFK timer, but how long a server will wait for user connections, such as during a loading screen)
- Added several lighting improvements in Chapter H - Majelka
What Were Working On
Thank you for your bug reports and feedback, including through our new in-game bug reporter. Were still working on addressing more issues for future patches. Here are some things were currently investigating:
- Decals persisting and layering from scene to scene.
- Progression blocker in Temporal Sanctum (offline)
- Transition times between scenes
- Rarely disconnecting immediately after connecting to a new server.
- Enemies in Arena and Monolith often do not animate properly
- Continuing localization and translation improvements
Beta 0.9.2c Patch Notes
Thank you for your bug reports and feedback. Were still working on addressing more issues for future patches. Here are some things were currently investigating:
[ 2023-09-21 18:45:25 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Fixed the waypoint on the world map for Last Refuge Outskirts being unusable.
- Fixed the Hide/Show Quests function on the world map.
- Fixed a bug which caused error spam in The Immortal Summit.
What Were Working On
Thank you for your bug reports and feedback. Were still working on addressing more issues for future patches. Here are some things were currently investigating:
- Progression blocker in Temporal Sanctum (offline)
- Some skill projectiles are colliding with 'invisible terrain'
- Transition times between scenes can be quite long.
- Rarely disconnecting immediately after connecting to a new server.
- Sometimes, your player model is duplicated after entering a new scene and the camera gets stuck. Portaling out to another server usually fixes this.
- Rune Prisons can rarely fail to spawn an Exiled Mage.
- Enemies in Arena and Monolith often do not animate properly.
- Certain abilities failing to hit enemies correctly.
- Swapping loot filters can cause the loot filter interface to bug out.
- Textures can pile up on the ground as you load more monolith echoes, causing strange visuals and increased memory usage.
- Item name lengths are now Long when they should be Normal.
0.9.2b Release and Patch Notes
Thank you for your bug reports and feedback. Were still working on addressing more issues for future patches. Here are some things were currently investigating:
[ 2023-09-14 16:25:33 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Fixed a bug where using a Rune of Research could not create a Glyph of Insight.
- Fixed a bug causing projectiles to be destroyed early in the Ritual Lake echo layout.
- Fixed a bug which caused Frostclaws Glamdring node to scale with increased and more melee damage stats.
- Fixed a bug where submitting a bug report when your Log File was too large could crash the game client.
- Submitting a bug report now also includes the Log File for your previous session as well.
- Fixed a bug where Adanais personal item dropped as a Staff instead of a Dagger. This fix will not retroactively affect existing items.
- Fixed a bug where Frost Claw did not have localized text.
- Fixed visual issues with Frostclaws Fire and Lightning conversions.
- Fixed visual bugs with the Rogues appearance when creating a new character.
- Fixed a bug where players would stand completely still after certain skill animation ended, rather than returning to their idle animation.
- Summon Spriggan
- Upheaval
- Default Attack
- Ice Thorns
- Summon Scorpion
- Earthquake
- Updated animations for channeled Flurry when using a polearm or two-handed axe.
- Updated sound effects for Immortal Eye enemies.
- Fixed footstep sounds being incorrect for players.
- Replaced the very old sounds on Divine Bolt and Volcanus shard ability with newer ones.
- Fixed various minor environmental audio issues.
What Were Working On
Thank you for your bug reports and feedback. Were still working on addressing more issues for future patches. Here are some things were currently investigating:
- Transition times between scenes can be quite long.
- Rarely disconnecting immediately after connecting to a new server.
- Sometimes, your player model is duplicated after entering a new scene and the camera gets stuck. Portaling out to another server usually fixes this.
- Rune Prisons can rarely fail to spawn an Exiled Mage.
- Enemies in Arena and Monolith often do not animate properly.
- Certain abilities failing to hit enemies correctly.
- Swapping loot filters can cause the loot filter interface to bug out.
- Textures can pile up on the ground as you load more monolith echoes, causing strange visuals and increased memory usage.
- Item name lengths are now Long when they should be Normal.
0.9.2a Release and Patch Notes
Were actively monitoring bug reports from you all and the health of our infrastructure. We plan for our next patch to be next week, focused on fixing bugs. Well be on the lookout for any critical issues this weekend though. Here are some things were currently investigating:
[ 2023-09-08 23:35:49 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Added chat channels for Korean - this was an oversight. You can select what language chat channels you connect to on the Login screen.
- Various logging improvements to aid troubleshooting.
What Were Working On
Were actively monitoring bug reports from you all and the health of our infrastructure. We plan for our next patch to be next week, focused on fixing bugs. Well be on the lookout for any critical issues this weekend though. Here are some things were currently investigating:
- Transition times between scenes can be quite long.
- Rarely disconnecting immediately after connecting to a new server.
- Sometimes, your player model is duplicated after entering a new scene and the camera gets stuck. Portaling out to another server usually fixes this.
- Rune Prisons can rarely fail to spawn an Exiled Mage.
- Enemies in Arena and Monolith often do not animate properly.
- Certain abilities failing to hit enemies correctly.
- Swapping loot filters can cause the loot filter interface to bug out.
- Submitting a bug report with a log file thats too large can crash the client.
- Textures can pile up on the ground as you load more monolith echoes, causing strange visuals and increased memory usage.
- Item name lengths are now Long when they should be Normal.
- The Rogues visuals look incorrect when making a new character.
- Certain skills cause the player to not properly return to their idle animation.
Runes of Power Update - Beta Patch 0.9.2 Patch Notes
[ 2023-09-05 16:00:47 CET ] [ Original post ]
Runes of Power, Patch 0.9.2, is coming Thursday, Sept 7th, 2023 at 11:00 AM CT!
Welcome everyone to the Patch Notes for Beta Patch 0.9.2 Runes of Power! Over the last week weve been going over some of the major features to expect in this patch including the new Runemaster Mastery, Localization, Frost Claw, Item Caches, and Rune Prisons. This update brings with it a whole new way to play with the Runemaster, alongside new content with random encounters, and many more improvements!
Last Epoch Beta Patch 0.9.2 - Runes of Power will introduce:
- Mage Mastery: Runemaster, including 5 new skills!
- New Base Mage Class Ability: Frost Claw
- One-shot Caches, and Lost Caches
- Localization
- Monolith Improvements
- In-game Bug Reporting
- New Models and Animations
- Twenty-one new Unique Items
- Balance Changes and Bug Fixes
- And more!
One-shot and Lost Caches
Have you ever thought to yourself I love exploring, but sometimes I wish there was something just a little bit more to find while exploring? Well, we have, and so were introducing One-shot Caches! These Caches are hidden throughout various Campaign zones. You wont find them on the beaten path either, so if you want them, make sure to put your exploring boots on. When you begin to approach a One-shot Cache, you will be able to see the cache appear as an icon on your mini-map to let you know that treasure is near.
One-shot Caches, as the name implies, can only be opened for their specific rewards once per character, but when opened provide greater rewards than a normal chest and always have a guaranteed drop of either a Personal Item or other helpful leveling items. Personal Items are hand-crafted items which once belonged to another entity that left them behind. They have fixed stats on them, and boast special Personal Affixes. These Personal Affixes cannot drop naturally, define the name of the item, and can be identified by their pale yellow color. Personal Items also cannot be crafted, so youll need to find the cache that has the personal item for you.
To prevent missing out on One-shot Caches when playing in a party, the Cache will only be opened for you by another player if you are also nearby. If youre further away, it will remain safely closed for you to explore it yourself when youre ready. You can always find the same One-shot Caches in every playthrough: so once you know where to find one, containing a particular item to help you through the campaign, youll know where to go. This also provides an opportunity for more experienced players to find different routes through the campaign for different characters, depending on which One-shot Caches they may want to nab.
Lost Caches are similar to One-shot Caches, however these will randomly appear in Monolith Echoes and dont have any limits on finding and opening them. Our goal here is to improve the feeling of each potential echo by adding random events where you can find fun little rewards - perhaps stumbling upon them, or for the avid explorers out there, a reward for your efforts. Do keep in mind, not all Echoes will contain a Lost Cache.
When found tucked away within Echoes, Lost Caches will grant a bunch of powerful items themed around the specific Lost Cache. There are many types of Lost Caches to find, as well as several Tiers of each type of Lost Cache. For example you may find an Explorers Cache which hoards keys, a Lost Thiefs Cache which contains jewelry, ranged weapons, and daggers, or perhaps a Thief Lords Cache which contains a greater version of the rewards from the Lost Thiefs Cache.
Alongside adding new mechanics and things to find in Monoliths, were making some changes to Echoes themselves to improve the experience. Our goal here is to make Echoes feel more consistent in navigation, feel better when clearing, add a bit more variety, and reduce the feeling of getting a bad map. With the performance improvements weve been making, were feeling confident about this first change being made: increasing mob density. On average, this works out to about a ten percent increase in mob density. However, in combination with adjusting mob spawner locations, we believe this can help with the feeling of density, without too much of a performance impact. This is just a first step towards better balanced endgame monster density and this will be an ongoing effort.
The second change were making is adding more possible player spawn locations. This was a quick change which can help to make maps feel more variable by creating different routes around the maps. The third change were making is to maps with a lot of dead ends either removing many of the dead ends, or adding additional connections to make these maps less punishing on path choice and reduce backtracking. The final change is were reducing the sizes of some of the larger maps. This means Alpine Halls is now about one third the size it previously was.
Thank you everyone for joining us for the final Pre-Patch Blog Post for Beta Patch 0.9.2 Runes of Power! With One-shot Caches and Lost Caches providing more reward to exploration, and general Monolith of Fate Improvements keeping the feel-goods coming, we hope everyone enjoys Runes of Power and Runemaster as much as weve enjoyed creating it. So get your theory-crafting juices flowing, and your plans set, because Runes of Power releases in just three days on September 7th! Keep your eyes open tomorrow for our final post before the patch, containing all of the juicy patch notes, coming soon!
[ 2023-09-04 16:00:29 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome to the final Pre-Patch Blog Post before the release of the full Patch Notes for Runes of Power! Today were going to be looking at another new encounter mechanic were adding to Last Epoch in just three days! As mentioned in the Rune Prisons blog post, we wanted to improve the moment- to-moment feeling within the Campaign, as well as within Echoes. To bolster this, were adding two types of caches to the game: One-shot Caches, which can be found during the Campaign, and Lost Caches, which can be found within the Monolith of Fate.
One-shot Caches
Have you ever thought to yourself I love exploring, but sometimes I wish there was something just a little bit more to find while exploring? Well, we have, and so were introducing One-shot Caches! These Caches are hidden throughout various Campaign zones. You wont find them on the beaten path either, so if you want them, make sure to put your exploring boots on. When you begin to approach a One-shot Cache, you will be able to see the cache appear as an icon on your mini-map to let you know that treasure is near.
One-shot Caches, as the name implies, can only be opened for their specific rewards once per character, but when opened provide greater rewards than a normal chest and always have a guaranteed drop of either a Personal Item or other helpful leveling items. Personal Items are hand-crafted items which once belonged to another entity that left them behind. They have fixed stats on them, and boast special Personal Affixes. These Personal Affixes cannot drop naturally, define the name of the item, and can be identified by their pale yellow color. Personal Items also cannot be crafted, so youll need to find the cache that has the personal item for you.
To prevent missing out on One-shot Caches when playing in a party, the Cache will only be opened for you by another player if you are also nearby. If youre further away, it will remain safely closed for you to explore it yourself when youre ready. You can always find the same One-shot Caches in every playthrough: so once you know where to find one, containing a particular item to help you through the campaign, youll know where to go. This also provides an opportunity for more experienced players to find different routes through the campaign for different characters, depending on which One-shot Caches they may want to nab.
Lost Caches
Lost Caches are similar to One-shot Caches, however these will randomly appear in Monolith Echoes and dont have any limits on finding and opening them. Our goal here is to improve the feeling of each potential echo by adding random events where you can find fun little rewards - perhaps stumbling upon them, or for the avid explorers out there, a reward for your efforts. Do keep in mind, not all Echoes will contain a Lost Cache.
When found tucked away within Echoes, Lost Caches will grant a bunch of powerful items themed around the specific Lost Cache. There are many types of Lost Caches to find, as well as several Tiers of each type of Lost Cache. For example you may find an Explorers Cache which hoards keys, a Lost Thiefs Cache which contains jewelry, ranged weapons, and daggers, or perhaps a Thief Lords Cache which contains a greater version of the rewards from the Lost Thiefs Cache.
Monolith of Fate Improvements
Alongside adding new mechanics and things to find in Monoliths, were making some changes to Echoes themselves to improve the experience. Our goal here is to make Echoes feel more consistent in navigation, feel better when clearing, add a bit more variety, and reduce the feeling of getting a bad map. With the performance improvements weve been making, were feeling confident about this first change being made: increasing mob density. On average, this works out to about a ten percent increase in mob density. However, in combination with adjusting mob spawner locations, we believe this can help with the feeling of density, without too much of a performance impact. This is just a first step towards better balanced endgame monster density and this will be an ongoing effort.
The second change were making is adding more possible player spawn locations. This was a quick change which can help to make maps feel more variable by creating different routes around the maps. The third change were making is to maps with a lot of dead ends either removing many of the dead ends, or adding additional connections to make these maps less punishing on path choice and reduce backtracking. The final change is were reducing the sizes of some of the larger maps. This means Alpine Halls is now about one third the size it previously was.
Patch Notes Soon
Thank you everyone for joining us for the final Pre-Patch Blog Post for Beta Patch 0.9.2 Runes of Power! With One-shot Caches and Lost Caches providing more reward to exploration, and general Monolith of Fate Improvements keeping the feel-goods coming, we hope everyone enjoys Runes of Power and Runemaster as much as weve enjoyed creating it. So get your theory-crafting juices flowing, and your plans set, because Runes of Power releases in just three days on September 7th! Keep your eyes open tomorrow for our final post before the patch, containing all of the juicy patch notes, coming soon!
Rune Prisons and Experimental Items
Rune Prisons are a special type of encounter you can find in any Monolith Echo, as well as most campaign areas. While making your way through the world and Eras of Eterra, you may find yourself coming across a large floating prism held in place with chains. The intermittent shudders betray the power that lies within these prisons.
By clicking on a Rune Prison, you will unleash the Exiled Mage held within, who will become immediately hostile to both you and any enemies in the area. These Exiled Mages will spawn with a random set of abilities, so you never quite know exactly what you will be facing when you break them out - but always be ready for a fight.
If you manage to defeat this Exiled Mage, you will be rewarded with an Experimental item, and potentially, at higher levels, a Rune of Research.
Experimental Items are a new class of items being introduced in Runes of Power. These are items which at first glance may appear to be a standard Magic, Unique, or Exalted item. However on closer inspection youll notice they come with a very special affix. These Experimental Affixes cannot by crafted or found through normal means, and are typically only found on items dropped by an Exiled Mage.
These experimental affixes can even roll exalted, as well as the potential for other affixes on the item to roll as Exalted. This means that yes, you can in fact craft a Legendary Item using Experimental Affixes! At higher levels, you may also find a very special crafting item dropped by an Exiled Mage: a Rune of Research.
Successfully defeating an Exiled Mage above level 70 has a chance to drop a Rune of Research. This Rune will seal an Experimental Affix on an Experimental item. This obeys normal Sealed Affix rules, in that an item can only have one Sealed Affix.
When sealing an experimental affix through the use of a Rune of Research, you have a chance to receive a particularly powerful crafting item, a Glyph of Insight. When this glyph is used to upgrade a normal affix, it will change it into an Experimental Affix. This process is deterministic based on the item.
This means if you have two of the exact same item, it will always produce the same Experimental Affix. Determining what exactly an item needs for each possible Experimental Affix however is something that may require a bit of experimentation.
Thats all for todays Pre-Patch Blog Post taking a look at Rune Prisons, and we hope everyones excited for this entirely new type of item and crafting mechanic coming in just four more days on September 7th. Join us again tomorrow for a look into One-shot Caches, Lost Caches, and some general improvements for Monolith Echoes coming in Beta Patch 0.9.2 Runes of Power!
[ 2023-09-03 16:00:14 CET ] [ Original post ]
Happy Sunday, Travelers! Welcome to the 0.9.2 Pre-patch Blog Post covering the new Rune Prisons and Experimental Items coming this Thursday in Runes of Power! An area weve felt is in need of improvement with respect to Last Epochs endgame system is the moment-to-moment gameplay of completing Echoes. This isnt something we feel can be fixed by any single change, however were still looking to improve this aspect of gameplay piece by piece. By introducing more random events that can happen in an Echo, it can help to reduce the sameness of each Echo, and feel like a much more dynamic experience. The first random encounter were introducing this Thursday is Rune Prisons.
Rune Prisons
Rune Prisons are a special type of encounter you can find in any Monolith Echo, as well as most campaign areas. While making your way through the world and Eras of Eterra, you may find yourself coming across a large floating prism held in place with chains. The intermittent shudders betray the power that lies within these prisons.
By clicking on a Rune Prison, you will unleash the Exiled Mage held within, who will become immediately hostile to both you and any enemies in the area. These Exiled Mages will spawn with a random set of abilities, so you never quite know exactly what you will be facing when you break them out - but always be ready for a fight.
If you manage to defeat this Exiled Mage, you will be rewarded with an Experimental item, and potentially, at higher levels, a Rune of Research.
Experimental Items
Experimental Items are a new class of items being introduced in Runes of Power. These are items which at first glance may appear to be a standard Magic, Unique, or Exalted item. However on closer inspection youll notice they come with a very special affix. These Experimental Affixes cannot by crafted or found through normal means, and are typically only found on items dropped by an Exiled Mage.
These experimental affixes can even roll exalted, as well as the potential for other affixes on the item to roll as Exalted. This means that yes, you can in fact craft a Legendary Item using Experimental Affixes! At higher levels, you may also find a very special crafting item dropped by an Exiled Mage: a Rune of Research.
Experimental Crafting
Successfully defeating an Exiled Mage above level 70 has a chance to drop a Rune of Research. This Rune will seal an Experimental Affix on an Experimental item. This obeys normal Sealed Affix rules, in that an item can only have one Sealed Affix.
When sealing an experimental affix through the use of a Rune of Research, you have a chance to receive a particularly powerful crafting item, a Glyph of Insight. When this glyph is used to upgrade a normal affix, it will change it into an Experimental Affix. This process is deterministic based on the item.
This means if you have two of the exact same item, it will always produce the same Experimental Affix. Determining what exactly an item needs for each possible Experimental Affix however is something that may require a bit of experimentation.
One-shot and Lost Caches
Thats all for todays Pre-Patch Blog Post taking a look at Rune Prisons, and we hope everyones excited for this entirely new type of item and crafting mechanic coming in just four more days on September 7th. Join us again tomorrow for a look into One-shot Caches, Lost Caches, and some general improvements for Monolith Echoes coming in Beta Patch 0.9.2 Runes of Power!
Updated Visuals, Quality of Life, and Items
With the recent complete overhaul of Chapter 1, we wanted to go back through some of the mid-game areas and apply our new tech and design principles. All zones in Chapter 6, most zones in Chapter 4, and several other hand-picked zones have had significant visual upgrades made to them.
Many of these areas have had completely new assets created for them such as siege weaponry for Osprix War Camps and new soul storage devices for the Immortal Empire. Many of these items not only improve the visuals of the area, but also work to create additional immersion as each of these custom crafted items also have a purpose and intent.
These changes help us bring Eterra as a whole up to our latest standards in preparation for 1.0. Our goal with many of these changes is not just to beautify these areas, but also to help bolster the unique distinctions between both different Eras and Zones. Time travel is a core part of Last Epoch, and so its even more important to have distinct visual traits and variety to help reinforce the difference between the Eras. These visual updates make many of these areas feel like entirely new maps to play through.
Alongside Zones, a number of enemies are getting visual updates as well in 0.9.2. For those that keep close track of our teasers on our weekly Dev Streams, we teased this duos art a while back, and theyll be two of the new Enemy Models arriving in Runes of Power!
One of the most frequently requested quality of life features is a way to be able to quickly and easily report bugs and provide feedback in-game. As of September 7th, this ability will be added to the game! On the Character select screen, as well as in the main menu, you can find a new Report a Bug button.
When you submit any bugs or feedback through this feature, you can automatically include a screenshot of your current game view, as well as your log files, for comprehensive review. Were quite happy to finally have this feature in players hands, both to make it easier and more friendly for you to report issues. Were looking forward to receiving more info and feedback on a range of issues so we can address them more quickly and efficiently with this new tool!
Earlier this week we re-enabled Town functionality live on all servers, allowing players to encounter other Travelers throughout Eterra in Towns. With this Town functionality, youre able to connect with other players, form parties, or socialize, show off your latest legendary, and talk shop. To make interaction in Towns a bit smoother, with Patch 0.9.2 were also adding the ability to right click players in Town to be able to interact with them. Using this interact menu, you can start a direct conversation, add to your friends list, send them a message, or if the need arises, block them.
Beta patch 0.9.2 Runes of Power is going to be adding twenty-one new Uniques to Eterra! With a new Mastery coming in, many of these will be aimed to support the Runemaster, however we havent completely forgotten other characters for this patch. Heres a look at a few of the new Unique Items coming in just five more days! You can also find a few more Unique teasers by keeping an eye on other news such as from our Dev Streams, and videos.
With continuing visual enhancements across all of Last Epoch, as well as improving quality of life features, were making our way ever closer to 1.0. While still making sure we continue to add new ways to build and theory-craft in Last Epoch with an ever-expanding roster of Unique Items. In Last Epoch, gameplay, quality of life, and visual fidelity are held in balance to continue making the game as enjoyable as possible for everyone in our great community. Thank you for joining us for Saturdays Pre-Patch Blog Post for Beta Patch 0.9.2 - Runes of Power, and well see you all again tomorrow to talk about Rune Prisons, Experimental Items, and Experimental Crafting!
[ 2023-09-02 16:00:19 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers to the third Pre-Patch Blog Post for Beta Patch 0.9.2 Runes of Power! Today well be taking a look at some of the new Unique Items, visual improvements, and quality of life features coming in Patch 0.9.2 on September 7th. This post is going to be quite a visual feast, so make sure you have your eyeballs ready for the images ahead!
Campaign Levels Visual Updates
With the recent complete overhaul of Chapter 1, we wanted to go back through some of the mid-game areas and apply our new tech and design principles. All zones in Chapter 6, most zones in Chapter 4, and several other hand-picked zones have had significant visual upgrades made to them.
Many of these areas have had completely new assets created for them such as siege weaponry for Osprix War Camps and new soul storage devices for the Immortal Empire. Many of these items not only improve the visuals of the area, but also work to create additional immersion as each of these custom crafted items also have a purpose and intent.
These changes help us bring Eterra as a whole up to our latest standards in preparation for 1.0. Our goal with many of these changes is not just to beautify these areas, but also to help bolster the unique distinctions between both different Eras and Zones. Time travel is a core part of Last Epoch, and so its even more important to have distinct visual traits and variety to help reinforce the difference between the Eras. These visual updates make many of these areas feel like entirely new maps to play through.
Enemy Updates
Alongside Zones, a number of enemies are getting visual updates as well in 0.9.2. For those that keep close track of our teasers on our weekly Dev Streams, we teased this duos art a while back, and theyll be two of the new Enemy Models arriving in Runes of Power!
Soul Cage
Soul Warden
Dont be so shy you two!
Quality of Life Updates
In-game Bug Reporting
One of the most frequently requested quality of life features is a way to be able to quickly and easily report bugs and provide feedback in-game. As of September 7th, this ability will be added to the game! On the Character select screen, as well as in the main menu, you can find a new Report a Bug button.
When you submit any bugs or feedback through this feature, you can automatically include a screenshot of your current game view, as well as your log files, for comprehensive review. Were quite happy to finally have this feature in players hands, both to make it easier and more friendly for you to report issues. Were looking forward to receiving more info and feedback on a range of issues so we can address them more quickly and efficiently with this new tool!
Town Functionality
Earlier this week we re-enabled Town functionality live on all servers, allowing players to encounter other Travelers throughout Eterra in Towns. With this Town functionality, youre able to connect with other players, form parties, or socialize, show off your latest legendary, and talk shop. To make interaction in Towns a bit smoother, with Patch 0.9.2 were also adding the ability to right click players in Town to be able to interact with them. Using this interact menu, you can start a direct conversation, add to your friends list, send them a message, or if the need arises, block them.
New Items
Beta patch 0.9.2 Runes of Power is going to be adding twenty-one new Uniques to Eterra! With a new Mastery coming in, many of these will be aimed to support the Runemaster, however we havent completely forgotten other characters for this patch. Heres a look at a few of the new Unique Items coming in just five more days! You can also find a few more Unique teasers by keeping an eye on other news such as from our Dev Streams, and videos.
More to Come
With continuing visual enhancements across all of Last Epoch, as well as improving quality of life features, were making our way ever closer to 1.0. While still making sure we continue to add new ways to build and theory-craft in Last Epoch with an ever-expanding roster of Unique Items. In Last Epoch, gameplay, quality of life, and visual fidelity are held in balance to continue making the game as enjoyable as possible for everyone in our great community. Thank you for joining us for Saturdays Pre-Patch Blog Post for Beta Patch 0.9.2 - Runes of Power, and well see you all again tomorrow to talk about Rune Prisons, Experimental Items, and Experimental Crafting!
Frost Claw
Unlocked at level 12 for all Mages, Frost Claw fires three piercing cold projectiles in an arc, dealing damage to any enemies they pass through, and converging on the targeted location to create a burst of area damage on impact. With Fireballs focus on damaging single enemies, and Lightning Blasts ability to target multiple enemies, this left a space in between for an area damage based ability. As such, not only does Frost Claw take up the missing element, it also fits the middle ground between playstyles, adding a greater element of accuracy rewarding picking the right spot to deal damage to a number of enemies. With its versatile design and ability to be quickly cast at high speeds with low cost, Frost Claw offers opportunities to be used by any of the three masteries. It can be specialized into Fire or Lightning in addition to the base cold, it can gain Melee Damage as Spell Damage, and can even be triggered automatically by melee attacks allowing even further spell synergy with the Spellblade. Depending on how Frost Claw is specialized, it can also be set up as a zero cost skill, making it useful as a generator for other abilities.
Lets take a look at a couple of the Transformative Nodes you will find on the Frost Claw tree!
With On Through the Snow, you will enable Frost Claw to recast from the target location a second time behind the targeted location. This recast can hit the same enemies hit by the first cast, producing both increased targeted damage, as well as expanding the total area of effect of the ability as the new projectiles can also hit any enemies along their path.
Looking for greater single target damage out of Frost Claw? Volley of glass removes the Area of Effect blast damage at the target location, but staggers each of the projectiles, allowing a single enemy to be hit by each one. This also lends Frost Claw to some very exciting ailment builds, so options are very open here.
Frost Claw is a perfect example of the importance and value of listening to feedback from the community. We want to provide a big thank you to everyone who helped us arrive at introducing Frost Claw to fill a much needed vacuum in the Mage Class, and provide an additional skill for everyone to enjoy in Patch 0.9.2 - Runes of Power! With a total of six new abilities, with five in a completely new mastery coming to Mage in just six more days, it should be a great patch for theory-crafting builds! Join us again tomorrow well be taking a look at some of the new Unique Items, continuing visual improvements, and quality of life updates coming to Last Epoch next week!
[ 2023-09-01 16:00:23 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome to the Pre-Patch Blog Post for Frost Claw! Frost Claw is being added as a new skill for the base Mage class. This is in addition to the 5 Runemaster skills, meaning there will be a total of 6 new skills being introduced in Patch 0.9.2 - Runes of Power! As we were developing Runemaster for the Mage, and began receiving early feedback, one of the most common responses was was the lack of a spammable cold skill, particularly for use in generating Heo runes early. When we reviewed this feedback, we agreed that there needed to be an earlier access for the Runemaster to generate runes, as well as correcting the lack of a fast usage cold spell alongside Fireball and Lightning Blast. Because of this, we decided to address the gap within the Mage class in tandem with the release of Runemaster. Frost Claw helps to provide support for more elemental build options, supports all Mage Masteries, and is just plain fun.
Frost Claw
Unlocked at level 12 for all Mages, Frost Claw fires three piercing cold projectiles in an arc, dealing damage to any enemies they pass through, and converging on the targeted location to create a burst of area damage on impact. With Fireballs focus on damaging single enemies, and Lightning Blasts ability to target multiple enemies, this left a space in between for an area damage based ability. As such, not only does Frost Claw take up the missing element, it also fits the middle ground between playstyles, adding a greater element of accuracy rewarding picking the right spot to deal damage to a number of enemies. With its versatile design and ability to be quickly cast at high speeds with low cost, Frost Claw offers opportunities to be used by any of the three masteries. It can be specialized into Fire or Lightning in addition to the base cold, it can gain Melee Damage as Spell Damage, and can even be triggered automatically by melee attacks allowing even further spell synergy with the Spellblade. Depending on how Frost Claw is specialized, it can also be set up as a zero cost skill, making it useful as a generator for other abilities.
Lets take a look at a couple of the Transformative Nodes you will find on the Frost Claw tree!
On Through the Snow
With On Through the Snow, you will enable Frost Claw to recast from the target location a second time behind the targeted location. This recast can hit the same enemies hit by the first cast, producing both increased targeted damage, as well as expanding the total area of effect of the ability as the new projectiles can also hit any enemies along their path.
Volley of Glass
Looking for greater single target damage out of Frost Claw? Volley of glass removes the Area of Effect blast damage at the target location, but staggers each of the projectiles, allowing a single enemy to be hit by each one. This also lends Frost Claw to some very exciting ailment builds, so options are very open here.
New Items and Visual Updates
Frost Claw is a perfect example of the importance and value of listening to feedback from the community. We want to provide a big thank you to everyone who helped us arrive at introducing Frost Claw to fill a much needed vacuum in the Mage Class, and provide an additional skill for everyone to enjoy in Patch 0.9.2 - Runes of Power! With a total of six new abilities, with five in a completely new mastery coming to Mage in just six more days, it should be a great patch for theory-crafting builds! Join us again tomorrow well be taking a look at some of the new Unique Items, continuing visual improvements, and quality of life updates coming to Last Epoch next week!
Introducing the Runemaster
We're exhausted. The good kind of exhausted that only whirlwind adventures can provide. In case you missed the news, last week we traveled to Cologne, Germany for Gamescom - the biggest stage in gaming. We were excited to introduce the Runemaster, who is featured in today's blog post, on that stage. For many of us it was the first time attending a convention of this scale and meeting each other face to face. We experienced the joy of those playing the game for the first time, we spoke in great depth with existing fans, and even strengthened our bonds as a team. We were honored to work (and play) alongside Maxroll ( Lonestar_McFluffin, Terek, and Lizard_IRL), Aaron ActionRPG, and Rhyyker. With their help we were able to show off Last Epoch to a whole new audience. We would like to extend our deepest gratitude to them for making it a memorable Milestone in our history. We wish it could last forever, but the ephemeral nature of time is what makes those moments so special. Now with our eyes on the future, we are incredibly excited to bring you 0.9.2 - Runes of Power.
Seeing so many amazing fans show up to our booth in Germany is a perfect segue to our first feature to mention coming in Runes of Power - Localization. Patch 0.9.2 will be releasing translated into eight languages in addition to English: Simplified Chinese, French, German, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish! We wanted to get localization into our community's hands before 1.0 so we could have time to get feedback from our global player base on it, and get it as clean as possible for 1.0. We are happy to say that we will be including this feature in patch 0.9.2. Our community has been the biggest part of what makes Last Epoch what it is from its very beginning, so being able to support an even larger community across the world is an amazing milestone to reach, and we're super excited to see all the new players joining the fray in Eterra. We know there are a lot of intricacies in an ARPG where wording is critical and we want to make sure that comes across as much as possible for everyone in our community. We have been working closely with translators over the last year to make as many translations hit the mark as possible. We also know no one could know the subtleties and nuances of game mechanics better than our own players, and we look forward to continuing to improve localization in Last Epoch with help from all of you!
Of course, what were all excited about since the reveal at Gamescom - the Runemaster! The third and final Mage Mastery, and the latest Mastery to join the ranks, the Runemaster provides the greatest opportunity for customization and skill expression to date with Runic Invocation. With the Runemasters mastery skill, Runic Invocation, you will passively gain Runes each time you use an ability: Heo, Rah, And Gon runes, representing Cold, Fire, and Lightning respectively. At any point you can invoke these Runes using Runic Invocation to cast one of 40 different invocations based on which runes you have active, and in what order they were generated. The Runemaster also has the ability to generate, benefit from, and consume runes with other abilities depending on how you choose to specialize. The new Passive tree continues to build upon our latest passives designs with threshold nodes, and even new mechanics such as dynamic defensive stats. As a savant, weaving the power of the raw arcane, infusing magic into offensive and protective wards, we wanted to create a class which could deliver a large depth of mechanical play. We felt this was a playstyle ripe for exploration within Last Epoch. One where in combat, each decision and ability used could impact the course of the fight individually, and create large payoffs for active decisions on controlling enemies and choosing how to approach a fight. With this in mind, the Runemaster offers several methods for area denial and enemy control with Frost Wall, Glyph of Dominion, and several of the available outcomes of Runic Invocation.
When we originally envisioned Runemaster, we had also looked at Golems as part of the Mastery, and we dont want to leave out mentioning them. These werent to be traditional minions, but rather arcane constructs which could be invoked by the Runemaster. When designing the specific interactions and diving into the gameplay of Runemaster, we made the decision that the focus should be on the Runes and Area Control. With the amount of depth, and complexity already offering such a strong playstyle for Runemaster, we found having pseudo-minions muddled the gameplay of the mastery too greatly. That being said, we also didnt want to leave out the theme of arcane constructs entirely, so you can still find ways to generate constructs as a Runemaster. Rune Bolt can create Runestones which automatically cast Runebolt for you, and the Hydrahedron Invocation creates a construct which lobs balls of molten fire at nearby enemies. These constructs act as an extension of yourself, scaling with your own stats rather than with Minion stats. The goal with the Runemaster is to be easy to approach, and have a large amount of depth to master and power to wield. While Runemaster is designed to offer great depth in mechanical play opportunities, we also want to make sure that every mastery is still approachable and easy to get into. A good example of this is the Runemaster spell Rune Bolt, which casts piercing elemental projectiles. This spell supports being used to manipulate specific rune generation, while being powerful and versatile enough to be a primary ability on its own in a low cost spam setup. Whether you just want to quick-cast single elements for three of the same Rune, establish a specific pattern of Runes, or adapt your Rune usage on the fly to get the absolute most out of the Mastery, The Runemaster has you covered.
[previewyoutube=YfAE8Uc6haU;full][/previewyoutube] The Runemasters Mastery Skill, gained the moment you gain your Mastery, Runic Invocation is at the very heart of the class. By invoking Runic Invocation with any number of Runes generated from other elemental abilities, Runic Invocation will consume your current runes to cast one of its forty corresponding invocations. Generate three Rah (Fire) Runes, and unleash Aergons Greater Fireball, creating a massive fiery explosion, dealing fire damage, and applying spreading flames to all enemies hit in a large area. By generating Rah, Gon, Heo (Fire, Lightning, Cold), you can invoke an Antipode of Mesembria, a rune stone which destabilizes over time eventually pulling in surrounding enemies followed by a massive explosion. Or perhaps a more defensive move is in order? Generate Heo, Rah, Heo (Cold, Fire, Cold), and surround yourself in an explosive shell of regenerating Ward with Reowyns Frostguard.
Flame Rush adds a new Traversal ability to the Mages Toolkit. Available to all masteries via the Runemaster passive tree, Flame Rush turns you into a hurling ball of fire, gaining damage reduction and exploding at the end of the movement. Channel the ability to its fullest and youll gain up to 150% increased area and damage when you release the ability. As a Runemaster, you will generate Runes while channeling abilities, making you ready for the next Invocation once you arrive at your destination. Flame Rush can also be specialized to automatically trigger your invocation at the end of the traversal for a very impactful arrival. Flame Rush can also be converted to either Lightning or Cold, matching the elements you need for your build and giving the Runemaster greater control over Rune generation.
Frost Wall is the second ability you can unlock in the Runemaster tree, and alongside Flame Rush will be available to all Mage Masteries should they chose to invest in the Runemaster Tree. Frost Wall erects a sheet of chilling winds, freezing and dealing Cold Damage over Time to enemies which cross it. With Frost Wall, we aimed to reinforce the Runemasters ability to control enemies and aid allies with thoughtful positioning. Frost Wall can be further specialized to apply beneficial effects to allies, or even to other spells passing through them. You can also convert Frost Wall to either Fire or Lightning to match your elemental style and provide their own positive effects, such as more damage over time. Frost wall offers extensive ways to control enemies and provide great payoffs for positioning.
Rune Bolt is the Runemasters bread and butter spell. Rune Bolt allows you to steadily fire piercing projectiles of Cold, Fire, and Lightning, rotating through the elements. We wanted to offer all Runemasters a skill which was easy to get into, and fill the role of something that was spammable. With a low mana cost, ability to generate resources, and ability to generate all Rune Types, Rune Bolt provides a go-to ability for the Runemaster. Within Rune Bolts Tree you can modify the ability to focus on its own projectiles - adding additional projectiles, making them home in on enemies, and even explode on contact dealing area damage. Alternatively, specialize Rune Bolts ability to generate runes and resources to make it a supporting skill for a larger build setup. Rune Bolt gives Runemaster many ways to control the flow of combat.
The final skill unlocked as a Runemaster is Glyph of Dominion. Placing a growing rune on the ground, dealing damage over time, culminating in a large explosion dealing damage to all enemies within it, Glyph of Dominion allows you to punish enemy positioning. With Glyph of Dominion, we wanted to focus on the area denial aspect of the Runemaster. To accomplish this, Glyph of Dominion can be specialized into taking greater advantage of enemies within it - dealing more damage to enemies that have shredded armor or are slowed, or adding a chance to stun enemies each second they are within it. You can also specialize to make Glyph of Dominion a haven for yourself and allies, offering defensive benefits such as ward generation, resistances, and even an additional 30% cast and attack area of effect while being dangerous for enemies to approach. Our goal with this ability is for Runemasters to be able to either take advantage of enemies positioning, or empower their own positioning. With the Runes of Disintegration node you can also generate ward per second and gain more damage to Disintegrate for those wanting some more laser beam action.
Were extremely excited to get Runemaster into everyones hands on September 7th. With a whole new level of opportunity for mechanical play, we cant wait to see what kinds of builds everyone manages to come up with. Alongside the new Mastery, making Last Epoch available to so many more players in their native language, means we have an opportunity to get feedback and continue building on Last Epoch for an even wider community! Tomorrow well be back looking at another, as yet unmentioned Mage Ability, which is going to be arriving with Patch 0.9.2 - Frost Claw! Until then, may Eterra watch over your travels.
[ 2023-08-31 17:59:53 CET ] [ Original post ]
Patch 0.9.2 - Runes of Power releases in just 7 days! Over the next week we'll be going over all the big new features coming in Runes of Power leading up to the Patch Notes on September 5th. We'll be covering the next mastery to reach Eterra: The Runemaster, a new Base Mage Skill, Rune Prisons and Experimental Items, One-shot and Lost Caches, a new Crafting Mechanic, a peek at some new Unique Items, and more progress in our ongoing efforts to improve Last Epochs visuals!
Gamescom
We're exhausted. The good kind of exhausted that only whirlwind adventures can provide. In case you missed the news, last week we traveled to Cologne, Germany for Gamescom - the biggest stage in gaming. We were excited to introduce the Runemaster, who is featured in today's blog post, on that stage. For many of us it was the first time attending a convention of this scale and meeting each other face to face. We experienced the joy of those playing the game for the first time, we spoke in great depth with existing fans, and even strengthened our bonds as a team. We were honored to work (and play) alongside Maxroll ( Lonestar_McFluffin, Terek, and Lizard_IRL), Aaron ActionRPG, and Rhyyker. With their help we were able to show off Last Epoch to a whole new audience. We would like to extend our deepest gratitude to them for making it a memorable Milestone in our history. We wish it could last forever, but the ephemeral nature of time is what makes those moments so special. Now with our eyes on the future, we are incredibly excited to bring you 0.9.2 - Runes of Power.
Localization
Seeing so many amazing fans show up to our booth in Germany is a perfect segue to our first feature to mention coming in Runes of Power - Localization. Patch 0.9.2 will be releasing translated into eight languages in addition to English: Simplified Chinese, French, German, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish! We wanted to get localization into our community's hands before 1.0 so we could have time to get feedback from our global player base on it, and get it as clean as possible for 1.0. We are happy to say that we will be including this feature in patch 0.9.2. Our community has been the biggest part of what makes Last Epoch what it is from its very beginning, so being able to support an even larger community across the world is an amazing milestone to reach, and we're super excited to see all the new players joining the fray in Eterra. We know there are a lot of intricacies in an ARPG where wording is critical and we want to make sure that comes across as much as possible for everyone in our community. We have been working closely with translators over the last year to make as many translations hit the mark as possible. We also know no one could know the subtleties and nuances of game mechanics better than our own players, and we look forward to continuing to improve localization in Last Epoch with help from all of you!
The Runemaster
Of course, what were all excited about since the reveal at Gamescom - the Runemaster! The third and final Mage Mastery, and the latest Mastery to join the ranks, the Runemaster provides the greatest opportunity for customization and skill expression to date with Runic Invocation. With the Runemasters mastery skill, Runic Invocation, you will passively gain Runes each time you use an ability: Heo, Rah, And Gon runes, representing Cold, Fire, and Lightning respectively. At any point you can invoke these Runes using Runic Invocation to cast one of 40 different invocations based on which runes you have active, and in what order they were generated. The Runemaster also has the ability to generate, benefit from, and consume runes with other abilities depending on how you choose to specialize. The new Passive tree continues to build upon our latest passives designs with threshold nodes, and even new mechanics such as dynamic defensive stats. As a savant, weaving the power of the raw arcane, infusing magic into offensive and protective wards, we wanted to create a class which could deliver a large depth of mechanical play. We felt this was a playstyle ripe for exploration within Last Epoch. One where in combat, each decision and ability used could impact the course of the fight individually, and create large payoffs for active decisions on controlling enemies and choosing how to approach a fight. With this in mind, the Runemaster offers several methods for area denial and enemy control with Frost Wall, Glyph of Dominion, and several of the available outcomes of Runic Invocation.
When we originally envisioned Runemaster, we had also looked at Golems as part of the Mastery, and we dont want to leave out mentioning them. These werent to be traditional minions, but rather arcane constructs which could be invoked by the Runemaster. When designing the specific interactions and diving into the gameplay of Runemaster, we made the decision that the focus should be on the Runes and Area Control. With the amount of depth, and complexity already offering such a strong playstyle for Runemaster, we found having pseudo-minions muddled the gameplay of the mastery too greatly. That being said, we also didnt want to leave out the theme of arcane constructs entirely, so you can still find ways to generate constructs as a Runemaster. Rune Bolt can create Runestones which automatically cast Runebolt for you, and the Hydrahedron Invocation creates a construct which lobs balls of molten fire at nearby enemies. These constructs act as an extension of yourself, scaling with your own stats rather than with Minion stats. The goal with the Runemaster is to be easy to approach, and have a large amount of depth to master and power to wield. While Runemaster is designed to offer great depth in mechanical play opportunities, we also want to make sure that every mastery is still approachable and easy to get into. A good example of this is the Runemaster spell Rune Bolt, which casts piercing elemental projectiles. This spell supports being used to manipulate specific rune generation, while being powerful and versatile enough to be a primary ability on its own in a low cost spam setup. Whether you just want to quick-cast single elements for three of the same Rune, establish a specific pattern of Runes, or adapt your Rune usage on the fly to get the absolute most out of the Mastery, The Runemaster has you covered.
Runic Invocation
[previewyoutube=YfAE8Uc6haU;full][/previewyoutube] The Runemasters Mastery Skill, gained the moment you gain your Mastery, Runic Invocation is at the very heart of the class. By invoking Runic Invocation with any number of Runes generated from other elemental abilities, Runic Invocation will consume your current runes to cast one of its forty corresponding invocations. Generate three Rah (Fire) Runes, and unleash Aergons Greater Fireball, creating a massive fiery explosion, dealing fire damage, and applying spreading flames to all enemies hit in a large area. By generating Rah, Gon, Heo (Fire, Lightning, Cold), you can invoke an Antipode of Mesembria, a rune stone which destabilizes over time eventually pulling in surrounding enemies followed by a massive explosion. Or perhaps a more defensive move is in order? Generate Heo, Rah, Heo (Cold, Fire, Cold), and surround yourself in an explosive shell of regenerating Ward with Reowyns Frostguard.
Flame Rush
Flame Rush adds a new Traversal ability to the Mages Toolkit. Available to all masteries via the Runemaster passive tree, Flame Rush turns you into a hurling ball of fire, gaining damage reduction and exploding at the end of the movement. Channel the ability to its fullest and youll gain up to 150% increased area and damage when you release the ability. As a Runemaster, you will generate Runes while channeling abilities, making you ready for the next Invocation once you arrive at your destination. Flame Rush can also be specialized to automatically trigger your invocation at the end of the traversal for a very impactful arrival. Flame Rush can also be converted to either Lightning or Cold, matching the elements you need for your build and giving the Runemaster greater control over Rune generation.
Frost Wall
Frost Wall is the second ability you can unlock in the Runemaster tree, and alongside Flame Rush will be available to all Mage Masteries should they chose to invest in the Runemaster Tree. Frost Wall erects a sheet of chilling winds, freezing and dealing Cold Damage over Time to enemies which cross it. With Frost Wall, we aimed to reinforce the Runemasters ability to control enemies and aid allies with thoughtful positioning. Frost Wall can be further specialized to apply beneficial effects to allies, or even to other spells passing through them. You can also convert Frost Wall to either Fire or Lightning to match your elemental style and provide their own positive effects, such as more damage over time. Frost wall offers extensive ways to control enemies and provide great payoffs for positioning.
Rune Bolt
Rune Bolt is the Runemasters bread and butter spell. Rune Bolt allows you to steadily fire piercing projectiles of Cold, Fire, and Lightning, rotating through the elements. We wanted to offer all Runemasters a skill which was easy to get into, and fill the role of something that was spammable. With a low mana cost, ability to generate resources, and ability to generate all Rune Types, Rune Bolt provides a go-to ability for the Runemaster. Within Rune Bolts Tree you can modify the ability to focus on its own projectiles - adding additional projectiles, making them home in on enemies, and even explode on contact dealing area damage. Alternatively, specialize Rune Bolts ability to generate runes and resources to make it a supporting skill for a larger build setup. Rune Bolt gives Runemaster many ways to control the flow of combat.
Glyph of Dominion
The final skill unlocked as a Runemaster is Glyph of Dominion. Placing a growing rune on the ground, dealing damage over time, culminating in a large explosion dealing damage to all enemies within it, Glyph of Dominion allows you to punish enemy positioning. With Glyph of Dominion, we wanted to focus on the area denial aspect of the Runemaster. To accomplish this, Glyph of Dominion can be specialized into taking greater advantage of enemies within it - dealing more damage to enemies that have shredded armor or are slowed, or adding a chance to stun enemies each second they are within it. You can also specialize to make Glyph of Dominion a haven for yourself and allies, offering defensive benefits such as ward generation, resistances, and even an additional 30% cast and attack area of effect while being dangerous for enemies to approach. Our goal with this ability is for Runemasters to be able to either take advantage of enemies positioning, or empower their own positioning. With the Runes of Disintegration node you can also generate ward per second and gain more damage to Disintegrate for those wanting some more laser beam action.
A new Mage Skill?
Were extremely excited to get Runemaster into everyones hands on September 7th. With a whole new level of opportunity for mechanical play, we cant wait to see what kinds of builds everyone manages to come up with. Alongside the new Mastery, making Last Epoch available to so many more players in their native language, means we have an opportunity to get feedback and continue building on Last Epoch for an even wider community! Tomorrow well be back looking at another, as yet unmentioned Mage Ability, which is going to be arriving with Patch 0.9.2 - Frost Claw! Until then, may Eterra watch over your travels.
Beta 0.9.1d4 Release & Maintenance
As announced last week: We will be performing some Server Maintenance today, Monday, August 21st. This will require our servers to be unavailable for approximately 12 hours. Offline mode will still be available during this time. This maintenance period is expected to run from August 21, 2023 10:00 PM to August 22, 2023 10:00 AM (US Central Time) Edit Aug 22 11:20 AM Central Were investigating an issue that has occurred after this maintenance. Were brought matchmaking down, meaning you cant join new servers, and some players may be kicked. Offline is still available. We'll provide an estimate when able. Edit Aug 22 2:47 PM Cental Online play is back up now. Apologies for the lack of updates in the meantime, we weren't able to give an accurate estimate in the middle of it.
[ 2023-08-21 17:46:15 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Made some configuration changes in advance of the Server Maintenance scheduled for tonight.
Server Maintenance
As announced last week: We will be performing some Server Maintenance today, Monday, August 21st. This will require our servers to be unavailable for approximately 12 hours. Offline mode will still be available during this time. This maintenance period is expected to run from August 21, 2023 10:00 PM to August 22, 2023 10:00 AM (US Central Time) Edit Aug 22 11:20 AM Central Were investigating an issue that has occurred after this maintenance. Were brought matchmaking down, meaning you cant join new servers, and some players may be kicked. Offline is still available. We'll provide an estimate when able. Edit Aug 22 2:47 PM Cental Online play is back up now. Apologies for the lack of updates in the meantime, we weren't able to give an accurate estimate in the middle of it.
Beta 0.9.1d3 Patch Notes
[ 2023-06-20 15:34:34 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug introduced by 0.9.1d which sometimes caused loading into Imperial Era Monolith Echoes to fail. Verifying game files did not fix this.
Beta 0.9.1d2 Patch Notes
[ 2023-06-15 22:46:13 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a race condition introduced by 0.9.1d which caused players to sometimes be disconnected after loading a zone.
Beta 0.9.1d Patch Notes
Thank you to everyone who is continuing to report bugs and provide feedback, we really appreciate it. At this point our designers are primarily working on content for our next major update, but as you can see we are still dedicated to bug fixing and polish. One initiative that isnt visible in the patch notes is that we have an internal team dedicated to improving performance, particularly on the server side. There are significant technical changes underway that will have a big impact, but were still in early stages. Were also working on reducing zone transition times. Besides that, here are some specific changes we are working on. Well keep looking through your reports to pick other things to fix as well.
[ 2023-06-14 16:09:10 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Improved how dynamic Solar Invaders (archers) are in combat:
- Increased how much and how frequent they move between attacks.
- Added another short fleeing state that can happen more often, not just after taking a lot of damage.
- Reduced their kick damage by 25%.
- Reduced their arrow damage by 11%.
- Majasas Blood Pools tick 4 times per second from 5 and deal 10% more damage per tick (resulting in 12% less damage per second). The ticks now always show damage number and hit vfx, so that it's clearer that they're dangerous
- Immobilized enemies no longer start using movement skills (immobilizing an enemy will not interrupt a movement skill in progress).
- Improved internal performance telemetry to assist our server optimization efforts.
- Overhauled the mechanics and visuals of Soul Cage and Soul Warden enemies.
- Added new on-hit particle, hit flash and death flash visuals for Holy Fire, Holy Lightning and Blood abilities.
- Previously these visuals would look the same for all abilities of a given damage type. Now a Physical ability can use Blood visuals instead, for example.
- Added new loading screen art for Lake Liath zones, Divine Era Majelka zones, and various Imperial Era zones.
- Updated frozen breakables in the Tomb of Morditas.
- Added new emerging sound effects for spider enemies.
- Updated the vocal sounds for all Osprix enemies to match the new sounds added for the Chapter 1 rework.
- Added new sounds for Basic Attack that change with weapon type.
- Updated the Game Guide to add region selection and the Sanctuary of Eterra.
- There is now a confirmation prompt when purchasing a cosmetic with Epoch Points.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed the game stuttering when spawning new enemy types in Arena starting in the second Arena layout of the run.
- Fixed a bug where the Sanctuary of Eterra window did not close after being used, allowing it to be used several times and causing it to block the screen.
- Portal cosmetics now apply to the portals you open after completing an Echo.
- Fixed a bug where item visuals and cosmetics would sometimes disappear after transitioning to a new zone.
- Fixed a bug where visual effects could project on top of some cosmetics.
- Fixed a bug that caused some "when landing" effects in Fury Leap's skill tree such as Frenzied Onslaught, Wings of Endurance and Battle Bloom to not apply to Maul with Werebear Form's Skull Crusher allocated.
- Fixed a bug where Earthquake's Aftershock did not scale with strength, and also incorrectly said it receives 40% increased damage per point of strength. It receives 4% increased damage per point of strength.
- Fixed a bug where Spirit Thorns did not apply ailments to enemies hit by more than one Spirit Thorn.
- Fixed a bug where when using Avalanches Precision node, the skill appears to not properly cast at the location of the Player's cursor after the initial cast.
- Fixed a bug where the visual for Lightning Blast and Lightning Smite would appear twice (once in its previous cast location).
- Fixed Bone Golems leap attack having a firey ground effect visual.
- Fixed Manifest Armor not having an outline in Online mode.
- Fixed a bug where lightning wolves' unique appearance would be reverted to the regular summoned wolf visual when they were hit.
- Fixed rare Void Despair enemies not having a visual effect for changing their triple projectile attack.
- Fixed a bug where the Ice Breath from Frozen Wolf enemies cast in the wrong direction in Online mode.
- Changed the positioning of off-hand weapons for Sentinels to prevent clipping.
- Fixed Humming Bee uniques facing the wrong direction when in your Offhand, and being invisible when used as an Offhand for Mages.
- Fixed a bug where quest item drops in the Council Chambers would happen for all players present in the zone, but would only happen once. If a player joined the zone later and tried to turn in a quest, they wouldnt get the item.
- Fixed a bug where players could rarely be in 2 parties at the same time, causing various buggy behavior with party functionality.
- Added a quest progression failsafe for the first Blood, Frost and Death quest echo: you can skip talking to the first Wengari if needed.
- Fixed the world map showing that the Fortress Gardens has a waypoint, when it does not.
- Fixed a bug where there was no quest pulse leading you to speak to Balthas in The Summit.
- Fixed a bug where Orians entrance animation could sometimes play while hes off screen in The Summit.
- Fixed the world map not fading nicely when switching between eras.
Notes
Thank you to everyone who is continuing to report bugs and provide feedback, we really appreciate it. At this point our designers are primarily working on content for our next major update, but as you can see we are still dedicated to bug fixing and polish. One initiative that isnt visible in the patch notes is that we have an internal team dedicated to improving performance, particularly on the server side. There are significant technical changes underway that will have a big impact, but were still in early stages. Were also working on reducing zone transition times. Besides that, here are some specific changes we are working on. Well keep looking through your reports to pick other things to fix as well.
- Chat sometimes re-enables itself - also it says Chat is Disabled when it actually isnt.
- Rarely, a failed attempt to transition to another zone can become completed after loading a different character.
- Summoned Spriggans dont gain the Cold Minion tag when cold converted.
- The Journey To Majelka quest does not advance when talking to the Nagasa in SorethKa. You can move to the next zone without talking to them, however.
- You can get stuck in place if you join the Sanctum of the Architect after the fight starts.
- Further Ambush encounter and Chapter 1 enemy scaling changes.
Beta 0.9.1c Patch Notes
[ 2023-05-31 20:16:53 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Item Linking not working. Press ctrl + right click to link up to 3 items in a chat message. Open the chat window and hover over a linked item to view it.
- Fixed a bug where Weaver's Will items upgrading caused a performance stutter.
- Fixed a bug where parties would sometimes incorrectly use US East for their server region rather than the desired region.
- Fixed a bug where the Burning Daggers created by Cinder Strike's Firebreathing were not affected by the Pillager's Gold unique.
- Fixed a bug where the Increased Chance to Find Potions affix had no effect. This stat only worked when provided by the unique affixes of The Scavenger and Melvern's Writ or by passive tree nodes. This bug also impacted the Pillagers Gold unique.
- Fixed a bug where Spirit Plague's Rotten to the Core node could not be allocated.
- Fixed a bug where Cinder Strikes area of effect was not increased by its Blast Wave node.
- Fixed a bug where Volatile Zombie's Necromantic Fervor also gained the benefit of the Vital Ward node without allocating it, and Vital Ward still gave the health gain from Necromantic Fervor when allocated.
- Fixed ground visuals projecting on top of Storm Crows.
- Fixed a bug where The Shrouded Plateau was missing terrain in some areas.
- Fixed the prices for Epoch Points in the store always displaying in $USD, rather than your local currency in Steam.
- Fixed the polearm visual variant of Multistrike and Vengeance being rotated incorrectly.
- Fixed a visual issue with Voidtouched Archivists Ice Mortar and Voidfused Armors sword attack.
- Fixed Wraith and Volatile Zombie minions from party members having minimap icons.
Changes
- Improved AFK detection: interacting with the UI, pressing buttons, etc. will prevent you being flagged as AFK. The time before being kicked has also been increased to 20 minutes.
- Because the Increase Chance to Find Potions affix was having no effect before, we're being cautious with the total amount that it can give. The maximum value at T5 has been reduced to 60% (from 70%) and the maximum amount at T7 has been reduced to 120% (from 140%). Additionally it can no longer roll on rings and any existing potion drop rate affixes on rings have been changed to armour affixes (the armour affix can still not roll on rings naturally).
- Reduced Bolroth Stomp hitbox size especially at the sides of the Bolroth.
- Bolroths now stop turning (finalize target) 0.35 seconds into their Stomp attack. Previously they could turn right until the end.
- Regular enemies in Monolith Ambushes gain 15% more health (from 10% more damage and 5% less health).
- Bosses in Monolith Ambushes gain 5% more damage and 5% less health (from 10% more damage and 5% less health)
- Minibosses in Monolith Ambushes gain 20% more damage and 150% more health (from 40% more damage and 150% more health)
- The Osprix Monolith Ambush contains 1 fewer lightmage.
- Added final 2d art for Pillager's Gold, Ambitions of an Erased Acolyte, and Gambit of an Erased Rogue.
- Improved the quality of the preview images for the Soul Eater cosmetic armor set.
- Updated the Game Guide and tooltip for Corruption to mention the Sanctuary of Eterra.
- Baby Scorpions no longer have minimap icons.
Notes
- Thank you for continuing to report bugs; we keep an eye on everything that comes through the Forums. Heres much of what were currently working on fixing or improving:
- Chat sometimes re-enables itself - weve found that this is caused by joining or leaving a party or town server (because this joins/leaves a chat channel).
- Rarely, a failed attempt to transition to another zone can become completed after loading a different character.
- Further Ambush encounter scaling changes.
- Adjusting new Chapter 1 enemies that are problematic when scaled to Endgame.
- The window for reducing corruption in the Sanctuary of Eterra does not disappear after being used.
- Maul with the Skull Crusher node is not affected by some when landing effects in Fury Leap.
- Shield Bash fails to cast sometimes when you have increased attack speed.
- Summoned Spriggans dont gain the Cold Minion tag when cold converted.
- There isnt a quest marker prompting you to walk to Balthas after defeating Orian and Emberwing in the Summit in Chapter 1.
- Cosmetics and armor visuals are sometimes invisible (usually fixed by re-equipping or going to the next zone).
- Echo Completed portals dont use equipped Portal cosmetics.
Beta 0.9.1b Patch Notes
The new Towns functionality was disabled a few hours after 0.9.1 launched yesterday, meaning you will not see other players outside of your party in Town zones. Our service for processing requests to join Town servers was overloaded with the influx of players after launch, and this caused almost all requests to join a Town to be stuck. We investigated the problem and were unable to find a quick solution to resolve the problem, so we took down the new Towns system to unblock players. We have performed a root cause analysis and have a path forward that we are investigating. Our priority is to take our time with this so that the re-launch of Towns is smooth.
As always, we are monitoring bug reports. Heres what bugs we are working on now:
[ 2023-05-27 00:50:10 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- The waypoint for Crumbling Ruin now unlocks as soon as you complete the Shard quest in the Keepers Camp, allowing you to continue the campaign even if the transition to Crumbling Ruin fails.
- If you have a character that got stuck at the end of Chapter 1, going back to Keepers Camp should unlock the Crumbling Ruin waypoint in the Ruined Era, allowing you to proceed.
- Fixed a bug where making quest progress in a Town, then creating a new offline character could have the quest progress of the new character fast-forwarded to the quest state of the old character.
- Fixed a bug where Hardcore characters that died in Arena were not forced back to the Character Select screen.
- Fixed a bug where Hardcore characters that have died were still posting results to the Hardcore Arena leaderboard.
- Hardcore characters now connect to Standard chat channels after dying.
- Fixed a bug where Weaver Uniques did not immediately apply their newly gained affixes to the player when added or upgraded by the Weaver.
- Fixed a bug where creating a Weaver unique with a Rune of Ascendance could cause it to have 0 Weavers Will.
- Fixed a bug where stationary minions such as totems would stop attacking if given a move command via the A key.
- Fixed a bug where Lethal Mirage's Rending Darkness would cause mirages to sometimes target the player that cast it, accomplishing nothing.
- Fixed Stashes in the Keepers Camp not having minimap icons.
- Fixed some of Graels voice lines not playing in The Burning Forest in Online mode.
- Fixed sounds for Lethal Mirage not playing in Online mode.
- Fixed footstep sounds not playing correctly for summoned Bears.
- Adjusted some music and dialog mixing for Chapter 1.
- Added final 2d art for Dedication of an Erased Primalist and Code of an Erased Sentinel.
What Were Working On
Towns
The new Towns functionality was disabled a few hours after 0.9.1 launched yesterday, meaning you will not see other players outside of your party in Town zones. Our service for processing requests to join Town servers was overloaded with the influx of players after launch, and this caused almost all requests to join a Town to be stuck. We investigated the problem and were unable to find a quick solution to resolve the problem, so we took down the new Towns system to unblock players. We have performed a root cause analysis and have a path forward that we are investigating. Our priority is to take our time with this so that the re-launch of Towns is smooth.
Bug Fixes
As always, we are monitoring bug reports. Heres what bugs we are working on now:
- Item Linking is not currently working - there is a configuration issue between our testing environment and the live environment that we need to resolve
- Weaver Uniques being upgraded causes a lag spike.
- Rarely, a failed attempt to transition to another zone can become completed after loading a different character.
- The window for reducing corruption in the Sanctuary of Eterra does not disappear after being used.
- Missing terrain visuals in the Shrouded Plateau.
- There isnt a quest marker prompting you to walk to Balthas after defeating Orian and Emberwing in the Summit in Chapter 1.
- Cosmetics and armor visuals are sometimes invisible (usually fixed by re-equipping or going to the next zone).
- Echo Completed portals dont use equipped Portal cosmetics.
- Epoch Points are always shown as costing USD in the Shop, rather than local currency (the correct price is used when purchasing).
Rising Flames Update - Beta 0.9.1 Patch Notes
[ 2023-05-23 16:00:10 CET ] [ Original post ]
Rising Flames, Patch 0.9.1, is coming Thursday, May 25th, 2023 at 11:00 AM CT! Welcome everyone to the Patch Notes for Beta Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames! Over the last week weve been going over some of the major features to expect in this patch. With a completely recreated Chapter 1, Last Epoch now starts off the experience adventuring in Eterra on the right foot. With new zones, creatures, and improved tools we draw ever closer to our 1.0 release. Last Epoch Beta Patch 0.9.1 - Rising Flames will introduce:
- Complete Overhaul of Chapter 1
- New "Weaver's Will" Item Type
- New Uniques
- New Ambush Monolith Activity
- Online Arena Leaderboards
- Town Functionality
- New Models and Animations
- New Enemies
- New Music
- And more!
Chapter 1 Rework | Coming in Rising Flames
Some of the most common feedback weve gotten regarding the campaign and story is that its hard to track why youre embarking on a journey with the shard of the Epoch. In overhauling Chapter 1, we are setting the stage for the epic adventure the Traveler is about to embark on. In the revised Chapter 1, you, the Traveler, will now cross multiple zones, meet key NPCs, and explore multiple new and fantastic areas, as the story of the Epoch and the land of Eterra start to unfold. No longer just a few zones, Chapter 1 will now take you from level 1 to level 9 with chapter 2 and onwards being adjusted accordingly.
With the update to Chapter 1, the Traveler will know a world of peace as they begin their journey during the Divine Era. Learning about the plights and problems of the people of the time, and ultimately watching the destruction that war has brought, and the ushering of end of the Divine Era.
In the new Chapter 1, you will face off against Rahyehs forces as they begin their invasion of the Ulatri Cliffs. Along the way youll be introduced to essential story characters, including the Hero of Heoborea, Grael. Fighting your way through both flora, and fauna, you'll have the chance to interact with these characters and learn more about the world of Eterra.
After learning of the reason for Rahyehs invasion, you will make your way through his forces to reach The Keepers Vault, where this gods true objective lies. While whats kept safe within may be unknown, what is known is that if this war-mongering god is willing to go to such lengths to get to it, it must be kept from him.
The newly redesigned Chapter 1 pushes our design standards even further with improved lighting, shaders, textures, assets, and more. Using these new technologies and tools, we are continuing to enhance Last Epoch's visual design to be more distinct and beautiful. Before the void corrupted everything, the world was full of vibrant colors and stretching vistas. With Rising Flames, we are bringing that vision to life. Wed like to share a few screenshots of just a few of these new areas youll encounter in 0.9.1.
While the addition of a new Chapter 1 was a big focus for this patch, we plan to apply the lessons we learned and the tools we developed to other scenes, both old and new, in upcoming patches. Here are some examples of the updated scenes that will be included in this patch.
One of our main goals for our existing scenes is to improve the overall quality of assets and lighting. Additionally, we aim to increase the readability of the character models and monsters by reducing the complexity of ground textures.
By applying these new systems, even to existing scenes, we continue to provide more distinct visual identities between the different Eras.
Beta Patch 0.9.1 will also introduce our first iteration of Towns, starting with the first town in Chapter 1: Keepers Camp. Towns are non-combat social spaces found throughout the campaign, including the End of Time. Towns feature major amenities, such as a Stash access, and a Vendor allowing you to take care of your out-of-combat needs.
Upon entering a town, you will be able to see other Travelers making their way throughout Eterra, be able to meet and form parties with strangers, then continue on your journey with renewed force in allies. There is also dedicated town chat channels allowing you to connect with other users in the area, or perhaps even just hang out.
(note the view in this capture has mini-map icons for each player. In 0.9.1, only party members will have mini-map icons) The first iteration of towns is mainly technical in nature (making the server process of being placed on a server with non-party members, leaving the area to be assigned different servers, and all that good backend stuff). In future patches, we will be continuing to expand town functionality with more to do in towns, and empower the social aspects offered with a physical connection to other Travelers.
While somewhat related to towns and perhaps a little off-topic of the Chapter 1 Rework, we felt this note still demands higher attention than being relegated to just a patch note. While we continue to work on improving automatic server selection and server performance, weve heard your requests for the ability to manually select a server region to connect to. Even with perfect automatic selection, there were many good arguments made for being able to manually select a server region, such as wanting a middle ground for playing with friends in distant regions. As such, we are happy to say that with Beta Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames, you will now have the ability to manually select your server region!
You can do this in three places. From the main login menu, in the settings where you can select your preferred server region that will carry over between sessions, and when in a party, you can go into the party screen and select a server region to transfer to and it will take effect on the next transition.
With Beta Patch 0.9.1, Last Epoch has taken a significant leap forward in terms of visual design standards. The new patch brings about numerous improvements, resulting in environments that are more striking, memorable, and immersive than ever before. From the stunning vistas to the vibrant gardens, everything feels more vivid and alive than ever before. Were excited to see everyone get their hands on this brand-new experience in just a few days, and well see you all again tomorrow for the Patch Notes for Beta Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames!
[ 2023-05-22 16:00:09 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers to the final day of the Pre-patch Blog Post Hype Week!
One of our biggest goals closing in on our 1.0 launch of Last Epoch is getting existing content up to our latest standards. These improvements have been coming in across the board: Models, Animations, VFX, and UI updates. Over the years, weve been adding additional chapters to Last Epoch, and with that constant pushing of our standards for the campaign, our oldest chapters needed to be brought up in quality. With Rising Flames, we are pushing those standards even further with a complete overhaul of Chapter 1!
Reimagining
Some of the most common feedback weve gotten regarding the campaign and story is that its hard to track why youre embarking on a journey with the shard of the Epoch. In overhauling Chapter 1, we are setting the stage for the epic adventure the Traveler is about to embark on. In the revised Chapter 1, you, the Traveler, will now cross multiple zones, meet key NPCs, and explore multiple new and fantastic areas, as the story of the Epoch and the land of Eterra start to unfold. No longer just a few zones, Chapter 1 will now take you from level 1 to level 9 with chapter 2 and onwards being adjusted accordingly.
With the update to Chapter 1, the Traveler will know a world of peace as they begin their journey during the Divine Era. Learning about the plights and problems of the people of the time, and ultimately watching the destruction that war has brought, and the ushering of end of the Divine Era.
Rahyehs Warpath
In the new Chapter 1, you will face off against Rahyehs forces as they begin their invasion of the Ulatri Cliffs. Along the way youll be introduced to essential story characters, including the Hero of Heoborea, Grael. Fighting your way through both flora, and fauna, you'll have the chance to interact with these characters and learn more about the world of Eterra.
After learning of the reason for Rahyehs invasion, you will make your way through his forces to reach The Keepers Vault, where this gods true objective lies. While whats kept safe within may be unknown, what is known is that if this war-mongering god is willing to go to such lengths to get to it, it must be kept from him.
Evolving Design
The newly redesigned Chapter 1 pushes our design standards even further with improved lighting, shaders, textures, assets, and more. Using these new technologies and tools, we are continuing to enhance Last Epoch's visual design to be more distinct and beautiful. Before the void corrupted everything, the world was full of vibrant colors and stretching vistas. With Rising Flames, we are bringing that vision to life. Wed like to share a few screenshots of just a few of these new areas youll encounter in 0.9.1.
Applying Lessons
While the addition of a new Chapter 1 was a big focus for this patch, we plan to apply the lessons we learned and the tools we developed to other scenes, both old and new, in upcoming patches. Here are some examples of the updated scenes that will be included in this patch.
One of our main goals for our existing scenes is to improve the overall quality of assets and lighting. Additionally, we aim to increase the readability of the character models and monsters by reducing the complexity of ground textures.
By applying these new systems, even to existing scenes, we continue to provide more distinct visual identities between the different Eras.
Towns
Beta Patch 0.9.1 will also introduce our first iteration of Towns, starting with the first town in Chapter 1: Keepers Camp. Towns are non-combat social spaces found throughout the campaign, including the End of Time. Towns feature major amenities, such as a Stash access, and a Vendor allowing you to take care of your out-of-combat needs.
Upon entering a town, you will be able to see other Travelers making their way throughout Eterra, be able to meet and form parties with strangers, then continue on your journey with renewed force in allies. There is also dedicated town chat channels allowing you to connect with other users in the area, or perhaps even just hang out.
(note the view in this capture has mini-map icons for each player. In 0.9.1, only party members will have mini-map icons) The first iteration of towns is mainly technical in nature (making the server process of being placed on a server with non-party members, leaving the area to be assigned different servers, and all that good backend stuff). In future patches, we will be continuing to expand town functionality with more to do in towns, and empower the social aspects offered with a physical connection to other Travelers.
Server Selection
While somewhat related to towns and perhaps a little off-topic of the Chapter 1 Rework, we felt this note still demands higher attention than being relegated to just a patch note. While we continue to work on improving automatic server selection and server performance, weve heard your requests for the ability to manually select a server region to connect to. Even with perfect automatic selection, there were many good arguments made for being able to manually select a server region, such as wanting a middle ground for playing with friends in distant regions. As such, we are happy to say that with Beta Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames, you will now have the ability to manually select your server region!
You can do this in three places. From the main login menu, in the settings where you can select your preferred server region that will carry over between sessions, and when in a party, you can go into the party screen and select a server region to transfer to and it will take effect on the next transition.
Best Foot Forward
With Beta Patch 0.9.1, Last Epoch has taken a significant leap forward in terms of visual design standards. The new patch brings about numerous improvements, resulting in environments that are more striking, memorable, and immersive than ever before. From the stunning vistas to the vibrant gardens, everything feels more vivid and alive than ever before. Were excited to see everyone get their hands on this brand-new experience in just a few days, and well see you all again tomorrow for the Patch Notes for Beta Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames!
New Enemies & Models | Coming in Rising Flames
The first one up is a very colorful fellow which you may have spotted during the Reaper Form post. The Quill Hog is a new enemy which will be encountered as early as the first chapter of the game. Like many things in nature, bright colors may look pretty, but more often than not indicate danger. That is certainly the case with the Quill Hog, which is able to use its quills as both tools for burrowing and as projectiles.
The next new enemy were taking a look at is the new Bolroth. This large and lumbering creature sports some very odd adornments. The coral-like structures contain a sickly-sweet substance attracting small prey, which then become entangled and pulled down into digestive fluids deeper within the structure to be consumed by the Bolroth.
Rahyehs forces are also getting a facelift in 0.9.1. Today were showing one of his common foot soldiers. A zealous servant of Rahyeh, this soldier is more than happy to meet blades with you.
The flora inhabiting Eterra has also grown more deadly in the Rising Flames with our last new enemy were showing off for today. Most often found in heavily vegetated areas, with sharp thorns and a temperament to match, the Vine Crawler is one plant with 6 foot deep roots.
Alongside new enemies, some other models are getting visual updates bringing these models up to our current standards in preparation of our 1.0 release. Starting off for all the Primalists out here, we present to you the new Primal Wolf and Primal Bear companions! These new models feature adornments and armor helping them stand out as companions, alongside new animations to give them more personality. Whos a good doggo? All Primal Wolves are good doggos!
We are very pleased to announce, that as of the release of Patch 0.9.1 Rising flames: every unique Weapon in Last Epoch now has its own 3D Model! We want to share a few of these with you today, and hope you enjoy the beauty of these new models for uniques weve been familiar with for so much time without them.
Thats all for todays look at new Enemies and Models coming in Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames. Well be returning with the Pre-Patch Hype Week Post on Monday and look forward to seeing you all there as we release with our final, and biggest Blog Post for 0.9.1 Rising Flames, coming May 25th!
[ 2023-05-20 15:59:22 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome back to the Pre-Patch Hype Week Blog Posts - Weekend Edition! For todays post, were going to be taking a look at some of the new enemies and models youll be encountering in Beta Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames.
Enemies
Quill Hog
The first one up is a very colorful fellow which you may have spotted during the Reaper Form post. The Quill Hog is a new enemy which will be encountered as early as the first chapter of the game. Like many things in nature, bright colors may look pretty, but more often than not indicate danger. That is certainly the case with the Quill Hog, which is able to use its quills as both tools for burrowing and as projectiles.
Bolroth
The next new enemy were taking a look at is the new Bolroth. This large and lumbering creature sports some very odd adornments. The coral-like structures contain a sickly-sweet substance attracting small prey, which then become entangled and pulled down into digestive fluids deeper within the structure to be consumed by the Bolroth.
Rahyeh Soldier
Rahyehs forces are also getting a facelift in 0.9.1. Today were showing one of his common foot soldiers. A zealous servant of Rahyeh, this soldier is more than happy to meet blades with you.
Vine Crawler
The flora inhabiting Eterra has also grown more deadly in the Rising Flames with our last new enemy were showing off for today. Most often found in heavily vegetated areas, with sharp thorns and a temperament to match, the Vine Crawler is one plant with 6 foot deep roots.
New Models
Alongside new enemies, some other models are getting visual updates bringing these models up to our current standards in preparation of our 1.0 release. Starting off for all the Primalists out here, we present to you the new Primal Wolf and Primal Bear companions! These new models feature adornments and armor helping them stand out as companions, alongside new animations to give them more personality. Whos a good doggo? All Primal Wolves are good doggos!
Primal Wolf
Primal Bear
Unique Item Models
We are very pleased to announce, that as of the release of Patch 0.9.1 Rising flames: every unique Weapon in Last Epoch now has its own 3D Model! We want to share a few of these with you today, and hope you enjoy the beauty of these new models for uniques weve been familiar with for so much time without them.
Storm Breaker
Acidfletch
Soul Bastion
A day of Rest
Thats all for todays look at new Enemies and Models coming in Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames. Well be returning with the Pre-Patch Hype Week Post on Monday and look forward to seeing you all there as we release with our final, and biggest Blog Post for 0.9.1 Rising Flames, coming May 25th!
Response to MTX Store
Travelers, as you are likely already aware, yesterdays announcement has given us another chance to earn our reputation as the community-driven ARPG, and the studio that listens. Weve spent the last 24 hours reading your feedback, discussing it internally, and deciding what to do next. I want to thank our community for challenging us to be better. Were here today to say we hear you, and want to answer that challenge. We are making three immediate changes.
Admittedly, we ended up leaning too hard into following the established and successful models in the industry. The operational cost of EHG as a studio has risen sharply with the increasing team size, quality of the game, server expenses, etc., and our current price tag of $35 for the game was never designed to be the only source of income to ensure that were able to continue operating. So, when we were evaluating our options, we leaned on advice designed around previous titles, and that was a mistake. Last Epoch fans arent here because they want something thats already been done; you are here because you see how much we have to offer the genre. Over time we hope to bring that same innovation and player focus into the monetization space. New Pricing and Purchase Experience As echoed in our community yesterday, the experience of purchasing currency bundles and then managing leftover funds is not an enjoyable one. So moving forward we will have a new structure of currency bundles at the following price points:
We are now also ready to announce our Supporter Pack pricing for Rising Flames. For players who choose to purchase cosmetic MTX, we want the Supporter Packs each cycle to be the reveal that is most looked forward to and the place you can go to get the most value for your money spent each cycle. We hope that value is recognized below, but we of course will be keeping an ear out for your feedback.
As with all things, art and design are subjective in nature, so whats fantastic and exciting to one person may not be to the next. There can be some levels of understanding of This item is more grandiose than this item, but at its core, humans are so varied and unique in their perceptions that were never perfectly aligned in what we think is cool or worth it. We say this because we understand this concept, and so when some players say, Thats ugly, I would never pay X, or they say, Thats way overpriced for that garbage, you also have to recognize that there are others who say, Wow thats awesome and fits the character Im making perfectly and think its a good choice. With that in mind, we understand that the price points proposed initially were met with a general sentiment of being too high, and weve made adjustments to our inventory that will be ready to share fully for 0.9.1 - Rising Flames.
As for EP itself, we have seen confusion around why we need a separate currency at all. Which is a completely fair question, and it does have good reason. This is a larger conversation, but its important to break it down because the answer is many-layered. First, using an intermediary currency is very much necessary from a transactional / functions standpoint. This includes things like being able to award EP for community events, being able to refund EP when there is a hiccup with the actual transaction process, and being able to resolve payment disputes with Steam/sellers. A big part of this is our ability to reward our player base in ways that give them freedom of choice. We want to make cool things, but whats cool when it comes to cosmetics to incredibly selective. Its much better if we can use EP as a reward and allow you to get the things you would want, instead of being saddled with something that you felt wasnt worth it. Though, there may be some specific cosmetic rewards in the future as well. We have done a lot with our community in the past, and we have plans to do so much more. Utilizing EP is just one of the ways that we can continue to do so. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Epoch Points are something that we have offered from the very beginning of the Last Epoch existence. They were initially called Cosmetic Coins as a placeholder, but there are quite literally millions of them distributed to our players already. We have always intended to use a secondary currency as a reward system, and again, this just puts it in a place where any other option just could not work.
To sign off, Last Epoch is a passion project being made by fans of the ARPG genre and gaming as a whole. When our community tells us in unison that we have made a mistake, we have always worked to correct it. We hope that if youve been part of our community for long enough that weve shown that to be true, but we know many of you have joined us recently and we look forward to the next 10 years of proving it to you. We sincerely thank you for your passion in what were creating here at Eleventh Hour Games and taking your time to provide us with your feedback. We hope and aspire to always rise to the occasion to correct our mistakes when weve planned or introduce something that isnt well received by our fantastic fans - the fans who have taken us from a small after hours group on Kickstarter to the studio we are becoming. Appreciate you all, Judd.
[ 2023-05-19 19:33:19 CET ] [ Original post ]
Introduction
Travelers, as you are likely already aware, yesterdays announcement has given us another chance to earn our reputation as the community-driven ARPG, and the studio that listens. Weve spent the last 24 hours reading your feedback, discussing it internally, and deciding what to do next. I want to thank our community for challenging us to be better. Were here today to say we hear you, and want to answer that challenge. We are making three immediate changes.
How We Got Here
Admittedly, we ended up leaning too hard into following the established and successful models in the industry. The operational cost of EHG as a studio has risen sharply with the increasing team size, quality of the game, server expenses, etc., and our current price tag of $35 for the game was never designed to be the only source of income to ensure that were able to continue operating. So, when we were evaluating our options, we leaned on advice designed around previous titles, and that was a mistake. Last Epoch fans arent here because they want something thats already been done; you are here because you see how much we have to offer the genre. Over time we hope to bring that same innovation and player focus into the monetization space. New Pricing and Purchase Experience As echoed in our community yesterday, the experience of purchasing currency bundles and then managing leftover funds is not an enjoyable one. So moving forward we will have a new structure of currency bundles at the following price points:
- $4.99 USD = 50 EP
- $9.99 USD = 100 EP
- $19.99 USD = 200 EP
Supporter Packs
We are now also ready to announce our Supporter Pack pricing for Rising Flames. For players who choose to purchase cosmetic MTX, we want the Supporter Packs each cycle to be the reveal that is most looked forward to and the place you can go to get the most value for your money spent each cycle. We hope that value is recognized below, but we of course will be keeping an ear out for your feedback.
- Eternal Traveler - $20 - (includes 150 EP)
- Eternal Templar - $30 - (includes 150 EP)
- Eternal Vanquisher - $40 - (includes 150 EP)
- Eternal Legend - $50 - (includes 150 EP)
Cosmetic Price vs. Value
As with all things, art and design are subjective in nature, so whats fantastic and exciting to one person may not be to the next. There can be some levels of understanding of This item is more grandiose than this item, but at its core, humans are so varied and unique in their perceptions that were never perfectly aligned in what we think is cool or worth it. We say this because we understand this concept, and so when some players say, Thats ugly, I would never pay X, or they say, Thats way overpriced for that garbage, you also have to recognize that there are others who say, Wow thats awesome and fits the character Im making perfectly and think its a good choice. With that in mind, we understand that the price points proposed initially were met with a general sentiment of being too high, and weve made adjustments to our inventory that will be ready to share fully for 0.9.1 - Rising Flames.
Why Epoch Points at All?
As for EP itself, we have seen confusion around why we need a separate currency at all. Which is a completely fair question, and it does have good reason. This is a larger conversation, but its important to break it down because the answer is many-layered. First, using an intermediary currency is very much necessary from a transactional / functions standpoint. This includes things like being able to award EP for community events, being able to refund EP when there is a hiccup with the actual transaction process, and being able to resolve payment disputes with Steam/sellers. A big part of this is our ability to reward our player base in ways that give them freedom of choice. We want to make cool things, but whats cool when it comes to cosmetics to incredibly selective. Its much better if we can use EP as a reward and allow you to get the things you would want, instead of being saddled with something that you felt wasnt worth it. Though, there may be some specific cosmetic rewards in the future as well. We have done a lot with our community in the past, and we have plans to do so much more. Utilizing EP is just one of the ways that we can continue to do so. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Epoch Points are something that we have offered from the very beginning of the Last Epoch existence. They were initially called Cosmetic Coins as a placeholder, but there are quite literally millions of them distributed to our players already. We have always intended to use a secondary currency as a reward system, and again, this just puts it in a place where any other option just could not work.
Conclusion
To sign off, Last Epoch is a passion project being made by fans of the ARPG genre and gaming as a whole. When our community tells us in unison that we have made a mistake, we have always worked to correct it. We hope that if youve been part of our community for long enough that weve shown that to be true, but we know many of you have joined us recently and we look forward to the next 10 years of proving it to you. We sincerely thank you for your passion in what were creating here at Eleventh Hour Games and taking your time to provide us with your feedback. We hope and aspire to always rise to the occasion to correct our mistakes when weve planned or introduce something that isnt well received by our fantastic fans - the fans who have taken us from a small after hours group on Kickstarter to the studio we are becoming. Appreciate you all, Judd.
Weavers Will | Coming in Rising Flames
Weavers Will is a new Unique item type arriving in Beta Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames. These items expand the roster of item rarities, entering the fray with Unique and Legendary items, by being both! Similar to Unique Items, all Weavers Will items will have a fixed list of effects which will be unique to that specific named item. Where they differ from normal Uniques, is that these items do not roll Legendary Potential, but instead roll a Weavers Will value. These items will always drop with Weavers Will, and have a roll range of 5 to 28.
Instead of crafting on these items, these items will level alongside you as you play. As you kill enemies in Eterra with one or more of these items equipped, the Weaver will rebuild the item, consuming a point of will to add an affix to the item. The item can rebuild a total of four different affixes, at which point it starts upgrading the tiers of the existing rebuilt affixes (it could also increase the tier of an affix before acquiring all four affixes). These items can even be rebuilt all the way into exalted tiers of affixes including up to T7.
The Weaver, though, is a bit more discerning in their taste for items, meaning normally rarer affixes, such as +skill level, will be far more common to be rebuilt for slots such as relics.
Rising Flames will also arrive with several new Uniques to continue expanding on potential build opportunities. While this post is primarily dedicated to the new Weavers Will Unique item type coming in 0.9.1, we also want to share an example of one of the new Uniques coming in Rising Flames.
With a whole new way to reach Legendary items in Last Epoch, as well as the ever-expanding roster of Unique items coming in this patch, were excited to see what kind of builds everyone comes up with! Well be back again tomorrow with a look at some of the new awesome enemies and models coming in Beta Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames.
[ 2023-05-19 16:00:17 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers and Happy Friday! If you happened to read yesterdays post, you may have caught todays topic at the end, Weavers Will. Like any good cliff-hanger, well be continuing that conversation in todays episode of Pre-patch Blog Post Hype Week!
Weavers Will
Weavers Will is a new Unique item type arriving in Beta Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames. These items expand the roster of item rarities, entering the fray with Unique and Legendary items, by being both! Similar to Unique Items, all Weavers Will items will have a fixed list of effects which will be unique to that specific named item. Where they differ from normal Uniques, is that these items do not roll Legendary Potential, but instead roll a Weavers Will value. These items will always drop with Weavers Will, and have a roll range of 5 to 28.
Instead of crafting on these items, these items will level alongside you as you play. As you kill enemies in Eterra with one or more of these items equipped, the Weaver will rebuild the item, consuming a point of will to add an affix to the item. The item can rebuild a total of four different affixes, at which point it starts upgrading the tiers of the existing rebuilt affixes (it could also increase the tier of an affix before acquiring all four affixes). These items can even be rebuilt all the way into exalted tiers of affixes including up to T7.
The Weaver, though, is a bit more discerning in their taste for items, meaning normally rarer affixes, such as +skill level, will be far more common to be rebuilt for slots such as relics.
New Uniques
Rising Flames will also arrive with several new Uniques to continue expanding on potential build opportunities. While this post is primarily dedicated to the new Weavers Will Unique item type coming in 0.9.1, we also want to share an example of one of the new Uniques coming in Rising Flames.
With a whole new way to reach Legendary items in Last Epoch, as well as the ever-expanding roster of Unique items coming in this patch, were excited to see what kind of builds everyone comes up with! Well be back again tomorrow with a look at some of the new awesome enemies and models coming in Beta Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames.
Cosmetic Store Beta | Coming in Rising Flames
It has always been our goal at EHG to develop a great ARPG for the community to enjoy for the next 10 years. We want to deliver new content multiple times each year and continue to lift expectations and push limits of what a great ARPG can be. To be transparent, this is an expensive goal. Content production at this magnitude is a multi-million dollar annual development expense, with millions more in sever expenses each year. The Cosmetic Store is our way of introducing a fully optional, power-free, and truly feels-good way for our fans to unlock cool new stuff, and support the development of Last Epoch so we can create great content in Eterra year after year. [/expand]
No. Weve been saying this from day one, and it wont change. Pay for power, no matter how little of it is introduced, simply breaks the spirit of the game. We will not be offering a head start to those who pay more, we wont be offering a battle pass stacked with power-based currency, or anything else that gives you a competitive advantage. Every purchase in our shop will be purely cosmetic and entirely optional. [/expand]
After the launch of 1.0 each new Cycle will bring with it a new set of supporter packs for our players to enjoy. With Rising Flames, we are kicking off our Pre-Launch Support Packs - the Eternal Series. These packs feature exclusive Portals, Backs, and Pets from each of the four Eras in Eterra. When new supporter packs are launched, those packs will only be available during the current Cycle in which they were introduced. For the Eternal series, this timeframe will last from the launch of Rising Flames until 30 days beyond the launch of 1.0. Supporter packs offer exclusive cosmetics to players joining us for a specific cycle (these items are not available in the shop). Once a given set of supporter packs retire, players will no longer be able to purchase those cosmetics. We will certainly give our community notice when a series of supporter packs are no longer available for purchase.
Supporter packs will be available directly through Steam, or through the in-game store which redirects to a Steam-purchase overlay. We also intend to have them available for purchase through our web store in the future.
The Cosmetic Shop will be available in-game either by using the hotkey (by default U), or through the menu. The in-game store will allow you to filter what kind of cosmetic youre looking for, and provide you a large view of those items while browsing. Its also important to note that the items available in the Cosmetic Shop during this beta launch are only a small sample of what we intend to launch with future patches. This phase of the Shop is designed to gather and incorporate feedback from the community, work out any bugs, and provide an early look at the types of cosmetics players can expect. The Shop will be launching with only a select amount of Back, Portal, and Pet slot cosmetics. As you can see on the sidebar in the preview below, we intend on exploring other categories of cosmetics in the future, such as weapons and skill VFX.
Selecting an item will give you a larger in-game rendering of the item, with any related animations, as well as include a video of the cosmetic in action so you can be confident in what the cosmetic really looks like - all while browsing.
(Edit: We do apologize, these captures had an incorrect price listed for this particular item. We recognize that caused some headache. We have corrected the error from 250 EP to 165 EP for the Glacial Path portal)
Previously called Cosmetic Coins, Epoch Points will be the primary method of acquiring cosmetics from the Cosmetic Shop. For many familiar with Cosmetic Shops, this should be a fairly familiar experience. Basically, EP provides a way to pre-load your account with funds for cosmetics, these points will be available to purchase cosmetics with at any point. Your already existing Cosmetic Coins will be displayed as Epoch Points - this is just a name change, not any difference in value or quantity.
Epoch Points can be purchased through Steam, and are automatically loaded onto your account. They will be available in the following denominations: - 9.49 USD for 120 points - 18.99 USD for 265 points (240 + 25 bonus) - 49.99 USD for 755 points (630 +125 bonus)
With the Cosmetic Shop Beta becoming available, we want to strongly reiterate our stance regarding MTX. We will not offer power or convenience as MTX. This has always been our stance, and we have no intention of changing it. We will not sell loot pets, we will not sell experience boosts, or dungeon keys, stash tabs, or anything of that nature. It is important to note that we are building the Cosmetic Store as a way to support the long term development of an amazing ARPG we love - not the other way around. We want to ensure the game itself always offers the best quality of life features and conveniences we can create, and nothing is held back for monetization. We will also continue to push our standards for non-purchasable in-game gear models, animations, VFX, and everything else that makes Last Epoch look great. Thank you all for joining us again for todays blog post, as we get ready for Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames, and well be back tomorrow to talk about Weavers Will!
[ 2023-05-18 16:13:30 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers! If youve been waiting for your chance to put a little extra shine on your favorite hero of Eterra then todays announcement is for you - Rising Flames brings the beta launch of Last Epochs Cosmetic Store and our new Supporter Packs. We are very excited to bring some of these awesome upgrades to our community for the first time, and we cant wait to see all the amazing work our designers have created - wielded by, conjured by, and running alongside the Travelers of Eterra. As fans of the genre ourselves, we know that Cosmetic Stores come in all shapes and sizes, and so they inspire a wide variety of opinions from players. We get that. So let us take a moment to share our thoughts and guiding principles below.
Why are we introducing a Cosmetic Shop?
It has always been our goal at EHG to develop a great ARPG for the community to enjoy for the next 10 years. We want to deliver new content multiple times each year and continue to lift expectations and push limits of what a great ARPG can be. To be transparent, this is an expensive goal. Content production at this magnitude is a multi-million dollar annual development expense, with millions more in sever expenses each year. The Cosmetic Store is our way of introducing a fully optional, power-free, and truly feels-good way for our fans to unlock cool new stuff, and support the development of Last Epoch so we can create great content in Eterra year after year. [/expand]
Will there be pay for power in Last Epoch?
No. Weve been saying this from day one, and it wont change. Pay for power, no matter how little of it is introduced, simply breaks the spirit of the game. We will not be offering a head start to those who pay more, we wont be offering a battle pass stacked with power-based currency, or anything else that gives you a competitive advantage. Every purchase in our shop will be purely cosmetic and entirely optional. [/expand]
Supporter Packs
After the launch of 1.0 each new Cycle will bring with it a new set of supporter packs for our players to enjoy. With Rising Flames, we are kicking off our Pre-Launch Support Packs - the Eternal Series. These packs feature exclusive Portals, Backs, and Pets from each of the four Eras in Eterra. When new supporter packs are launched, those packs will only be available during the current Cycle in which they were introduced. For the Eternal series, this timeframe will last from the launch of Rising Flames until 30 days beyond the launch of 1.0. Supporter packs offer exclusive cosmetics to players joining us for a specific cycle (these items are not available in the shop). Once a given set of supporter packs retire, players will no longer be able to purchase those cosmetics. We will certainly give our community notice when a series of supporter packs are no longer available for purchase.
Supporter packs will be available directly through Steam, or through the in-game store which redirects to a Steam-purchase overlay. We also intend to have them available for purchase through our web store in the future.
Cosmetic Shop
The Cosmetic Shop will be available in-game either by using the hotkey (by default U), or through the menu. The in-game store will allow you to filter what kind of cosmetic youre looking for, and provide you a large view of those items while browsing. Its also important to note that the items available in the Cosmetic Shop during this beta launch are only a small sample of what we intend to launch with future patches. This phase of the Shop is designed to gather and incorporate feedback from the community, work out any bugs, and provide an early look at the types of cosmetics players can expect. The Shop will be launching with only a select amount of Back, Portal, and Pet slot cosmetics. As you can see on the sidebar in the preview below, we intend on exploring other categories of cosmetics in the future, such as weapons and skill VFX.
Selecting an item will give you a larger in-game rendering of the item, with any related animations, as well as include a video of the cosmetic in action so you can be confident in what the cosmetic really looks like - all while browsing.
(Edit: We do apologize, these captures had an incorrect price listed for this particular item. We recognize that caused some headache. We have corrected the error from 250 EP to 165 EP for the Glacial Path portal)
Epoch Points
Previously called Cosmetic Coins, Epoch Points will be the primary method of acquiring cosmetics from the Cosmetic Shop. For many familiar with Cosmetic Shops, this should be a fairly familiar experience. Basically, EP provides a way to pre-load your account with funds for cosmetics, these points will be available to purchase cosmetics with at any point. Your already existing Cosmetic Coins will be displayed as Epoch Points - this is just a name change, not any difference in value or quantity.
Epoch Points can be purchased through Steam, and are automatically loaded onto your account. They will be available in the following denominations: - 9.49 USD for 120 points - 18.99 USD for 265 points (240 + 25 bonus) - 49.99 USD for 755 points (630 +125 bonus)
Last Epoch and MTX
With the Cosmetic Shop Beta becoming available, we want to strongly reiterate our stance regarding MTX. We will not offer power or convenience as MTX. This has always been our stance, and we have no intention of changing it. We will not sell loot pets, we will not sell experience boosts, or dungeon keys, stash tabs, or anything of that nature. It is important to note that we are building the Cosmetic Store as a way to support the long term development of an amazing ARPG we love - not the other way around. We want to ensure the game itself always offers the best quality of life features and conveniences we can create, and nothing is held back for monetization. We will also continue to push our standards for non-purchasable in-game gear models, animations, VFX, and everything else that makes Last Epoch look great. Thank you all for joining us again for todays blog post, as we get ready for Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames, and well be back tomorrow to talk about Weavers Will!
Reaper Form | Coming in Rising Flames
Reaper form is getting a whole new visual overhaul to better match the theme with new robes, scythes, and VFX. We think the visuals can speak louder than words on this one.
With the flames rising on May 25th, you'll now be able to reap the fields of Eterra in style. Reaper form will now also use Reap when you transform, using the skill tree, allowing you to get into the fray right away.
0.9.1 continues our goal of improving our visuals in Last Epoch, getting things up to our current standards, and with this new Reaper Model, we continue to push Last Epoch into its 1.0 Era. We'll share again here the original concept artwork which inspired this Transform, which I know I regularly keep as my own computer Background!
Thank you all for joining us today for a quick look at the new Reaper Form coming in Patch 0.9.1 on May 25th, and we'll see you all again tomorrow for our next post of the Pre-patch Blog Post Hype Week as we talk about the Beta version of the MTX Store.
[ 2023-05-17 16:00:12 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome to the second day of the Pre-patch Blog Post Hype Week! Originally we were going to be talking about towns today, but in a Shyamalan-like twist, we're going to instead be covering the new Reaper Form coming in Patch 0.9.1 Rising Flames!
Reaper Form
Reaper form is getting a whole new visual overhaul to better match the theme with new robes, scythes, and VFX. We think the visuals can speak louder than words on this one.
With the flames rising on May 25th, you'll now be able to reap the fields of Eterra in style. Reaper form will now also use Reap when you transform, using the skill tree, allowing you to get into the fray right away.
0.9.1 continues our goal of improving our visuals in Last Epoch, getting things up to our current standards, and with this new Reaper Model, we continue to push Last Epoch into its 1.0 Era. We'll share again here the original concept artwork which inspired this Transform, which I know I regularly keep as my own computer Background!
The Week Continues
Thank you all for joining us today for a quick look at the new Reaper Form coming in Patch 0.9.1 on May 25th, and we'll see you all again tomorrow for our next post of the Pre-patch Blog Post Hype Week as we talk about the Beta version of the MTX Store.
Ladders | Coming in Rising Flames
Ladders help provide a sense of progression and accomplishment. Whether its competing with other players or just setting benchmarks for yourself, ladders offer the opportunity to create a tangible mark within Eterra. With the launch of patch 0.9, and the addition of multiplayer, we needed to change how ladders worked as the data they were working with had changed quite a bit, and we also wanted to support new and better features with our ladder system. In patch 0.9.1 we will be introducing the first version of the revised ladder system. In Rising Flames, you will be able to track and share your progress through the arena, marking your highest arena wave achieved either solo or as a group. One of the biggest things we wanted our new ladders to support was improved integrity. As such, Ladders will only be available for online play.
The new ladder will feature several categories for being able to track your progress against other players, and groups. While participating in the Endless Arena, each time you successfully complete a wave, your record will be entered into the ladder. The ladder is split between Softcore, Hardcore, Account Found, and Group Size. This means when comparing your progress against other players, you will always be looking at equal footing. You can also filter the ladders by Class to see how you stack up and see what skills others are running. Though to keep competition alive, full builds are not currently revealed through the ladder, so things like passive trees, skill trees, and exact gear setup can be kept as competitive secrets by participating players. With all these new ladders available, weve also redesigned the Ladder UI to help make it easier to navigate.
The full list of ladders that will be available with the launch of Beta Patch 0.9.1 is as follows:
We previously mentioned one of our goals for the new ladder system was to expand its abilities. While in 0.9.1, the ladder will only track Arena Wave progress, we will continue to develop this in the future. The new ladder system will allow us to grow to monolith progression, experience tracking, corruption tracking, events, and potentially much more. Were very excited to be bringing ladders back to Last Epoch in 0.9.1 Rising Flames on May 25th and the future opportunities Ladders will provide. Make sure to check back in tomorrow on our socials for our next Pre-patch Hype Week post, where well be covering Towns in 0.9.1!
[ 2023-05-16 16:00:12 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome to the first day of the Pre-Patch Hype week for Patch 0.9.1: Rising Flames!
Over the next week and leading up to the May 25th Rising Flames patch, we will be revealing and talking about most of the major features coming in patch 0.9.1. For todays post, were going to be covering Ladders!
Ladders
Ladders help provide a sense of progression and accomplishment. Whether its competing with other players or just setting benchmarks for yourself, ladders offer the opportunity to create a tangible mark within Eterra. With the launch of patch 0.9, and the addition of multiplayer, we needed to change how ladders worked as the data they were working with had changed quite a bit, and we also wanted to support new and better features with our ladder system. In patch 0.9.1 we will be introducing the first version of the revised ladder system. In Rising Flames, you will be able to track and share your progress through the arena, marking your highest arena wave achieved either solo or as a group. One of the biggest things we wanted our new ladders to support was improved integrity. As such, Ladders will only be available for online play.
Features
The new ladder will feature several categories for being able to track your progress against other players, and groups. While participating in the Endless Arena, each time you successfully complete a wave, your record will be entered into the ladder. The ladder is split between Softcore, Hardcore, Account Found, and Group Size. This means when comparing your progress against other players, you will always be looking at equal footing. You can also filter the ladders by Class to see how you stack up and see what skills others are running. Though to keep competition alive, full builds are not currently revealed through the ladder, so things like passive trees, skill trees, and exact gear setup can be kept as competitive secrets by participating players. With all these new ladders available, weve also redesigned the Ladder UI to help make it easier to navigate.
The full list of ladders that will be available with the launch of Beta Patch 0.9.1 is as follows:
- Softcore
- Solo (Account Found)
- 1 Player
- 2 Players
- 3 Players
- 4 Players
- Hardcore
- Solo (Account Found)
- 1 Player
- 2 Players
- 3 Players
- 4 Players
The Future of Ladders
We previously mentioned one of our goals for the new ladder system was to expand its abilities. While in 0.9.1, the ladder will only track Arena Wave progress, we will continue to develop this in the future. The new ladder system will allow us to grow to monolith progression, experience tracking, corruption tracking, events, and potentially much more. Were very excited to be bringing ladders back to Last Epoch in 0.9.1 Rising Flames on May 25th and the future opportunities Ladders will provide. Make sure to check back in tomorrow on our socials for our next Pre-patch Hype Week post, where well be covering Towns in 0.9.1!
Beta 0.9l Patch Notes
Thank you all for continuing to report bugs and engage in the community. As youve probably heard, were gearing up for our next content release on May 25th, so were shifting focus towards finishing that update. We are still working on bug fixes in the background as well, but theyre likely to be included in the 0.9.1 content update rather than a hotfix to 0.9. But, we can still make hotfixes if necessary. One bug weve recently become aware of is if you delete an Offline Character Found character and then load or make another character, progress will not be saved. If you restart the game after deleting the Offline Character Found character saving will work properly. Were working on a solution for this.
[ 2023-05-10 16:01:58 CET ] [ Original post ]
Dungeons
- Likely fixed a bug that caused players to be unable to enter the Boss Room of Dungeons.
- We have spent many hours confirming this fix so were pretty confident its resolved but arent totally certain since the bug didnt happen 100% of the time. Please let us know if this bug still happens for you after updating.
- Fixed a bug where you could enter a Dungeon without consuming a key in some situations.
Monolith of Fate
- Fixed a bug where echoes could fail to spawn enemies, including bosses or quest objectives, if Ring of Shields was active while loading the echo.
- Emperor of Corpses' Soul Bomb now deals less damage the further you are from the center of the ability.
- Fixed a bug where monolith modifiers could be duplicated. If a timeline had an impossibly high number of mods, those duplicated mods will be removed the next time you enter an echo in that timeline.
Gameplay
- Fixed a bug where using traversal skills while you had certain other skills on your bar (including Summon Skeletal Mage) caused a stutter to build up with each use, resulting in a game freeze after enough uses.
Notes
Thank you all for continuing to report bugs and engage in the community. As youve probably heard, were gearing up for our next content release on May 25th, so were shifting focus towards finishing that update. We are still working on bug fixes in the background as well, but theyre likely to be included in the 0.9.1 content update rather than a hotfix to 0.9. But, we can still make hotfixes if necessary. One bug weve recently become aware of is if you delete an Offline Character Found character and then load or make another character, progress will not be saved. If you restart the game after deleting the Offline Character Found character saving will work properly. Were working on a solution for this.
Beta 0.9j Patch Notes
Again, thank you all for being active in giving us bug reports and feedback. While were shifting more of our focus to new content for 0.9.1, we still plan to release more fixes before 0.9.1 releases. Well prioritize widely reported and/or critical bugs, and lower priority fixes and improvements might come with 0.9.1 instead. Some things were currently working on:
[ 2023-04-27 15:08:07 CET ] [ Original post ]
Gameplay
- Fixed a bug where Temporal Shift could sometimes cast a second time after being used once, resulting in getting sent back to the era you were originally in.
- Fixed a recent bug where targeted abilities such as Lunge or Smite could fail to cast if they were the first ability you used in a scene.
- Fixed a bug where it was possible to target enemies that had yet to emerge with Lunge. Doing so would result in being unable to move after using Lunge.
- Fixed a recent bug where offline characters would have 0 potions when loaded rather than their maximum amount of potions.
- Fixed a bug where some breakable objects in various scenes continued to obstruct movement after they were destroyed in online play. This also sometimes caused players to get stuck in place, unable to move. The fixed scenes include The Majelkan Catacombs, The Rustlands, The Altar of Flesh, The Dragons' Grotto, and The Rotting Hoard. Please make a Bug Report if you still run into this.
- Fixed a bug where enemies could be pushed around in Online by walking into them.
- Fixed global conditional damage properties not working (except for unlimited damage per stack of ailment effects, which already worked). These effects are fixed:
- More Spell Damage to Ignited Enemies on Soulfire
- More Throwing Damage to Bosses and Rare Enemies on Bo's Anarchy
- More Fire Hit Damage to Ignited Enemies on the Arcane Flames node on the Mage passive tree
- More Void Damage to Stunned Enemies on the Shifting Power node on the Volatile Reversal tree
- More Melee Damage per Bleed (up to 30 stacks) on the Wounded Prey node on the Summon Bear tree
- More Damage per Poison (up to 30 stacks) on the Envenomed Prey node on the Summon Scorpion tree
- You can no longer type in the chat windows when you have chat disabled.
Skills and Passives
- Base Skeletal Mages now use a new ability called Dread Bolt rather than a version of Hungering Souls.
- Normalized the damage and cast speed of Skeletal Mage projectiles. Previously the Hungering Souls used by regular Skeletal Mages was much slower and weaker, while the attacks from Cryomancers and Pyromancers had hidden modifiers to cast speed and damage which made it difficult to understand their power.
- Dread Bolt: 30 base damage and 150% damage effectiveness, 50% chance to apply Damned on hit, no longer applies Possessed (which had a stack limit and could overwrite a player's stronger Possessed ailment). Dread Bolt now also has a higher projectile speed and does not have homing.
- Cryomancer's Ice Shard: 30 base damage and 150% damage effectiveness (previously 12 and 100%, with 90% more damage).
- Pyromancer's Fireball: 34 base damage and 170% damage effectiveness (previously 25 and 125%, with 40% more damage).
- All three now have the same cast speed, slightly slower than Pyromancer's Fireball used to be.
- This should result in close to the same DPS for Fireball and Ice Shard, and much higher DPS for Dread Bolt.
- Increased the projectile speed of all Skeleton Archer projectiles.
- Fixed a bug where Rampage's Intimidating Cry did not require Roar to be on your action bar in order for it to trigger Roar. The description of this node has not yet been updated to specify that Roar must be on your bar.
- Fixed a bug where Void Knight's Void Well passive had no cooldown. It now has a 3 second cooldown (from 10 listed, none actual) and sets you to 30% of max mana (from 20%).
- Fixed a bug where Sacrifice's additional chains from Catalyst of Horror and Sanguine Libation were not additive with each other, resulting in 2 fewer chains than intended while any points were invested in Sanguine Libation.
- Fixed a bug where Sacrifice consistently chained to 1 fewer minions than intended (this is in addition to the other fix).
- Fixed Bow Puncture snapping to targets more intensely than other bow skills.
- Fixed a bug where Arcane Momentum's stacks displayed were incorrectly. This is only a display change.
Items
- Fixed a bug where Fragment of the Enigma gave 2 Lightning Damage for Spark Charge per 10 max mana instead of the stated 2 Lightning Damage for Spark Charge per Intelligence.
Visuals
- Updated the visual effects for the Mortar abilities used by Skeletal Mages.
- Updated the visual effects for fireballs cast by Pyromancers (Skeletal Mage).
- Updated the visual effects for all Skeleton Archer projectiles.
- Fixed various visual bugs with the poison cone attack used by Scalebane Casters.
- Updated the indicator visual on the ground for Soul Spire attacks.
- Fixed broken particle effect visuals in Soulfire Bastion.
- Fixed a bug which caused part of the visual effects of some skills, notably Lunge, to play at an incorrect place (usually offscreen).
- Fixed visual effects applying to item models on the ground.
Enemies
- High Speed and Crit Chance Until approach monster mod changes
- Fixed a bug where the mod's vfx were invisible online.
- This mod's effects and vfx now start when the monster is engaged rather than when it spawns
- Fixed a bug where the Less Damage Taken From Distant Enemies monster mod's vfx were invisible online.
- Fixed a bug where the Shade of Orobyss's blood orbs did not visually seek out targets in online play, causing them to hit players unexpectedly.
- Fixed the Void Amalgamations melee attack visual appearing further away from itself than intended.
- Improved the visuals of the Void Amalgamations melee attack.
- Fixed a bug where Voidwings could be invisible in Online mode.
- Fixed Cremorus weapon appearing solid white.
- Fixed the Void Fiend not having an outline and being visible before emerging.
- Reduced the chance for larger splatter visual effects when hitting rapidly, but made that decreased chance fall off sooner than previously. This will result in fewer large splatters when hitting rapidly, but more large ones when having multiple seconds between hits.
Optimization
- Fixed a bug where Arcane Ascendance with the Acuity node could cause severe latency problems while on your skill bar.
- Greatly improved the performance of these minion projectile abilities:
- Skeletal Mages now use Dread Bolt which performs better than Hungering Souls
- Cryomancer (Skeletal Mage) Ice Shards
- Pyromancer (Skeletal Mage) Fireballs
- All Skeleton Archer attacks
- Thorn Totem Thorns
- Fixed a bug where When-Hit VFX were playing more frequently than intended, causing some performance issues.
- Improved the performance of Spire abilities.
- Improved (reduced) how much RAM game servers use.
Notes
Again, thank you all for being active in giving us bug reports and feedback. While were shifting more of our focus to new content for 0.9.1, we still plan to release more fixes before 0.9.1 releases. Well prioritize widely reported and/or critical bugs, and lower priority fixes and improvements might come with 0.9.1 instead. Some things were currently working on:
- Dungeon boss doors not always working (we apologize for this taking so long)
- Monolith Echoes occasionally breaking when playing as a Forge Guard
- Using a skill you dont meet the weapon requirements for locking you in an animation
- Rubberbanding, latency and performance problems
- Monitoring for any other ability use problems
Beta 0.9i3 Patch Notes
[ 2023-04-17 18:22:16 CET ] [ Original post ]
This update fixes a regression in Spirit Plague, addresses a pre-existing bug that could affect the Emperor of Corpses fight, and improves our performance data collection. Were still working on bug fixes and general improvements as mentioned in out 0.9i post. Thanks for continuing to make bug reports and participate in our community.
Changes
- Fixed a bug where players could push enemies in Online mode by walking into them. This could cause positions to get out of sync between the client and server, for example in the Emperor of Corpses fight.
- Fixed a bug where Spirit Plagues Rotten to the Core node could not be allocated.
- Improved performance data collection on servers to aid in optimization efforts.
Beta 0.9i2 Patch Notes
[ 2023-04-13 18:04:54 CET ] [ Original post ]
This update fixes a few regressions that were introduced by 0.9i. We are monitoring for any other bugs that are new to this update, and otherwise our priorities are the same as in our last post. Thank you for your patience and for reporting bugs.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where channeled abilities did not work in Offline if they were not assigned to the first action bar slot (Q by default).
- Fixed Disintegrate being invisible when converted to Fire or Lighting (the default visual worked).
- Fixed a bug where items that dropped while item labels are hidden (Z / Alt-Z) would still be hidden after turning item labels back on.
Beta 0.9i Patch Notes
Thank you for posting bug reports and feedback. We plan to continue releasing bug fix patches at this pace for at least a few more patches. We do have team members that are working on new content that we plan to release in 0.9.1, rather than these bug fix patches, but we dont have anything to announce about that yet. However, most of our developers are still working on fixes and improvements rather than new content. Some of these projects are longer term than others. In terms of fixes and improvements, here are some of our priorities:
[ 2023-04-12 17:59:22 CET ] [ Original post ]
Monolith of Fate
- Restored The Rotting Hoards boss arena to its original size so that the Emperor of Corpses Soul Bomb attack can be avoided properly. Additionally, the damage of Soul Bomb has been increased back to the very painful amount it used to be.
- Fixed a bug where leaving a completed monolith echo via a town portal created before completion would grant rewards without applying the modifier from that echo. It now applies the modifier as well.
- Fixed an issue in Fallen Harbour echoes where one spire could spawn slightly out of bounds, making it unreachable for some builds.
- Fixed an issue in Boreal Forest echoes where two spires could spawn right next to each other which looked and felt weird.
- Fixed the shop inventory in Echo of a World never refreshing/refilling.
Gameplay
- Changing the behavior of the left mouse button now properly works in both Online and Offline mode.
- The attack used for breaking barrels is now distinct from the regular basic attack. It is faster by default, does not scale with attack speed, and uses a more appropriate animation while you have a bow equipped.
- Fixed a bug that caused certain damage multipliers based on ailments to not grant their damage bonus. The affected nodes and items were:
- Abyssal Echoes's Embrace the Darkness
- Arcane Ascendance's Chronoclasm
- Firebrand's Inferno
- Hungering Souls's Inspired Hunger
- Summon Sabertooth's Snow Stalker
- Summon Scorpion's Shock and Claw
- Volatile Reversal's Food for Wyrms
- Warcry's Horrifying Cry
- Firestarter's Torch
- Fixed a bug where when continuously using an ability all uses after the first would be delayed slightly on the server based on your ping. This caused the creation of their visuals to be slightly out of sync with the animation.
- Fixed a bug where in both online and offline if you clicked to use an ability then clicked again to buffer another ability use, but clicked to move before that second ability use started, it wouldn't cancel that second ability use.
- Fixed a bug in online where if you held down the move button and then used two abilities in succession, where the second was a reactive ability such as teleport or snap freeze, the second ability would be instantly canceled by movement, but would still go off on the server.
Skills
- Updated many base skill icons, skill tree icons and passive tree icons throughout the game. This should create a higher quality and more thematic experience of browsing through skill trees and passive trees.
- Fixed a bug that caused skill levels and available skill points to display incorrectly in many situations when the player had a source of additional skill level from items.
- Fixed the elemental conversion / damage type icons in the skill trees window not showing in Online mode.
- Fixed a bug in online play where Druids could not switch the abilities on their action bar while transformed.
- Fixed a bug where moving to a new zone in online mode would cause a previously summoned Abomination to be resummoned as if it had not consumed any minions.
- Fixed Tempest Strike having a missing texture (pink blocks).
- Fixed a bug that caused Forgemaster node in Forge Strike to not spawn axes.
- Fixed a bug where Rip Blood's second Blood Splatter could apply Bone Curse through Cursed Limbs when triggered by Crimson Enlightenment.
- Static Orb's baseline effect of more damage and increased area based on distance traveled now also applies to Charged Ground.
- Fixed a bug where the area increase from Static Orb's Storm Burst node did not apply to Charged Ground.
- Charged Ground now has the area tag, and its description states that it benefits from Static Orb's damage and area bonus per distance traveled.
- Improved Blood Splatter's hit detection, fixing problems where it would sometimes not hit targets it should have.
- Updated the visual effects for Thorn Totems Rotten Core node.
- The Pillars of Heorot node for Thorn Totem now converts 100% of Physical base damage to Cold (from 50%) and increases Freeze Rate to 30 (from 15).
- Removed Thorn Shield's slight priority for targeting players over minions, and mobile minions over immobile minions, which we introduced in 0.9g. This was removed to avoid the negative impact it had on builds that target minions with Thorn Shield.
Dungeons
- Fixed a bug that prevented some players from entering Dungeons. The key was consumed and you could access the lobby, but the transition into the dungeon itself did not appear.
- We are aware that players can sometimes not interact with the boss door at the end of Dungeons (the window to continue does not appear when you click). This seems to be more likely to happen to players that are by themselves. If this bug happens to you, joining a party should fix the problem. Otherwise, relog and try again. We are working on a fix for this.
- Fixed a bug that could cause Julra to fail to drop a boss-specific unique item or exalted item.
Item Visuals
- All loot now has an animation when it drops to the ground.
- Updated all loot models on the ground. They are more performant and look better.
- Added a generic bag model for small items such as jewelry, relics, and belts, and an idol model for idols.
- Updated all visual effects for items and gold on the ground, i.e. the vertical colored beams.
- Exalted items now have their own visual effect, rather than using the effect for rare items.
- Added a visual effect to potions on the ground to make them more noticeable in combat.
- Updated visual effects for all chests being opened.
- Added a special visual effect for the chest in Echo of a World.
Uniques
- Fixed a bug where item effects that relied on switching to or from a moving state didn't work in multiplayer. This fixes mods on the following uniques:
- Stormtide
- Transient Rest
- Flight of the First
- Orchirian's Petals and Ashes of Orchirian now sell for 144 gold, from 250. If you know, you know.
Quests
- Fixed a bug where the time rift to The Ancient Cavern would not re-open if you returned to The Precipice.
- Fixed a bug that caused multiple you are here markers to show at once when zoomed out on the Imperial Era world map.
- Fixed a bug that could cause players to be unable to start the wave fight in The Risen Lake if another party member completed the fight while they were not present.
- Fixed a bug where you could still talk to Rouj Zabat after he died.
- Added a work around to prevent Chapter 7 quests being uncompleteable if you skipped around during party play (the quests will be completed when moving on to Chapter 8).
- Fixed a bug where the sidequest in Etendell could get stuck on the Defeat Winged Fire objective if you killed the Siege Golem before the Winged Fire.
- Adjusted the Sirens and Sailors and To Shell With It quests to prevent situations where killing the enemies available in the zone was not enough to complete them.
Animation
- Fixed a bug where if you left a form while walking your character would slide in human form instead of playing a walk animation.
- Fixed a bug where if you left a form while using a 2h weapon your character would hold it like a 1h weapon and use 1h weapon animations.
Enemies
- Fixed a bug where the indicator for Haruspex Orians stab attack wasnt always lined up properly online.
- Fixed a bug where the indicator for Argentus' ice spear stab wasn't always lined up properly online, and the skill itself was not shown.
- Updated the visuals and sound for Bitterwings ice breath attack.
- Fixed a big lightning particle effect being left on screen when Meruna Ogres died.
- Fixed a bug where Void Horrors that spawned from Beacons didn't have hit or death flash.
Sound
- Unique, Set, Exalted Legendary Items and high rarity crafting materials now have new drop sound effects.
- All other items now have revised sounds for when they drop.
- Monolith chest now has new looping and open sound effects.
- Updated ambient sounds throughout Chapter 3.
- Fixed the wrong music playing in The Courtyard.
- Fixed Admiral Hartons voice lines being too loud in the Immortal Citadel.
Login
- Fixed a bug which could cause an LE-51 error during login, preventing access to the game for some players.
- Increased the character limit for entering an email address when starting the game for the first time.
Optimization
- Improved the performance of Volatile Maws explosions.
- Improved the performance of Meruna Ogre abilities.
- Improved the performance of Bitterwing enemies.
- Improved the performance of Upheaval.
- Reduced the file size of some textures, slightly reducing the games install size.
- Fixed a small memory leak, improving the performance and stability of long game sessions.
Notes
Thank you for posting bug reports and feedback. We plan to continue releasing bug fix patches at this pace for at least a few more patches. We do have team members that are working on new content that we plan to release in 0.9.1, rather than these bug fix patches, but we dont have anything to announce about that yet. However, most of our developers are still working on fixes and improvements rather than new content. Some of these projects are longer term than others. In terms of fixes and improvements, here are some of our priorities:
- Improving server and client performance. Poor performance on either side can lead to some types of lag, among other problems.
- Maintaining game server and service stability.
- Monitoring for any data loss. We are confident that our online systems have stabilized but were still looking out for it.
- Fixing gameplay and systems bugs. We read through reports from you, the community, and we are also constantly doing our own testing.
- This includes the dungeon boss door bug mentioned above.
Beta 0.9h Patch Notes
Because this stash bug was high priority and reasonably self-contained, we decided it was worth putting out a dedicated hotfix for it. We have many other bug fixes in progress that we plan to release in a more substantial patch next week, following the strategy I mentioned in the 0.9g post. Heres some of what were working on:
[ 2023-04-05 15:58:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where deleting a stash category could cause some stash tabs to become inaccessible, making it appear like the items were lost.
- Added a check to automatically fix any stashes that were affected by the above bug.
Notes
Because this stash bug was high priority and reasonably self-contained, we decided it was worth putting out a dedicated hotfix for it. We have many other bug fixes in progress that we plan to release in a more substantial patch next week, following the strategy I mentioned in the 0.9g post. Heres some of what were working on:
- We have fixes for reordering transform abilities, Abominations losing abilities on transition and Tempest Strike visuals.
- We have a fix for changing left mouse button behavior in testing.
- We have a fix for the Dungeon entrance bug and it has passed our initial testing. Since the problem does not affect everyone evenly, we are doing more testing to confirm.
- We are also working on a fix for Dungeon boss rooms sometimes being inaccessible, and Julra failing to drop her specific unique items.
- We are still actively working on client and server performance. This includes CPU, memory and network optimizations and should help improve situations that feel laggy.
- We are aware that unexpected server region / high latency issues are still occuring and are working on ways to improve this. Its a somewhat longer term effort than individual bug fixes.
- We are continuing to monitor for indications of save data loss, and things have looked good this week. We will investigate any reports thoroughly.
Beta 0.9g2 Patch Notes
[ 2023-03-30 09:08:41 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug introduced in Beta 0.9g which caused save data loss in Offline. If you returned to Login/Character Select by using the Leave Game button and then loaded any offline character, any updates to that character or the stash would not be saved.
Beta 0.9g Patch Notes
Thank you for continuing to make bug reports! We are still focused on bug fixes, server and service stability, performance, and polish. We plan to continue releasing updates but at a more consistent pace with fewer, larger patches. We will still hotfix any critical issues that come up. Some particular bug fixes that were currently working on include:
[ 2023-03-29 15:59:58 CET ] [ Original post ]
Gameplay
- Fixed a bug which caused rubberbanding (being moved backwards) when using movement abilities or the Temporal Shift ability in the Temporal Sanctum.
- Significantly reduced instances of Lunge and similar abilities getting stuck in their animation, which prevented movement until another ability was used.
- Players can now respawn at the end of a Dungeon boss fight without being kicked out of the dungeon when the boss is defeated by other party members.
- Players can now choose to Abandon a dungeon or arena run if they dont want to wait until they can respawn.
- Fixed a bug where the main combat floor entrances in Soulfire Bastion had invisible reverse transitions. If you walked backwards into them it would reload the zone (ending your dungeon run).
- Fixed a bug where your character model was sometimes duplicated after transitioning to a new zone. The camera would remain locked on the copy, while the other one could move.
- Fixed a bug where Spires could attack players that were in Echo of a World.
- Fixed a bug where the western moon fragment altar in the Moonlit Shrine could sometimes become uninteractable.
- Fixed quest objective pulses not updating properly in The Fall of Ledria.
- Fixed some Osprix Vanguard enemies using an incorrect ability.
- Fixed the Initializing screen showing after login even when the queue system isnt active. This makes getting to character select slightly faster.
- Fixed a bug where the Leave Game button took you back to Login rather than Character Select.
- Fixed another rare server bug which could cause save data loss. We are monitoring telemetry to find any other causes that need to be addressed.
Skills
- Thorn Shield now has a slight priority for targeting players over minions and mobile minions over immobile minions.
- Fixed a bug where Shifts Deadly Ambush and Braskulas Hesitation nodes were applying to all non-channelled attacks, not just the next non-channelled attack after Shift.
- Fixed a bug where Meteors Cycle of Fire only granted its ward and mana for 4 seconds after gaining Craterborn, rather than for the full 6 second duration of Craterborn.
- Fixed a bug where Teleports Comet Rush did not refresh the duration of an existing Haste.
- Fixed a bug where your Vengeance tree sometimes affected an allys versions of Riposte and Iron Blade instead of yours.
- Fixed a bug where the Fulminating Caw node on the Storm Crow tree sometimes caused an allys increased lightning damage to apply to your crows instead of your increased lightning damage.
- Fixed a bug where the nodes on the Ballista tree that caused your stats to apply to your ballistae sometimes caused an allys stats to apply to your ballistae instead.
- Fixed a bug where the on-use sounds for some instant cast abilities would not play on the client of the player using the skill.
- Fixed the trails behind Acid Flasks, Hammer Throw hammers, and Axe Thrower axes in mid-air stretching incorrectly.
Chat & Social
- Fixed a bug where chat channel selection could be reset in some situations. This could cause chat to turn back on after its been turned off.
- Fixed gameplay messages that are shown in the chat window (i.e. Loot Filter Disabled) being hidden when Chat is disabled.
- Fixed commands for replying to your last whisper (/r) and changing channels (i.e. /party) not working.
- Added a /lfg command to switch to the Looking For Group channel.
- Fixed a bug where Whisper and Party chat messages could sometimes appear to be from the wrong channel.
- Fixed new chat messages sometimes being cut off halfway vertically.
- Added a sound effect for receiving direct messages.
- Fixed the friends list scroll view being shorter than intended, causing fewer friends to be visible at once.
- The Add Friend and Block Player pop-ups now auto-select the input box so you can type right away.
- Fixed sections in the friends list re-opening when they should remain collapsed.
- Fixed a bug where adding a friend could cause an existing friend to disappear from the list for a while.
- Made a few small improvements to the visuals of the friends list.
Items
- Cindersong now also grants +1 to Fire Spells. Also improved the clarity of its tooltip.
- Unused dungeon keys are now returned back to your inventory when closing the dungeon entrance window (if you have space).
Visuals
- Fixed a bug where the water in Ritual Lake echoes would cause visual effects to become invisible.
- Reduced the overall brightness of Imperial Metropolis and Snowbound City echoes to make it easier to see.
- Updated the visuals for Drain Lifes poison explosion.
- Updated the visuals for abilities used by Profane Flesh.
- Fixed the visuals and damage for Profane Flesh sometimes not lining up with its animations.
- Fixed Profane Flesh snapping to face new targets rather than turning.
- Fixed Ruby Nagasa not animating properly on death.
- Fixed Infernal Husks not animating properly.
- Fixed Apophis sliding at the beginning of the cutscene in MajElka Upper District.
- Fixed Liath having glitchy animations in Island Battlefield.
- Fixed the Timeline Conduit in the Shade of Orobyss arena having a red outline.
Optimization
- Fixed a bug causing memory usage to go up on the client over time, particularly in Monolith. We tested the fix by playing through 10 campaign zones and 10 echos, and found that the fix reduced memory usage by more than 1 GB at the end of the test.
- The visual assets for enemies were not being properly unloaded when moving to different zones.
- RAM usage definitely still goes up over time, and we are currently investigating this further.
- Replaced several lightning visual effects with new ones which are much more performant.
- Improved the performance of death visual effects for various enemies.
- The ice projectile ability used by Ice Elementals is now pooled, which mitigates FPS drops caused by this enemy.
- Updated the Wengari Axe Throw abilitys visuals to be more performant.
- Fixed an issue that could cause unnecessarily large patch downloads. Unfortunately, the fix cant help the download size of this patch, just future ones.
Notes
Thank you for continuing to make bug reports! We are still focused on bug fixes, server and service stability, performance, and polish. We plan to continue releasing updates but at a more consistent pace with fewer, larger patches. We will still hotfix any critical issues that come up. Some particular bug fixes that were currently working on include:
- Deleting stash categories causes items to go missing (weve confirmed no items are being deleted)
- Players sometimes being unable to enter dungeons (this doesnt affect everyone evenly which makes it harder to track down
- Changing left mouse button behavior (i.e. move to attack)
- Re-ordering skills while transformed
- Abomination forgetting what minions it consumed after moving to a new zone
Beta 0.9f Patch Notes
Thanks for continuing to report bugs and other issues. Here are two were working on, though we have several other fixes in progress: Were aware of a bug where some players are unable to enter Dungeons. This will be a priority for us to address this week; we weren't able to finish a fix in time for this patch. However, weve seen that if you return to Character Select via the Leave Game button, you will be able to enter the dungeon. You should be able to try this without interacting with the Dungeon. Were also aware of rubberbanding happening during movement and movement skills.
[ 2023-03-20 17:34:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
Gameplay
- Fixed a rare bug which could lead to large online save data rollbacks. Were still working on identifying any other causes of rollbacks and fixing them.
- Fixed a bug where Druid Transform builds could sometimes end up with scrambled action bars, with incorrect and mispositioned abilities, which also caused the Human Form action bar to become blank.
- Fixed a bug where traversal skills such as Lunge would consume more than 1 charge of the ability when used, and also consumed more than 1 charge of other traversal skills that share a cooldown.
- Fixed a bug where an uninteractable reward rock could sometimes appear in Echo of a World, preventing interacting with the real reward rock.
- Fixed a bug which caused ability use to be prevented if you were holding down a key after using a movement ability. This caused Dancing Strikes to be used much less frequently when holding the button than when rapidly pressing it.
- Fixed a bug where quick selling items was not blocked on the client while gambling. This could cause the client to become out of sync with the server, with items appearing to be duplicated or lost. This was a visual/clientside bug; no items were lost or duplicated.
- Fixed a bug where the Liath and Thetima quest could get stuck on the Speak with Yulia in Thetima objective.
- Fixed some skill, passive and affix typos.
Account Creation
- Fixed a bug which caused LE-51 errors to be shown if a problem occurred while picking a display name, rather than an error message that tells you what went wrong (i.e. name already in use, invalid characters, invalid length, profanity filter).
Enemy Fixes
- Fixed a bug where some Void Despairs would have an outline appear after killing them.
- Fixed a bug where some Void Despairs didn't have a health bar.
- Fixed a bug where Void Despairs would sink into the ground immediately upon dying.
- Fixed a bug where the Void Penance didn't have a top of screen health bar in multiplayer.
- Fixed a bug where the indicator and animations for the Idol of Loathing would not re-time properly when it was chilled.
Notes
Thanks for continuing to report bugs and other issues. Here are two were working on, though we have several other fixes in progress: Were aware of a bug where some players are unable to enter Dungeons. This will be a priority for us to address this week; we weren't able to finish a fix in time for this patch. However, weve seen that if you return to Character Select via the Leave Game button, you will be able to enter the dungeon. You should be able to try this without interacting with the Dungeon. Were also aware of rubberbanding happening during movement and movement skills.
Beta 0.9e Patch Notes
In 0.9c, we included a bug fix for Flame Reave's Rhythm of Fire where it did not grant any stacks. We mistakenly believed this caused Flame Reave to never be able to receive the benefits of Rhythm of Fire. What actually happened before 0.9c was Flame Reave received the range and width bonus of Rhythm of Fire at all times, even when unspecialized, and received the damage bonus of Rhythm of Fire at all times when the Rhythm of Fire node was allocated. This means the current behavior of the skill and node are now working as intended, but we described the bug fix incorrectly. This caused a lot of confusion, and set expectations that the skill would become even stronger, when it was actually much stronger than intended. We will be more thorough in our testing and patch notes.
Were continuing to monitor your feedback and bug reports on and off of the forum. We know you want to hear more frequent and specific updates on what were doing and we will work on this. Getting the right balance between communication and working on the fixes themselves is tricky, especially while were this busy. Ill add a few below but this is by no means a complete list.
[ 2023-03-15 23:24:45 CET ] [ Original post ]
Quests
- Fixed a bug where the portal to return to Thetima would not appear after killing Lagon. The waypoint to SorethKa is unlocked however, so that can be used to progress without redoing the fight.
- Fixed a bug where the Saving Last Refuge quest could become uncompletable in some situations. Talking to Gaspar again should fix the quest if its bugged for you.
- Fixed a bug where the interaction to jump over the railing on the Dreadnoughts Deck would not appear if you left the zone after speaking with Alric.
Gameplay
- Fixed a bug which caused your item visuals and account name to fail to display and would display the default account label (usually fixed by moving to a new zone). This fix may take a little while to be fully in effect.
- Fixed a bug that caused Minion icons (top left of screen) to sometimes disappear.
- Fixed a bug where the Shade of Orobyss' concentric ring explosions could occasionally deal damage a second time, 2 seconds after the first.
- Fixed a bug where leaving a dungeon via a player portal could sometimes cause other players to be unable to portal to you (LE-70).
- Fixed LE-67 errors occurring if you clicked a dungeon door after someone put in a key and clicked Enter, but did not select a tier.
- Fixed a bug where hardcore characters that had died still showed as hardcore in some parts of the UI.
- Added tutorials to the start of the game for joining a party and re-assigning skills. We have other tutorial changes in progress.
Notes
Flame Reave
In 0.9c, we included a bug fix for Flame Reave's Rhythm of Fire where it did not grant any stacks. We mistakenly believed this caused Flame Reave to never be able to receive the benefits of Rhythm of Fire. What actually happened before 0.9c was Flame Reave received the range and width bonus of Rhythm of Fire at all times, even when unspecialized, and received the damage bonus of Rhythm of Fire at all times when the Rhythm of Fire node was allocated. This means the current behavior of the skill and node are now working as intended, but we described the bug fix incorrectly. This caused a lot of confusion, and set expectations that the skill would become even stronger, when it was actually much stronger than intended. We will be more thorough in our testing and patch notes.
Future Fixes
Were continuing to monitor your feedback and bug reports on and off of the forum. We know you want to hear more frequent and specific updates on what were doing and we will work on this. Getting the right balance between communication and working on the fixes themselves is tricky, especially while were this busy. Ill add a few below but this is by no means a complete list.
- We are monitoring issues with logging in and connecting to servers (i.e. being able to at all, and the speed of doing so). These issues are typically addressed on our backend, which happens separate from client/server releases.
- We are continuing to investigate reports of progression rollbacks and improving our telemetry to diagnose causes.
- Weve identified the cause of skills on the actionbar being scrambled/un-set when playing Transform build and are working on a fix.
- Weve seen reports of Lunge causing the player to get stuck but havent found a consistent way to cause the behavior. Any details you can add in a bug report (types of enemies, location onscreen, recordings) would be helpful.
Beta 0.9c & 0.9d Patch Notes
[ 2023-03-14 18:02:19 CET ] [ Original post ]
Gameplay
- The Death Recap screen (you were killed by X with Y damage type) now works in Multiplayer.
- Fixed a bug where offline characters could not unlock empowered monoliths at the timeline catalyst. You can go back to the catalyst on existing characters to unlock it.
- Fixed a bug where a reward rock could incorrectly appear after completing a Quest Echo in offline (Quest Echoes dont have echo completion rewards).
- Fixed a bug where return portals did not appear in the Council Chambers or Outcast Camp after taking a town portal to those zones.
- The following interactions now require a click rather than happening when you hold down the left mouse button and hover over the object:
- Using the Town Portal (both to town and from town)
- Open the Stash
- Talking to most NPCs
- Defeating the following chapter bosses now unlocks the first waypoint of the next chapter, in case you logout or disconnect before continuing:
- Admiral Harton
- Spymaster Zerrick
- Harton/Zerrick Rematch
- Lagon
Skills
- Fixed a bug where the skill tooltip incorrectly displayed when opening a skill tree.
- Fixed a bug where channeled skills kept recasting in multiplayer, causing casting vfx and sounds to play repeatedly.
- Increased the basic melee attack range of Assembled Abomination by around 100%.
- Fixed a bug where Flame Reaves Rhythm of Fire could not gain stacks from any source.
- Fixed a bug where using Fury Leap at a very long distance could cause you to get stuck in an animation pose until you used another ability.
- Fixed a bug where Lunge would lock you in place when targeting destructible objects.
- Fixed a bug where Rip Bloods Coagulated Blood was not affected by increased area.
- Fixed a bug where Swarmblades Locusts sunk into the ground and did not animate.
Save Data
- Fixed a bug where offline characters could be overwritten when creating a new offline character after deleting one.
Enemies
- Temporarily massively reduced the damage of the Emperor of Corpses Soul Bomb. The arena for this fight was made smaller in the lead up to 0.9 without the boss abilities being changed to account for this. We plan to return the arena to its original size soon.
- Void Worms have a less intense visual effect when they die.
- Fixed a bug where Infernal Fleshs abilities would sometimes indicate in the wrong direction in multiplayer.
- Fixed Spymaster Zerrick not having a boss-style healthbar when hovered over.
- Fixed the stone blocks in Liaths Sanctum not having a sound.
- Updated the emerging sound for Void Despair.
- Fixed the Hollow Druants Entangling Roots skill not having sounds.
Items
- Fixed The Throwing Damage and Mana Cost affix incorrectly showing that its damage had a physical tag.
- Fixed the Travelers Backpack not appearing when equipped. Were still working on granting this cosmetic to all players.
Notes
- We are investigating other reports of data loss associated with online characters. While these reports are fairly uncommon this remains our top priority. This build introduces some additional logging that will help us investigate.
- We now know what is causing characters to sometimes appear without their armor and the default display username ( ) to appear which is a failure to load this data and are working towards a fix. This is only a visual bug that is usually resolved when switching to a new zone.
- We will continue to monitor your feedback and put out additional hotfixes as necessary for skill bugs, multiplayer systems, and so on.
0.9d Changes
- Fixed a bug with the chat system that caused a hugely excessive amount of calls to our backend services (this shouldn't change anything on the player side).
The Convergence Update - Beta 0.9 Patch Notes
[ 2023-03-06 19:02:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
The Convergence, Patch 0.9, is coming Thursday, March 9, 2023 at 11:00 AM CT! Welcome everyone to the final day of our Pre-Patch Blog Post Hype Week! Over the last year, we have been working on a very large number of improvements for Last Epoch alongside the addition of the Multiplayer Beta. With all these changes stored up, we have a lot of notes and changes ready for you to look over. Because of the sheer number of these notes, we've decided to release them a few days earlier than we usually would in order to provide a chance to read through the areas you might be interested in and prepare for patch day! In preparation of the launch of the new client on March 9th, we will be taking the current log-in servers offline approximately 4 hours before the patch launch in order to migrate accounts to the new servers. (This will not transfer any characters, or other progression, just getting everyone set up to be able to log-in to the new servers). Last Epoch Beta Patch 0.9 - Convergence will introduce:
- Multiplayer!
- New 3D models for new and existing Uniques
- New Armor sets for Acolyte, Mage, Primalist, Rogue, and Sentinel
- New Unique Items
- Balance Changes, including almost every skill in the game
- Performance Improvements
- New Music & Sound
- New Player animations, and skill VFX
- New Bone Golem and Manifest Armor models
- New Enemies
- Reworked Zones
- New Monolith Maps
- Bug Fixes
- And more!
Performance & Optimization | Coming in Convergence
Every time an ability is used by the player or an enemy, the game has to create and initialize a visual effect associated with that ability in addition to other effects, such as hit effects. This Instantiation and initialization can be quite performance costly. Multiple things can cause players to experience more and more stuttering, such as the number of enemies increasing, players using skills more often, or those skills spawning more projectiles and effects. The solution to this problem is Pooling. The game creates all the effects we expect that will appear in the scene in advance, as such, the majority of the instantiation and initialization costs will be paid during the loading, and these effects will exist in the scene - in the pool but are disabled. When the game needs to display the requested visual effect, instead of creating a new one, writing it into memory, and initializing it, it will just take one from the pool and play it instead. After the visual effect is played, it will return to the pool and will be reused later. This solution reduces stuttering caused by VFX creation considerably. For patch 0.9.0, all player abilities VFX will be pooled. In addition to player abilities VFX, we are also pooling the most frequent visual effects - such as hit effects or ailments. We will also be continuing to add more visual effects to the pool.
Another aspect we are looking into is optimizing our shaders. A shader is an underlying code that decides the color of the pixel appearing on your monitor. Pretty much every pixel is calculated on the shader level, no matter if we are talking about UI elements, terrain, models, or visual effects. For VFX, we are using a wide variety of shaders to achieve different visuals - a smoke effect is using a different shader than liquid or blood, for example. Some of these shaders can be quite simple, but sometimes calculations to achieve a very specific look can be incredibly complex. Using our new internal tools, we identified several performance issues caused by our previous shader configurations. Since 0.8.5, we have been working on adjusting and even re-creating our shaders to improve from these issues resulting in a smoother and more performant experience.
Overdraw is when a pixel on the screen has to be drawn multiple times to achieve the final result - ideally, you want the color of the pixel calculated just once, but it is not always possible. This is mostly caused by transparent materials and effects. If you have a nice semi-transparent smoke effect, the engine needs to know what is behind the smoke to calculate the final color of the pixel, so in this case, everything that is behind the smoke needs to be calculated at least twice. If multiple particles or particle systems are using transparent materials, you can see how this will start to stack up. Overdraw is not an easy issue to fix, as well some level of overdraw is typical in modern games, but there are some options to mitigate the impact of overdraw or reduce the amount of it. to achieve this, we developed internal tools to measure the amount of overdraw caused by our visual effects. We have been going through all of our visual effects, searching for patterns or systemic issues we could fix by adjusting the shader or manually fixing the biggest offenders. We identified specific shaders which do not benefit from being transparent. Instead, we are converting them to something called alpha-test. Alpha test shader pixels are either fully visible or fully invisible. This allows the game engine to calculate the pixel color just once. This primarily applies to liquid/goo/blood effects with minimal or no visual impact. For cases where reworking the shader is not an option, we have been going through each element of the visual effects, adjusting them to reduce overall overdraw: sometimes switching elements to be alpha-tested instead, sometimes redesigning certain elements such as distortion, and sometimes redesigning the visual effect completely. Over time, we developed guidelines that help us minimize the performance impact of visual effects, and we are applying lessons we learned across the game. To demonstrate the impact of reducing overdraw, the Ancient Dragon encounter is a good example. In the current version, Ancient Dragon attacks can cause significant frame drops - in this example, frames drop to mid-40s.
After reducing overdraw for its attacks, the framerate curve is much smoother and hovers around 100, and there are still further optimizations planned. You will also notice higher average fps even before attacks, which is a result of other optimizations that we have been working on.
Rendering Path is a term not used commonly, but it is essential for the overall optimization of the game. A rendering path is a series of operations the engine uses to gather and calculate geometry, lighting, and shading. There are two common Rendering Paths used in modern games - Forward and Deferred. Both rendering paths have their advantages and disadvantages, and it depends on the game and art direction to determine which is the ideal rendering path for that specific game. Last Epoch is using the Deferred rendering path, and the main benefit is that using multiple lights doesnt negatively impact the game performance since lighting is calculated and rendered all at once (while in forward rendering, each object has to be rendered once for each light). We decided early that we want to use dynamic lights for our skills or environment design, so Deferred rendering was a logical choice - but there is a catch. Modern engines can combine both rendering paths into a single frame; they can render certain elements in the Deferred path and others in the Forward and combine them into the final image. Shaders decide what rendering path they will use based on features and operations they need for calculations - specific calculations are possible just in Forward and vice-versa. We are using a wide variety of shaders, and many of them need to be rendered in a Forward rendering path - which can cause performance issues, especially if there are multiple light sources in the scene, either from the environment or emitting from skills. To demonstrate the importance of having shaders using the correct rendering path for the situation, here is an example from testing the difference between Forward and Deferred shaders in the test scene using 16 lights and a couple of particle systems emitting blood-like particles. As you will notice, the FPS difference in this specific scenario is enormous.
So to solve this issue, we are going through all of our shaders in the game, not just for visual effects, and we are making sure that all shaders, where we need to have lighting calculations, are rendered through the Deferred rendering path. We still want to have some Forward shaders in the game because they can provide different visual effects, but we are making sure that all Forward shaders we are using are not using performance expensive lighting calculations. We still have a few cases we need to clean up, but when we are done, this will allow our visual effect and level design teams to use lights more artistically, increasing the fidelity and visual depth of the game in addition to overall better performance across the board. We took all the knowledge mentioned above and created a demonstration with the proposed changes. The necrotic explosion caused by Volatile Zombie skill was one of the demonstrations.
This is our current live version of Necrotic Explosion. As you can notice, spawning multiple explosion causes noticeable stuttering, you can see the profiler graph jumping really high, which means both CPU and GPU takes a lot of time to render out these frames.
This was demonstrated with proposed changes applied - reducing both overdraw and shader rendering path fixes. Even multiple explosions have minimal impact on the performance, as you can see on the profiler graph, keeping a smooth framerate without stuttering. Please note that this video does not show the final version of the Necrotic Explosion. This is just a demonstration that helps to guide the visual effect team to improve both performance and visuals of VFX.
During visual effects benchmarking, we noticed several patterns causing performance degradation, which lead us to investigate other systems we are using for VFX, namely Projectors and Trails. Projectors are tools that can project textures/decals on any surface. Projectors are very useful for both level design and visual effects, used either as temporary marks on the ground and other elements by skills or as permanent visual elements in many scenes. We moved from using default Unitys solution for decals to a custom solution, which is considerably faster, and you should see a considerable improvement in skills such as meteor or avalanche. Trail is a system that creates a nice smooth trail behind some projectiles, such as Hungering Souls. But as we found out during our benchmarking, our current solution can cause significant performance degradation, especially if skills have multiple projectiles. We are actively working on replacing the current solution with a better-performing one.
There are a lot of things that can negatively impact performance in the game. We already talked about some of these issues, and sometimes the visual effect does not perform well, but the underlying issue is not immediately apparent. In these cases, we need to dig deeper into the engine and code itself, find out how the engine works, what limitations it has, and what is causing performance issues. Quite a few operations are happening under the hood on the engine level, like how game objects are structured, their hierarchy, and their timings, with each of these having a potentially significant impact on performance. One example is the hit effect. Hit effects are relatively simple visual elements, yet we noticed a performance drop in specific scenarios. We were able to optimize the game object itself, bringing performance to acceptable levels without impacting visuals in any way. Below is a video showing several dummies periodically spawning physical hit VFX. Our current version of that VFX was causing a significant performance drop which impacted fast-hitting and summon builds the most. This was an important issue to solve before the open multiplayer patch was released since up to 4 players in one game significantly increases the number of hit effects.
To ensure that Last Epoch is running well even on lower-end machines, we knew we have to improve our scenes baseline frame times. We developed new internal tools to benchmark our scenes and identify performance issues. Now we are benchmarking our scenes once per week to make sure our performance improvements are hitting their targets and we are not introducing more performance issues. There are a lot of factors affecting scene frame times, including inefficient geometry, shaders, number of draw calls or shadow casters, reflection probes, etc. We did several global changes, including adjusting our graphics settings, and changing shaders or even vegetation, which helped bring frame times down in general. Now we are targeting each scene separately to fix scene-specific issues. We still have a lot of scenes to chew through, but we are working hard to make sure our scenes have baseline frame times as low as possible. In addition, we are learning valuable lessons and are preparing guidelines for our future scenes to be performant out of the box. These images show just a few of our improvements between patch 0.8.5 and 0.9.0. Frametimes were captured using the reference PC (GF 1650 4Gb, i5 - 11600K, 16GB RAM) on medium settings. These graphs represent a grid layout of their respective scenes. Each of the circles of the graph represents a spot on the map where a player can travel, and so our tool captured an image of load times from that location. Basically, think of this as the tool walking through the map like a player and placing a circle each time it has a look around. Each square on the graph represents a physical square of the scene and how long it took that section of the scene to load. In the first graph below, were having a look at one of the more open Monolith Echo zones, which happens to be one of the Imperial Era maps. Here, because its a more open area, the tool captures many points next to each other in order to graph the complete scene evenly as different players may traverse different parts of the map. Wherever the circles can be found is the walkable area of the map.
In the second graph, were having a look at one of the early Ruined Era cavern scenes from the campaign. Since this map is a winding cavern, theres a more linear route for players to travel, and so the capture points reflect this.
Performance optimization is an ongoing process, and even as we continue prepping for patch 0.9 and beyond, we have already identified areas where we can continue to improve. We are getting much better at collecting data, identifying sources causing performance issues, tracking them, and ultimately fixing them. We are also working on several guidelines to ensure that all our future content will be as optimized as possible on the first release. While we cant promise that every single performance issue will be fixed in the upcoming patch 0.9.0, we believe we are on the right path to give you the Last Epoch you deserve and can enjoy a smooth and fun experience. We hope you all enjoyed this deeper look into performance optimization in Last Epoch! Well be back again tomorrow with a particularly large post, which we think one or two people might be interested in potentially. Goodbye for now Travelers, and well see you all again very soon!
[ 2023-03-05 19:00:09 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello, Travelers! Its officially the start of Patch week, with only four more days to go until 0.9! In todays blog post, were going to be getting a bit technical. Performance and Optimization has been a major goal for us over the last year and something weve made a lot of improvements regarding. We also know this is a very important topic for many users, so we want to talk about all the things weve been working on. In short form, Performance coming to patch 0.9 has improved considerably, and well continue to improve it! If youre interested in the extended version with how were accomplishing that? Well, lets dive into that. Over the years, our team has been busy building a content-rich and fun game. With regular updates, we provided a lot of new content often. While we always had performance in mind and tried to keep performance in check or improve it over time, we were never as focused on improving performance as we have been and continue to do so. Many things affect the performance of the game, and today we would like to share more about the visual effects optimization improvements we have made for patch 0.9.0 and beyond. Visual effects (VFX) are present in every corner of the game. If you are casting fireball, throwing magical hammers, getting hit by void enemies, seeing flickering torches in the dark dungeons, or just standing in the rain, there are almost always several visual effects playing on your monitor. Over the years, weve added thousands of visual effects to the game, and as we are now also adding multiplayer functionality, we understand we need to have the performance in a good place, and VFX can and does affect the performance in moment-to-moment gameplay. We have been going through every single visual effect we have in the game, benchmarking it, and making sure it is up to our standards both from visual and performance perspectives.
Runtime Instantiation and Pooling
Every time an ability is used by the player or an enemy, the game has to create and initialize a visual effect associated with that ability in addition to other effects, such as hit effects. This Instantiation and initialization can be quite performance costly. Multiple things can cause players to experience more and more stuttering, such as the number of enemies increasing, players using skills more often, or those skills spawning more projectiles and effects. The solution to this problem is Pooling. The game creates all the effects we expect that will appear in the scene in advance, as such, the majority of the instantiation and initialization costs will be paid during the loading, and these effects will exist in the scene - in the pool but are disabled. When the game needs to display the requested visual effect, instead of creating a new one, writing it into memory, and initializing it, it will just take one from the pool and play it instead. After the visual effect is played, it will return to the pool and will be reused later. This solution reduces stuttering caused by VFX creation considerably. For patch 0.9.0, all player abilities VFX will be pooled. In addition to player abilities VFX, we are also pooling the most frequent visual effects - such as hit effects or ailments. We will also be continuing to add more visual effects to the pool.
Shaders, Overdraw, and Rendering Paths
Another aspect we are looking into is optimizing our shaders. A shader is an underlying code that decides the color of the pixel appearing on your monitor. Pretty much every pixel is calculated on the shader level, no matter if we are talking about UI elements, terrain, models, or visual effects. For VFX, we are using a wide variety of shaders to achieve different visuals - a smoke effect is using a different shader than liquid or blood, for example. Some of these shaders can be quite simple, but sometimes calculations to achieve a very specific look can be incredibly complex. Using our new internal tools, we identified several performance issues caused by our previous shader configurations. Since 0.8.5, we have been working on adjusting and even re-creating our shaders to improve from these issues resulting in a smoother and more performant experience.
Overdraw
Overdraw is when a pixel on the screen has to be drawn multiple times to achieve the final result - ideally, you want the color of the pixel calculated just once, but it is not always possible. This is mostly caused by transparent materials and effects. If you have a nice semi-transparent smoke effect, the engine needs to know what is behind the smoke to calculate the final color of the pixel, so in this case, everything that is behind the smoke needs to be calculated at least twice. If multiple particles or particle systems are using transparent materials, you can see how this will start to stack up. Overdraw is not an easy issue to fix, as well some level of overdraw is typical in modern games, but there are some options to mitigate the impact of overdraw or reduce the amount of it. to achieve this, we developed internal tools to measure the amount of overdraw caused by our visual effects. We have been going through all of our visual effects, searching for patterns or systemic issues we could fix by adjusting the shader or manually fixing the biggest offenders. We identified specific shaders which do not benefit from being transparent. Instead, we are converting them to something called alpha-test. Alpha test shader pixels are either fully visible or fully invisible. This allows the game engine to calculate the pixel color just once. This primarily applies to liquid/goo/blood effects with minimal or no visual impact. For cases where reworking the shader is not an option, we have been going through each element of the visual effects, adjusting them to reduce overall overdraw: sometimes switching elements to be alpha-tested instead, sometimes redesigning certain elements such as distortion, and sometimes redesigning the visual effect completely. Over time, we developed guidelines that help us minimize the performance impact of visual effects, and we are applying lessons we learned across the game. To demonstrate the impact of reducing overdraw, the Ancient Dragon encounter is a good example. In the current version, Ancient Dragon attacks can cause significant frame drops - in this example, frames drop to mid-40s.
After reducing overdraw for its attacks, the framerate curve is much smoother and hovers around 100, and there are still further optimizations planned. You will also notice higher average fps even before attacks, which is a result of other optimizations that we have been working on.
Rendering Paths and Visual Effects
Rendering Path is a term not used commonly, but it is essential for the overall optimization of the game. A rendering path is a series of operations the engine uses to gather and calculate geometry, lighting, and shading. There are two common Rendering Paths used in modern games - Forward and Deferred. Both rendering paths have their advantages and disadvantages, and it depends on the game and art direction to determine which is the ideal rendering path for that specific game. Last Epoch is using the Deferred rendering path, and the main benefit is that using multiple lights doesnt negatively impact the game performance since lighting is calculated and rendered all at once (while in forward rendering, each object has to be rendered once for each light). We decided early that we want to use dynamic lights for our skills or environment design, so Deferred rendering was a logical choice - but there is a catch. Modern engines can combine both rendering paths into a single frame; they can render certain elements in the Deferred path and others in the Forward and combine them into the final image. Shaders decide what rendering path they will use based on features and operations they need for calculations - specific calculations are possible just in Forward and vice-versa. We are using a wide variety of shaders, and many of them need to be rendered in a Forward rendering path - which can cause performance issues, especially if there are multiple light sources in the scene, either from the environment or emitting from skills. To demonstrate the importance of having shaders using the correct rendering path for the situation, here is an example from testing the difference between Forward and Deferred shaders in the test scene using 16 lights and a couple of particle systems emitting blood-like particles. As you will notice, the FPS difference in this specific scenario is enormous.
So to solve this issue, we are going through all of our shaders in the game, not just for visual effects, and we are making sure that all shaders, where we need to have lighting calculations, are rendered through the Deferred rendering path. We still want to have some Forward shaders in the game because they can provide different visual effects, but we are making sure that all Forward shaders we are using are not using performance expensive lighting calculations. We still have a few cases we need to clean up, but when we are done, this will allow our visual effect and level design teams to use lights more artistically, increasing the fidelity and visual depth of the game in addition to overall better performance across the board. We took all the knowledge mentioned above and created a demonstration with the proposed changes. The necrotic explosion caused by Volatile Zombie skill was one of the demonstrations.
This is our current live version of Necrotic Explosion. As you can notice, spawning multiple explosion causes noticeable stuttering, you can see the profiler graph jumping really high, which means both CPU and GPU takes a lot of time to render out these frames.
This was demonstrated with proposed changes applied - reducing both overdraw and shader rendering path fixes. Even multiple explosions have minimal impact on the performance, as you can see on the profiler graph, keeping a smooth framerate without stuttering. Please note that this video does not show the final version of the Necrotic Explosion. This is just a demonstration that helps to guide the visual effect team to improve both performance and visuals of VFX.
Projectors and Trails
During visual effects benchmarking, we noticed several patterns causing performance degradation, which lead us to investigate other systems we are using for VFX, namely Projectors and Trails. Projectors are tools that can project textures/decals on any surface. Projectors are very useful for both level design and visual effects, used either as temporary marks on the ground and other elements by skills or as permanent visual elements in many scenes. We moved from using default Unitys solution for decals to a custom solution, which is considerably faster, and you should see a considerable improvement in skills such as meteor or avalanche. Trail is a system that creates a nice smooth trail behind some projectiles, such as Hungering Souls. But as we found out during our benchmarking, our current solution can cause significant performance degradation, especially if skills have multiple projectiles. We are actively working on replacing the current solution with a better-performing one.
Working around engine limitations
There are a lot of things that can negatively impact performance in the game. We already talked about some of these issues, and sometimes the visual effect does not perform well, but the underlying issue is not immediately apparent. In these cases, we need to dig deeper into the engine and code itself, find out how the engine works, what limitations it has, and what is causing performance issues. Quite a few operations are happening under the hood on the engine level, like how game objects are structured, their hierarchy, and their timings, with each of these having a potentially significant impact on performance. One example is the hit effect. Hit effects are relatively simple visual elements, yet we noticed a performance drop in specific scenarios. We were able to optimize the game object itself, bringing performance to acceptable levels without impacting visuals in any way. Below is a video showing several dummies periodically spawning physical hit VFX. Our current version of that VFX was causing a significant performance drop which impacted fast-hitting and summon builds the most. This was an important issue to solve before the open multiplayer patch was released since up to 4 players in one game significantly increases the number of hit effects.
Improving scene baseline frame times
To ensure that Last Epoch is running well even on lower-end machines, we knew we have to improve our scenes baseline frame times. We developed new internal tools to benchmark our scenes and identify performance issues. Now we are benchmarking our scenes once per week to make sure our performance improvements are hitting their targets and we are not introducing more performance issues. There are a lot of factors affecting scene frame times, including inefficient geometry, shaders, number of draw calls or shadow casters, reflection probes, etc. We did several global changes, including adjusting our graphics settings, and changing shaders or even vegetation, which helped bring frame times down in general. Now we are targeting each scene separately to fix scene-specific issues. We still have a lot of scenes to chew through, but we are working hard to make sure our scenes have baseline frame times as low as possible. In addition, we are learning valuable lessons and are preparing guidelines for our future scenes to be performant out of the box. These images show just a few of our improvements between patch 0.8.5 and 0.9.0. Frametimes were captured using the reference PC (GF 1650 4Gb, i5 - 11600K, 16GB RAM) on medium settings. These graphs represent a grid layout of their respective scenes. Each of the circles of the graph represents a spot on the map where a player can travel, and so our tool captured an image of load times from that location. Basically, think of this as the tool walking through the map like a player and placing a circle each time it has a look around. Each square on the graph represents a physical square of the scene and how long it took that section of the scene to load. In the first graph below, were having a look at one of the more open Monolith Echo zones, which happens to be one of the Imperial Era maps. Here, because its a more open area, the tool captures many points next to each other in order to graph the complete scene evenly as different players may traverse different parts of the map. Wherever the circles can be found is the walkable area of the map.
In the second graph, were having a look at one of the early Ruined Era cavern scenes from the campaign. Since this map is a winding cavern, theres a more linear route for players to travel, and so the capture points reflect this.
We are not done
Performance optimization is an ongoing process, and even as we continue prepping for patch 0.9 and beyond, we have already identified areas where we can continue to improve. We are getting much better at collecting data, identifying sources causing performance issues, tracking them, and ultimately fixing them. We are also working on several guidelines to ensure that all our future content will be as optimized as possible on the first release. While we cant promise that every single performance issue will be fixed in the upcoming patch 0.9.0, we believe we are on the right path to give you the Last Epoch you deserve and can enjoy a smooth and fun experience. We hope you all enjoyed this deeper look into performance optimization in Last Epoch! Well be back again tomorrow with a particularly large post, which we think one or two people might be interested in potentially. Goodbye for now Travelers, and well see you all again very soon!
Enemies & Armor Updates | Coming in Convergence
So far, weve discussed level design and skills, and yet something still needs to populate these levels and provide something for these skills to be wielded against. With patch 0.9, weve updated and replaced many of the enemies which youll encounter with entirely new models, and a lot of focus is on some of the earliest enemies youll encounter in the game. These enemies feature completely new models, animations, attack patterns, and distributions. The enemies were going to be sharing today may be small or may rely on swarm tactics; however, being some of the most populous enemies makes it quite crucial for these enemies to be distinct and memorable.
The first new enemy were meeting today is the new Void Grub. This relatively large, almost ball-like creature of the void may not be very nimble on its feet but has identified other methods of locomotion to be wary of. Using its sharp tongue, it can also lash out at deceptively long distances.
The second creature were taking a look at today is the new Void Drone. A swarming enemy, Void Drones can often be found in packs. Their flower-like appendage can allow them to camouflage into the environment, and you should be wary of approaching a pack of Void Drones unaware, as in a group, they can pose quite a threat to you and your party.
The final Void creature on our list today is the new Flying Void Worm. By introducing a flying enemy alongside ground units, we provide more significant variation within enemies and provide players with a greater variety of targets to choose from. We felt that the previous Voidfused Bats did not accurately represent what a flying void enemy should look like, so we have replaced them with this impressive new model. Additionally, these new enemies are larger, allowing players to fully appreciate their striking appearance and beautiful face.
These are certainly not the only new creatures to be found in patch 0.9. Some much larger and more dangerous foes are said to wander the world, though no one has yet been able to survive bringing back information on them.
Patch 0.9 - Convergence continues our goal of having unique visual appearances for each tier of gear in the game. This update will include new armor set models for all five classes. For todays post, were showing off some of the new highest-tier gear for the Primalist, Acolyte, and Mage coming in patch 0.9. We are excited to see players discover these updated sets, and perhaps, even more can be found in the land of Eterra.
Fur, feathers, animal skulls, antlers, leather, and various adornments make up this high-level Primalist gear set. A very technical armor set for 3D design, this gear set tends to lean more towards the shaman side of the Primalist, offering greater defensive capabilities and an increased level of intimidation compared to earlier sets. The use of fur and feathers helps to create a more natural, organic appearance, while the incorporation of animal skulls and antlers adds a touch of menace and power.
This high-level acolyte set leans into its use of luxurious and more exotic materials. Embroidered cloths, intricately gilded and enameled armor pieces, and a delicately carved masquerade mask make up most of this armor set. While the addition of several horns, chains, and cuffs helps to tie us into the Acolytes style firmly, it also elevates our class above it.
Playing into the regal background of the Mage, this high-tier armor set crowns him as the preeminent master of magic. Implementing gold and royal purples with complex fabrics and materials, this set distinguishes the Mage as someone to fear and respect while also offering more protection. Being a set tailored for the mage, there is, of course, very little pocket space, but it does offer some clasps for scrolls as well as several other ornaments of power.
Thank you all for joining us for todays look into some of the enemy and armor improvements coming to Last Epoch in Beta Patch 0.9! Well be back again tomorrow with a much more technical post as we take a dive into some of the performance and optimization improvements weve made to make for a smoother experience coming in just five days on March 9th! Farewell for now, Travelers, and well see you all again tomorrow.
[ 2023-03-04 19:00:29 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and happy Saturday! The weekend may have arrived, but that doesnt mean the Pre-Patch Blog Post Hype Week has been paused! In todays post, were having a look at a few of the new enemies youll encounter in Eterra, as well as a few of the new high-level armor designs youll be able to find during the Convergence in Beta Patch 0.9.
New Enemies
So far, weve discussed level design and skills, and yet something still needs to populate these levels and provide something for these skills to be wielded against. With patch 0.9, weve updated and replaced many of the enemies which youll encounter with entirely new models, and a lot of focus is on some of the earliest enemies youll encounter in the game. These enemies feature completely new models, animations, attack patterns, and distributions. The enemies were going to be sharing today may be small or may rely on swarm tactics; however, being some of the most populous enemies makes it quite crucial for these enemies to be distinct and memorable.
The Void Grub
The first new enemy were meeting today is the new Void Grub. This relatively large, almost ball-like creature of the void may not be very nimble on its feet but has identified other methods of locomotion to be wary of. Using its sharp tongue, it can also lash out at deceptively long distances.
The Void Drone
The second creature were taking a look at today is the new Void Drone. A swarming enemy, Void Drones can often be found in packs. Their flower-like appendage can allow them to camouflage into the environment, and you should be wary of approaching a pack of Void Drones unaware, as in a group, they can pose quite a threat to you and your party.
The Flying Void Worm
The final Void creature on our list today is the new Flying Void Worm. By introducing a flying enemy alongside ground units, we provide more significant variation within enemies and provide players with a greater variety of targets to choose from. We felt that the previous Voidfused Bats did not accurately represent what a flying void enemy should look like, so we have replaced them with this impressive new model. Additionally, these new enemies are larger, allowing players to fully appreciate their striking appearance and beautiful face.
These are certainly not the only new creatures to be found in patch 0.9. Some much larger and more dangerous foes are said to wander the world, though no one has yet been able to survive bringing back information on them.
Updating Armor Sets
Patch 0.9 - Convergence continues our goal of having unique visual appearances for each tier of gear in the game. This update will include new armor set models for all five classes. For todays post, were showing off some of the new highest-tier gear for the Primalist, Acolyte, and Mage coming in patch 0.9. We are excited to see players discover these updated sets, and perhaps, even more can be found in the land of Eterra.
Primalist - T60
Fur, feathers, animal skulls, antlers, leather, and various adornments make up this high-level Primalist gear set. A very technical armor set for 3D design, this gear set tends to lean more towards the shaman side of the Primalist, offering greater defensive capabilities and an increased level of intimidation compared to earlier sets. The use of fur and feathers helps to create a more natural, organic appearance, while the incorporation of animal skulls and antlers adds a touch of menace and power.
Acolyte - T60
This high-level acolyte set leans into its use of luxurious and more exotic materials. Embroidered cloths, intricately gilded and enameled armor pieces, and a delicately carved masquerade mask make up most of this armor set. While the addition of several horns, chains, and cuffs helps to tie us into the Acolytes style firmly, it also elevates our class above it.
Mage - T50
Playing into the regal background of the Mage, this high-tier armor set crowns him as the preeminent master of magic. Implementing gold and royal purples with complex fabrics and materials, this set distinguishes the Mage as someone to fear and respect while also offering more protection. Being a set tailored for the mage, there is, of course, very little pocket space, but it does offer some clasps for scrolls as well as several other ornaments of power.
And Another One
Thank you all for joining us for todays look into some of the enemy and armor improvements coming to Last Epoch in Beta Patch 0.9! Well be back again tomorrow with a much more technical post as we take a dive into some of the performance and optimization improvements weve made to make for a smoother experience coming in just five days on March 9th! Farewell for now, Travelers, and well see you all again tomorrow.
Skill Updates | Coming in Convergence
Manifest armor is an example of a skill that mechanically was quite sound. The skill tree was fun to build around, it was mechanically interesting, and it had a good amount of power to it (even perhaps a bit too powerful in some cases). However, it was a skill where the visuals were certainly in need of a big update to really fulfill the fantasy provided by the skill. The old model, a transparent sentinel model with a couple pieces of armor slapped on it, wasnt really doing the job of conveying the idea of a war-ready magical construct created by a character thats out to slay a god such as Rahyeh. As an existing skill, Manifest Armor started with some restrictions around the design of a new model. It needed to be able to support having a shield, a weapon, a flame thrower, and be able to go without them depending on how the skill is specialized. Working within these constraints, our design team set to work creating a number of concepts undergoing review, and adjustments until eventually a design was chosen.
Here we can see the original concept that would be turned into the eventual model for the new Manifest Armor minion, created to be modular to support the skill as it existed. Some of the goals of the design were to capture the forged essence of the entity by having an intangible body, armor plates which float upon a summoned body of furnace fire and designing the armor plates to mimic the grates of such a furnace. However, theres more to it than just a model. An example here is the summoning and idle animations for the summon. By having it emerge from a pool of fire, it helps to reinforce the nature of its construction, making summoning the Manifested Armor onto the battlefield a more tangible experience. By giving it idle animations, such as performing a familiar motion and slamming the flat of its blade against the shield to intimidate enemies, it also helps reinforce this minions presence in the world with a bit of personality. This newly re-envisioned molten companion of fire and steel is yours to command if you so chose as a Forge Guard in Patch 0.9 - The Convergence.
The Acolytes iconic Bone Golem was another example of a minion skill with a model which was in strong need of a new model. While perhaps not as much as Manifest Armor, with the finished result, I think we can all agree the update was certainly well worth it. With something like a large undead Golem, theres a lot more leeway in how such a creature can be designed, and some of the earliest concept art of when we started looking at the Bone Golem goes to show just how many different ways a creature of this origin could be created.
As the Bone Golems central place in the Necromancers army is that of the Tank, we wanted to make sure the model really enforced the idea of a heavy, front-lining creature. While at the same time, we wanted to ensure it was very distinct from the Primalists minions, such as the Primal Bear, and matches the undead and necrotic theming of the Acolyte. After some discussion, a decision was reached on the first concept art, which would become the Bone Golem.
Skeletal hands grasping spears and chains arising from its back, layers of bone armor protecting its core frame, and several ever-watching heads adorning its mantle, its hard to mistake the nature of this beast. A nature most certainly not approved of by the College of Welryn. Also, like Manifest Armor, an update to such a minion needs more than just a model, which is where animation steps in. Even in idle animations, its important to convey the mass this creature represents with its swaying, as well as the unnatural state of its creation with its many faces constantly peering and moving in different directions, even down to the momentum of the chains hanging from its body. Unlike Manifest Armor, however, Bone Golems skill tree wasnt in quite as great a place as it could have been. While it had a couple of builds that saw common use, much of the tree was rarely seeing use or provided enough variance to the skill. As such, with this visual update, we are also changing up the skill tree with balance adjustments, adjusting the paths available on the tree, as well as a completely new node allowing for the creation of a Deathchill Golem.
While the Golem tree itself can support having up to two of these behemoths of undeath at your command at once, weve heard some rumors there may be a way to obtain at least twice as many in the Convergence. Will your Bone Golem serve you by shielding you from blows or by crushing your foes?
Rive as a skill is another example of a bit of a different case than our previous examples here. This Sentinel skill has been a strong standby for many players. Able to put out fairly strong damage as a primary skill, fill a support role as a mana generator, and providing a strong area of effect for a zero-cost melee skill. At a glance, it seemed like Rive was already in a really good place, being flexible and robust. However, we werent quite happy with Rive; while it felt good as a combo skill, it could still, at times, feel a bit generic. For 0.9, we wanted to revisit Rive to not only make it more visually distinct as a skill but to make the tree reflect the role it fills as a base Sentinel skill. One of the ways we wanted to do this was by providing the skill more feeling of specialization. As a master of arms, the Sentinel has a strong tie to many individual weapon types, and we wanted that reflected within this skill. One example of this is the new Foe Cleaver node which can be found on the Rive tree. Doubling the effect of Damage Stats and Ailment Chance provided by a two-handed weapon, Rive is provided more flexibility for choosing raw damage over speed, making those hits with a large two-handed weapon really land with high impact.
Another example of a new node Rive has seen introduced for 0.9 is the new Weapon Specialist node. This node reinforces the Sentinels Mastery of Arms by building for specific weapon types. With this node, youll be required to build for specific attributes alongside the weapon, but in doing so, gain more of the powerful added damage stat with each attribute point gained.
If you live by the adage You do not have me surrounded, you have merely placed me in a target-rich environment., perhaps Rive will be the skill of choice for you during the Convergence.
This is an example of one of many skills which have yet to receive changes as extensive as Manifest Amor or Bone Golem, but instead as part of our overarching goal of improving Combat Feel throughout Last Epoch. Lightning Blast is an iconic skill for mages of all kinds. With that in mind, weve made a revisit to Lightning Blast. While mechanically, its been a very sound skill and sees a lot of use, we felt it could see a considerable improvement in combat feel with even just a few adjustments. Our goals with these changes were to make the skill match the iconography of Lightning. The old Lightning Blast, in this regard, felt a bit too predictable and concentrated. While it may have a set discharge point, theres so much energy in the bolt that some of it gets discharged along the way. As it travels to its target, it also has some variations in its pathing as it finds the path of least resistance through the air itself. Weve taken these concepts and re-applied them to Lightning blast to give it a stronger visual, better matching the idea of lightning and providing more impact to the blast as it finds its path to its target.
Arcing bolts of lighting to multiple targets, chaining lightning between groups of enemies, or perhaps creating a repeating conduit to a single target: If you seek to control the power of high-voltage electricity to destroy the creatures of the void, the Mage awaits you at The Convergence.
Many more skills than those listed above are coming to patch 0.9 with visual improvements, sound updates, balance changes, or even new interactions. We cant wait to see what kinds of builds and combat styles everyone manages to come up with, both solo, and synergies in parties, with the much anticipated Multiplayer Beta on March 9th! Farewell for now, Travelers, and well see you again tomorrow for another look into another set of improvements coming to Last Epoch in only six days with the Convergence!
[ 2023-03-03 20:29:21 CET ] [ Original post ]
Good day Travelers! Welcome back to another day of the Pre-Patch Hype Week Blog Posts! Today were going to be taking a closer look at some of the skill updates and changes coming in Beta Patch 0.9! Skills are the topic that most often tends to take the spotlight in any ARPG. Whether youre slicing through enemies with vicious heavy swings of a weapon or calling down meteors to destroy swaths of enemies in a single act, skills play one of the most defining roles in the experience of an ARPG. Thats why for 0.9, weve revisited many of our skills to improve their combat feel. In some cases, this can mean mechanical adjustments to better allow a skill to fulfill its fantasy. In others, it may mean visual changes to convey the impact behind it better, and sometimes, it may mean both. With 0.9, weve gone through and adjusted over 90 skills to some extent, and in todays blog post, were going to be covering a few examples of different skills which received some changes, and what those changes bring to the table!
Manifest Armor
Manifest armor is an example of a skill that mechanically was quite sound. The skill tree was fun to build around, it was mechanically interesting, and it had a good amount of power to it (even perhaps a bit too powerful in some cases). However, it was a skill where the visuals were certainly in need of a big update to really fulfill the fantasy provided by the skill. The old model, a transparent sentinel model with a couple pieces of armor slapped on it, wasnt really doing the job of conveying the idea of a war-ready magical construct created by a character thats out to slay a god such as Rahyeh. As an existing skill, Manifest Armor started with some restrictions around the design of a new model. It needed to be able to support having a shield, a weapon, a flame thrower, and be able to go without them depending on how the skill is specialized. Working within these constraints, our design team set to work creating a number of concepts undergoing review, and adjustments until eventually a design was chosen.
Here we can see the original concept that would be turned into the eventual model for the new Manifest Armor minion, created to be modular to support the skill as it existed. Some of the goals of the design were to capture the forged essence of the entity by having an intangible body, armor plates which float upon a summoned body of furnace fire and designing the armor plates to mimic the grates of such a furnace. However, theres more to it than just a model. An example here is the summoning and idle animations for the summon. By having it emerge from a pool of fire, it helps to reinforce the nature of its construction, making summoning the Manifested Armor onto the battlefield a more tangible experience. By giving it idle animations, such as performing a familiar motion and slamming the flat of its blade against the shield to intimidate enemies, it also helps reinforce this minions presence in the world with a bit of personality. This newly re-envisioned molten companion of fire and steel is yours to command if you so chose as a Forge Guard in Patch 0.9 - The Convergence.
Bone Golem
The Acolytes iconic Bone Golem was another example of a minion skill with a model which was in strong need of a new model. While perhaps not as much as Manifest Armor, with the finished result, I think we can all agree the update was certainly well worth it. With something like a large undead Golem, theres a lot more leeway in how such a creature can be designed, and some of the earliest concept art of when we started looking at the Bone Golem goes to show just how many different ways a creature of this origin could be created.
As the Bone Golems central place in the Necromancers army is that of the Tank, we wanted to make sure the model really enforced the idea of a heavy, front-lining creature. While at the same time, we wanted to ensure it was very distinct from the Primalists minions, such as the Primal Bear, and matches the undead and necrotic theming of the Acolyte. After some discussion, a decision was reached on the first concept art, which would become the Bone Golem.
Skeletal hands grasping spears and chains arising from its back, layers of bone armor protecting its core frame, and several ever-watching heads adorning its mantle, its hard to mistake the nature of this beast. A nature most certainly not approved of by the College of Welryn. Also, like Manifest Armor, an update to such a minion needs more than just a model, which is where animation steps in. Even in idle animations, its important to convey the mass this creature represents with its swaying, as well as the unnatural state of its creation with its many faces constantly peering and moving in different directions, even down to the momentum of the chains hanging from its body. Unlike Manifest Armor, however, Bone Golems skill tree wasnt in quite as great a place as it could have been. While it had a couple of builds that saw common use, much of the tree was rarely seeing use or provided enough variance to the skill. As such, with this visual update, we are also changing up the skill tree with balance adjustments, adjusting the paths available on the tree, as well as a completely new node allowing for the creation of a Deathchill Golem.
While the Golem tree itself can support having up to two of these behemoths of undeath at your command at once, weve heard some rumors there may be a way to obtain at least twice as many in the Convergence. Will your Bone Golem serve you by shielding you from blows or by crushing your foes?
Rive
Rive as a skill is another example of a bit of a different case than our previous examples here. This Sentinel skill has been a strong standby for many players. Able to put out fairly strong damage as a primary skill, fill a support role as a mana generator, and providing a strong area of effect for a zero-cost melee skill. At a glance, it seemed like Rive was already in a really good place, being flexible and robust. However, we werent quite happy with Rive; while it felt good as a combo skill, it could still, at times, feel a bit generic. For 0.9, we wanted to revisit Rive to not only make it more visually distinct as a skill but to make the tree reflect the role it fills as a base Sentinel skill. One of the ways we wanted to do this was by providing the skill more feeling of specialization. As a master of arms, the Sentinel has a strong tie to many individual weapon types, and we wanted that reflected within this skill. One example of this is the new Foe Cleaver node which can be found on the Rive tree. Doubling the effect of Damage Stats and Ailment Chance provided by a two-handed weapon, Rive is provided more flexibility for choosing raw damage over speed, making those hits with a large two-handed weapon really land with high impact.
Another example of a new node Rive has seen introduced for 0.9 is the new Weapon Specialist node. This node reinforces the Sentinels Mastery of Arms by building for specific weapon types. With this node, youll be required to build for specific attributes alongside the weapon, but in doing so, gain more of the powerful added damage stat with each attribute point gained.
If you live by the adage You do not have me surrounded, you have merely placed me in a target-rich environment., perhaps Rive will be the skill of choice for you during the Convergence.
Lightning Blast
This is an example of one of many skills which have yet to receive changes as extensive as Manifest Amor or Bone Golem, but instead as part of our overarching goal of improving Combat Feel throughout Last Epoch. Lightning Blast is an iconic skill for mages of all kinds. With that in mind, weve made a revisit to Lightning Blast. While mechanically, its been a very sound skill and sees a lot of use, we felt it could see a considerable improvement in combat feel with even just a few adjustments. Our goals with these changes were to make the skill match the iconography of Lightning. The old Lightning Blast, in this regard, felt a bit too predictable and concentrated. While it may have a set discharge point, theres so much energy in the bolt that some of it gets discharged along the way. As it travels to its target, it also has some variations in its pathing as it finds the path of least resistance through the air itself. Weve taken these concepts and re-applied them to Lightning blast to give it a stronger visual, better matching the idea of lightning and providing more impact to the blast as it finds its path to its target.
Arcing bolts of lighting to multiple targets, chaining lightning between groups of enemies, or perhaps creating a repeating conduit to a single target: If you seek to control the power of high-voltage electricity to destroy the creatures of the void, the Mage awaits you at The Convergence.
And so many more
Many more skills than those listed above are coming to patch 0.9 with visual improvements, sound updates, balance changes, or even new interactions. We cant wait to see what kinds of builds and combat styles everyone manages to come up with, both solo, and synergies in parties, with the much anticipated Multiplayer Beta on March 9th! Farewell for now, Travelers, and well see you again tomorrow for another look into another set of improvements coming to Last Epoch in only six days with the Convergence!
Level Design Changes | Coming in Convergence
Assets are one of the fundamental aspects of any level design. This may be plant models, surfaces, textures, and a whole host of other things. Weve been updating scene assets accross Eterra for both better visuals and better performance. Just because something looks better, doesnt mean it needs to impact performance; this is the balance weve been striving for. Assets can also introduce a consistent theme, with specific lighting and atmosphere, areas can be tied together thematically. For todays example, were going to be looking at Lagons Temple. As a key area housing one of the Gods of Eterra themselves, this beautiful temple has had a lot of attention provided to it with new assets, lighting, and terrain tools. Our level design team has used our newest terrain tools to achieve localized wetness and blend dirt texture into the floor to make the area more distinct and stand out as a whole new experience.
The End of Time is one of the most important zones in Last Epoch. Its where you achieve one of the largest turning points of your character, its where the primary endgame system is housed, and it is, as the name implies, where everything ends up. Previously, The End of Time was not as visually distinct of an area as we would have liked, given its importance in story, gameplay, and as the primary central hub in Last Epoch.
Here weve gone through the End of Time, giving it the visual distinctness warranted by its importance. The background as a key part of The End of Times identity, which really helps drive home how final it is. Weve kept the core of it while adding some more fractured elements with islands of reality in the environment to put on display the existence of this place outside of reality itself. Following Patch 0.9, this area will also become one of the primary town hubs, where youll be able to encounter other players traveling through their own timelines or yours if you chose to share your timeline with them in forming a party.
Its hard to see all the beautiful textures and assets without lighting. However, just having a skybox light and some reflective surfaces doesnt make an area very engaging. This is where volumetric lighting comes in. In the past, we have used volumetric lighting, but in a minimal way. Weve improved our tools to be able to use volumetric lighting more globally, keeping visuals consistent no matter where you are in the scene. Instead of having localized god rays, we are now setting volumetric parameters for the whole scene, where light sources can properly react with these volumes, creating more believable fog and atmospherics. Volumetric systems can also work together with particle systems, like rain, to achieve a dramatic look where the rain is illuminated by other light sources or even thunderstorms. This is a much cheaper (performance-wise) way to create these types of effects compared to having lit semi-transparent particles. For todays showcase, were showing off some of these new volumetric effects, which are in high use on Admiral Hartons Dreadnaught, where the scene takes place on open water in the middle of a thunderstorm.
Volumetric systems can also work together with particle systems, like rain, to achieve a dramatic look where the rain is illuminated by other light sources or even thunderstorms. This is a much cheaper (performance-wise) way to create these types of effects compared to having lit semi-transparent particles. For todays showcase, were showing off some of these new volumetric effects, which are in high use on Admiral Hartons Dreadnaught, where the scene takes place on open water in the middle of a thunderstorm. We can also use volumetric properties to create visual effects, such as in this ravine. Having thick fog volume illuminated by glowing void assets.
In the past, we have used several different vegetation shaders for different vegetation assets, but this was causing a number of issues. Consistency between different assets was not great, as they had different shading models, different motions, or even no motion at all. With this, it was hard to maintain and create great-looking environments. We ended up creating our own vegetation shaders to unify all vegetation in the game. These shaders are optimized for our renderer and how we want to use vegetation now or in the future. Because this is a solution we made for us, the system is less expansive and focuses more on what we need. Meaning vegetation not only looks better, but also generally resulted in improving performance of these shaders across the board. It also means vegetation is now consistent with the same shading and lighting models.
This also gives us a set of unified controls that allow us to achieve new effects previously not possible! This means we can have rolling winds, gusts, gales, light breezes, and everything in between able to affect all the vegetation consistently. Imagine tiny grass, tall trees, and bushes all able to be controlled by in-game wind. Its very exciting, and you will see many of these effects coming in patch 0.9!
With new scene assets, volumetric lighting, and vegetation shaders at our disposal, were bringing the world of Eterra to life in a much more immersive way. Patch 0.9 will bring these improvements and more to many zones in Last Epoch during the Convergence update on March 9th, and you can look forward to more scenes receiving these improvements on our road to 1.0. Farewell for now Travelers, and well be back soon with another hype week blog post for our next look at our upcoming Multiplayer Beta - Convergence!
[ 2023-03-02 19:29:14 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, The Pre-Patch Hype Week continues! In todays blog post, were going to be covering some of the improvements in level design. Everything from the lighting, assets, and layout of the area youre fighting (or dying) in has a very significant impact on not only the gameplay feeling itself but also immersion. These visual aspects can convey a lot of feeling and emotion behind the meaning of a scene and help establish it within the world, making each scene feel unique and impactful. The physical layout of different areas is also quite crucial in an ARPG due to how the camera angle works, how movement works, and how players interact with it. As a quick example, ever notice how most maps like to go up and to the right? This is because you have the most visual area in the top of the screen, as well as for many people reading left to right leads to a natural tendency to go right first. Of course, there are exceptions to provide uniqueness, but there are many small rules that go into making maps for an ARPG. But today, were going to be covering some of the improvements weve been making since 0.8.5, and showcase some of these improved scenes!
Updated Scene Assets
Assets are one of the fundamental aspects of any level design. This may be plant models, surfaces, textures, and a whole host of other things. Weve been updating scene assets accross Eterra for both better visuals and better performance. Just because something looks better, doesnt mean it needs to impact performance; this is the balance weve been striving for. Assets can also introduce a consistent theme, with specific lighting and atmosphere, areas can be tied together thematically. For todays example, were going to be looking at Lagons Temple. As a key area housing one of the Gods of Eterra themselves, this beautiful temple has had a lot of attention provided to it with new assets, lighting, and terrain tools. Our level design team has used our newest terrain tools to achieve localized wetness and blend dirt texture into the floor to make the area more distinct and stand out as a whole new experience.
New End of Time Zone
The End of Time is one of the most important zones in Last Epoch. Its where you achieve one of the largest turning points of your character, its where the primary endgame system is housed, and it is, as the name implies, where everything ends up. Previously, The End of Time was not as visually distinct of an area as we would have liked, given its importance in story, gameplay, and as the primary central hub in Last Epoch.
Here weve gone through the End of Time, giving it the visual distinctness warranted by its importance. The background as a key part of The End of Times identity, which really helps drive home how final it is. Weve kept the core of it while adding some more fractured elements with islands of reality in the environment to put on display the existence of this place outside of reality itself. Following Patch 0.9, this area will also become one of the primary town hubs, where youll be able to encounter other players traveling through their own timelines or yours if you chose to share your timeline with them in forming a party.
Volumetric Lighting
Its hard to see all the beautiful textures and assets without lighting. However, just having a skybox light and some reflective surfaces doesnt make an area very engaging. This is where volumetric lighting comes in. In the past, we have used volumetric lighting, but in a minimal way. Weve improved our tools to be able to use volumetric lighting more globally, keeping visuals consistent no matter where you are in the scene. Instead of having localized god rays, we are now setting volumetric parameters for the whole scene, where light sources can properly react with these volumes, creating more believable fog and atmospherics. Volumetric systems can also work together with particle systems, like rain, to achieve a dramatic look where the rain is illuminated by other light sources or even thunderstorms. This is a much cheaper (performance-wise) way to create these types of effects compared to having lit semi-transparent particles. For todays showcase, were showing off some of these new volumetric effects, which are in high use on Admiral Hartons Dreadnaught, where the scene takes place on open water in the middle of a thunderstorm.
Volumetric systems can also work together with particle systems, like rain, to achieve a dramatic look where the rain is illuminated by other light sources or even thunderstorms. This is a much cheaper (performance-wise) way to create these types of effects compared to having lit semi-transparent particles. For todays showcase, were showing off some of these new volumetric effects, which are in high use on Admiral Hartons Dreadnaught, where the scene takes place on open water in the middle of a thunderstorm. We can also use volumetric properties to create visual effects, such as in this ravine. Having thick fog volume illuminated by glowing void assets.
Vegetation Shaders
In the past, we have used several different vegetation shaders for different vegetation assets, but this was causing a number of issues. Consistency between different assets was not great, as they had different shading models, different motions, or even no motion at all. With this, it was hard to maintain and create great-looking environments. We ended up creating our own vegetation shaders to unify all vegetation in the game. These shaders are optimized for our renderer and how we want to use vegetation now or in the future. Because this is a solution we made for us, the system is less expansive and focuses more on what we need. Meaning vegetation not only looks better, but also generally resulted in improving performance of these shaders across the board. It also means vegetation is now consistent with the same shading and lighting models.
This also gives us a set of unified controls that allow us to achieve new effects previously not possible! This means we can have rolling winds, gusts, gales, light breezes, and everything in between able to affect all the vegetation consistently. Imagine tiny grass, tall trees, and bushes all able to be controlled by in-game wind. Its very exciting, and you will see many of these effects coming in patch 0.9!
A new view
With new scene assets, volumetric lighting, and vegetation shaders at our disposal, were bringing the world of Eterra to life in a much more immersive way. Patch 0.9 will bring these improvements and more to many zones in Last Epoch during the Convergence update on March 9th, and you can look forward to more scenes receiving these improvements on our road to 1.0. Farewell for now Travelers, and well be back soon with another hype week blog post for our next look at our upcoming Multiplayer Beta - Convergence!
Sound & Music | Coming in Convergence Update
Hi everyone! Im John, Sound Designer at Eleventh Hour Games. Lets go over some of the cool sound design projects that Ive worked on in the lead-up to 0.9 as part of a teamwide effort to improve the feeling of combat in Last Epoch.
Meteor is one of those skills that need to feel great and powerful when you use it. Since the original sound effects were made, the visuals for Meteor have been massively upgraded, so I thought it was only appropriate to bring the sound design up to standard! Ultimately, the intention was to make Meteor sound big, crunchy, and powerful. Initially, I went through a few designs, which went a bit TOO hard on the crunch and power. Considering that this is a skill that can be spammed, should the player decide to craft their build that way, I had to make sure Meteor sounded bigger and better whilst not being too overwhelming in the mix. For the design, I utilized the sounds of fire, rocks, and jet engines (believe it or not). The final result is a set of sound effects that I feel better represents that the player is literally wrenching a meteor from the sky and slamming it into the ground. [previewyoutube=Y00fubwzWpU;full][/previewyoutube]
Bone Golem got a total overhaul recently. It looks and moves so much better now, so naturally, the sound design needed an upgrade also, particularly the vocal sound effects. Before starting the design, I split the visual aesthetics of the Bone Golem into three categories: Monstrous, Necrotic, and Bony. I took those concepts and approached the Bone Golem updated sound design with those in mind. The monstrous elements were achieved using a lions roar and several layers of hog and duck callers being blown into slime and other weird textures. Necrotic characteristics were added to the vocals using human screeching sounds and squeaking friction on glass. And lastly, because the Bone Golem is made of well, bones I made sure the vocals rattled with pitched-down growls. [previewyoutube=Ep-4hYCsIaE;full][/previewyoutube]
Not unlike the other examples, Void Knights Echo recently got an awesome new visual upgrade. This was an excellent opportunity to get those sounds feeling better. For those who dont know, an Echo is a passive effect thats received when selecting the Void Knight mastery in which some of your characters attacks will be repeated by an echo of yourself. The old sound was very whispery and a little boring when compared to these great new visual effects. I thought it would be fun to have the sound be more reminiscent of a player splitting through the space-time continuum to deal a blow to the enemy and then zipping straight back out. To achieve this, I used synthesized and weird, wobbly layers to match the creepiness of the Void and really sell the idea of time travel. [previewyoutube=tYDSoT7UWgI;full][/previewyoutube] Thats all of the sound design updates we could squeeze in for this post. It was pretty hard to round it down to just three examples because there have been MANY things updated in the soundscape of Last Epoch over the past year. Some of my other favorites include the new sounds for Snap Freeze, Idol of Ruin, and the new Bull Groles - but maybe well leave that for the next blog post.
Hi, I'm Erik, the composer for Last Epoch. I'm excited to share some of the music I've been writing as an update for the Ruined Era in Patch 0.9.
Most of the other music for the game has a natural, acoustic sound with more traditional instrumentation. This era focuses on synthetic sounds and acoustic instruments that have been warped - almost beyond recognition. Themes that are played at other times in the game come back but are altered in both sound and rhythm.
[previewyoutube=6ZlY89CGIjI;full][/previewyoutube] This piece starts off with an explosive, destructive sound, similar to the sound of a large stringed instrument breaking. This is the first time in the game that the players travel to the Ruined Era, so this sound sets the tone; were far from the more peaceful place where Last Epoch begins and far from it in time! The high-energy string parts become manipulated and warp and break down over the course of the piece, much like how the world breaks down to bring us the Ruined Era of Last Epoch.
[previewyoutube=ppSv376GjDs;full][/previewyoutube] This music creates the feeling of being in a large cavern where the council has set up and is trying to hold back the forces from the void. A feeling of anticipation of upcoming battle is overlaid with a feeling of subtle calm. The familiar Last Epoch theme comes back, but its played by guitars and in a different rhythmic setting from the other times that you hear it.
[previewyoutube=Y5JbHF3W3Fo;full][/previewyoutube] A gang of cultists have created a resurrected version of one of The Brotherhood, and this music helps create the mood for his insidious plot as you battle. The melody is played using an Ebow on a distorted electric guitar. It uses an electromagnet to vibrate the strings, this helps to give it an unfamiliar, cello-like sound. This is one way that the guitar was warped to sound unconventional.
And thats all of the featured music examples for the 0.9 patch.
A big thank you to both John and Erik for taking the time to provide their direct insight! I know I had put them in a hard spot trying to only pick a few of their works for this post, but on March 9th, well see everything theyve been working on over the last year. Thats all for todays look at a few of the new SFX and Music improvements coming to Last Epoch in patch 0.9 - Convergence. As mentioned previously, We have a bunch of these inside looks coming up, so keep an eye on our Discord, Twitter, Forums, and other socials for more inside views on updates and changes coming in our next major patch. We hope youre as excited as we are, and well see you all again soon Travelers!
[ 2023-03-01 19:00:32 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, We are officially on the road to Last Epoch: Convergence, which means its time for Pre-Patch Hype Week! In the coming days, were going to be covering some of the major updates coming alongside our Multiplayer Beta in Patch 0.9 - Convergence. While the main feature of this patch is, of course, the new Multiplayer environment, we also want to highlight many of the other improvements coming in Convergence. In todays blog post, were starting off in the world of sound, covering some of the fantastic new SFX and music that the team has been working on. Sound plays a critical role in any game, from Combat Feel to atmosphere; sound design can immerse you in the experience or take you out of it. Of course, our goal is the former, to create sound and music which emphasizes the gameplay. For todays look at Sound in Patch 0.9, weve got some direct insight to share from our team members who breathe life into the audio-world of Eterra. To really dive into some of the sound reworks, weve brought in our sound designer John, to talk about their experience in creating a few of these new sound effects, their ideas behind them, and some details regarding what goes into making a sound effect for an ARPG. Then for Music, weve brought in our Music Composer, Erik, who weve shared insight from before, to once again share their insight regarding some of the new tracks, which help set the tone and atmosphere in Last Epoch. So without further ado, Lets let John take it away!
Sound Design
Hi everyone! Im John, Sound Designer at Eleventh Hour Games. Lets go over some of the cool sound design projects that Ive worked on in the lead-up to 0.9 as part of a teamwide effort to improve the feeling of combat in Last Epoch.
Meteor SFX Rework
Meteor is one of those skills that need to feel great and powerful when you use it. Since the original sound effects were made, the visuals for Meteor have been massively upgraded, so I thought it was only appropriate to bring the sound design up to standard! Ultimately, the intention was to make Meteor sound big, crunchy, and powerful. Initially, I went through a few designs, which went a bit TOO hard on the crunch and power. Considering that this is a skill that can be spammed, should the player decide to craft their build that way, I had to make sure Meteor sounded bigger and better whilst not being too overwhelming in the mix. For the design, I utilized the sounds of fire, rocks, and jet engines (believe it or not). The final result is a set of sound effects that I feel better represents that the player is literally wrenching a meteor from the sky and slamming it into the ground. [previewyoutube=Y00fubwzWpU;full][/previewyoutube]
New Bone Golem Vocals
Bone Golem got a total overhaul recently. It looks and moves so much better now, so naturally, the sound design needed an upgrade also, particularly the vocal sound effects. Before starting the design, I split the visual aesthetics of the Bone Golem into three categories: Monstrous, Necrotic, and Bony. I took those concepts and approached the Bone Golem updated sound design with those in mind. The monstrous elements were achieved using a lions roar and several layers of hog and duck callers being blown into slime and other weird textures. Necrotic characteristics were added to the vocals using human screeching sounds and squeaking friction on glass. And lastly, because the Bone Golem is made of well, bones I made sure the vocals rattled with pitched-down growls. [previewyoutube=Ep-4hYCsIaE;full][/previewyoutube]
Void Knights Echo SFX Rework
Not unlike the other examples, Void Knights Echo recently got an awesome new visual upgrade. This was an excellent opportunity to get those sounds feeling better. For those who dont know, an Echo is a passive effect thats received when selecting the Void Knight mastery in which some of your characters attacks will be repeated by an echo of yourself. The old sound was very whispery and a little boring when compared to these great new visual effects. I thought it would be fun to have the sound be more reminiscent of a player splitting through the space-time continuum to deal a blow to the enemy and then zipping straight back out. To achieve this, I used synthesized and weird, wobbly layers to match the creepiness of the Void and really sell the idea of time travel. [previewyoutube=tYDSoT7UWgI;full][/previewyoutube] Thats all of the sound design updates we could squeeze in for this post. It was pretty hard to round it down to just three examples because there have been MANY things updated in the soundscape of Last Epoch over the past year. Some of my other favorites include the new sounds for Snap Freeze, Idol of Ruin, and the new Bull Groles - but maybe well leave that for the next blog post.
New Music
Hi, I'm Erik, the composer for Last Epoch. I'm excited to share some of the music I've been writing as an update for the Ruined Era in Patch 0.9.
Ruined Era Music
Most of the other music for the game has a natural, acoustic sound with more traditional instrumentation. This era focuses on synthetic sounds and acoustic instruments that have been warped - almost beyond recognition. Themes that are played at other times in the game come back but are altered in both sound and rhythm.
The Ulatri Cliffs - Ruined Era
[previewyoutube=6ZlY89CGIjI;full][/previewyoutube] This piece starts off with an explosive, destructive sound, similar to the sound of a large stringed instrument breaking. This is the first time in the game that the players travel to the Ruined Era, so this sound sets the tone; were far from the more peaceful place where Last Epoch begins and far from it in time! The high-energy string parts become manipulated and warp and break down over the course of the piece, much like how the world breaks down to bring us the Ruined Era of Last Epoch.
The Council Chambers
[previewyoutube=ppSv376GjDs;full][/previewyoutube] This music creates the feeling of being in a large cavern where the council has set up and is trying to hold back the forces from the void. A feeling of anticipation of upcoming battle is overlaid with a feeling of subtle calm. The familiar Last Epoch theme comes back, but its played by guitars and in a different rhythmic setting from the other times that you hear it.
The Ritual Site
[previewyoutube=Y5JbHF3W3Fo;full][/previewyoutube] A gang of cultists have created a resurrected version of one of The Brotherhood, and this music helps create the mood for his insidious plot as you battle. The melody is played using an Ebow on a distorted electric guitar. It uses an electromagnet to vibrate the strings, this helps to give it an unfamiliar, cello-like sound. This is one way that the guitar was warped to sound unconventional.
And thats all of the featured music examples for the 0.9 patch.
An exciting week ahead!
A big thank you to both John and Erik for taking the time to provide their direct insight! I know I had put them in a hard spot trying to only pick a few of their works for this post, but on March 9th, well see everything theyve been working on over the last year. Thats all for todays look at a few of the new SFX and Music improvements coming to Last Epoch in patch 0.9 - Convergence. As mentioned previously, We have a bunch of these inside looks coming up, so keep an eye on our Discord, Twitter, Forums, and other socials for more inside views on updates and changes coming in our next major patch. We hope youre as excited as we are, and well see you all again soon Travelers!
Trade Development Update
We are pleased to introduce you to an early peek at the feature design of our new Item Factions System in Last Epoch. Inside, you will find two powerful factions - The Merchants Guild and the Circle of Fortune, ready to accept and reward your allegiance in Eterra.
Along your travels in Last Epoch, you will encounter factions of Eterras denizens and may choose to align yourself with them. Aligning with a Faction will allow you to gain both Reputation to improve your rank within that faction, and Favor to spend on that factions services and rewards. Climbing ranks within a faction will unlock their unique perks, services, and rewards. The Merchants Guild and the Circle of Fortune are the first two factions that well introduce in Last Epoch, and your choice of allegiance will determine the way your character obtains and exchanges items in the endgame. Each character can only represent and gain reputation with one of these factions at a time, enabling their exclusive benefits. Characters may swap between factions at any time. Equipping items found while in the Circle of Fortune will require ranks in that faction and equipping items purchased through trade while in the Merchants Guild will require ranks in that faction. So, switching between them is more akin to respeccing your character rather than something youll want to do routinely. Details:
Below are a few reward examples you can expect when aligned with the Circle of Fortune:
Circle of Fortune is a mystical Faction that had banded together to seek fortune through arcane research and astrology. Aligning with the Circle of Fortune will grant you powerful benefits towards finding more and better items. You will also have the ability to purchase Prophecies with Favor which will bend fate to your advantage and help you find the specific items that youre looking for. Below are a few reward examples you can expect when aligned with the Merchants Guild:
The Merchants Guild is a prosperous organization that believes in prosperity through commerce. Aligning with the Merchants Guild will allow you to trade increasingly powerful items as you gain reputation and give you access to the Bazaar where you can browse and search for items that other players have listed and list items on the Bazaar yourself. All types of equipment, such as idols, uniques, and even legendary items can be traded with other players if you have a high enough rank, but crafting materials cannot.
The Bazaar will be a new trade-focused zone for players aligned with the Merchants Guild. Here you can gather, socialize, barter, and trade your wares throughout the market. Players will search through a variety of stalls for player-listed items, which you can buy and sell for gold with advanced searching functionality, no purchase delay, and no tax on the gold cost of the item.
Weve heard from the community that sharing items with friends is important to their enjoyment of Last Epoch long term. We agree, and so we are continuing to support Item Gifting between friends and party play regardless of your faction choice. To this end were doing two things: [olist] Item Gifting as experienced in the multiplayer tests and in 0.9 will remain. If you are with a player fighting enemies and an item drops youll be able to freely give your teammates that item if you wish.
Well be introducing a new item type called Resonances that drop when youve played alongside a player for a very extended period of time. Using a resonance on an item will enable it to be gifted to that player even if they were not present when the item dropped.
[/olist]
Thank you for all the passion and constructive criticism youve shown in these conversations. Weve been listening carefully, collecting your feedback and creating a solution that champions the diverse nature of our players. We are building Last Epoch for all of you, with all of you, and as ARPG gamers ourselves that came together to make this game, we value your ideas and opinions. We are very excited about introducing Item Factions and invite you to continue the conversation with us. Its worth noting that these systems will not be included in Patch 0.9, but we will be aiming to get them into subsequent patches this year. Resonances may be added sooner than Factions on account of their smaller scope.
Check out our FaQ over on our forums! Thank You, Last Epoch Team
[ 2023-02-21 17:00:04 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, Weve heard you and we have some exciting news to share with you today. You may recall back in December we released our plans for Item Gifting in Last Epoch. Since that time, weve been engaged in an ongoing conversation with the community about Trade. Many players expressed they were excited by our decision to champion finding loot, and many others have voiced their disappointment, letting us know that they were sincerely looking forward to trading their treasures in Eterra. Weve made it clear in the past that we want Last Epoch to be a place where you can come to slay monsters and find great gear upgrades, and it still will be. However, it is equally important to us that we remain a studio that listens and is grounded in our community. In short, we want Last Epoch to be the ARPG that rewards you for hunting items the way you most enjoy, no matter which side of the trade conversation youre on. So, weve been hard at work discussing, debating, and consulting with some of our trusted community members, and were happy to present you with the following:
Item Factions
We are pleased to introduce you to an early peek at the feature design of our new Item Factions System in Last Epoch. Inside, you will find two powerful factions - The Merchants Guild and the Circle of Fortune, ready to accept and reward your allegiance in Eterra.
Along your travels in Last Epoch, you will encounter factions of Eterras denizens and may choose to align yourself with them. Aligning with a Faction will allow you to gain both Reputation to improve your rank within that faction, and Favor to spend on that factions services and rewards. Climbing ranks within a faction will unlock their unique perks, services, and rewards. The Merchants Guild and the Circle of Fortune are the first two factions that well introduce in Last Epoch, and your choice of allegiance will determine the way your character obtains and exchanges items in the endgame. Each character can only represent and gain reputation with one of these factions at a time, enabling their exclusive benefits. Characters may swap between factions at any time. Equipping items found while in the Circle of Fortune will require ranks in that faction and equipping items purchased through trade while in the Merchants Guild will require ranks in that faction. So, switching between them is more akin to respeccing your character rather than something youll want to do routinely. Details:
- You can have different characters in the same Cycle in different factions
- Faction reputation is shared account-wide
- Faction reputation resets each Cycle
- When a Cycle ends and characters are transferred to the permanent non-Cycle environment, their Faction progress will be carried over
The Factions
Below are a few reward examples you can expect when aligned with the Circle of Fortune:
Circle of Fortune is a mystical Faction that had banded together to seek fortune through arcane research and astrology. Aligning with the Circle of Fortune will grant you powerful benefits towards finding more and better items. You will also have the ability to purchase Prophecies with Favor which will bend fate to your advantage and help you find the specific items that youre looking for. Below are a few reward examples you can expect when aligned with the Merchants Guild:
The Merchants Guild is a prosperous organization that believes in prosperity through commerce. Aligning with the Merchants Guild will allow you to trade increasingly powerful items as you gain reputation and give you access to the Bazaar where you can browse and search for items that other players have listed and list items on the Bazaar yourself. All types of equipment, such as idols, uniques, and even legendary items can be traded with other players if you have a high enough rank, but crafting materials cannot.
The Bazaar will be a new trade-focused zone for players aligned with the Merchants Guild. Here you can gather, socialize, barter, and trade your wares throughout the market. Players will search through a variety of stalls for player-listed items, which you can buy and sell for gold with advanced searching functionality, no purchase delay, and no tax on the gold cost of the item.
Weve heard from the community that sharing items with friends is important to their enjoyment of Last Epoch long term. We agree, and so we are continuing to support Item Gifting between friends and party play regardless of your faction choice. To this end were doing two things: [olist]
Thank You to Our Community
Thank you for all the passion and constructive criticism youve shown in these conversations. Weve been listening carefully, collecting your feedback and creating a solution that champions the diverse nature of our players. We are building Last Epoch for all of you, with all of you, and as ARPG gamers ourselves that came together to make this game, we value your ideas and opinions. We are very excited about introducing Item Factions and invite you to continue the conversation with us. Its worth noting that these systems will not be included in Patch 0.9, but we will be aiming to get them into subsequent patches this year. Resonances may be added sooner than Factions on account of their smaller scope.
Still have questions?
Check out our FaQ over on our forums! Thank You, Last Epoch Team
Open Beta Weekend Signup is live!
[ 2023-02-17 23:38:27 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers!
Signup for Last Epochs Free Multiplayer Beta Playtest is now live on Steam!
If youve been waiting for the right moment to introduce your friends to Last Epoch, there is no better time than right now. You dont need to own a copy of the game; all you need is a Steam account. Head over to our steam page and hit the sign-up button!
When can we sign up?
Right now!
When can we play?
Thursday February 23rd @ 10am CST through Monday February 27th @ 10am CST
What the Free Multiplayer Beta includes
- First Look at the upcoming 0.9 Patch
- Play for free with up to 3 friends in your party!
- Adventure through the first 4 chapters
- Access to 12 Class Masteries.
The Travelers Backpack - Our gift to you!
The Last Epoch Logo Patch - This was the first version of the Last Epoch logo revealed during our Kickstarter launch.
The original Symbol of Eterra
Bee-Mike - A wonderful momento from our Dev Mike and his Bee-Themed streams!
In the map pocket on the right side - Map of Eterra
The Bedroll on Top - Our first support pack playmat from our Kickstarter.
Fools! Fools! - One of our favorite quotes from our resident disgruntled Mage.
Rahyehs Reserve Hot Sauce - created for the 2022 April Fools Day by team member Wick, and showcased in a special hot wings episode on the Weekly Dev Stream.
The Material of the backpack itself is 100% authentic grole hide. (All grole hide was ethically sourced from a series of ones and zeros.)
Navigational Instruments - Every Traveler needs tools to read their maps.
Zizaran Campaign Mug - from our earliest campaigns to support Last Epoch!
Primalist Patch - The OG class icon to showcase the Primalist.
A Skullen figurine - Remembering the early times of Last Epoch!
Epog!
Where would we be without the ever-present reminder of Multiplayer When?
Orians Eye - Always watching you. Waiting. :slight_smile:
[/olist]
[/expand]
If you happened to notice either in the game or watching someones stream, we had a sneak peek at this item during our last 2 events.
The Travelers backpack back slot cosmetic will be given to ALL owners of Last Epoch who own a copy prior to the Multiplayer Beta Patch 0.9, coming on March 9th, so there is still time to get the game and the backpack! If you are thinking about jumping into the world of Eterra there is still time to also get the original supporter packs, but those will be going away during our March 9th release, and a new set of supporter packs will become available. The price for Last Epoch will still remain the same, so you dont need to worry about a price increase when the launch happens. A note about current supporter packs and upgrading: [expand type="A note about current supporter packs and upgrading:"] If you purchased the game through our website, and would like to upgrade your supporter pack, you can have this done through a support ticket to the link below. If you purchased the game through Steam, or via a Steam Key, and youd like to upgrade your supporter pack to a higher tier pack before 0.9, we cant technically do an upgrade. However, since your purchase on Steam is already considered the Ardent Gladiator supporter pack, and you wish to upgrade to one of the other packages (only available until March 9th), we can offer an additional 350 cosmetic coins as we cannot refund Steam purchases in any way. We can do this for you by submitting a ticket to the link below after purchasing the desired pack. Link: https://support.lastepoch.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=1260808459030 [/expand] Thank you to everyone who has helped us on this incredible journey and we look forward to seeing you all showing off your Backpack! Thank You to everyone, Last Epoch Team
[ 2023-02-16 19:32:30 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers!
Yesterday we announced our 500,000 units sold milestone, and today we present to you a gift from the entire Last Epoch team!
Introducing, the Travelers Backpack.
This exclusive gift is our way of thanking you, and commemorating our shared journey with all of you who were with us from the start and those of you who are joining us just before we step into the world of Eterra together.
Spoiler Warning - Below is a list of each item on the backpack itself.
[expand type=Spoilers]
Starting in the Top Left, and going around clockwise!
[olist]
The Travelers backpack back slot cosmetic will be given to ALL owners of Last Epoch who own a copy prior to the Multiplayer Beta Patch 0.9, coming on March 9th, so there is still time to get the game and the backpack! If you are thinking about jumping into the world of Eterra there is still time to also get the original supporter packs, but those will be going away during our March 9th release, and a new set of supporter packs will become available. The price for Last Epoch will still remain the same, so you dont need to worry about a price increase when the launch happens. A note about current supporter packs and upgrading: [expand type="A note about current supporter packs and upgrading:"] If you purchased the game through our website, and would like to upgrade your supporter pack, you can have this done through a support ticket to the link below. If you purchased the game through Steam, or via a Steam Key, and youd like to upgrade your supporter pack to a higher tier pack before 0.9, we cant technically do an upgrade. However, since your purchase on Steam is already considered the Ardent Gladiator supporter pack, and you wish to upgrade to one of the other packages (only available until March 9th), we can offer an additional 350 cosmetic coins as we cannot refund Steam purchases in any way. We can do this for you by submitting a ticket to the link below after purchasing the desired pack. Link: https://support.lastepoch.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=1260808459030 [/expand] Thank you to everyone who has helped us on this incredible journey and we look forward to seeing you all showing off your Backpack! Thank You to everyone, Last Epoch Team
Last Epoch Pack the Server Week Follow-up
[ 2023-02-14 19:18:31 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, First and foremost, we would like to thank all of you who participated in the Pack the Server Event Week. We understand it was a lot to ask to sign up for the event, and changing around branches on Steam to get involved, and we greatly appreciate everyone who took the time and effort to do so. This event was able to provide us with all sorts of great information from not only our backend systems but all sorts of feedback provided directly by all of you. Bugs were encountered and squashed. The servers struggled and were improved. Over the course of the event, we released several hotfixes to improve and fix various issues brought to our attention, and eventually even released the last remaining endgame system to the event, the Arena, alongside a number of server-side improvements which made it possible. One of the things we were able to test to great results was our ability to quickly develop and QA changes based on feedback, complete a build for the fix and release the build within a short timeframe. On the day the event started, the client released at 10:00AM CT, then only 6 hours later were able to release the first hotfix for several bugs, as well as adjust to feedback changing the beta disclaimer to only display once per account. Over the event, we also continued to get a lot of great feedback regarding the various performance, scenes, VFX, and SFX sounds, which were great to read and feel the excitement for 0.9. Overall, we were very happy with the results of the event. As we continue to close in on 0.9 (less than a month away!) were focusing almost entirely on resolving the remaining bugs as all core systems for 0.9 are in place. That means all the little bugs regarding quest state tracking, channeling skills, controller adjustments, and continued endgame server performance are the items on our remaining hitlist for 0.9. Of course, we still have one more upcoming event on Feb 23rd, the Open Beta Event, in which all steam users are able to participate, even if they dont currently own Last Epoch. Over the coming weeks, we will be posting more information regarding the launch of 0.9 Convergence, some more specifics on some of the changes you all got to experience, and of course as we close in on patch day itself, the much-anticipated patch notes! Thank you, everyone, we hope you enjoyed your time during this preview of 0.9, with the zone reworks, skill changes, and of course the early multiplayer beta allowing us to get the servers tuned for the much-anticipated release of the multiplayer beta on March 9th. We hope to see you all there on March 9th for Beta Patch 0.9 - Convergence!
Multiplayer Invitational Follow-up
One of the last things we saw during the event, but one of the first we want to address, is some late-game activities server-side performance. While participants agreed that client-side performance has improved significantly with this release, we did encounter some issues with server performance for endgame builds that can spawn a lot of objects. As mentioned, this was something we were already aware of and actively working on for 0.9. However, the event was able to show us a few specific things that were leading to more performance loss than others. One of the largest offenders we were able to identify was server lag encountered when groups would split up within an area to individually tackle different parts of the zone. This caused a number of issues, including many actors to all be activated at once, and the server needed to handle that data flow for each player. Were already well along on a fix for this which should greatly help reduce that performance hit, and while it wont be in place for Thursdays event, it will be in place shortly after. There are other hidden things were working on (like excessive server logging); however, we think this was one of the more visible issues, and so wanted to make sure were addressing it here. Another offender we saw with lag, was actually not performance at all. We found some participants who were experiencing lag were actually being assigned to incorrect server locations, such as European players being issued North American servers. This is something we immediately began investigating, and have some changes in place to help address incorrect server allocations which should help with many of these scenarios. In conjunction with the added ability to see server region with the latency tooltip, we expect this to help improve the experience when partying with various players, as well as being able to recognize reasoning for certain ping values.
Of course, there was a lot of gameplay experience feedback provided that were acting on as well. For the next event, were prioritizing some of the quickest improvements we can get in in time. Some adjustments are technically smaller things, like adjusting the latency bar to represent expectations with ping values better, and adding server information to the latency tooltip, however, this can have a much larger impact on user experience and received more feedback than we expected. As such, were working on adding these two items for the event this Thursday. One of the more common areas of feedback we received during the event was that the campaign was made a bit too easy when in a full party. In response to this, were going to be bumping up enemy health scaling for the next event. Were doing this in smaller increments, so we dont over-correct, as many of these players are highly experienced players, but well be continuing to monitor feedback on this and adjusting as well. We also heard from participants that they really enjoyed the new online monolith experience with seamless transitions between Echoes and Echo of a World (the rest area in monoliths). For the campaign, though, the length of some loading screen times was a common topic. We have some adjustments already in the pipe to help reduce these loading screen times, which were hoping to have in for this Thursdays 10k event.
Another common topic of feedback was item gifting and the user experience of it. While feedback noted that the interaction felt really good with gifting, and it was a strong addition to gameplay, currently, once you gift an item to a party member, that item cant be gifted again. Being unable to gift it further caused a couple of negative experiences during the event, so in response, were changing this so that when an item is gifted, it retains its giftability status and can still be gifted to all the same people who were eligible for it. While this does offer a bit more power to the gifting system, we want to prioritize a fun experience. Many keen-eyed community members also called out that there seemed to be something up with item drop rates during the event, and that some things appeared a little more common than normal. Theyre correct! In response to feedback from both previous blog posts, and event feedback, were adjusting some drop rates. In particular, this means making rarer idols such as Smite on Throwing Hit not as rare, culling some of the lower level drops - converting them into crafting material drops, and adjusting the distribution of exalted items to make drops more exciting rather than all the focus being on echo reward nodes. Were continuing to tweak this to reach an even better state in the looting and gearing experience in Last Epoch, and are actively watching feedback on this topic. We also see the efficiency of boss farming in multiplayer talked about frequently. We currently have an active plan to bring this in line that were working on implementing. When you participate in a monolith boss fight in multiplayer, in order to get rewards you will need to have sufficient stability for the fight, and receiving rewards from the fight will cost your stability. So while you can participate in any boss fight, in order to get rewards you need to have, and spend the stability for it. This means you wont be able to farm stability once as a group, then chain bosses with each party member. While this change wont be in place for Thursdays event, we wanted to acknowledge that we do hear this feedback, and are actively working on it!
There are, of course, many other things were continuing to work on, and with our next pre-patch event in only a few days, were hard at work on getting everything ready for this Thursdays 10k Multiplayer Beta week-long event. Were really excited to get everyone in the community into the experience, as well as the big Pack the Server party, where well ask everyone to help us break things on Saturday. Theres a lot to see and explore with 0.9, including many new unique items, base item changes, updates and adjustments to almost every skill in the game, new zones, VFX, SFX, Enemies, and a whole bunch more. Even if youre not a big multiplayer enthusiast, theres still a lot to see and check out in this patch. If you havent yet had an opportunity to sign up for the 10k event, you can quickly and easily do so here: https://events.lastepoch.com/packtheserverparty. We hope to see all of you in Eterra in just a couple of days. Until then Travelers, may the bees be with you!
[ 2023-01-31 18:17:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! This past weekend we held our first of multiple multiplayer events, the Invitational, which went exceptionally well. The aim of this event was to gather feedback, test our live operations procedures, and give the community their first full look at playing together with friends in Last Epoch. We were able to capture a ton of significant data and feedback to help us prepare for the multiplayer release coming with Last Epoch: Convergence on March 9th. From what we observed, many of the participants thoroughly enjoyed the new and updated campaign zones, all the VFX, SFX, and music changes, which was fantastic to hear. We also received a lot of positive feedback regarding the ease of grouping up, and generally feeling great playing together for hours on end, outside of a few minor bugs (were on them!). Some issues that we are aware of and have been actively working on did rear their heads during this event, such as server-side performance in end-game activities and specific late-game team strategies that were providing too great of a bonus for groups. While we were aware of these kinds of things, from the event, we were able to get a better view of where these impacts are coming from, have made some adjustments to our priorities, and have already made some changes for the next events. We want to go over some of this feedback and what kind of differences you can see between the Invitational event, future events, and Patch 0.9.
What were working on
Server-side performance
One of the last things we saw during the event, but one of the first we want to address, is some late-game activities server-side performance. While participants agreed that client-side performance has improved significantly with this release, we did encounter some issues with server performance for endgame builds that can spawn a lot of objects. As mentioned, this was something we were already aware of and actively working on for 0.9. However, the event was able to show us a few specific things that were leading to more performance loss than others. One of the largest offenders we were able to identify was server lag encountered when groups would split up within an area to individually tackle different parts of the zone. This caused a number of issues, including many actors to all be activated at once, and the server needed to handle that data flow for each player. Were already well along on a fix for this which should greatly help reduce that performance hit, and while it wont be in place for Thursdays event, it will be in place shortly after. There are other hidden things were working on (like excessive server logging); however, we think this was one of the more visible issues, and so wanted to make sure were addressing it here. Another offender we saw with lag, was actually not performance at all. We found some participants who were experiencing lag were actually being assigned to incorrect server locations, such as European players being issued North American servers. This is something we immediately began investigating, and have some changes in place to help address incorrect server allocations which should help with many of these scenarios. In conjunction with the added ability to see server region with the latency tooltip, we expect this to help improve the experience when partying with various players, as well as being able to recognize reasoning for certain ping values.
Gameplay
Of course, there was a lot of gameplay experience feedback provided that were acting on as well. For the next event, were prioritizing some of the quickest improvements we can get in in time. Some adjustments are technically smaller things, like adjusting the latency bar to represent expectations with ping values better, and adding server information to the latency tooltip, however, this can have a much larger impact on user experience and received more feedback than we expected. As such, were working on adding these two items for the event this Thursday. One of the more common areas of feedback we received during the event was that the campaign was made a bit too easy when in a full party. In response to this, were going to be bumping up enemy health scaling for the next event. Were doing this in smaller increments, so we dont over-correct, as many of these players are highly experienced players, but well be continuing to monitor feedback on this and adjusting as well. We also heard from participants that they really enjoyed the new online monolith experience with seamless transitions between Echoes and Echo of a World (the rest area in monoliths). For the campaign, though, the length of some loading screen times was a common topic. We have some adjustments already in the pipe to help reduce these loading screen times, which were hoping to have in for this Thursdays 10k event.
Itemization
Another common topic of feedback was item gifting and the user experience of it. While feedback noted that the interaction felt really good with gifting, and it was a strong addition to gameplay, currently, once you gift an item to a party member, that item cant be gifted again. Being unable to gift it further caused a couple of negative experiences during the event, so in response, were changing this so that when an item is gifted, it retains its giftability status and can still be gifted to all the same people who were eligible for it. While this does offer a bit more power to the gifting system, we want to prioritize a fun experience. Many keen-eyed community members also called out that there seemed to be something up with item drop rates during the event, and that some things appeared a little more common than normal. Theyre correct! In response to feedback from both previous blog posts, and event feedback, were adjusting some drop rates. In particular, this means making rarer idols such as Smite on Throwing Hit not as rare, culling some of the lower level drops - converting them into crafting material drops, and adjusting the distribution of exalted items to make drops more exciting rather than all the focus being on echo reward nodes. Were continuing to tweak this to reach an even better state in the looting and gearing experience in Last Epoch, and are actively watching feedback on this topic. We also see the efficiency of boss farming in multiplayer talked about frequently. We currently have an active plan to bring this in line that were working on implementing. When you participate in a monolith boss fight in multiplayer, in order to get rewards you will need to have sufficient stability for the fight, and receiving rewards from the fight will cost your stability. So while you can participate in any boss fight, in order to get rewards you need to have, and spend the stability for it. This means you wont be able to farm stability once as a group, then chain bosses with each party member. While this change wont be in place for Thursdays event, we wanted to acknowledge that we do hear this feedback, and are actively working on it!
Onward to 0.9!
There are, of course, many other things were continuing to work on, and with our next pre-patch event in only a few days, were hard at work on getting everything ready for this Thursdays 10k Multiplayer Beta week-long event. Were really excited to get everyone in the community into the experience, as well as the big Pack the Server party, where well ask everyone to help us break things on Saturday. Theres a lot to see and explore with 0.9, including many new unique items, base item changes, updates and adjustments to almost every skill in the game, new zones, VFX, SFX, Enemies, and a whole bunch more. Even if youre not a big multiplayer enthusiast, theres still a lot to see and check out in this patch. If you havent yet had an opportunity to sign up for the 10k event, you can quickly and easily do so here: https://events.lastepoch.com/packtheserverparty. We hope to see all of you in Eterra in just a couple of days. Until then Travelers, may the bees be with you!
The Invitational Event starts this weekend!
[ 2023-01-23 20:33:45 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers!
March 9th is getting closer by the minute. With only a bit over a month left, that means It's getting time for pre-patch events!
Everything is kicking off this Friday, January 27th, with the Invitational event! For this event, many of your favorite Last Epoch streamers will playing and streaming the internal test version of Last Epoch Patch 0.9.0 - Convergence.
If you've been paying attention to our streams and dev blogs, there will still be all sorts of new features to catch, including balance changes to almost every skill, item changes, more than a dozen new unique items, visual reworks, new music and SFX, and more! So make sure to tune into your favorite content creator this weekend to get their point of view on Multiplayer and Patch 0.9.0 Convergence.
Here is a short list (though it's not final) of content creators who you should be able to catch throughout the weekend streaming!
Presented in no particular order:
- GhazzyTV
- Lizard_IRL
- McFluffin
- Ter3k
- Heavy_GamingTV
- QuietForMe
- AaronActionRPG
- Palsteron
- crouching_tuna
- PerrythePig
- dr3adful__
- VisionGL
- Thyworm
- jaytheproduct
- TheAristotelian
- RektbyProtos
- BorOfSol
- DmGamingEu
- VulkanARPG
After this event, make sure to keep your eyes peeled on our social media channels as we will then be posting more information regarding the February 2nd Pack the Server party, open to all Last Epoch owners. This will include information on how to get your account registered and put in queue for the event!
Finally, on Feb 23rd will be the Multiplayer Open Beta Weekend, which will feature a special trial version of Last Epoch available to all steam users to try out Patch 0.9 and multiplayer up to Chapter 5! So if youve been watching Last Epoch, and have been waiting for an opportunity to give it a try, this event will provide you an opportunity to not only try out Last Epoch, but also the upcoming patch!
We're again really excited about these events, and hope to see you all this weekend with the first Pre-patch event!
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-12-16 19:00:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. The Stream Charity for December is Salvation Army International. All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-12-09 19:00:34 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. The Stream Charity for December is Salvation Army International. All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Item Gifting Development Update from our Principal Game Designer
One of our core beliefs when designing Last Epoch has always been that it feels more rewarding when you find and/or craft the items you use, rather than buying them, and that this also helps keep item drops exciting because there's a reasonable chance that the dropped item itself will be useful for your character. Because of this, we've always wanted to ensure that killing monsters and playing the game is the primary way of acquiring items. However, we also wanted to have a player economy on top of this. This led to us designing various iterations of the Bazaar, an auction house or player shop style system, always with a lot of restrictions on the rate and type of items players could trade to hopefully keep the system under control and ensure that the items you could acquire in this manner didn't eclipse those you found from drops and/or crafted.
The more we found problems with these iterations of trade, ideated new ones, and advanced those ideas, the more we realised that any of these economy-based trade systems would damage this progression. Economies are extremely complex, even when they're limited to video game items. They're often unintuitive, they change over time as the player base finds more items, and they can act very differently depending on the number of active players. All of this makes it very difficult to accurately predict how an economy will function in practice and balance it accordingly. Ideally, we'd want it to feel relevant and useful and not overtake other methods of item acquisition, but realistically the unpredictability of an economy renders that level of balance precision impossible. The downside of getting it wrong could be trade taking over the game, making item drops unexciting, and ruining the balance of the game's combat. Another question we were increasingly asking ourselves was whether anyone would be happy with the system and have a good time using it. Players who want to play the economy and exchange the valuable items they find with other players were going to be faced with an impersonal and restrictive system. They would likely be frustrated and feel like their expectations of playing an online ARPG with an open trade economy had been betrayed by such a limited system. Meanwhile, players who want an ARPG with generous drops and crafting would likely still have to experience the pains of us having to balance around the existence of a trade economy, or at the very least, their item drops would feel worse because of the higher standard of items that having an economy results in. With these conclusions in mind, we decided to pivot away from having economy-based trade and cancelled the plans for the Bazaar.
Item trading definitely has some significant benefits in an ARPG. One of them is that if you want to play a build that requires a specific build-enabling item, you're not just praying that it drops; you can reliably farm up currency and buy it. This means that unless they're particularly expensive, needing specific items to get a build going is much less of a barrier for creating that build. This is particularly important nowadays because, in contrast to the subgenre's Rogue-like roots, much of the ARPG community has trended more towards wanting to plan out a build from the start and reliably progress towards that rather than making most of the decisions on the fly and adapting heavily to the items that you find. This is a process a lot of players enjoy and something we want to ensure that we support. However, trade isn't the only way or even necessarily the best way to support it. The flip side of being able to acquire any item through trade is that the process of acquiring the items you need for your build is just the process of farming currency, so the activities you do and the places you farm are whatever's most optimal to farm currency. This runs a big risk of turning a potentially varied endgame experience into a very repetitive one, where only a small part of the content is experienced over and over again. Meanwhile, if you need to farm the items themselves, and those items drop either exclusively or more frequently from different specific pieces of content, then that naturally entices you to engage with those different pieces of content to farm those different items. This means that hunting for gear is a more varied process for an individual character and is also more different from one character to another as long as they require different sorts of gear. Because of that, we want to continue to rely on powerful target farming methods rather than trade to facilitate specific item acquisition.
One of the other benefits of one player being able to trade items to another is that when you're playing with a friend, and you find a cool item that's good for their character, you can give it to them. That's an experience that can feel great because it's a way of meaningfully helping your friend out in a way that isn't always felt so often in the fast-paced combat of ARPGs, but it's still one that resulted from you playing co-op together. There are two sides to this, though. A player giving items to a friend isn't an unquestionable good that always leads to a better experience. ARPGs are games about progression that are inherently more about the journey than the destination, and a friend skipping that journey for you by giving you all the items you need often drastically shortcircuits the adventure of the game and makes it less enjoyable. Another danger with unrestricted item gifting is that an economy can grow up of its own accord, coordinated and facilitated by the community. It is certainly cool to see a game's community achieve this sort of thing. However this can result in all the same problems that a developer-created economy can, while also being less convenient. Nevertheless, our primary goal with multiplayer is facilitating a great co-op experience, and we felt that a big part of that is being able to share the items you find while playing together. With this all in mind, we set out to design a system that facilitated this sort of co-op item gifting without a full economy developing.
Earlier in the year, we said that trade wouldn't be included in patch 0.9. The community reacted with disappointment to this announcement, and so we prioritised getting our item gifting system ready to be tested by our community testers. That testing went well, and we're confident in detailing the system publicly and including it in patch 0.9.
In this system items that drop while you're adventuring with other players (in the same zone) can be gifted to any of those players at any point. This can be done by right-clicking their portrait and selecting "Gift Item. This brings up your inventory alongside a gifting window and highlights the items in your inventory that can be gifted to that player. You can then simply place the chosen item in the gifting window, press "Confirm Gift," and the item will be transferred to the player's gift inventory. The player will then receive a notification telling them what item they've received, and they'll have an icon in the bottom right of their screen that they can click to bring up their gifting inventory. From there, they can either transfer the item to their inventory now, leave it there until later, or throw it on the ground, because their friend has gifted them a hat with no affixes. Trade in ARPGs is a topic that has many passionate people on every side of the conversation. However, we want Last Epoch to be an ARPG that, at its core, is about going out in the world, killing enemies, and finding awesome loot, not one where playing the economy is the key to success. We strongly believe that this approach will make the game both a more enjoyable co-op experience and a more balanced solo experience. With this, we'll be able to preserve and continue to improve all the great systems we've built for Last Epoch in terms of progression and the player experience without having to sacrifice them to accommodate extensive item trading. We'll be closely monitoring feedback regarding the details of this system while we look forward to everyone getting their hands on item gifting and more in Patch 0.9 on March 9th.
[ 2022-12-08 20:16:14 CET ] [ Original post ]
If youve been following Last Epoch, youre probably aware that our plans for how trading will work in the game have evolved significantly over development. In this dev blog, I'll explain the reasoning and design process that brought us to our current plans, what those plans are, and how they relate to patch 0.9.
Economies and Our Evolving Philosophy
One of our core beliefs when designing Last Epoch has always been that it feels more rewarding when you find and/or craft the items you use, rather than buying them, and that this also helps keep item drops exciting because there's a reasonable chance that the dropped item itself will be useful for your character. Because of this, we've always wanted to ensure that killing monsters and playing the game is the primary way of acquiring items. However, we also wanted to have a player economy on top of this. This led to us designing various iterations of the Bazaar, an auction house or player shop style system, always with a lot of restrictions on the rate and type of items players could trade to hopefully keep the system under control and ensure that the items you could acquire in this manner didn't eclipse those you found from drops and/or crafted.
The more we found problems with these iterations of trade, ideated new ones, and advanced those ideas, the more we realised that any of these economy-based trade systems would damage this progression. Economies are extremely complex, even when they're limited to video game items. They're often unintuitive, they change over time as the player base finds more items, and they can act very differently depending on the number of active players. All of this makes it very difficult to accurately predict how an economy will function in practice and balance it accordingly. Ideally, we'd want it to feel relevant and useful and not overtake other methods of item acquisition, but realistically the unpredictability of an economy renders that level of balance precision impossible. The downside of getting it wrong could be trade taking over the game, making item drops unexciting, and ruining the balance of the game's combat. Another question we were increasingly asking ourselves was whether anyone would be happy with the system and have a good time using it. Players who want to play the economy and exchange the valuable items they find with other players were going to be faced with an impersonal and restrictive system. They would likely be frustrated and feel like their expectations of playing an online ARPG with an open trade economy had been betrayed by such a limited system. Meanwhile, players who want an ARPG with generous drops and crafting would likely still have to experience the pains of us having to balance around the existence of a trade economy, or at the very least, their item drops would feel worse because of the higher standard of items that having an economy results in. With these conclusions in mind, we decided to pivot away from having economy-based trade and cancelled the plans for the Bazaar.
Specific Item Acquisition
Item trading definitely has some significant benefits in an ARPG. One of them is that if you want to play a build that requires a specific build-enabling item, you're not just praying that it drops; you can reliably farm up currency and buy it. This means that unless they're particularly expensive, needing specific items to get a build going is much less of a barrier for creating that build. This is particularly important nowadays because, in contrast to the subgenre's Rogue-like roots, much of the ARPG community has trended more towards wanting to plan out a build from the start and reliably progress towards that rather than making most of the decisions on the fly and adapting heavily to the items that you find. This is a process a lot of players enjoy and something we want to ensure that we support. However, trade isn't the only way or even necessarily the best way to support it. The flip side of being able to acquire any item through trade is that the process of acquiring the items you need for your build is just the process of farming currency, so the activities you do and the places you farm are whatever's most optimal to farm currency. This runs a big risk of turning a potentially varied endgame experience into a very repetitive one, where only a small part of the content is experienced over and over again. Meanwhile, if you need to farm the items themselves, and those items drop either exclusively or more frequently from different specific pieces of content, then that naturally entices you to engage with those different pieces of content to farm those different items. This means that hunting for gear is a more varied process for an individual character and is also more different from one character to another as long as they require different sorts of gear. Because of that, we want to continue to rely on powerful target farming methods rather than trade to facilitate specific item acquisition.
Sharing Discoveries
One of the other benefits of one player being able to trade items to another is that when you're playing with a friend, and you find a cool item that's good for their character, you can give it to them. That's an experience that can feel great because it's a way of meaningfully helping your friend out in a way that isn't always felt so often in the fast-paced combat of ARPGs, but it's still one that resulted from you playing co-op together. There are two sides to this, though. A player giving items to a friend isn't an unquestionable good that always leads to a better experience. ARPGs are games about progression that are inherently more about the journey than the destination, and a friend skipping that journey for you by giving you all the items you need often drastically shortcircuits the adventure of the game and makes it less enjoyable. Another danger with unrestricted item gifting is that an economy can grow up of its own accord, coordinated and facilitated by the community. It is certainly cool to see a game's community achieve this sort of thing. However this can result in all the same problems that a developer-created economy can, while also being less convenient. Nevertheless, our primary goal with multiplayer is facilitating a great co-op experience, and we felt that a big part of that is being able to share the items you find while playing together. With this all in mind, we set out to design a system that facilitated this sort of co-op item gifting without a full economy developing.
Item Gifting in Patch 0.9
Earlier in the year, we said that trade wouldn't be included in patch 0.9. The community reacted with disappointment to this announcement, and so we prioritised getting our item gifting system ready to be tested by our community testers. That testing went well, and we're confident in detailing the system publicly and including it in patch 0.9.
In this system items that drop while you're adventuring with other players (in the same zone) can be gifted to any of those players at any point. This can be done by right-clicking their portrait and selecting "Gift Item. This brings up your inventory alongside a gifting window and highlights the items in your inventory that can be gifted to that player. You can then simply place the chosen item in the gifting window, press "Confirm Gift," and the item will be transferred to the player's gift inventory. The player will then receive a notification telling them what item they've received, and they'll have an icon in the bottom right of their screen that they can click to bring up their gifting inventory. From there, they can either transfer the item to their inventory now, leave it there until later, or throw it on the ground, because their friend has gifted them a hat with no affixes. Trade in ARPGs is a topic that has many passionate people on every side of the conversation. However, we want Last Epoch to be an ARPG that, at its core, is about going out in the world, killing enemies, and finding awesome loot, not one where playing the economy is the key to success. We strongly believe that this approach will make the game both a more enjoyable co-op experience and a more balanced solo experience. With this, we'll be able to preserve and continue to improve all the great systems we've built for Last Epoch in terms of progression and the player experience without having to sacrifice them to accommodate extensive item trading. We'll be closely monitoring feedback regarding the details of this system while we look forward to everyone getting their hands on item gifting and more in Patch 0.9 on March 9th.
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-12-02 21:01:31 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. The Stream Charity for December is Salvation Army International. All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
December Development Update: 0.9.0 Date Locked!
The news many are coming to this post for! On Tuesday, we announced not only the date for 0.9.0, locked in as coming on March 9th, but also that we would be hosting three pre-patch events. We want to cover some of the details regarding these events, what they are, how to get involved, and whats happening during and after these events.
From January 27th, through to the 29th, we will be hosting a Closed Invitational Beta Weekend. This event will be limited to selected individuals, primarily EHG team members, family, friends, community testers, and content creators. That means that invited members for this event will be able to stream the content and discuss all the content they have access to! As we approach this event, well be posting a list of content creators who will be participating - so make sure to stay tuned to your favorite streamer or content creator during this weekend event to get their take on the new 0.9.0 multiplayer experience!
LETS PARTY! This event aims to test our Multiplayer Beta on a larger scale. We will be inviting 10,000 (thats right, ten thousand) players to join us for a week of putting our servers to the test. Same as before, this event will be for players who already own a copy of the game and can stream the content and discuss what they are playing. This is a big one for us, and we want you to join us. We will be sure to post the signup for the pack the server party in the future.
From February 23rd through the 26th we will be hosting the first-ever Open Beta weekend for Last Epoch! What does this mean? Anyone can try out Last Epoch and patch 0.9.0 for this weekend. Thats right, you will not need a copy of Last Epoch to participate in this event; it will be open to all Steam users! If youve been watching our ongoing development but havent quite been ready to pull the trigger on picking up a copy, this will be your opportunity not only to get yourself into the world of Eterra, but also to get a feel for the upcoming major content release!
As we continue to work towards our next major content release, we want to open up a bit more about how exactly the multiplayer experience will work. For today, a few topics we want to cover are how Monolith navigation, Blessing rewards, and Dungeons work in multiplayer. One of the most anticipated topics being asked about is Trade, and we also have some news to share on that topic. Over the past few months, we have implemented an Item Gifting system for our Community Testers, received feedback on it, and continued our internal discussions of the system. We will be releasing a deep-dive blog post focused on Trade in the near future; however, today, we can confirm that, Yes, Beta Patch 0.9.0 will include a Trade system that allows items to change hands within your party! More details to come!
As The Monolith of Fates is our core endgame experience, our top priority for the Multiplayer Monolith has been to make it feel awesome, not just to make it functional. Weve been working very closely with our fantastic Community Testers, listening to feedback and adjusting the mechanics as we shape that end-game experience together. We are designing with intention to make sure the mechanics of the Multiplayer Monolith dont make players feel like multiplayer is the only way to play, so weve kept a close eye on things like split farming strategies or multiplayer boosted rewards. At the very core of this design conversation is the question, how does a group actually interact with the Monolith system?. When grouped together, every player in the party can access any monolith which they have unlocked and interact with its web the same as the single-player experience. Upon selecting an echo, the echo is loaded, and a portal is opened for all party members to join up with the player which chose the echo. In the normal single-player Monolith experience, when a player dies during an echo or disconnects, the echo is closed, and rewards are lost. However, this doesnt quite work in multiplayer for a couple of reasons. For one, other players are present in the echo, and we dont want to kick everyone out when one player dies. We also want players to be able to play together and not be stuck waiting at the End of Time for the rest of the party to complete the echo before being able to rejoin. To address this, the portal remains open throughout the entire echo, and all party members can still portal to each other. So if a player falls to the enemies of Eterra, they can quickly and easily rejoin their party. However, beware: Dying during an echo or leaving during the echo will still cause any players who fell to miss out on the end of echo rewards for that echo.
With our main two priorities in mind - Fun and Fair, weve implemented a unique solution for monolith navigation and rewards. When we first implemented monolith for our Community Testers, it was quickly found that providing the same node rewards to everyone created a very poor experience in which there was a clear optimal path of split farming. This strategy involved splitting up to individually farm out a monolith web until a number of exalted and unique nodes were unveiled, then group up just to complete those nodes to maximize the highest tier of rewards from the monolith. Because this involves constantly splitting up and then reforming parties, it wasnt a very fun experience. We wanted the experience of multiplayer to be for groups to play together and stay together for as long as they wanted. Not just any solution would do though. A big part of our Monolith experience when it comes to rewards is that of Choice. We feel that its important in Last Epoch to empower players with the ability to choose, whether its crafting, build selection, or the Monolith. Normally when navigating the echo, you have the power of choice by selecting which echo you want to do, which is often heavily affected by the rewards the echo offers. In multiplayer, if everyones in the same echo, then only one player can have chosen the echo and its associated reward, so by default, other players in the party would lose that sense of control over the items theyre farming for. As such, we needed to find a solution that solved split-farming issues while still offering the power of choice. After a few iterative changes, we now have a solution we are thrilled to share.
When in a party, one player can pick a node on the monolith web, and for the person who picks which echo is being done, everything works as it currently does in single-player. However, for other players in the party, when the echo is completed, they will be presented with two options for rewards from the echo. These reward options are the same options that are normally found in the echo web (eg. Exalted Helms, or Rare Swords), and are rolled using the same weighting as the echo that was completed. Meaning the corruption level of the echo and the distance from the center will weigh into the reward options. The result of this is that all group members will get the same average value of rewards, and for individual echos may result in getting lower tier rewards, the same rewards, or better rewards than the party leader. So what role will you want? The Party Leader who gets to choose their specific rewards on the web, or the Party Member who gets to choose between two options, each echo with the potential for even better rewards than the Party Leader picked?
Dungeons raise some fairly unique interactions when it comes to multiplayer, and with our desire for multiplayer groups to be able to stick together for the experience. Primarily starting a dungeon, dying during a dungeon, and dungeon rewards. Dungeons are designed as curated experiences. This means that dungeons are meant to be experienced from start to finish and dont work as well, dropping in part way through. We've implemented a few multiplayer-specific interactions to ensure that groups are empowered to stay playing together. The first is that only one key is required for the entire party to enter the dungeon. Secondly, to ensure the experience remains intact for all party members and that no one is left behind still making their way through the dungeon, weve implemented a ready-check system for starting a dungeon boss. Upon attempting to enter the boss room, a ready check will appear for all party members. Once all party members have chosen to participate or not, all participating members will be teleported into the boss room to begin their trial.
Dungeons are also designed to be a rewarding experience with unique reward mechanics, making them most often a highly rewarding activity. We want to preserve that experience for the entire party without making running dungeons in a party much more powerful than running them solo. For this, unlike Monoliths, if you die in a dungeon, you will not be able to rejoin the continuing members, so make sure to stay on your toes in dungeons! All players will also have access to the end-of-dungeon rewards. For example, in Temporal Sanctum, each party member will have the opportunity to create a Legendary item with the alter, and in Soulfire Bastion have their own reserve of embers to gamble with.
Of course, while Multiplayer has been a significant focus for 0.9.0, thats not near the only thing coming. Our efforts to improve Combat Feel through improved VFX, SFX, and Animation continue, as well as changes to skills, zones, items, enemies, and more. We want to share with you today a few of these improvements weve been making for the gameplay experience coming next patch!
Beta Patch 0.9.0 is set to bring with it updates to many of our existing skills for VFX, SFX, as well as some balancing changes and even some receiving completely new nodes and ways to build them. Today were showcasing a few of these improvements coming in our March 9th update.
Swipe is one of the many skills receiving both VFX and SFX updates and updated functionality. Here were showing off the new Spirit Wolves node, which will now cause Spirit Wolves to be emitted from your Wolf companions instead of from you. The new Spirit Wolves will count as the wolf casting the spirit, and thus scale with the wolfs stats instead of yours. Each Wolf companion will send out a spirit, and multiple Spirit Wolves can hit the same target to open up a whole new build style with Wolves and offer better scaling opportunities.
Shield Rush and Rive are both fairly old skills, and their VFX shows it. No longer, come 0.9.0 with these brand new VFX updates, we're bringing these highly popular skills up to our modern standards!
Harvest was a skill less commonly called out for needing a visual rework. However, after seeing the new version with the nice clean sweeps, the scythe extending from the weapon itself, and the much more impactful swing, I think its clear there was a lot of improvement to be made. And that improvement has been made to come in our next major update!
Reaper form is another skill which has needed a visual update, and were happy to show off the new model coming for Reaper form in our next Major Update. This new model will also be accompanied by entirely new scythe models giving some much-needed flair and quality to this core identifying skill of the Lich.
The Temple Guardian stands watch over the entrance to Eterras Temple throughout the ages. This mini-boss holds a very important position within the campaign, and we felt its about time for this guardian to get the visual update they deserve. Similar to the Forge Guards manifest armor, we thought wed play another game of spot the difference and a turntable view of this new stalwart guardian!
This big old worm was a little too wormy and not enough idol of the void-y, so were fixing that with this terrifying new model, accompanied by an all-new SFX kit as well.
One of the brand new enemies emerging from the void in 0.9.0: the Void Despair, is quite agile given its size and has been known to approach from unexpected angles. Make sure to be careful when theyre in the area, or you may provide them the opportunity to demonstrate their namesake.
We've shown off this little guy here before, but we felt this was just too awesome of a view of the new Void Earth enemy not to share as well.
Alongside skills and models, some of our zones are also starting to show their age. While going through every zone in the game and improving performance, weve also improved the visual quality of these zones. One of our focuses for improvement without adding a bunch of performance overhead back into zones is improving lighting quality, and wed like to share a couple of shots from one of our older, earlier zones - the Last Refuge Outskirts.
In other cases, these improvements to zones come in the form of more than lighting. Wed like to show an example of one of these zones with the video below from The Tomb of Morditas. Here the area has a brand new look, with Morditas being contained within some kind of prison - I wonder what that could be all about?
There is still more we are working on that weve yet to reveal, so we hope youre as excited as we are to bring Patch 0.9 to life in March. As a reminder, weve been revealing loads of new updates coming into Patch 0.9 throughout our development cycle, so heres a refresher! Check out a couple of these previous development posts highlighting even more updates coming in Patch 0.9! September Development Update June Development Update Community Collection of previous Teasers weve released, Compiled by Andrew.Tilley
Patch 0.9.0 will be a big one, with a lot of content, updates, combat feel improvements, performance improvements, balance changes, and of course, Multiplayer. As we close in, well continue to provide updates on the latest and greatest, both in posts and our weekly dev stream over at [twitch.tv/lastepochgame](http://twitch.tv/lastepochgame). If youre interested in getting a taste of 0.9.0 before March 9th, make sure to keep an eye out on our news feed for our Pack the Server Party signup, as well as the other lead-up events! Thank you to everyone as we work towards our biggest feature addition to date, introducing an entirely new way to play with Multiplayer, and well see you in our next post! Stay safe Travelers, and may Eterra bless your drops.
[ 2022-12-02 19:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome to our Development Blog post for December 2022! Earlier this week, we made an exciting announcement for Last Epoch: The date for our highly anticipated Multiplayer release is locked in on March 9th, 2023! Youll be able to join forces with your fellow Travelers in Eterra with Beta Patch 0.9.0, but thats not all it will bring. This major content patch will also be coming with all sorts of other performance, combat, and gameplay feel improvements that you can enjoy with your friends. You may not even have to wait until March to get your hands on these changes - join us early during our upcoming MP Launch Roadmap Events detailed below! Weve been hard at work on this next major patch, and we continue to be excited about its release. Of course, we wanted to release it before the end of the year to make a nice Christmas Event, however, as always we continue to prioritize quality over speed. We want to make sure that 0.9.0 lands with the level of quality both you and we all expect from our major releases, with a fun and stable multiplayer, a complete online experience, and all the great improvements to gameplay and performance. We know its a long wait since the last major update, however, were dedicated to making sure this next one sticks that landing we all strive for as fellow fans. In this blog post, well be covering some of the features coming in this next major update, as well as providing some developers insight into the features as we like to do. Well also be covering some of the big features of multiplayer, further Combat Feel improvements, Skill updates, and more. All this info is only a scroll away!
Upcoming Events
The news many are coming to this post for! On Tuesday, we announced not only the date for 0.9.0, locked in as coming on March 9th, but also that we would be hosting three pre-patch events. We want to cover some of the details regarding these events, what they are, how to get involved, and whats happening during and after these events.
Jan 27th - 29th - Multiplayer Beta - Invitational Weekend
From January 27th, through to the 29th, we will be hosting a Closed Invitational Beta Weekend. This event will be limited to selected individuals, primarily EHG team members, family, friends, community testers, and content creators. That means that invited members for this event will be able to stream the content and discuss all the content they have access to! As we approach this event, well be posting a list of content creators who will be participating - so make sure to stay tuned to your favorite streamer or content creator during this weekend event to get their take on the new 0.9.0 multiplayer experience!
Feb 2nd - 12th - Multiplayer Beta Week - Pack the Server Party!
LETS PARTY! This event aims to test our Multiplayer Beta on a larger scale. We will be inviting 10,000 (thats right, ten thousand) players to join us for a week of putting our servers to the test. Same as before, this event will be for players who already own a copy of the game and can stream the content and discuss what they are playing. This is a big one for us, and we want you to join us. We will be sure to post the signup for the pack the server party in the future.
Feb 23rd - 26th - Multiplayer Beta - Open Weekend
From February 23rd through the 26th we will be hosting the first-ever Open Beta weekend for Last Epoch! What does this mean? Anyone can try out Last Epoch and patch 0.9.0 for this weekend. Thats right, you will not need a copy of Last Epoch to participate in this event; it will be open to all Steam users! If youve been watching our ongoing development but havent quite been ready to pull the trigger on picking up a copy, this will be your opportunity not only to get yourself into the world of Eterra, but also to get a feel for the upcoming major content release!
Multiplayer Updates
As we continue to work towards our next major content release, we want to open up a bit more about how exactly the multiplayer experience will work. For today, a few topics we want to cover are how Monolith navigation, Blessing rewards, and Dungeons work in multiplayer. One of the most anticipated topics being asked about is Trade, and we also have some news to share on that topic. Over the past few months, we have implemented an Item Gifting system for our Community Testers, received feedback on it, and continued our internal discussions of the system. We will be releasing a deep-dive blog post focused on Trade in the near future; however, today, we can confirm that, Yes, Beta Patch 0.9.0 will include a Trade system that allows items to change hands within your party! More details to come!
Monolith Navigation
As The Monolith of Fates is our core endgame experience, our top priority for the Multiplayer Monolith has been to make it feel awesome, not just to make it functional. Weve been working very closely with our fantastic Community Testers, listening to feedback and adjusting the mechanics as we shape that end-game experience together. We are designing with intention to make sure the mechanics of the Multiplayer Monolith dont make players feel like multiplayer is the only way to play, so weve kept a close eye on things like split farming strategies or multiplayer boosted rewards. At the very core of this design conversation is the question, how does a group actually interact with the Monolith system?. When grouped together, every player in the party can access any monolith which they have unlocked and interact with its web the same as the single-player experience. Upon selecting an echo, the echo is loaded, and a portal is opened for all party members to join up with the player which chose the echo. In the normal single-player Monolith experience, when a player dies during an echo or disconnects, the echo is closed, and rewards are lost. However, this doesnt quite work in multiplayer for a couple of reasons. For one, other players are present in the echo, and we dont want to kick everyone out when one player dies. We also want players to be able to play together and not be stuck waiting at the End of Time for the rest of the party to complete the echo before being able to rejoin. To address this, the portal remains open throughout the entire echo, and all party members can still portal to each other. So if a player falls to the enemies of Eterra, they can quickly and easily rejoin their party. However, beware: Dying during an echo or leaving during the echo will still cause any players who fell to miss out on the end of echo rewards for that echo.
Echo Rewards
With our main two priorities in mind - Fun and Fair, weve implemented a unique solution for monolith navigation and rewards. When we first implemented monolith for our Community Testers, it was quickly found that providing the same node rewards to everyone created a very poor experience in which there was a clear optimal path of split farming. This strategy involved splitting up to individually farm out a monolith web until a number of exalted and unique nodes were unveiled, then group up just to complete those nodes to maximize the highest tier of rewards from the monolith. Because this involves constantly splitting up and then reforming parties, it wasnt a very fun experience. We wanted the experience of multiplayer to be for groups to play together and stay together for as long as they wanted. Not just any solution would do though. A big part of our Monolith experience when it comes to rewards is that of Choice. We feel that its important in Last Epoch to empower players with the ability to choose, whether its crafting, build selection, or the Monolith. Normally when navigating the echo, you have the power of choice by selecting which echo you want to do, which is often heavily affected by the rewards the echo offers. In multiplayer, if everyones in the same echo, then only one player can have chosen the echo and its associated reward, so by default, other players in the party would lose that sense of control over the items theyre farming for. As such, we needed to find a solution that solved split-farming issues while still offering the power of choice. After a few iterative changes, we now have a solution we are thrilled to share.
When in a party, one player can pick a node on the monolith web, and for the person who picks which echo is being done, everything works as it currently does in single-player. However, for other players in the party, when the echo is completed, they will be presented with two options for rewards from the echo. These reward options are the same options that are normally found in the echo web (eg. Exalted Helms, or Rare Swords), and are rolled using the same weighting as the echo that was completed. Meaning the corruption level of the echo and the distance from the center will weigh into the reward options. The result of this is that all group members will get the same average value of rewards, and for individual echos may result in getting lower tier rewards, the same rewards, or better rewards than the party leader. So what role will you want? The Party Leader who gets to choose their specific rewards on the web, or the Party Member who gets to choose between two options, each echo with the potential for even better rewards than the Party Leader picked?
Dungeons
Dungeons raise some fairly unique interactions when it comes to multiplayer, and with our desire for multiplayer groups to be able to stick together for the experience. Primarily starting a dungeon, dying during a dungeon, and dungeon rewards. Dungeons are designed as curated experiences. This means that dungeons are meant to be experienced from start to finish and dont work as well, dropping in part way through. We've implemented a few multiplayer-specific interactions to ensure that groups are empowered to stay playing together. The first is that only one key is required for the entire party to enter the dungeon. Secondly, to ensure the experience remains intact for all party members and that no one is left behind still making their way through the dungeon, weve implemented a ready-check system for starting a dungeon boss. Upon attempting to enter the boss room, a ready check will appear for all party members. Once all party members have chosen to participate or not, all participating members will be teleported into the boss room to begin their trial.
Dungeons are also designed to be a rewarding experience with unique reward mechanics, making them most often a highly rewarding activity. We want to preserve that experience for the entire party without making running dungeons in a party much more powerful than running them solo. For this, unlike Monoliths, if you die in a dungeon, you will not be able to rejoin the continuing members, so make sure to stay on your toes in dungeons! All players will also have access to the end-of-dungeon rewards. For example, in Temporal Sanctum, each party member will have the opportunity to create a Legendary item with the alter, and in Soulfire Bastion have their own reserve of embers to gamble with.
Gameplay Improvements
Of course, while Multiplayer has been a significant focus for 0.9.0, thats not near the only thing coming. Our efforts to improve Combat Feel through improved VFX, SFX, and Animation continue, as well as changes to skills, zones, items, enemies, and more. We want to share with you today a few of these improvements weve been making for the gameplay experience coming next patch!
Skill Updates
Beta Patch 0.9.0 is set to bring with it updates to many of our existing skills for VFX, SFX, as well as some balancing changes and even some receiving completely new nodes and ways to build them. Today were showcasing a few of these improvements coming in our March 9th update.
Swipe
Swipe is one of the many skills receiving both VFX and SFX updates and updated functionality. Here were showing off the new Spirit Wolves node, which will now cause Spirit Wolves to be emitted from your Wolf companions instead of from you. The new Spirit Wolves will count as the wolf casting the spirit, and thus scale with the wolfs stats instead of yours. Each Wolf companion will send out a spirit, and multiple Spirit Wolves can hit the same target to open up a whole new build style with Wolves and offer better scaling opportunities.
Shield Rush & Rive
Shield Rush and Rive are both fairly old skills, and their VFX shows it. No longer, come 0.9.0 with these brand new VFX updates, we're bringing these highly popular skills up to our modern standards!
Harvest
Harvest was a skill less commonly called out for needing a visual rework. However, after seeing the new version with the nice clean sweeps, the scythe extending from the weapon itself, and the much more impactful swing, I think its clear there was a lot of improvement to be made. And that improvement has been made to come in our next major update!
Reaper Form
Reaper form is another skill which has needed a visual update, and were happy to show off the new model coming for Reaper form in our next Major Update. This new model will also be accompanied by entirely new scythe models giving some much-needed flair and quality to this core identifying skill of the Lich.
New and Updated Enemies
Temple Guardian
The Temple Guardian stands watch over the entrance to Eterras Temple throughout the ages. This mini-boss holds a very important position within the campaign, and we felt its about time for this guardian to get the visual update they deserve. Similar to the Forge Guards manifest armor, we thought wed play another game of spot the difference and a turntable view of this new stalwart guardian!
Idol (Giant Worm Boss)
This big old worm was a little too wormy and not enough idol of the void-y, so were fixing that with this terrifying new model, accompanied by an all-new SFX kit as well.
Void Despair
One of the brand new enemies emerging from the void in 0.9.0: the Void Despair, is quite agile given its size and has been known to approach from unexpected angles. Make sure to be careful when theyre in the area, or you may provide them the opportunity to demonstrate their namesake.
Voidfused Earth
We've shown off this little guy here before, but we felt this was just too awesome of a view of the new Void Earth enemy not to share as well.
Re-worked Zones
Alongside skills and models, some of our zones are also starting to show their age. While going through every zone in the game and improving performance, weve also improved the visual quality of these zones. One of our focuses for improvement without adding a bunch of performance overhead back into zones is improving lighting quality, and wed like to share a couple of shots from one of our older, earlier zones - the Last Refuge Outskirts.
In other cases, these improvements to zones come in the form of more than lighting. Wed like to show an example of one of these zones with the video below from The Tomb of Morditas. Here the area has a brand new look, with Morditas being contained within some kind of prison - I wonder what that could be all about?
Previous Updates
There is still more we are working on that weve yet to reveal, so we hope youre as excited as we are to bring Patch 0.9 to life in March. As a reminder, weve been revealing loads of new updates coming into Patch 0.9 throughout our development cycle, so heres a refresher! Check out a couple of these previous development posts highlighting even more updates coming in Patch 0.9! September Development Update June Development Update Community Collection of previous Teasers weve released, Compiled by Andrew.Tilley
Almost There
Patch 0.9.0 will be a big one, with a lot of content, updates, combat feel improvements, performance improvements, balance changes, and of course, Multiplayer. As we close in, well continue to provide updates on the latest and greatest, both in posts and our weekly dev stream over at [twitch.tv/lastepochgame](http://twitch.tv/lastepochgame). If youre interested in getting a taste of 0.9.0 before March 9th, make sure to keep an eye out on our news feed for our Pack the Server Party signup, as well as the other lead-up events! Thank you to everyone as we work towards our biggest feature addition to date, introducing an entirely new way to play with Multiplayer, and well see you in our next post! Stay safe Travelers, and may Eterra bless your drops.
Multiplayer Beta (Patch 0.9) Launches March 9th, 2023!
[ 2022-11-29 19:50:44 CET ] [ Original post ]
Stay tuned for a full development update with more information on each of these events later this week!
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-11-25 18:00:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. The Stream Charity for November is Child's Play. "a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in our network of over 185 hospitals worldwide." All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-11-18 18:00:18 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. The Stream Charity for November is Child's Play. "a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in our network of over 185 hospitals worldwide." All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-11-11 18:00:40 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. The Stream Charity for November is Child's Play. "a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in our network of over 185 hospitals worldwide." All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-11-04 17:00:22 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for November is Child's Play. "a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in our network of over 185 hospitals worldwide." All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-10-28 17:00:28 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for October is Oceana. "Oceana is dedicated to advocating for science-based fishery management and restoring the worlds oceans." All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-10-21 17:00:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for October is Oceana. "Oceana is dedicated to advocating for science-based fishery management and restoring the worlds oceans." All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-10-07 17:00:54 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for October is Oceana. "Oceana is dedicated to advocating for science-based fishery management and restoring the worlds oceans." All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-09-30 17:00:46 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for August is Good Sports. "Good Sports drives equitable access in youth sports and physical activity, by supporting children in high-need communities to achieve their greatest potential, on the field and in life." All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-09-23 17:00:15 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for August is Good Sports. "Good Sports drives equitable access in youth sports and physical activity, by supporting children in high-need communities to achieve their greatest potential, on the field and in life." All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-09-16 17:00:30 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for August is Good Sports. "Good Sports drives equitable access in youth sports and physical activity, by supporting children in high-need communities to achieve their greatest potential, on the field and in life." All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-09-09 17:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for August is Good Sports. "Good Sports drives equitable access in youth sports and physical activity, by supporting children in high-need communities to achieve their greatest potential, on the field and in life." All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
September 2022 Development Update
Since our last update, we now have all abilities working! Channeled abilities were the last bit we needed to do. Were now focusing on ensuring all abilities are smooth and responsive in multiplayer. Essentially this comes down to minor bugs with things like positioning and network interpolation. Weve also progressed the Monolith to ~95% complete with empowered timelines being wrapped up and again moving to working on ensuring smooth experience with small bug fixes and polish. Weve continued to make great progress on our new Chat implementation. Weve completed matching parity of features with our current chat system, and are now working on expanding the functionality. This change of our chat system gives us a lot more flexibility and potential for features than our old chat system. This includes channel support, and game guide linking which were really excited for.
We are already making progress on the remaining endgame systems (Arena and Dungeons), and will be digging into a polish pass for our questing system soon. We will have more to share on these features in our next Development Update.
Weve made a lot of headway on improving the overall experience of playing multiplayer. This means improving the connect and disconnect flow, error messaging, and ensuring scene transitions are as smooth as possible. There's still more to do here, and we'll always be working to ensure this experience is as easy and clean as possible. Having an intuitive and consistent user experience when playing multiplayer is just as important as making sure all the multiplayer stuff behind the scenes is functioning smoothly, so were ensuring this is as crisp and smooth an experience as possible. Were pretty much complete with our migration from our previous backend platform (such as for account services), and we now have all the core components in place. This was a fairly large task which has allowed for many improvements with multiplayer and the new cohesive single player and multiplayer combined client. Well announce more details for what this means for players alongside our 0.9.0 posts as we close in on the update date. Another area of focus for us at the moment is carefully evaluating and improving how we save and keep character data. This is one of our largest remaining projects for multiplayer because we understand just how important it is to have accurate information for players and their inventories. We had hit a couple challenges during our work on this feature, but our talented team is through them now and we have a clear path forward. All of this work has lead us to our most exciting development update
Starting September, we will be taking our multiplayer build online 24/7 for our CT Program. From this point on, testers will be able to play multiplayer whenever they would like instead of playing within specific testing windows. With this, we will be providing regular updates to the alpha from now, until the launch of 0.9.0. We anticipate having minimal downtime during these updates, and will be both experimenting with, and refining our release processes during this time to establish the best processes possible for once were fully online for the entire community. Were really excited about this stage as this is a big observable step closer to our goal of open multiplayer and we get to experience and refine maintaining the live service.
Were feeling very good about how multiplayer is progressing, and with great confidence in our CT program we are now in the process of expanding the program to ~1000 users. It feels like just yesterday the very first people outside of EHG were getting their hands on multiplayer, and now were at the thousand mark already. This is amazing, and were extremely happy that so many players are interested in participating in testing. With this, a big thank you to all past, present, and future, CT program members for helping us make this as great a feature as possible. We will be continuing to expand the program even more leading up to 0.9.0, and there is likely to be multiple waves of intakes to reach that point. So make sure if youre interested in applying and getting involved with alpha testing to submit an application! You can read all about the program and how to apply in this post here.
If youve been following our previous development updates you know weve been making some massive headway on our performance and optimization goals. That momentum hasnt slowed down since we last shared our progress. Weve been boosting frame rates, reducing draw calls, optimizing shaders, culling triangles, removing memory leaks, and minimizing disk space impact. The result of all of this means your time in Eterra is feeling smoother, more beautiful, and more immersive than ever before - all with a lower impact on your hardware. We are so excited to bring these updates into the game along side out upcoming multiplayer patch. Last time around, we mentioned some updates to one of our favorite non-performants, the Ancient Dragon. We finished up some more work on this enemy, and wanted to show off the latest updated version with a more direct FPS comparisons in game as a result of these improvements. Of course, the Ancient Dragon is not the only thing we've been focusing on. We will be sharing a deeper dive into the details about optimization in an upcoming blog post, where we can dig into the ins and outs of each initiative listed above. Keep your eyes out for those upcoming blogs - until then, check out this sneak peak at some big framerate gains!
A number of updates ago we introduced a change to flat Spell Damage, removing specific damage types from it in many cases, and introducing Adaptive Spell Damage. This meant that the damage would apply to whatever ability you used and was treated as matching the damage types for the skill. For example if you have a staff with +40 Adaptive Spell Damage and used a fire skill, it would be treated as added fire damage. The same staff used with a cold skill would treat it as added cold damage. This system has been fairly well received and enabled spell builds to scale flat damage without needing to seek out a type that matched the element of the spell or make do with mixed damage types that would be harder to scale. Currently many melee, bow, and throwing attack builds find themselves limited to dealing mostly Physical Damage. This is true even with using a melee void attack, or fire bow attack, as thats what weapons come with. This resulted in the best way to scale your damage often being counter intuitively and counter thematically increasing physical damage rather than increasing a damage type that matched the tags of the attack. As such, weve decided to extend this system to attack based damage - Melee, bows, and Throwing. This means the majority of weapons will now provide Melee Damage rather than Melee Physical Damage as an implicit property, and many passives will see a similar change. Our plan for this is to again open opportunities for more diverse melee builds and make building a melee character more intuitive and enjoyable. As a note, there will still be a few item types which have specific damage types (such as scythes with implicit necrotic damage).
Were also revisiting skills which have multiple damage options, and adjusting them to better utilize these changes (such as Warpath which can add the fire tag, but currently does not convert base damage). With these change many builds will have many more options made available to them rather than often needing to go physical due to available equipment. Alongside this, weve also revisited flat throwing damage. Throwing skills often dont benefit from flat implicit damage on weapons, and as such start with much higher base damage on the skill. Currently there are not a lot of sources of flat throwing damage, meaning while throwing skills often start out strong, theres some difficulty getting throwing to scale into the late game without using ailments or triggered effects. To address this, weve changed the Catapults affix on items to provide flat throwing damage (which like the new melee is considered adaptive), as well as changing the Ballistas affix to provide flat throwing damage rather than flat throwing physical damage. This should help allow builds like Hammer Throw to focus more on the hammer, and less on what the hammer can cause as a delivery system.
Another game mechanic were looking at for this patch is Ailments. Were seeking to make ailment related stats easier to understand, more intuitive as to how they work, as well as making them easier to balance, particularly in multiplayer. The goals here arent necessarily for immediate balance improvements, but for performance and user experience as were moving into multiplayer and 1.0. While we want to maintain a level of depth and complexity in Last Epochs item system, we also put a large priority on getting players invested in that system enough to care about the details, and a key part of that process is making sure that stats effects and interactions are clear. There were two areas we felt were easily misunderstood when it came to scaling the damage of ailments. One is that they are affected by penetration, and the other is that increased effect acts as a multiplier to their damage, but multiple sources of increased effect are additive. To alleviate both concerns, for damaging ailments we are replacing stats like "10% increased Ignite Effect" with "+10% Fire Penetration with Ignite. With this, not all changes are 1:1, many values have been re-balanced to accommodate for this change. Most non damaging ailments, such as armor shred, will retain their increased effect stats. Another commonly discussed topic weve had a look at is how some ailments, in particular resistance shredding ailments, tend to greatly favor faster hitting builds. This isnt great for performance, networking, or build diversity. As such, weve reduced the stack limit on resistance shredding ailments. Resistance shredding ailments, including shock, will stack to 10 (from 20). Meanwhile, Poison will continue to stack infinitely, but only the first 30 stacks on a target will shred resistance. Poison will also deal more damage to compensate for this. In the case of shock where it also offers stun chance, weve doubled the stun chance portion to retain the same value as the previous stack limit.
*(as shown in the above screenshot, the 15 stack limit for ailments on the enemy health bar UI has been removed)* Alongside this, weve also re-assessed how damage over time is factored into tooltip DPS. While ailment duration would theoretically just be multiplicative for DPS, this is not felt in practice as many targets will die before the most of the ailments they were inflicted with have expired. As such tooltip DPS previously curtailed the effect of Increased Ailment Duration. However it did not apply the same principle of diminishing returns to the base ailment duration, resulting in ailments being perceived as having an exaggerated effect on tooltip DPS compared to their actual usefulness for damage. This approach has been changed so that diminishing returns apply to an ailment's total DPS (as long as it lasts at least 1 second) rather than distinguishing between base duration and extra duration from increased duration stats, and this results in the tooltip DPS being lower overall (this is a good thing - its more accurate to expected results). Were currently still testing and iterating on these changes, so we wont go too much into numbers or the changes to all the individual ailments, such as frostbite, but wanted to cover the design philosophies on some of the changes. Also note these redesigns are still subject to change.
Our talented Art, VFX, and SFX teams continue to raise the bar when it comes to improving Eterras visual and combat experiences. This has been one of our longest patch cycles to date, and as such we have built up an impressive queue of upgrades ready to go live when patch 0.9 hits Last Epoch. Incase you missed some our previous updates in this area, including from our Friday streams we highly recommend checking them out. One of our fantastic community members AndrewTilley has actually compiled a list of teasers for the current cycle here. Lets take a peek at some highlights from the most recent round of upgrades below!
All totems have had VFX and SFX reworks. Previously all totems used the same base model, typically with an extra model or two kind of glued onto it. We really wanted to revisit these to give them all their own distinct identities and make them truly awesome with completely custom and individually created designs.
Many other older skills are getting both VFX and SFX updates and we want to show a couple examples of those here with both Fireball, and Wandering Spirits.
The denizens of Eterra continue to see improvements to make the world more distinct and memorable. Some may be replaced, others however have very strong themes we enjoy and so are instead sticking around with reworks. Today, wed like to show off another one of the latter, with the Voidfused Armor. In this clip, weve included a comparison with the old and new Voidfused Armor enemies, with the new model exhibiting a much more imposing frame, matching its aggression and threat to players everywhere.
As mentioned in the the VFX section, were also making a lot of updates SFX. This is another area of improvement so large, similar to Performance, where were currently planning on having a more dedicated and expanded post to talk about SFX improvements and sound design in general. However, for this post, we not only want to provide some treats for the eyes, but also some for the ears. Heres a few clips of some of the improved SFX youll find in patch 0.9.0. [previewyoutube=RLwUREtYfcY;full][/previewyoutube] Well take a deeper dive into some of this work with our sound team later on, and hope to see you all in that post!
Multiplayer is on the horizon now, and moving forward to the launch of 0.9 you are going to hear a lot more communication from us. We dont quite have a date were ready to share yet, but its most certainly getting closer. Alongside multiplayer, 0.9.0 is introducing a whole new level of polish to Last Epoch never seen before. Greatly improved performance, tons of new SFX and improvements to combat feel, updated enemies, and tons of other improvements. Were really excited to get this update into everyones hands, raising the bar on whats expected for Last Epoch, and we have no plans of stopping here. One final reference for this post - if youre interested in getting involved in the alpha stage of multiplayer testing, you can find all the relevant information in this post here. Were looking forward to diving into more details concerning 0.9.0, and will see you all again soon in our optimization blog posts. Until next time Travelers, may Eterra bless your journeys!
[ 2022-09-02 19:00:23 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome to the September Development Update! We have big news for you today: The CT Multiplayer Build for Last Epoch is going online 24/7 starting in early September. This means our Community Testers will be in full multiplayer test mode (by the way you can apply here) all day, every day as we polish, improve, and prepare for our upcoming Multiplayer Launch. Well be diving into the details regarding Multiplayer development in its dedicated section below. In todays Development Update youll also find details on our continued improvements to performance, optimization, combat feel, and upcoming mechanical balance changes, all coming in our next update.
Multiplayer Progress Update
Progress Since Last Update
Features and Gameplay
Since our last update, we now have all abilities working! Channeled abilities were the last bit we needed to do. Were now focusing on ensuring all abilities are smooth and responsive in multiplayer. Essentially this comes down to minor bugs with things like positioning and network interpolation. Weve also progressed the Monolith to ~95% complete with empowered timelines being wrapped up and again moving to working on ensuring smooth experience with small bug fixes and polish. Weve continued to make great progress on our new Chat implementation. Weve completed matching parity of features with our current chat system, and are now working on expanding the functionality. This change of our chat system gives us a lot more flexibility and potential for features than our old chat system. This includes channel support, and game guide linking which were really excited for.
We are already making progress on the remaining endgame systems (Arena and Dungeons), and will be digging into a polish pass for our questing system soon. We will have more to share on these features in our next Development Update.
Online Experience, Stability, and Services
Weve made a lot of headway on improving the overall experience of playing multiplayer. This means improving the connect and disconnect flow, error messaging, and ensuring scene transitions are as smooth as possible. There's still more to do here, and we'll always be working to ensure this experience is as easy and clean as possible. Having an intuitive and consistent user experience when playing multiplayer is just as important as making sure all the multiplayer stuff behind the scenes is functioning smoothly, so were ensuring this is as crisp and smooth an experience as possible. Were pretty much complete with our migration from our previous backend platform (such as for account services), and we now have all the core components in place. This was a fairly large task which has allowed for many improvements with multiplayer and the new cohesive single player and multiplayer combined client. Well announce more details for what this means for players alongside our 0.9.0 posts as we close in on the update date. Another area of focus for us at the moment is carefully evaluating and improving how we save and keep character data. This is one of our largest remaining projects for multiplayer because we understand just how important it is to have accurate information for players and their inventories. We had hit a couple challenges during our work on this feature, but our talented team is through them now and we have a clear path forward. All of this work has lead us to our most exciting development update
Multiplayer Alpha: Online 24/7
Starting September, we will be taking our multiplayer build online 24/7 for our CT Program. From this point on, testers will be able to play multiplayer whenever they would like instead of playing within specific testing windows. With this, we will be providing regular updates to the alpha from now, until the launch of 0.9.0. We anticipate having minimal downtime during these updates, and will be both experimenting with, and refining our release processes during this time to establish the best processes possible for once were fully online for the entire community. Were really excited about this stage as this is a big observable step closer to our goal of open multiplayer and we get to experience and refine maintaining the live service.
Invitation waves and future expansions
Were feeling very good about how multiplayer is progressing, and with great confidence in our CT program we are now in the process of expanding the program to ~1000 users. It feels like just yesterday the very first people outside of EHG were getting their hands on multiplayer, and now were at the thousand mark already. This is amazing, and were extremely happy that so many players are interested in participating in testing. With this, a big thank you to all past, present, and future, CT program members for helping us make this as great a feature as possible. We will be continuing to expand the program even more leading up to 0.9.0, and there is likely to be multiple waves of intakes to reach that point. So make sure if youre interested in applying and getting involved with alpha testing to submit an application! You can read all about the program and how to apply in this post here.
Upcoming Performance Blogs
If youve been following our previous development updates you know weve been making some massive headway on our performance and optimization goals. That momentum hasnt slowed down since we last shared our progress. Weve been boosting frame rates, reducing draw calls, optimizing shaders, culling triangles, removing memory leaks, and minimizing disk space impact. The result of all of this means your time in Eterra is feeling smoother, more beautiful, and more immersive than ever before - all with a lower impact on your hardware. We are so excited to bring these updates into the game along side out upcoming multiplayer patch. Last time around, we mentioned some updates to one of our favorite non-performants, the Ancient Dragon. We finished up some more work on this enemy, and wanted to show off the latest updated version with a more direct FPS comparisons in game as a result of these improvements. Of course, the Ancient Dragon is not the only thing we've been focusing on. We will be sharing a deeper dive into the details about optimization in an upcoming blog post, where we can dig into the ins and outs of each initiative listed above. Keep your eyes out for those upcoming blogs - until then, check out this sneak peak at some big framerate gains!
Melee, Bow, and Throwing Damage
A number of updates ago we introduced a change to flat Spell Damage, removing specific damage types from it in many cases, and introducing Adaptive Spell Damage. This meant that the damage would apply to whatever ability you used and was treated as matching the damage types for the skill. For example if you have a staff with +40 Adaptive Spell Damage and used a fire skill, it would be treated as added fire damage. The same staff used with a cold skill would treat it as added cold damage. This system has been fairly well received and enabled spell builds to scale flat damage without needing to seek out a type that matched the element of the spell or make do with mixed damage types that would be harder to scale. Currently many melee, bow, and throwing attack builds find themselves limited to dealing mostly Physical Damage. This is true even with using a melee void attack, or fire bow attack, as thats what weapons come with. This resulted in the best way to scale your damage often being counter intuitively and counter thematically increasing physical damage rather than increasing a damage type that matched the tags of the attack. As such, weve decided to extend this system to attack based damage - Melee, bows, and Throwing. This means the majority of weapons will now provide Melee Damage rather than Melee Physical Damage as an implicit property, and many passives will see a similar change. Our plan for this is to again open opportunities for more diverse melee builds and make building a melee character more intuitive and enjoyable. As a note, there will still be a few item types which have specific damage types (such as scythes with implicit necrotic damage).
Were also revisiting skills which have multiple damage options, and adjusting them to better utilize these changes (such as Warpath which can add the fire tag, but currently does not convert base damage). With these change many builds will have many more options made available to them rather than often needing to go physical due to available equipment. Alongside this, weve also revisited flat throwing damage. Throwing skills often dont benefit from flat implicit damage on weapons, and as such start with much higher base damage on the skill. Currently there are not a lot of sources of flat throwing damage, meaning while throwing skills often start out strong, theres some difficulty getting throwing to scale into the late game without using ailments or triggered effects. To address this, weve changed the Catapults affix on items to provide flat throwing damage (which like the new melee is considered adaptive), as well as changing the Ballistas affix to provide flat throwing damage rather than flat throwing physical damage. This should help allow builds like Hammer Throw to focus more on the hammer, and less on what the hammer can cause as a delivery system.
Ailment Changes
Another game mechanic were looking at for this patch is Ailments. Were seeking to make ailment related stats easier to understand, more intuitive as to how they work, as well as making them easier to balance, particularly in multiplayer. The goals here arent necessarily for immediate balance improvements, but for performance and user experience as were moving into multiplayer and 1.0. While we want to maintain a level of depth and complexity in Last Epochs item system, we also put a large priority on getting players invested in that system enough to care about the details, and a key part of that process is making sure that stats effects and interactions are clear. There were two areas we felt were easily misunderstood when it came to scaling the damage of ailments. One is that they are affected by penetration, and the other is that increased effect acts as a multiplier to their damage, but multiple sources of increased effect are additive. To alleviate both concerns, for damaging ailments we are replacing stats like "10% increased Ignite Effect" with "+10% Fire Penetration with Ignite. With this, not all changes are 1:1, many values have been re-balanced to accommodate for this change. Most non damaging ailments, such as armor shred, will retain their increased effect stats. Another commonly discussed topic weve had a look at is how some ailments, in particular resistance shredding ailments, tend to greatly favor faster hitting builds. This isnt great for performance, networking, or build diversity. As such, weve reduced the stack limit on resistance shredding ailments. Resistance shredding ailments, including shock, will stack to 10 (from 20). Meanwhile, Poison will continue to stack infinitely, but only the first 30 stacks on a target will shred resistance. Poison will also deal more damage to compensate for this. In the case of shock where it also offers stun chance, weve doubled the stun chance portion to retain the same value as the previous stack limit.
*(as shown in the above screenshot, the 15 stack limit for ailments on the enemy health bar UI has been removed)* Alongside this, weve also re-assessed how damage over time is factored into tooltip DPS. While ailment duration would theoretically just be multiplicative for DPS, this is not felt in practice as many targets will die before the most of the ailments they were inflicted with have expired. As such tooltip DPS previously curtailed the effect of Increased Ailment Duration. However it did not apply the same principle of diminishing returns to the base ailment duration, resulting in ailments being perceived as having an exaggerated effect on tooltip DPS compared to their actual usefulness for damage. This approach has been changed so that diminishing returns apply to an ailment's total DPS (as long as it lasts at least 1 second) rather than distinguishing between base duration and extra duration from increased duration stats, and this results in the tooltip DPS being lower overall (this is a good thing - its more accurate to expected results). Were currently still testing and iterating on these changes, so we wont go too much into numbers or the changes to all the individual ailments, such as frostbite, but wanted to cover the design philosophies on some of the changes. Also note these redesigns are still subject to change.
Updated Models / VFX
Our talented Art, VFX, and SFX teams continue to raise the bar when it comes to improving Eterras visual and combat experiences. This has been one of our longest patch cycles to date, and as such we have built up an impressive queue of upgrades ready to go live when patch 0.9 hits Last Epoch. Incase you missed some our previous updates in this area, including from our Friday streams we highly recommend checking them out. One of our fantastic community members AndrewTilley has actually compiled a list of teasers for the current cycle here. Lets take a peek at some highlights from the most recent round of upgrades below!
Totems
All totems have had VFX and SFX reworks. Previously all totems used the same base model, typically with an extra model or two kind of glued onto it. We really wanted to revisit these to give them all their own distinct identities and make them truly awesome with completely custom and individually created designs.
Spells
Many other older skills are getting both VFX and SFX updates and we want to show a couple examples of those here with both Fireball, and Wandering Spirits.
Enemies
The denizens of Eterra continue to see improvements to make the world more distinct and memorable. Some may be replaced, others however have very strong themes we enjoy and so are instead sticking around with reworks. Today, wed like to show off another one of the latter, with the Voidfused Armor. In this clip, weve included a comparison with the old and new Voidfused Armor enemies, with the new model exhibiting a much more imposing frame, matching its aggression and threat to players everywhere.
Sound Design Updates
As mentioned in the the VFX section, were also making a lot of updates SFX. This is another area of improvement so large, similar to Performance, where were currently planning on having a more dedicated and expanded post to talk about SFX improvements and sound design in general. However, for this post, we not only want to provide some treats for the eyes, but also some for the ears. Heres a few clips of some of the improved SFX youll find in patch 0.9.0. [previewyoutube=RLwUREtYfcY;full][/previewyoutube] Well take a deeper dive into some of this work with our sound team later on, and hope to see you all in that post!
Closing
Multiplayer is on the horizon now, and moving forward to the launch of 0.9 you are going to hear a lot more communication from us. We dont quite have a date were ready to share yet, but its most certainly getting closer. Alongside multiplayer, 0.9.0 is introducing a whole new level of polish to Last Epoch never seen before. Greatly improved performance, tons of new SFX and improvements to combat feel, updated enemies, and tons of other improvements. Were really excited to get this update into everyones hands, raising the bar on whats expected for Last Epoch, and we have no plans of stopping here. One final reference for this post - if youre interested in getting involved in the alpha stage of multiplayer testing, you can find all the relevant information in this post here. Were looking forward to diving into more details concerning 0.9.0, and will see you all again soon in our optimization blog posts. Until next time Travelers, may Eterra bless your journeys!
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-09-02 17:00:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream with Senior Game Designer Mike. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for August is Good Sports. "Good Sports drives equitable access in youth sports and physical activity, by supporting children in high-need communities to achieve their greatest potential, on the field and in life." All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-08-26 17:00:04 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike starts a new build for August. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for August is Paws with a Cause. All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-08-19 17:00:47 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike starts a new build for August. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for August is Paws with a Cause. All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-08-12 17:00:40 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike starts a new build for August. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for August is Paws with a Cause. All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-08-05 17:00:44 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike starts a new build for August. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development. The Stream Charity for August is Paws with a Cause. All twitch subscriptions, bits, and donations will be going towards this charity! All past streams can be found on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LastEpochGame/videos
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-07-29 17:39:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike starts a new build for July. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-07-22 20:00:09 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike starts a new build for July. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-07-15 18:35:10 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike starts a new build for July. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-07-08 17:00:25 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike starts a new build for July. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Community Tester Program
Back when we started getting into development cycles for Last Epoch, we only had a handful of development team members, with a hardcore passion for ARPGs. While this handful of members had extensive experience with the genre, we wanted a group of individuals to help review what was being created and provide feedback from more ranges of experience rather than just the most hardcore of crowd. The reason we did this as a closed off group is because many of these items get tested in an incomplete state. While Last Epoch is an early access game, we constantly aim for each main patch to be a polished experience. Having a select group of individuals to help review changes before they are fully complete helps us to refine and steer the direction of the game, improving the quality of our releases without negatively impacting the gameplay experience of our wider playerbase. As the team here at Eleventh Hour Games continued to grow with the amazing support of our community, we have continued to evolve our development processes including our internal QA department and their interactions with our Community Testers. Our Community Testers have been a very valuable resource for helping us continue to refine the Last Epoch experience, and as such we have decided that we want to keep the program moving forward. Being involved in and working closely with our community is core to us, so having community members as part of our development process helps define part of what Eleventh Hour Games is. As such, were doubling down on the Community Tester program; clarifying its goals and how it operates, as well as expanding the program to continue to make Last Epoch even greater and maintain our close relationship with our community.
The Community Tester program is sometimes seen as an early access to the early access, however this is not the case. Sometimes, core parts of the game arent available in builds we release to Community Testers, as we havent finished working on changes but need feedback on other parts of the game. We didnt want to have the entire community experience these kinds of half completed states, so we recruited a number of players who were willing to do so. Because of the nature of some items and mechanics, and how they can change quite considerable before release or even be removed entirely, testers need to be under a non-disclosure agreement. As such, due to these partial states, we couldnt do simple opt-in betas. At the same time, we wanted to ensure the direction of the game continued to match to our community, so hiring internal staff for this didnt make sense. And so, the Community Tester program was born. As explained above, Community Testers have contributed greatly to help shape Last Epoch over the years. A great example of something our Community Testers have helped steer the direction of is with Dungeons. Originally, our Dungeons didnt offer any sort of modifiers when progressing between areas. With Community Tester feedback we added these modifiers to make progressing through the dungeon more engaging and provide choices with the dungeon progression itself. As weve continued to expand upon these dungeons, weve continued to refine this method, in some cases having the modifiers directly effect the dungeon reward such as the case with Soulfire Bastion to further drive incentive for decision making with which doors to take and make them more engaging.
The CT program will be evolving as we start ramping up our Multiplayer testing. While we may have previously been primarily focused on gameplay feedback, we now need testers for a variety of reasons such as stress testing as well as helping us assure the quality and stability of our online live releases. We will absolutely still be looking for gameplay feedback, but at least initially we will be prioritizing the overall multiplayer experience and not necessarily balance. We will be looking for feedback on subjects like how does it feel to join another player whos at a different point of gameplay from yourself?. This will not be the case forever. As as we mentioned in our June development update, over time our team will be turning to balance as we iron out the kinks of the overall experience. Ultimately these dedicated testing periods will help us grow our online platform and ensure that we have the best quality launch possible and participation from our Community Testers will be a fundamental part of our journey. With that being said, were looking to considerably expand the current roster of Community Testers. Were looking for more Community Testers in the near future. Many more. If youre interested in participating in the CT Program, heres a few things to know and help decide if you might fit into the program: [olist] Community Testers do need to sign an NDA. This means you cannot discuss anything youve seen or learned about through the tests or chat channels for CTs even to friends and family. It is also your responsibility to protect any information you have access to - so if youre on a shared PC this may be difficult. Because of the NDA, you must also be eligible to sign an NDA contract (be age of majority, and not have any conflicting contracts)
Experience with testing, debugging and gameplay design is *not necessary*. We encourage Community Testers to engage in the provided content how they want to play it, the less thought put into it the better. Balance is good, gameplay is better, feelings are best.
Community Testers are expected to provide their feedback in a structured way within provided channels. We of course provide guidance to help with this, but this ensures we can collect the feedback and be able to act on it.
Community Testers experience partial versions of the game - its not just a way to get the latest updates early. Community Testers are a vital part of our design process and provide invaluable feedback in how we continue to evolve Last Epoch into the game for the community as a whole to enjoy.
While Community Testers are not expected to uphold the same standing as members of the Beesfriends are, Community Testers are still expected to be in good standing with the community. So following the code of conduct, as well as being active and collaborative members of the community can certainly contribute to someones assessment as a CT.
There are no commitments to be available for any specific time or any specific test, or any required schedule at all. This is of course a volunteer community program, and we above all want to ensure were always respectful and appreciative of our community members who want to try to help shape the future of Last Epoch.
[/olist]
If all this sounds good to you, you can submit an application to join the CT Program here: https://support.lastepoch.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=6980787618971.
Were excited to talk more about multiplayer, and 0.9.0 in the near future with more updates and teasers as we start getting closer to the next big update, and hope to see you all there!
[ 2022-07-04 18:00:42 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! A while back we posted a Dev Blog post on our Beesfriends: Community Guides and Moderators program. We like being open with what were doing and different programs we operate, so were doing the same kind of thing here today for the Community Tester Program. As such, for todays Dev Blog post, were going to spend a bit of time to cover what the program is, why we have the program, what the goals of the program are, and what exactly Community Testers do. Lastly, with multiplayer coming up quickly, were also going to be expanding our roster of Community Testers, so will be going over whats involved in joining the program, and how to go about applying!
What is the Community Tester Program?
Back when we started getting into development cycles for Last Epoch, we only had a handful of development team members, with a hardcore passion for ARPGs. While this handful of members had extensive experience with the genre, we wanted a group of individuals to help review what was being created and provide feedback from more ranges of experience rather than just the most hardcore of crowd. The reason we did this as a closed off group is because many of these items get tested in an incomplete state. While Last Epoch is an early access game, we constantly aim for each main patch to be a polished experience. Having a select group of individuals to help review changes before they are fully complete helps us to refine and steer the direction of the game, improving the quality of our releases without negatively impacting the gameplay experience of our wider playerbase. As the team here at Eleventh Hour Games continued to grow with the amazing support of our community, we have continued to evolve our development processes including our internal QA department and their interactions with our Community Testers. Our Community Testers have been a very valuable resource for helping us continue to refine the Last Epoch experience, and as such we have decided that we want to keep the program moving forward. Being involved in and working closely with our community is core to us, so having community members as part of our development process helps define part of what Eleventh Hour Games is. As such, were doubling down on the Community Tester program; clarifying its goals and how it operates, as well as expanding the program to continue to make Last Epoch even greater and maintain our close relationship with our community.
Why Community Testers?
The Community Tester program is sometimes seen as an early access to the early access, however this is not the case. Sometimes, core parts of the game arent available in builds we release to Community Testers, as we havent finished working on changes but need feedback on other parts of the game. We didnt want to have the entire community experience these kinds of half completed states, so we recruited a number of players who were willing to do so. Because of the nature of some items and mechanics, and how they can change quite considerable before release or even be removed entirely, testers need to be under a non-disclosure agreement. As such, due to these partial states, we couldnt do simple opt-in betas. At the same time, we wanted to ensure the direction of the game continued to match to our community, so hiring internal staff for this didnt make sense. And so, the Community Tester program was born. As explained above, Community Testers have contributed greatly to help shape Last Epoch over the years. A great example of something our Community Testers have helped steer the direction of is with Dungeons. Originally, our Dungeons didnt offer any sort of modifiers when progressing between areas. With Community Tester feedback we added these modifiers to make progressing through the dungeon more engaging and provide choices with the dungeon progression itself. As weve continued to expand upon these dungeons, weve continued to refine this method, in some cases having the modifiers directly effect the dungeon reward such as the case with Soulfire Bastion to further drive incentive for decision making with which doors to take and make them more engaging.
Multiplayer Testing and Joining the CT Program
The CT program will be evolving as we start ramping up our Multiplayer testing. While we may have previously been primarily focused on gameplay feedback, we now need testers for a variety of reasons such as stress testing as well as helping us assure the quality and stability of our online live releases. We will absolutely still be looking for gameplay feedback, but at least initially we will be prioritizing the overall multiplayer experience and not necessarily balance. We will be looking for feedback on subjects like how does it feel to join another player whos at a different point of gameplay from yourself?. This will not be the case forever. As as we mentioned in our June development update, over time our team will be turning to balance as we iron out the kinks of the overall experience. Ultimately these dedicated testing periods will help us grow our online platform and ensure that we have the best quality launch possible and participation from our Community Testers will be a fundamental part of our journey. With that being said, were looking to considerably expand the current roster of Community Testers. Were looking for more Community Testers in the near future. Many more. If youre interested in participating in the CT Program, heres a few things to know and help decide if you might fit into the program: [olist]
Steam Summer Sale | June 23rd - July 7th
[ 2022-06-24 18:03:51 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers! The Steam Summer Sale has just arrived and with it comes the final early access sale for Last Epoch! This will be the last time you see Last Epoch on sale for quite a while so if you havent already, now is the best time to join us. Check out the sale page on Steam here! If you havent been keeping up, we have a huge amount of new content that has been added to the world of Eterra just this year alone. A massively expanded endgame, new skills, reworked masteries, new legendary and unique Items, and a whole host of other content! With multiplayer launching later this year, you wont want to miss this sale! To see all the exciting updates, be sure to check the announcements page on our forums!
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-06-24 17:00:07 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Primalist, Herald of the Scurry (Squirrel Companion) build. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
June Development Update: The road to 0.9.0
We have made immense progress in the last few months to ensure not only that Multiplayer isnt a separate project, but also to create a truly immersive and seamless online experience. Although we have many more tests on the horizon, our confidence is growing as a result of our last set of multiplayer community tests. As we mentioned in our last update, we have spent a lot of effort on our back-end services, systems, and telemetry. It was quickly clear just how much that effort had paid off as by the second round the testers turned their focus from bugs and issues to instead discuss design feedback and new possibilities for the game. While we have some more work to get the remaining content online ready, all designs from this point are fully made with multiplayer in mind. We are confident enough to say that by the time 0.9.0 is out, we will be already working on new content, such as new skills, without having to sacrifice progress towards our final goal. We know that multiplayer will be at the very core of Last Epoch and will be critical for supporting long term development.
The 0.9 update will be the multiplayer Beta of Last Epoch. As we stated above, we are calling this the beta because 0.9 will be bringing existing features and content online. Our vision includes more features and changes that we havent discussed much lately, but are aspects we consider fundamental. For example, we have some missing masteries that we believe will truly help make the game feel more complete. Beyond new content or systems, we will want gameplay and balance to be in the best possible state for 1.0. We expect a lot of new players with 1.0 and we want to polish the new player experience, including for offline players. We will also be paying close attention to what changes need to be made once everyone starts playing together. As we explained in our last update, we are building up to being an online game and multiplayer balancing will be a part of that. While we have made great strides lately to develop our skills as a group, that transition doesnt happen overnight or even over a few months. We are just starting this process now, so we have more to do and more to learn, but are excited for the future.
But thats enough of the heavy stuff. We have some pretty exciting updates from our last post. Since then we have finished or nearly finished getting some smaller bits of content AND some much larger pieces of content online. Here are just some of these changes: - Transform Abilities - Chests - Monolith - UI Improvements (player cards, minion cards, player in menu UI) - Ailment changes and improvements
One of the most challenging parts of our development, which we talked about back in November 2021, has been working on making our online services more robust. Its incredibly difficult to make these improvements and changes alongside the development of the rest of the features and because these services are so fundamental. This has meant weve had to make a lot of hard decisions regarding where to spend our focus and effort, but has also meant that its slowed us down in the past. Were happy to say that weve made some incredible progress here lately which includes finishing the migration of our chat to this new service (though there is further polish needed). Weve also significantly reduced crashes and disconnects in part due to our rapidly improving telemetry. This has meant that weve been able to turn to improving server performance as well. There are some unique performance challenges that online ARPGs have to overcome to make sure the experience is smooth. Some examples include managing physics and positioning for MANY actors and precise abilities, making sure that servers have some long lasting memory to handle systems like parties going through echos, or always having servers ready when players transition to new zones. We are fortunate that as weve grown we have gained some amazingly talented people that are well equipped to handle these problems and will keep us well on track to reach our goal for 0.9 and 1.0. ## Getting to 0.9.0 In order to start getting ready for being online, we are now we are building up our multiplayer alpha. We have a few specific goals for the alpha: - Have a 24/7 Online Last Epoch for testers - Limit down time to being under 3 hours while still having regular updates - Learn better branch and environment management - Be able to maintain a large CCU We are excited to share the good news that we are already on the cusp of having a fully 24/7 Online Last Epoch for our community testers. In order to achieve these goals we will be expanding our community testing program. We will have more details on our plans to expand the program *relatively* soon, so please refrain from poking Kain *too* much.
For our efforts to address community feedback, were sharing a bit more details here concerning Performance optimization, Combat Feel, and a few other areas of significant community feedback.
We've recently finished our first pass of level optimization - all the levels have been reviewed and optimized, and there's a huge performance increase across the board. Generally speaking, the background FPS should be more leveled now, with less areas that perform significantly lower than others.
For example, every zone in the game had its Draw Calls (the amount of objects visible at a time) manually fixed. By combining certain objects we've managed to make the scenes more uniform with less FPS drops. The result is an area that looks the same, but considerably less costly on the CPU side; Because of this, some of the slower areas in the game have seen an increase of up to 40 FPS.
As part of the ongoing optimization effort, we're now taking a look at performance drops during combat; We've identified a few factors causing those to happen and are working on them. For example, with the Ancient Dragon, a change in the shaders of the particle effects resulted in FPS increasing from 50 to 90 during his attacks.
We're going over every attack and special effect to make sure there are no dips. The goal is to have a persistent, stable FPS across the gameplay experience, so our next step is to make combat as smooth as possible. More posts on the ongoing performance optimizations to come: we'll make sure to keep you informed of these improvements as they happen!
In our May Development Update, we mentioned for combat feel we had started work on introducing new death animations as well as on-death effects. Over the last month, weve continued to tune these and get them ready for the updated combat feel experience for Last Epoch. In addition to these improvements, combat feel can be impacted by not only how you fight, but what you fight. As such, were also expanding on enemy variety adding completely new enemies, and updating some older enemies to newer models and animations. These efforts are directed to improve this part of the experience and continue to refine the representation of the denizens of Eterra, making their origins creepier, more fantastic, or more exciting in general. This also helps to bolster their unique identity within the world of Eterra to give them each a more distinct experience. For this, we have to share a couple of new enemies coming to Last Epoch.
In this corner, we introduce the void master of arms, Void Penance! This creepy new enemy can be found within the most corrupted areas of Eterra, and is ready and willing to lend one of its many hands to anyone that feels like getting a bit too close. This also introduces one of our new death animation techniques that weve been working on for combat feel.
While Voidfused Earth enemies can be found within Eterra currently, we felt that they didnt have a unique enough appearance. So while this new enemy shares the same name, thats about all it shares. This new Voidfused Earth is ready for both ranged and melee attackers alike, so make sure you keep an eye out for these corrupted eart- rending enemies!
Our efforts also continue on the equipment models front as with every update to provide a more visually appealing aspect to upgrading your character. Our goal here is for every Armor Set, unique Weapon, and Unique offhand to have a distinct appearance. In keeping with the last Development update, were sharing here a couple more examples of new Armor Set models which were working on for the second highest tier of armor for the Mage and Primalist, and a few more 3D models for unique items!
We last revealed some of the new summon designs with the concept art for the new Primal Bear, Primal Sabertooth, and the Acolytes Golem, however theres another thats getting a bit of a glow up. With this summon, were going to play a little game of spot the difference. If youve been following our dev streams, you may have already seen this teaser, but no cheating! Comment below if you think you can spot the differences between the old and new versions of the Forge Guards Manifest Armor summon!
From April 18th through May 27th we ran our first ever Community Designed Unique event. Over this time period, we held a total of seven polls to decide on a new unique to be introduced into Last Epoch - one of the communitys design. The weapon type, unique effect, name, everything was decided by the community through six and a half thousand votes. And the result from this was fantastic. From the Community Designed Unique event we have the new Lament of the Lost Refuge which will be releasing in 0.9. If you missed this event, wed like to show you this new item (note affix values may not be final):
There were some very close and exciting races in the votes during the event, but the end result is certainly a very interesting one-of-a-kind item. Granting an all-new damage conversion, and providing character buffs rather than only directly granting power to a particular skill. This grants the item a lot of flexibility in how its power is leveraged. Were really excited to see all the different builds the community manages to come up with for this item once its in your hands, and well be keeping a close eye on it to ensure it meets a satisfactory power level. We had amazing community involvement throughout the event, and would again like to thank everyone who participated, submitting their ideas and their votes! Because of the success of this event, this may certainly be something we revisit in the future. If youre interested in more information regarding this event, you can find the full reveal and links to all of the polls here: https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/community-designed-unique-reveal/48908 We have a number of other community events in mind for the future and plan to keep running all sorts of different events. So make sure to keep your eyes out for these kinds of social posts if youre interested in getting involved in our community events!
We cant overstate just how exciting of a cycle this is for us here, and we would like to thank all of you for being an amazing community, and for your patience to allow us to make this next update such a big one. With the next major update including multiplayer, were now starting to set our sights on our 1.0 release of Last Epoch: including the remaining masteries, other core features, and polish, to make for an amazing world for all to play and discover. Over the last number of months, weve been bolstering our team with many new roles, however for 1.0 and beyond, there are still several roles were looking to continue expanding. If youre interested in joining the team here at Eleventh Hour Games, check out our hiring page at https://eleventhhour.games/careers to see what positions were currently looking to fill. Were approaching a major milestone here for the Last Epoch community, so make sure to keep your eyes on our Facebook, Twitter, Discord, Forums, and the weekly Dev Stream, for more updates as we approach the update to get more information regarding the exact update date, features such as performance updates, and those juicy details and teasers regarding some of the content to expect in the next major update!
[ 2022-06-22 18:00:43 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome to the June Development Update for Last Epoch! In this Development Update, were going to be uncovering some information regarding the next big update coming to Last Epoch, some updates on multiplayer progress, and as always, a bunch of teasers regarding some of the new content coming to the world of Eterra!
To start things off, lets have a quick note regarding how multiplayer progress is going. Well dive into more detail here in a bit, but just a quick mention regarding how testing has been going, and what the results mean for us.
Simply put - Its going amazing.
We greatly appreciate everyones patience as weve been spending the time to get everything in the background into place: account services, our debugging tools, ensuring stability, and more tasks that are hard to perceive on the surface but are essential for a solid online experience. This work is paying off in the testing phase. In fact, Its been going so well, weve decided to make a minor adjustment to our schedule. We had previously implied in passing here and there that the next major update would be 0.8.6 which is what we were initially planning. Thats no longer the case. Instead, were going to take a little bit more time to reach our MVP, and make the next update 0.9.0.
Thats right - Multiplayer testing has been going so well weve made the call: The next major update for Last Epoch will be Update 0.9.0, with the Multiplayer Beta!
We are calling this the beta because we will have all the existing systems and content fully playable online, but we wont be done tailoring the *entire* Last Epoch experience to be ready for our full launch. Well touch on this more in the Multiplayer section in a moment.
This means a lot of really big things for Last Epoch, and is unbelievably exciting for the team here at EHG. Not only are we able to now set a delivery timeline on a core part of the experience wanted by so many community members, as well as ourselves; but by completing multiplayer into the core experience of Last Epoch, this also means well be able to complete other content more quickly, and sooner. This is due to the reduced replication required for working on two separate Single Player and Multiplayer projects. To clarify this - Last Epoch will still have an Offline Single Player mode, it just means from our perspective were no longer working on two completely different versions of the game code simultaneously.
Of course, as per the last development update, multiplayer is not our only focus right now. Our next major update will still also have a significant focus on addressing our largest areas of community feedback for Last Epoch: Performance, and Combat Feel. Were going to be diving into a bit more detail regarding these two big areas of feedback here as well in this Development Update.
But no time right now to mull over that big news, let's start diving into some of the details!
Multiplayer
Multiplayer at the Core of Last Epoch
We have made immense progress in the last few months to ensure not only that Multiplayer isnt a separate project, but also to create a truly immersive and seamless online experience. Although we have many more tests on the horizon, our confidence is growing as a result of our last set of multiplayer community tests. As we mentioned in our last update, we have spent a lot of effort on our back-end services, systems, and telemetry. It was quickly clear just how much that effort had paid off as by the second round the testers turned their focus from bugs and issues to instead discuss design feedback and new possibilities for the game. While we have some more work to get the remaining content online ready, all designs from this point are fully made with multiplayer in mind. We are confident enough to say that by the time 0.9.0 is out, we will be already working on new content, such as new skills, without having to sacrifice progress towards our final goal. We know that multiplayer will be at the very core of Last Epoch and will be critical for supporting long term development.
The 0.9 Beta Update
The 0.9 update will be the multiplayer Beta of Last Epoch. As we stated above, we are calling this the beta because 0.9 will be bringing existing features and content online. Our vision includes more features and changes that we havent discussed much lately, but are aspects we consider fundamental. For example, we have some missing masteries that we believe will truly help make the game feel more complete. Beyond new content or systems, we will want gameplay and balance to be in the best possible state for 1.0. We expect a lot of new players with 1.0 and we want to polish the new player experience, including for offline players. We will also be paying close attention to what changes need to be made once everyone starts playing together. As we explained in our last update, we are building up to being an online game and multiplayer balancing will be a part of that. While we have made great strides lately to develop our skills as a group, that transition doesnt happen overnight or even over a few months. We are just starting this process now, so we have more to do and more to learn, but are excited for the future.
Updates From Last Post
Finished or Nearly Finished Content
But thats enough of the heavy stuff. We have some pretty exciting updates from our last post. Since then we have finished or nearly finished getting some smaller bits of content AND some much larger pieces of content online. Here are just some of these changes: - Transform Abilities - Chests - Monolith - UI Improvements (player cards, minion cards, player in menu UI) - Ailment changes and improvements
Online Platform and Service Improvements
One of the most challenging parts of our development, which we talked about back in November 2021, has been working on making our online services more robust. Its incredibly difficult to make these improvements and changes alongside the development of the rest of the features and because these services are so fundamental. This has meant weve had to make a lot of hard decisions regarding where to spend our focus and effort, but has also meant that its slowed us down in the past. Were happy to say that weve made some incredible progress here lately which includes finishing the migration of our chat to this new service (though there is further polish needed). Weve also significantly reduced crashes and disconnects in part due to our rapidly improving telemetry. This has meant that weve been able to turn to improving server performance as well. There are some unique performance challenges that online ARPGs have to overcome to make sure the experience is smooth. Some examples include managing physics and positioning for MANY actors and precise abilities, making sure that servers have some long lasting memory to handle systems like parties going through echos, or always having servers ready when players transition to new zones. We are fortunate that as weve grown we have gained some amazingly talented people that are well equipped to handle these problems and will keep us well on track to reach our goal for 0.9 and 1.0. ## Getting to 0.9.0 In order to start getting ready for being online, we are now we are building up our multiplayer alpha. We have a few specific goals for the alpha: - Have a 24/7 Online Last Epoch for testers - Limit down time to being under 3 hours while still having regular updates - Learn better branch and environment management - Be able to maintain a large CCU We are excited to share the good news that we are already on the cusp of having a fully 24/7 Online Last Epoch for our community testers. In order to achieve these goals we will be expanding our community testing program. We will have more details on our plans to expand the program *relatively* soon, so please refrain from poking Kain *too* much.
Ongoing Efforts
For our efforts to address community feedback, were sharing a bit more details here concerning Performance optimization, Combat Feel, and a few other areas of significant community feedback.
Optimization
We've recently finished our first pass of level optimization - all the levels have been reviewed and optimized, and there's a huge performance increase across the board. Generally speaking, the background FPS should be more leveled now, with less areas that perform significantly lower than others.
For example, every zone in the game had its Draw Calls (the amount of objects visible at a time) manually fixed. By combining certain objects we've managed to make the scenes more uniform with less FPS drops. The result is an area that looks the same, but considerably less costly on the CPU side; Because of this, some of the slower areas in the game have seen an increase of up to 40 FPS.
What's next?
As part of the ongoing optimization effort, we're now taking a look at performance drops during combat; We've identified a few factors causing those to happen and are working on them. For example, with the Ancient Dragon, a change in the shaders of the particle effects resulted in FPS increasing from 50 to 90 during his attacks.
We're going over every attack and special effect to make sure there are no dips. The goal is to have a persistent, stable FPS across the gameplay experience, so our next step is to make combat as smooth as possible. More posts on the ongoing performance optimizations to come: we'll make sure to keep you informed of these improvements as they happen!
Combat Feel
In our May Development Update, we mentioned for combat feel we had started work on introducing new death animations as well as on-death effects. Over the last month, weve continued to tune these and get them ready for the updated combat feel experience for Last Epoch. In addition to these improvements, combat feel can be impacted by not only how you fight, but what you fight. As such, were also expanding on enemy variety adding completely new enemies, and updating some older enemies to newer models and animations. These efforts are directed to improve this part of the experience and continue to refine the representation of the denizens of Eterra, making their origins creepier, more fantastic, or more exciting in general. This also helps to bolster their unique identity within the world of Eterra to give them each a more distinct experience. For this, we have to share a couple of new enemies coming to Last Epoch.
Void Penance
In this corner, we introduce the void master of arms, Void Penance! This creepy new enemy can be found within the most corrupted areas of Eterra, and is ready and willing to lend one of its many hands to anyone that feels like getting a bit too close. This also introduces one of our new death animation techniques that weve been working on for combat feel.
Voidfused Earth
While Voidfused Earth enemies can be found within Eterra currently, we felt that they didnt have a unique enough appearance. So while this new enemy shares the same name, thats about all it shares. This new Voidfused Earth is ready for both ranged and melee attackers alike, so make sure you keep an eye out for these corrupted eart- rending enemies!
Updated Equipment Models
Our efforts also continue on the equipment models front as with every update to provide a more visually appealing aspect to upgrading your character. Our goal here is for every Armor Set, unique Weapon, and Unique offhand to have a distinct appearance. In keeping with the last Development update, were sharing here a couple more examples of new Armor Set models which were working on for the second highest tier of armor for the Mage and Primalist, and a few more 3D models for unique items!
Mage
Primalist
Torch of the Pontifex
Battlemage's Endeavour
The Last Laugh
Hakar's Phoenix
Summons
We last revealed some of the new summon designs with the concept art for the new Primal Bear, Primal Sabertooth, and the Acolytes Golem, however theres another thats getting a bit of a glow up. With this summon, were going to play a little game of spot the difference. If youve been following our dev streams, you may have already seen this teaser, but no cheating! Comment below if you think you can spot the differences between the old and new versions of the Forge Guards Manifest Armor summon!
Community Events
From April 18th through May 27th we ran our first ever Community Designed Unique event. Over this time period, we held a total of seven polls to decide on a new unique to be introduced into Last Epoch - one of the communitys design. The weapon type, unique effect, name, everything was decided by the community through six and a half thousand votes. And the result from this was fantastic. From the Community Designed Unique event we have the new Lament of the Lost Refuge which will be releasing in 0.9. If you missed this event, wed like to show you this new item (note affix values may not be final):
There were some very close and exciting races in the votes during the event, but the end result is certainly a very interesting one-of-a-kind item. Granting an all-new damage conversion, and providing character buffs rather than only directly granting power to a particular skill. This grants the item a lot of flexibility in how its power is leveraged. Were really excited to see all the different builds the community manages to come up with for this item once its in your hands, and well be keeping a close eye on it to ensure it meets a satisfactory power level. We had amazing community involvement throughout the event, and would again like to thank everyone who participated, submitting their ideas and their votes! Because of the success of this event, this may certainly be something we revisit in the future. If youre interested in more information regarding this event, you can find the full reveal and links to all of the polls here: https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/community-designed-unique-reveal/48908 We have a number of other community events in mind for the future and plan to keep running all sorts of different events. So make sure to keep your eyes out for these kinds of social posts if youre interested in getting involved in our community events!
In Closing
We cant overstate just how exciting of a cycle this is for us here, and we would like to thank all of you for being an amazing community, and for your patience to allow us to make this next update such a big one. With the next major update including multiplayer, were now starting to set our sights on our 1.0 release of Last Epoch: including the remaining masteries, other core features, and polish, to make for an amazing world for all to play and discover. Over the last number of months, weve been bolstering our team with many new roles, however for 1.0 and beyond, there are still several roles were looking to continue expanding. If youre interested in joining the team here at Eleventh Hour Games, check out our hiring page at https://eleventhhour.games/careers to see what positions were currently looking to fill. Were approaching a major milestone here for the Last Epoch community, so make sure to keep your eyes on our Facebook, Twitter, Discord, Forums, and the weekly Dev Stream, for more updates as we approach the update to get more information regarding the exact update date, features such as performance updates, and those juicy details and teasers regarding some of the content to expect in the next major update!
Music Showcase: The End of Time
[ 2022-06-20 18:00:44 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers! Today we are sharing some design thoughts surrounding the creation of our new track in The End of Time in Last Epoch. If you havent heard it yet, its beautiful - have a listen! [previewyoutube=vAftzMZUinQ;full][/previewyoutube] Singing wordless vocals throughout help create the mysterious feeling for the End of Time soundtrack. The track also contains a lot of ethereal synths and mandolins that are drenched in echo effects to help create the feeling that you are in a mysterious, faraway place that also has a feeling of hope. Halfway through the track, a version of the LE theme comes in that hints at the melody and plays around with the timing to give the track familiarity, but with an abstract approach. This is the first track in the game to utilize a generative music system that evolves over time. This system was designed by Erik Desiderio to combine different sonic elements composed ahead of time, at random. For example, in the game the music engine could play vocal part 3 over background 2 the first time you hear it, then the next time, it could play back vocal part 1 over background 3. This system allows the player to hear the track for extended periods of time without it sounding repetitive, because the system is constantly combining different elements to create a unique variation each time the player hears it. Keep your eye on our social channels throughout the week, or join us on our discord at discord.gg/lastepoch as were going to be posting our next Development Update soon. This Development Update will be including some important news, and will be available to read in just two days on Wednesday, June 22nd!
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-06-17 20:13:25 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Primalist, Herald of the Scurry (Squirrel Companion) build. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-06-10 17:00:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Primalist, Herald of the Scurry (Squirrel Companion) build. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-06-03 17:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Hail of Arrows Marksman. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Community Designed Unique: Reveal!
Were really excited about where this new unique can be taken. Weve seen what can happen with Void based mages in the past, and were re-opening that door with this weapon. This unique effect also offers a lot of versatility in how its power is leveraged, rather than specifying skill combination . This gives it a strong unique aspect rather than simply being a point of power for existing builds. Well be monitoring the power of this unique closely on release to ensure it meets what were looking for. As part of that - we want this, as with almost all Uniques, to keep relevancy throughout the game. If the community finds it needs some more power after getting their hands on it for a while, or perhaps its destroying the hordes of the Void a little too easily, well make sure it has a good solid home in Last Epoch as the very first Community Unique. So, with that, lets take a look at what this new Unique looks like, and what kind of stats it will be bringing to the table in Last Epoch. Please note that these stats are not final, and are still subject to further QA testing.
To get ahead of at least one question - were currently looking at Corrupted Heraldry to have a 12 stack limit, with a 12 second duration per stack. This allows you to maintain full stacks so long as youre following closely to the orb to be getting hit by shrapnel. As mentioned, were taking this opportunity to enhance the visuals for the core Volcanic Orb skill as well, and would like to share the amazing new 3D models for Volcanic orb - The baseline Fire version, the cold conversion, and the all new Void conversion provided through this unique!
And finally, weve prepared a quick video demonstrating the new Item in action with its special effect and new Volcanic Orb visuals! Again, note that we are still tweaking some of the new visuals, and not all are necessarily final.
We were looking forward to running this kind of event for a long time, and are extremely happy that we finally arrived at a window in which weve been able to commit to it. A big thank you to everyone who got involved with this event submitting both your ideas, and your votes, to create this amazing new Unique item. This event as far as were aware, has been a first of its kind. Full community guidance for creation of an in-game item is something which presents a number of challenges. With our ties to our community, we were more than happy to take these challenges head on, and weve learned a lot through this event. Were extremely happy with the outcome of the event, so there is a decent chance we may do something like this again in the future in a further refined form. But for now, this is our one and only, dearly created, Community Designed Unique. We are planning to welcome the Lament of the Lost Refuge to the world of Eterra in the next major update for Last Epoch, so feel free to start your fallen Void Mage theory crafting! A final thank you to all of our awesome community, and well see you in the next news post! April 8th - Community Designed Unique Kick Off April 15th - Community Designed Unique: Item Type April 22nd - Community Designed Unique: Item Theme April 29th - Community Designed Unique: Unique Effect May 6th - Community Designed Unique: Item Art May 13th - Community Designed Unique: Item Name and Flavour Text May 27th - Community Designed Unique: Reveal!
[ 2022-05-27 18:00:21 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and once more: Welcome to the final post of the Community Designed Unique Event! Over the course of 6 weeks, we held a total of seven polls to result in a new Unique item to be immortalized within Last Epoch. This event has been a very special one. The entire unique from start to finish has been designed by the community. Throughout this event, there have been many amazing ideas brought forward by the community, and some very close races in the polls. Some of these ideas may not have won the polls, but our hearts instead, and may well live to see implementation in some other form (Long unlive zom-bees!). However the community has spoken, and the Community Designed Unique has been created! While our production team has been hard at work on multiplayer, Performance, and other top-secret changes for the next major update, our art team has been hard at work over the last couple of weeks to bring this Community Designed Unique to life for us to show off today. As an additional teaser: Since you all have decided on a new conversion for Volcanic Orb requiring new visuals, weve also taken this opportunity to bring the model and VFX for Volcanic Orb up to our current standards. These changes aim to give it a much more engaging visual design alongside many other combat and visual improvements. Were also looking at the SFX for Volcanic Orb, however, todays reveal will be covering some of the updated Visuals for Volcanic orb, the new Unique Spear, and the first reveal of the completed Unique items stats! So without further ado, allow us to introduce you all to your new unique item:
Lament of the Lost Refuge
Were really excited about where this new unique can be taken. Weve seen what can happen with Void based mages in the past, and were re-opening that door with this weapon. This unique effect also offers a lot of versatility in how its power is leveraged, rather than specifying skill combination . This gives it a strong unique aspect rather than simply being a point of power for existing builds. Well be monitoring the power of this unique closely on release to ensure it meets what were looking for. As part of that - we want this, as with almost all Uniques, to keep relevancy throughout the game. If the community finds it needs some more power after getting their hands on it for a while, or perhaps its destroying the hordes of the Void a little too easily, well make sure it has a good solid home in Last Epoch as the very first Community Unique. So, with that, lets take a look at what this new Unique looks like, and what kind of stats it will be bringing to the table in Last Epoch. Please note that these stats are not final, and are still subject to further QA testing.
To get ahead of at least one question - were currently looking at Corrupted Heraldry to have a 12 stack limit, with a 12 second duration per stack. This allows you to maintain full stacks so long as youre following closely to the orb to be getting hit by shrapnel. As mentioned, were taking this opportunity to enhance the visuals for the core Volcanic Orb skill as well, and would like to share the amazing new 3D models for Volcanic orb - The baseline Fire version, the cold conversion, and the all new Void conversion provided through this unique!
And finally, weve prepared a quick video demonstrating the new Item in action with its special effect and new Volcanic Orb visuals! Again, note that we are still tweaking some of the new visuals, and not all are necessarily final.
The Wrap-up
We were looking forward to running this kind of event for a long time, and are extremely happy that we finally arrived at a window in which weve been able to commit to it. A big thank you to everyone who got involved with this event submitting both your ideas, and your votes, to create this amazing new Unique item. This event as far as were aware, has been a first of its kind. Full community guidance for creation of an in-game item is something which presents a number of challenges. With our ties to our community, we were more than happy to take these challenges head on, and weve learned a lot through this event. Were extremely happy with the outcome of the event, so there is a decent chance we may do something like this again in the future in a further refined form. But for now, this is our one and only, dearly created, Community Designed Unique. We are planning to welcome the Lament of the Lost Refuge to the world of Eterra in the next major update for Last Epoch, so feel free to start your fallen Void Mage theory crafting! A final thank you to all of our awesome community, and well see you in the next news post! April 8th - Community Designed Unique Kick Off April 15th - Community Designed Unique: Item Type April 22nd - Community Designed Unique: Item Theme April 29th - Community Designed Unique: Unique Effect May 6th - Community Designed Unique: Item Art May 13th - Community Designed Unique: Item Name and Flavour Text May 27th - Community Designed Unique: Reveal!
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-05-27 17:00:23 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Hail of Arrows Marksman. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Check out the Buzz for this Years World Bee Day
Eleventh Hour Games started its days as a single post on reddit, asking Who wants to make an ARPG?. This thread brought together a number of hardcore fans , who then got together after work to produce a demo late into the night (part of the reason for Eleventh Hour Games). With this Demo, they went to Kickstarter to try to get funding to make the ARPG they wanted. From this Kickstarter, EHG has continued to expand, to date releasing 18 major patches, and numerous smaller patches, with a vision for a long continued life cycle for Last Epoch. All of this is thanks to our community. From those that directly backed the game, to build guide creators, content creators doing showcases, and members of the community simply having conversations in chat, on discord, and on the forums all help to build the community to what it is. As the original founding of EHG started with hardcore members of the ARPG fan community, we intend to always keep that close to our hearts as we continue to create the game weve always dreamt about building. We strive to be open and communicative with our community, to listen to our communitys feedback and incorporate it, and make sure we prioritize our community; as we are all members of that self-same community. Many of our expanded team members even started out as dedicated members of the Last Epoch community specifically, including myself. So to all of you: Thank you for all of your support up to today, and we hope to continue our great relationship and community as we keep going into the future of Last Epoch (or any other timelines that it may take).
Now, this post may raise the question of why bees?. Well we honestly dont know. We know where it started. Early on in Last Epoch we released Keepers Gloves and Keepers Idols. These were the first (and to date only) methods of generating bees as minions within Last Epoch. However, there was a couple of bugs with these bugs, which allowed significant quantities of bees to be summoned. This was corrected in subsequent smaller patches, but the legend of the bees carried on. Though were not quite sure why it grew into what it is today, I know I for one fully embrace our new bee overlords. The community attachment to bees is certainly something we intend to support so long as the community desires it. On that note: We have a couple of items wed like to share today. Weve had two of our backers recently finish working on their Unique Designs with our production team. These Uniques are both aimed at increasing the diversity and availability of bee related builds, and have some really exciting opportunities.
The first Creator Unique wed like to show is the new Bloodkeepers Nest created with Hunter. This unique Primalist relic focuses on directly buffing bees to use them as a primary source of damage combined alongside other Spriggan Form abilities - primarily Thorn Shield.
The second Creator Unique wed like to show is the Hive Mind created with K1ngisback. This unique Rogue helm focuses on hybridizing the rogues specialty with throwing skills, poison damage, and adding more bees to the build, allowing either a focus on minions, or using the bees as support. With this unique, youll also convert your Decoys into Beecoys, causing them to generate a swarm of bees when they detonate, keeping the swarm strong.
Make sure to hold onto those Keepers Gloves, and Keepers Idols, because both of these new Uniques will be released with the next major update! I know Im very excited to have more bee swarm viability. If youre interested in World Bee Day initiatives, you can find more information here: https://www.un.org/en/observances/bee-day and https://www.worldbeeday.org. As with every Friday, well be hosting our dev stream Today (Friday the 20th) at 3:00PM CDT. Mike might have also something special prepared for this stream as well for this day. So if youre interested in asking any questions about the game, watching a developer play the game, or just hang out with some of the developers, make sure to swing by for the stream! Thank you once again, to all of our amazing community members, and may the bees be with you!
[ 2022-05-20 18:00:34 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! Today is an oddly special day for Last Epoch: World Bee Day. On the 20th of December, 2017, the UN General Assembly officially declared May 20th World Bee Day in observation of the role bees play within our worlds ecosystem as a pollinator. This day of recognition aims to increase awareness of the critical part they play in everything from food production to medicine production, and to provide information to help protect these critical creatures from the decline they have been facing. While this is an important topic in general, you may feel its odd for a game company such as ourselves to be talking about and promoting it. However, those who have been with us for a while may have recognized that bees have found a special place within our hearts, game, and community. As such, today is a day of celebration.
To our Community
Eleventh Hour Games started its days as a single post on reddit, asking Who wants to make an ARPG?. This thread brought together a number of hardcore fans , who then got together after work to produce a demo late into the night (part of the reason for Eleventh Hour Games). With this Demo, they went to Kickstarter to try to get funding to make the ARPG they wanted. From this Kickstarter, EHG has continued to expand, to date releasing 18 major patches, and numerous smaller patches, with a vision for a long continued life cycle for Last Epoch. All of this is thanks to our community. From those that directly backed the game, to build guide creators, content creators doing showcases, and members of the community simply having conversations in chat, on discord, and on the forums all help to build the community to what it is. As the original founding of EHG started with hardcore members of the ARPG fan community, we intend to always keep that close to our hearts as we continue to create the game weve always dreamt about building. We strive to be open and communicative with our community, to listen to our communitys feedback and incorporate it, and make sure we prioritize our community; as we are all members of that self-same community. Many of our expanded team members even started out as dedicated members of the Last Epoch community specifically, including myself. So to all of you: Thank you for all of your support up to today, and we hope to continue our great relationship and community as we keep going into the future of Last Epoch (or any other timelines that it may take).
Bees?
Now, this post may raise the question of why bees?. Well we honestly dont know. We know where it started. Early on in Last Epoch we released Keepers Gloves and Keepers Idols. These were the first (and to date only) methods of generating bees as minions within Last Epoch. However, there was a couple of bugs with these bugs, which allowed significant quantities of bees to be summoned. This was corrected in subsequent smaller patches, but the legend of the bees carried on. Though were not quite sure why it grew into what it is today, I know I for one fully embrace our new bee overlords. The community attachment to bees is certainly something we intend to support so long as the community desires it. On that note: We have a couple of items wed like to share today. Weve had two of our backers recently finish working on their Unique Designs with our production team. These Uniques are both aimed at increasing the diversity and availability of bee related builds, and have some really exciting opportunities.
Bloodkeepers Nest
The first Creator Unique wed like to show is the new Bloodkeepers Nest created with Hunter. This unique Primalist relic focuses on directly buffing bees to use them as a primary source of damage combined alongside other Spriggan Form abilities - primarily Thorn Shield.
Hive Mind
The second Creator Unique wed like to show is the Hive Mind created with K1ngisback. This unique Rogue helm focuses on hybridizing the rogues specialty with throwing skills, poison damage, and adding more bees to the build, allowing either a focus on minions, or using the bees as support. With this unique, youll also convert your Decoys into Beecoys, causing them to generate a swarm of bees when they detonate, keeping the swarm strong.
Make sure to hold onto those Keepers Gloves, and Keepers Idols, because both of these new Uniques will be released with the next major update! I know Im very excited to have more bee swarm viability. If youre interested in World Bee Day initiatives, you can find more information here: https://www.un.org/en/observances/bee-day and https://www.worldbeeday.org. As with every Friday, well be hosting our dev stream Today (Friday the 20th) at 3:00PM CDT. Mike might have also something special prepared for this stream as well for this day. So if youre interested in asking any questions about the game, watching a developer play the game, or just hang out with some of the developers, make sure to swing by for the stream! Thank you once again, to all of our amazing community members, and may the bees be with you!
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-05-20 17:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Hail of Arrows Marksman. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Community Designed Unique: Item Name and Flavour Text
[ 2022-05-13 18:00:33 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome to the sixth Community Designed Unique event poll!
To quickly recap last weeks poll, we decided on what the art would be for the Unique item. While we had three great options representing The Lost Refuge, and its cultural combination due to humanity from across Eterra taking refuge together - there was a very strong community preference.
This spear has strong influences from Lagon, Rahyeh, and Heorots people, with the makeshift nature of combining powerful relics from their homelands into a necessary weapon to try to hold at bay the ceaseless void.
Now, we must finally decide what the name and flavour text will be for the item. The name helps to pull the entire item together, often embodying both the theme and effect of the item, completing everything into one whole. The flavour text often provides either background information for the item - lore, or provides a quote from someone who was particularly close to the item or directly wielded it.
We got some fantastic suggestions for these two aspects. Thank you to all our community members who submitted their ideas for these options! I personally find creating names and lore far more difficult than creating unique effects. Weve reviewed the community suggestions and again picked those that were the highest voted, and our most favorite. Join us on our forums at https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/community-designed-unique-item-name-and-flavour-text/48826 and cast your vote for the Community Designed Unique's Name and Flavour Text this week!
April 8th - Community Designed Unique Kick Off
April 15th - Community Designed Unique: Item Type
April 22nd - Community Designed Unique: Item Theme
April 29th - Community Designed Unique: Unique Effect
May 6th - Community Designed Unique: Item Art
May 13th - Community Designed Unique: Item Name and Flavour Text
May 27th - Community Designed Unique: Reveal!
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-05-13 17:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Hail of Arrows Marksman. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Closed Multiplayer Testing Begins | Development Update
In March we released Patch 0.8.5 - Depths of Eterra. This update introduced two new dungeons: The Lightless Arbor and The Soulfire Bastion, as well as The Arena of Champions, an overhaul to Catalysts, and a whole slew of new 3D models for unique weapons and armor sets. These two new dungeons saw with them their own unique gameplay and reward mechanics, including a much anticipated gold sink. With the addition of all this new content, we feel our endgame goals for 1.0 are in a great space. Of course there will still be further adjustments and changes, but were happy with the variety in endgame content to now switch our focus fully to a few key goals. Were turning our attention to visual and combat polish, performance improvements, and of course everyones favorite topic, Multiplayer. Combat feel and performance have been two of the most talked-about feedback topics from our community for some time now, and while we felt that delivering our core content was something we needed to do first, we are now incredibly excited to be in a position to add the level of polish to these systems that Last Epoch deserves.
As weve always planned on providing cycles for content post 1.0, weve followed fairly regular development cycles of 3-4 months since the first Beta launch of Last Epoch. This allowed us to hone our techniques for this kind of regular development schedule, and gain an understanding of what we could, or could not develop within one of these cycles. With our current goal of prioritizing multiplayer, performance, and combat polish, we are going to be extending this patch cycle to the 6-month mark (Septemberish) to keep progress on these fronts moving full steam ahead. This change is not for all future development cycles, weve only decided to take more time on the current one to progress more efficiently on a specifically large and branching task, instead of splitting our attention back and forth between multiplayer and single player. As mentioned in the last multiplayer update, were moving towards a singular project, where single player and multiplayer are not separate projects, but one unified goal we are moving towards. As such, were taking the time right now to make that happen. Moving forward, we will also be combining Development updates, and Multiplayer updates into one Development update as we have with this post.
For the multiplayer section of this Development update, our Production Director Stanzwar is back to bring you up to speed on our progress. Going forward were going to be combining these updates into single, frequent Development updates. however for this post Stanzwar is still providing the update directly!
The last month or two has mostly been heads down focusing on a lot of this less glamourous work I mentioned in our February Multiplayer update, but let me break down some updates to our progress in these areas.
We have finished or nearly finished adding a ton of minor content to the game that needed to have the multiplayer switch flipped to on. This is a lot of smaller content such as:
We have made a lot of progress on this front; weve made more progress here than anywhere else, but we can appreciate that this isnt the most exciting topic. Over the past several months, weve been working on migrating our backend system to gain more control and capacity to provide ourselves with telemetry and statistics. This allows us to more quickly identify, correct, and roll out fixes for issues much quicker than ever before. We have a lot of power here now, and here are some examples of how this backend migration is working out for us:
We knew this was going to be an incredibly complex project, but it was even more complex than we anticipated in the last post :). Weve made most of our way through completing this project and are almost ready to release multiplayer monolith for testing to our internal team. One major decision weve made is a change to how our game loads for you. We wanted to make sure that traveling back and forth from Echoes and the Monolith reward chamber was a quick and seamless experience. So we totally changed how we do loading in Last Epoch! Previously, at any part of the game, we would just unload old zones and load new ones as you played. Your experience is more complicated in the Monolith - you are moving between Echoes, the reward chamber, and the hub zone constantly. In a group, this would have meant a lot of loading of new servers for players - not only is that expensive for us, but its a very slow and annoying player experience. To solve all of this, our outstanding development team has re-engineered our game to support additive loading - that means we can do all kinds of things now, and in the future! This means:
Now that were through some major updates, we are happy to share some big news. With all the progress weve made, weve decided to bring multiplayer to our Community Testers! Our first multiplayer test with our Community Testers will be TODAY! For our Community Testers, were giving them a few straightforward goals:
It is a huge transition for any team to go from managing an offline game to an online one. We have often mentioned we want to make this process as healthy as possible for our team, while also being able to properly handle any issues we see when we go live. For now, we are going to be starting with short bursts of tests. Our eventual goal is to be doing full-weekend tests, and then having full pre-Alpha multiplayer availability at all times. A lot of the prior months have been filled with planning, organizing, and trying our best to be ready to handle any issues we run into without burning out our team. We get a lot of questions from the team about when we are ready, when we will feel good to test, and how we will get there. We recently had an epiphany that helped us simplify how we can answer these questions: Go online!. Eventually at some point, you just have to make the decision to jump in and get the game online. Today is that day! Were very excited to finally be approaching a wider online release, and very excited where this will take us.
Our main goal is to start making multiplayer available to our Community Testers, and beginning to master the art of the online service. In doing this, well likely share some details about how the test went and what our next steps are after that. Outside of that, were almost completely focused on fixing multiplayer bugs, finishing up features, and preparing for larger and wider multiplayer releases. Thank you for checking in, and expect to hear more from me soon after our testing to let you know how it went!
Moving into the current development cycle from 0.8.5, were making the most concentrated effort on multiplayer weve ever made. However, this doesnt mean the core game is going to be neglected. Alongside the development for multiplayer, were also going to be addressing some of the topics which weve received a lot of feedback regarding, and we agree are very important for us to polish as we approach 1.0. This includes performance optimization, making combat feel better and more exciting, as well as updating item and enemy models to our more current standards. Of course, these items in themselves will be constantly ongoing projects for as long as we continue developing content for Last Epoch (planning for many years of content!). However, theres a good bit of catching up we feel we can do here which we intend to target during this development cycle. Not all of these items may make it into the next major patch, but are items we are currently working on preparing Last Epoch for its 1.0 release.
In our efforts to further polish Last Epoch, we are creating a suite of analytics tools to measure game performance. We know that performance improvements are something that the community is very much looking forward to, and we are very excited about this development. We are taking the extra step here - from measuring individual abilities and effects to creating performance heatmaps of entire levels. This gives us a broad view of the entire game, how levels compare to each other and where the heavier FPS hits are.
With these tools we can measure values such as how many objects are being drawn per scene, as well as perform comparisons between different computer setups, making it easier to find bottlenecks. It also helps us to establish a guideline for what we expect from level performance in the future, so if a new map deviates from the average we will immediately recognize it. We are planning an entire development blog specifically showcasing the improvements were making to Last Epochs performance and optimization across the game - so keep your eyes out for that in the future.
One of the significant areas of feedback we get concerning core gameplay is Combat Feel. This is a fairly complex topic and consists of a lot of things that can be hard to identify, or call out - but is certainly a case of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. To improve the feeling of combat, were focusing on two main parts: how it feels to hit an enemy and how it feels to kill an enemy.
For the combat feel of when you hit an enemy, were exploring options for enhancing the skill SFX and VFX that can happen when hitting enemies, such as blood splatter, dust and bones being shattered off on hitting skeletons, bug gloop coming off of bugs, void splatters for void creatures, etc. Additionally were looking into improving many stun animations as well as adding walking flinch animations for big hits that dont quite stun to provide this feedback of enemies being hit, even while moving.
For the combat feel of killing enemies, were experimenting with various ways to add custom death VFX for each damage type, which so far has been very successful. The goal here is to make this aspect of killing enemies feel more responsive to your skill and damage type selection. Seeing that impact of your skill selection directly on enemies as they die helps to reinforce the importance of your build selection, and its effects.
With new on-death effects, we are also making efforts to improve many death animations, and ragdolls throughout the game. Further expanding on this, we are also adding more variations for death animations for enemies often encountered in large packs to provide a better reaction to clearing large groups of enemies at once.
Another part of combat feel were working on is clarity of ailments on enemies. For this, were moving the ailment points to inside of the monsters, as well as reworking the visuals for many ailments. While this may sound a bit complex, essentially it works to make the monster feel more like its on fire, or poisoned. Sometimes monsters in Last Epoch currently have their ailments obviously floating in the air next to them instead of inside or on them. These changes should help make a big impact on the feeling of applying ailments, and seeing that ailment truly affecting your enemies.
While this also plays into combat feel, were also revisiting some of the older skill VFX to get these skills up to date and provide a more visually pleasing experience to use them. For those that follow our developer streams (every Friday at 3:00 PM CDT at twitch.tv/lastepochgame!), you may have already seen these; but we want to share these two examples with our entire community and one additional new yet unteased VFX update. Introducing the new visual effects for Hammer Throw, Judgment, and Aura of Decay!
In refining the gameplay experience Last Epoch, were continuing to put attention into the UI elements. UI often goes under the radar, however it is critical to the game experience as its something regularly encountered, or even constantly persistent. We recently introduced the new skill bar, passive page, and globe UIs, and now were working on expanding on these UI updates through the Dialogue system. Were reworking the panels: providing all major and minor NPCs in Eterra new Portraits to make them more distinct and recognizable, cleaning up dialogue (often making it shorter and easier to digest), and improving user experience with the window and options no longer moving up and down based on the dialogue length. For text boxes with longer dialogue that doesnt require a player response, there is now a continue button where clicking anywhere on the panel (aside from the close button) will progress the text.
Alongside the improvements to combat feel, were also continuing our efforts to update visuals throughout the game to our current standards. This includes minions, companions, skills, and class armor designs. Heres a few examples of some of the updates were currently working on!
The first items wed like to show off is the updates coming for the Primalists Primal Sabretooth and Primal Bear companions with their new concept arts, as well as the 3D render for the Acolytes Golem. These updated styles help provide more character to these companions, as well as provide distinct silhouettes within the game sphere to make them easier to identify at a glance. These visual updates will also be coming with updates to their related skill tree!
Another item wed like to show off is a visual overhaul to everyones favorite domesticated Eterran animals: Groles. The whole family will be getting new standard and corrupted variant visuals, as well as animations.
Of course, one of the most common categories of feedback we get (aside from when mp?) is in making different armor have a visual impact on your character. And we agree that this is very important in distinguishing your character, as well as providing a feeling of progression and power throughout the game. For this, wed like to share the concept art for what is planned to be the highest tier of armor for the Mage Class, as well as one of the early Primalist armor sets.
Alongside updated models for armor sets, we are also continuing to work on creating 3D models for all existing Unique Weapons, Shields, and Catalysts to provide the visual experience of actually wielding the items you have equipped. With this, we have a couple examples of 3D renders wed like to share the completed models for:
There are a number other improvements we are excited to share with you in the future, and as all these systems start to harmonize together, Last Epoch is really feeling like its leveling up in a big way. As it happens, leveling up is one of those core feelings that ARPGs are known for delivering, and so we wanted to take the time to add some new polish to that experience as well.
We may have hinted at it throughout this post here and there, but some big things are starting to hit full sprint here at Eleventh Hour Games. Today is the first day anyone outside of our own team is accessing multiplayer which is incredibly exciting for us. Were also revisiting some of our earlier work and moving it up to current standards to get everything ready for a goal that was once a Kickstarter dream. Thank you to all of our community members for your continued support, as we continue towards the Last Epoch weve always dreamed of making! After the first series of tests with our Community Testers, we will be posting another update talking about how the tests went, as well as looking for additional Community Testers for expanding the tests - so make sure to hold on to your applications for now and keep an eye out for this post with information on how to apply if youre interested in joining the expanded Alpha tests!
[ 2022-05-10 17:00:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers to our May Development Update for Last Epoch. It has been a little while since our last post, so oh boy, do we have a lot to share with you today. We are going to be sharing our progress on several big initiatives weve been working on, including multiplayer, visual and combat polish, and performance. We are also excited to announce that today marks the first day of our closed community testing for Multiplayer in Last Epoch.
Development Focus
In March we released Patch 0.8.5 - Depths of Eterra. This update introduced two new dungeons: The Lightless Arbor and The Soulfire Bastion, as well as The Arena of Champions, an overhaul to Catalysts, and a whole slew of new 3D models for unique weapons and armor sets. These two new dungeons saw with them their own unique gameplay and reward mechanics, including a much anticipated gold sink. With the addition of all this new content, we feel our endgame goals for 1.0 are in a great space. Of course there will still be further adjustments and changes, but were happy with the variety in endgame content to now switch our focus fully to a few key goals. Were turning our attention to visual and combat polish, performance improvements, and of course everyones favorite topic, Multiplayer. Combat feel and performance have been two of the most talked-about feedback topics from our community for some time now, and while we felt that delivering our core content was something we needed to do first, we are now incredibly excited to be in a position to add the level of polish to these systems that Last Epoch deserves.
Development Cadence
As weve always planned on providing cycles for content post 1.0, weve followed fairly regular development cycles of 3-4 months since the first Beta launch of Last Epoch. This allowed us to hone our techniques for this kind of regular development schedule, and gain an understanding of what we could, or could not develop within one of these cycles. With our current goal of prioritizing multiplayer, performance, and combat polish, we are going to be extending this patch cycle to the 6-month mark (Septemberish) to keep progress on these fronts moving full steam ahead. This change is not for all future development cycles, weve only decided to take more time on the current one to progress more efficiently on a specifically large and branching task, instead of splitting our attention back and forth between multiplayer and single player. As mentioned in the last multiplayer update, were moving towards a singular project, where single player and multiplayer are not separate projects, but one unified goal we are moving towards. As such, were taking the time right now to make that happen. Moving forward, we will also be combining Development updates, and Multiplayer updates into one Development update as we have with this post.
Multiplayer Development Update
For the multiplayer section of this Development update, our Production Director Stanzwar is back to bring you up to speed on our progress. Going forward were going to be combining these updates into single, frequent Development updates. however for this post Stanzwar is still providing the update directly!
A Letter From Stanzwar
The last month or two has mostly been heads down focusing on a lot of this less glamourous work I mentioned in our February Multiplayer update, but let me break down some updates to our progress in these areas.
Updates from our last post
Remaining Content
We have finished or nearly finished adding a ton of minor content to the game that needed to have the multiplayer switch flipped to on. This is a lot of smaller content such as:
- Shrines
- UI notifications such as Level Ups
- Disconnect Logic
- Online portal behaviors
- Minion functionality (they transition across zones online now!)
- Monolith (nearing completion)
- Channeled abilities (nearing completion)
- and a lot more!
Diagnostics / Fixing Multiplayer Bugs Fast
We have made a lot of progress on this front; weve made more progress here than anywhere else, but we can appreciate that this isnt the most exciting topic. Over the past several months, weve been working on migrating our backend system to gain more control and capacity to provide ourselves with telemetry and statistics. This allows us to more quickly identify, correct, and roll out fixes for issues much quicker than ever before. We have a lot of power here now, and here are some examples of how this backend migration is working out for us:
- Were down to zero or extremely few crashes in our servers
- Our system that allocates you a server is up to 100% reliability
- When you have an issue like a crash or poor performance, we can see:
- Your player names and accounts
- The time of the problem
- The precise server it occurred on
- The logs for the issue
- An alert is immediately sent to our development team
- We have a lot of data about:
- Number of total crashes
- Active players and party information
- Reliability
- Performance (is some crazy build making servers work overtime?)
Multiplayer Monolith
We knew this was going to be an incredibly complex project, but it was even more complex than we anticipated in the last post :). Weve made most of our way through completing this project and are almost ready to release multiplayer monolith for testing to our internal team. One major decision weve made is a change to how our game loads for you. We wanted to make sure that traveling back and forth from Echoes and the Monolith reward chamber was a quick and seamless experience. So we totally changed how we do loading in Last Epoch! Previously, at any part of the game, we would just unload old zones and load new ones as you played. Your experience is more complicated in the Monolith - you are moving between Echoes, the reward chamber, and the hub zone constantly. In a group, this would have meant a lot of loading of new servers for players - not only is that expensive for us, but its a very slow and annoying player experience. To solve all of this, our outstanding development team has re-engineered our game to support additive loading - that means we can do all kinds of things now, and in the future! This means:
- When you enter the Monolith hub, the reward zone will also be loaded
- Neither of these will unload
- When you enter a new echo, it loads it
- When you finish an Echo and enter the hub or reward zone, it unloads
- You can seamlessly travel between your Echo, the Monolith hub, and the reward zone
- All of this is now on a single server for a full group
CT Test Update and Recruitment news
Now that were through some major updates, we are happy to share some big news. With all the progress weve made, weve decided to bring multiplayer to our Community Testers! Our first multiplayer test with our Community Testers will be TODAY! For our Community Testers, were giving them a few straightforward goals:
- Have fun!
- Play in groups of 2-4 players
- Dont race
- Try to create party synergies
- Report major player experience issues
- Observe party, server allocation, and server health
- Observe server performance callouts
- See how well were able to intake feedback and data
- Not focused on gameplay yet
Going Online
It is a huge transition for any team to go from managing an offline game to an online one. We have often mentioned we want to make this process as healthy as possible for our team, while also being able to properly handle any issues we see when we go live. For now, we are going to be starting with short bursts of tests. Our eventual goal is to be doing full-weekend tests, and then having full pre-Alpha multiplayer availability at all times. A lot of the prior months have been filled with planning, organizing, and trying our best to be ready to handle any issues we run into without burning out our team. We get a lot of questions from the team about when we are ready, when we will feel good to test, and how we will get there. We recently had an epiphany that helped us simplify how we can answer these questions: Go online!. Eventually at some point, you just have to make the decision to jump in and get the game online. Today is that day! Were very excited to finally be approaching a wider online release, and very excited where this will take us.
Goal for May
Our main goal is to start making multiplayer available to our Community Testers, and beginning to master the art of the online service. In doing this, well likely share some details about how the test went and what our next steps are after that. Outside of that, were almost completely focused on fixing multiplayer bugs, finishing up features, and preparing for larger and wider multiplayer releases. Thank you for checking in, and expect to hear more from me soon after our testing to let you know how it went!
Current Development
Moving into the current development cycle from 0.8.5, were making the most concentrated effort on multiplayer weve ever made. However, this doesnt mean the core game is going to be neglected. Alongside the development for multiplayer, were also going to be addressing some of the topics which weve received a lot of feedback regarding, and we agree are very important for us to polish as we approach 1.0. This includes performance optimization, making combat feel better and more exciting, as well as updating item and enemy models to our more current standards. Of course, these items in themselves will be constantly ongoing projects for as long as we continue developing content for Last Epoch (planning for many years of content!). However, theres a good bit of catching up we feel we can do here which we intend to target during this development cycle. Not all of these items may make it into the next major patch, but are items we are currently working on preparing Last Epoch for its 1.0 release.
Performance Optimization
In our efforts to further polish Last Epoch, we are creating a suite of analytics tools to measure game performance. We know that performance improvements are something that the community is very much looking forward to, and we are very excited about this development. We are taking the extra step here - from measuring individual abilities and effects to creating performance heatmaps of entire levels. This gives us a broad view of the entire game, how levels compare to each other and where the heavier FPS hits are.
With these tools we can measure values such as how many objects are being drawn per scene, as well as perform comparisons between different computer setups, making it easier to find bottlenecks. It also helps us to establish a guideline for what we expect from level performance in the future, so if a new map deviates from the average we will immediately recognize it. We are planning an entire development blog specifically showcasing the improvements were making to Last Epochs performance and optimization across the game - so keep your eyes out for that in the future.
Improvements to Combat Feel
One of the significant areas of feedback we get concerning core gameplay is Combat Feel. This is a fairly complex topic and consists of a lot of things that can be hard to identify, or call out - but is certainly a case of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. To improve the feeling of combat, were focusing on two main parts: how it feels to hit an enemy and how it feels to kill an enemy.
On-Hit Effects
For the combat feel of when you hit an enemy, were exploring options for enhancing the skill SFX and VFX that can happen when hitting enemies, such as blood splatter, dust and bones being shattered off on hitting skeletons, bug gloop coming off of bugs, void splatters for void creatures, etc. Additionally were looking into improving many stun animations as well as adding walking flinch animations for big hits that dont quite stun to provide this feedback of enemies being hit, even while moving.
On-death Effects
For the combat feel of killing enemies, were experimenting with various ways to add custom death VFX for each damage type, which so far has been very successful. The goal here is to make this aspect of killing enemies feel more responsive to your skill and damage type selection. Seeing that impact of your skill selection directly on enemies as they die helps to reinforce the importance of your build selection, and its effects.
Death Animations
With new on-death effects, we are also making efforts to improve many death animations, and ragdolls throughout the game. Further expanding on this, we are also adding more variations for death animations for enemies often encountered in large packs to provide a better reaction to clearing large groups of enemies at once.
Ailments
Another part of combat feel were working on is clarity of ailments on enemies. For this, were moving the ailment points to inside of the monsters, as well as reworking the visuals for many ailments. While this may sound a bit complex, essentially it works to make the monster feel more like its on fire, or poisoned. Sometimes monsters in Last Epoch currently have their ailments obviously floating in the air next to them instead of inside or on them. These changes should help make a big impact on the feeling of applying ailments, and seeing that ailment truly affecting your enemies.
Skill VFX & SFX
While this also plays into combat feel, were also revisiting some of the older skill VFX to get these skills up to date and provide a more visually pleasing experience to use them. For those that follow our developer streams (every Friday at 3:00 PM CDT at twitch.tv/lastepochgame!), you may have already seen these; but we want to share these two examples with our entire community and one additional new yet unteased VFX update. Introducing the new visual effects for Hammer Throw, Judgment, and Aura of Decay!
Continued Visual and UI Updates
UI Updates
In refining the gameplay experience Last Epoch, were continuing to put attention into the UI elements. UI often goes under the radar, however it is critical to the game experience as its something regularly encountered, or even constantly persistent. We recently introduced the new skill bar, passive page, and globe UIs, and now were working on expanding on these UI updates through the Dialogue system. Were reworking the panels: providing all major and minor NPCs in Eterra new Portraits to make them more distinct and recognizable, cleaning up dialogue (often making it shorter and easier to digest), and improving user experience with the window and options no longer moving up and down based on the dialogue length. For text boxes with longer dialogue that doesnt require a player response, there is now a continue button where clicking anywhere on the panel (aside from the close button) will progress the text.
Visual Updates
Alongside the improvements to combat feel, were also continuing our efforts to update visuals throughout the game to our current standards. This includes minions, companions, skills, and class armor designs. Heres a few examples of some of the updates were currently working on!
Primal Sabretooth, Primal Bear, and Golem
The first items wed like to show off is the updates coming for the Primalists Primal Sabretooth and Primal Bear companions with their new concept arts, as well as the 3D render for the Acolytes Golem. These updated styles help provide more character to these companions, as well as provide distinct silhouettes within the game sphere to make them easier to identify at a glance. These visual updates will also be coming with updates to their related skill tree!
Monster Models
Another item wed like to show off is a visual overhaul to everyones favorite domesticated Eterran animals: Groles. The whole family will be getting new standard and corrupted variant visuals, as well as animations.
Armor Models
Of course, one of the most common categories of feedback we get (aside from when mp?) is in making different armor have a visual impact on your character. And we agree that this is very important in distinguishing your character, as well as providing a feeling of progression and power throughout the game. For this, wed like to share the concept art for what is planned to be the highest tier of armor for the Mage Class, as well as one of the early Primalist armor sets.
3D Models for Uniques
Alongside updated models for armor sets, we are also continuing to work on creating 3D models for all existing Unique Weapons, Shields, and Catalysts to provide the visual experience of actually wielding the items you have equipped. With this, we have a couple examples of 3D renders wed like to share the completed models for:
And much more
There are a number other improvements we are excited to share with you in the future, and as all these systems start to harmonize together, Last Epoch is really feeling like its leveling up in a big way. As it happens, leveling up is one of those core feelings that ARPGs are known for delivering, and so we wanted to take the time to add some new polish to that experience as well.
Looking Forward
We may have hinted at it throughout this post here and there, but some big things are starting to hit full sprint here at Eleventh Hour Games. Today is the first day anyone outside of our own team is accessing multiplayer which is incredibly exciting for us. Were also revisiting some of our earlier work and moving it up to current standards to get everything ready for a goal that was once a Kickstarter dream. Thank you to all of our community members for your continued support, as we continue towards the Last Epoch weve always dreamed of making! After the first series of tests with our Community Testers, we will be posting another update talking about how the tests went, as well as looking for additional Community Testers for expanding the tests - so make sure to hold on to your applications for now and keep an eye out for this post with information on how to apply if youre interested in joining the expanded Alpha tests!
Community Designed Unique: Item Art
[ 2022-05-06 18:00:24 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome to the fifth week of the Community Designed Unique event! Last week we posted the poll for what the items Unique Effect would be. For this poll, the community came up with some really exciting ideas. I saw a lot of people talking about theorycrafting and different potential routes each of the unique effects could take really showing just how great these unique effects were. As the poll came to a close, it was decided that the unique effect will be: [quote] Volcanic Orb is converted to Void damage +Directly Casting Volcanic Orb grants a stack of Corrupted Heraldry +Chance to gain a stack of Corrupted Heraldry when hit by Volcanic Orb Shrapnel +Gain X% movement speed, X% increased mana regen, and +X spell void damage per stack of Corrupted Heraldry +All stacks of Corrupted Heraldry are lost upon using a movement skill [/quote] This unique effect has some very interesting prospects a number of community members have already been discussing. It really takes the application of a spear in a very interesting direction, where its acting almost as a flagbearers spear over a traditional spear. The buff from shrapnel hits encourages keeping the player in close combat to continue getting more stacks as Volcanic Orb shreds down enemies, leading the charge. This allows Volcanic Orb to either be used for its direct effect, or be specialized to be a buff generator for other skills changing how the skill can be used in combat. For todays poll, weve had our art design team come up with three options for what the item will look like. Being based around the Lost Refuge, these designs incorporate the makeshift direction of weapons given the final stand environment, as well as the incorporation of several Eterran cultures as everyone took refuge here, and finally the corruption of the void creeping into the weapon. However theres three amazing options here for what this item could look like - and its up to you to decide. Join us on our official forums at https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/community-designed-unique-item-art/48761 and cast your vote for what your community designed unique art should be!
Last Epoch Developer Stream
[ 2022-05-06 17:00:21 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, Every Friday at 3:00pm CDT we host a dev stream with Mike, one of our game designers, as an opportunity to catch up with our community, help answer questions, and just be part of the community ourselves. Each month, we pick a new charity for the weekly dev streams. All income from Subscriptions, Donations, and Bits are donated to the charity. Back in March we started raising funds for UNICEFs Ukraine children relief fund. Alongside setting this charity for the stream, we also set forth a promise to match the communities donations. When April rolled around, and we hadnt met our goal, we decided to extend this fundraiser through April, as well as continuing the match promise. With this fundraiser through both March and April the community raised a total of $1,525.42 through the stream in subscriptions, bits, and donations. With other direct contributions, as well as our promise to match these donations (and a bit of rounding up), Eleventh Hour Games with the contributions of our amazing community is donating a total of $3,500 from this fundraiser for the UNICEF Ukraine Childrens relief fund! We would like to give a huge thanks to all of our community members, both those who contributed, and those who showed up to provide support. Were happy to contribute what we can to these causes, and happy to have a community that supports in doing so. Of course, were not done. As mentioned, every month we pick a charity for which all stream contributions go to. For the month of May, we will be contributing the stream proceeds to the St.Jude Childrens Research Hospital. St.Jude Childrens Research Hospital focuses on pediatric treatment and research concerning catastrophic diseases in children, primarily leukemia and other cancers. This organization also has one of the best charity scores for accountability and transparency out there. So whether youre interested in contributing to this charity, asking questions about Last Epoch, or just hanging out with some devs live, make sure to catch our dev stream each Friday, including today at 3:00 PM CDT!
Beta 0.8.5f Release and Patch Notes
[ 2022-05-03 21:46:43 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug which resulted in your character being locked to an idle pose when trying to both move and use an ability that was on cooldown close to the end of an ability animation.
Changes
- The ward gain effect for Ashes of Mortality can now have a 13%-19% chance to proc (from a static roll of 6%), grants 2 ward per ignite or damned stack on the target (from 2 to 3), and now also has a 1 second cooldown.
- If you have two Ashes of Mortality equipped the proc chances for the ward gain effect are added together, but the amount of ward gained is not (this was previously the other way around).
- Monolith Echoes now always contain at least one enemy type that has medium to large packs. This should reduce the potential to have echoes with particularly low enemy density.
- Enemies that lose aggro can go slightly further from their original position before losing aggro.
Community Designed Unique: Item Effect
[ 2022-04-29 18:02:48 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, and welcome to the fourth round of voting for the Community Designed Unique event! Last Week we polled for the Community's decision regarding the item theme. It turned out to be an extremely close race. While they were all great thematic options for the Unique item, two options were constantly fighting for the top spot, often tied, other times one would pull ahead by a single percentage, then the places would reverse. Eventually, in the final hours, one choice emerged the victor. In one corner was the theme of "Tri-Elemental". Sporting one of the core themes of the Mage class itself, Tri-Elemental would focus around, this particular class theme as the item theme. There were a lot of great ideas for what kind of unique effects we might see out of a tri-elemental weapon: True displays of why the Elders of the College are so revered for their mastery of this art. In the other corner, was The Lost Refuge (also known as Rat City). The Lost Refuge represents one of the final bastions of humanity against the ever-encroaching Void before the final End of Time. The valiancy, bravery, and dire straights of this area emboldened many community members with strong unique effect ideas to try to stem the tide of the void. However, there could only be one top pick for the poll, and that winner was: The Lost Refuge! Even in a poll, the last remnants of humanity would not give up the fight to emerge victorious. Sadly, The Lost Refuge in Eterra was not as successful, though with the Community Designed Unique, we will be immortalizing their efforts within Last Epoch! Over the last several weeks, we've had you all submitting your ideas for unique effects, and adding likes to those unique effects so we can compile a list to be voted on. We've reviewed this list, and have picked out the ones to which the community provided the greatest response, as well as ones we enjoyed the most. Join us on our official forums at https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/community-designed-unique-unique-effect/48723/ to see what unique options are up for grabs, and cast your vote on what this item's effect should be! April 8th - Community Designed Unique Kick Off April 15th - Community Designed Unique: Item Type April 22nd - Community Designed Unique: Item Theme April 29th - Community Designed Unique: Unique Effect May 6th - Community Designed Unique: Item Art May 13th - Community Designed Unique: Item Name and Flavour Text May 27th - Community Designed Unique: Reveal!
Last Epoch Q&A Dev Stream
[ 2022-04-29 17:00:50 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Hail of Arrows Marksman. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Beta 0.8.5e Release and Patch Notes
[ 2022-04-26 18:13:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
This patch consists mostly of buffs for a few underused uniques, set items, and skills. However a major reason for it is fixing the Ashes of Mortality + Humming Bee combination that resulted in movement speed and defense far beyond that which other builds could achieve. This occurred on account of us critically underestimating the amount of ward that could be generated by Ashes of Mortality. This was in part due to the ailment stack limit in the UI hiding the actual stacks of ailments that enemies often had applied. That limit will not be removed in this hotfix, but has been removed internally and that change will be included in our next major patch. Meanwhile, we are greatly reducing the amount of ward generated by Ashes of Mortality based on the stacks of ignite and damned on the target. To compensate, we are increasing the power it gains from ignite and damned stacks on you, and increasing the amount of increased damage it grants. Humming Bee is also being reworked. Movement speed scaling off of ward is a legacy effect implemented long before we knew how much ward builds would frequently accumulate, and in its current state it greatly exacerbates ward related imbalances. With the changes in this hotfix it will no longer give crazy amounts of movement speed when you have a ton of ward. However, it will give more increased damage than before if you're using an elemental melee attack, and its new movement speed bonuses will be more relevant when found early on in the game, as they're less dependent on generating very large amounts of ward. One of the benefits of the overpowered state of Ashes of Mortality was that it enabled ignite builds that had been underpowered for quite some time. We are slightly buffing the damage of ignite to attempt to keep those builds above water despite the nerf to the unique. Due to some changes in our deployment infrastructure, this patch has a larger download size than usual. Our apologies for the inconvenience.
Uniques
- Ashes of Mortality now grants a 6% chance to gain 2-3 Ward per Ignite and Damned on the target and 13 to 29 ward per Ignite and Damned on You (from a 13% chance to gain 6-13 ward per Ignite and Damned on you or the target).
- Ashes of Mortality grants 30% to 76% increased fire and necrotic damage (from 30% to 52%).
- The Confluence of Fate now grants 13 to 18 Fire, Necrotic, and Void Spell Damage (from 5 to 13) and is now an Oracle Amulet (from Silver Amulet).
- Humming Bee grants 1% Chance per 20 Ward to gain Haste for 2 seconds when you use a Melee Attack (from 1% increased movement speed per 250 ward).
- Humming Bee grants your Elemental Melee Attacks 1% Increased damage per 200 ward (from giving 1% increased elemental damage per 250 ward).
- Humming Bee now also grants 3% to 7% increased movement speed.
- Zeurial's Hunt grants 12 to 32 bow lightning damage and throwing lightning damage (from 12 to 22).
- Zeurial's Hunt's conditional effects grants 42% to 62% Lightning Penetration (from 42% to 52%).
- Fixed a bug where Zeurial's Hunt's effect could be procced by non-lightning attacks.
Set Items
Zerrick's Set
- Zerrick's Set's old 3 item bonus is now its 2 item bonus (its previous 2 item bonus was 54% Increased Chance To Find Potions). Its 3 Item bonus is now 72% Increased Chance to Find Potions and 18% less poison and necrotic damage taken.
- Zerrick's Greed now grants 130 to 390 dodge rating (from 120 to 240).
- Zerrick's Guile now grants 125 to 375 dodge rating (from 100 to 200).
- Zerrick's Ambition now grants 23% to 35% increased leech rate (from 20% to 30%).
Halvar's Set
- Halvar's 2 item bonus is +25 Spell Cold Damage (from +15).
- Halvar's 3 item bonus now also grants +2 to Avalanche in addition to its existing bonus.
Isadora's Set
- Isadora's Revenge grants 40 to 82 health (from 40 with no range).
- Isadora's Gravechill grants 48 to 80 health (from 36 to 60).
- Isadora's 3 Set Bonus now also grants 30% Increased Damned Effect in addition to its existing bonus.
Pebbles' Set
- Pebbles' Collar grants 24% to 42% increased minion damage (from 24% with no range).
- Pebbles' Collar grants 24% to 42% Cold Resistance (from 24% with no range).
- Pebbles' Bitemarked Sash grants 24% to 42% increased minion damage (from 24% with no range).
- Pebbles' Bitemarked Sash grants 24% to 42% Fire Resistance (from 24% with no range).
- Pebbles' Femur grants 24% to 42% Lightning Resistance (from 24% with no range).
- Pebbles' 3 set bonus now grants +42 fire, cold, or lightning damage (from 24).
Corsair's Set
- Corsair's Set's 2 item bonus now also grants 35% less necrotic damage taken on block in addition to its existing bonus.
- Changed Corsair's Blood Cowl's base type to Umbral Visage from Exile Hat.
- Corsair's Blood Cowl no longer grants 17% to 35% less necrotic damage taken on block.
- Corsair's Blood Cowl now grants 35% to 85% increased chance to find potions (from 35% to 72%).
- Corsair's Blood Cowl now grants 35% to 85% increased mirage attack area for Lethal Mirage (from 35% to 72%).
- Corsair's Boarding Shield requires level 35 (from level 51).
Last Bear's Set
- Last Bear's Set's 2 item bonus now grants 20 health gained on stun (from 15).
- The Last Bear's Scorn grants 20% to 30% Endurance (from 10% to 15%).
- The Last Bear's Fury grants 30% to 75% increased melee physical damage (from 20% to 50%).
- Changed The Last Bear's Fury base type to Engraved Gauntlets from Noble Gloves.
- The Last Bear's Lament requires level 20 (from level 28).
- The Last Bear's Lament grants 25% to 45% void resistance (from 15% to 50%).
- The Last Bear's Lament grants 45 to 105 Endurance Threshold (from 50 to 100).
Skills
- Soul Feast deals 25% more damage and costs 17 mana (from 20)
- Blood Tether (from the Soul Feast and Reaper Form trees) has 50% more base damage and added spell damage applies to it at 100% effectiveness per second (from 40%)
- Hammer Throw has 22% more base damage and added throwing damage applies to it at 110% effectiveness (from 100%)
- Shield Throw deals 20% more damage
- Meteor deals 12.5% more damage and costs 56 mana (from 60).
Ailments
- Ignite deals 5% more damage.
Community Designed Unique: Item Theme
[ 2022-04-22 18:00:50 CET ] [ Original post ]
Things have certainly gotten interesting since the latest poll. From last weeks poll, well be creating a Two-Handed Mage Spear! This will be the first of its kind in Last Epoch, so has quite the opportunity to really create something new and distinct. Im personally very excited to see how this item continues to evolve from this point. For todays poll, well be collecting your votes for the items theme. This theme will help direct the art style of the item, naming, flavor text, and even the unique effect. Weve collected suggestions from the forums, and picked out options that the community has been highly receptive to. This is a very important, almost historical poll, as its the first poll where all of the options are not based on core game mechanics. Instead they are completely based on community suggestions that will be directly implemented into Last Epoch. Come join us on our Official Forums and cast your vote for the Item Theme for the Community Designed Unique, and don't forget to start submitting your ideas for the Unique effect! https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/community-designed-unique-item-theme/48654 April 8th - Community Designed Unique Kick Off April 15th - Community Designed Unique: Item Type April 22nd - Community Designed Unique: Item Theme April 29th - Community Designed Unique: Unique Effect May 6th - Community Designed Unique: Item Art May 13th - Community Designed Unique: Item Name and Flavour Text May 27th - Community Designed Unique: Reveal!
Last Epoch Q&A Dev Stream
[ 2022-04-22 17:00:47 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Hail of Arrows Marksman. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Community Designed Unique Event: Weapon Type
[ 2022-04-15 18:00:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers to the second poll of the Community Designed Unique Event! We hope youre enjoying some of the new Uniques introduced in 0.8.5d (I know I have a few off meta ideas for myself). Last weeks poll had some amazing interaction and were very excited that so many members from the community are so interested in this event. Thank you all for being such a great community to be a part of. From last weeks poll, it looks like Mage is going to be the target class for the new unique, very exciting! And we are shocked, simply shocked that a Two-Handed weapon was selected. We had no way to foresee this outcome. Ok, maybe were not that shocked. So keeping in mind that were looking at a Mage as the focus for a two handed weapon, join us on our forums and cast your vote for what the weapon type should be. Mages are capable of wielding all but bows, so what will it be: A Spellblade Spear? A Sorcerer Axe? You decide! https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/community-designed-unique-item-type/48587
Last Epoch Q&A Dev Stream
[ 2022-04-15 17:00:34 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Hail of Arrows Marksman. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Beta 0.8.5d Release and Patch Notes
Aims: Further incentivize killing enemies in echoes rather than ignoring them on the way to the objective, but avoid making it optimal to bring a large ball of enemies to the objective and kill all of them at the same time.
(reduced base stability and increased bonus stability)
[ 2022-04-13 17:07:05 CET ] [ Original post ]
Edit: Weve deployed a quick fix for 0.8.5d to prevent Fire Lich Scythe base type dropping as a normal item, change its attack rate to 0.92 (from 1) and change its range to 2.6m (from 1.9).
Uniques
- Added 3 new uniques that are exclusive to the Soul Gambler.
- Added 3 new uniques and a set item that can be dropped by Cremorus, Immolator of Souls.
- Added 4 new uniques that can be dropped by The Mountain Beneath.
- Added 3 new uniques that can be dropped by the Arena Champions.
- Added a new set item that can be dropped by Formosus.
- Added 2 new uniques that can randomly drop.
Enemy Aggro
- In campaign, dungeons, and the monolith, most enemies now de-aggro if they go too far from their original position unless they are particularly close to their target or currently using an ability.
- Bosses, minibosses, rare enemies, and enemies with high base health are excluded.
- This has no effect in the arena or in arena echoes.
Monolith of Fate
Aims: Further incentivize killing enemies in echoes rather than ignoring them on the way to the objective, but avoid making it optimal to bring a large ball of enemies to the objective and kill all of them at the same time.
Stability changes
(reduced base stability and increased bonus stability)
- Reduced base stability scaling from distance from origin - now gains an average of 1.25 stability per tier (from 1.5).
- Reduced base stability scaling from corruption below 50 - now gains 1 stability per 8 corruption up to a total of 6 (from 1 stability per 5 corruption up to a total of 10).
- Increased stability scaling from corruption above 100 - now gains 0.3333% increased stability per corruption up to 100% at corruption 400 (from 0.32% increased stability per corruption up to 80% at corruption 350).
- Increased bonus stability from regular echoes from around 106% of base stability to around 204% of base stability.
- Increased bonus stability from arena echoes from around 60% of base stability to around 114% of base stability.
- Maximum bonus stability from regular echoes now requires around 5% more kills to attain unless the echo is particularly small.
- Shade Echoes now grant around 320% of a regular echo's base stability (from 250%).
- Bonus stability from arena echoes now starts when wave 2 spawns (from wave 1) and the maximum amount is reached once all waves are defeated (from when the last wave spawns).
Implications of Stability changes
- Regular echoes at a moderate distance from the center of the echo web grant around 25% less base stability at 0 corruption, 29% less at 100 corruption, and 21% less at 400 corruption.
- Regular echoes at a moderate distance from the center of the echo web grant around 11% more total stability at 0 corruption, 5% more at 100 corruption, and 16% more at 400 corruption.
- On average, if you now kill enough enemies to have obtained around 60% of the maximum bonus stability according to 0.8.5c numbers, you will gain more total stability than in 0.8.5c.
- This threshold is higher around 100 corruption, lower around 400, higher when far from the centre of the echo web, and lower when close to it.
UI Changes
- Bonus stability is now displayed on the stability bar at the top of the panel when you select an echo that grants bonus stability.
Randomization
- Improved the spawn locations in Solarum Ascent.
Keys
- Right clicking a dungeon key while the appropriate slot is open now always moves the key to the slot (this was already implemented for arena keys).
- Right clicking a dungeon key while the appropriate slot is not open now opens the map at the location of the dungeon.
- Right clicking an arena key while the appropriate slot is not open now opens the map at the location of Champion's Gate.
- This same functionality can be achieved on a controller by pressing Y while using D-PAD selection.
- The drop rate of individual dungeon keys before level 55 is now equal to their drop rate at level 55.
- Keys can still not drop before their minimum drop level (25, 47, and 54).
- The effect of this is a 75% increase in key drop rate at level 25, linearly scaling to no difference at level 55 or higher.
- Very slightly increased how many dungeon keys drop outside of dungeons (this is multiplicative with the change above).
Dungeons
Lightless Arbor
- Tier 1 modifiers now grant much less increased damage and health, but grant rare items instead of exalted items.
- The number of bonus rare items from these mods is higher than the number of bonus exalted items from the previous mods.
Soulfire Bastion
- Modifiers offered at the exit of the first zone in Tier 1 and Tier 2 Soulfire Bastion give 10% increased damage and health (from 30%).
- Modifiers offered at the start of Tier 2 Soulfire Bastion give 50% increased damage and health (from 30%).
- Compared to 0.8.5c, Tier 1 Soulfire Bastion is slightly easier after the first zone, and Tier 2 Soulfire Bastion is slightly harder in the first zone.
Temporal Sanctum
- Tier 1 Julra deals 7% less damage and has 5% less health.
Ability Buffering
- Improved buffering when rapidly clicking to attack. If you rapidly press ability A while using ability A, and also press ability B at least once, ability B will be buffered instead of ability A, regardless of which ability's press was latest.
- Improved buffering when holding down the move key. Holding down the movement key no longer prevents buffered abilities that cannot interrupt low priority settle from going off. They now go off when the ability would have ended had it not been interrupted by movement.
- For example, if you are holding down the movement key while using Lightning Blast and then press the Static Orb key, the Static Orb key press would have previously been ignored as you'd start moving before being able to cast another ability. Now it'll go off at that point when you can cast another ability even if you've already started moving.
- Fixed cases of reactive skills that were not able to interrupt the portion of an ability that could be interrupted by movement. This affected Werebear Roar and all form changing skills, and they should now feel more responsive to use.
Other Changes
- Dragon Fire from Dragon Song now has its visuals pooled, improving performance.
- Immortal Eyes now have "Immune to Stun and Freeze" in their description. This is only a display change.
- Updated the attribute scaling displayed on Northern Winds, Lightning Bolt, and Earth Spikes to accurately reflect the scaling they use (Tempest Strike's 4% increased damage per point of Strength and Attunement). This is only a display change.
- Area modifiers for Dread and Infernal Shade now visually scale just the ring's radius, not the height of the ring or the size of the shade.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where Avalanche was receiving 4% increased damage per point of Intelligence instead of its intended 4% increased damage and 4% freeze rate multiplier per point of Attunement.
- Fixed a bug where Earthquake's Shatterquake node did not apply its benefits to Earthquake's Aftershocks.
- Fixed a bug where Fury Leap's Regain Stamina could only trigger while in Werebear Form.
- Fixed a bug where the damage increase from the Blaze Shade node on the Infernal Shade tree did not affect Ailments applied by Blaze Shade.
- Fixed Shadow Daggers and other abilities procced by ailments failing to deal damage when procced in certain circumstances (e.g. from a distance with bow puncture).
- Fixed a bug that caused 2H Axes to drop from the Rare Maces Monolith rewards.
- Fixed a bug where Aura of Decay's VFX was not affected by increased area. This was only a visual bug.
- Fixed a bug where the area increase from Blaze Shades did not affect their visuals.
- Fixed visual bugs with Unseeing and similar enemy types.
- Clarified that Devouring Orb's Hollow Orb node causes Devouring Orb's Void Rifts to no longer increase in size or damage for each successive Void Rift.
- Clarified the alt tooltip of the "chance to receive a glancing blow when hit" property to state that glancing blows deal 35% less damage (previously said half damage).
- Fixed the shock ailment tooltip saying that it reduces elemental resistance instead of lightning resistance.
Community Designed Unique Event
[ 2022-04-08 22:00:39 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, There have been requests, there have been rumblings, and there have been bees. Today, the much anticipated Community Designed Unique Event begins! Starting today, every week we will be posting a new community poll. Each poll will help further refine a design for a Unique item to be immortalized in Last Epoch. The polls will be opened on Friday evenings two hours before the start of the Dev Stream at 1:00PM CDT, and be closed on the following Friday morning. That means you will have seven days to cast your vote to shape a new item to be introduced to the world of Eterra. At each step along the way, you can also suggest in comments different aspects of the item, such as name, effect, theme, or even flavor text. Those that get the most likes and still fit within the world of Eterra will be included in the voting options. With this, we will try to include options for ideas that both we and the community enjoy the most: however do be aware, if an idea strays too far from the game, we may have to decline it as an option (sorry, even with a community designed unique, there wont be any nyan cats in Last Epoch). So to kick everything off, this week wed like to get your opinions on the first shaping of the item. Head over to our forums on https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/community-designed-unique-event/48454 and cast your votes in the included Polls to see this item start to take form!
Last Epoch Q&A Dev Stream
[ 2022-04-08 19:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Hail of Arrows Marksman. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
New Unique Items Coming To Depths Of Eterra Update
[ 2022-04-07 18:03:05 CET ] [ Original post ]
Wed like to start this post with a thank you to everyone in our amazing community and all of the great feedback concerning the changes and new content in 0.8.5. Its with this great feedback weve been able to continue making Last Epoch as great as it is.
In the very near future we will be releasing the remaining Uniques for The Mountain Beneath, as well as Cremorus and a few more adjustments and fixes. However, before these Uniques are available in game, we wanted to provide a bit of a teaser. In the post below, youll see item card examples for two of the new items coming, as well as art for other items coming for the 0.8.5d hotfix. Let us know in the comments below what sort of effects you think the remaining Uniques might have!
In addition to speculation, we have some speculation for you - Keep an eye on our socials tomorrow as were going to be starting a very exciting event we know a lot of people have been looking forward to (not multiplayer), and were excited to see you all there!
Last Epoch Q&A Dev Stream
[ 2022-04-01 18:01:00 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Hail of Arrows Marksman. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Beta 0.8.5c Release and Patch Notes
Our aim with these changes is to improve the rewards for killing enemies in echoes when farming timeline boss drops and/or corruption.
The reception to the summoning side of Swarmblade Form was originally that it was underwhelming. We attempted to fix this by adjusting numbers to make it more rewarding to consume Locusts for Locust Swarm. However, the scaling duration of Locust Swarm, combined with some bugs and unintended mechanics, made a version of this build brokenly powerful. Regardless, abuse of these mechanics requires a playstyle that is really unenjoyable. We understand that many players want to play optimal, powerful builds, so we're making such an immediate change to avoid funneling players onto this build, especially as we increase rewards for clearing more enemies in Monolith echoes. On account of this we're reworking the summoning aspects of Swarmblade Form and will be closely monitoring further feedback on its playstyle and balance. These changes involve limiting the number of Locusts while greatly increasing the ease of summoning them quickly, and making individual Locusts more effective and powerful. It will no longer be possible to gain increased damage per Locust for Locust Swarm so that increased damage from items and passives matters for the build.
[ 2022-04-01 02:24:37 CET ] [ Original post ]
EDIT: These patch notes were mistakenly not published on Steam when this update when live on Tuesday. Sorry about that!
Monolith of Fate
Our aim with these changes is to improve the rewards for killing enemies in echoes when farming timeline boss drops and/or corruption.
Bonus stability
- Echoes now grant bonus stability based on the number of enemies you kill, up to around double the normal amount of stability.
- The maximum bonus stability for an echo is listed in the rewards section of its tooltip.
- Fall of the Outcasts' 3rd quest echo now has slightly higher stability requirements. It requires 300 in non-empowered and 800 in empowered (from 250 in non-empowered and 750 in empowered).
Gaze of Orobyss
- The first two quest echoes of each timeline are now optional in empowered timelines.
- Completing the third quest echo in an empowered timeline now grants 1 Gaze of Orobyss.
- Defeating a Shade of Orobyss that increases corruption consumes all Gaze of Orobyss to grant bonus corruption. However, if you die while fighting such a Shade, you will lose all Gaze of Orobyss.
Randomization
- All regular monolith echoes now have multiple player spawn locations rather than a single fixed player spawn.
- Most regular monolith echoes have a wider variety of objective spawn locations.
- We have a system in place to prevent objectives from being placed too close to the player spawn location regardless of the randomization.
Arena Echoes
- Now 10% less common for most timelines, and 28% less common for Ending the Storm, where they were previously 25% more common than usual.
Swarmblade Form
The reception to the summoning side of Swarmblade Form was originally that it was underwhelming. We attempted to fix this by adjusting numbers to make it more rewarding to consume Locusts for Locust Swarm. However, the scaling duration of Locust Swarm, combined with some bugs and unintended mechanics, made a version of this build brokenly powerful. Regardless, abuse of these mechanics requires a playstyle that is really unenjoyable. We understand that many players want to play optimal, powerful builds, so we're making such an immediate change to avoid funneling players onto this build, especially as we increase rewards for clearing more enemies in Monolith echoes. On account of this we're reworking the summoning aspects of Swarmblade Form and will be closely monitoring further feedback on its playstyle and balance. These changes involve limiting the number of Locusts while greatly increasing the ease of summoning them quickly, and making individual Locusts more effective and powerful. It will no longer be possible to gain increased damage per Locust for Locust Swarm so that increased damage from items and passives matters for the build.
Locusts
- Last 12 seconds by default (from 9).
- You are now limited to 12 active locusts.
- Locusts deal 50% more damage.
- Hives summon locusts 122% more frequently.
- The summon hive skill has 35% more cast speed.
- The summon hive skill has a 5 second cooldown (from 8) and can hold 3 charges (from 2).
- You are limited to 3 active hives (from 2).
Locust Swarm and Swarm Strike
- You are now limited to a single active Locust Swarm.
- Fixed a bug where the added melee poison damage for Locust Swarm was actually applied as added melee physical damage.
- Locust Swarm deals 25% more damage.
- Locust Swarm gains 15 melee physical damage, 15 melee poison damage, 15% increased duration, and 15% increased area per locust consumes (from 12, 12, 12%, and 12% respectively).
- Added melee damage is now applied at 350% effectiveness to Swarm Strike (from 300%).
Skill Tree
- All Druids with Swarmblade specialized will receive a free respec for its tree.
- Replaced Toxic Hum (20% increased swarm damage per locust, grants 2% poison chance per locust while swarm active) with Plague of Locusts (2% more swarm damage per locust, grants 4% poison chance per locust while swarm active).
- Grand Colony now also grants +1 maximum locust, but no longer increases the summoning speed of hives, and can have 3 points allocated (from 4).
- Hive Mind no longer increases the maximum number of hives or grants additional hive charges, but instead increases hive summoning speed and causes Locust Swarm to release locusts over time (a swarm does not lose damage as it releases locusts, but cannot release more locusts than were initially gathered to create it). It can have 3 points allocated (from 2).
- Bountiful Hibernacula no longer increases cooldown recovery speed for Summon Hive, but now grants 10 health and 1 rage whenever a hive releases a locust.
- Earth Stinger grants 3 melee physical damage to you and locusts, and 3 melee physical damage for Locust Swarm per Locust consumed (from 2, and 2 respectively).
- Hornet Nest now halves the maximum number of Locusts rather than the maximum summoned by a Hive.
- Army of the Tempest can have 2 points allocated (from 3), but now also grants procced tornadoes 40% more damage per point.
Other Changes
- Using a skill that requires an accessible target location, such as a movement skill, while targeting an inaccessible location now casts the skill at an accessible location near the target. Previously the skill would fail entirely.
- This should prevent movement skills from failing in Titans Rest, for example.
- Soulfire Shield no longer scales with cast speed, but is 80% faster to cast. This improves how smooth it is to use, and makes it consistent across classes.
- Scales of Eterra
- Grants 8-20% increased Cast Speed (from 5-16%).
- Infusion grants 10% more damage of that element per stack (from 8%).
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where Vaion the Arsenal's Smelter's Wrath ability would still trigger if you killed him while it was charging up.
- Fixed a bug where the quest list on the right side of the screen would appear empty at first when loading an existing character.
- Fixed a bug where you could exceed the summon limit for a minion type if you summoned multiple minions with a single ability cast.
- Fixed a bug where Void Rifts were creating duplicate visual objects, affecting performance.
- Fixed a bug where Warpath's Apocalypse Whirl gave 10% Time Rot chance instead of the listed 30%.
- Fixed a bug where it was possible in some cases to still deal critical strikes with Singularity equipped.
- Fixed a visual bug where Shield Rush's Echoes of the Charge followed the player.
Last Epoch Depths of Eterra Update Patch 0.8.5 Q&A Dev Stream
[ 2022-03-25 19:28:06 CET ] [ Original post ]
Join us as for our weekly Dev stream as Game Designer Mike continues working on his Hail of Arrows Marksman. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Beta 0.8.5b Release and Patch Notes
[ 2022-03-22 16:51:48 CET ] [ Original post ]
Uniques
Fiery Dragon Shoes
- No longer grants 50% to 75% fire resistance.
- Now grants +5% to 15% chance to receive a critical strike.
- Now grants 75% to 85% less bonus damage taken from critical strikes.
- Grants 25% to 35% chance to cast Fire Trail when you are crit (from 40% to 50%). The chance is still higher than before due to the additional chance to receive a crit.
- Ignite inflicted by Fire Trail no longer has 20% reduced effect and 60% reduced duration.
- Now has lore text.
Ravenous Void
- Void Barrier conversion now always procs when you drop below your endurance threshold, even if you are immediately raised above it by an effect such as Aurora's Time Glass.
- Void Barriers again grant 5% less damage taken (from 6% less void damage taken in 0.8.5).
- Now grants a Void Barrier every 5 seconds (from every 3) and the normal maximum Void Barrier stacks is 3 (from 6 in 0.8.5, from 5 before then).
- Your Void Barriers and Maximum Void Barriers are now doubled for 3 seconds when you drop below your Endurance Threshold. After that duration all stacks of Void Barrier are converted to Mimic Feast, a damaging ailment that also disables Void Barrier Generation and Health Leech.
- No longer converts Void Barrier stacks to Time Rot when you drop below your endurance Threshold.
- Grants 10% - 15% of physical damage taken as void (from 60% to 75% in 0.8.5, from 25% before then).
- Grants 10% - 15% less void damage taken (from 0% in 0.8.5, from 5% - 10% before then).
- Grants 5% - 10% increased health (from 12% - 20% in 0.8.5, from 10% - 15% before then).
- Grants 5 - 10 Vitality (from 8 - 10).
- Added new buff visuals and sounds.
Torkrefins Hunger
- Consuming a stack of Viscera now grants 5% bleed chance and 1% increased bleed effectiveness per 5% uncapped physical resistance (from 3% bleed chance and 1% increased bleed effectiveness per 1% uncapped physical resistance).
- Fixed the increased bleed effect from its non-Viscera mod being multiplicative with other sources of increased bleed effect.
- Now also grants 100% - 150% melee bleed chance to compensate.
Skills
Acid Flask
- Added a new node that gives Acid Flask additional poison penetration based on your uncapped poison resistance.
- Now states that it has 60% added damage effectiveness (this is just a description change).
Acid Flask - Cluster Bomb
- No longer gives armor shred, which was not listed in its description.
- Now states that it has 50% added damage effectiveness (this is just a description change).
- Increased base damage by 25%; its base damage now aligns with its added damage effectiveness of 50%.
- Reduced the size of its VFX to match its damaging area.
- Fixed a bug where its damaging area would sometimes occur in incorrect locations.
Flurry
- Fusillade now adds 12 to channel cost (from 15).
Other Changes
- Greatly improved the performance and improved the appearance of Bleeds visual effect.
- The icons for Dungeons and the Arena on the world map now have tooltips.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an oversight where Monolith Timeline Bosses could not drop Lightless Arbor or Soulfire Bastion keys.
- Fixed a bug where mastery restricted abilities (requiring 25+ passive points) for other mastery classes could be unlocked and specialized.
- Fixed a bug where crafting on a duplicated item from the Vault of Uncertain Fate affected the other copies.
- Fixed a bug where the indicator visual effect for the falling Titanspawn in the Mountain Beneath fight was below the ground (impossible to see).
- Fixed a bug where the wrong Monolith timeline was shown when interacting with the system while using a controller.
- Adjusted the hitbox for Smelter's Wrath used by Vaion, The Arsenal to more closely match its indicator and vfx.
- Fixed a bug where Static's damage did not benefit from its charges.
- Fixed Bone Curses Signet of Agony node not working.
- Fixed a bug where the Viscera buff from Torkrefin's Hunger's was consumed by indirect ability uses and some channeled abilities such as Warpath.
- Fixed a bug where increases to Warpath's area did not affect its visuals. The actual AoE of Warpath was still correct.
- Fixed a bug where custom names for minions and some enemies did not work.
- Fixed a bug where the wrong side of The Mountain Beneath would light on fire sometimes.
- Fixed the one-way Soulfire Bastion exit in Kolheim Pass having a transition icon.
- Fixed the bar along the bottom of base class passives not filling in properly above 20 points.
- Fixed Scalebane Rogues having incorrect ragdoll physics.
- Fixed Cremorus not having cloth physics.
- Fixed a typo in the description for Soulfire Shield.
- Fixed Cremorus necrotic orbiting ability having an incorrect name.
- Fixed Yrun using some incorrect sounds.
Last Epoch Depths of Eterra Update Patch 0.8.5 Q&A Dev Stream
[ 2022-03-18 18:10:26 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers to the first dev stream of the Depths of Eterra update patch 0.8.5. Game Designer Mike Starts a new character with today's release of patch 0.8.5. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Last Epoch | Depths of Eterra Update is Live!
[ 2022-03-18 18:01:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
[previewyoutube=93AbaEqHZDE;full][/previewyoutube]
Depths of Eterra Update - Beta 0.8.5 Patch Notes
[ 2022-03-17 20:00:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
The Depths of Eterra Update (Patch 0.8.5) will arrive tomorrow, March 18th! [previewyoutube=93AbaEqHZDE;full][/previewyoutube] Ready your mind, body, and armament as you venture into the darkest forgotten areas of Eterra, challenge the might of the Immortal Empire in one of their research facilities, and face off against the new Champions of the Arena. The Depths of Eterra Update introduces two new endgame Dungeons, a new Arena mode, and a whole host of visual updates and more including:
- New Endgame Dungeon: The Lightless Arbor
- New Endgame Dungeon: Soulfire Bastion
- New Arena Mode: Champions of the Arena
- Complete Catalyst Rework
- New 3D models for new and existing Uniques
- New 3D models for all Wraiths including both Necromancer's summoned Wraiths, and enemy Wraiths
- New Armor sets for Acolyte, Sentinel, Primalist, and Rogue
- New Unique Items
- Balance Changes
- Bug Fixes
New Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor
Eterras history holds many dark secrets - some so distant theyve faded into myth. Such is the case of The Lightless Arbor and The Mountain Beneath. Deep under the mountains that house the Last Refuge, quietly lives a time-worn forest full of ancient vegetation, wildlife, and creatures of tremendous power. One of these creatures, a massive Titan made of plant and stone, has awoken from his long slumber. His lumbering beneath the Last Refuge threatens to cause a cave-in that that will burry humanitys last light. You must venture deep into The Lightless Arbor, walking paths untouched by sunlight for over a thousand years, and save Eterras Last Refuge from The Mountain Beneath.
The Lightless Arbor is Eterras darkest dungeon - quite literally - and that darkness is home to a horde of ancient creatures whove thrived in it for thousands of years. The darkness has made them stronger and more resilient. If you thought saving Eterra was difficult before, try doing it in the dark. In their dark.
Luckily, you will have some assistance from a Lost Spriggan and a magical source of light known as the Pyre Amber. Once activated, the Pyre Amber will travel with you through the dungeon, and at your command illuminate a specified area, then return back to you as needed. Control of the Pyre Ambers light will be crucial to your success in The Lightless Arbor, as the enemies here are fortified by the darkness - they deal much higher damage, and receive much less in return while shrouded.
While the Pyre Amber is following you, your fates are linked. Take too much damage and the light radius shrinks. If you are to succeed, youll have to find a way to replenish the Pyres light, or risk being lost in the darkness forever.
While there is little so far revealed about the Titans of Eterra, we do know they were born in the Ancient Era. Humanity remains unsure how many have survived Eterras dangerous history up until the Ruined Era, but today weve learned that at least one has - and hes angry. The Voids corruption has spread into the Lightless Arbor and torn away the ecosystem that has kept him sleeping peacefully for all these years.
The Mountain Beneath has earned his name - made of stone and plant, and towering over 100ft tall. Once you are standing in front of him, watching his mighty fists plummeting down towards you, you might be struck with the question: How does one properly slay a mountain? A good question no doubt, and one we pray you find the answer to somewhere in the depths of The Lightless Arbor.
The Vault of Uncertain fate is a mysterious structure from a similar origin as the Monolith and Eternity Cache, long forgotten by mankind. Its lost legend is tied to the power of a being called Derium who dates back to the beginnings of the Ancient Era.
It has the power to transform gold coins into powerful rewards - but be cautioned - the vault itself is in control of your fate and reward, there are no guarantees of being offered what you are looking for. When you enter the Vault, you will be presented an offering. If you value whats presented, you may accept the reward and pay the demanded price. At this point you will be presented another offering, and a choice: continue to invest or enter the Vault. The Vaults power is limited only to the extent of your sacrifice, and the power of your reward scales deeply with the amount of wealth youve parted with. It is important to be strategic about which offers you accept and which you decline, as all choices come with a cost - and the cost of a missed opportunity weighs heavily.
Whether youve been with us through our entire journey so far, or you are just joining us near the end, we want to say thank you for your continued support (and hype) for all the cool new content coming in Patch 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra. Join us tomorrow for the 9th and final day of the Phenomenal Week+, Super Hype-Train, Patch Spectacular *TM - It is everyones favorite day! Christm PATCH NOTES DAY! See you then! March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
[ 2022-03-16 20:00:29 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers! Welcome to the 8th day of our Sensational, Week+, Hype-Train, Patch Spectacular *TM, and the reveal of our second dungeon The Lightless Arbor releasing with patch 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra. We are very excited to shed some light on what is waiting for you in these ancient depths, but fair warning, for those who would wish to discover these new passages on their own, spoilers lay ahead.
The Lightless Arbor Lore
Eterras history holds many dark secrets - some so distant theyve faded into myth. Such is the case of The Lightless Arbor and The Mountain Beneath. Deep under the mountains that house the Last Refuge, quietly lives a time-worn forest full of ancient vegetation, wildlife, and creatures of tremendous power. One of these creatures, a massive Titan made of plant and stone, has awoken from his long slumber. His lumbering beneath the Last Refuge threatens to cause a cave-in that that will burry humanitys last light. You must venture deep into The Lightless Arbor, walking paths untouched by sunlight for over a thousand years, and save Eterras Last Refuge from The Mountain Beneath.
Unique Mechanic: The Darkness & Pyre Amber
The Lightless Arbor is Eterras darkest dungeon - quite literally - and that darkness is home to a horde of ancient creatures whove thrived in it for thousands of years. The darkness has made them stronger and more resilient. If you thought saving Eterra was difficult before, try doing it in the dark. In their dark.
Luckily, you will have some assistance from a Lost Spriggan and a magical source of light known as the Pyre Amber. Once activated, the Pyre Amber will travel with you through the dungeon, and at your command illuminate a specified area, then return back to you as needed. Control of the Pyre Ambers light will be crucial to your success in The Lightless Arbor, as the enemies here are fortified by the darkness - they deal much higher damage, and receive much less in return while shrouded.
While the Pyre Amber is following you, your fates are linked. Take too much damage and the light radius shrinks. If you are to succeed, youll have to find a way to replenish the Pyres light, or risk being lost in the darkness forever.
The Mountain Beneath
While there is little so far revealed about the Titans of Eterra, we do know they were born in the Ancient Era. Humanity remains unsure how many have survived Eterras dangerous history up until the Ruined Era, but today weve learned that at least one has - and hes angry. The Voids corruption has spread into the Lightless Arbor and torn away the ecosystem that has kept him sleeping peacefully for all these years.
The Mountain Beneath has earned his name - made of stone and plant, and towering over 100ft tall. Once you are standing in front of him, watching his mighty fists plummeting down towards you, you might be struck with the question: How does one properly slay a mountain? A good question no doubt, and one we pray you find the answer to somewhere in the depths of The Lightless Arbor.
The Vault of Uncertain Fate
The Vault of Uncertain fate is a mysterious structure from a similar origin as the Monolith and Eternity Cache, long forgotten by mankind. Its lost legend is tied to the power of a being called Derium who dates back to the beginnings of the Ancient Era.
It has the power to transform gold coins into powerful rewards - but be cautioned - the vault itself is in control of your fate and reward, there are no guarantees of being offered what you are looking for. When you enter the Vault, you will be presented an offering. If you value whats presented, you may accept the reward and pay the demanded price. At this point you will be presented another offering, and a choice: continue to invest or enter the Vault. The Vaults power is limited only to the extent of your sacrifice, and the power of your reward scales deeply with the amount of wealth youve parted with. It is important to be strategic about which offers you accept and which you decline, as all choices come with a cost - and the cost of a missed opportunity weighs heavily.
Whether youve been with us through our entire journey so far, or you are just joining us near the end, we want to say thank you for your continued support (and hype) for all the cool new content coming in Patch 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra. Join us tomorrow for the 9th and final day of the Phenomenal Week+, Super Hype-Train, Patch Spectacular *TM - It is everyones favorite day! Christm PATCH NOTES DAY! See you then! March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
Arena Champions
In a remote stronghold in Heoborea, an abandoned castle once known as Jormuns Fortress has seen renewed interest. Only its new inhabitants have taken to a new name, Champions Gate. A portal has opened within Champions gate, through which only one thing is known, what lies beyond this portal is endless swarms of combatants in every shape, form, and number. The unique nature of this portal has drawn an odd assortment of humans and Wengari to live here, so they may have access to thrilling combat whenever they please. [table noborder=1][tr][td]
[/td][/tr][tr] [td align=center] Those who travel to Champion's Gate will find the recently set up Training Grounds. Here Travelers will find a set of five different specialized setups with training dummies for testing their abilities. [/td][/tr][/table] However, some few have chosen to stay within the realm beyond, as they have found a way to only face those who would be a challenge worthy of their battle lust. These few champions have fallen to their obsession with the ceaseless battles, letting the worst part of themselves take root and grow. In 0.8.5 enter this portal and face the once Champions of Eterra, now, Champions of the Arena.
Arena of Champions will offer an alternative approach to the current Endless Arena, while not replacing it. When accessing the Arena portal you will be presented with the opportunity to either compete in the existing Endless Arena, or the new Arena of Champions. With the Arena of Champions, you will have the option of four different tiers of difficulty, with escalating tiers providing increased difficulty, and greater rewards.
Upon entering the Arena of Champions, you will face off against a number of waves. While progressing through the waves, you will be presented with a choice of additional modifiers to further increase the difficulty and rewards. However, be careful with your choices: In the Arena, all spoils only go to the victor. The final five waves will take place within one of the Arena Champions dedicated arenas, with the final wave containing the Champion of the Arena themselves. There are currently three Arena Champions, each a former Traveler from another timeline in which they failed to find purpose through the Epoch and strayed far from their path.
To sum up Vaion the Arsenal in one word: Pride. A skilled blacksmith, and collector of any and all weapons, Vaion never found purpose outside of his natural talents. Instead, he spends his time in the Arena honing his proficiencies to a point beyond mere skill. Fancying himself a true master of arms, he readies his entire armament for a challenger worthy of facing the full extent of his knowledge of blades, maces, shields, and more.
The familiar taste of copper in the air, the sensation of slowed time, and the look of shock and surprise on man, and beasts faces alike. The Crimson Blade never lost their lust for taking lives, but instead thrives on the thrill of assassinations and the rush that comes with it. Honing herself to a razors edge as if a living weapon, The Crimson Blade waits in the shadows for those who may be able to share with her a new experience in the thrill of the kill.
Idolizing storms and avalanches, Alfrig Wolfmaw follows a path of might makes right. Embracing this mentality, Alfrig no longer sees animals as companions, but simply disposable power to be commanded. He has sought out the Arena as a method of strengthening his mind and body to become a force of destruction. In the Arena of Champions, Alfrig Wolfmaw seeks out those with power to continue proving his path is correct through the broken bodies of those who face him.
The Arena of Champions will be available in multiple tiers for adjustable difficulty, with higher tiers providing increased rewards. These Champions have been reigning within Champions Gate for decades, collecting the spoils from their victories over countless other adventurers across Eterra. Some of this loot they use to fight, some is kept in reserve. Other trinkets, like rare keys to hidden passages across Eterra, are kept close by as trophies to track their ongoing reign over Champions Gate. This brings to a conclusion todays news for the Ceaseless, 9 day, Sequential Hype Week, Patch Extravaganza! Make sure to keep your eyes on our socials, as we will be continuing the pre-patch hype with tomorrows post on the the second dungeon, The Lightless Arbor! March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
[ 2022-03-15 19:59:55 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers to day seven of the Unbroken, 9 day, Sequential Hype Week, Patch Extravaganza*TM! In this news post were going to be covering the new Arena of Champions!
Champions Gate
In a remote stronghold in Heoborea, an abandoned castle once known as Jormuns Fortress has seen renewed interest. Only its new inhabitants have taken to a new name, Champions Gate. A portal has opened within Champions gate, through which only one thing is known, what lies beyond this portal is endless swarms of combatants in every shape, form, and number. The unique nature of this portal has drawn an odd assortment of humans and Wengari to live here, so they may have access to thrilling combat whenever they please. [table noborder=1][tr][td]
[/td][/tr][tr] [td align=center] Those who travel to Champion's Gate will find the recently set up Training Grounds. Here Travelers will find a set of five different specialized setups with training dummies for testing their abilities. [/td][/tr][/table] However, some few have chosen to stay within the realm beyond, as they have found a way to only face those who would be a challenge worthy of their battle lust. These few champions have fallen to their obsession with the ceaseless battles, letting the worst part of themselves take root and grow. In 0.8.5 enter this portal and face the once Champions of Eterra, now, Champions of the Arena.
Arena of Champions
Arena of Champions will offer an alternative approach to the current Endless Arena, while not replacing it. When accessing the Arena portal you will be presented with the opportunity to either compete in the existing Endless Arena, or the new Arena of Champions. With the Arena of Champions, you will have the option of four different tiers of difficulty, with escalating tiers providing increased difficulty, and greater rewards.
Upon entering the Arena of Champions, you will face off against a number of waves. While progressing through the waves, you will be presented with a choice of additional modifiers to further increase the difficulty and rewards. However, be careful with your choices: In the Arena, all spoils only go to the victor. The final five waves will take place within one of the Arena Champions dedicated arenas, with the final wave containing the Champion of the Arena themselves. There are currently three Arena Champions, each a former Traveler from another timeline in which they failed to find purpose through the Epoch and strayed far from their path.
Vaion the Arsenal
To sum up Vaion the Arsenal in one word: Pride. A skilled blacksmith, and collector of any and all weapons, Vaion never found purpose outside of his natural talents. Instead, he spends his time in the Arena honing his proficiencies to a point beyond mere skill. Fancying himself a true master of arms, he readies his entire armament for a challenger worthy of facing the full extent of his knowledge of blades, maces, shields, and more.
The Crimson Blade
The familiar taste of copper in the air, the sensation of slowed time, and the look of shock and surprise on man, and beasts faces alike. The Crimson Blade never lost their lust for taking lives, but instead thrives on the thrill of assassinations and the rush that comes with it. Honing herself to a razors edge as if a living weapon, The Crimson Blade waits in the shadows for those who may be able to share with her a new experience in the thrill of the kill.
Alfrig Wolfmaw
Idolizing storms and avalanches, Alfrig Wolfmaw follows a path of might makes right. Embracing this mentality, Alfrig no longer sees animals as companions, but simply disposable power to be commanded. He has sought out the Arena as a method of strengthening his mind and body to become a force of destruction. In the Arena of Champions, Alfrig Wolfmaw seeks out those with power to continue proving his path is correct through the broken bodies of those who face him.
Rewards
The Arena of Champions will be available in multiple tiers for adjustable difficulty, with higher tiers providing increased rewards. These Champions have been reigning within Champions Gate for decades, collecting the spoils from their victories over countless other adventurers across Eterra. Some of this loot they use to fight, some is kept in reserve. Other trinkets, like rare keys to hidden passages across Eterra, are kept close by as trophies to track their ongoing reign over Champions Gate. This brings to a conclusion todays news for the Ceaseless, 9 day, Sequential Hype Week, Patch Extravaganza! Make sure to keep your eyes on our socials, as we will be continuing the pre-patch hype with tomorrows post on the the second dungeon, The Lightless Arbor! March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
New Armor Sets Coming in Depths of Eterra Update
The Acolytes new set takes a lightweight approach to a gothic, demonic, and ragged theme - it pairs perfectly with some of our new darker-themed catalysts revealed on the weekend. In order to achieve a realistic result of the different layers of clothes in game, we had to use a combination of simulating the fabric in 3D and manual sculpting.
Here is our newly redesigned low-tier Primalist set, one of the first armor sets you will collect as a new Primalist making their way through Eterra. With a strong wilderness inspiration, it was necessary to focus on fur creation and find solutions to bring that fur to life - while respecting the technical aspects of the engine. To keep the model on game-budget, we created groups of fur-textured planes and layered them one by one creating depth and volume.
Our new mid-tier Rogue armor set takes on the soul of an outlaw. Its open design leaves mobility completely unhindered, while providing heavier protection while in marksman stance at range - protecting the side profile of the shooter. Also, check out that hat. That is going to be a popular hat.
Our endgame ready high-tier Sentinel set showcases a beautiful combination of battle-scarred plate and white wolf fur. We would like to believe the fur adds an element of comfort here for our Sentinels journey, but how comfortable can you really be in the Depths of Eterra? The biggest challenge here was bringing together the technical challenges of fur and hard-surface materials into one unified piece.
This concludes day six of the Continuing, 9 day, Super Hype Week, Patch Spectacle*TM. Make sure to check back in tomorrow for the deeper dive on the Arena Champions being introduced in the Depths of Eterra update. March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
[ 2022-03-14 20:00:39 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers to day six of the Ceaseless, 9 day, Super Hype Week, Patch Spectacle*TM! If you are just joining us this week, be sure to check out all of our Depths of Eterra announcements over the past five days (links below!). The Depths of Eterra update is continuing to add distinct armor designs for each of the classes, improving the feeling of progression and unique identity. Check out some of the awesome new looks coming into Eterra!
Acolyte Armor Set
The Acolytes new set takes a lightweight approach to a gothic, demonic, and ragged theme - it pairs perfectly with some of our new darker-themed catalysts revealed on the weekend. In order to achieve a realistic result of the different layers of clothes in game, we had to use a combination of simulating the fabric in 3D and manual sculpting.
Primalist Armor Set
Here is our newly redesigned low-tier Primalist set, one of the first armor sets you will collect as a new Primalist making their way through Eterra. With a strong wilderness inspiration, it was necessary to focus on fur creation and find solutions to bring that fur to life - while respecting the technical aspects of the engine. To keep the model on game-budget, we created groups of fur-textured planes and layered them one by one creating depth and volume.
Rogue Armor Set
Our new mid-tier Rogue armor set takes on the soul of an outlaw. Its open design leaves mobility completely unhindered, while providing heavier protection while in marksman stance at range - protecting the side profile of the shooter. Also, check out that hat. That is going to be a popular hat.
Sentinel Armor Set
Our endgame ready high-tier Sentinel set showcases a beautiful combination of battle-scarred plate and white wolf fur. We would like to believe the fur adds an element of comfort here for our Sentinels journey, but how comfortable can you really be in the Depths of Eterra? The biggest challenge here was bringing together the technical challenges of fur and hard-surface materials into one unified piece.
This concludes day six of the Continuing, 9 day, Super Hype Week, Patch Spectacle*TM. Make sure to check back in tomorrow for the deeper dive on the Arena Champions being introduced in the Depths of Eterra update. March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
New Wraith Models Coming In Depths of Eterra Update
[ 2022-03-13 20:01:14 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers, to day Five of the Essential, 9 Day, No Brakes, Hype-Train, Phenomenon *TM! The Depths of Eterra update brings with it a number of new Wraiths to fight and follow you across time. These updated Wraiths will help breath new unlife into the world of Eterra as part of our ongoing efforts to bring models to current standards. Check out some examples below of these new terrifying creatures of necromancy both travelling with you, or facing you in your journey as the Elders shudder at the power youve brought into the world.
Summoned Wraiths are a common creation of skilled necromancers, as they are a simple coalescence of soul energy with minimal willpower or physicality.
They are often used for simple tasks or for swarming enemies by sheer numbers. These wraiths spread terror and panic wherever they go.
Wraiths can also appear spontaneously in places with a high amount of soul and/or necrotic activity, these Wraiths are ferocious and uncontrolled. They are not to be taken lightly.
This concludes day Five of the Unbroken, 9 day, No Brakes, Hype-Train, Patch Extravaganza *TM. We would love to hear your Necromantic build ideas that the Elders have shunned, down below! Make sure to check back in tomorrow for our post on the New Armor Set Models being added in 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra!
March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement
March 10th - New Uniques
March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion
March 12th - Catalyst Rework
March 13th - New Unique Models
March 13th - New Wraith Models
March 14th - New Armor Set Models
March 15th - Arena Champions
March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor
March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview
March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
New 3D Models for Unique Items
You might be expecting us to say here This concludes day five of the Enduring, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Phenomenon*TM. However not this time! Instead keep your eyes out for our post later today on the new Wraith models being introduced in Patch 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra! March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
[ 2022-03-13 16:08:12 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers to day five of the Enduring, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Spectacle*TM! Some say form follows function, Depths of Eterra update states that sometimes form follows fashion. Introducing updated 3D models for 25 existing Uniques, patch 0.8.5 introduces a new appreciation for some of the amazing art in Last Epoch, and allows your enemies to see some of this new art up close and personal like never before. Check out some examples below!
Aberrant Call
Aurelis
Deaths Embrace
Flayers Pride
Hell Reach
Chronostasis
The Judicator
Leviathan Carver
Reach of the Grave
Reign of Winter
Tempest Maw
Vilatrias Downfall
You might be expecting us to say here This concludes day five of the Enduring, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Phenomenon*TM. However not this time! Instead keep your eyes out for our post later today on the new Wraith models being introduced in Patch 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra! March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
Catalysts Overhaul
This concludes day four of the Ceaseless, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Spectacle*TM. Make sure to check back in tomorrow for two (Two, in one day!) posts on updated 3d models for existing uniques, and New Wraith models being introduced in the Depths of Eterra update. March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
[ 2022-03-12 20:59:24 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers to day four of the Continuing, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Spectacle*TM! The Depths of Eterra update introduces new and improved catalysts for concentrating your energies on what matters - culling more enemies of Eterra! All catalysts are getting new 2D and 3D art, as well as new animations, and powerful implicit affixes to curate a wider variety of builds and create more competition within the weapon configurations. Check out some examples below!
Ritual Stone
Sapphire Tome
Opulent Focus
Fleshbound Tome
Crystal Skull
Astrolabe
This concludes day four of the Ceaseless, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Spectacle*TM. Make sure to check back in tomorrow for two (Two, in one day!) posts on updated 3d models for existing uniques, and New Wraith models being introduced in the Depths of Eterra update. March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
Last Epoch Q&A Dev Stream
[ 2022-03-11 22:06:39 CET ] [ Original post ]
Senior Developer Mike continues leveling up his Bear Druid. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
New Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion
North of Lake Liath in the Imperial Era, a Lich in the service of the Immortal Empire has unearthed the remains of an Osprix battleground containing countless Solarum made constructs and potent elemental fire. This Lich is now repurposing the constructs for use by the empire and experimenting with elemental fire to create a force known as Soul Embers, threatening to spread fire and destruction. An unlikely ally has made himself known in the form of an unscrupulous imperial agent who seeks to sabotage the operations here under the orders of a rival within the empire - his name: Grin.
Grin is an experienced agent for the Immortal Empire, a faction of undead humans who control most of the world. While Grin could easily rise as high in the ranks of the Empires espionage wing as he wanted, he prefers to keep a low profile. Grin makes a habit of making himself an invaluable asset to Imperial Officers of higher rank, getting paid with as many souls as possible by doing their dirty work, and being ready to stab them in the back when better opportunities present themselves.
Grin currently finds himself working for an Imperial Lich of the Immortal Empire and aiding in his attempts to sabotage another commander of the Empire. He wants to keep as low of a profile on this mission as possible, so he has taken to hiring living adventurers to attack his target for him. You are that adventurer. Your task is to explore the depths of this Osprix battleground turned imperial facility known as the Soulfire Bastion, collect as many of these powerful resources called Soul Embers within, and face the ferocity of the Fire Lich inside.
In Soulfire Bastion, you will find yourself within a conflux of the Immortal Empires vile necrotic energies, and Solarums searing fire elements. Any normal adventurer would find themselves quickly torn apart by these energies. However in Soulfire Bastion you will be granted a new ability, courtesy of the imperial agent Grin, to help you survive. Of course, being Grin, the knowledge he shares may have been obtained somewhat recently, and perhaps, without the owners knowledge.
Using the Fire Lichs own research against him you will have at your disposal the Soulfire Shield. The results of the Fire Lichs research is great, and the Soulfire Shield is impenetrable to the element it is deflecting, no matter the magnitude. This power comes at a cost however - it must be fed additional Soul Embers in order to change attunements between fire and necrotic. As you face the alternating elements within the dungeon, both from the environment and from enemies within, you will need to decide when the cost must be paid and feed more Soul Embers to the shield to protect yourself.
While progressing through Soulfire Bastion, you will gain Soul Embers by destroying various constructs of the Fire Lich, with more powerful enemies granting additional Soul Embers. Use your Soul Embers to continue fueling your Soulfire Shield, but dont spend them carelessly, these embers are a highly valuable resource to the right buyer
A petty and jealous commander in the Immortal Empires forces, he finds the culture and history of the long dead Osprix fascinating. Cremorus has chanced upon a Solarum battleground that has been buried and ignored for centuries. Overwhelmed with excitement at his discovery, he devoted his entire regiments forces to the excavation and restoration for use by the empire.
He feels a sharp jealousy towards a particular rival, whose recent campaigns in the frozen north have won him recognition by the Immortal Emperor himself. He channels this jealousy into his work, embracing the burning hatred he feels into his creation of a new form of soul magic he is calling Soul Embers. This discovery has afforded Cremorus an opportunity to finally overtake his rivals glory, and hell not be so quick to let it slip from his fingers.
Should you find yourself having defeated Fire Lich Cremorus, and pockets heavy with Soul Embers, youll have the opportunity to speak with one of the parties interested in helping you lighten the load. The Soul Gambler will trade his items for soul embers youve acquired by slaying enemies in the dungeon. Hes willing to trade and trade fairly. Though, still an imperial at heart, hes not willing to tell you exactly what youre buying. With the Soul Gambler, youll have the ability to trade for a specific item type, such as helmet or shield with the possibility of it being any subtype. However these items are much more powerful than those any regular gambler would offer, with chances of being items no other gambler would dare to offer. As hes located within enemy lines, he doesnt have any backroom stores to change stock while you browse, and you only have at your disposal the Soul Embers from your recent conquest, so choose wisely.
This brings to a conclusion todays news for the Ceaseless, 9 day, Continued Hype Week, Patch Spectacular *TM! Make sure to keep your eyes on our socials, even through the weekend, as we will be continuing the pre-patch hype with tomorrows post on the Catalyst Rework! March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
[ 2022-03-11 19:59:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers to the third day, and first dungeon post of the Unbroken, 9 day, Sequential Hype Week, Patch Extravaganza*TM! In this news post were going to be covering the first of the two new dungeons coming in patch 0.8.5 - Depths of Eterra: its lore, mechanics, and unique dungeon reward.
Soulfire Bastion Lore
North of Lake Liath in the Imperial Era, a Lich in the service of the Immortal Empire has unearthed the remains of an Osprix battleground containing countless Solarum made constructs and potent elemental fire. This Lich is now repurposing the constructs for use by the empire and experimenting with elemental fire to create a force known as Soul Embers, threatening to spread fire and destruction. An unlikely ally has made himself known in the form of an unscrupulous imperial agent who seeks to sabotage the operations here under the orders of a rival within the empire - his name: Grin.
Grin is an experienced agent for the Immortal Empire, a faction of undead humans who control most of the world. While Grin could easily rise as high in the ranks of the Empires espionage wing as he wanted, he prefers to keep a low profile. Grin makes a habit of making himself an invaluable asset to Imperial Officers of higher rank, getting paid with as many souls as possible by doing their dirty work, and being ready to stab them in the back when better opportunities present themselves.
Grin currently finds himself working for an Imperial Lich of the Immortal Empire and aiding in his attempts to sabotage another commander of the Empire. He wants to keep as low of a profile on this mission as possible, so he has taken to hiring living adventurers to attack his target for him. You are that adventurer. Your task is to explore the depths of this Osprix battleground turned imperial facility known as the Soulfire Bastion, collect as many of these powerful resources called Soul Embers within, and face the ferocity of the Fire Lich inside.
Unique Mechanic: Soulfire Shield & Soul Embers
In Soulfire Bastion, you will find yourself within a conflux of the Immortal Empires vile necrotic energies, and Solarums searing fire elements. Any normal adventurer would find themselves quickly torn apart by these energies. However in Soulfire Bastion you will be granted a new ability, courtesy of the imperial agent Grin, to help you survive. Of course, being Grin, the knowledge he shares may have been obtained somewhat recently, and perhaps, without the owners knowledge.
Using the Fire Lichs own research against him you will have at your disposal the Soulfire Shield. The results of the Fire Lichs research is great, and the Soulfire Shield is impenetrable to the element it is deflecting, no matter the magnitude. This power comes at a cost however - it must be fed additional Soul Embers in order to change attunements between fire and necrotic. As you face the alternating elements within the dungeon, both from the environment and from enemies within, you will need to decide when the cost must be paid and feed more Soul Embers to the shield to protect yourself.
While progressing through Soulfire Bastion, you will gain Soul Embers by destroying various constructs of the Fire Lich, with more powerful enemies granting additional Soul Embers. Use your Soul Embers to continue fueling your Soulfire Shield, but dont spend them carelessly, these embers are a highly valuable resource to the right buyer
Fire Lich Cremorus
A petty and jealous commander in the Immortal Empires forces, he finds the culture and history of the long dead Osprix fascinating. Cremorus has chanced upon a Solarum battleground that has been buried and ignored for centuries. Overwhelmed with excitement at his discovery, he devoted his entire regiments forces to the excavation and restoration for use by the empire.
He feels a sharp jealousy towards a particular rival, whose recent campaigns in the frozen north have won him recognition by the Immortal Emperor himself. He channels this jealousy into his work, embracing the burning hatred he feels into his creation of a new form of soul magic he is calling Soul Embers. This discovery has afforded Cremorus an opportunity to finally overtake his rivals glory, and hell not be so quick to let it slip from his fingers.
The Soul Gambler
Should you find yourself having defeated Fire Lich Cremorus, and pockets heavy with Soul Embers, youll have the opportunity to speak with one of the parties interested in helping you lighten the load. The Soul Gambler will trade his items for soul embers youve acquired by slaying enemies in the dungeon. Hes willing to trade and trade fairly. Though, still an imperial at heart, hes not willing to tell you exactly what youre buying. With the Soul Gambler, youll have the ability to trade for a specific item type, such as helmet or shield with the possibility of it being any subtype. However these items are much more powerful than those any regular gambler would offer, with chances of being items no other gambler would dare to offer. As hes located within enemy lines, he doesnt have any backroom stores to change stock while you browse, and you only have at your disposal the Soul Embers from your recent conquest, so choose wisely.
This brings to a conclusion todays news for the Ceaseless, 9 day, Continued Hype Week, Patch Spectacular *TM! Make sure to keep your eyes on our socials, even through the weekend, as we will be continuing the pre-patch hype with tomorrows post on the Catalyst Rework! March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
New Unique Items | Coming in Depths of Eterra Update
This concludes day two of the Sensational, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Exhibition*TM. Maybe have an idea for a new build or two with these? Make sure to check back in tomorrow for our post on the first of the two new dungeons being added in 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra - Soulfire Bastion! March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
[ 2022-03-10 20:59:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome Travelers to day two of the Sensational, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Extravaganza *TM! The Depths of Eterra update brings with it a number of new Uniques, unlocking a range of brand new build opportunities to carve your way through the enemies of Eterra. Whether you are an elusive sniper, vengeful tank, commander of spirits and souls, or just finding your promised path in Eterra for the first time, we have something new for you here. For our more experienced theory crafters out there, we are excited to see what you do when a single idol has the power to change your entire build. Check out a few examples below (weve held a couple back for you to find on your own) of the types of items you can get your hands on in the Depths of Eterra Update!
Chronicles Of The Damned
Hearthenons Vow
Singularity
Renegades Will
Shadow String
This concludes day two of the Sensational, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Exhibition*TM. Maybe have an idea for a new build or two with these? Make sure to check back in tomorrow for our post on the first of the two new dungeons being added in 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra - Soulfire Bastion! March 9th- Depths of Eterra update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
Depths of Eterra Update (0.8.5) - Coming March 18th
As patch 0.8.5, Depths of Eterra, is introducing the second and third dungeon to Last Epoch, we want to go over what makes a dungeon a dungeon, what the goals of the dungeon system are, and the future of dungeons in Last Epoch. Our goal with dungeons is to provide repeatable endgame content that exists within the world of the campaign. This means dungeons can, and will, be added to all sorts of areas within the campaign, and you may even be able to encounter dungeons fairly early on.
With dungeons being designed to show up throughout the campaign in Last Epoch, each one is also created with the ability to scale multiple tiers, starting from whenever they first appear in the campaign, all the way to level 100. This allows us to add, through playable content, more lore to the world, as well as provide challenges and rewards for new and experienced players alike. As these dungeons are added as part of the core world of Eterra rather than being a side mechanic, and their lore true to the timeline of the campaign, these dungeons also allow players to play through the campaign using different paths. Rather than each character always following the same quest-to-quest path to get through the campaign reach the end game, with the right keys subsequent characters can instead enter a dungeon at one point during the campaign, and end up at a different part of the campaign. This results in an opportunity to have unique and customizable playthrough experiences.
Each dungeon is designed to have its own unique mechanic as well as its own unique rewards. While not all of these rewards may be as game changing as Temporal Sanctums Eternity Cache, each reward mechanic will provide a distinct method to fuel your characters progression. We plan to continue to add dungeons to Last Epoch for as long as we feel there is a good place for them in the world, and we feel we have a good way to implement a new mechanic and reward. However, enough dev talk, we know youre eager to hear about the new content to explore in patch 0.8.5, and were exited to share.
With 0.8.5 were going to be adding a number of new Uniques to Last Epoch, continuing to bolster the existing roster. Make sure to keep an eye out for this post to get a peek at some of the new unique items!
North of Lake Liath in the Imperial Era, a Lich of the Immortal Empire has unearthed the remains of an old Osprix battleground. Here he has discovered countless Solarum-made constructs and dangerous supply of potent elemental fire. Understanding the power of what he has discovered, he now works endlessly repurposing the constructs for use by the empire and experimenting with the elemental fire to create a destructive resource know as Soul Embers. Explore the dangerous excavations of Soulfire Bastion. Put an end to Fire Lich Cremoruss destructive intent, and dont forget to fill your boots full of Soul Embers for your trouble. There is more than one individual in Eterra that sees the value in what has been discovered here.
Catalysts have been reworked, both visually and mechanically. These changes present a significant improvement to equipped item rigging, and provide more versatility within the catalyst item type. There is now more options within Catalysts for implicit selection, as well as helping provide for a better gearing system with more options when comparing with other weapon setups.
We know you want to look as powerful as you feel out there in Eterra, and we are committed to that goal. We are introducing updated 3D models for 25 existing Uniques! Join us March 13th to see your favorite Unique items that are being brought to life in-game!
All Wraiths throughout Eterra have received a significant visual update. This includes both Necromancers Summon Wraith skill, as well as the various Wraiths found throughout Eterra.
0.8.5 - Depths of Eterra will continue to add to our roster of distinct armor designs. Keep an eye out for this post to get a nice view of some of the new armor sets you can collect for your favorite class.
Jormuns Fortress, once abandoned for years, has seen renewed activity in the Divine Era. A mysterious portal has opened within its walls, taking brave explorers to arenas around the world to face hordes of deadly enemies. While feared at first, these Arenas quickly became a way to prove ones ability in combat, and with that it drew the attention of the most talented fighters across Eterra. Over time the fortress adopted a new, more fitting name: Champions Gate.
The thrill of the Arena is a calling that speaks to each of us differently. Competition. Glory. Renown. Respect. While some can not hear the call, others in Eterra believe it to be an essential path of growth and a way of life. Others though, are drawn even further towards the calling and the quest for glory is all they now see. They remain within the Champions Gate, refusing to return to Eterra, waiting to finally find a worthy opponent who is capable of a proper fight, and a proper death.
Eterras history holds many secrets - some stretching so far back that they fade into myth. Such is is the case of The Lightless Arbor and The Mountain Beneath. Now, deep in the Ruined Era, during Eterras darkest hours, humanity will have to pay the price for that lost knowledge. Deep under the mountains that house the Last Refuge, there is an underground forest which has hidden away creatures and relics dating as far back as before the Ancient Era. One of these creatures - a massive construct made of plant and stone, has awoken - his lumbering beneath the Last Refuge threatens to cause a cave-in that would bury humanitys last light. Venture deep into The Lightless Arbor, walking paths untouched by sunlight for over a thousand years. Find safe passage through the dark forgotten forests and caverns, eventually confronting The Mountain Beneath. Within these depths, discover a mysterious vault; which unknown to the world for so long, still holds vast stores of unknown treasures.
On the 17th youll be able to get your hands on all of the juicy details of changes coming in patch 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra.
On the 18th, the passages open, the mountains lurch to life, and the champions stand awaiting challengers. Get into Last Epoch and discover these challenges, as well as their rewards.
With this patch preview concluded, we come to an end for todays news and announcement the Unbroken 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Spectacular *TM kickoff! Make sure to keep your eyes on our socials, as we will be continuing with tomorrows post on new Uniques in 0.8.5 - Depths of Eterra! Heres a summary of what you have to look forward to for the next 9 days. See you then Travelers! March 9th - Depths of Eterra Update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
[ 2022-03-09 20:57:50 CET ] [ Original post ]
Today is an exciting day to be part of the Last Epoch community!
First off, thank you for being so patient while waiting to hear what is in store for our next big update. That wait is now over, and your patience is about to be rewarded.
Today we are revealing that patch 0.8.5 - Depths of Eterra is only 9 days away, releasing on March 18th. WHAT? 9 DAYS? Fire up the hype train!? We hear you, and we agree. This patch cycle we decided to take a different approach in the way we announce all the cool new things that are coming: Weve packed them all into a Non-stop, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Extravaganza *TM. Ok, we are still working on the name.
What does this mean for you? It means that starting today, youll get new updates, features, or reveals everyday for 9 days until we hit patch release! To kick off this Non-stop, 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Spectacular *TM we are starting with an overview of patch highlights, and when you can expect more details on each of these highlights.
The Depths of Eterra hold many slumbering secrets and waking dreams. On March 18th, new passages open filled with bellowing fires and necrotic energies, the mountains themselves seem to quake to life, and amongst the chaos, those focused on fame and glory within the walls of the arena will find fierce new foes staking their rights to the name Arena Champions.
In patch 0.8.5 join us in exploring two new dungeons, and face down the fierce new Arena Champions for fame, glory, and well earned rewards.
Dungeons Overview
As patch 0.8.5, Depths of Eterra, is introducing the second and third dungeon to Last Epoch, we want to go over what makes a dungeon a dungeon, what the goals of the dungeon system are, and the future of dungeons in Last Epoch. Our goal with dungeons is to provide repeatable endgame content that exists within the world of the campaign. This means dungeons can, and will, be added to all sorts of areas within the campaign, and you may even be able to encounter dungeons fairly early on.
With dungeons being designed to show up throughout the campaign in Last Epoch, each one is also created with the ability to scale multiple tiers, starting from whenever they first appear in the campaign, all the way to level 100. This allows us to add, through playable content, more lore to the world, as well as provide challenges and rewards for new and experienced players alike. As these dungeons are added as part of the core world of Eterra rather than being a side mechanic, and their lore true to the timeline of the campaign, these dungeons also allow players to play through the campaign using different paths. Rather than each character always following the same quest-to-quest path to get through the campaign reach the end game, with the right keys subsequent characters can instead enter a dungeon at one point during the campaign, and end up at a different part of the campaign. This results in an opportunity to have unique and customizable playthrough experiences.
Each dungeon is designed to have its own unique mechanic as well as its own unique rewards. While not all of these rewards may be as game changing as Temporal Sanctums Eternity Cache, each reward mechanic will provide a distinct method to fuel your characters progression. We plan to continue to add dungeons to Last Epoch for as long as we feel there is a good place for them in the world, and we feel we have a good way to implement a new mechanic and reward. However, enough dev talk, we know youre eager to hear about the new content to explore in patch 0.8.5, and were exited to share.
March 10th: New Uniques
With 0.8.5 were going to be adding a number of new Uniques to Last Epoch, continuing to bolster the existing roster. Make sure to keep an eye out for this post to get a peek at some of the new unique items!
March 11th: Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion
North of Lake Liath in the Imperial Era, a Lich of the Immortal Empire has unearthed the remains of an old Osprix battleground. Here he has discovered countless Solarum-made constructs and dangerous supply of potent elemental fire. Understanding the power of what he has discovered, he now works endlessly repurposing the constructs for use by the empire and experimenting with the elemental fire to create a destructive resource know as Soul Embers. Explore the dangerous excavations of Soulfire Bastion. Put an end to Fire Lich Cremoruss destructive intent, and dont forget to fill your boots full of Soul Embers for your trouble. There is more than one individual in Eterra that sees the value in what has been discovered here.
March 12th: Catalysts Rework
Catalysts have been reworked, both visually and mechanically. These changes present a significant improvement to equipped item rigging, and provide more versatility within the catalyst item type. There is now more options within Catalysts for implicit selection, as well as helping provide for a better gearing system with more options when comparing with other weapon setups.
March 13th: New Unique Models
We know you want to look as powerful as you feel out there in Eterra, and we are committed to that goal. We are introducing updated 3D models for 25 existing Uniques! Join us March 13th to see your favorite Unique items that are being brought to life in-game!
(Also) March 13th: New Wraith Models
All Wraiths throughout Eterra have received a significant visual update. This includes both Necromancers Summon Wraith skill, as well as the various Wraiths found throughout Eterra.
March 14th: New Armor Models
0.8.5 - Depths of Eterra will continue to add to our roster of distinct armor designs. Keep an eye out for this post to get a nice view of some of the new armor sets you can collect for your favorite class.
March 15th: Arena Champions
Jormuns Fortress, once abandoned for years, has seen renewed activity in the Divine Era. A mysterious portal has opened within its walls, taking brave explorers to arenas around the world to face hordes of deadly enemies. While feared at first, these Arenas quickly became a way to prove ones ability in combat, and with that it drew the attention of the most talented fighters across Eterra. Over time the fortress adopted a new, more fitting name: Champions Gate.
The thrill of the Arena is a calling that speaks to each of us differently. Competition. Glory. Renown. Respect. While some can not hear the call, others in Eterra believe it to be an essential path of growth and a way of life. Others though, are drawn even further towards the calling and the quest for glory is all they now see. They remain within the Champions Gate, refusing to return to Eterra, waiting to finally find a worthy opponent who is capable of a proper fight, and a proper death.
March 16th: Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor
Eterras history holds many secrets - some stretching so far back that they fade into myth. Such is is the case of The Lightless Arbor and The Mountain Beneath. Now, deep in the Ruined Era, during Eterras darkest hours, humanity will have to pay the price for that lost knowledge. Deep under the mountains that house the Last Refuge, there is an underground forest which has hidden away creatures and relics dating as far back as before the Ancient Era. One of these creatures - a massive construct made of plant and stone, has awoken - his lumbering beneath the Last Refuge threatens to cause a cave-in that would bury humanitys last light. Venture deep into The Lightless Arbor, walking paths untouched by sunlight for over a thousand years. Find safe passage through the dark forgotten forests and caverns, eventually confronting The Mountain Beneath. Within these depths, discover a mysterious vault; which unknown to the world for so long, still holds vast stores of unknown treasures.
March 17th: Patch Notes
On the 17th youll be able to get your hands on all of the juicy details of changes coming in patch 0.8.5 Depths of Eterra.
March 18th: Patch Day!
On the 18th, the passages open, the mountains lurch to life, and the champions stand awaiting challengers. Get into Last Epoch and discover these challenges, as well as their rewards.
With this patch preview concluded, we come to an end for todays news and announcement the Unbroken 9 day, Extended Hype Week, Patch Spectacular *TM kickoff! Make sure to keep your eyes on our socials, as we will be continuing with tomorrows post on new Uniques in 0.8.5 - Depths of Eterra! Heres a summary of what you have to look forward to for the next 9 days. See you then Travelers! March 9th - Depths of Eterra Update Announcement March 10th - New Uniques March 11th - Dungeon - Soulfire Bastion March 12th - Catalyst Rework March 13th - New Unique Models March 13th - New Wraith Models March 14th - New Armor Set Models March 15th - Arena Champions March 16th - Dungeon - The Lightless Arbor March 17th - Patch Notes & Video Overview March 18th - Depths of Eterra Launch Day!
Last Epoch Q&A Dev Stream
[ 2022-03-04 20:33:12 CET ] [ Original post ]
Senior Developer Mike continues leveling up his Bear Druid. Come and ask any questions you have about Last Epoch and its development.
Weekly Dev Stream | Ukraine Relief Fundraiser
March 4th: 15:00 - 17:00 CST (22:00 - 00:00 BST) March 11th: 15:00 - 17:00 CST (22:00 - 00:00 BST) March 18th: 15:00 - 17:00 CST (22:00 - 00:00 BST) March 25th: 15:00 - 17:00 CST (22:00 - 00:00 BST)
Save the Children - https://www.savethechildren.org/ UNICEF - https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/unicef-children-crossfire-ukraine-crisis/ Stream Donations - https://streamlabs.com/lastepochgame/tip
[ 2022-03-03 19:51:31 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, As much of our community is aware, every Friday one of our game designers - Mike, hosts a dev stream. This stream is an opportunity for us to hang out with our community, play some Last Epoch, answer community questions, and maybe, reveal a teaser or two about upcoming content. What many people might not be aware of is that each month we pick a charity which all proceeds from the dev stream are donated. For the months of January and February, we were contributing dev stream proceeds to Save the Children. Save the Children is an organization which works to improve the lives of children through better education, health care, and economic opportunities, as well as providing emergency aid in natural disasters, war, and other conflicts. Last Friday, our Lead Game Director Judd posted a statement concerning the happenings involving Ukraine and Russia, and the relations to the Eleventh Hour Games studio having team members in both countries. As part of our response to this, for the month of March, Eleventh Hour Games will be donating all dev stream proceeds to UNICEFs Ukraine relief fund. Further, **Eleventh hour games is also committing to match all community proceeds and donations for the month of March up to $10,000.** All subs, donations, and bits will be going to this cause. We appreciate all of our community members support, and look forward to seeing you during the dev streams, even if just to watch us play some Last Epoch or try to catch some teasers.
Stream Schedule:
March 4th: 15:00 - 17:00 CST (22:00 - 00:00 BST) March 11th: 15:00 - 17:00 CST (22:00 - 00:00 BST) March 18th: 15:00 - 17:00 CST (22:00 - 00:00 BST) March 25th: 15:00 - 17:00 CST (22:00 - 00:00 BST)
Charity Information:
Save the Children - https://www.savethechildren.org/ UNICEF - https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/unicef-children-crossfire-ukraine-crisis/ Stream Donations - https://streamlabs.com/lastepochgame/tip
Multiplayer Progress Update - February 2022
Weve finished all of our preliminary work here. Which means... we have multiplayer crafting!
Having crafting for our daily multiplayer testing has been a gamechanger for the multiplayer experience, and were starting to get a really clear vision of how Last Epoch is going to be played online together with friends. We have a lot more work here to do to ensure data integrity; that is, making sure all your characters and crafting endeavours can be saved and backed up safely, addressing any potential points of failure or game exploitation. This will be ongoing up and through our multiplayer betas and 1.0 release.
While weve been working diligently on core multiplayer features, weve seen a natural increase to the complexity of the processes of creating and releasing Last Epoch builds. What does this mean? The automated system we use to build the game has become more complicated to maintain, as we now have two major clients (single player and multiplayer), as well as our game servers. We have the skills to address this all ourselves, and this is a normal part of game development, its something that will take a fraction of our attention to address whenever given issues come up. This will also become much easier once were only developing and releasing Last Epoch as an online game. With that said, were still hiring for more hands to manage the multiplayer release of Last Epoch!
Were still continuing to use our new account system internally, and we have determined that its current state will be shippable to our Community Testers when we get there. A full account migration of our now-large player base will be something we perform a bit later, closer to when we release a public multiplayer beta. Its a complex process and will require a very thorough plan to execute, so we are focused for now on delivering a testable multiplayer experience instead.
We actually have our new chat service nearly fully complete and ready to integrate into Last Epoch. This is quite exciting, as our issues with our current chat have been well known. Right now, because we have another single-player release looming, we cannot yet add it into our multiplayer environment as its a complicated process. We will have to wait until our 0.8.5 release to bring this into our internal multiplayer build, test and make fixes, and have it available for when we release multiplayer to Community Testers. This new chat wont be publicly available until we release a wider multiplayer beta.
We are now ready for all of these to be tested at a larger scale, and are continuing to work at ensuring we remove as many risks to our games online stability as possible. This still remains one of the most important things we need to get right to give you all a high quality multiplayer release, so were going to always be making consistent progress here. Also, a gentle reminder that for us, Matchmaking is a more technical term that describes how you and your parties will request and receive servers, rather than some sort of party matchmaking system, which is not something we are developing at this time.
Our main goals for March are to ensure we are able to diagnose and debug core problems quickly, and add the last remaining game content to the multiplayer version of Last Epoch. Once we have these closed out, were going to have a pretty high confidence in releasing an alpha multiplayer version to our Community Testers, and other players soon after that.
Developing the multiplayer version of the Monolith of Fate is a far larger undertaking than adding the campaign (which is already fully complete). Weve already fully designed and are executing our plan here, and this will be something I will share updates on in great detail in next months post. An exciting part of this plan is that were also going to be optimizing a number of parts about how our game loads, and overall performance, so were quite excited about this!
With our team size growing and with so many complex bugs and systems to have to be able to manage when we go online, its important we can read all of the information we receive quickly. Weve recognized a need to reduce the amount of noise we get in all of our logging, as well as start to mature our tools to give each of our teams the data theyll need to make good decisions. This may not sound glamorous, but its of vital importance for us to be able to diagnose problems as quickly as possible, so youre never waiting for a hotfix to a problem, or a game update.
Outside of the Monolith, well be adding the remaining game content we dont have yet online. Were now happy to say we have enough support to be able to make progress on most of this at once. Were also nearing the finish line. Some of the main areas well target: updates to the technical aspects of channeled and shapeshifting abilities, cleaning up some other elements of the endgame such as the Arena group experience, and starting to plan out what our Leaderboard will look like on our new backend. There are a few other features that could be included here, but were starting to close it all out!
When contemplating the question when will multiplayer be released for testing? Ive learned to ask myself another question: What are we looking for with a public test? The answer to that is pretty simple. We want the experience to be mostly focused on players being able to give us feedback about Last Epochs online experience, rather than technical bugs. Our last pushes before releasing multiplayer to Community Testers will now be focused on that philosophy: when we reach a threshold that we feel well get consistent game design feedback to improve our games multiplayer experience, well release it. Ive started to build the plan with our lead network engineer to get us there. Next month well be excited to share with you some more status updates, a more technical breakdown of how the multiplayer monolith will work, as well as any reveals about our Community Testing plan if were ready. Thanks again for all of your patience and support, and like always Ill be hanging out in the comments sections to answer questions. See you next month!
[ 2022-02-28 18:29:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello all, and welcome to the second multiplayer blog of 2022!
If you checked out Ross post last month, we took a break from all my techno babble to break down our various social features. Were now using a number of these changes in internal multiplayer testing. But youre not here for that - youre here for a progress update!
Im pleased to say that were now making major progress in every avenue of multiplayer development. It was a very challenging process to migrate a large chunk of our backend features to be more self-owned, something I spoke about in our November update. Now that were through the major migration, weve been able to return to core game design and preparing multiplayer for our Community Testers.
For this update I am going to speak directly to our status from what I discussed in December, and mention a few exciting game design tidbits.
Characters / Crafting
Weve finished all of our preliminary work here. Which means... we have multiplayer crafting!
Having crafting for our daily multiplayer testing has been a gamechanger for the multiplayer experience, and were starting to get a really clear vision of how Last Epoch is going to be played online together with friends. We have a lot more work here to do to ensure data integrity; that is, making sure all your characters and crafting endeavours can be saved and backed up safely, addressing any potential points of failure or game exploitation. This will be ongoing up and through our multiplayer betas and 1.0 release.
Deployment
While weve been working diligently on core multiplayer features, weve seen a natural increase to the complexity of the processes of creating and releasing Last Epoch builds. What does this mean? The automated system we use to build the game has become more complicated to maintain, as we now have two major clients (single player and multiplayer), as well as our game servers. We have the skills to address this all ourselves, and this is a normal part of game development, its something that will take a fraction of our attention to address whenever given issues come up. This will also become much easier once were only developing and releasing Last Epoch as an online game. With that said, were still hiring for more hands to manage the multiplayer release of Last Epoch!
Users / Game Access
Were still continuing to use our new account system internally, and we have determined that its current state will be shippable to our Community Testers when we get there. A full account migration of our now-large player base will be something we perform a bit later, closer to when we release a public multiplayer beta. Its a complex process and will require a very thorough plan to execute, so we are focused for now on delivering a testable multiplayer experience instead.
Chat
We actually have our new chat service nearly fully complete and ready to integrate into Last Epoch. This is quite exciting, as our issues with our current chat have been well known. Right now, because we have another single-player release looming, we cannot yet add it into our multiplayer environment as its a complicated process. We will have to wait until our 0.8.5 release to bring this into our internal multiplayer build, test and make fixes, and have it available for when we release multiplayer to Community Testers. This new chat wont be publicly available until we release a wider multiplayer beta.
Login / Game Server / Matchmaking
We are now ready for all of these to be tested at a larger scale, and are continuing to work at ensuring we remove as many risks to our games online stability as possible. This still remains one of the most important things we need to get right to give you all a high quality multiplayer release, so were going to always be making consistent progress here. Also, a gentle reminder that for us, Matchmaking is a more technical term that describes how you and your parties will request and receive servers, rather than some sort of party matchmaking system, which is not something we are developing at this time.
Goals for March
Our main goals for March are to ensure we are able to diagnose and debug core problems quickly, and add the last remaining game content to the multiplayer version of Last Epoch. Once we have these closed out, were going to have a pretty high confidence in releasing an alpha multiplayer version to our Community Testers, and other players soon after that.
Multiplayer Monolith
Developing the multiplayer version of the Monolith of Fate is a far larger undertaking than adding the campaign (which is already fully complete). Weve already fully designed and are executing our plan here, and this will be something I will share updates on in great detail in next months post. An exciting part of this plan is that were also going to be optimizing a number of parts about how our game loads, and overall performance, so were quite excited about this!
Diagnostics / Fixing multiplayer bugs fast
With our team size growing and with so many complex bugs and systems to have to be able to manage when we go online, its important we can read all of the information we receive quickly. Weve recognized a need to reduce the amount of noise we get in all of our logging, as well as start to mature our tools to give each of our teams the data theyll need to make good decisions. This may not sound glamorous, but its of vital importance for us to be able to diagnose problems as quickly as possible, so youre never waiting for a hotfix to a problem, or a game update.
Remaining Game Content
Outside of the Monolith, well be adding the remaining game content we dont have yet online. Were now happy to say we have enough support to be able to make progress on most of this at once. Were also nearing the finish line. Some of the main areas well target: updates to the technical aspects of channeled and shapeshifting abilities, cleaning up some other elements of the endgame such as the Arena group experience, and starting to plan out what our Leaderboard will look like on our new backend. There are a few other features that could be included here, but were starting to close it all out!
Final Thoughts
When contemplating the question when will multiplayer be released for testing? Ive learned to ask myself another question: What are we looking for with a public test? The answer to that is pretty simple. We want the experience to be mostly focused on players being able to give us feedback about Last Epochs online experience, rather than technical bugs. Our last pushes before releasing multiplayer to Community Testers will now be focused on that philosophy: when we reach a threshold that we feel well get consistent game design feedback to improve our games multiplayer experience, well release it. Ive started to build the plan with our lead network engineer to get us there. Next month well be excited to share with you some more status updates, a more technical breakdown of how the multiplayer monolith will work, as well as any reveals about our Community Testing plan if were ready. Thanks again for all of your patience and support, and like always Ill be hanging out in the comments sections to answer questions. See you next month!
Community Moderation Team | Beesfriends
In many games and communities, moderators are scary people who tend to lurk in the background, hammer ready to punish those who fall out of line. Thats not what we want within our community. We have three core principles we follow when it comes to moderation within Last Epoch:
Our moderators are not passive, lurking in the shadows. Our moderators are community guides and helpers first, moderators second. Moderators lead by example within the community. By actively setting the stage, moderation action becomes much less necessary as more players will become willing to adopt the positive environment being set. Our goal is to strive to help the community grow in a positive way, rather than simply address negative actions.
Our moderators engage the community, not shut down the community. If a conversation starts becoming abusive, excessively vulgar, or otherwise becomes too hot, moderators will try to step in and reign in the conversation by changing the topic, or if necessary asking players to change topics.
Our moderators strive to be fair and unbiased in action. We provide coaching and guidance towards this goal, as well as providing full opportunity for peer discussion of events. We try to avoid implementing action whenever possible, preferring to provide players the opportunity to chose to be part of a healthy community. However, sometimes conversations can simply get a bit too heated, or a player goes too far in violation of the Code of Conduct. If this occurs, our moderators will take all reasonable steps to ensure fair warning is provided, and that they do not participate in any bias if action is required.
Weve mentioned in posts a few times in the past helpful community members who help us out. We refer to this as our Community Moderation Team and Beesfriends (name to be finalized). This team is comprised of handpicked players who have gone above and beyond within the community to make it a great place for new and experienced players alike. These players operate on a completely volunteer basis, out of their passion for the game and its community. Because of this, we do have zero tolerance for any abuse targeting these volunteer members (as we do any players). These community members often already follow the first two principles of our moderation principles before joining the team, and are then empowered to implement short actions in the third principle when necessary. Whenever an action is taken by one of or moderators, a report is automatically generated and submitted to us so we can provide oversight and guidance to our moderation team. Any time a more severe moderation action may be required, it is discussed with EHG staff and implemented directly by EHG if deemed necessary. Though because weve had such a great community with all of you, this has rarely been necessary.
Currently, for all players, to report another player it requires directly submitting a support ticket with information regarding the event. Going forward, we want to provide all players more power in shaping their community. With the new chat system being developed alongside multiplayer, all players will have the power to report users in game. This chat system will also provide further utility for our team in regards to moderation such as helping clarify when someone is an appointed community moderator or a member of the EHG team. Further, we provide a route for all players to be able to dispute a moderation action. If you believe an action was taken against you incorrectly, you can submit a support ticket and the action will be reviewed directly by EHG staff. Even in the event it was a staff member who implemented the action, it will not be touched by the person who implemented the action to ensure a fair review.
By having a community moderation team rather than solely an in house moderation team, we also help ensure that we are never pushing an agenda, or biasing our communitys conversations. Moderation action is never taken for criticizing EHG or our policies. This allows for a healthy community in which all members feel welcome and able to participate in. Our community moderators are also allowed to put forward other community members to join the team, helping to keep this self regulation within moderation to prevent a overarching bias to actions. However, this is not to say that the community moderation team is completely autonomous. All community moderators are expected to follow the same Code of Conduct as all other players, and do have a set of guidelines to follow in their actions. The team is provided support directly by us here at EHG, providing oversight as well to ensure theres no abuse of power within the community moderation team, and that the three core principles are being maintained. Most Importantly, this approach to moderation is that the first two core principles dont require any sort of special power. Its something any community member going above and beyond is capable of. It is important to us to be involved in the community, and the community involved with us, as all of us not only come from it, but are still a part of it.
As the player base continues to expand, so will our efforts in this. With multiplayer on the not so distant horizon, we are looking to expand our community moderation team including in game, Discord, Steam, Forums, and on our official Reddit. Reddit in particular we want to be as hands off in moderation as possible to ensure the integrity of discourse there, that it is always fair, and completely unbiased. For in game, were looking to expand our roster of community moderators to assist our global community in different languages. If youre interested in joining our community moderation team, heres a general outline of what we would be looking for:
[ 2022-02-02 18:41:41 CET ] [ Original post ]
Good day Travelers! We wanted to take an opportunity to discuss a sometimes controversial topic, but a very important one. Moderation. This is normally a daunting topic, however we dont think it should be. Rather, it should be something we are open about. In that spirit, we wanted to spend a little bit of time to discuss how we handle moderation, and what our plans are concerning it going forward. Alongside this I also want to provide a big shout out to all of the community members who make up our community moderator team, and all the work theyve been doing to help out with our community. Thank you for all of your hard work with us helping out all the players, and working to keep a great environment for players to learn and have fun in Last Epoch!
What moderation means to us
In many games and communities, moderators are scary people who tend to lurk in the background, hammer ready to punish those who fall out of line. Thats not what we want within our community. We have three core principles we follow when it comes to moderation within Last Epoch:
Setting the stage
Our moderators are not passive, lurking in the shadows. Our moderators are community guides and helpers first, moderators second. Moderators lead by example within the community. By actively setting the stage, moderation action becomes much less necessary as more players will become willing to adopt the positive environment being set. Our goal is to strive to help the community grow in a positive way, rather than simply address negative actions.
Guiding the conversations
Our moderators engage the community, not shut down the community. If a conversation starts becoming abusive, excessively vulgar, or otherwise becomes too hot, moderators will try to step in and reign in the conversation by changing the topic, or if necessary asking players to change topics.
Moderation action
Our moderators strive to be fair and unbiased in action. We provide coaching and guidance towards this goal, as well as providing full opportunity for peer discussion of events. We try to avoid implementing action whenever possible, preferring to provide players the opportunity to chose to be part of a healthy community. However, sometimes conversations can simply get a bit too heated, or a player goes too far in violation of the Code of Conduct. If this occurs, our moderators will take all reasonable steps to ensure fair warning is provided, and that they do not participate in any bias if action is required.
How we plan to implement this style of moderation
Community Moderator Program - Codename Beesfriends
Weve mentioned in posts a few times in the past helpful community members who help us out. We refer to this as our Community Moderation Team and Beesfriends (name to be finalized). This team is comprised of handpicked players who have gone above and beyond within the community to make it a great place for new and experienced players alike. These players operate on a completely volunteer basis, out of their passion for the game and its community. Because of this, we do have zero tolerance for any abuse targeting these volunteer members (as we do any players). These community members often already follow the first two principles of our moderation principles before joining the team, and are then empowered to implement short actions in the third principle when necessary. Whenever an action is taken by one of or moderators, a report is automatically generated and submitted to us so we can provide oversight and guidance to our moderation team. Any time a more severe moderation action may be required, it is discussed with EHG staff and implemented directly by EHG if deemed necessary. Though because weve had such a great community with all of you, this has rarely been necessary.
Empowering players to be involved in moderation
Currently, for all players, to report another player it requires directly submitting a support ticket with information regarding the event. Going forward, we want to provide all players more power in shaping their community. With the new chat system being developed alongside multiplayer, all players will have the power to report users in game. This chat system will also provide further utility for our team in regards to moderation such as helping clarify when someone is an appointed community moderator or a member of the EHG team. Further, we provide a route for all players to be able to dispute a moderation action. If you believe an action was taken against you incorrectly, you can submit a support ticket and the action will be reviewed directly by EHG staff. Even in the event it was a staff member who implemented the action, it will not be touched by the person who implemented the action to ensure a fair review.
Why this style of moderation?
By having a community moderation team rather than solely an in house moderation team, we also help ensure that we are never pushing an agenda, or biasing our communitys conversations. Moderation action is never taken for criticizing EHG or our policies. This allows for a healthy community in which all members feel welcome and able to participate in. Our community moderators are also allowed to put forward other community members to join the team, helping to keep this self regulation within moderation to prevent a overarching bias to actions. However, this is not to say that the community moderation team is completely autonomous. All community moderators are expected to follow the same Code of Conduct as all other players, and do have a set of guidelines to follow in their actions. The team is provided support directly by us here at EHG, providing oversight as well to ensure theres no abuse of power within the community moderation team, and that the three core principles are being maintained. Most Importantly, this approach to moderation is that the first two core principles dont require any sort of special power. Its something any community member going above and beyond is capable of. It is important to us to be involved in the community, and the community involved with us, as all of us not only come from it, but are still a part of it.
Joining the Beesfriends
As the player base continues to expand, so will our efforts in this. With multiplayer on the not so distant horizon, we are looking to expand our community moderation team including in game, Discord, Steam, Forums, and on our official Reddit. Reddit in particular we want to be as hands off in moderation as possible to ensure the integrity of discourse there, that it is always fair, and completely unbiased. For in game, were looking to expand our roster of community moderators to assist our global community in different languages. If youre interested in joining our community moderation team, heres a general outline of what we would be looking for:
- No history of moderation actions in the LE community
- Preference given to players with longer tenure / more consistent activity within the community
- Either generally helpful within the community such as answering questions for new players, or discussing friendly topics in chat without pushing the Code of Conduct. Let us know how you participate in the community!
- Preference would be given to players which are online with a regular frequency. There are no obligations or schedules for our moderation team, but we would be looking for members who will be able to regularly help with the community.
Multiplayer Progress Update - January 2022
The Social Panel is the heart of the multiplayer experience in Last Epoch and will be how youll add new friends, send party invites, and manage your current party. Were in the process of replacing our placeholder social UI in our current multiplayer builds with redesigned panels that are easier to use, more consistent with the rest of our UI, and have better gamepad support.
The Friends tab of our new Social Panel The Friends tab within the Social Panel has the majority of the features youd expect, including:
The Party tab of our new Social Panel
Players can be added to your friends list by entering their username via the Social Panel, right-clicking the users name in the chat UI, or right-clicking a player in the World/a Town Hub. Were currently still working on specifics around how many players youll see in Town Hubs during the campaign and at end game, well release more specifics on that at a later date. When youre partied up with your friends, youll see their player card at the top left of your HUD. This shows their class, frame, level, and a button to open a portal directly to them. The context menu for party cards provides other options for interacting with that player, including muting and whispering.
Our current chat system is enjoyed by many of our players and is a great way to ask or answer questions from other players or get advice on your build. That being said, were aware of the issues and missing functionality within the system and are doing a full revamp of chat functionality for Multiplayer, in addition to building out and improving our moderation tools to provide an enjoyable and welcoming environment to our players. Were hard at work developing this new chat system using a third-party chat provider that will scale better from our current numbers up to launch, and will have several new core features compared to our current system, allowing you to customize your chat experience.
Our redesigned Chat UI
Our updated chat UI has a custom tab system allowing you to create and rename chat tabs, controlling which specific channels you are interested in displaying messages from within that tab. Our current chat system is limited on that front and only has one Global channel, however as we scale the system up for multiplayer launch, were adding more specific channels for players to chat in. For example, you may configure your Main tab to be connected to channels that relate specifically to your current class, or you may just want to be connected to Global chat for casual conversation. Youll also be able to configure individual tabs to show/disable Local Chat, Party Chat, and to display NPC subtitles. If youre in a Party, a tab will automatically appear to display chat within your Party. Were also implementing an alert system where well be able to inform players via the Chat UI of any announcements, maintenance, or downtime that may occur from time to time.
Configuring a Chat Tab
A common request from players has been to allow linking items in Chat. Were pleased to say that this functionality is being added to our chat UI, and youll be able to show off or ask questions relating to your specific items, linking them in chat so that other people can hover over the link and view the full tooltip. We are also looking at other systems that could be integrated with chat linking, such as the ability to link to specific sections of the in-game guide.
Were currently working on ensuring our systems and flow for informing the user of their connection status is working well. That includes how disconnections are handled, how were communicating various errors states, announcements, player ping, and so on. [Dan] I believe were planning to add a ping display within the Action Bar HUD, assuming thats fine/doable. Thats all for this months Multiplayer Update. Let us know what Social features youd be excited for when Multiplayer drops! As mentioned above, next month well be back with Dan, focusing on covering how core multiplayer development is progressing. Stay tuned!
[ 2022-01-31 18:34:15 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello all, happy new year, and welcome to the first multiplayer dev blog of 2022! Im Ross, Creative Director at Eleventh Hour games, and as Dan mentioned in our previous multiplayer progress update, this month well be taking a break from covering the more technical aspects of Multiplayer implementation and instead are discussing the interface and user experience elements involved in partying up and playing multiplayer with your friends in Last Epoch! Rest assured the development team is continuing to make good progress on core multiplayer development. Were growing the multiplayer team and have been hard at work implementing our final core systems such as Item Crafting and the Monolith. There will be more on that in the next progress update.
Partying up
The Social Panel is the heart of the multiplayer experience in Last Epoch and will be how youll add new friends, send party invites, and manage your current party. Were in the process of replacing our placeholder social UI in our current multiplayer builds with redesigned panels that are easier to use, more consistent with the rest of our UI, and have better gamepad support.
The Friends tab of our new Social Panel The Friends tab within the Social Panel has the majority of the features youd expect, including:
- Listing and grouping your friends via their status
- Displaying friend requests (incoming and outgoing)
- Blocked player management
- Visibility settings
- A custom Status message
- Displaying each players portrait and frame. Currently, were defaulting to showing a users base class for the portrait, in however longer term were aiming to add more options in addition to that, including mastery specific portraits, and other portraits unlocked by Challenges The Party Tab shows an overview of your current party, showing each party members status, and allows the Party Leader to remove players from the group. Currently, any player in the party can invite other players to join the group, but only the leader can kick people from the party. [Dan] - check this is correct.
The Party tab of our new Social Panel
Adding Players to your party
Players can be added to your friends list by entering their username via the Social Panel, right-clicking the users name in the chat UI, or right-clicking a player in the World/a Town Hub. Were currently still working on specifics around how many players youll see in Town Hubs during the campaign and at end game, well release more specifics on that at a later date. When youre partied up with your friends, youll see their player card at the top left of your HUD. This shows their class, frame, level, and a button to open a portal directly to them. The context menu for party cards provides other options for interacting with that player, including muting and whispering.
Chat Improvements
Our current chat system is enjoyed by many of our players and is a great way to ask or answer questions from other players or get advice on your build. That being said, were aware of the issues and missing functionality within the system and are doing a full revamp of chat functionality for Multiplayer, in addition to building out and improving our moderation tools to provide an enjoyable and welcoming environment to our players. Were hard at work developing this new chat system using a third-party chat provider that will scale better from our current numbers up to launch, and will have several new core features compared to our current system, allowing you to customize your chat experience.
Our redesigned Chat UI
Customizing tabs
Our updated chat UI has a custom tab system allowing you to create and rename chat tabs, controlling which specific channels you are interested in displaying messages from within that tab. Our current chat system is limited on that front and only has one Global channel, however as we scale the system up for multiplayer launch, were adding more specific channels for players to chat in. For example, you may configure your Main tab to be connected to channels that relate specifically to your current class, or you may just want to be connected to Global chat for casual conversation. Youll also be able to configure individual tabs to show/disable Local Chat, Party Chat, and to display NPC subtitles. If youre in a Party, a tab will automatically appear to display chat within your Party. Were also implementing an alert system where well be able to inform players via the Chat UI of any announcements, maintenance, or downtime that may occur from time to time.
Configuring a Chat Tab
Chat and Item linking
A common request from players has been to allow linking items in Chat. Were pleased to say that this functionality is being added to our chat UI, and youll be able to show off or ask questions relating to your specific items, linking them in chat so that other people can hover over the link and view the full tooltip. We are also looking at other systems that could be integrated with chat linking, such as the ability to link to specific sections of the in-game guide.
What aspects of multiplayer UX are we focusing on now?
Were currently working on ensuring our systems and flow for informing the user of their connection status is working well. That includes how disconnections are handled, how were communicating various errors states, announcements, player ping, and so on. [Dan] I believe were planning to add a ping display within the Action Bar HUD, assuming thats fine/doable. Thats all for this months Multiplayer Update. Let us know what Social features youd be excited for when Multiplayer drops! As mentioned above, next month well be back with Dan, focusing on covering how core multiplayer development is progressing. Stay tuned!
0.8.5 on the Horizon | Development Update January 2022
December saw the introduction of the Eternal Legends update. This introduced one of the new endgame Dungeons: Temporal Sanctum, Legendary Items, an overhaul to crafting, and an overhaul to the Druid mastery. We're happy to say this new endgame system, and the addition of legendary items to provide further solid goals for players has been very well received. This patch resulted in not only continual growth of player numbers over the first month following release but the highest overall retention weve seen to date. Looking forward to patch 0.8.5, we have some exciting news to share with you today. 0.8.5 will bring an exciting batch of content into the game for players in Eterra to explore. From endgame content like two new dungeons and updates to our Arena system - to visual improvements across the game, like new 3D models, weapons, and combat VFX and feel. We are also putting a lot of effort into improving our tools to find, track and fix performance issues. In addition to the new content above, behind the scenes our 0.8.5 development cycle has a massive focus on multiplayer. We have more dedicated developers devoted to multiplayer this year than at any time in Last Epochs history, and we are actively paving the way towards our first community test.
As our development path towards 1.0 comes closer into focus, we have an update to share on some of our longer-term development goals for Last Epoch. We now have a better understanding of what our focuses need to be for 1.0 to ensure Epoch is ready for a large audience, and live operations development for years to come. As weve continued to develop and shape Last Epoch around community feedback (thank you by the way), we have realized that some features have needed to be re-evaluated in how they fit into the world of Eterra, and thus removed from this development card. This does not mean we have plans for any less content for Last Epoch, just that these items no longer fit into the core experience in a fun and fluid way as they were envisioned.
Right now our efforts need to be focused on overall game quality, higher performance standards, server load, balance, story presentation, and more to ensure were on the right foot at 1.0 to give our community, and Last Epoch the successful launch it deserves. We fully understand this message may come as disappointing news to some who were waiting for a specific feature to drop into an upcoming patch. We want you to know that we remain committed to our ongoing development of Last Epoch and in time we will deliver everything the game needs, and our passionate community deserves. Two features were removing from the card are Gates of Memoriam, and the Epochs Call system. We have removed the Bazaar from the card and added player trading in its place. Gates of Memoriam was planned as an endgame system that was more rooted in the world and timeline of the campaign, in contrast with the Monolith and Arena. However as we discussed and developed the idea more recently, we decided that the prospect of revisiting the actual campaign zones did not fit well into Last Epoch as it exists now or our visions for it in the future. We feel that the Dungeon system more effectively fulfills this role of a repeatable endgame system that takes place within the world of the campaign, and will be expanding on it in 0.8.5 with two new dungeons. Epochs Call was intended as a mechanic for directing players towards specific randomised content in the Gates of Memoriam and the Monolith of Fate. However as we no longer plan to go ahead with the Gates of Memoriam and our vision of the Monolith of Fate has evolved a lot since 2018, Epochs Call as it was originally envisioned no longer has a clear place. With that said we are still dedicated to improving monolith randomisation. These sorts of missions that direct players towards specific pieces of content in endgame are still something were considering implementing. However, if implemented, theyre more likely to be a part of the Favour system rather than Epochs Call. The final system we want to discuss is the Bazaar. We spoke to our ideas regarding the Bazaar in the Multiplayer FAQ in July of last year. Since then, we listened very carefully to all of the dialogue concerning trade and had a lot of conversations internally as a result. After a lot of discussion about the various challenges to our proposed direction, we no longer feel that the Bazaar is the best way to go about player trading in Last Epoch. While player trading will still be a part of the game, were planning to take a different approach. We will be talking more about our reasoning here, as well as the future of trading in Last Epoch, in a dedicated post in the coming months.
Temporal Sanctum was the first dungeon we added to the game in the Eternal Legends Update. It offers the first iteration of map randomization, a unique mechanic, a boss encounter, and last but not least, its own reward. In the future, we plan to expand the Dungeon System, introduce new challenges, and make the end-game more diverse.
Patch 0.8.5 will bring two new dungeons with their own theme and mechanics to Last Epoch. Players will encounter two new terrifying bosses and after defeating them will get access to new rewards - the Vaults of Uncertain Fate and the Soul Gambler. Well talk more about the mechanics and rewards in the coming weeks.
With 0.8.5, were going to be introducing a new arena mode. In this mode youll find yourself in the arena against a set number of waves, eventually coming face to face with one of the new Arena Champions. These champions have had their own fair share of experience in the gauntlet and know which way the pointy end goes - you may even find them using a trick or two of your own against you. You can defeat skullens, imperial commanders, and even dragons; but can you defeat another master of the arena?
Players can find hundreds of unique and set items in the game. And while the unique items have great 2D art, the vast majority of them dont have 3D models to match. Patch 0.8.5 will bring the first batch of new 3D models for dozens of unique and set-based weapons and shields.
Adding new armor sets to the game is an ongoing process and patch 0.8.5 will bring several new ones.
In addition to the armor sets, Catalysts will get a complete overhaul with new implicit affixes and 2D/3D art.
Weve also taken this opportunity to revise some animations, and our playable characters will get brand new animations when using Catalysts.
And this is not all. Behind the scenes were constantly working on many other smaller but important changes. With 0.8.5 well see many of these game experience changes; including new enemies, improvements to animations of some of the older enemies, an improved dialog box, more voice-overs, and improvements to the visuals of some areas. We cant wait to share the details with you in the upcoming weeks, so keep your eyes on our socials. Patch 0.8.5 will be released this March. Discord Facebook Twitter Reddit Youtube
[ 2022-01-27 18:23:40 CET ] [ Original post ]
Development Update
December saw the introduction of the Eternal Legends update. This introduced one of the new endgame Dungeons: Temporal Sanctum, Legendary Items, an overhaul to crafting, and an overhaul to the Druid mastery. We're happy to say this new endgame system, and the addition of legendary items to provide further solid goals for players has been very well received. This patch resulted in not only continual growth of player numbers over the first month following release but the highest overall retention weve seen to date. Looking forward to patch 0.8.5, we have some exciting news to share with you today. 0.8.5 will bring an exciting batch of content into the game for players in Eterra to explore. From endgame content like two new dungeons and updates to our Arena system - to visual improvements across the game, like new 3D models, weapons, and combat VFX and feel. We are also putting a lot of effort into improving our tools to find, track and fix performance issues. In addition to the new content above, behind the scenes our 0.8.5 development cycle has a massive focus on multiplayer. We have more dedicated developers devoted to multiplayer this year than at any time in Last Epochs history, and we are actively paving the way towards our first community test.
Forecast Update
As our development path towards 1.0 comes closer into focus, we have an update to share on some of our longer-term development goals for Last Epoch. We now have a better understanding of what our focuses need to be for 1.0 to ensure Epoch is ready for a large audience, and live operations development for years to come. As weve continued to develop and shape Last Epoch around community feedback (thank you by the way), we have realized that some features have needed to be re-evaluated in how they fit into the world of Eterra, and thus removed from this development card. This does not mean we have plans for any less content for Last Epoch, just that these items no longer fit into the core experience in a fun and fluid way as they were envisioned.
Right now our efforts need to be focused on overall game quality, higher performance standards, server load, balance, story presentation, and more to ensure were on the right foot at 1.0 to give our community, and Last Epoch the successful launch it deserves. We fully understand this message may come as disappointing news to some who were waiting for a specific feature to drop into an upcoming patch. We want you to know that we remain committed to our ongoing development of Last Epoch and in time we will deliver everything the game needs, and our passionate community deserves. Two features were removing from the card are Gates of Memoriam, and the Epochs Call system. We have removed the Bazaar from the card and added player trading in its place. Gates of Memoriam was planned as an endgame system that was more rooted in the world and timeline of the campaign, in contrast with the Monolith and Arena. However as we discussed and developed the idea more recently, we decided that the prospect of revisiting the actual campaign zones did not fit well into Last Epoch as it exists now or our visions for it in the future. We feel that the Dungeon system more effectively fulfills this role of a repeatable endgame system that takes place within the world of the campaign, and will be expanding on it in 0.8.5 with two new dungeons. Epochs Call was intended as a mechanic for directing players towards specific randomised content in the Gates of Memoriam and the Monolith of Fate. However as we no longer plan to go ahead with the Gates of Memoriam and our vision of the Monolith of Fate has evolved a lot since 2018, Epochs Call as it was originally envisioned no longer has a clear place. With that said we are still dedicated to improving monolith randomisation. These sorts of missions that direct players towards specific pieces of content in endgame are still something were considering implementing. However, if implemented, theyre more likely to be a part of the Favour system rather than Epochs Call. The final system we want to discuss is the Bazaar. We spoke to our ideas regarding the Bazaar in the Multiplayer FAQ in July of last year. Since then, we listened very carefully to all of the dialogue concerning trade and had a lot of conversations internally as a result. After a lot of discussion about the various challenges to our proposed direction, we no longer feel that the Bazaar is the best way to go about player trading in Last Epoch. While player trading will still be a part of the game, were planning to take a different approach. We will be talking more about our reasoning here, as well as the future of trading in Last Epoch, in a dedicated post in the coming months.
New Dungeons
Temporal Sanctum was the first dungeon we added to the game in the Eternal Legends Update. It offers the first iteration of map randomization, a unique mechanic, a boss encounter, and last but not least, its own reward. In the future, we plan to expand the Dungeon System, introduce new challenges, and make the end-game more diverse.
Patch 0.8.5 will bring two new dungeons with their own theme and mechanics to Last Epoch. Players will encounter two new terrifying bosses and after defeating them will get access to new rewards - the Vaults of Uncertain Fate and the Soul Gambler. Well talk more about the mechanics and rewards in the coming weeks.
Arena Champions
With 0.8.5, were going to be introducing a new arena mode. In this mode youll find yourself in the arena against a set number of waves, eventually coming face to face with one of the new Arena Champions. These champions have had their own fair share of experience in the gauntlet and know which way the pointy end goes - you may even find them using a trick or two of your own against you. You can defeat skullens, imperial commanders, and even dragons; but can you defeat another master of the arena?
New 3D models for several Unique Weapons
Players can find hundreds of unique and set items in the game. And while the unique items have great 2D art, the vast majority of them dont have 3D models to match. Patch 0.8.5 will bring the first batch of new 3D models for dozens of unique and set-based weapons and shields.
New Armor Sets, Catalysts, and new catalyst animations
Adding new armor sets to the game is an ongoing process and patch 0.8.5 will bring several new ones.
In addition to the armor sets, Catalysts will get a complete overhaul with new implicit affixes and 2D/3D art.
Weve also taken this opportunity to revise some animations, and our playable characters will get brand new animations when using Catalysts.
And much more
And this is not all. Behind the scenes were constantly working on many other smaller but important changes. With 0.8.5 well see many of these game experience changes; including new enemies, improvements to animations of some of the older enemies, an improved dialog box, more voice-overs, and improvements to the visuals of some areas. We cant wait to share the details with you in the upcoming weeks, so keep your eyes on our socials. Patch 0.8.5 will be released this March. Discord Facebook Twitter Reddit Youtube
Beta 0.8.4h Release and Patch Notes
[ 2022-01-05 18:58:45 CET ] [ Original post ]
EDIT: We've reverted this update and re-deployed 0.8.4g for now as we had some new bugs reported to us which we did not encounter internally.
Changes
- Likely fixed a bug which would cause the LE-26 error to appear for new players.
- Fixed a bug where new players who logged in to an account they made via our website with an incorrect password would get an LE-24 error until they restarted the game.
Beta 0.8.4g Release and Patch Notes
[ 2022-01-03 20:06:14 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Fixed a bug where new players that bought the game on Steam but registered their account via our website would encounter an LE-24 error when first starting the game.
- Were still investigating other potential issues. Contact us at https://support.lastepoch.com if you need assistance.
- Fixed the Crafting Guide in the crafting window being outdated.
- Updated some error messages.
Multiplayer Progress Update - December 2021
Were making continued progress polishing core gameplay and making sure the player experience feels great. There are a lot of decisions our team has made for the player experience for the single-player game that manifest themselves in very tiny ways, like how small details of a UI works or how group quests and party UIs will function. Our UX Director Ross (who designed our new website - PS were hiring!) will be a large part of our Multiplayer update next month to talk more about how well realize player experience and UI when we go online. We are making other progress here that is chiefly focused on fixing bugs, and most importantly reducing CPU costs for both our game servers, and your gameplay experience.
Weve completed the initial stages of migrating our character save system to the more robust service mentioned last month. This coming month well be digging into the fine details, such as ensuring our crafting and stash systems are as reliable as possible. This will involve things such as breaking down how often we save characters and world states, how to protect the integrity of characters, how to prevent items from disappearing or being duplicated, and much more. We want to catch as much of the easy-to-find issues here before we even release it to Community Testers, and make sure we can fix these kind of problems faster than anything else.
Since our current deployment environment is fairly efficient, and weve had other priorities, we didnt place a huge emphasis on work here this month. We spent a bit of time targeting the specific improvements we need and were set to do some technical planning for this in January.
Last month we mentioned we were migrating our account system, and we have it functional internally now. We arent quite ready to roll it out to the public. The next month is focused on integrating this system with our website, and making sure we have the ability to observe important details that will allow us to fix account problems quickly when we see them. Unfortunately a number of players have run into login issues recently with our old system thats currently live, and you can see why were eager to finish our work here to make sure nobody experiences this issue again, or we can create better fixes faster.
Weve made massive progress here. We are happy with our new chat system and it will almost certainly be the one we release to 1.0. My update here is very boring, software development-related stuff; we are making a few minor refactors, and then planning a proper integration into our new backend systems. With this new chat system, were going to able to add a ton more moderation and Quality of Life features than ever before.
We mentioned last month that we have successfully implemented our matchmaker. And even better news is that weve tested its scalability up to ~1million concurrent users making matchmaking requests! A new challenge ahead of us now is to build out more automated scale testing to try to ensure were also going to see those numbers in the game client itself; this tech will help us with every release we do and is something the other big Action RPGs give a lot of attention to.
Our main goals for January are very broad, but I can summarize some of my thoughts here:
Focus on all of the elements we need from every part of both the game, and the platform we are building, to ensure that we can best make use of Community Tester feedback for multiplayer. This means a large focus on our ability to observe the health of the online game, as well as our ability to quickly fix any problems we find. This also implies a lot of other things: fixing bugs, having 24/7 support where possible, planning for how to suddenly increase our multiplayer playerbase by a large amount, and more.
Were growing our team to build Last Epoch Multiplayer, and as one might guess its important to plan how to do that so we dont slow down our ability to create work on the game.
This is very much tied to planning for Community Testing but its worth breaking out on its own. As Ive mentioned in previous posts, a lot goes into making sure were a game company that can provide a great game service as well as a great game for years to come. Were making sure we continue to put a lot of attention and love into building the departments we dont already have that will help make this happen.
Some of our final core systems to fully implement are our Monolith and Crafting systems. Our crafting system is heavily reliant on a lot of complex database work and character saving, so there will be a lot of debugging to perform here. The Monolith of Fate is relatively straightforward to implement at its baseline, but there will be a lot of multiplayer considerations we need to address before we release it to Community Testers.
While were hard at work on getting multiplayer ready next month, well change up this blog post a bit to allow our UX Director Ross to speak more to some of the ways were going to be improving Last Epoch to welcome a fully multiplayer experience. Happy Holidays and New Years to everybody, its been an exciting year for Last Epoch and Eleventh Hour Games and 2022 will be our biggest year yet. Like always, Ill be around to answer questions below. Thank you so much for reading, and see you next month!
[ 2021-12-31 12:50:33 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello all, Happy Holidays and welcome to the December Multiplayer update!
Its been a fun month for us with our release of patch 0.8.4, Eternal Legends, and some developers taking some holiday time off to spend time with friends and loved ones before we dive in head first into getting Multiplayer into players hands in 2022.
We have quite a lot going on in our Multiplayer development and Id like to break down some updates for the topics from last month, as well as talk about what is ahead of us in the next month.
Our feature list from last month:
Party / Friends / Gameplay
Were making continued progress polishing core gameplay and making sure the player experience feels great. There are a lot of decisions our team has made for the player experience for the single-player game that manifest themselves in very tiny ways, like how small details of a UI works or how group quests and party UIs will function. Our UX Director Ross (who designed our new website - PS were hiring!) will be a large part of our Multiplayer update next month to talk more about how well realize player experience and UI when we go online. We are making other progress here that is chiefly focused on fixing bugs, and most importantly reducing CPU costs for both our game servers, and your gameplay experience.
Characters
Weve completed the initial stages of migrating our character save system to the more robust service mentioned last month. This coming month well be digging into the fine details, such as ensuring our crafting and stash systems are as reliable as possible. This will involve things such as breaking down how often we save characters and world states, how to protect the integrity of characters, how to prevent items from disappearing or being duplicated, and much more. We want to catch as much of the easy-to-find issues here before we even release it to Community Testers, and make sure we can fix these kind of problems faster than anything else.
Deployment
Since our current deployment environment is fairly efficient, and weve had other priorities, we didnt place a huge emphasis on work here this month. We spent a bit of time targeting the specific improvements we need and were set to do some technical planning for this in January.
Users / Game Access
Last month we mentioned we were migrating our account system, and we have it functional internally now. We arent quite ready to roll it out to the public. The next month is focused on integrating this system with our website, and making sure we have the ability to observe important details that will allow us to fix account problems quickly when we see them. Unfortunately a number of players have run into login issues recently with our old system thats currently live, and you can see why were eager to finish our work here to make sure nobody experiences this issue again, or we can create better fixes faster.
Chat
Weve made massive progress here. We are happy with our new chat system and it will almost certainly be the one we release to 1.0. My update here is very boring, software development-related stuff; we are making a few minor refactors, and then planning a proper integration into our new backend systems. With this new chat system, were going to able to add a ton more moderation and Quality of Life features than ever before.
Login / Game Server / Matchmaking
We mentioned last month that we have successfully implemented our matchmaker. And even better news is that weve tested its scalability up to ~1million concurrent users making matchmaking requests! A new challenge ahead of us now is to build out more automated scale testing to try to ensure were also going to see those numbers in the game client itself; this tech will help us with every release we do and is something the other big Action RPGs give a lot of attention to.
Goals for January
Our main goals for January are very broad, but I can summarize some of my thoughts here:
Planning for Community Testing
Focus on all of the elements we need from every part of both the game, and the platform we are building, to ensure that we can best make use of Community Tester feedback for multiplayer. This means a large focus on our ability to observe the health of the online game, as well as our ability to quickly fix any problems we find. This also implies a lot of other things: fixing bugs, having 24/7 support where possible, planning for how to suddenly increase our multiplayer playerbase by a large amount, and more.
Growing the Multiplayer Team
Were growing our team to build Last Epoch Multiplayer, and as one might guess its important to plan how to do that so we dont slow down our ability to create work on the game.
Becoming Production Ready"
This is very much tied to planning for Community Testing but its worth breaking out on its own. As Ive mentioned in previous posts, a lot goes into making sure were a game company that can provide a great game service as well as a great game for years to come. Were making sure we continue to put a lot of attention and love into building the departments we dont already have that will help make this happen.
Monolith/Crafting Ready
Some of our final core systems to fully implement are our Monolith and Crafting systems. Our crafting system is heavily reliant on a lot of complex database work and character saving, so there will be a lot of debugging to perform here. The Monolith of Fate is relatively straightforward to implement at its baseline, but there will be a lot of multiplayer considerations we need to address before we release it to Community Testers.
Final Thoughts
While were hard at work on getting multiplayer ready next month, well change up this blog post a bit to allow our UX Director Ross to speak more to some of the ways were going to be improving Last Epoch to welcome a fully multiplayer experience. Happy Holidays and New Years to everybody, its been an exciting year for Last Epoch and Eleventh Hour Games and 2022 will be our biggest year yet. Like always, Ill be around to answer questions below. Thank you so much for reading, and see you next month!
Beta 0.8.4f Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-12-24 06:16:13 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Mitigated a problem that prevented login for some new players on Steam. If you encounter an LE-24 error or any other issues when logging in, please contact us at support.lastepoch.com and we will respond as soon as possible.
Beta 0.8.4e Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-12-22 17:14:56 CET ] [ Original post ]
Edit: 0.8.4e originally had a bug which caused minion icons to not stack. Weve re-released the patch to address this, but youll have to download the update.
Temporal Sanctum
- Chronomancer Julra now drops one of four new uniques specific to her.
- Each dungeon tier introduces a new unique to the pool of uniques she may drop.
- The unique always has at least 1 legendary potential.
- The unique is always accompanied by a matching exalted item with four affixes.
- For slots with class specific items, the matching exalted item is always compatible with your class.
New Affixes
Primalist
- Added a new body armour prefix: Level of Swarmblade Form and increased damage while transformed.
- Added a new body armour prefix: Armour Shred Chance for Locusts.
- Added a new body armour prefix: Level of Upheaval and increased melee damage.
- Added a new body armour prefix: Chance to create a Shockwave on hit with Upheaval.
- Added a new body armour prefix: Critical Strike Chance with Rampage.
- Added a new helmet prefix: Increased Attack and Cast Speed for Summoned Vines.
- Added a new adorned (2x2) idol prefix: Melee Physical Damage For Swarm Strike and Locusts.
Rogue
- Added a new relic prefix: Level of Umbral Blades and increased throwing damage.
- Added a new ornate (4x1) idol prefix: Increased Damage with Umbral Blades per stack of Dusk Shroud.
Uniques
- Roots of Vithrasil's spirit thorns projectile bonus now only applies while immobilized to prevent snapshotting abuse. It can now drop again.
- Primal Squirrels now have a unique minion icon at the top left of the screen.
- Added lore text for Herald of the Scurry.
Skills
Swarmblade Form
- Dive now scales with movement speed, but is 5% slower by default. This makes it much quicker to use.
- Swarm Strike now has 300% added damage effectiveness (from 200%) but only has 2 base damage (from 20). The new base damage is in line with other melee skills.
- Increased the cast speed of manually summoning Locusts by 33%.
Summon Spriggan
- Added a downed animation for the Summon Spriggan companion.
Passives
Druid
- Force of Nature now properly states that it grants added melee and spell physical damage, instead of adaptive spell damage. This is only a tooltip change.
- Force of Nature node now also adds 25% armor shred chance for Locusts as an 8 point bonus.
Sound
- Updated the sound of Roar for Primal Bear companions.
- Updated sounds for the Summon Bear skill.
- Updated the sound for purchasing a stash tab.
- Changed the sound effect for Fire Nova.
- Removed placeholder sounds from Entangling Roots seeds.
- Fixed a missing sound for the Voidfused Forges magma pool attack.
- Improved mixing for casting sound effects.
Performance
- Improved the performance and reduced the visual noise of Ice Bite, which is used by Primal Wolf companions and Frozen Wolf enemies.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug which caused the monster mod restrictions to be ignored. For example, Rare Void Horrors could have the Summons Ethereal Reflections mod in 0.8.4, which was not intended.
- Fixed a bug where dying right as you changed from one Druid form to another would break your characters visuals and gameplay until you relogged.
- Likely fixed a bug where Elder Erza would sometimes not spawn at the end of Last Refuge Outskirts.
- Fixed Locusts not targeting Lagon.
- Fixed Locusts getting stuck after spawning in certain situations.
- Fixed a bug where Fury Leap's Rise and Poisonous Thicket nodes gave less chance to summon vines than intended.
- Fixed a bug where Upheaval Totems with Rejuvenating Splinters could not shatter other totems.
- Fixed a bug where Crowstorm cast via Swarmblade Form's Inspiring Swarm would cast in front of the crows instead of at the targeted location.
- Fixed a bug where Abyssal Echoes's Rippling Corrosion only applied its armor shred if you also had the Potent Corruption node.
- Fixed a bug where refreshing Ravaging Auras duration did not work (it would end as if you hadnt triggered it again).
- Fixed a bug which prevented the Primalist idol affix which granted mana back upon transforming back into human form from working.
- Fixed a bug where Swipe's Way of the Hunt node granted ten times more leech than intended.
- Fixed a bug where Thorn Shield with the Glacial Grove node could cast Maelstrom on allies without needing Maelstrom's Storm's Aid node.
- Fixed a bug where Ice Thorns' Barbed Thorns node granted 30% bleed chance and 5% more damage per point, instead of the stated 20% bleed chance.
- Fixed a bug where the damage bonus from Serpent Strike's Septic Wounds applied twice to targets afflicted by both blind and blinding poison, and clarified its tooltip to reflect this.
- Fixed a somewhat rare bug that could cause the player to move in the wrong direction when trying to pick up items from the ground.
- Fixed a bug that caused Formosus, Argentus and Rahyeh to not say their voice lines in the Monolith of Fate.
- Fixed a minor audio bug that could occur when the player turned around very quickly.
- Fixed a bug where Entangling Roots's wrap VFX on enemies did not match its duration if you had the Entrapped node.
- Fixed a bug where Storm Crawlers did not lose their lightning VFX upon death.
- Fixed the Acolyte holding spears in an incorrect position.
- Clarified that Werebear's Bringer of Storms node only works for Maul and Rampage.
Beta 0.8.4d Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-12-17 22:34:19 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
- Fixed a bug where Maul did not gain damage or critical strike multiplier bonuses from Fury Leap's tree when using Skull Crusher. The affected nodes were Savage Impact, Brutal Impact, and Panther Strike.
- Maul was already in a good place despite this bug, so we're making other changes to keep Maul's damage from getting out of hand and bring nodes in line with normal values. These changes are a net buff to Maul with Skull Crusher.
- Maul
- 250% added damage effectiveness (from 300%).
- Fixed a bug where Werebear Form's Territorial node and Fury Leap's Crater node were multiplicative instead of additive with each other, resulting in Maul having 11% more area of effect than intended with both nodes.
- Fury Leap
- 250% added damage effectiveness (from 200%).
- Savage Impact gives 8% more damage (from 12%).
- Brutal Impact gives +20% critical strike multiplier (from 25%).
- Panther Strike gives 6% more damage (from 10%).
- Ambush Predator gives 30% more hit damage against full health enemies (from 35%).
- Rejuvenating Storm also gives Fury Leap +10% lightning penetration per point.
- Werebear Form
- Rip and Tear gives 12% more damage (from 15%).
- Apex Predator gives 20% more Rampage damage and 50% increased damage while rampaging (from 15% and 45%).
Visuals
- Ice Bite is now visually smaller when used by Primal Squirrels to reduce visual noise.
Sound
- Updated hit sounds for Reap, Harvest and Swarmblade Slash.
- Adjusted volume and clarity of the level up sound effect.
- Adjusted mixing for the main theme music.
- Fixed the sound effect for Lagons claw attack triggering incorrectly.
Bug Fixes
- Added another fix for the sound stuttering bug (often encountered when playing Upheaval).
- Fixed a bug where respawning in the Temple of Eterra could place you in an inaccessible location.
- Fixed a bug where the fence in the Cultist Camp could be walked through.
- Fixed a bug where the doors in the Great College did not stay open.
- Fixed a bug where Lagon could immediately use abilities at the start of his third phase, without giving the player time to react.
- Fixed a bug where Summoned Vines with the Huntersbane node did not benefit from Rose Meadow, Stinging Bramble, or the penetration from Branch Storm.
- Fixed a bug where Storm Crows with the Arborist node would not target Upheaval Totems or Warcry Totems with Wisdom of the Storm.
- Fixed a bug where the Increased Physical Damage and Added Bleed chance from Spriggan Forms Barbed Thicket node applied to you as well as your minions when it should only have applied to your minions.
- Fixed a bug which caused Upheaval's Earth Armor node to not update the character sheet (the stats were still applied correctly).
- Fixed a bug where Chronomancer Julra's lightning orbs did not deal reduced damage to minions.
- Fixed a bug where the buffs from Druid's Tiger Spirit did not last for the full duration of Shapeshifter.
- Fixed shrines spawning out of bounds in Hidden Oasis echoes.
- Fixed the Crafting Guide not being updated for 0.8.4 crafting mechanics.
- Druid's powershifting abilities Barkskin (Spriggan to Werebear) and Infest (Spriggan to Swarmblade) now display the correct tooltip.
- Fixed the Nimbleness node in Storm Crows incorrectly referencing armor shred in the alt tooltip.
Beta 0.8.4c Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-12-15 18:06:13 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Fixed a bug where you could exceed the limit of 3 Bladestorms via blades left in the ground by shadows with Umbral Remnant.
- Umbral Blades thrown by Shadows can now be Bladestorms.
- Fixed a bug where Werebear's Swipe was attacking slower than intended. It now has 14% more attack speed to match normal Swipe.
- Updated the art for Glyphs to make them more visually distinct from each other.
- The Crafting button now changes color based on what action will be performed.
- Critical Vulnerability and Blinding Poison aliments now show under enemy health bars.
- Upheaval's skill tree now uses the correct icon in the center.
- You can now search your stash for items with Legendary Potential. For example, "2 legend" will highlight all items with exactly 2 Legendary Potential.
- Alt tooltips and the Game Guide now state if a unique cannot have legendary potential.
- Node Tooltips
- Added subskill tooltips to many Swarmblade nodes that were missing them.
- Clarified Swarmblade's Toxic Hum node to say that the Locust Swarm (from Swarm Strike) deals increased damage per locust consumed and that you have additional poison chance per locust consumed, while the Swarm is active.
- Clarified Swarmblade's Bloodlust Swarm to say that the Locust Swarm (from Swarm Strike) deals increased damage and gains increased area per bleed consumed.
- Clarified Swarmblade's Viper's Call to say that it does not include the base added poison chance or increased poison duration when you take the node.
- Clarified Spriggan Form's Ice Branch to say that the poison chance converted to frostbite includes all three Spriggan skill.
- Clarified the Burst of Agony node in Umbral Blades to state that it gains "more explosion area per second on ground", rather than just "more explosion area"
Bug Fixes
- Likely fixed a bug where sound could stutter a lot during combat, especially with Upheaval. Please let us know if youre still encountering this and we will investigate further.
- Fixed a bug that caused most skill-related sprites to have visual artifacts.
- Fixed a bug where Swarmblade's Armblade Slashes were not affected by increased attack speed nodes from Serpent Strike while you had the Viper's Call node.
- Fixed a bug where Swarmblade's Toxic Hum was not correctly providing its increased damage per locust consumed.
- Fixed a bug where Swarmblade's Bloodlust Swarm was not correctly providing its increased damage per bleed consumed.
- You can now correctly allocate points into Swarmblade's Neverending Drove node with only one point in the Toxic Hum node.
- Fixed a bug where Umbral Blades's Subzero Intrusion did not convert shock chance to frostbite chance.
- Fixed a bug where Summon Spriggans cold conversion node did not convert poison to frostbite.
- Fixed a bug where Sciurine Rage (Primal Squirrel companion ability) could not be refreshed or triggered by other effects such as Frenzy Totem's Furious Cry.
- Fixed the Druids Eternal Nature passive having an incorrect description.
- Fixed a bug where you could not copy loot filters from clipboard that were made in earlier versions of the game.
- Fixed a bug where the cursor would appear underneath the Change Input window while using a controller.
- Fixed a bug where controller mappings did not get reset properly when needed.
- Fixed Flame Gryphons being smaller than intended and flickering slightly.
- Fixed some visual issues with Lightning Elementals.
- Fixed a bug that caused a LE-24 error for some new players.
- Fixed a bug that caused the LE-36 error to appear.
Beta 0.8.4b Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-12-13 23:41:59 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Adjusted forging potential of new items
- +3 minimum forging potential for normal items.
- +2 minimum forging potential for magic items.
- +2 maximum forging potential for normal items.
- +3 to 4 minimum forging potential for rare items based on level.
- Reduced the maximum forging potential cost of adding a second affix to 14 (from 15).
- Reduced the maximum forging potential cost of adding a third or fourth affix to 18 (from 20).
- Controller Keybinds
- Left D-Pad now triggers the dungeon ability.
- Right D-Pad press is still bound to portal usage, but a long press will now toggle ground items.
- A controller binding reset should be enforced automatically. If the actionbar doesnt change, try resetting keybinds.
- Julra's beams are destroyed or don't spawn if you kill her while they are active or spawning.
- Reduced Festering Cultist damage by 8%.
- Roots of Vithrasil no longer drops. There are some bugs with it so it was planned to be held off for now.
- The door in The Shining Cove now also opens if you have waypoint in The Oracle's Refuge or are at least level 53.
Bug Fixes
- Likely fixed a rare bug that caused the game window to be a solid white background with some user interface on top when loading a character. If youre still having this problem, please make a bug report with your log file.
- Fixed a bug where logging out or dying after killing the boss in the Dreadnoughts Deck or Morditas Tomb could prevent further game progression.
- Fixed a bug where using Ice Thorns Cold Prison node with an active minion could crash the game.
- Fixed a bug with Spriggan Form's Vale Spirits which could cause several other bugs such as extreme movement speed.
- Fixed being able to use skill tree nodes to change into transforms you had not unlocked.
- Fixed a bug where transform-specifc skills could be put on the actionbar while in human form.
- Fixed a bug where Maul's cooldown could not be reset by Fury Leap's Aspect of the Mantis when you have Werebear Form's Skull Crusher node.
- Fixed a bug where Spriggan Form's Garden of Rage restored mana while in human form.
- Fixed a bug where Maul using Upheaval could cost more rage than intended if you had increased Upheaval's mana cost with nodes such as Excavating Blow.
- Fixed a bug where Drain Life still had a minimum mana cost of 1 after you took the Blood Magic node to change its mana cost to a health drain.
- Fixed a bug where opening the Appearance window via the button in the Inventory window would not load your list of pets. Opening the window directly via the K key worked correctly.
- Fixed armor models having stretching issues in the character select screen on some graphics settings.
- Fixed a bug where Exalted items had less forging potential than intended.
- Fixed a bug where no error would be shown if a character name contained a restricted word.
- Changed Polearms to Spears in text descriptions for the Monolith of Fate.
- Fixed Death's Embrace lacking its intended lore text.
Last Epoch | Eternal Legends Update is Live!
[previewyoutube=IUpSPcINkPY;full][/previewyoutube] Check out the full Patch Notes here! Not in Eterra yet? Join your favorite streamers on Nexus.gg for a discount!
[ 2021-12-10 19:02:01 CET ] [ Original post ]
Forge Your Legend
The Eternal Legends Update is Now Live!
[previewyoutube=IUpSPcINkPY;full][/previewyoutube] Check out the full Patch Notes here! Not in Eterra yet? Join your favorite streamers on Nexus.gg for a discount!
Eternal Legends Update | 0.8.4 Patch Notes
[ 2021-12-09 18:50:59 CET ] [ Original post ]
The Eternal Legends Update (Patch 0.8.4) will arrive tomorrow, December 10th! [previewyoutube=RKiqgD2NSiU;full][/previewyoutube] Forge your own legend, explore the mysterious chambers of Temporal Sanctum and face the elusive Chronomancer. The Eternal Legends Update introduces a new end-game system and gear progression while bringing changes and improvements to existing content as well:
- New Endgame Dungeon: Temporal Sanctum
- Legendary Items & Eternity Cache
- Druid Rework and new Druid Form
- Revamped Crafting System
- Overhauled Character Select Screen
- New Mage and Acolyte Character Models
- New Skills
- New Unique Items
- Balance Changes
- Bug Fixes
Eternal Legends Update - Patch 0.8.4 Preview
In the Eternal Legends Update you will discover and explore Eterras first endgame dungeon: Temporal Sanctum. You will meet Chronomancer Julra, a once optimistic and motivated researcher determined to unlock the secrets of the elusive Eternity Cache. Now, after years of being tormented in time, Julra has lost her way, her mind, and she will stop at nothing to finally tap into the power of the Eternity Cache. Controlling the flow of time, you must navigate the puzzle of her sanctum and liberate the Chronomancer from her madness.
Legendary Items and Eternity Cache With access to the Eternity Cache, players will now have the power to forge Legendary items by combining exalted and unique items of the same type and merging them together with their powerful unique items. You however may not use just any unique and exalted item, it requires specific criteria to be met. The unique item must have a new property called Legendary Potential. This new stat determines the specific number of affixes which will be transferred from the exalted item. If you find a 2 Legendary Potential item, it will take 2 primary affixes from the exalted item.
To forge a Legendary item you must complete a dungeon, after which you will be rewarded with the ability to access the Eternity Cache in 2 different eras. You place your two items into the cache in the past and when you return to it in the future you will be greeted with your new Legendary item.
Process of creation of a Legendary Item in the Eternity Cache
We are very excited to see all of the very powerful, and perhaps some not so powerful, Legendary Items that you all create. We know there are some unexpected and fun builds that are waiting to be unleashed with the addition of Legendary Items.
The first few steps of a long journey tend to set the pace for the long-run, and we felt it was time to revisit our humble beginnings. Eternal Legends is bringing you an epic new visual experience to the kickoff of every new Traveler in Eterra. We hope you enjoy the new Character Select Screen and music to go with it!
[previewyoutube=81uvI8lzReM;full][/previewyoutube]
Swarmblade Reveal When it came time to develop the final transformation for our Druid, we knew we wanted to do something unique and exciting. These goals meant we wanted to steer clear of other often used animal transformations so we could land on something fresh. When we started reviewing the stunning concept art for the Swarmblade below, we knew we found the answer.
Swarmblade has two distinct fantasies we wanted to slice. One being a fast slashing bug and the other being the hive-father. With only 4 skills on the bar, we were aware that in order to really hit both of these we would need to have these themes overlap on some skills. Also, having a contained kit like this on a character gave us the ability to create some really exciting ability interactions. In the video below you will see: Armblade Slash, which is fast melee slash attack. It will be your most reliable attack in Swarmblade form with no cooldown and no Rage cost.
Dive is the Swarmblades movement ability which also damages all enemies in its path.
Swarmblades third skill is Summon Hive. When using the ability, he throws down a hive and summons some feisty locusts to fight alongside him.
Swarmblades final skill is Swarm Strike, a 360 degree heavy spin attack that also rallies your summoned bugs around you dealing heavy AoE damage.
Werebear Overhaul
In our 0.8.4 redesign the Werebear form has a mix of both new and returning skills, and even the returning ones have been revamped with new VFX, sounds, altered base functionality, and new potential in their skill trees! In the video below you will see Swipe, Warcry, Maul, and Rampage in action.
Spriggan Overhaul
This patch we have updates to all of the abilities which include replacing Vale Blast with Spirit Thorns, and replacing Root Wall with Thorn Shield. Healing Totem and Summon Vines have kept their base functionality but have received new visual updates and lots of new options in the overhauled skill trees.
Entangling Roots - Skill Rework Entangling Roots is receiving a complete rework that includes a visual overhaul!
While redesigning the Druid as a whole, we knew we needed to elevate one of his skills into the Mastery-locked section of his passive tree. After some consideration we felt that thematically, Entangling Roots fit this spot very well. We are thrilled to share with you the results of our work.
Upheaval Upheaval is a powerful, semi-spammable ground slam ability. It will do a decent amount of damage and have a medium mana cost. With the announced removal of Ice Thorns, Upheaval will be stepping in to fill its empty skill slot. This means that moving forward, upheaval will be an early and core addition to the Primalist theme and leveling experience.
Umbral Blades Umbral Blades is joining the ranks of quick, spammable, low mana cost Rogue skills, and is aimed at fulfilling the fantasy of masterfully throwing daggers (or swords) at your enemies. It is a 3-step combo ability. First, you throw 2 piercing blades at your enemies, next you throw 4 more, and finally on the 3rd step, you recall all of your blades back into your hands, hitting enemies along the way.
Crafting Changes
In 0.8.4 were changing crafting to remove instability and fracture chance, and instead give all craftable items an amount of Forging Potential. Each craft uses a random amount of Forging Potential, normally around 1 to 15, and when an item runs out of Forging Potential it can no longer be crafted on, but until then all crafts will be successful.
Were swapping the old two Glyphs for four new ones, replacing one Rune, and adding two new Runes. Three of these new crafting items will be chase items with more exciting and powerful potential outcomes than the existing Runes and Glyphs.
Another change to the crafting system in 0.8.4 is that you can now see the outcome of your crafts. This display is positioned at the bottom of the crafting panel where the various fracture chances used to be displayed. It tells you what stats you gained from a craft and how much Forging Potential was lost, if any.
We are adding 10 new monolith zones with diverse environments to the game. We also made some changes to Spires - they now only attack while the player is in combat.
We greatly improved visuals in several Chapter 5 zones to bring them up to our current standards.
You will meet 4 new dangerous enemies. In addition, you will encounter a brand new boss in the Temporal Sanctum Dungeon.
New Unique Items As with every patch, we are introducing variety of new unique and set items to Last Epoch. Below are just a few examples:
Sentinel, Mage & Acolyte As the Last Epoch team grows, we are making dedicated efforts to to bring all old content up to our latest standards. In the Eternal Legends update, we are excited to introduce brand new models and armor sets for the Sentinel, Mage, & Acolyte!
Spears, Staves In recent patches, we updated the 3D and 2D art of several weapon groups and added powerful implicit affixes to support a wide variety of builds. In the next patch, we are updating more weapon groups such as the spears and staves. Below are just a few examples of what you can expect to find across Eterra:
The Eternal Legends Update brings a mountain of balance and skill improvements, performance upgrades, new music Join us December 10th for the Eternal Legends Update.
[ 2021-12-06 21:10:39 CET ] [ Original post ]
Saving Eterra is going to take more than time, it will require becoming something else entirely: Legendary. Last Epoch is proud to announce that with Patch 0.8.4 comes the launch of our first endgame Dungeon and the rise of Legendary tiered armor and weapons. [previewyoutube=E6PUnTTjDnE;full][/previewyoutube]
Dungeon: Temporal Sanctum
In the Eternal Legends Update you will discover and explore Eterras first endgame dungeon: Temporal Sanctum. You will meet Chronomancer Julra, a once optimistic and motivated researcher determined to unlock the secrets of the elusive Eternity Cache. Now, after years of being tormented in time, Julra has lost her way, her mind, and she will stop at nothing to finally tap into the power of the Eternity Cache. Controlling the flow of time, you must navigate the puzzle of her sanctum and liberate the Chronomancer from her madness.
Eternity Cache & Legendary Items
Legendary Items and Eternity Cache With access to the Eternity Cache, players will now have the power to forge Legendary items by combining exalted and unique items of the same type and merging them together with their powerful unique items. You however may not use just any unique and exalted item, it requires specific criteria to be met. The unique item must have a new property called Legendary Potential. This new stat determines the specific number of affixes which will be transferred from the exalted item. If you find a 2 Legendary Potential item, it will take 2 primary affixes from the exalted item.
To forge a Legendary item you must complete a dungeon, after which you will be rewarded with the ability to access the Eternity Cache in 2 different eras. You place your two items into the cache in the past and when you return to it in the future you will be greeted with your new Legendary item.
Process of creation of a Legendary Item in the Eternity Cache
We are very excited to see all of the very powerful, and perhaps some not so powerful, Legendary Items that you all create. We know there are some unexpected and fun builds that are waiting to be unleashed with the addition of Legendary Items.
New Character Select Screen
The first few steps of a long journey tend to set the pace for the long-run, and we felt it was time to revisit our humble beginnings. Eternal Legends is bringing you an epic new visual experience to the kickoff of every new Traveler in Eterra. We hope you enjoy the new Character Select Screen and music to go with it!
Druid Rework
[previewyoutube=81uvI8lzReM;full][/previewyoutube]
Swarmblade
Swarmblade Reveal When it came time to develop the final transformation for our Druid, we knew we wanted to do something unique and exciting. These goals meant we wanted to steer clear of other often used animal transformations so we could land on something fresh. When we started reviewing the stunning concept art for the Swarmblade below, we knew we found the answer.
Swarmblade has two distinct fantasies we wanted to slice. One being a fast slashing bug and the other being the hive-father. With only 4 skills on the bar, we were aware that in order to really hit both of these we would need to have these themes overlap on some skills. Also, having a contained kit like this on a character gave us the ability to create some really exciting ability interactions. In the video below you will see: Armblade Slash, which is fast melee slash attack. It will be your most reliable attack in Swarmblade form with no cooldown and no Rage cost.
Dive is the Swarmblades movement ability which also damages all enemies in its path.
Swarmblades third skill is Summon Hive. When using the ability, he throws down a hive and summons some feisty locusts to fight alongside him.
Swarmblades final skill is Swarm Strike, a 360 degree heavy spin attack that also rallies your summoned bugs around you dealing heavy AoE damage.
Werebear
Werebear Overhaul
In our 0.8.4 redesign the Werebear form has a mix of both new and returning skills, and even the returning ones have been revamped with new VFX, sounds, altered base functionality, and new potential in their skill trees! In the video below you will see Swipe, Warcry, Maul, and Rampage in action.
Spriggan
Spriggan Overhaul
This patch we have updates to all of the abilities which include replacing Vale Blast with Spirit Thorns, and replacing Root Wall with Thorn Shield. Healing Totem and Summon Vines have kept their base functionality but have received new visual updates and lots of new options in the overhauled skill trees.
Entangling Roots
Entangling Roots - Skill Rework Entangling Roots is receiving a complete rework that includes a visual overhaul!
While redesigning the Druid as a whole, we knew we needed to elevate one of his skills into the Mastery-locked section of his passive tree. After some consideration we felt that thematically, Entangling Roots fit this spot very well. We are thrilled to share with you the results of our work.
New Skills
Upheaval Upheaval is a powerful, semi-spammable ground slam ability. It will do a decent amount of damage and have a medium mana cost. With the announced removal of Ice Thorns, Upheaval will be stepping in to fill its empty skill slot. This means that moving forward, upheaval will be an early and core addition to the Primalist theme and leveling experience.
Umbral Blades Umbral Blades is joining the ranks of quick, spammable, low mana cost Rogue skills, and is aimed at fulfilling the fantasy of masterfully throwing daggers (or swords) at your enemies. It is a 3-step combo ability. First, you throw 2 piercing blades at your enemies, next you throw 4 more, and finally on the 3rd step, you recall all of your blades back into your hands, hitting enemies along the way.
Crafting Updates
Crafting Changes
Forging Potential
In 0.8.4 were changing crafting to remove instability and fracture chance, and instead give all craftable items an amount of Forging Potential. Each craft uses a random amount of Forging Potential, normally around 1 to 15, and when an item runs out of Forging Potential it can no longer be crafted on, but until then all crafts will be successful.
New Runes and Glyphs
Were swapping the old two Glyphs for four new ones, replacing one Rune, and adding two new Runes. Three of these new crafting items will be chase items with more exciting and powerful potential outcomes than the existing Runes and Glyphs.
Crafting Outcome UI
Another change to the crafting system in 0.8.4 is that you can now see the outcome of your crafts. This display is positioned at the bottom of the crafting panel where the various fracture chances used to be displayed. It tells you what stats you gained from a craft and how much Forging Potential was lost, if any.
Monolith Improvements
We are adding 10 new monolith zones with diverse environments to the game. We also made some changes to Spires - they now only attack while the player is in combat.
Chapter 5 Improvements
We greatly improved visuals in several Chapter 5 zones to bring them up to our current standards.
New Enemies
You will meet 4 new dangerous enemies. In addition, you will encounter a brand new boss in the Temporal Sanctum Dungeon.
New Unique and Set Items
New Unique Items As with every patch, we are introducing variety of new unique and set items to Last Epoch. Below are just a few examples:
New Sentinel, Mage & Acolyte Models & Armor Sets
Sentinel, Mage & Acolyte As the Last Epoch team grows, we are making dedicated efforts to to bring all old content up to our latest standards. In the Eternal Legends update, we are excited to introduce brand new models and armor sets for the Sentinel, Mage, & Acolyte!
New Weapons: Spears & Staves
Spears, Staves In recent patches, we updated the 3D and 2D art of several weapon groups and added powerful implicit affixes to support a wide variety of builds. In the next patch, we are updating more weapon groups such as the spears and staves. Below are just a few examples of what you can expect to find across Eterra:
And so much more
The Eternal Legends Update brings a mountain of balance and skill improvements, performance upgrades, new music Join us December 10th for the Eternal Legends Update.
Legendary Items and Eternity Cache
Unique items can now drop with a new property called Legendary Potential. This is a new stat that ranges from 0 to 4 and determines the uniques ability to be transformed into a Legendary Item in the Eternity cache.
High Level Uniques will generally drop with no or with low Legendary Potential. Low level unique items will generally roll with more Legendary Potential than end game uniques. Finding a low level unique with 4 legendary potential will still be very rare, but not as astronomically unlikely as finding an Omnis with 4 legendary potential.
Low-level uniques have much higher chance of rolling high Legendary Potential.
To create the Legendary Item, you need a Unique Item with Legendary Potential and an Exalted item of the same type with 4 unsealed affixes. This means that you can use any exalted, 4 affix Shield to create a Legendary Bastion of Honour.
To create a Legendary Item, you need a Unique Item with Legendary Potential and an Exalted item of the same type with 4 unsealed affixes. It takes time to forge a legend into the record books. So, youll have to employ a new mechanic in our Temporal Sanctum dungeon to create a Legendary Item. At the end of the dungeon, you will be rewarded with the ability to access the Eternity Cache in 2 different eras. You place your two items into the cache in the past and when you return to it in the future you will be greeted with your new Legendary item. Legendary Potential determines how many affixes will be extracted and transferred from the Exalted item into your Unique - making it Legendary.
Process of creation of a Legendary Item in the Eternity Cache
The Legendary Item we have just created To guarantee that everyone who completes the dungeon has some Legendary to make, the boss will always drop some combination of items which can be used to make a Legendary item. However, we cant guarantee the quality of this legendary so you might want to prepare your own ahead of time.
When designing our loot system in general, we quite often look for ways to make loot drops exciting. You may have noticed that a large number of unique items are going largely unused. Many of them have very cool mechanics on them but they just lack the stats that end game items have. So, we wanted a way to bring some of these items into a spot where they have the potential to become something amazing.
We didnt want to completely invalidate exalted items as a rare and exciting drop to get so we decided that we would incorporate exalteds in as an ingredient needed to make a Legendary item. Another big advantage here is that it doesnt invalidate our crafting system. We wanted to make sure that this would feel like a natural extension of the current crafting system rather than a replacement. One thing we have felt that we were missing was multiple large drops which fit together. Where you can see tangible progress towards one super item. This system combines multiple drops into a more powerful whole in a directed way. Making this is the most number of different items weve ever had to get really excited about dropping.
We are very excited to see all of the very powerful, and perhaps some not so powerful, Legendary Items that you all create. We know there are some unexpected and fun builds that are waiting to be unleashed with the addition of Legendary Items.
No, it doesnt matter how much Legendary Potential the unique item has, the exalted item must always have exactly 4 unsealed affixes.
You may use an exalted item with a sealed affix. The Eternity Cache ignores sealed affixes. The exalted item must always have exactly 4 unsealed affixes, regardless if it has a sealed affix or not.
No, each affix has the same chance to be chosen. Get them all up as high as you can before you use it.
Yes! So make sure to get those affix tiers up as high as possible before using it. This also means that you can use a Rune of Creation on a particularly epic exalted item to get 2 shots at making the Legendary of your dreams.
Yes, the item level is recalculated based on the affixes brought over.
Sorry, no. Youll have to hunt down some new ones.
No, there is a stash in the Eternity Cache room.
No, we currently dont have and dont plan to add any way for you to further improve Legendary Items after they are made. This isnt set in stone but its unlikely to change.
Being in a higher level zone is the only thing that you can do to increase the chances of getting Legendary Potential on an item that drops. If a certain zone has a higher chance to drop the specific unique you are looking for and is a couple levels lower than an alternative zone, its probably better to farm where more of that unique drops. This might not always be true but dont expect to frequently find even 3Leg uniques in a level 100 zone. These high potential items are very rare.
No, only unique items may be placed in the Eternity Cache with an exalted.
No, most unique items will not drop with any Legendary Potential. Each unique item is eligible to drop with some amount of Legendary Potential but it is far from guaranteed.
[ 2021-12-03 19:57:01 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Legendary item dev blog! Legendary items in Last Epoch have evolved heavily since we first concepted them a few years ago. We are very excited to say that you will be forging your own legend by completing the first dungeon and creating a Legendary item of your own. A Legendary item is a composite item made up of a unique and exalted item. You however may not use just any unique and exalted item, it requires specific criteria to be met.
Legendary Potential
Unique items can now drop with a new property called Legendary Potential. This is a new stat that ranges from 0 to 4 and determines the uniques ability to be transformed into a Legendary Item in the Eternity cache.
High Level Uniques will generally drop with no or with low Legendary Potential. Low level unique items will generally roll with more Legendary Potential than end game uniques. Finding a low level unique with 4 legendary potential will still be very rare, but not as astronomically unlikely as finding an Omnis with 4 legendary potential.
Low-level uniques have much higher chance of rolling high Legendary Potential.
How do I get a Legendary Item?
To create the Legendary Item, you need a Unique Item with Legendary Potential and an Exalted item of the same type with 4 unsealed affixes. This means that you can use any exalted, 4 affix Shield to create a Legendary Bastion of Honour.
To create a Legendary Item, you need a Unique Item with Legendary Potential and an Exalted item of the same type with 4 unsealed affixes. It takes time to forge a legend into the record books. So, youll have to employ a new mechanic in our Temporal Sanctum dungeon to create a Legendary Item. At the end of the dungeon, you will be rewarded with the ability to access the Eternity Cache in 2 different eras. You place your two items into the cache in the past and when you return to it in the future you will be greeted with your new Legendary item. Legendary Potential determines how many affixes will be extracted and transferred from the Exalted item into your Unique - making it Legendary.
Process of creation of a Legendary Item in the Eternity Cache
The Legendary Item we have just created To guarantee that everyone who completes the dungeon has some Legendary to make, the boss will always drop some combination of items which can be used to make a Legendary item. However, we cant guarantee the quality of this legendary so you might want to prepare your own ahead of time.
Goals of the System
When designing our loot system in general, we quite often look for ways to make loot drops exciting. You may have noticed that a large number of unique items are going largely unused. Many of them have very cool mechanics on them but they just lack the stats that end game items have. So, we wanted a way to bring some of these items into a spot where they have the potential to become something amazing.
We didnt want to completely invalidate exalted items as a rare and exciting drop to get so we decided that we would incorporate exalteds in as an ingredient needed to make a Legendary item. Another big advantage here is that it doesnt invalidate our crafting system. We wanted to make sure that this would feel like a natural extension of the current crafting system rather than a replacement. One thing we have felt that we were missing was multiple large drops which fit together. Where you can see tangible progress towards one super item. This system combines multiple drops into a more powerful whole in a directed way. Making this is the most number of different items weve ever had to get really excited about dropping.
We are very excited to see all of the very powerful, and perhaps some not so powerful, Legendary Items that you all create. We know there are some unexpected and fun builds that are waiting to be unleashed with the addition of Legendary Items.
FAQ
Can I use an exalted item with only 2 affixes on it to improve my chances of pulling the right affix?
No, it doesnt matter how much Legendary Potential the unique item has, the exalted item must always have exactly 4 unsealed affixes.
Can I use an exalted item with a sealed affix and is that affix able to be moved to a Legendary item? Can I use an Exalted item with 3 regular affixes and 1 sealed affix?
You may use an exalted item with a sealed affix. The Eternity Cache ignores sealed affixes. The exalted item must always have exactly 4 unsealed affixes, regardless if it has a sealed affix or not.
Do tiers of mods on the exalted item weight which mods get transferred to the legendary item?
No, each affix has the same chance to be chosen. Get them all up as high as you can before you use it.
Can I use an exalted item with 0 remaining Forging Potential?
Yes! So make sure to get those affix tiers up as high as possible before using it. This also means that you can use a Rune of Creation on a particularly epic exalted item to get 2 shots at making the Legendary of your dreams.
Does level requirement of a Legendary item go up to the level of the exalted item?
Yes, the item level is recalculated based on the affixes brought over.
Will my existing uniques gain Legendary Potential?
Sorry, no. Youll have to hunt down some new ones.
Do I have to bring the unique and exalted item with me into the dungeon?
No, there is a stash in the Eternity Cache room.
Can I do any more crafting on the Legendary Item after its been made?
No, we currently dont have and dont plan to add any way for you to further improve Legendary Items after they are made. This isnt set in stone but its unlikely to change.
What exactly affects the amount of Legendary Potential that a unique item gets?
Being in a higher level zone is the only thing that you can do to increase the chances of getting Legendary Potential on an item that drops. If a certain zone has a higher chance to drop the specific unique you are looking for and is a couple levels lower than an alternative zone, its probably better to farm where more of that unique drops. This might not always be true but dont expect to frequently find even 3Leg uniques in a level 100 zone. These high potential items are very rare.
Can a Legendary Item be reforged as a unique into a new Legendary using a new exalted item?
No, only unique items may be placed in the Eternity Cache with an exalted.
Do all unique items drop with at least 1 Legendary Potential?
No, most unique items will not drop with any Legendary Potential. Each unique item is eligible to drop with some amount of Legendary Potential but it is far from guaranteed.
New Character Models - Acolyte and Mage
A few weeks ago we published a blog about a new model for Sentinel. It has not escaped many of you that in the pictures we used, the upper parts of the legs and the area around the waist didnt look as it should. At that time, the model had not yet been implemented and was still being worked on. We have since corrected the problems with the skinning that caused these seemingly incorrect proportions. Here is a comparison of Sentinel as it looks in our previous blog and as it looks now.
Left: The image we shared a few weeks ago. Sentinel has incorrect proportions around the upper legs area. Right: New proportions after skinning issues were fixed.
Our work on the characters does not end with these changes. The Rogue model will also get some improvements, but we know that many of you are waiting for more variation of our characters' looks when using different Armor sets. Sentinel will get two new Armor sets in the next patch and we are working hard on more. Here is a preview of just a few that are already in various stages of development and we hope to get them into the game as soon as possible. Please keep in mind that real game assets may differ from these artworks. Many times changes have to be made for both aesthetic and technical reasons, or they may not make it into the game at all and be replaced by a different design.
We hope you enjoyed this sneak-peek of what's in store for you in the Eternal Legends Update and beyond. Don't worry, we know what many of you are waiting for and what you want to know more about. We may have some [strike]lege[/strike]... very interesting information ready for you tomorrow!
[ 2021-12-02 19:28:17 CET ] [ Original post ]
With each patch we add new content and improve what already exists in the game. Its no secret that player characters are among the oldest assets. The Sands of Majasa Update brought an update to the Primalist model, and the Eternal Legends Update will continue this trend with improvements to Sentinel, Acolyte and Mage. As we mentioned in Primalist blog, weve also changed the topology of the models, which has improved the look of many of the animations and also affects the silhouette and detail of the characters, which is most noticeable on the face. In the case of Mage and Acolyte, we didnt want to completely change their appearance. We tried to keep the main features of our characters and focused mainly on visual quality improvements. We want you to still recognize the characters after these changes and we want to bring them up to our current standards. Lets take a closer look at Mage and Acolyte.
Mage
Acolyte
Sentinel Corrections
A few weeks ago we published a blog about a new model for Sentinel. It has not escaped many of you that in the pictures we used, the upper parts of the legs and the area around the waist didnt look as it should. At that time, the model had not yet been implemented and was still being worked on. We have since corrected the problems with the skinning that caused these seemingly incorrect proportions. Here is a comparison of Sentinel as it looks in our previous blog and as it looks now.
Left: The image we shared a few weeks ago. Sentinel has incorrect proportions around the upper legs area. Right: New proportions after skinning issues were fixed.
What else we are working on beyond 0.8.4?
Our work on the characters does not end with these changes. The Rogue model will also get some improvements, but we know that many of you are waiting for more variation of our characters' looks when using different Armor sets. Sentinel will get two new Armor sets in the next patch and we are working hard on more. Here is a preview of just a few that are already in various stages of development and we hope to get them into the game as soon as possible. Please keep in mind that real game assets may differ from these artworks. Many times changes have to be made for both aesthetic and technical reasons, or they may not make it into the game at all and be replaced by a different design.
We hope you enjoyed this sneak-peek of what's in store for you in the Eternal Legends Update and beyond. Don't worry, we know what many of you are waiting for and what you want to know more about. We may have some [strike]lege[/strike]... very interesting information ready for you tomorrow!
Multiplayer Progress Update - November 2021
Our multiplayer party system has been working well and we've been using it for about 8 months now. We needed to migrate it, however, as the party system relies on our account system which we are moving. We have recently just completed this and are testing it.
Very similar to the party system, it works online the same as the one you have now, but we also have to migrate it. This has been completed and is in testing.
Everything is looking great here and nothing is impacted for online gameplay. We have a lot of work to go optimizing it and we'll have to make some changes to how the game saves data since we are moving the character saving system. We are still implementing the Monolith in an online format but we regularly play the rest of Epoch together online, and have continued to work on systems such as latency compensation, as well as other elements we need to make the experience feel great.
The service we were relying on for character saves was fairly reliable at the scale we were testing at, but as we have continued to grow our playtests it increasingly became clear that this wouldn't be sufficient if we had a large influx of players. Migrating this to a more robust service has been a priority and we've been able to make gains here quickly by moving to an industry standard platform.
This is our ability to deploy patches quickly to a global audience - nobody wants to wait 7 days for a patch. We have actually been really happy with how fast we can deploy the game online - we were at least as quick as other similar games. However, because we migrated our server hosting solutions, we have to modify a lot of the scripts and tools we use to deploy the game both internally and externally. This work is ongoing but it is something we have a huge amount of experience with at this point, we are confident it will be quick by the time we move to CT testing.
This is the first of our main set of changes. We consider this of extreme importance as the integrity of the online experience will be critical to have a competitive ladder, as well as ensuring we can maintain a great community by ensuring bad actors cannot access the game again. We are actively moving towards migrating our account system to work within an industry standard provider - work here is still ongoing and we will want this before releasing out a MP Alpha to testers.
Another area where we experienced some issues even in the single player game over the course of this year - there was more than one occasion in which we had to disable our chat. We recognized it would not scale in a way that would make us happy. We also had a number of issues this year with chat moderation, which our current chat system has not made easy to deal with. This is now actively in development using a third-party chat provider that should safely support us scaling from our current numbers up to launch. We expect this to be in when we also have our new user system for community testing.
The second of our main set of changes - an inability to login is one of the worst things that can happen for us when we go live. We know we need this critical piece of infrastructure needs to keep up with however many people decide to play at once. We're feeling good that our new provider is up to the job and should easily scale at the numbers we anticipate. We're keeping an eye on the need for a login queue, but have no immediate plans to implement one at the moment. We expect this to be in when we also have our new user system for community testing.
This is the last of our main set of changes. Adapting a general purpose matchmaker to our scene allocation needs proved to be quite challenging. We need to be able to quickly allocate game servers to handle the wide array of scenes players will be in, while keeping our server load manageable. We have successfully moved to a new platform, are regularly testing with it, and no longer have to rely on a complex matchmaker. We are really happy with our changes here but it took a few months.
One thing I'd also like to touch on a bit is our regular release of the single player version of the game. Previously we were a much smaller team, so it was often the case that we had to divide our attention between continuing to develop, test, release, and fix our single player game. Our 3 month content process is really critical for us to continue to fund the ongoing develop of Last Epoch, as well as make big changes for our current players, so this had a lot of impact on our ability to remain consistent. It is not common to build out a multiplayer version of a game while consistently releasing a single player version - but considering that the development of Last Epoch has been financed by early access, it's a challenge we've had to rise up to. With the growth of our team, it takes time to onboard new developers into our processes. We are starting to cross this threshold with new developers that have joined the team over the last year, and are adding even more developers to resolve this conflict. Over the course of the next period of time, we are looking to merge our single player and multiplayer processes so we can put the entirety of our team on the multiplayer release of Last Epoch.
I hope this information has helped clear up the air about all the work we're putting into the development of Last Epoch multiplayer to ensure that when it releases, we do it right. We have learned a lot and are continuing to learn as we develop the platform we need to succeed now and far into the future. I know that the best time to release multiplayer is yesterday, but moving forward we're going to be a lot happier with some of the things we've rebuilt. As a final thing, we're still hiring for all kinds of roles! Check out our postings at https://eleventhhour.games/careers for more information.
[ 2021-11-30 20:48:01 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello all, and welcome to the November Multiplayer update!
It has not gone unnoticed that our last update was fairly light, and that we skipped our October update. I would love to take some time to break down some of the reasons why and share as much visibility and clarity on our ongoing Multiplayer work.
I'd like to make reference to something Judd discussed a bit more in-depth in our July Road to 1.0 Update:
"I cannot overstate how important it is to EHG that multiplayer is executed correctly. A bad initial multiplayer experience can harm the game for all players and jeopardize the success and reputation of the studio long term, much more than holding it until its ready. We want multiplayer to be enjoyable when we first release it without confusion or game-breaking bugs, even in early access. Several games with many more resources have failed to stick the landing on multiplayer, so were making sure to learn everything we can from those mistakes and not to repeat them. While we still may make some mistakes, well be able to react and iterate on them quickly."
Through further testing of our scalability of multiplayer services over the last few months, and in the light of other recent major game launches, we recognized some core areas of our current Multiplayer experience that we would have to re-address. We wanted these to have a stable gameplay experience before we roll out even a multiplayer alpha test. We realized that some of the services we were relying on were things we should ideally build and own ourselves if we want to be able to reduce live problems as much as possible, as well as fix things quickly whenever we need to.
To put it as clearly as I can - we've experienced some setbacks and delays because we made the choice to improve a number of our services, which we believe is the right decision for the long-term health of Multiplayer. **Our intended Community Testing program for Multiplayer has moved to Q1 2022.**
The result here is that we have chosen to migrate a few of our features, where some of the other features we've now built ourselves. This has meant our previously intended Community Testing phase of multiplayer has been delayed until we're confident in the Alpha version of a number of these changes. Let me break it down visually with a quick run-down:
The core multiplayer gameplay of Last Epoch is functioning very well - we playtest every week without any issues and are making a huge number of gameplay changes to consider the impact of the multiplayer version of Last Epoch. Let me cover some of this visually:
Party
Our multiplayer party system has been working well and we've been using it for about 8 months now. We needed to migrate it, however, as the party system relies on our account system which we are moving. We have recently just completed this and are testing it.
Friends
Very similar to the party system, it works online the same as the one you have now, but we also have to migrate it. This has been completed and is in testing.
Gameplay
Everything is looking great here and nothing is impacted for online gameplay. We have a lot of work to go optimizing it and we'll have to make some changes to how the game saves data since we are moving the character saving system. We are still implementing the Monolith in an online format but we regularly play the rest of Epoch together online, and have continued to work on systems such as latency compensation, as well as other elements we need to make the experience feel great.
Characters
The service we were relying on for character saves was fairly reliable at the scale we were testing at, but as we have continued to grow our playtests it increasingly became clear that this wouldn't be sufficient if we had a large influx of players. Migrating this to a more robust service has been a priority and we've been able to make gains here quickly by moving to an industry standard platform.
Deployment
This is our ability to deploy patches quickly to a global audience - nobody wants to wait 7 days for a patch. We have actually been really happy with how fast we can deploy the game online - we were at least as quick as other similar games. However, because we migrated our server hosting solutions, we have to modify a lot of the scripts and tools we use to deploy the game both internally and externally. This work is ongoing but it is something we have a huge amount of experience with at this point, we are confident it will be quick by the time we move to CT testing.
Users / Game Access
This is the first of our main set of changes. We consider this of extreme importance as the integrity of the online experience will be critical to have a competitive ladder, as well as ensuring we can maintain a great community by ensuring bad actors cannot access the game again. We are actively moving towards migrating our account system to work within an industry standard provider - work here is still ongoing and we will want this before releasing out a MP Alpha to testers.
Chat
Another area where we experienced some issues even in the single player game over the course of this year - there was more than one occasion in which we had to disable our chat. We recognized it would not scale in a way that would make us happy. We also had a number of issues this year with chat moderation, which our current chat system has not made easy to deal with. This is now actively in development using a third-party chat provider that should safely support us scaling from our current numbers up to launch. We expect this to be in when we also have our new user system for community testing.
Login
The second of our main set of changes - an inability to login is one of the worst things that can happen for us when we go live. We know we need this critical piece of infrastructure needs to keep up with however many people decide to play at once. We're feeling good that our new provider is up to the job and should easily scale at the numbers we anticipate. We're keeping an eye on the need for a login queue, but have no immediate plans to implement one at the moment. We expect this to be in when we also have our new user system for community testing.
Game Server / Matchmaking
This is the last of our main set of changes. Adapting a general purpose matchmaker to our scene allocation needs proved to be quite challenging. We need to be able to quickly allocate game servers to handle the wide array of scenes players will be in, while keeping our server load manageable. We have successfully moved to a new platform, are regularly testing with it, and no longer have to rely on a complex matchmaker. We are really happy with our changes here but it took a few months.
Final Thoughts
One thing I'd also like to touch on a bit is our regular release of the single player version of the game. Previously we were a much smaller team, so it was often the case that we had to divide our attention between continuing to develop, test, release, and fix our single player game. Our 3 month content process is really critical for us to continue to fund the ongoing develop of Last Epoch, as well as make big changes for our current players, so this had a lot of impact on our ability to remain consistent. It is not common to build out a multiplayer version of a game while consistently releasing a single player version - but considering that the development of Last Epoch has been financed by early access, it's a challenge we've had to rise up to. With the growth of our team, it takes time to onboard new developers into our processes. We are starting to cross this threshold with new developers that have joined the team over the last year, and are adding even more developers to resolve this conflict. Over the course of the next period of time, we are looking to merge our single player and multiplayer processes so we can put the entirety of our team on the multiplayer release of Last Epoch.
I hope this information has helped clear up the air about all the work we're putting into the development of Last Epoch multiplayer to ensure that when it releases, we do it right. We have learned a lot and are continuing to learn as we develop the platform we need to succeed now and far into the future. I know that the best time to release multiplayer is yesterday, but moving forward we're going to be a lot happier with some of the things we've rebuilt. As a final thing, we're still hiring for all kinds of roles! Check out our postings at https://eleventhhour.games/careers for more information.
New Unique Items coming in Eternal Legends Update
[ 2021-11-29 18:44:58 CET ] [ Original post ]
Similar to the Sands of Majasa Update, the Eternal Legends Update will bring a large number of new unique items that will either help players during leveling or help create end-game builds. A couple of weeks ago we shared some of the unique items coming to the game in the next update, and last week our backers shared their own awesome and powerful uniques - Deaths Embrace by Heavy, Prismatic Gaze by woozel and Chronostasis by Corax.
The release date for the next update is fast approaching, and we know many of you cant wait for us to share more about Legendary items - rest assured, well be talking about them very soon. But before we do, lets take a look at a few more unique items, shall we?
All values are subject to change.
We cant wait for you to get your hands on these new unique items, and it wont take long. the Eternal Legends Update will be released on December 10th.
Keep an eye on our social media, as well be sharing more about Legendary items and our first Dungeon soon.
Discord
Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
Youtube
New Rogue Skill - Umbral Blades
Umbral Blades is joining the ranks of quick, spammable, low mana cost Rogue skills, and is aimed at fulfilling the fantasy of masterfully throwing daggers (or swords) at your enemies. It is a 3-step combo ability. First, you throw 2 piercing blades at your enemies, next you throw 4 more, and finally on the 3rd step, you recall all of your blades back into your hands, hitting enemies along the way. Umbral Blades pairs perfectly with the Rogues high mobility and proper positioning as the key to success.
Note: Skill icon is not finalized. Umbral Blades skill is using tech we developed for the Majasa boss battle, where she sends out the blood pools, then turns all these pools into orbs and float back to her. In fact, this sparked the initial idea for this new Rogue skill. We felt that recalling your abilities is something, that can be really fun to play with, offers a different playstyle, and rewards correct positioning more than other throwing skills. After extensive testing, we are happy to introduce this skill to our players.
Umbral Blades is a new 3-step combo throwing skill
Specialization trees offer a variety of powerful nodes to support different playstyles. If you wish to utilize the complex behavior of this skill or you want to simplify the interaction, there is something you will like.
Skill tree offers poison and cold conversion to support a variety of builds
Recalled blades now targeting enemies around instead of returning to you
Explosive blades with cold conversion in action
Cacophony of Steel with poison conversion.
Eternal Legends Update is packed with new content and improvements and there is still a lot we will share with our community. So stay tuned for more updates coming your way very soon.
[ 2021-11-25 18:57:04 CET ] [ Original post ]
Its no secret that the Primalist is getting a lot of attention in the Eternal Legends Update - a complete Druid mastery overhaul in addition to a new core skill. However, the Primalist is not the only character with an expanding arsenal. Eternal Legends is bringing a new Rogue skill into the game - Umbral Blades. Lets take a closer look.
Umbral Blades - Skill
Umbral Blades is joining the ranks of quick, spammable, low mana cost Rogue skills, and is aimed at fulfilling the fantasy of masterfully throwing daggers (or swords) at your enemies. It is a 3-step combo ability. First, you throw 2 piercing blades at your enemies, next you throw 4 more, and finally on the 3rd step, you recall all of your blades back into your hands, hitting enemies along the way. Umbral Blades pairs perfectly with the Rogues high mobility and proper positioning as the key to success.
Note: Skill icon is not finalized. Umbral Blades skill is using tech we developed for the Majasa boss battle, where she sends out the blood pools, then turns all these pools into orbs and float back to her. In fact, this sparked the initial idea for this new Rogue skill. We felt that recalling your abilities is something, that can be really fun to play with, offers a different playstyle, and rewards correct positioning more than other throwing skills. After extensive testing, we are happy to introduce this skill to our players.
Umbral Blades is a new 3-step combo throwing skill
Umbral Blades - Example Nodes
Specialization trees offer a variety of powerful nodes to support different playstyles. If you wish to utilize the complex behavior of this skill or you want to simplify the interaction, there is something you will like.
Skill tree offers poison and cold conversion to support a variety of builds
Recalled blades now targeting enemies around instead of returning to you
Explosive blades with cold conversion in action
Cacophony of Steel with poison conversion.
Eternal Legends Update is packed with new content and improvements and there is still a lot we will share with our community. So stay tuned for more updates coming your way very soon.
Staves Rework
We hope you enjoyed sneak peek of what is coming. Join us tomorrow, when we will share details about the new rogue skill. Discord Facebook Twitter Reddit Youtube
[ 2021-11-24 18:51:12 CET ] [ Original post ]
The Eternal Legends Update is bringing a slew of improvements, changes, and new content. Yesterday we released a Dev Blog about Crafting Changes coming to Last Epoch in the upcoming patch. Today, lets take a closer look at another weapon group getting an overhaul - Staves. Similar to Spears, Staves will also get new 2D and 3D art and offer a wide variety of powerful implicit affixes to support even more builds. Check some examples below!
Temple Staff
Dragon Staff
Bladed Staff
Spine Rod
Horned Staff
Shamanic Staff
We hope you enjoyed sneak peek of what is coming. Join us tomorrow, when we will share details about the new rogue skill. Discord Facebook Twitter Reddit Youtube
Crafting Changes coming to Eternal Legends Update (0.8.4)
The core of the crafting system has existed in a similar state in Last Epoch for the last four years. In that time weve had a lot of positive feedback, but a lot of people have also voiced their frustrations with it. In 0.8.4 we want to carry forward the positives, while reworking the core of this system to be less frustrating, and adding more variety to how you can craft in Last Epoch. Positives to carry forward
In 0.8.4 were changing crafting to remove instability and fracture chance, and instead give all craftable items an amount of Forging Potential. Each craft uses a random amount of Forging Potential, normally around 1 to 15, and when an item runs out of Forging Potential it can no longer be crafted on, but until then all crafts will be successful.
This has several immediate advantages:
As mentioned above, with the previous crafting system it was often more optimal to start crafting from a magic item. There were several causes of this that were planning to address with the 0.8.4 crafting changes.
On a related note, we also want to shield players from bad RNG when crafting on exalted items, as that process is inherently more risky due to exalted items being much less easily replaceable. Because of this exalted items drop with particularly high forging potential.
This patch were swapping the old two Glyphs for four new ones, replacing one Rune, and adding two new Runes. Three of these new crafting items will be chase items with more exciting and powerful potential outcomes than the existing Runes and Glyphs. One of our goals with overhauling Glyphs was to make the decision around choosing the one you wanted to be based more on strategy and what sort of outcome you wanted, rather than the math of which was more likely to result in you being able to craft the item further. On account of that, the roles of the Glyph of the Guardian and the the Glyph of Stability have been rolled into the new Glyph of Hope, which gives a chance that a craft will consume no forging potential. Glyph of Chaos
Rune of Ascendance
Rune of Creation
Glyph of Despair
Another change to the crafting system in 0.8.4 is that you can now see the outcome of your crafts. This display is positioned at the bottom of the crafting panel where the various fracture chances used to be displayed. It tells you what stats you gained from a craft and how much Forging Potential was lost, if any.
Community feedback is always valued and has been instrumental in providing direction for the crafting changes were making this patch. We hope that you enjoy the changes and that youll let us know how the new system feels to use either way. See you all in Eterra.
[ 2021-11-24 00:25:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
Crafting Changes
The core of the crafting system has existed in a similar state in Last Epoch for the last four years. In that time weve had a lot of positive feedback, but a lot of people have also voiced their frustrations with it. In 0.8.4 we want to carry forward the positives, while reworking the core of this system to be less frustrating, and adding more variety to how you can craft in Last Epoch. Positives to carry forward
- Directed Crafting: You can find shards on the ground for specific affixes and use them to add that affix to items or upgrade that affix on items that already have it. This is a very intuitive system that gives a great sense of control and progression to crafting, while providing plenty of crafting items to find and collect.
- An element of randomness: We want to keep a degree of randomness in crafting so that it can feel exciting and unpredictable. If you know exactly how an item is going to end up when you start crafting it, the whole experience can feel flat. We dont think that the randomness of the current system works well, it can be very frustrating, but we still believe that keeping a significant level of unpredictability in the system is very important.
- Most of the existing runes: The Rune of Shattering is instrumental in allowing you to target farm specific Affix Shards, and the other Runes for the most part provide interesting ways to craft an item beyond just adding and upgrading affixes.
- The glyph system: While were not keeping either of the two existing Glyphs, the system by which you can support crafts with different items to modify the outcome has the opportunity to add a lot of depth. Were hoping to capitalize on that more in 0.8.4, rather than making it mostly a maths based decision of which Glyph is most likely to result in more opportunities to craft the item further.
- Irrelevant Shards: Shards for affixes you didnt want to use felt completely useless. At worst this could undermine the feeling of having frequent useful drops that you didnt have to spend time evaluating, like you do with equipment.
- Magic vs. Rare Items: With the previous crafting system it often ended up being more optimal to start crafting from a magic item rather than a rare one for several reasons. A later part of this dev blog will go into more detail.
- Perception of Luck: The RNG of the system functioned in a way that resulted in players generally feeling unlucky when crafting. This came from two sources, an unintuitively high chance of failure, and a lack of opportunities to feel particularly lucky.
- This was mostly due to unintuitive failure chance over multiple crafts amounting from repeated attempts where failure chance is small, but not negligible. Human psychology doesnt handle the perception of chance very well, overestimating the chance of success from a high percentage. This meant that items fractured more frequently than players expected, resulting in disappointment and frustration.
- Because success chance generally stayed high, the expectation with each individual craft was for it to succeed, and this meant that each success just felt expected or even owed rather than lucky. Whenever success chance dipped low enough that succeeding wasnt the expectation and there might be an opportunity to feel lucky, there was a strong disincentive to just stop crafting, because of the risk of a damaging or destructive fracture. For some, this lack of lucky moments could also result in crafting feeling flat or dull outside of the occasional critical success or the disappointment of an unexpected fracture.
Forging Potential
In 0.8.4 were changing crafting to remove instability and fracture chance, and instead give all craftable items an amount of Forging Potential. Each craft uses a random amount of Forging Potential, normally around 1 to 15, and when an item runs out of Forging Potential it can no longer be crafted on, but until then all crafts will be successful.
This has several immediate advantages:
- Clearer Expectations: Theres an expectation for how much you can craft on an item, and its clear how quickly its going down. The point at which you can no longer craft doesnt come out of nowhere, but gets closer and closer as an item loses more forging potential. This is particularly important for new players who dont always initially understand that crafting is limited in the old system.
- Softening the Blow: It doesnt feel as bad when an item becomes uncraftable, because the last attempted craft always still succeeds, regardless of how much forging potential was left. Theres never a time where you attempt a craft and then the item just fractures instead and you dont upgrade the affix you wanted to.
- Positive RNG: This system is much more conducive to creating moments where you feel lucky. Often an item is low on forging potential and it looks like youre only going to get one more craft out of it. But through a mix of rolling low amounts of forging potential consumed, critical successes preventing forging potential consumption, and Glyphs of Hope - you can end up being able to craft far more times than you were expecting.
Crafting Bases: Magic vs Rare Items
As mentioned above, with the previous crafting system it was often more optimal to start crafting from a magic item. There were several causes of this that were planning to address with the 0.8.4 crafting changes.
- There was no good, or easy, way to get rid of mods you didnt like. There was the Rune of Removal, but that had a high risk of removing affixes that you did want and that made the item worth crafting on in the first place. This meant that bad mods were significantly worse than empty mod slots.
- One of the ways we are planning to solve this is the Glyph of Chaos which can be used to reroll affixes when theyre upgraded, giving you several shots of changing an affix to one you want.
- There were only two Glyphs and they both extended the average number of times you could craft the item. Either by reducing stability added or by reducing fracture chance. There was no opportunity cost to using one of these so there wasnt as much of an advantage to starting from an item that required particularly few crafts to complete.
- We are aiming to solve this by introducing new Glyphs that allow you to push an item further or refine it at the opportunity cost of not using a Glyph that could preserve Forging Potential. For example you can use the Glyph of Order to preserve a good roll you get on a lower tier and carry that forward to higher tiers.
- Rare items started with more instability than magic items, so the gap between their mod count and total tiers could be closed more easily.
- Were flipping that around with the new crafting system so that rare items start with more forging potential than magic items, and rare items at high levels drop with even more. This means that not only will that gap be harder to close for magic items, but when crafting on rare items youll have more freedom to use items like the Glyph of Order without worrying as much about running out of forging potential.
On a related note, we also want to shield players from bad RNG when crafting on exalted items, as that process is inherently more risky due to exalted items being much less easily replaceable. Because of this exalted items drop with particularly high forging potential.
Runes and Glyphs
This patch were swapping the old two Glyphs for four new ones, replacing one Rune, and adding two new Runes. Three of these new crafting items will be chase items with more exciting and powerful potential outcomes than the existing Runes and Glyphs. One of our goals with overhauling Glyphs was to make the decision around choosing the one you wanted to be based more on strategy and what sort of outcome you wanted, rather than the math of which was more likely to result in you being able to craft the item further. On account of that, the roles of the Glyph of the Guardian and the the Glyph of Stability have been rolled into the new Glyph of Hope, which gives a chance that a craft will consume no forging potential. Glyph of Chaos
- As mentioned above this glyph rerolls an affix when you upgrade it. This means that rare items with one or two affixes you dont want become much more viable bases for crafting. This also adds a degree of RNG that isnt just about success, failure, or using up a resource.
- The Glyph of Chaos also solves another problem with the old crafting system, which was that shards of affixes you didnt want could feel completely useless. Youll now want to have at least a few of every shard on hand so that you can reroll their respective affixes.
- The Rune of Shattering and Rune of Refinement are not changing. We like the role they played in the old crafting system and think theyll continue to work just as well in this new one.
- As discussed above the Rune of Removal could lead to moments of frustration when it removed the one affix that made the item exciting for you in the first place. Of course the Glyph of Chaos provides an alternative now, but if you do want to use the Rune of Removal, the edge will be taken off the disappointment, because itll return a number of shards of the removed affix equal to its tier. This will allow you to more easily craft that affix onto a different item instead. This also opens up the strategy of using multiple Runes of Removal instead of a Rune of Shattering if you want to maximize the number of Shards you get from an item.
- The Rune of Shaping will no longer favour moderate rolls, making it more exciting to use and giving it more of a potential to create really powerful items. We felt comfortable doing this because with the new system we can simply balance it by giving it a higher maximum forging potential cost.
- The Rune of Cleansing is being removed. In 0.8.4 rare and exalted items drop with high Forging Potential to encourage crafting on those rather than creating the exact items you want from scratch, being able to use a Rune of Cleansing to turn those into high forging potential white items would bypass that, so the rune is being removed.
- This is a new rune being added in 0.8.4. It costs no forging potential and adds random T1 affixes to all the empty affix slots on an item.
- This is mostly intended to provide another option for crafting in early game, where youre not looking for a perfect item, but a grab bag of random affixes could be a potential upgrade, or you might want to round out the affixes of an item with low forging potential.
- All your old runes of cleansing will be turned into Runes of Discovery.
Rune of Ascendance
- The first of the three chase crafting items. This transforms an item into a random unique or set of the same type.
- The subtype does not matter, just the item type. For example using a Rune of Ascendance on a silver ring can result in any unique or set ring that could randomly drop, but cannot result in a unique helmet.
Rune of Creation
- Another chase crafting item, this removes all the items remaining forging potential, and then duplicates it.
- Beyond being able to equip both copies in the case of things like rings and one handed swords, this will have another use that will become clear in the run up to 0.8.4.
Glyph of Despair
- This is the only chase Glyph, and it has a particularly exciting effect. Whenever you use a shard to attempt to upgrade an affix while using a Glyph of Despair there is a chance that the affix will be sealed instead of upgraded.
- A sealed affix moves to its own slot and cannot be modified further. However this means that the prefix or suffix slot it previously occupied is now open to allow for another affix to be added, allowing you to craft 5 affix items.
Crafting Outcome UI
Another change to the crafting system in 0.8.4 is that you can now see the outcome of your crafts. This display is positioned at the bottom of the crafting panel where the various fracture chances used to be displayed. It tells you what stats you gained from a craft and how much Forging Potential was lost, if any.
Community feedback is always valued and has been instrumental in providing direction for the crafting changes were making this patch. We hope that you enjoy the changes and that youll let us know how the new system feels to use either way. See you all in Eterra.
Eternal Legends Update (Patch 0.8.4) - Coming December 10th
Saving Eterra is going to take more than time, it will require becoming something else entirely: Legendary. Last Epoch is proud to announce that with Patch 0.8.4 comes the launch of our first endgame Dungeon and the rise of Legendary tiered items. See you in Eterra on December 10th for the Eternal Legends Update.
[ 2021-11-17 20:30:37 CET ] [ Original post ]
[previewyoutube=E6PUnTTjDnE;full][/previewyoutube]
Eternal Legends
Saving Eterra is going to take more than time, it will require becoming something else entirely: Legendary. Last Epoch is proud to announce that with Patch 0.8.4 comes the launch of our first endgame Dungeon and the rise of Legendary tiered items. See you in Eterra on December 10th for the Eternal Legends Update.
Previously revealed for Eternal Legends:
Also coming in Eternal Legends:
- New Endgame Dungeon: Temporal Sanctum
- Legendary Items & Eternity Cache
- Revamped Crafting System
- New Rogue Skill
- New Mage and Acolyte Character Models
- Overhauled Character Select Screen
- New Unique Items
- and much more
New Primalist Skill coming in Patch 0.8.4 - Upheaval
Upheaval is a powerful, semi-spammable ground slam ability. It will do decent amount of damage and have a medium mana cost. With the announced removal of Ice Thorns, Upheaval will be stepping in to fill its empty skill slot. This means that moving forward, upheaval will be an early and core addition to the Primalist theme and leveling experience.
We knew that the visuals of Upheaval needed to feel impactful for our players. We started by adding some additional screen shake, then we added another slam visual object right when the Primalists weapon hits the ground. The visual design of Upheaval also presented us with the opportunity to create a new visual skill-tool: Decals over a trail. This is a design tool that drops visual-decals every 1.5 units which results in a repeated trail of decals. This design truly realized the desired visuals for Upheaval, and we will certainly be using it to shape other future skills in Last Epoch.
Upheaval is a powerful melee attack with a solid range.
Upheaval specialization tree offers a wide variety of powerful nodes to support many different builds. Here are a couple highlights from the brand new Upheaval skill tree. We can't wait to see the earth-shaking creations from our community once they get a hold of the full skill tree. Values have been omitted as we are still balancing the skill.
The cold version of Upheaval cast by totem.
Excavating blow with Tectonic Slam obliterating enemies.
Upheaval will be joining the Primalists skill kit before the end of the year with patch 0.8.4. For those keeping score in the community, that means youll have patch 0.8.4 in your hands in no more than 46 days from now. In that time youll be hearing from us a lot. In fact, weve barely scratched the surface in revealing what all is coming your way. We have more blog posts, feature reveals, announcements, and trailers heading your way in the coming weeks - so stay tuned for all the news for our Ete oops, to patch 0.8.4! Discord Facebook Twitter Reddit Youtube
[ 2021-11-15 19:49:42 CET ] [ Original post ]
As you may have already noticed, our Primalist is getting a lot of love in patch 0.8.4. Not only is his Druid Mastery going through a complete overhaul, but he is also getting some new, powerful baseline tools added to his kit. Today, the new Primalist skill Upheaval is making its smashing reveal to our community, so hold on to your boots and lets get into the details below.
Upheaval - Skill
Upheaval is a powerful, semi-spammable ground slam ability. It will do decent amount of damage and have a medium mana cost. With the announced removal of Ice Thorns, Upheaval will be stepping in to fill its empty skill slot. This means that moving forward, upheaval will be an early and core addition to the Primalist theme and leveling experience.
We knew that the visuals of Upheaval needed to feel impactful for our players. We started by adding some additional screen shake, then we added another slam visual object right when the Primalists weapon hits the ground. The visual design of Upheaval also presented us with the opportunity to create a new visual skill-tool: Decals over a trail. This is a design tool that drops visual-decals every 1.5 units which results in a repeated trail of decals. This design truly realized the desired visuals for Upheaval, and we will certainly be using it to shape other future skills in Last Epoch.
Upheaval is a powerful melee attack with a solid range.
Upheaval - Example Nodes
Upheaval specialization tree offers a wide variety of powerful nodes to support many different builds. Here are a couple highlights from the brand new Upheaval skill tree. We can't wait to see the earth-shaking creations from our community once they get a hold of the full skill tree. Values have been omitted as we are still balancing the skill.
The cold version of Upheaval cast by totem.
Excavating blow with Tectonic Slam obliterating enemies.
Upheaval will be joining the Primalists skill kit before the end of the year with patch 0.8.4. For those keeping score in the community, that means youll have patch 0.8.4 in your hands in no more than 46 days from now. In that time youll be hearing from us a lot. In fact, weve barely scratched the surface in revealing what all is coming your way. We have more blog posts, feature reveals, announcements, and trailers heading your way in the coming weeks - so stay tuned for all the news for our Ete oops, to patch 0.8.4! Discord Facebook Twitter Reddit Youtube
Druid Overhaul Overview and Swarmblade Form
When it came time to develop the final transformation for our Druid, we knew we wanted to do something unique and exciting. These goals meant we wanted to steer clear of other often used animal transformations so we could land on something fresh. When we started reviewing the stunning concept art for the Swarmblade below, we knew we found the answer.
Insects exist in many different shapes and forms so we had a lot of material to explore. As you can see in the picture below, our artists had an awesome mix of ideas for the insect-based form.
The ability to transform into a deadly flying bug that can slash your enemies to ribbons is a really fun fantasy we are excited to deliver in patch 0.8.4. The Swarmblade went through many visual and naming iterations before we had finally crafted the fearsome bug-king hunter you see below.
Transforming into the Swarmblade takes you into a spinning slash animation that we feel connects the player very well to the Swambalade fantasy - it feels visceral and impactful. This was a great feeling with most transformation situations, but in some others (for example Werebear to Swarmblade) it had to be adjusted since a massive Werebear performing a full-spin just didnt look right.
Swarmblade has two distinct fantasies we wanted to slice. One being a fast slashing bug and the other being the hive-father. With only 4 skills on the bar, we were aware that in order to really hit both of these we would need to have these themes overlap on some skills. Also, having a contained kit like this on a character gave us the ability to create some really exciting ability interactions.
Swarmblades first skill, Armblade Slash, is fast melee slash attack. It will be your most reliable attack in Swarmblade form with no cooldown and no Rage cost. Weve designed the Swarmblade heavily around rapid melee slashing, and while Armblade Slash will be deadly, it will not be the only melee attack in your arsenal.
Swarmblades second skill is Dive. We knew we needed to hit the mobility aspect while also maintaining his aggressiveness. Looking at the Rogues Shift ability, we saw how responsive and good it felt to use, so we emulated that for Swarmblade while also decreasing the range a bit and adding a slash at the end. This allows you to either engage or disengage quickly.
Swarmblades third skill is summon hive. When using the ability, he throws down a hive and summons some feisty locusts to fight with him. This hits the summoner theme that a Druid should have and puts the Swarmblade as a hive-father or king bee of sorts. And of course, these locusts will scale with Minion Damage.
Since the hives are going to summon locusts, we designed another skill that would interact with them to help promote ability synergy. Thats where Swarmblades fourth and final skill comes in - Swarm Strike. Swam Strike is a 360 degree heavy spin attack that also rallies your summoned bugs around you dealing heavy AoE damage. This ability really rounds out the Swarmblades toolkit.
With every new transformation comes a new skill tree and Swarmblade is no exception. Swarmblades specialization tree is packed with a wide variety of powerful or nodes supporting different playstyles. As in the case of Werebear and Spriggan, Swarmblade also has several options to generate rage to stay in the form longer or even permanently.
An important part of our Druid overhaul is also allowing players to utilize other Primalists skills even while being transformed. You will find several different options inside the skill tree.
Here are a few examples of some new and powerful Swarmblade nodes.
Were moving away from a Mana based resource for all Druid transforms and replacing it with a new resource called Rage. This new resource system comes with new mechanics to support a wide variety of playstyles including permaform builds as well as multiform builds. To catch up on the new rage mechanic we provide more info in our previous blogs - Werebear and Spriggan.
Now that all three forms are revealed we can talk about something really exciting. For those of you who prefer a more versatile approach to shapeshifting - we have added support for the powershifting playstyle, and we are so excited to see what our community can do with the power of multiform support at their fingertips. To achieve this, there are now nodes in each skill tree that allow you to shift directly into another form without having to revert back to a human first. These direct transformations also come with an additional effect.
Thank you for joining us this week for this discovery of our newly designed Druid Mastery. We hope to see you Werebears, Spriggans and Swarmblades fighting back the void across Eterra when 0.8.4 drops later this year. Oh and dont worry, we have plenty more to share in the coming weeks. Druid Rework Development Week: 1st November - Werebear Form Blog Post 2nd November - Entangling Roots Blog Post 3rd November - Spriggan Form Blog Post 4th November - New Form Teaser 5th November - Druid Rework Overview and New Form
[ 2021-11-05 19:13:20 CET ] [ Original post ]
We hope youve been enjoying our Druid Development Week so far, and thanks for joining us here again for our biggest reveal yet. Weve been eager to show you all of the major changes coming to the Druid Mastery in 0.8.4 and we are finally able to do so with the third and final transformation: the deadly Swarmblade. [previewyoutube=81uvI8lzReM;full][/previewyoutube] All imagery, animations, mechanics, and videos are captured during the development process and do not directly reflect the final product. All instances shown are subject to change as needed
Swarmblade - New Druid Form
When it came time to develop the final transformation for our Druid, we knew we wanted to do something unique and exciting. These goals meant we wanted to steer clear of other often used animal transformations so we could land on something fresh. When we started reviewing the stunning concept art for the Swarmblade below, we knew we found the answer.
Concept Art and Model
Insects exist in many different shapes and forms so we had a lot of material to explore. As you can see in the picture below, our artists had an awesome mix of ideas for the insect-based form.
The ability to transform into a deadly flying bug that can slash your enemies to ribbons is a really fun fantasy we are excited to deliver in patch 0.8.4. The Swarmblade went through many visual and naming iterations before we had finally crafted the fearsome bug-king hunter you see below.
Transformation
Transforming into the Swarmblade takes you into a spinning slash animation that we feel connects the player very well to the Swambalade fantasy - it feels visceral and impactful. This was a great feeling with most transformation situations, but in some others (for example Werebear to Swarmblade) it had to be adjusted since a massive Werebear performing a full-spin just didnt look right.
Swarmblade Skills
Swarmblade has two distinct fantasies we wanted to slice. One being a fast slashing bug and the other being the hive-father. With only 4 skills on the bar, we were aware that in order to really hit both of these we would need to have these themes overlap on some skills. Also, having a contained kit like this on a character gave us the ability to create some really exciting ability interactions.
Armblade Slash
Swarmblades first skill, Armblade Slash, is fast melee slash attack. It will be your most reliable attack in Swarmblade form with no cooldown and no Rage cost. Weve designed the Swarmblade heavily around rapid melee slashing, and while Armblade Slash will be deadly, it will not be the only melee attack in your arsenal.
Dive
Swarmblades second skill is Dive. We knew we needed to hit the mobility aspect while also maintaining his aggressiveness. Looking at the Rogues Shift ability, we saw how responsive and good it felt to use, so we emulated that for Swarmblade while also decreasing the range a bit and adding a slash at the end. This allows you to either engage or disengage quickly.
Summon Hive
Swarmblades third skill is summon hive. When using the ability, he throws down a hive and summons some feisty locusts to fight with him. This hits the summoner theme that a Druid should have and puts the Swarmblade as a hive-father or king bee of sorts. And of course, these locusts will scale with Minion Damage.
Swarm Strike
Since the hives are going to summon locusts, we designed another skill that would interact with them to help promote ability synergy. Thats where Swarmblades fourth and final skill comes in - Swarm Strike. Swam Strike is a 360 degree heavy spin attack that also rallies your summoned bugs around you dealing heavy AoE damage. This ability really rounds out the Swarmblades toolkit.
Swarmblade Skill-Tree
With every new transformation comes a new skill tree and Swarmblade is no exception. Swarmblades specialization tree is packed with a wide variety of powerful or nodes supporting different playstyles. As in the case of Werebear and Spriggan, Swarmblade also has several options to generate rage to stay in the form longer or even permanently.
An important part of our Druid overhaul is also allowing players to utilize other Primalists skills even while being transformed. You will find several different options inside the skill tree.
Here are a few examples of some new and powerful Swarmblade nodes.
New Resource & Permaform support
Were moving away from a Mana based resource for all Druid transforms and replacing it with a new resource called Rage. This new resource system comes with new mechanics to support a wide variety of playstyles including permaform builds as well as multiform builds. To catch up on the new rage mechanic we provide more info in our previous blogs - Werebear and Spriggan.
Multiform Support
Now that all three forms are revealed we can talk about something really exciting. For those of you who prefer a more versatile approach to shapeshifting - we have added support for the powershifting playstyle, and we are so excited to see what our community can do with the power of multiform support at their fingertips. To achieve this, there are now nodes in each skill tree that allow you to shift directly into another form without having to revert back to a human first. These direct transformations also come with an additional effect.
Thank you for joining us this week for this discovery of our newly designed Druid Mastery. We hope to see you Werebears, Spriggans and Swarmblades fighting back the void across Eterra when 0.8.4 drops later this year. Oh and dont worry, we have plenty more to share in the coming weeks. Druid Rework Development Week: 1st November - Werebear Form Blog Post 2nd November - Entangling Roots Blog Post 3rd November - Spriggan Form Blog Post 4th November - New Form Teaser 5th November - Druid Rework Overview and New Form
Druid Overhaul - Spriggan Form
The design goal of the new Spriggan form is to connect our players to the 'magical spellcaster rooted in nature' type of fantasy. This involved committing to a couple thematic design goals:
The visuals for our current Spriggan form were a bit outdated and the abilities felt rather clunky and difficult to use. All around, he needed of a lot of love. Here is some of our early concept art for the model redesign:
Once we decided upon the concept art and the details within, we set forth to create a new epic model for the Druids Spriggan form. Complete with hardened bark, a variety of natural growth, and an ancient glowing power within, our new Spriggan form stands ready to take on any threat.
Weve given our new Spriggan form an exciting new transformation animation and integrated the casting of a new ability while transforming: Thorn Shield. Casting Thorn Shield while transforming into Spriggan strongly communicates the fantasy of becoming a tree. It feels great in dangerous situations, and connects the player with the soul of the Spriggan fantasy.
This patch we have updates to all of the abilities which include replacing Vale Blast with Spirit Thorns, and replacing Root Wall with Thorn Shield. Let's dive into each of these decisions a bit more below.
Vale Blast, while decent at single target damage, felt rather lackluster and its theming did not fit well. Generic green laser blast of sorts doesn't really scream "nature magic." Also, we're removing Ice Thorns from Primalist this patch, so we would be lacking in any spell cast where you are creating thorns, which is very appropriate for a nature caster. So that led us to building Spirit Thorns. This is a single target, or multitarget, skill that feels much more satisfying to use than Ice Thorns or Vale Blast currently does, and really hits on that Spriggan nature theme.
While we loved the theme of Root Wall, weve ultimately decided it wasnt effective or impactful enough, so it was time for it to retire. Its replacement, Thorn Shield, is a rather different skill compared to Root Wall. It forms a protective barrier of thorns around you that grants armor and reflects a flat amount of damage to attackers. When the shield expires, a burst of thorns shoots out and damages all nearby enemies. For Thorn Shield, we wanted to double down on the thorn theme, and also fully empower and support a thorns style of gameplay, where things die just from touching you. Being able to cast it on your companions also enables a fun playstyle where you stand back and send your thorny bear into battle for you. Or you can even sprout some thorns on your friends as they charge into the fray.
Healing Totem and Summon Vines are both keeping their current base functionality but gain visual updates and several new options in the overhauled skill tree. The reworked Spriggan Form minions often feel like new skills when using them in battle.
As we discussed in the Werebear Blog, we're moving away from a mana based resource for all Druid transforms and they will use a new resource called Rage. There will be many ways to recover Rage such as the examples below.
Similar to the Werebear, one of our major redesign goals with the Spriggan skill tree is to allow players to bring in the power of other skills while transformed. This will allow players to make more strategic decisions when choosing which other skills they wish to specialize in.
The entire Spriggan skill tree has been redesigned with the intent to allow our community of Travelers to create many new builds and explore new ways to play. Here are some of our favorite new nodes:
Great Vine lives up to its name Thank you for joining us for this reveal of the changes coming to the Druids Spriggan form in Patch 0.8.4. We hope you love the new direction for the Druid and, as always, would love to hear your feedback in the comments! We hope to see you again tomorrow for a sneak peak at our Druids new and final transformation! Here is a peek at what you can expect this week! See you next time! Druid Rework Development Week: 1st November - Werebear Form Blog Post 2nd November - Entangling Roots Blog Post 3rd November - Spriggan Form Blog Post 4th November - New Form Teaser 5th November - New Form Blog Post 5th November - Druid Rework Overview Video
[ 2021-11-03 18:20:41 CET ] [ Original post ]
We hope you enjoyed our new Entangling Roots design in the Entangling Roots Blog. We are thrilled to have you back again for our next reveal. Today marks day three of our Druid Development Week, so stay tuned in the coming days to catch even more great news (full schedule below)! Today, we will be focusing on the Druids most adaptive transformation - the Spriggan.
Druid Rework - The Spriggan
The design goal of the new Spriggan form is to connect our players to the 'magical spellcaster rooted in nature' type of fantasy. This involved committing to a couple thematic design goals:
- The Spriggan would not utilize any movement abilities. Being a tree-man, he cant move very quickly without breaking the fantasy.
- All attacks and spells should be deeply rooted in nature magic
- The two major themes expressed through gameplay should encompass the feeling of controlling the environment and summoning natures creatures.
New Spriggan Visuals
The visuals for our current Spriggan form were a bit outdated and the abilities felt rather clunky and difficult to use. All around, he needed of a lot of love. Here is some of our early concept art for the model redesign:
Once we decided upon the concept art and the details within, we set forth to create a new epic model for the Druids Spriggan form. Complete with hardened bark, a variety of natural growth, and an ancient glowing power within, our new Spriggan form stands ready to take on any threat.
New Transformation
Weve given our new Spriggan form an exciting new transformation animation and integrated the casting of a new ability while transforming: Thorn Shield. Casting Thorn Shield while transforming into Spriggan strongly communicates the fantasy of becoming a tree. It feels great in dangerous situations, and connects the player with the soul of the Spriggan fantasy.
Spriggan Skills
This patch we have updates to all of the abilities which include replacing Vale Blast with Spirit Thorns, and replacing Root Wall with Thorn Shield. Let's dive into each of these decisions a bit more below.
Spirit Thorns
Vale Blast, while decent at single target damage, felt rather lackluster and its theming did not fit well. Generic green laser blast of sorts doesn't really scream "nature magic." Also, we're removing Ice Thorns from Primalist this patch, so we would be lacking in any spell cast where you are creating thorns, which is very appropriate for a nature caster. So that led us to building Spirit Thorns. This is a single target, or multitarget, skill that feels much more satisfying to use than Ice Thorns or Vale Blast currently does, and really hits on that Spriggan nature theme.
Thorn Shield
While we loved the theme of Root Wall, weve ultimately decided it wasnt effective or impactful enough, so it was time for it to retire. Its replacement, Thorn Shield, is a rather different skill compared to Root Wall. It forms a protective barrier of thorns around you that grants armor and reflects a flat amount of damage to attackers. When the shield expires, a burst of thorns shoots out and damages all nearby enemies. For Thorn Shield, we wanted to double down on the thorn theme, and also fully empower and support a thorns style of gameplay, where things die just from touching you. Being able to cast it on your companions also enables a fun playstyle where you stand back and send your thorny bear into battle for you. Or you can even sprout some thorns on your friends as they charge into the fray.
Summon Healing Totem & Summon Vines
Healing Totem and Summon Vines are both keeping their current base functionality but gain visual updates and several new options in the overhauled skill tree. The reworked Spriggan Form minions often feel like new skills when using them in battle.
New Spriggan Skill-Tree
As we discussed in the Werebear Blog, we're moving away from a mana based resource for all Druid transforms and they will use a new resource called Rage. There will be many ways to recover Rage such as the examples below.
Similar to the Werebear, one of our major redesign goals with the Spriggan skill tree is to allow players to bring in the power of other skills while transformed. This will allow players to make more strategic decisions when choosing which other skills they wish to specialize in.
The entire Spriggan skill tree has been redesigned with the intent to allow our community of Travelers to create many new builds and explore new ways to play. Here are some of our favorite new nodes:
Great Vine lives up to its name Thank you for joining us for this reveal of the changes coming to the Druids Spriggan form in Patch 0.8.4. We hope you love the new direction for the Druid and, as always, would love to hear your feedback in the comments! We hope to see you again tomorrow for a sneak peak at our Druids new and final transformation! Here is a peek at what you can expect this week! See you next time! Druid Rework Development Week: 1st November - Werebear Form Blog Post 2nd November - Entangling Roots Blog Post 3rd November - Spriggan Form Blog Post 4th November - New Form Teaser 5th November - New Form Blog Post 5th November - Druid Rework Overview Video
Entangling Roots - Skill Rework
While redesigning the Druid as a whole, we knew we needed to elevate one of his skills into the Mastery-locked section of his passive tree. After some consideration we felt that thematically, Entangling Roots fit this spot very well. By elevating the skill in this way, we also knew we had to elevate the power, visuals, and impact of the skill across the board to make sure it was worth committing to. We are thrilled to share with you the results of that work below.
We wanted to keep the core fantasy of rooting large groups of enemies while also being open to changing other aspects. We quickly came across 3 design challenges.
From a visual perspective, this meant we could focus the roots visuals around individual enemies, allowing us to increase the prominence of the roots without causing too much visual noise and increase their visual fidelity without sacrificing performance. The end result is a fresh take on a classic Druid-themed skill that we are very proud to share with our community. We hope you enjoy exploring this newly energized skill and its brand new skill tree full of unique decisions and powerful changes.
The skill specialization tree is also getting a complete overhaul with a wide variety of options for different druid playstyles. Enjoy a taste of what Entangling roots skill has to offer! Values have been omitted as we are still balancing the skill.
Thank you for joining us for this reveal of the changes coming to the Entangling Roots skill in Patch 0.8.4. We hope you enjoy the new direction for the Druid and, as always, would love to hear your feedback in the comments! We hope you join us again soon to check out the exciting updates coming to the Druids most adaptive transformation - the Spriggan. Here is a peek at what you can expect this week! Druid Rework Development Week: 1st November - Werebear Form Rework 2nd November - Entangling Roots Rework 3rd November - Spriggan Form Rework 4th November - New Form Teaser 5th November - Druid Overhaul Overview and New Form
[ 2021-11-02 18:37:53 CET ] [ Original post ]
We hope all you Druid fans loved the unveiling of our new Werebear design in the Werebear Blog. We are thrilled to have you back again for our next reveal. We are eager to share our full vision for the future of the Druid Mastery, and all the exciting changes coming your way before the end of the year. Today marks day two of our Druid Development Week, so stay tuned in the coming days to catch even more great news! See the full schedule below. Today, we will be focusing on the Druids skill - Entangling Roots.
Entangling Roots - Rework
While redesigning the Druid as a whole, we knew we needed to elevate one of his skills into the Mastery-locked section of his passive tree. After some consideration we felt that thematically, Entangling Roots fit this spot very well. By elevating the skill in this way, we also knew we had to elevate the power, visuals, and impact of the skill across the board to make sure it was worth committing to. We are thrilled to share with you the results of that work below.
We wanted to keep the core fantasy of rooting large groups of enemies while also being open to changing other aspects. We quickly came across 3 design challenges.
- Currently it created too much visual noise by being a large persistent area of effect, and this was a major barrier to bringing its VFX up to our latest quality standards as it had a negative impact on performance.
- In its current form, Entangling Roots simply slowed enemies rather than completely immobilizing them resulting in them doing a slow walking animation that again did not hold up to our standards.
- New enemies walking onto the skills area were also effectively rooted. This often created a pile-up effect as enemies were all stopping at the edge of the skills effected area. This made it harder to solve as completely immobilizing the enemies exacerbates the pile-up effect.
From a visual perspective, this meant we could focus the roots visuals around individual enemies, allowing us to increase the prominence of the roots without causing too much visual noise and increase their visual fidelity without sacrificing performance. The end result is a fresh take on a classic Druid-themed skill that we are very proud to share with our community. We hope you enjoy exploring this newly energized skill and its brand new skill tree full of unique decisions and powerful changes.
Nodes Examples
The skill specialization tree is also getting a complete overhaul with a wide variety of options for different druid playstyles. Enjoy a taste of what Entangling roots skill has to offer! Values have been omitted as we are still balancing the skill.
Thank you for joining us for this reveal of the changes coming to the Entangling Roots skill in Patch 0.8.4. We hope you enjoy the new direction for the Druid and, as always, would love to hear your feedback in the comments! We hope you join us again soon to check out the exciting updates coming to the Druids most adaptive transformation - the Spriggan. Here is a peek at what you can expect this week! Druid Rework Development Week: 1st November - Werebear Form Rework 2nd November - Entangling Roots Rework 3rd November - Spriggan Form Rework 4th November - New Form Teaser 5th November - Druid Overhaul Overview and New Form
Druid Overhaul - Werebear Form
Were moving away from a mana based resource for all Druid transforms. Previously, to maximize time in the form you often had to avoid using your heavier abilities and that resulted in one-dimensional gameplay where you mostly spammed your low cost abilities. Instead, all Druid transformations will now use a new resource called Rage. Rage will be restored to full when you enter a form and will then drain slowly over time. Skills themselves will have little to no Rage cost by default so it wont feel punishing to utilize your whole set of abilities while transformed. There will be many ways to recover Rage, so you have a lot of build options if you want to stay in one form for a long duration. Reaching the point where you can stay in a form indefinitely should be much easier than before and there will be more ways to achieve it.
The design goal of our new Werebear model is to connect our players to a 'massive, in your face brawler' type of fantasy. We started with new concept art, increasing the size and presence of our thick-furred fighter. Concept #3 - 'Top Heavy' was quickly selected as the best champion of this fantasy.
Next came the design of our new ferocious model. Below you will find the upgraded version of our Werebear complete with new textures & materials including bone, claw, fur and war paint.
When recreating the Werebear we knew we wanted him to feel like a massive brawler. Some of the design requirements here included moderate mobility and heavy sweeping attacks. The previous Werebear kit missed the mark in a few areas. Firstly, Charge felt too fast for the size and stature behind the Werebear. Secondly, Swipe was a bit too successful at restoring your Mana, preventing our Druid players from feeling the desire for working in Roar or Ravage into their rotations. In our 0.8.4 redesign the Werebear form has a mix of both new and returning skills, and even the returning ones have been revamped with new VFX, sounds, altered base functionality, and new potential in their skill trees! Here is a sneak peek of the new skills being added to the Werebears ferocious arsenal.
Swipe is one of the more successful elements of the previous Werebear form. The ability to use the existing Swipe skill tree to augment your Werebears abilities was really great. It lets you create a stronger build while not wasting those precious specialization slots if you wanted to be permanently transformed. We saw this and made a focused effort to get a few more interactions like Swipe into each of the Transform trees. Every good brawler also needs a consistent, spammable, damage skill, and Swipe fits that role very well.
We replaced the old Werebear Roar with Warcry because it felt extremely thematic and fitting. This also reduced redundancy within the Primalist skills as a whole. We were then able to apply a re-shuffle of the skill unlocks, allowing Warcry to be unlocked in base Primalist instead of Beastmaster. Now, if players choose to specialize in Warcry they will gain the full effects in their ferocious Werebear form.
Maul is a new skill for Werebear, replacing Ravage. Ravage had two issues that we wanted to resolve. Firstly it didnt feel distinct enough from Swipe to use, given its similar status as a low AoE melee attack, and it was difficult to balance it to compete with Swipe when the latter had its own entire tree. Secondly, the new werebear model has different proportions, with much larger arms and a less prominent head. A bite animation like Ravage no longer made sense with this new model. We still wanted to include a heavier melee attack with a cooldown in Werebear form to provide a way to mix up the melee gameplay so that its not always just Swipe Swipe Swipe. To reinforce a distinct use case for this melee attack we decided to give it a medium to a large area of effect and gave it more damage. We added movement to it to make it feel very different to attack with, and to help add enough weight and impact to the animation. With all these changes, the old name Ravage no longer fits so well, so we changed it to Maul.
Every good brawler would really love a way to get around the battlefield quickly. Especially in an ARPG. While the Werebears charge provided this option and it worked mechanically, it was not ideal for a charging Werebear to be moving so fast. It was also basically the same as Lunge, which we werent super enthused about. So we took some of the other themes and ideas we wanted to portray to come up with a new movement skill that is unique and fun. Having a wild Rampage feels very thematic. Mechanically you dont move super quickly, but you damage all the units along the way and you can slightly adjust your trajectory while moving.
One of the strengths of the Druid fantasy comes from its ability to adapt to danger through transformation. In our previous version of the Werebear, this transformation also came with a fair amount of restrictions. Once you transformed you lost access to the previous skills on your bar that you chose to specialize in. Our new Werebear design solves this problem by introducing several options for you to tie in previously specialized skills and utilize them while transformed. As a result the Werebear arsenal feels deeper and more diverse than ever before. Here are just few examples of these nodes as well some other powerful ones.
Few example nodes which allow you to utilize other primalist skills in the Werebear form
Werebear specialization tree offers a wide variety of powerful nodes.
Bringer of Storms and Crackling Assault in action Thank you for checking out this sneak peek of some of the changes coming to the Druids Wearbear form in Patch 0.8.4. We hope you join us again soon to check out the exciting updates coming to the Druids skill - the Entangling Roots. Here is a peek at what you can expect this week! See you next time! Druid Rework Development Week: 1st November - Werebear Form Rework 2nd November - Entangling Roots Rework 3rd November - Spriggan Form Rework 4th November - New Form Teaser 5th November - Druid Overhaul Overview and New Form
[ 2021-11-01 18:09:03 CET ] [ Original post ]
We hope all you Druid fans are ready for some excitement because heading into patch 0.8.4 our Primalists most adaptive Mastery is receiving a full development update. We are eager to share our vision for the future of the Druid Mastery, and all the exciting changes coming your way before the end of the year. Today marks the kickoff of our Druid Development Week, so stay tuned over the coming days to catch even more great news (full schedule below)! Today, we will be focusing the Druids first and most ferocious transformation - the Werebear.
New Resource - Rage
Were moving away from a mana based resource for all Druid transforms. Previously, to maximize time in the form you often had to avoid using your heavier abilities and that resulted in one-dimensional gameplay where you mostly spammed your low cost abilities. Instead, all Druid transformations will now use a new resource called Rage. Rage will be restored to full when you enter a form and will then drain slowly over time. Skills themselves will have little to no Rage cost by default so it wont feel punishing to utilize your whole set of abilities while transformed. There will be many ways to recover Rage, so you have a lot of build options if you want to stay in one form for a long duration. Reaching the point where you can stay in a form indefinitely should be much easier than before and there will be more ways to achieve it.
New Werebear Visuals
The design goal of our new Werebear model is to connect our players to a 'massive, in your face brawler' type of fantasy. We started with new concept art, increasing the size and presence of our thick-furred fighter. Concept #3 - 'Top Heavy' was quickly selected as the best champion of this fantasy.
Next came the design of our new ferocious model. Below you will find the upgraded version of our Werebear complete with new textures & materials including bone, claw, fur and war paint.
Werebear Skills
When recreating the Werebear we knew we wanted him to feel like a massive brawler. Some of the design requirements here included moderate mobility and heavy sweeping attacks. The previous Werebear kit missed the mark in a few areas. Firstly, Charge felt too fast for the size and stature behind the Werebear. Secondly, Swipe was a bit too successful at restoring your Mana, preventing our Druid players from feeling the desire for working in Roar or Ravage into their rotations. In our 0.8.4 redesign the Werebear form has a mix of both new and returning skills, and even the returning ones have been revamped with new VFX, sounds, altered base functionality, and new potential in their skill trees! Here is a sneak peek of the new skills being added to the Werebears ferocious arsenal.
Swipe
Swipe is one of the more successful elements of the previous Werebear form. The ability to use the existing Swipe skill tree to augment your Werebears abilities was really great. It lets you create a stronger build while not wasting those precious specialization slots if you wanted to be permanently transformed. We saw this and made a focused effort to get a few more interactions like Swipe into each of the Transform trees. Every good brawler also needs a consistent, spammable, damage skill, and Swipe fits that role very well.
Warcry
We replaced the old Werebear Roar with Warcry because it felt extremely thematic and fitting. This also reduced redundancy within the Primalist skills as a whole. We were then able to apply a re-shuffle of the skill unlocks, allowing Warcry to be unlocked in base Primalist instead of Beastmaster. Now, if players choose to specialize in Warcry they will gain the full effects in their ferocious Werebear form.
Maul
Maul is a new skill for Werebear, replacing Ravage. Ravage had two issues that we wanted to resolve. Firstly it didnt feel distinct enough from Swipe to use, given its similar status as a low AoE melee attack, and it was difficult to balance it to compete with Swipe when the latter had its own entire tree. Secondly, the new werebear model has different proportions, with much larger arms and a less prominent head. A bite animation like Ravage no longer made sense with this new model. We still wanted to include a heavier melee attack with a cooldown in Werebear form to provide a way to mix up the melee gameplay so that its not always just Swipe Swipe Swipe. To reinforce a distinct use case for this melee attack we decided to give it a medium to a large area of effect and gave it more damage. We added movement to it to make it feel very different to attack with, and to help add enough weight and impact to the animation. With all these changes, the old name Ravage no longer fits so well, so we changed it to Maul.
Rampage
Every good brawler would really love a way to get around the battlefield quickly. Especially in an ARPG. While the Werebears charge provided this option and it worked mechanically, it was not ideal for a charging Werebear to be moving so fast. It was also basically the same as Lunge, which we werent super enthused about. So we took some of the other themes and ideas we wanted to portray to come up with a new movement skill that is unique and fun. Having a wild Rampage feels very thematic. Mechanically you dont move super quickly, but you damage all the units along the way and you can slightly adjust your trajectory while moving.
New Werebear Skill-Tree
One of the strengths of the Druid fantasy comes from its ability to adapt to danger through transformation. In our previous version of the Werebear, this transformation also came with a fair amount of restrictions. Once you transformed you lost access to the previous skills on your bar that you chose to specialize in. Our new Werebear design solves this problem by introducing several options for you to tie in previously specialized skills and utilize them while transformed. As a result the Werebear arsenal feels deeper and more diverse than ever before. Here are just few examples of these nodes as well some other powerful ones.
Few example nodes which allow you to utilize other primalist skills in the Werebear form
Werebear specialization tree offers a wide variety of powerful nodes.
Bringer of Storms and Crackling Assault in action Thank you for checking out this sneak peek of some of the changes coming to the Druids Wearbear form in Patch 0.8.4. We hope you join us again soon to check out the exciting updates coming to the Druids skill - the Entangling Roots. Here is a peek at what you can expect this week! See you next time! Druid Rework Development Week: 1st November - Werebear Form Rework 2nd November - Entangling Roots Rework 3rd November - Spriggan Form Rework 4th November - New Form Teaser 5th November - Druid Overhaul Overview and New Form
Spears - Polearms Rework
Well be sharing more exciting news about upcoming content and features very soon through our social media channels so make sure to follow along: Discord Facebook Twitter Reddit Youtube
[ 2021-10-26 18:32:22 CET ] [ Original post ]
In recent patches, we update the 3D and 2D art of several weapon groups and added powerful implicit affixes to support a wide variety of builds. In the next patch, we are updating more weapon groups such as the polearms. Were also making a couple of changes to item type names in 0.8.4. Polearms are being renamed to Spears and maces are no longer sometimes referred to as blunt weapons instead of maces. This changes from polearms and blunt weapons to spears and maces is being made for a couple of reasons.
- When we originally named these item categories, we went with names that had wide scopes that clearly encompassed all their individual base types. However this resulted in the names themselves feeling quite dry and technical, especially blunt weapons, so when choosing the new names we instead decided to prioritize compelling names with a strong fantasy attached.
- The second reason is that the intentionally wide scope of the original names resulted in ambiguity where they could arguably refer to base types that did not belong to them. In the case of polearms, we have items like the Imperial Halberd and Lucerne, which are an axe and mace respectively (they work better with those animations), but in a real-world sense they are polearms and many other games categorize them as such. Meanwhile, blunt weapons could be understood as also including sceptres and staves, especially as the name is stylistically different to something like swords or axes and so could easily be misconstrued as referring to a larger category of items. For both new names, there will be more cases where the item type doesnt perfectly describe an individual base type, such as Spear for Trident or Mace for Pick Hammer. However we believe that this style of naming convention for these item types is common enough in RPGs that this wont trip many people up, and if someone is unsure about an items item type it is better if that confusion is just not knowing what it is (e.g. what is a club? Is it a mace or something else?), than mistakenly believing that its the wrong item type (e.g. Im guessing that Lucerne is a Polearm).
Sun Spear
Trident
Ice Spear
Coiled Bident
Dragonslayer Glavie
Deicide Lance
Well be sharing more exciting news about upcoming content and features very soon through our social media channels so make sure to follow along: Discord Facebook Twitter Reddit Youtube
Sentinel's New Model and Armor Sets
In the October 2021 Development Update we revealed our plans for Patch 0.8.4 and beyond where we talked about our ongoing efforts to increase the visual quality and fidelity of the game. New character models are an important step for the future of Last Epoch. The upgraded models will increase the fidelity of the characters, and lay the groundwork for facial animation support during key story moments in future updates. The Sands of Majasa Update brought an exciting new Primalist model and armor set - something you can continue to look forward to in our next update. Next up on the remodel, the Sentinel!
In addition to the new model, the Sentinel is getting two new armor sets. Say goodbye to his starter armor set, one of the oldest sets in the game! In the image below you can see the replacement for our beloved and internally coined bucket-head armor set.
The second Sentinel armor set coming in Patch 0.8.4 will start dropping in mid-game. Our art team has added a lot of new details to this collection, combining several materials like leather, cloth, and metal. We continue to push ourselves towards new and higher standards for our character models and we are very proud of the work done here with the Sentinel.
We hope you enjoyed our first look at the new Sentinel model and armor sets. Well be sharing more information and teasers on the upcoming patch through our social media channels so make sure to follow along: Discord Facebook Twitter Reddit Youtube
[ 2021-10-15 18:33:56 CET ] [ Original post ]
New Sentinel Model
In the October 2021 Development Update we revealed our plans for Patch 0.8.4 and beyond where we talked about our ongoing efforts to increase the visual quality and fidelity of the game. New character models are an important step for the future of Last Epoch. The upgraded models will increase the fidelity of the characters, and lay the groundwork for facial animation support during key story moments in future updates. The Sands of Majasa Update brought an exciting new Primalist model and armor set - something you can continue to look forward to in our next update. Next up on the remodel, the Sentinel!
New Armor Sets
In addition to the new model, the Sentinel is getting two new armor sets. Say goodbye to his starter armor set, one of the oldest sets in the game! In the image below you can see the replacement for our beloved and internally coined bucket-head armor set.
The second Sentinel armor set coming in Patch 0.8.4 will start dropping in mid-game. Our art team has added a lot of new details to this collection, combining several materials like leather, cloth, and metal. We continue to push ourselves towards new and higher standards for our character models and we are very proud of the work done here with the Sentinel.
We hope you enjoyed our first look at the new Sentinel model and armor sets. Well be sharing more information and teasers on the upcoming patch through our social media channels so make sure to follow along: Discord Facebook Twitter Reddit Youtube
0.8.4 and Beyond - October 2021 Development Update
We know players are excited about multiplayer in Last Epoch and we cant wait to play with all of you, however, there is still work to be done before we can open the floodgates. We feel it is important to remain transparent about our progress, which is why we publish a monthly multiplayer status report. Last week, we released Multiplayer Progress Update - September 2021. To learn more, check also our Multiplayer FAQ.
A few months back we talked about changes to our roadmap format. The goal of this change is to better inform players about whats coming to the game next. And in the spirit of these changes, today wed like to share our forecast for 0.8.4.
As you can see in the updated forecast, the next patch will bring a lot of interesting content and long-awaited changes. Lets take a closer look at what you can look forward to in patch 0.8.4, coming later this year.
Legendary items and the Eternity cache are a major feature of 0.8.4. Since announcing these features all the way back in 2018 weve iterated on their design a lot internally to ensure that they enhance Last Epochs itemization by providing great end-game chase and make item drops more exciting. . Were not ready to announce exactly how Legendary items work or how the Eternity Cache factors into their acquisition, but hold onto your exalted items that have good affixes. Youll want them.
Earlier this year we talked about plans to improve the Druid mastery and especially the transformation skills and mechanics . Here are some changes you can expect to see in this next update:
Patch 0.8.4 will bring our first dungeon into the game. The dungeon system is another major system in Last Epoch that we will build upon over time adding more dungeons and dungeon mechanics in later updates. We will have more information for you closer to the patch release, but for now, we can reveal that it will utilize our first iteration of map layout randomization and will offer different gameplay compared to Monolith maps.
Crafting in Last Epoch is one of our fan-favorite systems so when making updates to it, we want to be careful not to change what players like about it. However, we feel there are some issues with the current system. For example, the random factor and fracturing items can lead to feel bad and frustrating moments. In 0.8.4, crafting will get some major changes. It will still be deterministic, and involve using shards to augment or add specific modifiers on the item, and we also still keep an element of randomization. However, that randomization will no longer come in the form of an item suddenly fracturing.
We are improving Last Epochs visuals every patch and 0.8.4 will be no different. For example, In the Sands of Majasa Update, the Primalist got a new model and we will be adding new models for the rest of our characters in this upcoming patch. New models will support facial animations which will be important for the future improvements of the game. We are also hard at work on creating new and updated armor sets as were nearing completion brand new models on all of our in-game weapons and offhands. Many visual effects, that dont represent the current quality of Last Epoch visuals are being reworked. Some initial targets beyond the Druid rework include Flame Reave, Serpent Strike, Wandering Spirits, Frenzy, Haste, and many on-hit visuals.
We also are constantly looking to update older enemies. Some of the void enemies encountered early in the game are some of the oldest and are being brought up to our modern standards.
Another enemy that we will be replacing is all forms of Spriggans.
Last Epochs character creation and selection screen is also showing its age as many have pointed out. We understand that first impressions are very important and were reworking these screens entirely to include new visuals, better representation of characters, and updated UI.
One of our long-term goals is to continue to improve and rework campaign chapters to bring the quality of the campaign up to our new standards. We are adding more voice acting, making dialogue and narrative adjustments to help engage players with the story, and working on lore collectibles which will give players a way to know the deeper stories of Eterra. We also have targets that will make combat in Last Epoch feel more impactful and satisfying. It is absolutely crucial to get the feel of the combat right, and we are exploring many improvements we can make , including updating hit visual effects, exploring directional hit effects, improving hit sounds across the board, and more. Well be sharing more information and teasers on the upcoming patch through our social media channels so make sure to follow along: Discord Facebook Twitter Reddit Youtube Thank you all for the amazing support and opportunities youve provided to Eleventh Hour Games. Were working hard to make Last Epoch a game that you want to come back to for years to come.
[ 2021-10-05 20:06:02 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello, Travelers!
Our most recent release, The Sands of Majasa Update, raised the quality bar for our patch releases and is a good example of what our growing team is able to accomplish. We welcomed thousands of new Travelers to our community, and with your help we hope to continue building a home for all Last Epoch players for years to come.
To our outstanding community members who have been working hard to keep in-game chat an inclusive and welcoming experience for all of our new Travelers - thank you! Due to our quickly expanding community, we acknowledge the need for a major update to our in-game chat services to provide you with a fun and functional experience. Well have more to share on our plans for updating chat in the near future.
State of the Multiplayer
We know players are excited about multiplayer in Last Epoch and we cant wait to play with all of you, however, there is still work to be done before we can open the floodgates. We feel it is important to remain transparent about our progress, which is why we publish a monthly multiplayer status report. Last week, we released Multiplayer Progress Update - September 2021. To learn more, check also our Multiplayer FAQ.
Forecast for 0.8.4 and beyond
A few months back we talked about changes to our roadmap format. The goal of this change is to better inform players about whats coming to the game next. And in the spirit of these changes, today wed like to share our forecast for 0.8.4.
As you can see in the updated forecast, the next patch will bring a lot of interesting content and long-awaited changes. Lets take a closer look at what you can look forward to in patch 0.8.4, coming later this year.
Legendary Items and Eternity Cache
Legendary items and the Eternity cache are a major feature of 0.8.4. Since announcing these features all the way back in 2018 weve iterated on their design a lot internally to ensure that they enhance Last Epochs itemization by providing great end-game chase and make item drops more exciting. . Were not ready to announce exactly how Legendary items work or how the Eternity Cache factors into their acquisition, but hold onto your exalted items that have good affixes. Youll want them.
Druid Rework
Earlier this year we talked about plans to improve the Druid mastery and especially the transformation skills and mechanics . Here are some changes you can expect to see in this next update:
- New Druid form
- Transform skills are all getting new visuals
- Transform skills are all getting new skill trees
- New transform mechanics including a new resource system
- The ability to stay in transforms permanently more easily
- Support for multi-form builds
- Keybinding for druid form abilities
- Reworks and Updates to other druid skills
Introduction of the first Dungeon
Patch 0.8.4 will bring our first dungeon into the game. The dungeon system is another major system in Last Epoch that we will build upon over time adding more dungeons and dungeon mechanics in later updates. We will have more information for you closer to the patch release, but for now, we can reveal that it will utilize our first iteration of map layout randomization and will offer different gameplay compared to Monolith maps.
Crafting Updates
Crafting in Last Epoch is one of our fan-favorite systems so when making updates to it, we want to be careful not to change what players like about it. However, we feel there are some issues with the current system. For example, the random factor and fracturing items can lead to feel bad and frustrating moments. In 0.8.4, crafting will get some major changes. It will still be deterministic, and involve using shards to augment or add specific modifiers on the item, and we also still keep an element of randomization. However, that randomization will no longer come in the form of an item suddenly fracturing.
Continuous effort to improve game visuals
We are improving Last Epochs visuals every patch and 0.8.4 will be no different. For example, In the Sands of Majasa Update, the Primalist got a new model and we will be adding new models for the rest of our characters in this upcoming patch. New models will support facial animations which will be important for the future improvements of the game. We are also hard at work on creating new and updated armor sets as were nearing completion brand new models on all of our in-game weapons and offhands. Many visual effects, that dont represent the current quality of Last Epoch visuals are being reworked. Some initial targets beyond the Druid rework include Flame Reave, Serpent Strike, Wandering Spirits, Frenzy, Haste, and many on-hit visuals.
We also are constantly looking to update older enemies. Some of the void enemies encountered early in the game are some of the oldest and are being brought up to our modern standards.
Another enemy that we will be replacing is all forms of Spriggans.
Last Epochs character creation and selection screen is also showing its age as many have pointed out. We understand that first impressions are very important and were reworking these screens entirely to include new visuals, better representation of characters, and updated UI.
What else we are working on beyond 0.8.4
One of our long-term goals is to continue to improve and rework campaign chapters to bring the quality of the campaign up to our new standards. We are adding more voice acting, making dialogue and narrative adjustments to help engage players with the story, and working on lore collectibles which will give players a way to know the deeper stories of Eterra. We also have targets that will make combat in Last Epoch feel more impactful and satisfying. It is absolutely crucial to get the feel of the combat right, and we are exploring many improvements we can make , including updating hit visual effects, exploring directional hit effects, improving hit sounds across the board, and more. Well be sharing more information and teasers on the upcoming patch through our social media channels so make sure to follow along: Discord Facebook Twitter Reddit Youtube Thank you all for the amazing support and opportunities youve provided to Eleventh Hour Games. Were working hard to make Last Epoch a game that you want to come back to for years to come.
Multiplayer Progress Update - September
A Party voting on whether they want to continue an Arena run Why use a voting system? During playtests, we felt that having an entire run end due to one player having to leave the party unexpectedly felt too punishing. Using a majority vote system to progress in the Arena allows the party some level of flexibility, which is particularly beneficial when attempting longer Arena runs. We will continue to assess the multiplayer Arena experience and make any further changes required before we release it all to you. 5. Start preparing to add Multiplayer to the Community Tester Program I probably should have been anticipating the response here, as I caused some chaos for our support team by having the community reach out through our support network :) sorry! We had an overwhelming response of people interested in involving themselves in our Community Testing program, no doubt aided by the fact that it might involve early Multiplayer Testing. I want you to know that we've received everybody's responses and we'll eventually be selecting new candidates as we get ready to test our game at scale - if you've already applied we will eventually get to you.
It's first worth establishing two important concepts: Last Epoch as a multiplayer game, and Last Epoch as a platform. The first refers to all our game content and gameplay "netcode"; setting up all the game content online, compensating for gameplay lag - essentially making sure the game is functional and feels as good as our singleplayer game does. Last Epoch as a platform involves *everything else* it takes to bring a game online: How do we allocate you servers? What is our matchmaking code? How does our character storage database work? Can our login system handle hundreds of thousands of requests at the same time? Do we need a queue system? Do we have metric systems in place to monitor the health of all this? We have been performing relentless testing of our multiplayer platform for Last Epoch to ensure it can scale up to handle many players, and do so in a stable manner. Between our continued development of our own skills as Live Ops developers, as well as observations about modern ARPG releases, we have learned a lot about where the real risks of a live release are (hint: the servers are the easiest part). As a result of all this testing and learning, we have come to discover that some of our backend services may not hold up well to scale as well as we would have liked them to. We are very happy to make these kind of observations now before we release to a lot of unhappy people unable to play our game, but it still means we need to go back and make some changes. So what does this mean? Firstly, this does not stop us working on Last Epoch multiplayer gameplay content - we're still readily adding and testing our singleplayer content and preparing it for group play, making sure it feels great and performs well. It does mean we are taking a step back on some of our backend systems to make them even better, such as the way we allocate servers, or our chat system. While these discoveries can often feel like a setback, the reality is that we are collectively quite relieved to now have the confidence to build out our own platform and own it. We are also confident that we'll be able to quickly fix any problems that might happen when we go live. We now have a clear vision for Last Epoch as a long-term live platform, and I'd like to share more of my philosophies on that next month.
We will be focused on making the changes mentioned above for the sake of our stability and scalability. We're actually well underway in most avenues here, and we hope to be playtesting Last Epoch multiplayer with our new changes in the next coming weeks. Until then, we're still actively adding and changing game content to account for group play. Rather than provide a list of bullet points this month, I plan on discussing the core pillars around what matters to us for a successful Multiplayer release, and what you as a player should expect from us when we go live. I will also update you on the progress we make strengthening our backend to prepare for release. I'm sure we're also going to show you a cool gameplay feature or two ;) Thank you so much for all the support, and I am really excited to show you all what we have cooked up for next month. Stanzwar
[ 2021-09-28 18:29:25 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello travelers, and welcome again to the monthly multiplayer update! Through the last month we were hard at work delivering our Sands of Majasa update, which of course takes some of our attention to ensure we can deliver a high quality release to everybody. We were humbled to see more and more engagement with new players every day, and the reality of what this means for the scale of our multiplayer release is not lost on us. I'd like to update everybody on our goals from the August Update, as well as share some information about some decisions we've made for group Arena play. I am also going to discuss some of the learnings we have made about the scale we need to get to in order to ensure a high quality multiplayer release. Onwards to the updates! 1. Convert the Idol System to be 100% server authoritative This is complete and works well online. We will have ongoing work to fix a number of the Idol affixes, specifically the ones that have very unique custom properties such as casting other abilities. It's more important for us to focus on the backend and technical portions of multiplayer at the moment, so we are happy with the progress we have made here until we get to CT and MP Alpha testing. 2. Collect additional server performance data I am very happy to say we now have this. We can now actively see the performance of all of our game servers at any given time, and we have a permanent history of them as well. It's possible for us to find outliers, good and bad performance, and major outages using our own hand build diagnostics. This is crucial for us to be able to work quickly if there are issues when we go live. If you are having a bad time when Last Epoch multiplayer goes live, we're going to know where to look right away. 3. Improve gamepad support for server-side multiplayer We performed some preliminary investigations here, and discovered that it will take some refactoring of our existing gamepad code in order to make it easier to co-develop it with multiplayer. We know what to change and have a plan of how to do it, and anticipate no issues making it all work. We are going to return to this project once we're done focusing on our backend and scaling. 4. More testing and optimization of the Arena experience for multiple players in a party, and advance supporting systems noted above After playtesting, we have decided that Multiplayer Arena runs will use a group voting system in order to allow players to vote on whether to continue to more challenging Waves. How it works
- Every 5 waves, a "majority rule" voting system will determine whether the arena run continues to additional waves
- When a player in a group dies, they will remain down until the end of the 5 wave run. If the whole party is downed, the entire Arena run ends
A Party voting on whether they want to continue an Arena run Why use a voting system? During playtests, we felt that having an entire run end due to one player having to leave the party unexpectedly felt too punishing. Using a majority vote system to progress in the Arena allows the party some level of flexibility, which is particularly beneficial when attempting longer Arena runs. We will continue to assess the multiplayer Arena experience and make any further changes required before we release it all to you. 5. Start preparing to add Multiplayer to the Community Tester Program I probably should have been anticipating the response here, as I caused some chaos for our support team by having the community reach out through our support network :) sorry! We had an overwhelming response of people interested in involving themselves in our Community Testing program, no doubt aided by the fact that it might involve early Multiplayer Testing. I want you to know that we've received everybody's responses and we'll eventually be selecting new candidates as we get ready to test our game at scale - if you've already applied we will eventually get to you.
Multiplayer Stability and Scale
It's first worth establishing two important concepts: Last Epoch as a multiplayer game, and Last Epoch as a platform. The first refers to all our game content and gameplay "netcode"; setting up all the game content online, compensating for gameplay lag - essentially making sure the game is functional and feels as good as our singleplayer game does. Last Epoch as a platform involves *everything else* it takes to bring a game online: How do we allocate you servers? What is our matchmaking code? How does our character storage database work? Can our login system handle hundreds of thousands of requests at the same time? Do we need a queue system? Do we have metric systems in place to monitor the health of all this? We have been performing relentless testing of our multiplayer platform for Last Epoch to ensure it can scale up to handle many players, and do so in a stable manner. Between our continued development of our own skills as Live Ops developers, as well as observations about modern ARPG releases, we have learned a lot about where the real risks of a live release are (hint: the servers are the easiest part). As a result of all this testing and learning, we have come to discover that some of our backend services may not hold up well to scale as well as we would have liked them to. We are very happy to make these kind of observations now before we release to a lot of unhappy people unable to play our game, but it still means we need to go back and make some changes. So what does this mean? Firstly, this does not stop us working on Last Epoch multiplayer gameplay content - we're still readily adding and testing our singleplayer content and preparing it for group play, making sure it feels great and performs well. It does mean we are taking a step back on some of our backend systems to make them even better, such as the way we allocate servers, or our chat system. While these discoveries can often feel like a setback, the reality is that we are collectively quite relieved to now have the confidence to build out our own platform and own it. We are also confident that we'll be able to quickly fix any problems that might happen when we go live. We now have a clear vision for Last Epoch as a long-term live platform, and I'd like to share more of my philosophies on that next month.
What are our goals for October?
We will be focused on making the changes mentioned above for the sake of our stability and scalability. We're actually well underway in most avenues here, and we hope to be playtesting Last Epoch multiplayer with our new changes in the next coming weeks. Until then, we're still actively adding and changing game content to account for group play. Rather than provide a list of bullet points this month, I plan on discussing the core pillars around what matters to us for a successful Multiplayer release, and what you as a player should expect from us when we go live. I will also update you on the progress we make strengthening our backend to prepare for release. I'm sure we're also going to show you a cool gameplay feature or two ;) Thank you so much for all the support, and I am really excited to show you all what we have cooked up for next month. Stanzwar
Beta 0.8.3e Release and Patch Notes
Due to a miscommunication pre-patch, Javelin's Holy Trail ended up with added spell damage scaling, which was not intentional. The healing effectiveness scaling from the Path of Judgement node is meant to be a replacement for added damage scaling like it is for Consecrated Ground. Having spell damage and healing effectiveness scaling means that extremely high damage can be achieved by scaling both, because they're multiplicative with each other. Despite this being a mistake, it has made damage over time paladin builds that scale healing effectiveness viable, which was one of our aims when adding Holy Trail. As such we have decided to keep the spell damage scaling, but make it stack additively with the healing effectiveness scaling.
[ 2021-09-15 16:40:43 CET ] [ Original post ]
Paladin Healing Effectiveness Scaling
Due to a miscommunication pre-patch, Javelin's Holy Trail ended up with added spell damage scaling, which was not intentional. The healing effectiveness scaling from the Path of Judgement node is meant to be a replacement for added damage scaling like it is for Consecrated Ground. Having spell damage and healing effectiveness scaling means that extremely high damage can be achieved by scaling both, because they're multiplicative with each other. Despite this being a mistake, it has made damage over time paladin builds that scale healing effectiveness viable, which was one of our aims when adding Holy Trail. As such we have decided to keep the spell damage scaling, but make it stack additively with the healing effectiveness scaling.
Javelin
- Path of Judgement grants +1 adaptive spell damage per 5% increased healing effectiveness (from 1% more damage per 1% increased healing effectiveness).
- Holy Trail deals 25% more damage.
- Pilgrimage grants 25% more fire and lightning damage (from 15%).
- Fixed Pilgrimage's tooltip saying that it gave just 15% melee ignite chance and melee electrify chance (it gave 25% and still does).
Consecrated Ground
- 66% more damage.
- Now scales with increases to spell damage.
- Added spell damage now applies at 150% effectiveness per second.
- Now gains +1 adaptive spell damage per 5% increased healing effectiveness (from 1% more damage per 1% increased healing effectiveness).
- The increased healing effectiveness from Sanctified Serenity is now taken into account for Consecrated Ground's bonus damage per increased healing effectiveness.
- Lingering Force grants 12% increased duration (from 10%).
- Holy Eruption has 33% more base damage.
- Added spell damage applies to Holy Eruption at 200% effectiveness (from 100%).
- Holy Eruption restores 80 health (from 50).
Shield Bash - Kindling node
- This change is to avoid this node warping the potential power of Consecrated Ground, while giving it a wider range of uses with other builds. Nodes like this are generally intended to provide an immediate boost of power to a single instance of an attack, rather than buff a persistent effect.
- Now grants +5% crit chance and +100% ignite chance per point (from 50% more fire damage).
- Now applies to the next melee or throwing attack (from the next melee attack).
- Now excludes channelled skills.
Skills
Drain Life
- The Dark Shackles node in the Drain Life tree adds 60 mana cost (from 65).
- Drain Life's beam now attaches to the Acolyte's left hand, catalyst, or shield, rather than to a fixed point behind her.
- Drain Life's circle vfx no longer rotates when you change its angle relative to the character.
Dread Shade
- The Lone Watcher node on the Dread Shade tree grants 100% increased duration (from 50%).
Judgement
- Changed to use the same animation as Erasing Strike which better matches the vfx and fantasy of the skill (it still has the original animation if you have the Sanctification Node which removes the melee hit).
- Reduced delay until you can use another ability by 20%.
- Range now scales with weapon range.
- Sigil of Sacrifice now also grants added spell damage and no longer states incorrectly that it gives base fire damage (it gave melee fire damage, and still does alongside spell fire damage).
- Divine Destruction now also applies to damage from Consecrated Ground.
- Purifying Flame now also applies to damage from Consecrated Ground and requires 1 point in Sacred Sword (from 2).
- Destructive Impact grants 30% increased Consecrated Ground area (from 25%).
- If you have nodes to remove the melee hit and turn Consecrated Ground into an aura the Move To Attack behaviour is disabled for Judgement.
Mana Strike
- The lightning ability from Mana Strike's Mana Storm node has been named Mana Arc to help clarify that it is a subskill.
- Mana Arc is now affected by nodes on Mana Strikes skill tree.
Wandering Spirits
- Now reveals 4 spirits immediately on cast (from 1) - this does not affect the rate at which spirits are revealed afterwards.
- Deals 29% more damage.
- Spirits deal damage in a 7% larger area - reveal area has not been changed.
- Added a new node that makes the spirits shred necrotic resistance.
- Added a new node that makes the spirits inflict Damned.
- Lingering Souls grants 13% increased duration per point (from 10%), but can have 3 points allocated (from 4).
- Spirit Swarm no longer increases mana cost, can have 3 points allocated (from 2) and is now attached to the root node (from requiring 1 point in Lingering Souls). The increased cooldown recovery speed it gives is no longer multiplicative with other sources.
- Terrifying Presence no longer increases mana cost, but now requires 1 point in Spirit Swarm (from being attached to the root node).
- Harrowing Aura no longer reduces damage and now also increases the range at which Wandering Spirits apply necrotic shred and damned.
- Reap the Damned requires 1 point in Lingering Souls (from 2 points in Souls of Rage).
Warpath
- Path of Heavens grants +8 adaptive spell damage (from 50% increased spell damage).
- Winds of Justice grants 25% Smite chance per point (from 15%) and can have 4 points allocated (from 5).
- Amended Warpath's description to clarify that the movement speed modifier is multiplicative.
Tooltips
- Added alt text to Javelins Siege Barrage and Divine Fury nodes to state that they are incompatible.
- Added alt text to Summon Wraiths Twin Souls and Covenant of Souls to state that they are incompatible.
- Fixed Static Orbs Scatter Blast node stating the small orb did less damage, and clarified that only the small orbs cant pull or explode.
- Clarified Divine Essences tooltip to state that it excludes healing over time effects.
Enemies
- Echoes that contain a Spine Hunter Alpha that is not the boss contain 50% fewer of them.
- Enemy types that are rarer in Echoes are now even rarer in Arena Echoes.
- Immortal Chimeras no longer spawn in the arena.
- Reduced the pack size in the area of Spine Hunters, Scalebane Rogues, Crystal Elementals, Ascendant Embermages, Emerald Nagasa, and Osprix Zealots.
- Ascendant Embermages now move around 10% closer to their target before attacking and have 11% less health.
- Diamond Nagasa have 5% less health.
- Crystal Elementals deal 7% less damage.
- Crystal Elementals have a 20% longer delay before releasing projectiles when they spin and 80% of them only use their spin attack when damaged (from 40%).
- Crystal Elementals' spin attack deals 10% less damage.
- Crystal Golems' Beam ability locks in a target direction 20% sooner and has a 25% longer cast time.
- Crystal Golems' Punch ability locks in a target direction 30% sooner.
- Emerald Nagasa deal 10% less damage.
- Gold Elementals' Punch ability locks in a target direction 30% sooner.
- Scalebane Rogues deal 12% less damage.
- Scarab Riders deal 30% less damage with their ranged attacks.
- Spine Hunters' on death effect deals 40% less damage.
- Spine Hunter Alphas deal 5% less damage.
Items
- The Oblivion Wave from Anchor of Oblivion now has 100% increased base damage and gains +2 spell void damage per point of Vitality.
- Magma Shards from Volcanus deal 20% more damage.
Chat
- Added chat language filter options. You can now hide chat messages which contain characters from other languages/scripts.
- English/Latin, Chinese, and Russian are the current options.
- A default setting will be picked according to your system language, but you can change it at any time in the Social tab of the settings window.
- We still plan to offer multiple global chat channels and implement chat reporting features in the future, but they are not quick to implement (and are out of scope for a hotfix).
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where using Ice Barrage with the Wintry Blast and Brittle Fragments nodes would degrade performance each time you used the skill until you moved to a new zone.
- Fixed the visuals for Tail Swipe, Flame Reave, and Voidfused Armoury (enemy abilities) being invisible.
- Fixed many player and enemy abilities having missing sound effects.
- Fixed the Lichs Harvested Legions passive not working.
- Fixed a bug where Aberrant Call did not provide additional max wraiths if you had taken Summon Wraith's Echoes Inside node.
- Fixed a bug where Dark Forging Ornate Solar Idols did not provide their listed increase to Void Cleave's area of effect.
- Fixed a bug where Riposte was classified as a Spell rather than a Melee Attack. This caused it to consume when you cast a spell effects, etc.
- Fixed Punctures Scalebane node having unreadable text.
- Fixed a bug where Mana Arc (Lightning) could not trigger if you were distant from the enemy due to Mana Strike's Teleporting Strikes node.
- Fixed a visual bug where Mana Strike's VFX did not increase with increased area of effect.
- Fixed the Game Guide entry for Time Rot stating it stacks 3 times (it stacks 12 times).
- Fixed a bug where the Ruby Fang Cleaver item would float behind the player.
- Fixed a bug where Gorgons left behind a dust devil vfx on death.
- Consecrated Ground
- Fixed a bug where the visuals disappeared at the end of the normal duration, even if you had increased duration.
- Fixed a bug where the visuals didn't scale with increased area.
- When you have the Anointed node turning Consecrated Ground into an aura the visuals no longer rotate with the character.
- Drain Life
- Fixed a bug where some of Drain Life's sounds would fail to play when you took the Lay Waste node.
- Fixed a bug where taking the Virulence node did not convert the circle vfx to the poison variant.
- Fixed a bug where taking the Dark Shackles node resulted in the circle vfx floating too far above the target location.
Beta 0.8.3d Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-09-09 20:40:10 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Tundra Nova (Frozen Ire proc) now has a freeze rate of 80 (up from 0), and this is shown on its alt tooltip.
- Frost Nova (Ice Barrage proc) now has a freeze rate of 40 (up from 30), and this is now shown on its alt tooltip.
- Fixed the "ward granted when casting flame ward" idol affix having an incorrect range of values. It now has a range of 28 to 64.
- The tooltip for items in the Gamblers shop now state that they cannot be a unique or set item.
- The visuals for Fire Aura now fade out smoothly when its duration expires.
- The sub-ability of Forge Strike that makes Forged Weapons is now called Summon Forged Weapon (from Summon Weapon).
- Added new hit sounds for Javelin and Void Cleave.
- Added new general hit sounds for bladed and blunt weapons.
- Added falling sand and incense burner ambient sounds to the Temple of Majasa.
- Increased the volume of Saazhar in Sorethka.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where certain zones (such as Thetima) appeared totally black when using SMAA.
- Increased the duration Rebuke needs to be channeled before it activates to 0.2 seconds. This is a temporary change to avoid very buggy behavior in some situations while we look into a fix.
- Fixed a bug where the The Scalebane quest could not be turned in to Zerrick until the Arjani, The Ruby Commander quest had been completed.
- Fixed a bug where login credentials were not remembered properly for the standalone version of the game. (Youll need to login one more time for it to be fixed).
- Fixed a bug where Majasa could be one-shot in a brief window before Phase 2 starts.
- Fixed a bug where leaving The Dry River after triggering the Scarab Broodkeeper encounter could prevent the Missing Merchant quest from advancing.
- Fixed a bug which allowed the latter parts of combo abilities to be used repeatedly in some situations. This includes the Dash ability from Javelins Surprise Initiative node.
- Fixed a bug where converting Warpath to Fire or Void did not properly trigger element specific effects, such as chance to poison with fire skills.
- Fixed a bug where Shadows created by Lethal Mirages Gloom and Doom node did not attack.
- Fixed the charged version of Detonating Arrow playing sounds at incorrect times.
- Fixed the tooltip for Forge Strike listing incorrect minion scaling for Forged Weapons, and stating that they last 10 seconds (they last 20 seconds).
- Fixed Forge Strikes Shrapnel node saying it reduces the duration of Forged Weapons by 60%, when it actually reduces it by 75%.
- Fixed a bug where the Endurance while channeling Warpath affix was a suffix instead of a prefix.
- Fixed a bug with Scales of Eterra where non-spell abilities could trigger Infusions.
- Fixed a bug where controller keybind changes could be forgotten in some cases.
- Fixed the world map stating incorrect levels for the Stolen Lance and Black Sun timelines.
- Fixed a visual bug where Flame Reave would appear underground when cast via Surge.
- Fixed a bug where the buff icon for Teleports Time Dilation did not last for the correct duration (this was only a visual issue).
Beta 0.8.3c Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-09-07 22:44:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
- Renamed the Elemental Arrow node on the Detonating Arrow tree to Mana Arrow to avoid ambiguity with the Elemental Arrow node on the Marksman Tree.
- The Redistributed Steel node on the Manifest Armour tree grants 25% more damage (from 35% increased damage) and 8% less health and armour (from 10% reduced health and armour).
- Amended Smite's description to improve clarity and fix incorrect healing value.
Javelin
- Increased the effective hitbox width of Javelin against enemies by 25%.
- Holy Trail now adds a 3 second cooldown (from a 4 second cooldown).
- Fixed ambiguity with the Surprise Initiative node saying that you would "Lunge" to the Flag when it does not use the Lunge skill. It now says "Dash" instead.
- Increased the damage of Consecrated Ground from Judgement by 14%.
Lunge
- Improved several node descriptions to reduce ambiguity and confusion.
- Lead the Charge affects allies in a 300% larger radius.
- Fixed ambiguity with the Surprise Initiative node saying that you would "Lunge" to the Flag when it does not use the Lunge skill. It now says "Dash" instead.
- Increased the damage of Consecrated Ground from Judgement by 14%.
Vengeance
- Added a new node that prevents hits you riposte from critting.
- Bolster grants 5% less damage taken (from 3%).
- Executioner grants 12% more damage to damaged enemies (from 10%).
Items
- Reduce effect of increased rarity on normal, magic, and rare items by 28%.
- This is to counteract the effects of us releasing a fix in 0.8.3 for increased rarity not affecting magic or rare items.
- Fixed a bug where the "Brittle" Acolyte idol affix gave 26% to 7% increased minion cold damage rather than 26% to 72%.
Melee Leech prefix changes
- Can also roll on gloves (could previously only roll on weapons)
- Is now slightly more powerful at all tiers
Passives
- The Blademaster node on the Sentinel Tree grants 6% increased attack and cast speed (from 5%).
User Interface
- Added new character portraits for the Scalebane Bodyguard in Majelka Lower District and the Scalebane Miner in The Oasis.
- Updated the font for Chinese characters to be thinner.
Enemies
- Ascendant Embermage meteors have a 50% longer delay between the indicator appearing and the meteor hitting.
- Emerald Nagasa deal 6% less damage.
- Osprix Zealots deal 5% less melee damage.
- Fixed a bug where Osprix Zealots' dash dealt cold and physical damage rather than fire and physical.
- Scarab riders deal 24% less damage and fewer of them spawn in echoes that contain them.
- Spine Hunters deal 5% less damage.
- Silver Elementals deal 5% more damage.
- Gold Elementals have 7% more health.
- Allied Zerrick in Chapter 9 deals 19% less damage.
- Monolith zones that contain Siege Golems contain 50% fewer of them on average.
- Ruby Captain Arjani can no longer spawn in the arena.
Crystal Lotus
- Deals 22% less damage (multiplicative with other changes listed).
- Ruby Slam deals 20% less damage and locks in a target location 14% sooner.
- Sapphire bolt deals 17% more damage and locks in a target location 10% sooner.
- Sapphire Slam attack deals 33% less damage with its initial hit.
- Sapphire Slam attack ground projectiles deal 35% less damage to begin with, but gain 84% more damage over their duration (from 42%). This is still a reduction in damage at all ranges.
- Sapphire Slam attack ground projectiles have a 27% narrower hitbox
- Increased item drops by 33%.
- Now also drops a guaranteed rare item.
Diamond Nagasa
- Monolith zones that contain Diamond Nagasa contain 50% fewer of them on average.
- Sky beam deals 6% less damage and deals pure fire damage (from fire and physical).
- Wave deals 10% less damage and deals pure fire damage (from fire and physical).
- Fixed Sky beam and wave having misleading names displayed if you were killed by them.
Gorgon
- 7% more health.
- Limited to 1 per wave in the arena.
- Fewer spawn in monolith zones that contain them.
- Twister has 4% less radius and deals 10% less damage.
Majasa
- Deals 12% less damage in both phases (includes damage from Essences).
- Phase 1 has 7% less health.
- Phase 2 has 25% less health.
- Melee attacks and blood pools in Phase 2 no longer apply physical shred.
- Armour shred applied by melee attacks in Phase 2 no longer has increased duration (from 30% to 40% depending on the attack).
- Melee attacks in Phase 2 apply one stack of armour shred on hit (from 50% chance of 1 stack, 50% chance of 2 stacks).
- Essence of Opulence can no longer hit the player with multiple lightning projectiles from a single cast (i.e. it no longer shotguns).
- Essence of Opulence has a 15% longer delay between casts.
- Essence of Greed has a 15% longer delay between casts.
- Falling Emeralds spell has 16% reduced duration resulting in fewer emerald falling (does not affect duration of poison pools).
Scalebane Guildleader
- 7% less damage in phase 1.
- 11% less damage in phase 2.
- 30% reduced poison duration.
- 38% more health in phase 2.
Scalebane Bandit
- 7% less health.
- 9% fewer spawn at once.
- Can no longer spawn with the Rampancy monster suffix.
Scalebane Sorcerer
- 3% less damage.
- Can no longer spawn with the Rampancy monster suffix.
Scalebane Rogues
- 7% less health.
- 7% less damage.
- Dash to ranged enemies attack has a 29% longer cooldown.
- 3% fewer spawn at once.
- Can no longer spawn with the Rampancy monster suffix.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where you could die during certain Time Rift sequences.
- Fixed a bug where projectiles were destroyed on impact with several enemy types even if they were supposed to pierce. (This affected 17 different enemy types, mostly from Chapter 2)
- Fixed a bug where the Ravenous Void unique drop from Husk of Gaspar could not be obtained.
- Fixed a bug where Ravenous Void could not drop from random monsters.
- Fixed a bug where Leviathan Carver could not drop.
- Fixed Sacrifical Embrace consuming Abyssal Rite stacks on procced abilities.
- Fixed a bug where the Charged Hand node on the Smite Tree had no effect.
- Fixed Warpaths Cyclone of War granting less leech than intended.
- Fixed many Shade of Orobyss abilities not having reduced damage against minions.
- Fixed a bug where Stone Tablets (intended as a unique only base type for Stormcarved Testament) could drop as normal, magic, or rare items.
- Fixed a bug where the zone level display at the top right of the screen would not correctly update upon entering a monolith or arena zone unless you toggled the tab map.
- Fixed Fire Auras visuals being below the ground.
- Fixed the Cleanse Ailments on Potion Use affix not having an affix title. It is now "Cleansing".
- Fixed a bug where the Cleansing potion affix was displayed in the Attributes tab of the loot filter (without a name).
Known Issues
- The The Scalebane quest cannot be turned in to Zerrick until the Arjani, The Ruby Commander quest has been completed.
- We have been working on a fix for this but it was not completed in time for this hotfix.
Beta 0.8.3b Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-09-04 01:20:58 CET ] [ Original post ]
Missed the patch notes for 0.8.3? Read them now on our forum.
Changes
- Added new 2d art for the Devotion and Eye of Orexia uniques.
- Javelin now scales with melee damage on your polearm rather than from all sources while you have a polearm equipped.
- This shouldnt make a large difference, but removes some confusing edge cases.
- Acolyte Damage over Time
- The Pestilence node for Spirit Plague was too strong, so it was adjusted in 0.8.3, but we feel that this left DoT Acolytes a bit weaker than intended.
- Wandering Spirits deals 40% more damage and gains 4% increased damage per intelligence (from 4% increased necrotic damage).
- Spirit Plague deals 11% more damage.
- Infernal Shade deals 33% more damage and costs 18 mana (from 21).
- Drain Life deals 20% more damage.
- Reaper Form
- A shared cooldown was added between Reap and Transplant in 0.8.3. Given the strength of Transplant, this has made Reap feel redundant. These changes add more options for how to use Reap in builds. Reaper Form should have more mobility than 0.8.3, but less mobility than when using it with Transplant in 0.8.2.
- Swift Harbinger now grants Reap 30% increased cooldown recovery speed (from 17% reduced cooldown duration), and can have 3 points allocated (from 2).
- Sanguine Reaper now also grants Reap 18% increased area per point.
- Unholy Dominion no longer increases Reap Area, but now makes it no longer have a shared cooldown with transplant and gives 200% increased cooldown duration. It can now have 1 point allocated (from 2).
Bug Fixes
- Fix a bug which prevented some players from being able to load new or existing characters.
- Fixed inaccessible enemies in the Temple Rooftops.
- Fixed the outside radius of the Scalebane Swarmkeepers AoE attack being larger than its visual effect.
- Fixed a bug where Puncture with Penumbral Ambush would trigger the mana consumption of Rogue's Coated Blades passive multiple times.
- Fixed a bug where the tooltip DPS on Static Orb and Javelin did not account for damage conversion. This was only a display bug.
- Fixed Anomaly saying it scales with Vitality, when only the Time Wave sub-ability scales with Vitality.
- Fixed Chinese punctuation marks not displaying in chat.
Known Issues
- The "The Scalebane" quest cannot be turned in to Zerrick until the "Arjani, The Ruby Commander" quest has been completed.
Sands of Majasa Update Patch 0.8.3 is Live!
[ 2021-09-03 16:01:16 CET ] [ Original post ]
Wait no more, Travelers! Patch 0.8.3 has arrived and is ready for hacking and slashing. What will you check out first? Need the full details? Read yesterday's Patch Notes or preview some gameplay below. Let us know what you think about 0.8.3 in the comments or on our Official Last Epoch Forum. [previewyoutube=2oxspDb7GPo;full][/previewyoutube]
Sands of Majasa Update (0.8.3) - Patch Video & Notes
[ 2021-09-02 18:48:59 CET ] [ Original post ]
The Sands of Majasa Patch 0.8.3 will arrive tomorrow, September 3rd! Journey through the Divine Era to search for the Lance of Heorot and destroy the Immortal Emperor, or enjoy new weapons models, skill updates and controller support to play Last Epoch your way! Check out the full 0.8.3 Patch Notes, skip to a section below or watch the full Patch Overview Video. | Table of Contents | 1. Campaign 2. Monolith of Fate 3. Endgame Balance 4. Arena 5. New Skills 6. Skills Balance 7. Mechanics 8. Passives 9. User Interface 10. Items 11. Uniques 12. Enemies 13. Visuals 14. Sound & Music 15. Controller Support 16. Optimization 17. Bug Fixes [previewyoutube=pqsylcx6xgI;full][/previewyoutube] Sands of Majasa Patch 0.8.3 Overview by Game Director, Judd Cobler.
Javelin - New Sentinel Skill Coming in Sands of Majasa Update(0.8.3)
Javelin skill in action!
Values have been omitted as we are still balancing the skill.
The banner is granting combat bonuses in a radius to you and nearby allies.
A barrage of spears pulverizing everything in the area. Also, with lightning conversion.
Ligh err, I mean Divine Fury swiftly obliterating enemies! We hope you enjoyed this look at the new Sentinel skill. If you want to learn more about new content, changes, and improvements coming to Last Epoch, check our patch preview.
[ 2021-09-01 19:37:32 CET ] [ Original post ]
Sands of Majasa Update is just a few days away and we have shared details about a lot of upcoming content, changes, and improvements. Sentinel is getting several improvements of his own. Including skill reworks and new skills - 3 new skills in fact. We already showcased Void Cleave and Multistrike. Today we are revealing the last, but certainly not least, skill coming into Sentinels arsenal - Javelin! Javelin is a throwing attack with a fast piercing projectile helping to round out the Sentinels arsenal. Its specialization tree is packed with several unique nodes that significantly change its functionality. Check out just a few examples below!
Javelin - Skill
Javelin skill in action!
Javelin - Example Nodes
Values have been omitted as we are still balancing the skill.
The banner is granting combat bonuses in a radius to you and nearby allies.
A barrage of spears pulverizing everything in the area. Also, with lightning conversion.
Ligh err, I mean Divine Fury swiftly obliterating enemies! We hope you enjoyed this look at the new Sentinel skill. If you want to learn more about new content, changes, and improvements coming to Last Epoch, check our patch preview.
New Maces and Wands Coming in Sands of Majasa Update (0.8.3)
To learn more about new content and improvements coming to Last Epoch, check out our patch preview.
[ 2021-08-31 19:22:13 CET ] [ Original post ]
Alongside Axes, 1-handed Maces and Wands are another weapon type receiving a complete rework in the Sands of Majasa Update, including a new 3D model, 2D art, and powerful implicit affixes to support a wide variety of builds. Check out some examples below!
1-handed Mace
Wands
To learn more about new content and improvements coming to Last Epoch, check out our patch preview.
Sands of Majasa Update - Gameplay Trailer
[ 2021-08-30 19:07:13 CET ] [ Original post ]
[previewyoutube=2oxspDb7GPo;full][/previewyoutube] To learn more about new content and improvements coming to Last Epoch, check out our Sands of Majasa Update patch preview.
Sands of Majasa Update - Patch 0.8.3 Preview!
Were eager to share details about changes and additions coming to Last Epoch in the Sands of Majasa Update. Read on to learn more about the upcoming content, improvements, reworks, and quality of life changes coming September 3rd!
Your journey continues in Chapter 9 where you will uncover more secrets, visit never seen before locations, and will have to fight through new and challenging enemies.
In the Sands of Majasa Update, the Primalist will be the first character to receive an entirely new model. In addition, we are bringing a new Armor Set, which fits the brutish nature of this character.
Sentinel is getting a wide variety of updates to his arsenal - many of his skills such as Warpath, Lunge, Judgement, Erasing Strike are getting significant improvements or complete overhaul.
We also updated visual effects of many skills, including conversion variants.
Sentinel is also getting 3 new skills, giving him even deeper customization and more ways to play.
Void Cleave is a powerful 2-handed melee attack with a short cooldown and moderate mana cost that hits all enemies in front.
Multistrike is a 0 mana cost Sentinel melee skill. Its damage ramps up over time as you use it by creating more and more extra hits to other nearby enemies.
And no, you are not counting wrong. More is still coming!
All necromancer skills are receiving significant updates to address several issues. One of the main goals is to support the necromancer style with permanent pets, leading an army of undead monsters to battle and just support it from behind without constantly summoning the army.
We want to deliver the best possible experience for playing with the controller and the next patch brings major improvements to Controller Support.
Monolith of Fate will also get some major improvements, including balance pass to all spires and timeline exclusive echo reward types that grant unique or set items of specific types, allowing you to target farm specific uniques. In addition, we have given buffs to many empowered blessings.
Several weapon groups are getting a complete rework with new 3D models, 2D art, and powerful implicit affixes to support more variety of builds. You will be able to find 45 new weapons across 4 weapon groups, including 1-handed and 2-handed axes.
Sands of Majasa Update also brings new unique and set items, balance changes, bug fixes, quality of life changes, performance improvements, new music, and so much more. As always, we greatly appreciate the community for the continued support and engagement, we would not be here without you! Join our Official Community Discord!
[ 2021-08-26 19:48:57 CET ] [ Original post ]
Patch 0.8.3 Preview
Were eager to share details about changes and additions coming to Last Epoch in the Sands of Majasa Update. Read on to learn more about the upcoming content, improvements, reworks, and quality of life changes coming September 3rd!
What to Expect
- New Chapter and continuation of the story of Last Epoch
- New Sentinel Skills
- Necromancer skills Updates
- Skill Improvements and Overhauls
- New Primalist model and armor set
- 45 New Weapon Models
- and much, much more!
New Chapter
Your journey continues in Chapter 9 where you will uncover more secrets, visit never seen before locations, and will have to fight through new and challenging enemies.
- 15 new locations
- 30+ new enemies
- Epic boss battles
Updated Primalist model and Armor Set
In the Sands of Majasa Update, the Primalist will be the first character to receive an entirely new model. In addition, we are bringing a new Armor Set, which fits the brutish nature of this character.
Sentinel Skill Updates
Sentinel is getting a wide variety of updates to his arsenal - many of his skills such as Warpath, Lunge, Judgement, Erasing Strike are getting significant improvements or complete overhaul.
We also updated visual effects of many skills, including conversion variants.
Sentinel is also getting 3 new skills, giving him even deeper customization and more ways to play.
Void Cleave
Void Cleave is a powerful 2-handed melee attack with a short cooldown and moderate mana cost that hits all enemies in front.
Multistrike
Multistrike is a 0 mana cost Sentinel melee skill. Its damage ramps up over time as you use it by creating more and more extra hits to other nearby enemies.
And no, you are not counting wrong. More is still coming!
Necromancer Skill Updates
All necromancer skills are receiving significant updates to address several issues. One of the main goals is to support the necromancer style with permanent pets, leading an army of undead monsters to battle and just support it from behind without constantly summoning the army.
Controller Support Improvements
We want to deliver the best possible experience for playing with the controller and the next patch brings major improvements to Controller Support.
Monolith Improvements
Monolith of Fate will also get some major improvements, including balance pass to all spires and timeline exclusive echo reward types that grant unique or set items of specific types, allowing you to target farm specific uniques. In addition, we have given buffs to many empowered blessings.
New Weapons
Several weapon groups are getting a complete rework with new 3D models, 2D art, and powerful implicit affixes to support more variety of builds. You will be able to find 45 new weapons across 4 weapon groups, including 1-handed and 2-handed axes.
Sands of Majasa Update also brings new unique and set items, balance changes, bug fixes, quality of life changes, performance improvements, new music, and so much more. As always, we greatly appreciate the community for the continued support and engagement, we would not be here without you! Join our Official Community Discord!
Multiplayer Progress Update - August
Hello Travelers, and welcome to the August multiplayer update! I am once again excited to provide you with a status update on the development progress as weve made great strides since Julys Update. The goal for this update will be to talk to each of the points I brought up last month, as well as mention some of our major goals for the coming month. Its worth noting that we are also hard at work releasing the Sands of Majasa Update, which is currently receiving polishing touches and undergoing a heavy QA pass. Lets address the topics from last month:
[ 2021-08-24 20:51:17 CET ] [ Original post ]
Multiplayer Progress Update
Hello Travelers, and welcome to the August multiplayer update! I am once again excited to provide you with a status update on the development progress as weve made great strides since Julys Update. The goal for this update will be to talk to each of the points I brought up last month, as well as mention some of our major goals for the coming month. Its worth noting that we are also hard at work releasing the Sands of Majasa Update, which is currently receiving polishing touches and undergoing a heavy QA pass. Lets address the topics from last month:
1. Ensuring our content, up to reaching End of Time, is polished and easy to play. A major system we are to begin on is Waypointing so players can play asynchronously more easily.
- Weve made incredible progress here! We are now playing content together, starting from logging in from End of Time and using waypoints to travel across the eras. Quest and scene states are being polished and the town portal logic is working well. Were still figuring out some of the logic of some side quests for example, but most work well and were happy with them.
2. Debugging our party system to ensure play is as smooth as possible. The last 20% is the trickiest.
- A lot of code that was written early on for the party system was simplified and optimized significantly this month. Parties are now fully functional.
3. Planning for earlier access to one of our endgame systems in order to extend multiplayer play to make it viable for wider testing.
- For July to August, we decided to go with the Arena system and have successfully implemented it. Playing the Arena in a party has a number of new considerations, such as the need for a voting system to progress to further waves, how to handle distributing rewards for multiple players before progressing, how a single players death will affect the part and ongoing arena run, and more. We crafted a voting system and are internally testing the Arena every week now in 2-3 hour sessions! Our highest group Arena ranking is currently Rank 53, which is very modest compared to leaderboard numbers. I imagine somebody will score a much higher ranking in this weeks playtest. How the Arena can work in a multiplayer environment is a very interesting discussion and Im happy to field questions about it below.
4. Collecting data. We need to not only be able to monitor and track player activity to help inform good decisions, we need to be able to monitor all of our front-end and back-end systems if we want to provide you a high quality experience like other online ARPGs.
- Progress over the last month has been steady. There are so many data points a high quality Action RPG wants to collect, and how we collect and store them is as critical as the data itself. We are now storing our game server health metrics on a very popular and large scale cloud service. We also successfully added player data collection for things such as class, abilities, levels, and more. Adding more data points is fairly trivial for us to do - even for things such as items. Our work over the next few months will be focused on interpreting and using the data to maximize online stability, and gain insights about players.
5. Optimizing our server size in order to save cost, and this comes in two major forms: server optimization, and netcode optimization. We are profiling our server to reduce its size online in order to allow us to put more servers on a single machine. We are optimizing our netcode to significantly reduce the size of the data we need to send between the server and clients, as well as optimize our gameplay code to reduce the amount of computations we send to the server in the first place.
- In the last month we managed to reduce our server memory overhead by quite a bit (~30%). We are now in a range where its efficient enough to host our game servers at mass scale. Well continue to further optimize the server footprint up to release. We are constantly improving our game code to be more efficient, much in the same way we have done with our graphical performance. On this note, I may only provide updates in this department in the future when there are really significant finds!
6. Getting our idol and potion systems working server-authoritatively, so you can complete your character build (and survive!).
- We have fully implemented potions and they are server authoritative as well. Idols are still a work in progress, and its not so much an issue with server authority as it is the case that idol unlock slots need to be properly synced to the client, and then all the idol affixes need a heavy QA pass and Multiplayer playtesting.
7. Scaling up to approach the ability to test more widely!
- We doubled the amount of bare metal servers we are hosting, and are now successfully using emergency alternatives for potential sudden spikes in concurrent players.
What Are Our Goals For September?
- More testing and optimization of the Arena experience for multiple players in a party, and advance supporting systems noted above
- Convert the Idol System to be 100% server authoritative
- Collect additional server performance data
- Improve gamepad support for server-side multiplayer
- Start preparing to add Multiplayer to the Community Tester Program. This will involve fixing many minor bugs that we are used to internally but would not want testers to have to suffer through
New Axes coming in Sands of Majasa Update (0.8.3)
More weapon groups are being reworked for the Sands of Majasa Update and we will talk more about these soon.
[ 2021-08-19 23:06:09 CET ] [ Original post ]
Sands of Majasa Update brings new and improved tools for hacking and slashing through enemies. Axes, both one-handed and two-handed, are getting new 2D and 3D art as well as powerful implicit affixes to support a wide variety of builds and create new opportunities. Check out some examples below!
One-handed Axes - Examples
Two-handed Axes - Examples
More weapon groups are being reworked for the Sands of Majasa Update and we will talk more about these soon.
Sands of Majasa Update - Patch 0.8.3 Reveal!
[previewyoutube=jyU4d5sIztE;full][/previewyoutube]
[ 2021-08-18 18:51:20 CET ] [ Original post ]
Darkness within the jewel of the desert... Coming September 3, 2021
[previewyoutube=jyU4d5sIztE;full][/previewyoutube]
Last Epoch Development Update - July Recap
[ 2021-08-13 19:19:07 CET ] [ Original post ]
It's an exciting time at Eleventh Hour Games and for Last Epoch development! In our efforts to be transparent and communicative, we've started a new Forum series to give you a peek behind the scenes. Here is a small collection of our latest updates as we progress down the road to 1.0: Road to 1.0 - July 2021 Development Update The most recent update on Last Epoch progress that covers the studio, live service planning, multiplayer and performance and optimization. Read More Multiplayer Update Blog Post The first of a monthly multiplayer update series that covers current status, what we're working on next and potential risks to a successful multiplayer launch. Read More Multiplayer FAQ Answers to common questions around multiplayer systems and their development. This page will be updated as new questions arise. Read More Have more questions? Our Last Epoch developers are highly active on our Forum and we welcome you to join the conversation!
Beta 0.8.2i Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-06-08 20:37:46 CET ] [ Original post ]
User Interface
- Fixed the chat window failing to scroll automatically in some situations.
- You can now search for attribute tags in the main skills window.
- Fixed searching for Minion or Totem not working in the main skills window.
- Fixed Shield Throw having the tooltip for Shield Rush in the passives window.
- Fixed a bug where Show + Emphasize loot filter rules would not emphasize items on the first attempt.
Skills
- Fixed a bug where attempting to channel a skill while already channeling another skill (or instance of the same skill) would cause the player to get stuck in a channeling animation.
- Fixed a bug where Sigils of Hope could in rare cases cause negative stats and a black circle around your character.
- Fixed a bug where non-stationary Assembled Abominations that could use Soul Reave would attempt to use basic attack while out of range after they used Soul Reave.
- Fixed Drain Life and Maelstroms tooltip DPS being increased by generic ailment chance stats. These only work with skills that hit, and these skills do not hit.
Beta 0.8.2h Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-06-04 16:00:53 CET ] [ Original post ]
Monolith of Fate
Stability
- After considering community feedback, we felt that the 0.8.2g changes over-corrected the stability requirements, so were aiming to strike a balance.
- The maximum stability benefit from corruption has been increased by around 7%, so that echoes at the start of a 350+ corruption web give exactly 50 stability.
- Empowered timeline 3rd quest echo stability requirements now range from 750 to 900 (from all being 750).
- 2nd quest echo stability requirements have also been increased slightly for some empowered timelines..
- 3rd quest echo stability requirements for non-empowered timelines from Ending the Storm and onwards have been reduced by 50.
- The maximum stability for empowered timelines is still always twice the requirement for its 3rd quest echo.
Quest Echoes
- The state of a quest echo is now reset each time you enter it. This fixes various problems, such as objective indicators not appearing in a quest echo if you had previously abandoned the echo, or if you switched to empowered before completing the whole quest line.
User Interface
- Grand Blessings now replace standard blessings in the Discovered Blessings section of the blessings tab when discovered.
- The functionality you choose for left click is now saved between game sessions.
- The icon for left click now updates if you configured left click to use a skill.
- The search box when you first open the skills panel now works with most skill tags.
Chat
- Chat has been re-enabled with improved spam prevention. We still have more improvements planned.
- Improved the performance of the chat window. This will mitigate the game freezing if a very large amount of chat messages are being received.
- Chat messages can now be 280 characters long (from 220).
Controller Support
- Fixed a bug where using skills (especially movement skills) with a controller could freeze/crash the game in certain situations.
Beta 0.8.2g Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-06-02 16:26:05 CET ] [ Original post ]
Monolith of Fate
- Beacon echoes can no longer spawn adjacent to each other.
- Holding ctrl + alt while hovering over a Blessing now shows its potential range of values.
- If you die in an echo and then complete it later, destroying a Vessel of Memory will now restore the echo's guaranteed reward.
- Fixed a bug where logging out or going to a different zone before unlocking empowered timelines would prevent you from unlocking them for that character. Affected characters can now unlock the timelines as normal.
- Fixed a bug where completing a quest echo would grant stability equal to the previous non-quest echo you ran (and also reapply some of its other on-completion effects).
- Fixed a bug where the timeline stability bar could be incorrectly filled when moving to a new timeline.
- Fixed reduced corruption rewards using the same icon as added corruption rewards.
Stability
- Completing the 3rd quest echo of a timeline now reduces stability by the 3rd quest echo's requirement, rather than reducing it to 0.
- The 3rd quest echo in empowered timelines now requires 750 stability (from 1000 in 0.8.2d). The stability requirement for the 2nd quest echo has also been reduced for most empowered timelines.
- Stability requirements for the 2nd and 3rd quest echoes have been reduced for higher level non-empowered timelines.
- Empowered timelines now all have a maximum stability of 1500 (so you can save up 2 quest echo runs, assuming no deaths).
- The amount of Timeline Stability granted by rewards at 350 corruption and above is 12.5% lower.
Spires
- The maximum number of spires in a single echo has been reduced to 4 (from 5).
- Fewer spires spawn on average in a spire echo.
- All spires have a 20% longer delay between attacks.
- Bone spires deal 34% less damage.
- Wengari Spires deal 30% less damage.
- Fixed the names of spire abilities (shown on the death screen).
User Interface
- Fixed various visual bugs related to fading between different tabs in the world map.
- Polished scrolling behavior in the world map while the quest list is open.
- Removed Monolith of Fate labels from waypoints in the End of Time map tab.
- The ladder now shows the Softcore tab by default.
- The fill on the floating ward bar above the player character's head now works the same way as the fill on the ward bar above the health globe.
- Fixed a bug where the ward bar above the health globe would only fill to 73% capacity.
- Fixed icons for Marksman skills in the passive panel not changing color when unlocked.
Skills
- Fixed a bug where attempting to channel a skill while already channeling another skill (or instance of the same skill) would cause the player to get stuck in a channeling animation.
- Fixed a bug where resummoning a Bone Golem with the Marrow Eater node active could break various other minion-centric effects.
- Earthquakes Cataclysm now converts all base and added damage to fire (from just converting added damage, which was very low for the default melee variant).
- Earthquakes Storm Rift now adds 50 lightning damage to the initial hit (from 30).
- Fixed a bug where Entangling Roots nodes for buffing minions were not buffing minions.
- Fixed a bug where Flurrys Shockwave could not trigger Kineticism on kill.
- Added sub-ability tooltips for Kineticism.
- Fixed the Enras Technique node for Hammer Throw granting too much crit when Hammer Vortex was also taken.
- Fixed an incorrect scaling description for Harvests Elements of Death node.
- Reaper Forms alt tooltip now describes that excess damage taken in Reaper Form is dealt to your human form health.
- Fixed a bug where Thorn Totems Rotten Core node did not apply to Healing Totems with the Spiked Totem node.
Mechanics
- If you have a stat granting you "% of missing health gained as ward per second" levelling up no longer heals you to full (as this can be counterproductive for survival). Instead, you gain ward equal to your maximum health.
Enemies
- Updated animations for Zombie enemies.
Items
- Updated 2d art for all Shade of Orobyss uniques.
- Fixed a bug where alt text for various stat lines on uniques did not display (particularly on stats that cant exist on normal items).
- Clarified that Flight of the Firsts Ancient Flight cant be triggered by movement skills.
- Increased melee damage and increased physical damage spawn more rarely on shields.
- Increased the value of the increased mana regen affix for tiers 1 to 4. Tier 1 is now 10% to 14% (from 8% to 11%).
Beta 0.8.2f Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-05-28 18:11:16 CET ] [ Original post ]
Performance
- Fixed a bug where opening the Crafting Materials window would permanently affect performance for the rest of the gameplay session. This reduced fps by 20-30 in our testing.
- Still having performance issues? Try these steps while we continue working on improvements:
- Validate the game's files.
- Restart your computer and reduce how many apps are running.
- Install any Windows updates.
- Update your drivers or any other pending software upgrades.
Beta 0.8.2e Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-05-27 22:43:56 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Reduced the damage of Ice Whirlwinds used by Wengari Spires by 37.5%.
- Reef Time Gates spawn more Stranded Sailors.
- Yulia's Husk deals 500% more damage with her Ice Mortar and 40% less damage with her Ice Vortex.
- Enemy healthbars now disappear more quickly when they die.
- Added additional details to the outskirts of the world map.
- The "total affix tiers of" loot filter condition now looks at the affixes you've selected in that rule instead of all affixes on the item.
- To achieve the old functionality, make a rule that has all affixes selected.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug that caused leaderboard entries to be removed. Old leaderboard entries cant be recovered, but this wont happen anymore.
- Fixed a bug where the Shade of Orobyss could not use cold abilities on targets within melee range.
- Fixed a bug where it was possible for the world map for End of Time to get stuck, preventing you from panning.
- The notice for viewing additional quests now shows the map keybind instead of the old quest journal keybind.
- Fixed some outdated information in the Game Guide and loading screen tips.
- Fixed the clear search button for loot filters not working.
- Fixed Voidwing Nests not having an outline on hover.
Beta 0.8.2d Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-05-27 00:38:12 CET ] [ Original post ]
Monolith of Fate
- Lowered the stability requirements of the 3rd quest echo for all timelines other than the first.
- This reduction is smaller for non-empowered timelines.
- The 3rd quest echo now requires 1000 stability for all empowered timelines (from 1000 to 1350 depending on timeline).
- Slay enemies to locate __ is now listed as a separate objective in the quest tracker for echoes that use a delayed objective pulse (Bosses and Time Gates).
- Time Gates now also have delayed objective pulses like Bosses.
- The threshold for showing delayed monolith objective pulses now varies based on zone. It's higher than before in most zones, but lower in zones where going in a random direction may result in significant backtracking.
- The icons for unavailable echoes are now darker and less saturated to make available echoes more clear.
- Adjusted the position of the monolith reward object in Echo of a World.
Optimization
- Greatly improved the performance of hideable objects (things that fade out when they block the camera). This likely caused stutters or reduced fps in many zones.
- Players have reported that validating game files can help with performance or stability issues. Well continue investigating, but validating files, updating drivers / OS and restarting your computer are good troubleshooting steps.
Other Changes
- Updated 2d art for Auroras Time Glass and Flight of the First
- The Possess ailment deals 33% increased damage.
- Updated sounds for the monolith reward object in Echo of a World.
- Removed Detonate Corpse from the list of skills on Lich when creating a new character.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug that allowed gaining infinite amounts of gold.
- Fixed a bug where the spin attack used by Desecrated Flesh was not cancelled by killing or stunning the enemy.
- Fixed a bug where Punctures Mutilate node did not restore health.
- Fixed a bug where The Claw and The Fang would not summon all wolves at once.
- Fixed being able to click through the character stats window in some places.
- Fixed being able to click through skill unlock notifications in the passives window.
- Fixed the search bar for the Game Guide not having a cancel button.
- Fixed Dreamthorns 3d art being incorrect.
Beta 0.8.2b & 0.8.2c Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-05-25 23:15:34 CET ] [ Original post ]
EDIT: 0.8.2c has been released to additionally fix a bug that caused some players to have a blank login screen, which prevented them from logging into the game. This primarily affected new players that started in 0.8.2. 0.8.2b Patch Notes: This hotfix brings fixes for a number of bugs and some additional polish to the UI and Monolith. Were eager to hear your thoughts on 0.8.2, so keep it coming! Missed the patch notes for 0.8.2? Check them out here.
Login
- Fixed a bug where players with certain system regions (i.e. Thai) could not login (the loading animation would play but the login attempt never completed).
- Improved the login system to prevent other issues.
- If youre unable to login, please contact our support team and include your log file and a screenshot. We appreciate your patience and assistance as we investigate issues like this.
Monolith of Fate
- Fixed a bug where the maximum value limits for monolith modifiers did not apply in some cases. This could result in modifiers like enemies take 100% less damage.
- Added a minimap icon for the reward objects in Echo of a World.
- Fixed delayed objective pulses being positioned incorrectly on the minimap.
- Fixed a bug where the icons for Exalted rewards in the Monolith of Fate were not colored purple.
- Updated the position and visuals of the Open Portal button.
User Interface
- Fixed a bug where the border/background graphics for items in the inventory would fail to display in some situations.
- Fixed the loot filter selection dropdown overlapping the window for creating new rules.
- Fixed the Increased cooldown recovery for surge affix being in the wrong affix category for loot filters.
- Fixed a bug where the Show option when creating a rule would be unavailable if you clicked on Hide or Recolor.
- Fixed Necromancer wrapping to a second line in the passives panel.
- Fixed the Rogue passive tree being labeled as Primalist.
- Fixed a bug where the tick marks for Passive progression were missing from most base class trees.
- Improved the contrast for tick marks in the passives panel.
- Improved the greyed out effect for passive nodes that have not been taken yet.
- Fixed some minor positioning issues for details in the passives panel.
- Updated the Mastery Selection window to match the new UI style.
- Replaced the Quests button on the window selection wheel for gamepad with a Social button (the quest journal was removed in 0.8.2).
- Fixed Bone Pyres not having a healthbar on mouseover.
Skills
- Fixed a bug where the Enra's Technique node for Hammer Throw didn't provide base critical chance when you had taken Hammer Vortex.
- Fixed a bug where Holy Aura's Purification node was granting 10% poison resistance rather than the listed 20%
- Clarified Abyssal Echoes descript to say that it doesnt hit.
- Fixed a memory leak caused by certain skills.
Sound
- Updated the sound effect for Volatile Zombies leaping.
- Updated death sound effects for the Emperors Remains.
- Increased the volume of Storm Crows spells.
- Fixed a bug where shattering a fractured item would play the fracture sound effect.
Quests
- Fixed a bug where the door inside The Great College was missing.
Patch 0.8.2 arrives tomorrow - Patch Notes are now available!
[ 2021-05-23 21:17:57 CET ] [ Original post ]
Patch 0.8.2 arrives tomorrow, May 24th, at 1 PM CT / 6 PM UTC! Patch Highlights:
- Massive updates to end-game and the Monolith of Fate
- New challenging boss encounters
- Completely refreshed UI
- New Skills: Volatile Zombie & Storm Crows
- And much, much more!
[Developer Blog] Monolith Overhaul
[ 2021-05-17 20:35:24 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey, Travelers!
We're super excited to be sharing our latest Developer Blog with you!
Principal Designer Trasochi is spilling the beans on Patch 0.8.2's extensive changes to the Monolith of Fate. This is one of our largest Developer Blogs of all time. As with all of our Developer Blogs, this post is exclusively available on Last Epoch's official forum. We look forward to seeing you there!
Here's a link: Monolith Overhaul!
Arena Updates Coming in Patch 0.8.2
[ 2021-05-12 23:32:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
As we've previously shared, Patch 0.8.2 focuses heavily on the Monolith of Fate. We're actively working on an associated Developer Blog that we're super excited to share with you soon. In the meantime, we're happy to be announcing a number of updates coming to the Arena! One of our goals when working on Arena was to address zones with significant differences in height potentially hiding dangerous Area of Effect abilities used by certain enemies. We've removed a few zones from rotation, and also updated a number of others which could be problematic in this regard. For example, Woodland Arena will now be significantly flatter, and the Tundra Arena (now called Tower Arena) will also have less varied elevation. To maintain the current level of variety, we're also adding some of our best-looking zones ever to the Arena in Patch 0.8.2. We've prepared a number of screenshots of these below.
Abandoned Arena
Abyssal Arena
Ancient Arena
Sanctuary Arena
New 'Reaper Form' Splash Art
Our Art Team have been working on new splash art! This image features the Lichs signature Reaper Form transform ability! Set in a murky graveyard which has not seen the living for many years, a Lich skulks towards her prey.
Like the image as much as we do? Weve prepared copies of it at several resolutions for those interested in a new desktop wallpaper! If the download window doesnt open automatically, right-click on the image and choose Save image as... or your browsers equivalent option. [table] [tr] [th]Resolution[/th] [th]Also Known As[/th] [th]Download Link[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]3840 x 2560[/td] [td]4k[/td] [td]link[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]2560 x 1440[/td] [td]1440p[/td] [td]link[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]1920 x 1080[/td] [td]1080p[/td] [td]link[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]1280 x 720[/td] [td]720p[/td] [td]link[/td] [/tr] [/table]
[ 2021-05-10 20:32:00 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved in the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official forum!
New 'Reaper Form' Splash Art
Our Art Team have been working on new splash art! This image features the Lichs signature Reaper Form transform ability! Set in a murky graveyard which has not seen the living for many years, a Lich skulks towards her prey.
Like the image as much as we do? Weve prepared copies of it at several resolutions for those interested in a new desktop wallpaper! If the download window doesnt open automatically, right-click on the image and choose Save image as... or your browsers equivalent option. [table] [tr] [th]Resolution[/th] [th]Also Known As[/th] [th]Download Link[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]3840 x 2560[/td] [td]4k[/td] [td]link[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]2560 x 1440[/td] [td]1440p[/td] [td]link[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]1920 x 1080[/td] [td]1080p[/td] [td]link[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]1280 x 720[/td] [td]720p[/td] [td]link[/td] [/tr] [/table]
A New Companion Skill Coming to Primalists in Patch 0.8.2
The full tooltip.
The activatable ability for these new Companions.
[ 2021-04-30 17:30:30 CET ] [ Original post ]
Our next update, Patch 0.8.2, includes a new skill for Primalists! A minion-summoning skill which adds to the Primalists ranged opinions, Summon Storm Crow increases the variety of available Companions. The default behaviour of this skill is to summon multiple crows, each of which cast lightning damage-dealing spells from a distance. The specialisation tree for Summon Storm Crow has a wide variety of options for improving the effectiveness of your crows and also allows you to change their role on the battlefield.
Summon Storm Crow: The Skill
The full tooltip.
The activatable ability for these new Companions.
Summon Storm Crow: Example Nodes
New Enemies Joining the Army of the Immortal Empire
[ 2021-04-27 17:45:30 CET ] [ Original post ]
When we brought Last Epoch to Kickstarter back in 2018, the Soul Cage was one perhaps the single most well-received creature we showed off. Its concept art, found almost half way down our campaign page, was frequently the subject of conversations. This skeletal brute carrying a soul-filled prison has remained one of the most iconic enemies in the entire game, and we are excited to now be designing two related creatures to include in a future content patch.
The two-legged Soul Warden takes the 'Soul Cage' design language in a new direction; a smaller, upright creature bearing its own cage, this agent of the Immortal Empire has its path illuminated by faint lights. They are often encountered in the presence of Soul Carriers.
The Soul Carrier - referred to as a 'Soul Cage' on the above Design Sheet - serve a similar purpose to Soul Cages for the Immortal Empire, and will be the rarer of the two enemies.
Got any ideas for new enemies in the 'soul cage' family? We'd love to hear 'em!
Slay The All-New Spires Coming in Patch 0.8.2!
[ 2021-04-21 20:30:34 CET ] [ Original post ]
Patch 0.8.2 focuses on endgame content. In addition to introducing new challenges & rewards for players to experience, it also brings many improvements to existing content. Spires are among the oldest content in the Monolith and our next content patch completely overhauls them. Spires not only see a visual update thanks to all new art assets but will also have their own unique attacks, giving Travelers more distinct and varied challenges. We'll have more news to share regarding this update shortly! In the meantime, we hope you'll consider checking out some examples of new Spires we've included in our post on the game's official forum! Unfortunately, Steam doesn't allow us to upload videos to Announcements. To see some examples of new Spires coming in Patch 0.8.2, please join us on the game's official forum!
Lets Look At Some of the Shade of Orobyss's Many Skills!
We've previously introduced you to the Shade of Orobyss, who will be joining the denizens of the Monolith of Fate in May with the release of Patch 0.8.2. In that post we had revealed there are multiple varities of the Shade of Orobyss - however this mystery goes ever deeper. This new boss has thirty - yes, 30 - abilities! Each time it descends upon you in the Monolith, it selects a number of its skills to unleash upon you. The number of skills - and therefore visual effects, and telegraphs - being capped ensures combat remains readable. Of course, the vast pool of abilities at the Shade's disposal also means no one fight will be quite like any other... Today we're excited to reveal some of the destructive power this creatures has at its fingertips!
[previewyoutube=qGm7mTUCPDM;full][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube=iMxJCfV8gkc;full][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube=V_UnBuGohcs;full][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube=v_81SkE8oQM;full][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube=2rTiR1RqsRk;full][/previewyoutube]
[ 2021-04-15 20:30:27 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved in the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official forum!
Lets Look At Some of the Shade of Orobyss's Many Skills!
We've previously introduced you to the Shade of Orobyss, who will be joining the denizens of the Monolith of Fate in May with the release of Patch 0.8.2. In that post we had revealed there are multiple varities of the Shade of Orobyss - however this mystery goes ever deeper. This new boss has thirty - yes, 30 - abilities! Each time it descends upon you in the Monolith, it selects a number of its skills to unleash upon you. The number of skills - and therefore visual effects, and telegraphs - being capped ensures combat remains readable. Of course, the vast pool of abilities at the Shade's disposal also means no one fight will be quite like any other... Today we're excited to reveal some of the destructive power this creatures has at its fingertips!
Skill Teaser 1
[previewyoutube=qGm7mTUCPDM;full][/previewyoutube]
Skill Teaser 2
[previewyoutube=iMxJCfV8gkc;full][/previewyoutube]
Skill Teaser 3
[previewyoutube=V_UnBuGohcs;full][/previewyoutube]
Skill Teaser 4
[previewyoutube=v_81SkE8oQM;full][/previewyoutube]
Skill Teaser 5
[previewyoutube=2rTiR1RqsRk;full][/previewyoutube]
Beta 0.8.1i Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-04-13 17:26:57 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Introduced a number of new chat-focused error messages.
- Improved existing error messages used by our chat system.
Beta 0.8.1h Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-04-05 21:10:47 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Implemented a workaround for Steam users who had recently purchased Last Epoch and have subsequently had difficulty registering Last Epoch accounts in-game.
- If you were affected by this, please use the create an account prompt beneath the log in fields to register a new account which will be linked to your Steam account.
- If you continue to be affected, please try registering an account on our website, and then logging into the game using the account credentials for that account.
- If you were affected by this, please use the create an account prompt beneath the log in fields to register a new account which will be linked to your Steam account.
Beta 0.8.1g Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-04-02 06:09:37 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Fixed a bug where on kill effects would proc if the player brought themselves below 0 health.
- Improved the font for certain characters in chat.
Known Issues
- Chat messages sometimes appear twice. This is a server-side issue and we plan to deploy a fix very soon.
Beta 0.8.1f Release and Patch Notes
Now that social features are once again available, a Last Epoch account is required to play the game, just as it had been prior to the release of Patch 0.8.1e on Saturday. This account will also be necessary for multiplayer when Patch 0.9 has been released. Please see this support article for more information.
[ 2021-04-01 00:01:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
Social Features
- Social Features (including account linking, chat, cosmetic pets and the ladder) are now re-enabled.
- Greatly optimized chat performance. We will continue to monitor this.
- Fixed a bug causing a Your account is in use on another device notification to be displayed at incorrect times.
Last Epoch Accounts
Now that social features are once again available, a Last Epoch account is required to play the game, just as it had been prior to the release of Patch 0.8.1e on Saturday. This account will also be necessary for multiplayer when Patch 0.9 has been released. Please see this support article for more information.
Known Issues
- Chat messages are sometimes displayed twice. We believe this can be resolved without another game update.
Beta 0.8.1e Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-03-27 16:21:52 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Temporarily disabled social features.
- Fixed Gaspars Insight having two Void Resistance affixes instead of one Void Resistance and one Cold Resistance affix.
- Fixed a minor graphical issue in Risen Lake.
Beta 0.8.1d Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-03-26 16:00:23 CET ] [ Original post ]
Uniques
- Avarice now also grants 13% elemental resistance and no longer prevents health regen.
- Coral Aegis grants 30% to 43% lightning resistance (from 25% to 41%) and 300% to 430% chance to shock attackers (from 250% to 410%).
- Dreamthorn grants 35 melee void damage (from 25) and 35% void penetration (from 25%).
- Frozen Eyes of Formosus grant 80% to 140% increased minion cold damage (from 70% to 120%).
- Gaspar's Acuity now also grants 35% to 45% lightning resistance.
- Gaspar's Insight now also grants 35% to 45% cold resistance.
- Herkir's Vessel grants 60% to 100% increased fire damage (from 30% to 60%).
- The Last Bear's Fury grants 3% increased health regen per point of strength (from 2%).
- Mortality's Grasp now grants 73 to 113 health (from 50 to 60).
- Murama's Hilt grants 85% to 130% increased curse damage (from 80% to 95%).
- Transient Rest grants 35% physical, poison, and necrotic resistance (from 25%).
- The water orbs from Ucenui's Sphere deal 50% more damage.
- Added lore text for the following uniques that were added in 0.8.1:
- Bhuldar's Wrath
- Call of the Tundra
- Faith of the Frozen
- Gaspar's Will
- Gaspar's Acuity
- Gaspar's Insight
- Herkir's Vessel
- Horns of Uhkeiros
- Logi's Hunger
- Reign of Winter
Bug Fixes
Monolith of Fate
- Fixed a bug which could prevent the Empowered versions of each timeline from being unlocked. This fix applies to both new and old characters.
- Return to the Empowerment Altar in the middle of the 3 level 90 timelines and click on it to unlock the Empowered Timelines.
User Interface
- Fixed a bug where the chat window would not show new messages in some situations.
- Fixed a bug where the Forge button in the crafting window would become unusable in some situations.
- Fixed a bug where clicking Cancel while creating a new character with Hardcore enabled would cause the Hardcore tickbox to become inverted (i.e. a checkmark means it is disabled).
- Removed some false positives from the chat filter.
Zizaran's Unique Item Design Collaboration
[ 2021-03-25 20:00:27 CET ] [ Original post ]
Tomorrow a few of our devs will be joining Zizaran to design a unique item! Unique Item Design Collaborations are available in our Ardent Creator supporter pack. They entail someone deciding details such as the theme of an item, what the item does, and its name & flavor text. Members of our team will work with you to get your item ready for inclusion in a future update. Our support team often answers questions about design collaborations, so tomorrow a few of us will be joining Zizaran on Twitch so that anyone curious can learn more about the process. Designing unique items is always a lot of fun, so we're really looking forward to it and we hope to see you there! Catch us at noon CT / 5 PM GMT!
Upcoming Graphical Improvements for Skills
[ 2021-03-24 22:15:22 CET ] [ Original post ]
We're working on making skills in Last Epoch look better! There are many aspects to making skills look impactful, exciting, and "real". One of these is the use of lighting to cause skills to be reflected on nearby surfaces. This is something that we have historically shied away from, primarily due to performance concerns. Our ongoing optimization work now allows us to begin the process of updating the visual effects used by our skills to contain a number of lights. Both skills available to players and skills used by enemies will be updated in this way where it makes sense for them to use lighting. Steam won't allow us to embed the videos, but we've prepared a few examples on our official forum.
Something Lurks Within the Monolith...
As we've previously hinted, Patch 0.8.2 will focus heavily on endgame content. Today we're excited to unveil our most complex boss to-date! The Shade of Orobyss is a particularly unpredictable nemesis that appears in a number of distinct forms with differing abilities. The revamped and expanded Monolith of Fate contains many additional types of Echo, with new rewards awaiting those brave enough to venture inside them. New objectives, new bosses, new types of content, and new meta progression are all coming in this massive update. In a future post we will detail the changes coming to the Monolith. At its heart is the mysterious Shade of Orobyss, a mysterious entity whose appearance heralds the destruction of an entire Timeline. We'll warn you of some of its most potent abilities ahead of time - but be warned, for one cannot rid the Monolith of the Shade any more than they can stop the sun from rising. As you journey through the updated Monolith of Fate, the Shade of Orobyss will be drawn ever closer to you. Eventually, either you will find the Shade... or it shall find you.
[ 2021-03-23 22:00:21 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved in the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official forum!
Something Lurks Within the Monolith...
As we've previously hinted, Patch 0.8.2 will focus heavily on endgame content. Today we're excited to unveil our most complex boss to-date! The Shade of Orobyss is a particularly unpredictable nemesis that appears in a number of distinct forms with differing abilities. The revamped and expanded Monolith of Fate contains many additional types of Echo, with new rewards awaiting those brave enough to venture inside them. New objectives, new bosses, new types of content, and new meta progression are all coming in this massive update. In a future post we will detail the changes coming to the Monolith. At its heart is the mysterious Shade of Orobyss, a mysterious entity whose appearance heralds the destruction of an entire Timeline. We'll warn you of some of its most potent abilities ahead of time - but be warned, for one cannot rid the Monolith of the Shade any more than they can stop the sun from rising. As you journey through the updated Monolith of Fate, the Shade of Orobyss will be drawn ever closer to you. Eventually, either you will find the Shade... or it shall find you.
Clean up in Aisle 3! It's a Volatile Zombie
The tooltip for Summon Volatile Zombie, Alt text included.
The skill art for Summon Volatile Zombie.
[ 2021-03-22 22:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved in the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official forum! Weve been working on an explosive addition to the Acolytes toolkit! Were super excited to be showing you Volatile Zombie, a new summoning spell she will acquire in Patch 0.8.2. Below you can find the tooltip, skill art, and a selection of some of the nodes on its specialization tree. NOTE: This skill is still in development, so weve omitted most numbers from the below tooltips.
Summon Volatile Zombie
The tooltip for Summon Volatile Zombie, Alt text included.
The skill art for Summon Volatile Zombie.
Nodes on Summon Volatile Zombies' Specialization Tree
Updating the Druid Class's Transform Abilities
We're working on the Druid class! While much of this work is being done by our development team, the artists are pitching in with all-new models being created for both Werebear Form and Spriggan Form. These will be accompanied by new animations and visual effects, bringing these up to more modern standards such as those enjoyed by the Rogue class.
A Model Sheet for Werebear Form, featuring material references. Werebear Form is being made to look like a larger, sturdier, and more realistic shapeshifted form (to the extent that shapeshifting can be made to look "realistic"). It will also be a significantly more detailed, higher quality model. Spriggan Form is being made to still look like a spriggan, but one that is being approximated by the spell cast by a human - it has a more human-looking face, and greenery resembling hair and a beard. Hostile spriggans are also getting visually updated, and their new model will look notably different from the one being used by Primalists.
A Model Sheet for Spriggan Form, featuring material references. Acolyte fans... you haven't been forgotten. steamhappy
[ 2021-03-17 19:00:16 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official forum!
Updating the Druid Class's Transform Abilities
We're working on the Druid class! While much of this work is being done by our development team, the artists are pitching in with all-new models being created for both Werebear Form and Spriggan Form. These will be accompanied by new animations and visual effects, bringing these up to more modern standards such as those enjoyed by the Rogue class.
A Model Sheet for Werebear Form, featuring material references. Werebear Form is being made to look like a larger, sturdier, and more realistic shapeshifted form (to the extent that shapeshifting can be made to look "realistic"). It will also be a significantly more detailed, higher quality model. Spriggan Form is being made to still look like a spriggan, but one that is being approximated by the spell cast by a human - it has a more human-looking face, and greenery resembling hair and a beard. Hostile spriggans are also getting visually updated, and their new model will look notably different from the one being used by Primalists.
A Model Sheet for Spriggan Form, featuring material references. Acolyte fans... you haven't been forgotten. steamhappy
One of Our Artists Was Recently Interviewed!
[ 2021-03-11 19:30:24 CET ] [ Original post ]
3dTotal recently interviewed Alexandr from our Art Team to discuss his progression as an artist! They discussed the start of his career, some prior experience in the industry, and touched on his recent work for Eleventh Hour Games such as designing the bows used by our new Rogue class. Check out the interview here, and I'm sure he'd love to hear your feedback!
Huge UI Improvements Are Coming
[ 2021-03-09 23:00:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey, Travelers! We've been working on overhauling the user interface in Last Epoch, and today we're pleased to begin telling you it! The post we've prepared for today is larger than most and contains a number of images, which had led to us struggling to format it effectively here on Steam. You can find the post - including a table of contents with links to each section - on our official forum, here. We look forward to seeing you there!
Assembling the Abomination
Initially we did some exploratory concept art to help us decide what kind of shape and size we wanted this minion to be. Sergey produced a variety of different designs - some focusing on the horror of multiple minions being stitched together, others iterating on the idea of a lumbering brute, and others still exploring the idea of a large devourer of bodies.
Our preferred fantasy for this minion was to have a large behemoth ponderously approaching enemies, visibly in a state of undeath but not completely losing the idea of a menacing beast descending upon its prey. With this decision made, we began refining the idea.
As our designs consolidated towards a single concept, Sergey worked on increasingly detailed sketches to further flesh out the minion. Details such as asymmetric limbs, a visible rib cage, and the minion's palette began getting locked in at this stage.
We then began creating other art for the minion, such as this material reference sheet which is created to help the 3d artists better understand the vision for the model. While mostly referenced by our modelers, these can also help our animators.
With a firmer idea of what the abomination itself would look like, it was time to focus on how the model would change to reflect the 'ingredients' used in its construction. There was minimal iteration needed here - the first round of designs were very popular internally.
We hope you found this post interesting! We look forward to being ready to start talking about the contents of Patch 0.8.2 in detail later in its patch cycle. We currently anticipate this update taking a couple of weeks longer than most of our content patches.
[ 2021-03-07 22:30:37 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official forum!
We're working on new boss fights to add more variety to our endgame content and once again raise the standard of our boss encounters. A couple of these feature particularly impressive models which you'll hopefully enjoy seeing as much as we enjoy designing them!
As we're not ready to begin showing these off just yet, we were inspired to look at some of the creatures we've added previously, and their journey from initial concept to implementation.
Only the most powerful of Necromancers can create such a foul construct.
In Patch 0.7.9 we implemented the Assemble Abomination skill for Necromancers. Already a large monstrosity, its appearance varied depending on which minions were unfortunate enough to be involved in its dark summoning ritual, rendering it one of the most complex models to have been created for Last Epoch to-date. Let's explore its ideation!
Designing The Base Model
Initially we did some exploratory concept art to help us decide what kind of shape and size we wanted this minion to be. Sergey produced a variety of different designs - some focusing on the horror of multiple minions being stitched together, others iterating on the idea of a lumbering brute, and others still exploring the idea of a large devourer of bodies.
Our preferred fantasy for this minion was to have a large behemoth ponderously approaching enemies, visibly in a state of undeath but not completely losing the idea of a menacing beast descending upon its prey. With this decision made, we began refining the idea.
As our designs consolidated towards a single concept, Sergey worked on increasingly detailed sketches to further flesh out the minion. Details such as asymmetric limbs, a visible rib cage, and the minion's palette began getting locked in at this stage.
We then began creating other art for the minion, such as this material reference sheet which is created to help the 3d artists better understand the vision for the model. While mostly referenced by our modelers, these can also help our animators.
Designing Minion-Specific Appendages
With a firmer idea of what the abomination itself would look like, it was time to focus on how the model would change to reflect the 'ingredients' used in its construction. There was minimal iteration needed here - the first round of designs were very popular internally.
We hope you found this post interesting! We look forward to being ready to start talking about the contents of Patch 0.8.2 in detail later in its patch cycle. We currently anticipate this update taking a couple of weeks longer than most of our content patches.
From Concept to Reality: Meet the Nagasa
Note: We do not presently expect the Nagasa to be available in Patch 0.8.2.
[ 2021-03-03 23:00:43 CET ] [ Original post ]
Nearly a year ago, we posted the concept art for the Nagasa; creatures that serve the will of the desert goddess Majasa. Its particularly important to us that the so-called god races look impressive, and today were excited to share with you some of the Nagasa weve created! Want another look at the concept art? Find it here.
Emerald Nagasa
Diamond Nagasa
???
Note: We do not presently expect the Nagasa to be available in Patch 0.8.2.
Beta 0.8.1c Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-02-25 17:42:44 CET ] [ Original post ]
Missed the Patch Notes for Beta 0.8.1? Read them on our froum.
Arena
- Fixed a bug where Arena layouts were not properly selected at random. This caused the Desert Arena and Solarum Arena to be more common than the others.
Endurance
Aims
- Bring Endurance more in line with other defenses, by making it more difficult for endurance threshold to be close to or exceed your maximum health, which would overcome its balancing factor.
- Reduce how much the effectiveness of Endurance varies with maximum health.
Changes
- All characters now have endurance threshold equal to 20% of their maximum health (from 40 + 2 per character level).
- Reduced the value of endurance threshold affixes (by up to 30% at higher tiers).
- Root Shields grant 45 to 70 endurance threshold (from 70 to 100).
- Reduced the value of endurance threshold on blessings by around 33%.
- The Druids Hideskin node now grants 15 health, and 1% of maximum health gained as endurance threshold (from +15 health and 3% reduced stun duration).
Skills
Minions
- Fixed a bug where Increased Size effects did not apply to minions.
- Fixed a bug where minion names granted by nodes (i.e. Thunder Totem) or random chance did not work.
- Fixed a bug where Areks Flesh did not have animations.
Death Seal
- Fixed a bug where Death Seal's wave upon release was not affected by the skill's base 20% more damage per second. It now deals more damage than before.
- Adjusted the functionality of Doomcall: 10% more damage per stack of Damned, does not scale with points allocated (from 20% per point). +1 stack of Damned on you each second per allocated point (unchanged). Can have up to 5 points allocated (from 4).
Detonating Arrow
- Fixed a bug where Detonating Arrow's Arcing Blast node could trigger even if Detonating Arrow's damage was converted.
Firebrand
- Fixed a bug where Galvanize did not convert sources of ignite chance on Firebrands tree to shock chance.
Frenzy Totem
- Fixed a bug where Eterra's Blessing triggered by the Healing Pulse node did not use Eterra's Blessing's tree or scale with the player's healing effectiveness.
Infernal Shade
- Fixed a bug where triggering Blaze Shade could cause Infernal Shade to instantly expire in some cases.
- Fixed a bug where Blaze Shade caused the area of Infernal Shade to be reduced rather than increased.
- Fixed a bug where Blood Shade was not converting the skills base fire damage to physical damage.
- Fixed a bug where Legion would not cast Infernal Shade on additional nearby minions if the Devour In Flames node was also taken.
- Fixed a bug where Shifting Doom combined with Devour In Flames did not damage the subsequent minion that Infernal Shade attached to.
Lethal Mirage
- Fixed a bug which caused several nodes for Lethal Mirage to not work.
Rebuke
- Fixed a bug where the buffs granted by Rebuke never persisted after channeling if you had channeled for the full duration.
Shield Throw
- Fixed a bug where Spiked Plates and Rygar's Fury did not grant their damage bonus.
Surge
- Fixed a bug where Storm Battery granted a stack of Dormant Energy even if you did not hit at least one enemy with your melee attack.
Tooltip DPS
- Fixed a bug where negative ailment chances (caused by certain skill tree nodes) would prevent all other ailments from affecting tooltip DPS.
- Focus now displays tooltip DPS when taking the Energy Overflow or Energy Battery nodes.
- Added tooltip DPS for the Spark Charge and Lightning Wave sub-abilities.
- Improved tooltip DPS support for Shatter Strikes Icicle subability.
- Fixed a bug where Detonating Arrow's tooltip DPS did not account for conversion in some cases.
Items
- Added new 2d art for Valdyrs Chalice and Raindance.
- Increased Physical Damage can now also roll on belts.
- Fixed a bug where the Critical Success bonus for crafts would not be saved in some situations.
- Fixed a bug where the "+x Levels to Sacrifice" Affix granted more levels than intended. It is now the same amount as other affixes.
- Fixed a bug where Smite's damage was not increased by the Wrathful Large Rahyeh Idol (increased damage with Vengeance and Smite).
- Fixed the model for Dreamthorn being positioned incorrectly.
- Fixed a bug where the Mage would hold Staves incorrectly in some situations.
- Fixed a visual issue for Primalists wielding two-handed swords on the character select screen.
Passives
- The Druids Hideskin node now grants 15 health, and 1% of maximum health gained as endurance threshold (from +15 health and 3% reduced stun duration).
- Fixed a bug where the Void Knight's Null Velocity passive could trigger from an ability use that leaves you above 0 mana.
- Fixed a bug where the Paladins Shield Wall node granted maximum health instead of health on block.
- Fixed a bug where the Bladedancers Cloak of Shadows node did not grant Dexterity.
- Renamed the Gladiator (block) node in the Sentinel tree to Protector as the name 'Gladiator' was also in use on the dual wielding node.
Visuals
- Overhauled all visuals for Swipe, including:
- Base visual effect
- Lightning conversion
- Spirit Wolves node
- 2D icon
- Revised the visuals for Holy Aura.
Monolith / Campaign
- Increased the health of the Pyromancer miniboss in Ash Covered Maj'Elka.
- Frigid Hinterland now also appears in the Blood, Frost and Death timeline.
- Fixed a wall blocking the camera in Sealed Archive.
- Fixed some targeting issues near the waypoint in the Immortal Summit.
- Fixed Alrics voice acting in The Immortal Citadel cutting off other voice acting.
- Fixed some rocks falling upwards in the Council Chambers.
UI
- Skill tree nodes now have square borders. Key Nodes are still hexagonal.
- Adjusted the description for Endurance and the highlight colors in the health globe tooltip.
- Fixed a bug causing damage numbers, particularly for critical hits, to look different than in previous patches.
- +X Other Shards notifications now appear last in the list of shard notifications.
- Fixed a bug where an erroneous +0 Other Shards notification would appear in some situations.
Massive Amount of New Item Art - Which Do You Like the Most?
[ 2021-02-23 23:00:39 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers! Today we've posted some of the new item art recently added to the game - and we want to hear from you! We'd like to hear which are your favourite, what you like most about them, and any you mightn't like as much (and why!). We know there's recently been a trend of us not posting content here on Steam directly - that's just been due to the content we've recently posted. For example, today's post is very image-heavy and the formatting options available to us here are somewhat limited compared to the game's official forum. We hope you'll check the post out, and we'll see you again here soon!
[Developer Blog] Affixes, Defenses and Minions
[ 2021-02-19 19:50:15 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey, Travelers! Trasochi has posted our latest Developer Blog; Affixes, Defenses and Minions. Developer Blogs are when members of the team take a deep dive into a particular aspect of Last Epoch's design, explaining not just changes that will be made, but the reasoning behind those changes. This latest Developer Blog focuses on the ability to dual wield weapons in Patch 0.8. Unlike most of our posts, Developer Blogs are only available on the game's official forum. We sincerely hope you take the time to check out the post and leave us your feedback. We'll see you there!
Beta 0.8.1 Release and Patch Notes
[ 2021-02-18 18:33:25 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey, Travelers! Today we're excited to share Patch 0.8.1 with you. Unfortunately, our content patches long ago became too big for us to fit our changelogs inside posts here on Steam, so instead we've prepared a table of contents that links to each individual section. Beta 0.8.1 Patch Notes Table of Contents 1. Monolith of Fate 2. Skills 3. Tooltip DPS 4. Skill Unlocks 5. Arena 6. Animation 7. Defenses 8. Item Bases 9. Crafting 10. Skill Balance 11. Passives 12. Mechanics 13. Uniques & Item Sets 14. Affixes 15. Enemies 16. Campaign 17. Graphics 18. Sound 19. User Interface 20. Social Features 21. Optimization 22. Bug Fixes We hope you enjoy all the latest changes & additions!
New Arenas Coming in Patch 0.8.1
Which ones your favourite?
[ 2021-02-16 23:07:39 CET ] [ Original post ]
As you know, in Patch 0.8.1 were introducing 5 new Arena maps! A prepared Traveler is a successful Traveler, so today were sharing some screenshots of each of the new Arenas so you know what to expect ahead of time. Safe journeys, Traveler!
Airborne Arena
Docklands Arena
Lagonian Arena
Lakeside Arena
Solarum Arena
Which ones your favourite?
Warcry, New Beastmaster Skill Coming Later This Week
Lay waste to the ground itself! In [url=https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/899770/view/5403726792722335408 Patch 0.8.1 Beastmasters get access to the new skill Warcry. Lets take a look at it! NOTE: Warcry is still in development, so weve omitted most numbers from the below tooltips.
Warcrys tooltip
The skill art for Warcry.
[ 2021-02-15 22:00:23 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
Warcry, New Beastmaster Skill Coming Later This Week
Lay waste to the ground itself! In [url=https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/899770/view/5403726792722335408 Patch 0.8.1 Beastmasters get access to the new skill Warcry. Lets take a look at it! NOTE: Warcry is still in development, so weve omitted most numbers from the below tooltips.
Warcry
Warcrys tooltip
The skill art for Warcry.
Nodes on Warcrys Specialization Tree
A New Boss Fight Track Coming Next Week
[ 2021-02-14 19:00:57 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey, Travelers! Today we're sharing one of the new boss tracks being added to the game in Patch 0.8.1! We've posted it on the game's official forum, here.
Updates to The Monolith of Fate in Patch 0.8.1
Explore beyond the Timelines youve previously conquered. We're making the following changes to empowering Timelines;
Those found wanting in the Monolith shall be fired. We're adding 3 new Timelines to the Monolith of Fate. These additions entail;
The Monolith of Fate is cooler than ever! Finally, we're also taking the opportunity to polish the system.
[ 2021-02-13 19:09:34 CET ] [ Original post ]
In Patch 0.8.1 we're giving the Monolith of Fate endgame system some love!
Updated Mechanics
Explore beyond the Timelines youve previously conquered. We're making the following changes to empowering Timelines;
- It will be possible to empower all Timelines.
- Empowering a Timeline now has additional effects;
- Enemies have 50% more health and damage (multiplicative with other modifiers)
- 50% increased item rarity
- 50% increased experience gained
New Content
Those found wanting in the Monolith shall be fired. We're adding 3 new Timelines to the Monolith of Fate. These additions entail;
- New bosses waiting for you in our latest Quest Echoes
- New Blessings
- Notably, there are now Blessings available for new weapon types
- New Unique items
- 3 new boss music tracks
Polishing the Monolith
The Monolith of Fate is cooler than ever! Finally, we're also taking the opportunity to polish the system.
- We're introducing 9 new zone layouts for increased level design variety.
- Many zones available through the Monolith Fate have had visual improvements.
- We're updating the level of the existing Timelines to accommodate the new ones.
Patch Preview: Beta 0.8.1
Patch 0.8.1 introduces substantial updates to endgame content, our itemization, and elements of our user interface. As with all content patches, it also brings new polish to Last Epoch.
[ 2021-02-11 20:10:25 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
Summary
Patch 0.8.1 introduces substantial updates to endgame content, our itemization, and elements of our user interface. As with all content patches, it also brings new polish to Last Epoch.
Highlights
Endgame
- We're bringing fresh content to the Monolith of Fate, and we'll post about this soon!
- This patch also includes 5 new Arena maps!
User Interface
- This patch includes Tooltip DPS, a Phase 4 item from our Early Access Forecast.
- We're also redesigning our skill tooltips, as shown in the thread linked to above.
- Your characters now wear their equipped gear on the character selection screen.
Items
- We are introducing powerful new skill level-raising affixes.
- We are working on significant changes to defences.
- We have reworked how affixes are distributed between prefixes and suffixes and which items they roll on.
- This update introduces new, class-specific Relics.
- Sceptres now have new 2d art, new 3d art, and new implicit properties.
- Shields now have new 2d art, new 3d art, and new implicit properties.
- We've updated all unique items implemented before Patch 0.7.7 (March 2020).
Skills
- A new Spellblade skill, Surge, is being added.
- A new Beastmaster skill, Warcry, is being added.
- The Mage skill Fire Shield is being removed.
- The Beastmaster skill Flanking Strike is being removed.
- We have revisited every skill in the game to better standardize our specialization trees.
- Older skills should now be appreciably more viable in challenging content.
Animations
- All animations used by non-transformed Primalists have been replaced or improved.
- We plan to improve Werebear Form and Spriggan Form animations in future.
- We are also exploring model improvements for these skills.
- We plan to improve Werebear Form and Spriggan Form animations in future.
Level Design
- We've performed a pass on many zones to improve their appearance. These updates were concentrated on Chapter 5 and Chapter 3, but we've touched up other zones as well.
- We haven't specifically posted about these, but you might have found a teaser.
Optimization
- Significantly optimized visual effects that appear around the character during skill usage.
- While these are not the most significant contributors to poor performance, this is the first update to include work from a long-term project of ours to dramatically improve combat performance in Last Epoch. We will be gradually rolling out this optimization work to additional areas of the game across future updates.
- Optimized the performance of outlines applied to enemies and allies on mouse-over.
- They should also now look better.
Looking at a New Skill, Surge, Coming in Patch 0.8.1
In Patch 0.8.1 well be removing the Mage skill Fire Shield. In the same update, well be adding a new skill called Surge to the Spellblades arsenal. Lets see what Surge is all about!
Surge's tooltip
The skill art for Surge
Holding down the Alt key while mousing-over Coldfront shows Tidal Wave's tooltip; [expand type=details](Image may take a moment to load.)
[/expand]
Holding down the Alt key while mousing-over Conduit shows Static's tooltip; [expand type=details](Image may take a moment to load.)
[/expand]
Holding down the Alt key while mousing-over Electropulse shows Lightning Blast's tooltip; [expand type=details](Image may take a moment to load.)
[/expand]
[ 2021-02-04 22:45:22 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
Looking at a New Skill, Surge, Coming in Patch 0.8.1
In Patch 0.8.1 well be removing the Mage skill Fire Shield. In the same update, well be adding a new skill called Surge to the Spellblades arsenal. Lets see what Surge is all about!
Surge
Surge's tooltip
The skill art for Surge
Nodes on Surges Specialization Tree
Holding down the Alt key while mousing-over Coldfront shows Tidal Wave's tooltip; [expand type=details](Image may take a moment to load.)
[/expand]
Holding down the Alt key while mousing-over Conduit shows Static's tooltip; [expand type=details](Image may take a moment to load.)
[/expand]
Holding down the Alt key while mousing-over Electropulse shows Lightning Blast's tooltip; [expand type=details](Image may take a moment to load.)
[/expand]
We're Updating the Character Selection Screen in Patch 0.8.1!
Starting in Patch 0.8.1, your characters will show their currently equipped gear when clicked on in the character selection screen! Well be releasing Patch 0.8.1 later this month.
Dual wielders represent! This change should make it more convenient to tell your characters apart straight away, which will gradually get even easier as we continue to add additional 3d models for equipment.
Dont they look amaging? We plan to update the appearance of the character selection screen itself in a later update.
[ 2021-02-02 21:00:41 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
We're Updating the Character Selection Screen in Patch 0.8.1!
Starting in Patch 0.8.1, your characters will show their currently equipped gear when clicked on in the character selection screen! Well be releasing Patch 0.8.1 later this month.
Dual wielders represent! This change should make it more convenient to tell your characters apart straight away, which will gradually get even easier as we continue to add additional 3d models for equipment.
Dont they look amaging? We plan to update the appearance of the character selection screen itself in a later update.
Another Phase 4 Item Approaches: Tooltip DPS!
One of the most commonly requested items from our Early Access Forecast, Tooltip DPS is coming soon to a video game near you! Today weve prepared a few early looks at our updated tooltips. In addition to incorporating more information into them, weve taken the opportunity to drastically improve the appearance of our skill tooltips. We know that a lot of you like to Spin to Win, so well be focusing on Warpath. Heres a look at how Warpaths tooltip is currently expected to be in Patch 0.8.1;
Been a while since you've played? Click here to see Warpath's tooltip as of 0.8d; [expand type=details]
[/expand] Our new tooltips pack different pieces of information into seperate sections, which makes quickly scanning them to find a specific detail quicker and more convenient. Weve also invested more time into their design to bring them up to the level of our item tooltips. Sticking with Warpath, lets hold down the Alt key in Patch 0.8.1;
Want another Patch 0.8d screenshot to compare? Here ya go; [expand type=details]
[/expand] Just as is currently possible, in Patch 0.8.1 youll be able to hold down the Alt key to see more details that arent visible by default. This, too, should be clearer due to both our new tooltip layout as well as each relevant attribute showing by how much they increase your damage. We hope youre looking forward to Patch 0.8.1 as much as we are! steamhappy
[ 2021-01-25 21:00:39 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
Another Phase 4 Item Approaches: Tooltip DPS!
One of the most commonly requested items from our Early Access Forecast, Tooltip DPS is coming soon to a video game near you! Today weve prepared a few early looks at our updated tooltips. In addition to incorporating more information into them, weve taken the opportunity to drastically improve the appearance of our skill tooltips. We know that a lot of you like to Spin to Win, so well be focusing on Warpath. Heres a look at how Warpaths tooltip is currently expected to be in Patch 0.8.1;
Been a while since you've played? Click here to see Warpath's tooltip as of 0.8d; [expand type=details]
[/expand] Our new tooltips pack different pieces of information into seperate sections, which makes quickly scanning them to find a specific detail quicker and more convenient. Weve also invested more time into their design to bring them up to the level of our item tooltips. Sticking with Warpath, lets hold down the Alt key in Patch 0.8.1;
Want another Patch 0.8d screenshot to compare? Here ya go; [expand type=details]
[/expand] Just as is currently possible, in Patch 0.8.1 youll be able to hold down the Alt key to see more details that arent visible by default. This, too, should be clearer due to both our new tooltip layout as well as each relevant attribute showing by how much they increase your damage. We hope youre looking forward to Patch 0.8.1 as much as we are! steamhappy
New Year, New Patch, New Mods!
To start 2021 with a , Patch 0.8.1 will introduce significant itemization changes! Among these will be new modifiers which raise the maximum level of skills. These modifiers will be available on a range of item rarities. Here are previews of an upcoming unique and a class-specific piece of rare gear;
Please note these are in the design phase and may be subject to additional balance passes.
[ 2021-01-14 18:45:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved in the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official forum!
New Year, New Patch, New Mods!
To start 2021 with a , Patch 0.8.1 will introduce significant itemization changes! Among these will be new modifiers which raise the maximum level of skills. These modifiers will be available on a range of item rarities. Here are previews of an upcoming unique and a class-specific piece of rare gear;
Please note these are in the design phase and may be subject to additional balance passes.
Year in Review: How Last Epoch Grew in 2020
[ 2021-01-01 18:05:53 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers!
Today our Game Director, Judd Cobler, is taking a moment to reflect on the last year - as well as looking forward to everything coming in 2021. You can find his post on Last Epoch's official forum, here.
And - from all of us at Eleventh Hour Games - HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Patch 0.9 and Multiplayer Are Coming Next Year
[ 2020-12-18 20:51:05 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers! Today our Game Director, Judd Cobler, is providing an update on our progress towards incorporating mutliplayer in the builds we release to the community. This post includes new information on how multiplayer will work as well as a recently recorded video of us playing multiplayer internally. You can find it on our official forum here. Thank you for all of your support! We're as excited to release multiplayer to you as you are to play it. Until then, we hope you enjoy the festive season and stay safe. We'll be in touch again soon!
Beta 0.8d Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-12-15 18:14:03 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
Dancing Strikes
- Graceful Arena grants 25% increased damage (from 10% more damage).
- Rhythm grants 10% increased damage (from 5% more damage).
- Resolute Technique grants 15% increased damage (from 10% more damage).
- Windmill Ballet now grants 30% Shuriken Chance (from 25%).
Detonating Arrow
- Fixed a bug where Suckerpunch Arrow node did not provide any area increase.
- Fixed a bug where Weak Spot gave increased crit multi rather than added crit multi.
- Weak Spot grants 6% added crit multi (from 10% stated).
- Gift of the Ice grants 80% freeze rate multi (from 60%).
Puncture
- While using a Bow, Puncture now deals 5% less damage for each enemy it pierces (up to 20% less damage). The first enemy hit still takes full damage, and this effect is multiplicative with skill tree nodes which impact hit damage.
Shadow Daggers
- Increased base damage and added damage effectiveness by 20%.
- Now gains 4% increased damage per point of Dexterity.
- Added throwing and melee tags to the skill.
Shift
- Jagged Arrows grants 10% crit multi (from 15%).
- Velocity grants 25% increased damage (from 10% more damage).
- Head Trauma grants 15% increased damage (from 8% more damage).
- Braskula's Hesitation grants 50% increased damage (from 15% more damage).
- Fixed a bug where Sleight of Hand could remove the damage bonus from Shurikens Keen Throw node for all Chakrams thrown by the player.
Shurikens
- Fixed a bug where Keen Throw gave much more damage than intended to Chakrams.
Synchronized Strike
- Fixed a bug where Dark Allies could allow you to have more Shadows than intended.
Thorn Totem
- The Memories of Eterra node now only restores mana if the totem was summoned directly (i.e. not via effects such as Chance to Summon a Thorn Totem on Hit).
Items
- Fixed a bug where certain types of normal enemies would not drop items in level 1 to 49 areas. This had no effect on level 50+ areas, magic enemies, rare enemies, breakables, or chests.
- Reduced the number of items dropped by 6 outlier rare enemies that dropped far more items than intended:
- Ice Goliaths
- Marsh Beetle Queens
- Umbral Pursuers
- Void Horrors
- Meruna Ogres
- Siege Golems
- Increased the number of items dropped by Infernal Husks and Osprix Vanguards.
- Daggers can no longer have Increased Void Damage and roll Added Melee Void Damage much more rarely.
- Less Damage Taken from Critical Strikes can no longer roll on bows.
User Interface
- The quest tracker on the right side of the screen now only shows 6 quests at a time to avoid text overlapping issues. There is a note stating to open the quest journal (J) to view other quests.
- The current Chapter is now shown when the Menu is open (Esc).
Sound
- Added new sounds for receiving, progressing and completing quests.
- Added a new sound for levelling up.
- Added a new sound for Shield Throw.
- Reduced the volume of arrow hit sounds that occur close to the player.
Visuals
- Updated the visuals for Healing Hands.
- Added a destruction animation to a type of barrel that didnt have one.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where characters who had reached the Enter the Sanctum Bastille objective of the Ruined Temple quest before Beta 0.8 was released were unable to enter the Sanctum Bastille in Beta 0.8.
- Fixed an additional issue causing bosses to sometimes spawn out of bounds in the Volcanic City Monolith of Fate layout.
- Fixed causes of player movement input lag in situations with lots of minions and/or enemies.
- Fixed the new Gladiators Oath unique not dropping as intended.
- Fixed Mourningfrost not granting added cold damage to throwing or bow attacks.
- Fixed multiple animations for the Primalist being bugged while wielding a staff.
- Fixed an Osprix Lightmage in Liaths Tower aggroing on the player immediately rather than waiting for the player to approach.
- Fixed a bug where Blessing comparison tooltips could become stuck on the screen in some situations.
- Fixed an incorrect range on the Increased Damage While Wielding a Bow affix (was 31-25% at T2, is now 31-35%).
- Fixed or improved the consistency of the names of several affixes.
Beta 0.8c Release and Patch Notes
If you are a new user since the release of Beta 0.8 you will now need to register an account with Beta 0.8c. You will be presented a registration screen upon entering the game after the update. This will not affect any saved data.
Lethal Mirage
[ 2020-12-10 17:29:50 CET ] [ Original post ]
Note: Last Epoch requires a Last Epoch account for all users.
If you are a new user since the release of Beta 0.8 you will now need to register an account with Beta 0.8c. You will be presented a registration screen upon entering the game after the update. This will not affect any saved data.
Social Features
- The updates to social features (chat, friends, etc) mentioned in the Beta 0.8 Patch Notes are now available. Weve also made some additional adjustments according to feedback from our Opt-In Testing for Beta 0.8b.
Skills
Lethal Mirage
- Sundering Blows now grants 2% more damage per stack of bleed per point, and has a maximum effect of 30% more damage per point.
- Clarified the description of Barrage of Pain to specify that it adds on to Bow Mastery, using the same buff icon.
- Shadow Cacades tags now correctly update to add Throwing and/or remove Melee depending on the nodes taken.
- Shift (and its nodes) no longer states that it leaves a smoke trail. This mechanic was removed during development.
- The Blade Shield node for Shurikens no longer states that the effect stacks. Stacking was removed during development due to power concerns.
Items
- Several uniques added in Beta 0.8 can now be obtained. They were disabled from dropping by mistake.
- The Chance to Summon Bees with Acid Flask idol affix now only summons a single bee at a time and has reduced values.
User Interface
- The basic attack DPS entry in the character sheet is now calculated using Bow stats when you have a bow equipped.
Visuals
- Updated Holy Aura visuals.
- Updated Forge Strike visuals.
- Updated blood visuals for Blood Chimeras, Blood Scorpions and others.
Sound
- The Rogue says her skill on cooldown voice line less often.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed objectives spawning out of bounds in the Volcanic City Monolith layout.
- Fixed the minimap in Volcanic City not matching the layout of the level.
- Fixed a bug preventing any nodes from being taken on Snap Freeze. Players will receive a free respec for Snap Freeze due to the fix.
- Fixed a bug where Synchronized Strikes Shadow Infusion node was increasing radius per Shadow consumed, rather than increasing area as intended. This will make the overall area of effect of the skill with this node much smaller.
- Fixed a bug where Hail of Arrows could apply damaging ailments to allies in some situations.
- Fixed the Rogue passive Lethal Cadence not scaling with points allocated.
- Fixed some node connections on the Lethal Mirage tree only working in one direction.
- Added a failsafe to prevent items getting deleted when switching a bow for another type of weapon with a full inventory.
- Fixed a bug where Dancing Strikes 3rd hit could not proc any on hit effects, such as applying ailments.
- Fixed a bug preventing movement across a vine bridge in The Ancient Cavern.
- Fixed music not changing in the Tomb of Morditas.
- Fixed the animations for Moss Trolls being timed incorrectly.
- Fixed a bug where the dropdowns for various graphics settings did not load properly the first time the game was started.
- Fixed graphical issues related to setting Reflections to Very Low.
- Fixed class names not fitting on one line in the Ladder window.
- Fixed the chance to slow on bow hit affix having an incorrect name.
- Fixed various spelling mistakes.
[EDIT: Rolled Back] Beta 0.8b Patch Notes
[ 2020-12-06 19:26:01 CET ] [ Original post ]
Systems
- Re-enabled multiple social systems that had been temporarily disabled alongside the release of Patch 0.8, such as our new chat system & the leaderboards.
- This may result in needing to accept the Terms of Use, link a Last Epoch account to your Steam account, or log into your Last Epoch account again.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug preventing God Hunter Argentus from spawning in the Monolith of Fate.
- We have resolved the issue of cosmetic pets being unavailable for the majority of players.
Known Issues
- The overlay map opacity might have been adjusted for users.
- Changes to this setting should work as normal.
- If you attempt to drag and equip a non-bow weapon to replace your bow when you have a bow and quiver equipped, the item may be deleted. This will also be resolved in Patch 0.8c.
- The See Supporter Packs button in the game menu is currently not functioning correctly, and opens a file explorer window instead of going to the website.
Beta 0.8 Release and Patch Notes
Chapter 4
These improvements will be coming in a small patch shortly after 0.8 is released. Social features are currently disabled. Chat
Aura of Decay
Primalist
New Item Types
New Items
Item Drops
Screen Shake
[ 2020-12-04 18:30:45 CET ] [ Original post ]
https://youtu.be/xzgPEpCZyj4
Rogue
- The 5th base class for Last Epoch is now available! Highlights include:
- 2 mastery classes: Bladedancer and Marksman
- 17 skills and specialization trees
- 46 class-specific affixes for body armour and helmets and 50 Idol affixes
- Unique character model, animations and voice acting
Rogue Skills
Base Class
- Flurry - A bow or melee attack that performs 3 rapid strikes. The last strike can be cancelled by moving. Unlocked at character level 1.
- Shurikens - A throwing attack that launches 3 shurikens in a cone in front of you. Can be repeated by Shadows. Unlocked at character level 2.
- Shift - A short, fixed-distance dash with a 3 second cooldown and quick animation. Unlocked at character level 3.
- Acid Flask - Throw a flask of acid that explodes on impact, poisoning enemies and shredding their armor. Unlocked at character level 4.
- Puncture - An extended melee stab or piercing bow attack that has a 30% chance to inflict bleed on hit. Bleeds inflicted by Puncture have 30% increased duration. Unlocked at character level 5.
- Cinder Strike - Melee or bow combo with three attacks. The first attack creates a large fiery explosion, followed by two rapid smaller attacks. Unlocked at character level 10.
- Smoke Bomb - Drop a Smoke Bomb at your feet that blinds enemies and grants you haste while you remain inside it. The Cloud of Smoke lasts 4 seconds and grows in size over its duration. Unlocked at 5 points into Rogue passives.
- Decoy - Throw a device to create a decoy that taunts enemies around it for 3 seconds before exploding. Unlocked at 10 points into Rogue passives.
- Ballista - Summons a ballista that fires bolts at nearby enemies. Ballistae have 1000 base health, last 10 seconds by default, and are poor at drawing enemy aggro. Unlocked at 15 points into Rogue passives.
Bladedancer
- Dancing Strikes - A combo of 4 different melee strikes that move you forward as you use them. Requires dual wielding. Unlocked by selecting Bladedancer as your Mastery Class.
- Shadow Cascade - A large circular melee attack that's also repeated by your Shadows. Requires dual wielding. Unlocked at 5 points into Bladedancer passives.
- Synchronized Strike - Jump forward and strike in an area in front of you while Shadows appear and simultaneously strike on either side of you, then persist afterwards. Requires a melee weapon. Unlocked at 10 points into Bladedancer passives.
- Lethal Mirage - Leap forward and disappear for a duration, becoming invulnerable while mirages rapidly strike nearby targets. Unlocked at 30 points into Bladedancer passives.
Marksman
- Detonating Arrow - Fires a lightning arrow that embeds itself in a target then explodes after a short duration. All added bow damage is converted to lightning. Unlocked by selecting Marksman as your Mastery Class.
- Multishot - A bow attack that fires a cone of 5 arrows in the target direction. Aiming the cursor further from your character reduces the spread. Unlocked at 5 points into Marksman passives.
- Dark Quiver - Summons 7 Black Arrows that rain from the sky around you over 4 seconds, retrieving one grants 100% increased damage to your next bow attack. Unlocked at 10 points into Marksman passives.
- Hail of Arrows - Launch a hail of arrows into the sky that rain down on the target location over 3.5 seconds, dealing damage over time. Unlocked at 30 points into Marksman passives.
- Dual Wielding
- Dual wielding can now be enabled for multiple classes by taking a passive node which allows you to equip specific kinds of weapons in your offhand. You can still equip any weapon you like in your main hand.
- Primalists can wield axes or swords in their offhand after taking a passive node.
- Rogues can wield daggers or swords in their offhand after taking a passive node.
- Sentinels can wield swords in their offhand after taking a passive node.
- Spellblades can wield swords in their offhand after taking a passive node.
Campaign
Chapter 4
- Completely overhauled the 3 ruined era temple zones: The Temple of Eterra, The Lotus Halls, and The Sanctum Bastille.
- Each temple zone has a brand new layout, visuals, and quests.
- There is now a notification at the top of the screen whenever a new chapter starts.
- Upgraded visuals in the zones adjacent to the Temple of Eterra: The Courtyard and The Outcast Camp.
- Removed the cinematic camera movement in The Council Chambers.
Social Features
These improvements will be coming in a small patch shortly after 0.8 is released. Social features are currently disabled. Chat
- Improved stability.
- You can now whisper players by typing /w [username], and reply to whispers sent to you by typing /r.
- You can now choose to display All messages or only Whispers by clicking on a dropdown at the top of the chat box.
- Right clicking on a username in chat allows you to whisper, friend, or block that player.
- Improved stability.
- The Social window (H) allows you to manage or view your friend list, set and view status messages, and block players.
- You now receive a notification on the left side of the screen when a friend request is received. This can be disabled in the Social tab of the Settings window.
- Selecting Remember Me on the Login screen allows you to login without re-entering your password for subsequent sessions on the Standalone client.
Skill Balance
Aura of Decay
- Absence of Life heals for 3% of missing health (from 2%).
- Inoculation grants 5% less poison damage taken (from 2%), but can have 4 points allocated (from 5).
- Respite grants 50% increased health regen on deactivation (from 40%) and now also grants 15% poison resistance while in Aura of Decay.
- Illusion of Pain's crit and damage bonuses now only apply to instances of Bone Curse applied directly by the Bone Curse spell, and not to instances applied by other skills via the Cursed Limbs node.
- Initial hit deals 25% more damage.
- Summon Frenzy Totem now has a cooldown of 6 seconds (from 6.2 seconds).
- Frenzy Totems have 100 base health (from 60) and gain 5 health per attunement and character level (from 3).
- Summon Storm Totem now has a 3 second cooldown (from 8 seconds).
- Storm Totems have 100 base health (from 60 stated, 80 actual) and gain 5 health per attunement and level (from 4).
- Characters with Thorn Totem specialized will receive a free respec for its tree.
- Summon Thorn Totem no longer has a cooldown.
- Rotten Core now creates a burst that poisons on hit, rather than a poison cloud that lingers.
- Rotten Core now grants 100% chance (from 25%), but can have 1 point allocated (from 4) and requires 3 points in Lasting Affliction (from 1).
- Lasting Affliction can have 4 points allocated (from 3) and requires 2 points in Venom Tipped Thorns (from 3).
- Forested Expanse no longer grants an additional charge, but only increases mana cost by 25% (from 40%), and can have 4 points allocated (from 3).
- Grove Mind no longer increases cooldown duration, reduces charges, or reduces summoning speed, but it now reduces maximum totems by 1 and adds 15 to mana cost per additional totem summoned.
- Frenetic Attunement increases summoning speed by 10% (from 17%).
- Eternal Forest now also grants totems 15% more health, but only increases duration by 1 second (from 3) and requires 2 points in Forested Expanse (from 1).
- Totemic Wisdom grants 15% mana efficiency (from 35%).
- Switched the positions of Totemic Wisdom and Memories of Eterra.
- Memories of Eterra no longer increases cooldown recovery speed, but instead grants mana when a totem dies. It can have 3 points allocated (from 5).
- Fixed a bug where Frost Attunement did not increase freeze rate per point of attunement.
- Glancing Blow now reduces damage taken by 35% (from 50%).
- Levelling up now fully restores your health and mana.
Passives
Primalist
- Primalists will receive a free respec for their passive tree.
- Added a node that allows you to dual wield by equipping an axe or sword in your offhand
- Tempestborn and Thorn Bond have been replaced by a new node that increases physical, cold, and lightning damage and whose effect is doubled while you have an active minion.
- Hunter's Restoration now restores 8 health (from 6) and also grants 2% increased health.
- Berserker reduces damage taken on low health by 5% per point (from 6%).
- Added a node that allows you to dual wield by equipping a sword in your offhand
- Removed Retaliation (increased damage, doubled if blocked recently)
- Iron Mastery can have 8 points allocated (from 5)
- Fixed a bug where Iron Mastery granted on kill was more powerful than Iron Mastery granted when hit.
- Added a Spellblade-exclusive node that allows you to dual wield by equipping a sword in your off hand.
- Endgame
- Monolith of Fate
- Bosses in non-quest echoes deal 10% more damage and have 12% more health.
- Husk of Elder Pannion no longer uses teleports or dashes in the Monolith of Fate. This is to resolve a bug where he could get stuck in walls, making the Echo impossible to complete.
Arena
- Added Golden Arena Keys, which allow you to start the Arena at wave 80.
- Dropped instead of a regular Arena Key from the Arena Reward Chest when you abandon a run after 80+ waves.
- Occasionally dropped from rare enemies in level 90+ timelines if you have conquered at least 15 echoes in that run.
- The chance of getting an arena key from the Arena Reward Chest when abandoning a run now scales with the number of waves completed. You always get a key if you completed at least 65 waves.
- The maximum pack size multiplier has been reduced by 10%.
- The maximum movement speed multiplier has been increased by 8%.
- Improved loading times.
- The Arena now starts with a random arena zone, rather than always starting with the Woodland Arena.
- Can no longer have the same enemy type spawn for two waves in a row.
- Zone changes every 10 waves (from every 15).
- Can no longer have the same layout twice in a row.
- Now plays a random music track from a pool rather than a fixed track in each arena zone.
Items
New Item Types
- Added Daggers as an item type, with 11 subtypes.
- Added Bows as an item type, with 11 subtypes. Bows are currently Rogue-specific.
- Added Quivers as an item type for use as an off-hand with bows. 8 subtypes exist.
- Some non-class specific item types are now more common for certain classes. This does not affect uniques or affect the total number of items dropped.
- Bows and Quivers very rarely drop for non-Rogue classes, as they can only be equipped by Rogues.
- Catalysts rarely drop for Primalists, Sentinels, and Rogues.
- Two Handed Maces and Axes are now as common as other item types for Primalists and Sentinels, but half as common for other classes (from being 25% less common than other item types for all classes).
- Daggers are half as common as other item types for Primalists and Sentinels.
- Reduced the implicit block effectiveness of all shields.
- Reduced the value of the block effectiveness affix (especially below T6).
- Reduced block chance of the Heater Shield, Tower Shield, and Kite Shield.
- Chance to Chill Attackers no longer rolls on body armour, helmets, or gloves (it now only rolls on shields and catalysts), and its values are about 80% higher.
- Chance to Slow Attackers no longer rolls on rings, belts, or boots (it now only rolls on shields and catalysts), and its values are about 80% higher.
- Chance to Shock Attackers no longer rolls on relics (it now only rolls on shields and catalysts), and its values are about 20% higher.
- Most class specific affixes now spawn on helmets and body armour 80% more frequently.
- Most affixes on two handed weapons are 19% more powerful (with the exception of all attributes and less damage taken from crits).
- Most affixes on one handed weapons are 17% more powerful.
- Most affixes on catalysts and shields are 17% more powerful (with the exception of shield specific affixes, such as block chance).
- Added melee void damage has lower values than before at T1 to T4, but higher values at T6 and T7.
- Other added melee damage affix values are higher, but not as much higher as other affixes on weapons, before T6 and T7 (for which they have a similar increase to other affixes).
- Hybrid affixes that previously reduced mana cost by a fixed amount now have greater mana cost reduction at T6 and T7
- The Acolytes Insatiable idol affix now grants a chance to cast Marrow Shards after using Transplant, rather than a chance to use Soul Feast. This benefits from your Marrow Shards tree (it did not benefit from your Soul Feast tree).
- Added a new affix for Acolyte body armour and helmets with the same effect as the above.
- Slightly increased the value of increased stun chance and increased melee stun chance affixes.
- Increased stun chance can now also roll on gloves, but it is rarer on gloves than it is on weapons.
- Slightly increased the power of bleed chance, ignite chance, slow chance, blind chance, chill chance, poison chance and shock chance affixes.
- Shock chance now rolls more frequently on sceptres and staves (to match its heightened frequency on wands).
Uniques
New Items
- Added 8 new unique items.
- Added a new 3-piece set.
- Now grants 75% to 100% chance to gain a stack of Reen's Ire on melee crit (chance above 100% has no effect), instead of always granting a stack per Eye of Reen equipped.
- Fixed a bug where the roll for melee fire damage and melee ignite chance was always the same (e.g. if you had max melee fire damage you would also have max melee ignite chance).
Enemies
Item Drops
- Rare enemies now always drop at least one rare item.
- Increased item drop rate from rarity can now also increase the number of items dropped.
- Slightly reduced the default item drop chance of enemies.
- Rare enemies no longer get a universal multiplier to their maximum health. The health of rare enemies with lower base health is now increased more than the health of rare enemies with higher base health.
- Reduced how much rare enemy health scaling increases with area level.
- Rare enemies deal slightly more damage.
- The aim of these changes is to avoid rares that are killed too quickly for their modifiers to have any effect, while also avoiding rares that take far too long to kill.
- Magic enemies no longer get a universal multiplier to their maximum health. The health of magic enemies with lower base health is now increased more than the health of magic enemies with higher base health. This results in most magic enemies having more health than before.
- Increased Void Cultist health by 55%.
- Increased Silent Disciple health by 59%.
- Increased Void Prophet health by 61%.
- Increased Bloated Husk health by 71%.
- Reduced Voidwing Nest health by 22%.
- Archyreans now always spawn as rare enemies.
- Roar now shreds fire resistance.
- 11% less health.
- 15% increased melee attack speed.
- 25% more fire damage.
- 25% less delay between preparing and releasing fire breath.
- Reduced the duration of lightning areas on the ground to 35 seconds (from 65 seconds).
- Increased lightning beam damage by 15%.
- Enemies above level 60 now deal slightly more damage, up to 6.4% at level 100.
Visuals
Screen Shake
- Fixed a serious bug where if a screen shake effect was in progress any new screen shake effects would increase its remaining duration, but not change its intensity or start a new screen shake effect.
- New screen shake effects will replace existing ones if the new effect is of higher intensity, or wait until the current effect has ended if it is of lower intensity. The new event will have the same end time in either situation.
- The intensity of screen shake has been increased to help make combat feel more impactful now that bugs with the system have been resolved.
- Added a new tier of armor models for Acolytes. Existing items have been updated to use the new visuals.
- Updated the Acolytes appearance on the character select screen to use the new set of armor models.
- Updated the visuals for Holy Aura.
- Added a new ground crack effect to Shield Rush.
User Interface
- Updated the games logo.
- The range for implicits on items is now shown in the Loot Filter.
- Implemented tooltips to explain when Masteries are unlocked in the Passives window.
- Substantially updated the design of item tooltips.
- Updated the design for skill and passive tooltips.
- Improved elements and backgrounds for many different pieces of the user interface.
- Fixed many cases of poor quality / jagged images in the user interface, particularly items.
- Health bars above the heads of the player, minions and enemies now have a glow at the end of them. The experience bar also has a similar glow.
- Claw Totems now share a single icon in the top left of the screen rather than having an icon for each totem.
Sound
- Added 2 new music tracks for the Temple of Eterra.
- Updated sounds for selecting a class on the character creation screen.
- Added a new sound for Abyssal Sundering.
- The sound effects for Soul Spear and Seeking Soul now follow the projectile, rather than emanating from where the skill was cast.
- Updated sounds for the Temple Guardian.
- Improved sound timing for the melee attacks of Devoured Husks.
Optimization
- Optimized shadows. This achieved a 6 FPS average gain across the game.
- There are now shadows present on the Very Low setting as they have minimal performance impact now.
- Added a "Detail Shadows" option, which can be unticked for further performance improvements if desired.
Bug Fixes
Mechanics
- Fixed various targeting/control issues
- Targeting a wall with Warpath now makes you spin towards the wall rather than spin on the spot.
- Targeting off the edge of a map with no floor with Warpath now makes you spin towards the cursor.
- Targeting other skills off the edge of a map with no floor now targets the cursor at the height of the player.
- These bugs were particularly prevalent in the Lagon boss fight.
- Fixed a bug where minimap progress was not saved when re-entering a zone.
- Fixed Shock not having less effect against players.
Skills
- Fixed a bug where ailment chances granted from places outside of a skills tree would not apply to sub-skills it created (i.e. ignite chance on a wand did not apply to Volcanic Orbs Shrapnel).
- Fixed a bug where skills that inherently modified ailments (such as Serpent Strikes increased poison duration) did not modify ailments granted from outside their skill trees.
- Fixed a bug where skills that were supposed to be unable to apply specific ailments could apply those ailments if you had a stat that gave you a chance to apply them.
- Fixed a bug where the cooldown for a skill would not be shown when viewing its tooltip in the skills panel unless you had equipped it.
- Fixed a bug where Arcane Ascendance's duration was refreshed each time you cast a spell with the Acuity node taken.
- Fixed a bug where Enchant Weapons Conduit node would not work unless Thundering was also taken, and triggered less often than intended when Thundering was taken.
- Fixed a bug where Eterra's Blessing's Embolden node did not increase the damage of your next spell.
- Fixed a bug where Flame Ward's Infusion and Through Flames nodes did not apply their damage bonus to the Fire Aura created by Flame Ward.
- Fixed a bug where Firebrands Exothermic and Hypothermic nodes doubled the effects of Incineration, causing a greater damage buff than intended.
- Fixed a bug where Rebukes Burst of Speed node did not increase attack or cast speed (it did increase movement speed and still does).
- Fixed Rive's Assassin's Sustenance node granting 0.5% health leech per point instead of the intended 5% health leech per point.
- Fixed a bug where Shatter Strikes Cold Steel node did not apply when a two-handed sword was equipped.
- Fixed a bug where Skeleton Pyromancers had double the intended cast speed with fireball.
- Fixed a bug where Skeleton Pyromancers could not receive extra projectiles from the Splintered Dominion node.
- Fixed a bug where Spirit Plague's Enfeeblement node did not cause Spirit Plague to apply any Frailty.
Items
- Fixed a bug where Implicit values for items in the gambler could be shown before purchase by using the compare function.
- Fixed a bug where the Sentinels affixes that relied on having a certain weapon equipped (such as Melee Physical Damage If Wielding A Sword) did not display correctly until you switched weapons.
- Fixed a bug where the Mages affixes for Increased Fire Aura Damage did not work.
- Fixed a bug where the tidal waves from Alluvion would shoot out at odd angles based on cursor position.
- Fixed the display name of the Primalist Totem Cast Speed affix.
Enemies
- Fixed a bug where the Husk of Elder Pannions cold dash ability could leave him in an inaccessible location in The Lower District.
- Fixed a bug introduced in 0.7.10 where enemies with natural resistances had much higher resistance values than intended. This did not affect resistance monster suffixes.
- Fixed the damage indicator for delayed void novas from Voidfire Maggots, Void Cultists, and Otra'Ek The Survivor disappearing before the damage was dealt.
- Possibly fixed a bug where twinned enemies could create an immortal twin if a single instance of damage took them from above 50% health to below 0%.
Levels
- Fixed multiple cases of items dropping out of bounds in Imperial Welryn and Ruined Welryn
- Fixed projectiles failing in Erzas Library.
- Fixed a bug preventing projectiles from being used at the end of The Nomad Camp.
- Fixed the quest pulse for finding alternate paths in the Ending the Storm timeline pointing to the wrong location.
- Starting the Immortal Empires End quest after failing it previously now skips the Soul Repository step. This bypasses a bug where quest pulses did not show up properly.
- Fixed a bug where you could walk through a fence in Travelers Camp.
- Fixed a bug where some of the scenery in The Lower Sewer would flicker.
- Fixed a graphical error with a tree in Etendell.
Visuals
- Fixed a bug where the visuals of the Character Select screen would break if you changed graphics settings before entering the game.
- Fixed a bug where bloom was disabled for some users.
- Fixed a bug where Death Seals activation visual would play a second time if the skills duration was increased.
- Fixed a bug where Void Husks would not use walking animations after teleporting.
- Fixed a bug where the Enrage visual could appear on dead enemies.
- Fixed at least one source of a bug where the Stun visual effect would appear over dead enemies.
Patch Preview: Beta 0.8
This huge update includes new classes, new weapon and offhand types, dual wielding, and many improvements to existing aspects of the game. We cant wait to share it with you!
[ 2020-11-30 22:01:29 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved in the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official forum!
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Summary
This huge update includes new classes, new weapon and offhand types, dual wielding, and many improvements to existing aspects of the game. We cant wait to share it with you!
Highlights
Classes
- The Rogue base class will now be available for all players.
- The Marksman class mastery will be available for all players.
- The Bladedancer class mastery will also be available for all players.
Systems
- Dual wielding is here!
- To learn more about our plans for dual wielding, please see this Developer Blog.
Skills
- The Rogue base class will launch with 9 skills, each of which has a specialization tree.
- The Bladedancer class mastery will launch with 4 skills, each with a specialization tree.
- The Marksman class mastery also launches with 4 skills, each with a specialization tree
Items
- New Weapon Type: Bows are being implemented!
- New ranged weapons, bows allow those that wield them to strike from a distance.
- Were initially releasing 11 bases.
- Weve shown off some of the art for these items here.
- New Weapon Type: Patch 0.8 includes daggers!
- Daggers are one-handed melee weapons, iideal for those seeking to hit their foes critical weakpoints.
- Were including 11 dagger bases in this update.
- Weve posted some dagger models in this thread.
- New Offhand Type: Quivers are included in this update.
- No archers arsenal is complete without one!
- There are 8 bases coming in Patch 0.8.
- Some of the art for these can be seen here.
- Uniques: A number of new uniques are coming - including some Rogue-specific items.
- Item Sets: Introducing 1 new set named after Spymaster Zerrick. This new set focuses on melee & throwing attacks, and consists of a belt, a pair of gloves, and a pair of boots.
Level Design
- We are completely replacing the Temple of Eterra, and it is now one of the most visually impressive areas in the game.
Visuals
- Due to performance improvements, shadows are now shown at all setting configurations.
User Interface
- This update includes a wealth of improvements designed to further polish our UI assets.
- We are completely replacing the chat system.
Loot Filter
- Were updating the Loot Filter to support bows, daggers, and quivers.
Optimization
- Weve created new shaders for our shadows.
- In our testing this has resulted in an improvement of ~ 6 FPS in most zones.
- Adding a new advanced graphics option to disable some shadows.
- This setting is on by default. Turning it off boosts FPS by ~ 6 in most situations.
Rogue Reveal Teaser #2
[ 2020-11-27 20:59:46 CET ] [ Original post ]
A Rogue's work is never done. The right kill with the right blade might save this ruined future. Become the Rogue next Friday, December 4, 2020. https://youtu.be/m5g5pzgL5aQ
Bows, Quivers and Daggers Are Being Added to Last Epoch's Armory
[ 2020-11-26 00:19:25 CET ] [ Original post ]
Alongside the release of the Rogue and Dual Wielding comes the ability to wield bows, quivers and daggers. Our art team has been hard at work and is excited to showcase some of the new 2D and 3D models Eleventh Hour has created. If your preferred playstyle is to remain at a safe distance while raining down arrows or if it is to dive into dexterous melee combat you now have the perfect weapon for each scenario.
A few examples of bows coming in Patch 0.8
As you travel through Eterra, you will now come across a wide variety of bows and quivers. You will discover agile recurve bows, rigid longbows, the rare dreadthorn bows and many more.
A few examples of quivers coming in Patch 0.8
Should you be on the search for something a little more quick and nimble, fear not, your search is not in vain. During your adventure you will stumble upon daggers that were crafted for the sole purpose of making sacrifices, slaying beasts or quietly dispatching foes. And should you find yourself empty handed and in a tight spot, even a dagger made of bone or chitin would work just fine.
A few examples of daggers coming in Patch 0.8
And dont worry, well be adding new rogue idols to empower your Bladedancer or Marksman and also push unique builds!
[Developer Blog] Dual Wielding Coming to Last Epoch
[ 2020-11-25 00:12:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey, Travelers! Trasochi has posted our latest Developer Blog; Dual Wielding Coming to Last Epoch. Developer Blogs are when members of the team take a deep dive into a particular aspect of Last Epoch's design, explaining not just changes that will be made, but the reasoning behind those changes. This latest Developer Blog focuses on the ability to dual wield weapons in Patch 0.8. Unlike most of our posts, Developer Blogs are only available on the game's official forum. We sincerely hope you take the time to check out the post and leave us your feedback. We'll see you there!
Rogue Reveal Teaser #1
[ 2020-11-20 20:31:34 CET ] [ Original post ]
Coming from the shadows, a swift blade The Rogue accepts her next hit. Coming December 4, 2020. https://youtu.be/HTjmMXMA6BM
An Update to Mac Support
[ 2020-10-23 20:00:45 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings, Travelers! Since Apple's announcement of a transition away from Macs based on Intel CPUs using the x86-64 instruction set at WWDC earlier this year, we have been exploring what this means for us. Today our Game Director, Judd Cobler, has an update regarding our plans for the Mac platform. Here's a link to his announcement on Last Epoch's official forum; https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/an-update-to-mac-support/25871
Beta 0.7.10c Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-10-16 19:25:00 CET ] [ Original post ]
Missed the patch notes for 0.7.10? Read them on our official forum!
Loot Filter
- Rules can now be renamed, which will improve clarity when placing several rules of the same type next to each other.
- Improved the default names for several types of rules.
- The color picker now opens automatically when setting a rule to Recolor.
- The Loot Filter toggle key now only disables the Loot Filter while the key is being held down.
- Fixed an oversight preventing the lowest tier of body armour being available for rules.
Arena
- Pack density scales up to a 17% lower maximum and scales up 20% more slowly.
- Enemy movement speed scales up 25% more quickly, but the maximum is unchanged.
Enemies
- Fixed an oversight causing Magic/Rare enemy mod restrictions for the Arena applying to all enemies in the game.
- Mods that could not spawn in the arena such as "Fracturing", "Summoning", "Twinned" and the new "nearby allies take less damage" could not spawn at all.
- Mods that could not spawn on magic enemies in the arena, such as the new resistance shred mods, could not spawn on magic enemies at all.
- Resistance Shred mods cannot spawn on magic packs that have more than 4 enemies.
- The revives after two seconds mod can no longer spawn in the Arena.
- Giant Crabs no longer appear in such large numbers in the Monolith.
- Fixed an oversight where Void Horrors could not spawn in endgame.
Skills
Devouring Orb
- Abyssal Juggernaut no longer grants elemental resistance and can have a maximum of 5 points allocated (from 6). It still grants void resistance.
Firebrand
- The Charring, Kindling, and Inflame nodes now only apply to Firebrand, rather than globally. This was the originally intended functionality.
Items
- Improved the Tier 6 and Tier 7 values of all non-set resistance affixes. For example, T7 fire resistance can now roll up to 60% (from 45%).
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug that caused a high intensity and long duration screenshake if lots of different sources of screenshake happened rapidly. This was most common in the Husk of Elder Pannion fight.
- Added a failsafe to allow old characters to complete the Finding Pannion quest.
- Fixed a bug where switching weapons would unsummon companions.
- Fixed a bug where switching weapons during a combo ability would allow using a single part of the combo repeatedly.
- Fixed a bug where the Mage specific Chance To Shock On Hit With Lightning Skills affix could not roll on any items. It can now roll on mage specific helmets and body armour.
- Fixed a bug where the Sentinel specific Increased Smelters Wrath Damage affix could not roll on any items. It can now roll on sentinel specific helmets and body armour.
- Fixed the Void Knight's Temporal Corruption node not adding Void damage.
- Fixed Thorn Shield granting 20 armour rather than the stated 40.
- Fixed a bug where Rive had a fire icon displayed in the skills panel despite not being able to acquire the fire tag.
- Clarified several Infernal Shade node tooltips.
- Fixed some NPCs floating above the ground in Last Archive.
- Fixed an arch not fading out when it blocks the camera in Heorots Arena and Heorots Temple.
- Fixed NPCs having incorrect voice lines in Echo of a World and Gladiators Rest.
- Fixed ragdoll forces being identical for all enemies of a given type, leading to less randomization.
- Fixed Desert Skullen not having outlines when moused over.
Loot Filter Improvements Coming This Week
In Patch 0.7.10 we implemented Loot Filters, a Phase 4 item from our Early Access Forecast. Since releasing this patch we have been poring over your feedback to see what works well, what youd like to see improved, and what new functionality you want added. One area in which we saw a clear need for improvement was the default names for certain rule types. In an update were preparing to release in the very near future, these names have been updated to provide more information so they are more meaningful. Here are two examples of rule names generated in both Patch 0.7.10b, and Patch 0.7.10c;
Before & after comparisons showing rule name changes in Patch 0.7.10c. When initially designing our Loot Filters, we decided to make it as easy as possible for them to be shared between members of the community - and well have more news on this soon! While we were working to improve rule names we discussed ways to better accommodate those creating Loot Filters to share with others. Our solution to this is the introduction of custom rule names. These bring the added flexibility of being able to leave simple instructions to those using your Loot Filter, such as Show Other Classes' Exalted Items (Disable If Solo) or Hide Boots Without Movement Speed (Enable If Racing), right beside the checkbox that controls whether a rule is currently enabled. The aim is to facilitate some customization by the users of Loot Filters who wish to spend the least time looking at them.
Some rule names you might use yourself (or not). Thank you for your feedback, and please do keep it coming. Well be reading!
[ 2020-10-15 20:32:33 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved in the community? Join us on the official forum!
Loot Filter Improvements Coming This Week
In Patch 0.7.10 we implemented Loot Filters, a Phase 4 item from our Early Access Forecast. Since releasing this patch we have been poring over your feedback to see what works well, what youd like to see improved, and what new functionality you want added. One area in which we saw a clear need for improvement was the default names for certain rule types. In an update were preparing to release in the very near future, these names have been updated to provide more information so they are more meaningful. Here are two examples of rule names generated in both Patch 0.7.10b, and Patch 0.7.10c;
Before & after comparisons showing rule name changes in Patch 0.7.10c. When initially designing our Loot Filters, we decided to make it as easy as possible for them to be shared between members of the community - and well have more news on this soon! While we were working to improve rule names we discussed ways to better accommodate those creating Loot Filters to share with others. Our solution to this is the introduction of custom rule names. These bring the added flexibility of being able to leave simple instructions to those using your Loot Filter, such as Show Other Classes' Exalted Items (Disable If Solo) or Hide Boots Without Movement Speed (Enable If Racing), right beside the checkbox that controls whether a rule is currently enabled. The aim is to facilitate some customization by the users of Loot Filters who wish to spend the least time looking at them.
Some rule names you might use yourself (or not). Thank you for your feedback, and please do keep it coming. Well be reading!
Beta 0.7.10b Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-10-11 02:27:02 CET ] [ Original post ]
Missed the patch notes for 0.7.10? Read them on our official forum!
Changes
- Adjusted the dodge chance formula to grant slightly lower dodge chances at all levels, and cap at 75% rather than 80%.
- The Boss Temporary Resistance System no longer applies to bosses in randomized Monolith zones or the Arena. Bosses in these areas have had a small health increase to partially compensate.
- Slightly reduced how much enemy damage scales with area level.
- Ward gained on block now applies after damage is taken (so the ward is not instantly removed).
- Added a death sound for Abhorrent Slimes.
- Adjusted the volume for various NPC voices.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug causing game audio to not play and gameplay errors on macOS.
- Fixed a bug where various skills that normally apply multiple stat buffs were only applying a single buff. This Holy Aura and Summon Spriggan, as well as others.
- Fixed a bug where Lightning Blasts Focal Blast node would cause the skill to continue dealing damage after channeling stopped. This could stack.
- Fixed Warpath's Whirling Barrier granting far more Elemental Resistance than intended.
- Fixed Flame Ward's Prismatic Buffer reducing elemental damage rather than elemental damage taken.
- Fixed a bug where the connection between the Sonority and Fiery Abyss nodes on the Abyssal Echoes tree only worked one way.
- Fixed the Forge Guard's Battle Hardened node not giving physical resistance.
- Fixed Frostbite dealing less damage than intended.
- Fixed a bug where you could put different crafting items on top of each other in the crafting panel to change their type.
- Fixed an object blocking the camera in The Ulatri Cliffs.
- Fixed items dropping out of bounds in part of Imperial Welryn.
- Fixed a chest being inaccessible in Necropolis of the Deep.
- Fixed the town portal in Cultist Camp spawning in an incorrect location.
- Fixed certain visual effects projecting on top of the Void Amalgamation.
- The Damage Dealt to Mana affix is now listed under Mage Specific in the affix picker for Loot Filters.
- Fixed loading screen tooltips not being updated for 0.7.10 mechanics.
- Updated information on Fractures in the Game Guide.
- Fixed the formula for Armour mitigation not being shown in the Game Guide.
- Fixed the world map showing that Last Archive has a waypoint.
- Fixed a visual issues with a cliff in The Precipice.
- Fixed the music in Last Archive being incorrect.
- Fixed some minor typos.
Beta 0.7.10 Release and Patch Notes
Due to our content patches growing bigger over time, we can no longer fit the Patch Notes directly here on Steam. While we have previously been selecting sections to omit as a workaround - replacing those sections with links to where they could be found on our official forum - ultimately we think it makes the most sense to provide a link to where the Patch Notes can be found in their entirety. The Patch Notes can found here: https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/beta-0-7-10-patch-notes/25072 Patch Notes Table of Contents 1. Loot Filters 2. Campaign 3. Crafting 4. Skills 5. Item Sets 6. Uniques 7. Items 8. Mechanics Balance 9. Defense Systems 10. Monolith of Fate 11. Skill Balance 12. Passives 13. User Interface 14. Visuals 15. Sounds 16. Enemies 17. Optimization 18. Bug Fixes
[ 2020-10-07 16:00:51 CET ] [ Original post ]
[previewyoutube=HkA-4pG62lY;full][/previewyoutube] A Patch Overview video by Game Director Judd Cobler.
Patch 0.7.10 is now available on Windows and Linux!
Due to our content patches growing bigger over time, we can no longer fit the Patch Notes directly here on Steam. While we have previously been selecting sections to omit as a workaround - replacing those sections with links to where they could be found on our official forum - ultimately we think it makes the most sense to provide a link to where the Patch Notes can be found in their entirety. The Patch Notes can found here: https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/beta-0-7-10-patch-notes/25072 Patch Notes Table of Contents 1. Loot Filters 2. Campaign 3. Crafting 4. Skills 5. Item Sets 6. Uniques 7. Items 8. Mechanics Balance 9. Defense Systems 10. Monolith of Fate 11. Skill Balance 12. Passives 13. User Interface 14. Visuals 15. Sounds 16. Enemies 17. Optimization 18. Bug Fixes
Loot Filter Rules
Affixes are grouped into categories, each of which can be expanded but are collapsed by default. Each affix-based rule can be used to target one or more affixes.
Rules can target equipment with class requirements. As with other rules in Last Epoch's loot filters, these can be used to ether show or hide items matching the criteria.
Rules targeting items based on level requirements can be given either fixed levels, or can be offset by your character's current level. As such, these rules tend to lend themelves towards inclusion in Loot Filters shared alongside leveling guides.
Rarity-based rules function exactly as you would expect - allowing you to ensure either that all items of a certain rarity are hidden, or that you never miss an item of that rarity.
Rules focusing on item types can target either categories of items (e.g. two-handed weapons), types of weapons (e.g. two-handed axes), or base types (e.g. Cloven Axes).
[ 2020-10-07 00:01:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
In the Patch Preview we promised you a look at Loot Filter rules - so let's take a peek! Rules in Last Epoch's loot filters are based on one of a variety of conditions. In today's post we will be looking at each of the conditions a rule can be based on. All loot is shown by default - rules in Last Epoch's loot filters can be configured to either show, or hide, matching items.
Affix
Affixes are grouped into categories, each of which can be expanded but are collapsed by default. Each affix-based rule can be used to target one or more affixes.
Class Requirement
Rules can target equipment with class requirements. As with other rules in Last Epoch's loot filters, these can be used to ether show or hide items matching the criteria.
Level
Rules targeting items based on level requirements can be given either fixed levels, or can be offset by your character's current level. As such, these rules tend to lend themelves towards inclusion in Loot Filters shared alongside leveling guides.
Rarity
Rarity-based rules function exactly as you would expect - allowing you to ensure either that all items of a certain rarity are hidden, or that you never miss an item of that rarity.
Item Type
Rules focusing on item types can target either categories of items (e.g. two-handed weapons), types of weapons (e.g. two-handed axes), or base types (e.g. Cloven Axes).
[Developer Blog] Overhauling Defenses in Last Epoch
[ 2020-10-05 22:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey, Travelers! Trasochi has posted our latest Developer Blog; Overhauling Defenses in Last Epoch. Developer Blogs are when members of the team take a deep dive into a particular aspect of Last Epoch's design, explaining not just changes that will be made, but the reasoning behind those changes. This latest Developer Blog focuses on changes to items and class passives coming in Patch 0.7.8. Unlike most of our posts, Developer Blogs are only available on the game's official forum. We sincerely hope you take the time to check out the post and leave us your feedback. We'll see you there!
Firebrand: New Spellblade Skill Coming in Patch 0.7.10
Firebrands unspecialized tooltip
Heres some examples of nodes from Firebrands tree! Incineration (0/1) Your next melee attack, that is not Firebrand, consumes all stacks of Firebrand and deals more damage per stack consumed (multiplicative with other modifiers). Illuminating Fire (0/1) Consuming 3 or more stacks of Firebrand with Incineration guarantees a critical strike. Fumination (0/3) Firebrand attacks faster per stack of Firebrand, up to a maximum. Inferno (0/5) Stacks of Firebrand also grant Increased Fire Damage Over Time. Firebrand has a chance to inflict Spreading Flames when hitting an ignited enemy. (Spreading Flames deals Fire Damage Over Time and spreads to nearby enemies after half a second. Enemies cannot have multiple instances of Spreading Flames at once.) Brand of Arcanus (0/1) Stacks of Firebrand add Adaptive Spell Damage rather than Melee Fire Damage. Pyre (0/1) If Firebrand hits at least one enemy, it consumes 10 Mana to cast Flame Wave, a spell that deals Fire Damage in a line. Crossfire (0/3) You have global Ignite Chance per stack of Firebrand. Exothermic (0/3) Flame Reave consumes stacks of Firebrand to add Ignite Chance per stack consumed.
[ 2020-10-02 21:00:16 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum! Our next update, Patch 0.7.10, includes a new Spellblade skill! Firebrand is a high level Spellblade skill which can be used either as a primary damage skill or as a supporting ability woven into a build using other melee skills, with which it synergizes strongly.
Default Functionality
Firebrands unspecialized tooltip
The Specialization Tree
Heres some examples of nodes from Firebrands tree! Incineration (0/1) Your next melee attack, that is not Firebrand, consumes all stacks of Firebrand and deals more damage per stack consumed (multiplicative with other modifiers). Illuminating Fire (0/1) Consuming 3 or more stacks of Firebrand with Incineration guarantees a critical strike. Fumination (0/3) Firebrand attacks faster per stack of Firebrand, up to a maximum. Inferno (0/5) Stacks of Firebrand also grant Increased Fire Damage Over Time. Firebrand has a chance to inflict Spreading Flames when hitting an ignited enemy. (Spreading Flames deals Fire Damage Over Time and spreads to nearby enemies after half a second. Enemies cannot have multiple instances of Spreading Flames at once.) Brand of Arcanus (0/1) Stacks of Firebrand add Adaptive Spell Damage rather than Melee Fire Damage. Pyre (0/1) If Firebrand hits at least one enemy, it consumes 10 Mana to cast Flame Wave, a spell that deals Fire Damage in a line. Crossfire (0/3) You have global Ignite Chance per stack of Firebrand. Exothermic (0/3) Flame Reave consumes stacks of Firebrand to add Ignite Chance per stack consumed.
Patch Preview: Beta 0.7.10
Patch 0.7.9 implemented Monolith of Fate updates from Phase 4 of our Early Access Forecast, and Patch 0.7.10 includes Loot Filters from Phase 4. Our next update, Patch 0.8, will stick with the '4' theme, albeit in a different way - it features four items from Phase 3! (Multiplayer is still being tested internally and won't be included in our next update.)
[ 2020-10-01 17:06:06 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
Highlights
- Patch 0.7.10 includes Loot Filters! Our initial post about Loot Filters can be found here and provides an overview of the functionality we are working on implementing. We plan to publish an additional post focusing on the different types of rules.
- Patch 0.7.10 includes sweeping changes to defenses in Last Epoch, with Glancing Blows being repurposed, Protections being replaced by Resistances, and other changes. We are working on a Developer Blog to share with you in the near future.
- We've made significant changes to Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, as well as visually updating parts of Chapter 6. We have posted some before & after screenshots here.
Systems
- We are making changes to skill respecs to have them feel less punishing. We have provided an overview of these changes here.
- We're making changes to crafting. These include the introduction of 'Critical Successes' as a positive equivalent to Fractures, and the removal of Destructive Fractures. See this post for a brief introduction to Critical Successes.
Game Balance
- In the campaign dying during a boss fight will reset the fight.
- After dying to a boss during the campaign you now respawn at the boss instead of at the start of the zone.
Skills
- This patch adds Firebrand, a new Spellblade skill.
- This patch adds Infernal Shade, a new Acolyte skill which replaces Cremate.
- This patch adds Shield Bash, a new Sentinel skill.
- This patch removes Defile, Ice Ward, Manifest Weapon, and Molten Blade.
Animation
- All of the Acolyte's animations are being replaced.
User Interface
- In Patch 0.7.10 it will be possible to view the specialization trees of skills belonging to mastery classes that have not yet been unlocked. The Skills window will also show the damage types of skills, with currently inactive types included but greyed out. We have posted a sneak peek of these changes here.
Art
- Patch 0.7.10 includes a new set of armor models for the Acolyte class. We have posted concept art and a preview of the armor set here.
After This Patch
Patch 0.7.9 implemented Monolith of Fate updates from Phase 4 of our Early Access Forecast, and Patch 0.7.10 includes Loot Filters from Phase 4. Our next update, Patch 0.8, will stick with the '4' theme, albeit in a different way - it features four items from Phase 3! (Multiplayer is still being tested internally and won't be included in our next update.)
Last Epoch Is Now Live on IGDA's Indie Showcase & Dan From EHG Is Doing an AMA!
[ 2020-09-18 20:32:33 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey, Travelers! It's Last Epoch's turn in IGDA's Indie Showcase, live on Twitch's home page! They're streaming Last Epoch and Dan from Eleventh Hour Games is doing an AMA. Here's the link to the stream. Come say hi! https://www.twitch.tv/igda
See Us Tomorrow at the IDGA's Indie Showcase!
[ 2020-09-17 21:31:21 CET ] [ Original post ]
Last Epoch is being featured in tomorrow's Indie Showcase by the International Game Developers Assocation! The Indie Showcase begins at 12pm PT. Expect to see us around 1:30pm. They'll be streaming Last Epoch on Twitch, and we'll be participating in an AMA if you've any questions about either Last Epoch or Eleventh Hour Games. Catch it at https://www.twitch.tv/igda. We hope to see you there!
Visual Improvements Coming in Our Next Patch
Our next update, Patch 0.7.10, includes a number of changes which will improve the appearance of the game world. Were focusing our efforts on touching up some of the oldest areas in the game so that they reach the standard of our more recent content such as Chapter 8. The zones featured below are presented in the order in which you encounter them as you play through the game. The first four are from Chapter 2, while the last is from Chapter 6. Each screenshot is in 2560x1440 resolution.
[ 2020-09-16 23:00:20 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
Visual Improvements Coming in Our Next Patch
Our next update, Patch 0.7.10, includes a number of changes which will improve the appearance of the game world. Were focusing our efforts on touching up some of the oldest areas in the game so that they reach the standard of our more recent content such as Chapter 8. The zones featured below are presented in the order in which you encounter them as you play through the game. The first four are from Chapter 2, while the last is from Chapter 6. Each screenshot is in 2560x1440 resolution.
Last Refuge Outskirts
Current Appearance
Updated Appearance
Upper District
Current Appearance
Updated Appearance
The Armoury
Current Appearance
Updated Appearance
The Lower District
Current Appearance
Updated Appearance
The Upper Necropolis
Current Appearance
Updated Appearance
Shield Bash: New Sentinel Skill Coming in Patch 0.7.10
Shield Bashs unspecialized tooltip
Heres some examples of nodes from Shield Bashs tree! Double Bash (0/1) You gain an additional charge of Shield Bash, but it has a longer cooldown. Fusillade (0/1) Using Shield Bash consumes all charges and deals significantly more damage per charge consume (multiplicative with other modifiers). Hindrance (0/3) Shield Bash now also slows enemies on hit. Staggering Punch (0/3) Shield Bash now also knocks enemies back, if Shield Bash has a cooldown. Rebounding (0/1) Your next Shield Throw can ricochet 5 additional times after using Shield Bash. Conjurer (0/1) Shield Bash has a chance to cause one enemy to drop a potion if Shield Bash has a cooldown. Dazed (0/5) Stuns caused by Shield Bash last longer. Wall of Shields (0/1) If Shield Bash is used while Ring of Shields is active, the shields form a wall which increases the width of Shield Bash, based on the number of active shields.
Shield Bashs default visual effect
Shield Bash specialized with the Wall of Shields node
[ 2020-09-15 22:00:28 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum! Our next content update, Patch 0.7.10, includes a new Sentinel skill!
Default Functionality
Shield Bashs unspecialized tooltip
The Specialization Tree
Heres some examples of nodes from Shield Bashs tree! Double Bash (0/1) You gain an additional charge of Shield Bash, but it has a longer cooldown. Fusillade (0/1) Using Shield Bash consumes all charges and deals significantly more damage per charge consume (multiplicative with other modifiers). Hindrance (0/3) Shield Bash now also slows enemies on hit. Staggering Punch (0/3) Shield Bash now also knocks enemies back, if Shield Bash has a cooldown. Rebounding (0/1) Your next Shield Throw can ricochet 5 additional times after using Shield Bash. Conjurer (0/1) Shield Bash has a chance to cause one enemy to drop a potion if Shield Bash has a cooldown. Dazed (0/5) Stuns caused by Shield Bash last longer. Wall of Shields (0/1) If Shield Bash is used while Ring of Shields is active, the shields form a wall which increases the width of Shield Bash, based on the number of active shields.
Media
Shield Bashs default visual effect
Shield Bash specialized with the Wall of Shields node
Crafting Changes We're Exploring
Since the core of Last Epoch's crafting system was implemented in Patch 0.4 in January 2018, items in Last Epoch have changed dramatically. We've added several new rarities: Unique Items in Patch 0.4.1, Set Items in Patch 0.6, and Exalted Items in Patch 0.7.9. Set Affixes for regular items were also added in Patch 0.6, and as we've created content for higher level characters we have been creating more powerful Unique Items with higher level requirements.
The game calling out that a fracture has occurred. Minor, Damaging, and Destructive Fractures were implemented in Patch 0.4, and were intended to prolong the item hunt by introducing an element of risk on player's journey to the holy grail... which at the time was four Tier 5 non-set affixes on a piece of equipment. As higher-end equipment options become available, the need to gate access to less powerful items diminishes. We are currently experimenting with making some adjustments to both Damaging Fractures and Destructive Fractures, but not Minor Fractures. Current Functionality
An issue with crafting we wish to address is that fractures inherently highlight a craft going particularly poorly, however there is no equivalent for a craft going spectacularly well. This leads to crafting feeling worse, as there is undue focus on the potential for being unlucky.
A mockup of a callout for the 'critical success' feature. We are thus experimenting with the addition of a counterpoint for fractures, which we are tentatively terming a 'critical success'. A critical success will be called out similarly to a fracture, and will cause an affix to be upgraded to a higher tier. This is most likely, but not guaranteed, to be the affix you had been crafting at the time. Please note that a critical success cannot raise an affix above Tier 5, which is the highest tier that can be crafted. A critical success cannot occur if it would raise an item's level requirement above your current level. We're still discussing how much instability (if any) a critical success will add.
[ 2020-09-11 18:30:16 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum! We are considering a number of potential changes to crafting. Please note that these are being discussed at an early stage of development, and there is consequently a greater than normal likelihood and scope for these changes to be revised prior to their inclusion in a patch. We also plan to introduce new Runes and Glyphs, however these will not be in Patch 0.7.10.
Fractures
Since the core of Last Epoch's crafting system was implemented in Patch 0.4 in January 2018, items in Last Epoch have changed dramatically. We've added several new rarities: Unique Items in Patch 0.4.1, Set Items in Patch 0.6, and Exalted Items in Patch 0.7.9. Set Affixes for regular items were also added in Patch 0.6, and as we've created content for higher level characters we have been creating more powerful Unique Items with higher level requirements.
The game calling out that a fracture has occurred. Minor, Damaging, and Destructive Fractures were implemented in Patch 0.4, and were intended to prolong the item hunt by introducing an element of risk on player's journey to the holy grail... which at the time was four Tier 5 non-set affixes on a piece of equipment. As higher-end equipment options become available, the need to gate access to less powerful items diminishes. We are currently experimenting with making some adjustments to both Damaging Fractures and Destructive Fractures, but not Minor Fractures. Current Functionality
- Damaging Fracture
- Item can no longer be crafted on.
- All affixes are reduced by 1-5 tiers.
- Affixes reduced below Tier 1 are removed.
- Destructive Fracture
- Item can no longer be crafted on.
- All affixes are removed.
- Damaging Fracture
- Item can no longer be crafted on.
- One affix has its tier reduced by 1-2.
- This cannot bring an affix below Tier 1.
- Destructive Fracture
- Item can no longer be crafted on.
- Between two and four affixes have their tiers reduced by 1-2.
- This cannot bring an affix below Tier 1.
Critical Success
An issue with crafting we wish to address is that fractures inherently highlight a craft going particularly poorly, however there is no equivalent for a craft going spectacularly well. This leads to crafting feeling worse, as there is undue focus on the potential for being unlucky.
A mockup of a callout for the 'critical success' feature. We are thus experimenting with the addition of a counterpoint for fractures, which we are tentatively terming a 'critical success'. A critical success will be called out similarly to a fracture, and will cause an affix to be upgraded to a higher tier. This is most likely, but not guaranteed, to be the affix you had been crafting at the time. Please note that a critical success cannot raise an affix above Tier 5, which is the highest tier that can be crafted. A critical success cannot occur if it would raise an item's level requirement above your current level. We're still discussing how much instability (if any) a critical success will add.
Skill Quality of Life Improvements
Were revamping the Skills window to implement a range of quality of life improvements!
Fury Leap has the Lightning Damage icon active as weve taken the Lagons Wrath node.
The improved Skills window will list all skills available to your base class and each of its mastery classes. Skills not yet unlocked will show how they are unlocked for convenience - so you know if you need to reach character level 30, or spend more points in Druid passives.
Weve performed significant code refactoring so that skills unlocked by spending points in class passives can have their specialization trees viewed prior to being unlocked.
Additionally, icons beneath each skill are shown to represent damage types. Active damage types will be displayed in color while other available damage types will be grayed out.
[ 2020-09-10 20:30:24 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
Skill Quality of Life Improvements
Were revamping the Skills window to implement a range of quality of life improvements!
Fury Leap has the Lightning Damage icon active as weve taken the Lagons Wrath node.
Skill Unlocks
The improved Skills window will list all skills available to your base class and each of its mastery classes. Skills not yet unlocked will show how they are unlocked for convenience - so you know if you need to reach character level 30, or spend more points in Druid passives.
Previewing Trees
Weve performed significant code refactoring so that skills unlocked by spending points in class passives can have their specialization trees viewed prior to being unlocked.
Damage Types
Additionally, icons beneath each skill are shown to represent damage types. Active damage types will be displayed in color while other available damage types will be grayed out.
Refining Skill Respecs in Patch 0.7.10
We plan to polish skill respecs in our next update. In the current version of the game, it is possible to either remove individual points from a skills specialization tree or to completely delevel the skill and start over from scratch - usually with a different skill entirely. While we will be retaining the current respec system, there are a couple of pain points with the current implementation that we plan to address.
Any skill placed in the slot on the left will immediately be set to level 7. Currently, despecialized skills placed in a specialization slot are always set to level 1. Starting with Patch 0.7.10, this minimum skill level will scale with character level. This is intended to make respecs feel less punishing, while still preventing hot swapping of skills. We are also looking at skills taking longer to respec for lower level characters than higher level characters, which is something we have always wanted to change. We believe the opportunity cost of respeccing skills should be greatest for high level characters, and so we are exploring various potential changes we can make to have skill respecs be less punishing at lower levels.
[ 2020-09-09 20:30:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
Refining Skill Respecs in Patch 0.7.10
We plan to polish skill respecs in our next update. In the current version of the game, it is possible to either remove individual points from a skills specialization tree or to completely delevel the skill and start over from scratch - usually with a different skill entirely. While we will be retaining the current respec system, there are a couple of pain points with the current implementation that we plan to address.
Any skill placed in the slot on the left will immediately be set to level 7. Currently, despecialized skills placed in a specialization slot are always set to level 1. Starting with Patch 0.7.10, this minimum skill level will scale with character level. This is intended to make respecs feel less punishing, while still preventing hot swapping of skills. We are also looking at skills taking longer to respec for lower level characters than higher level characters, which is something we have always wanted to change. We believe the opportunity cost of respeccing skills should be greatest for high level characters, and so we are exploring various potential changes we can make to have skill respecs be less punishing at lower levels.
Loot Filters in Last Epoch
Our next content patch will include loot filters! The loot filter is still in the design phase. Today were posting user interface mockups as well as some of the features you can expect. Closer to the release of the patch well be posting another thread focused on the loot filter with finalized UI elements and additional information such as more examples of rules.
Examples of loot filter rules. Starting in Patch 0.7.10, it will be possible to create loot filters with as many or as few rules as you would like. The creation of each rule consists of choosing whether it will show or hide matching items, which items are affected (e.g. Exalted Items, items only usable by one class), and any additional criteria such as minimum level requirements or affix tiers. Where rules contradict each other, the order in which they are listed will determine whether an item is shown or hidden. For example, it will be possible to show items of the exalted rarity and hide items that go in the helm slot - depending on the order these rules are listed in, exalted helmets may be shown or hidden as they meet the criteria of both rules. When designing loot filters we wanted to ensure the system was sufficiently flexible to both be approachable to newer players and cater to more experienced players that wish to control with precision exactly which items are shown to them and which are not. As we recognize new players may also wish to benefit from the expertise of veterans, it will also be possible to export and import loot filters. Consider incorporating one into your next build guide!
Loot filters will have names and descriptions for convenience.
[ 2020-09-08 23:30:51 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
Loot Filters in Last Epoch
Our next content patch will include loot filters! The loot filter is still in the design phase. Today were posting user interface mockups as well as some of the features you can expect. Closer to the release of the patch well be posting another thread focused on the loot filter with finalized UI elements and additional information such as more examples of rules.
Examples of loot filter rules. Starting in Patch 0.7.10, it will be possible to create loot filters with as many or as few rules as you would like. The creation of each rule consists of choosing whether it will show or hide matching items, which items are affected (e.g. Exalted Items, items only usable by one class), and any additional criteria such as minimum level requirements or affix tiers. Where rules contradict each other, the order in which they are listed will determine whether an item is shown or hidden. For example, it will be possible to show items of the exalted rarity and hide items that go in the helm slot - depending on the order these rules are listed in, exalted helmets may be shown or hidden as they meet the criteria of both rules. When designing loot filters we wanted to ensure the system was sufficiently flexible to both be approachable to newer players and cater to more experienced players that wish to control with precision exactly which items are shown to them and which are not. As we recognize new players may also wish to benefit from the expertise of veterans, it will also be possible to export and import loot filters. Consider incorporating one into your next build guide!
Loot filters will have names and descriptions for convenience.
Planned Functionality
- Create individual rules which can show or hide items.
- Allow rules to override each other depending on their order.
- Drag-and-drop rules to adjust the order in which they are listed.
- The ability to toggle individual rules on and off.
- This is mostly for testing purposes where a filter does not function as intended and you wish to establish which rule is responsible. Rules are on by default.
- The ability to delete individual rules from a loot filter.
- Loot filters will have names to make changing from one to another more convenient.
- Loot filters will have optional brief descriptions to clarify their functionality.
- It will be possible to duplicate loot filters to quickly create variations - for example, creating equivalent loot filters for different classes.
- It will be possible to import loot filters created by others, and export your own.
- Rules displayed in the list will have some colour coding for convenience. For example, the words Magic Items will be blue, and the words Exalted Items will be purple. This makes it quicker to scroll through the rules of particularly complex loot filters.
- Rules which hide items have a different background colour than rules which show items.
The Last Epoch Community Tester Program
[ 2020-09-05 14:31:39 CET ] [ Original post ]
The recent announcement by our Game Director, Judd Cobler, mentioned an initiative we're undertaking to include community members in our testing of content as it is iterated upon during a patch cycle. This is being called the Community Tester program. Since we first began releasing free playable demos in 2017 - of what was then a game worked on by a small team during the evenings and weekends - we've strived to balance developing an ARPG that matches our vision with incoporating community feedback. The goal of this program is for us to receive some initial feedback during the development process, so that we can begin acting on feedback sooner, and release more polished content patches going forward. Members of the Community Tester program will have access to restricted sections of the forum and a dedicated Discord server to discuss upcoming content with us. You'll know one of these people when you see them on our official forum as they'll have a distinctive 'Community Tester' forum title. While this is likely to change in future, at the present time we aren't accepting nominations. All invitations to join the Community Tester program are sent from an @lastepochgame.com e-mail address. If you ever receive an e-mail claiming to be from Eleventh Hour Games and wish to verify its authenticity, please send 1) the subject line of the e-mail, 2) the e-mail address of the sender, and, 3) the date on which you received the e-mail to us directly. We'll let you know whether we did in fact send the e-mail.
An Update on Our Road to 1.0
[ 2020-08-28 19:30:24 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Travelers, Today our Game Director, Judd Cobler, has some news to share with you regarding Last Epoch's official launch. You can read his post on our official forum, here. While some of our plans have changed, rest assured we'll still be regularly releasing content patches, reading and acting on your feedback, and keeping you informed of our development progress. Thank you once again for your generous support, and we'll talk to you soon!
New Acolyte Armor Coming in Our Next Patch
[ 2020-08-27 22:30:15 CET ] [ Original post ]
In Patch 0.7.9 we released new 3d armor models for the Primalist, Mage, and Sentinel. In our next update itll be the Acolytes turn, and today were taking a look at some early concept art, material references, a turnaround sheet, and the 3d models themselves.
Early Concept Art w/ Material Reference
As with the new 3d armor models implemented for other classes in our previous content patch, the new Acolyte armor models will be used for the highest level base types, and so it is designed to reflect the gear progression that characters wearing it have achieved.
Turnaround Sheet
We're currently discussing whether to have the Acolyte at the character selection screen wear this armor when our next patch is released. Let us know if you'd like us to make this change!
(While we want the appearance of characters at the character selection screen to reflect their equipped gear, this is more of a long-term goal and won't be ready in time for our next patch.)
Please note: It may be possible to see larger versions of the above images on our official forum.
Cremate's Replacement: Infernal Shade
In Patch 0.7.7 we removed the Acolyte skill Cremate from the game as we weren't entirely satisfied with its design. Our next content patch includes the revamped version, now called Infernal Shade!
Infernal Shade
Can target your minions.
(requires Devour in Flames) The minion gains 4% increased movement speed, attack and cast speed per second per point.
Explodes in a large area of effect at end of duration, or when the target dies.
(requires Combustion) +5% explosion critical strike chance.
If no target is within range of your target location the shade will wait up to 10 seconds for a target to come within range and then attach to it.
(requires Lingering Flames) Infernal Shade gains 40% increased damage each second that it is unattached to a target.
You may cast Infernal Shade on a ground location without a target in range. Infernal Shade has a chance to shred nearby enemy fire protection each second, but now has a cooldown (3 seconds).
(requires Hellfire) [35%] increased cooldown recovery speed per point.
Using Infernal Shade its possible to put the hurt on multiple groups at once.
Alternatively, you can kill enemies even quicker by stacking the areas of effect!
[ 2020-08-20 22:30:27 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
Cremate's Replacement: Infernal Shade
In Patch 0.7.7 we removed the Acolyte skill Cremate from the game as we weren't entirely satisfied with its design. Our next content patch includes the revamped version, now called Infernal Shade!
Target enemy and all nearby enemies take fire damage per second. Each enemy can only have one infernal shade attached at a time. Expires after 5 seconds. Max 4 active shades.
[Alt] This shade cap is shared with Dread Shade.
[Fire] [Spell] [Damage Over Time] [Intelligence]
Infernal Shade
Specialization Tree Nodes
Devour In Flames
Can target your minions.
Demonic Possession
(requires Devour in Flames) The minion gains 4% increased movement speed, attack and cast speed per second per point.
Combustion
Explodes in a large area of effect at end of duration, or when the target dies.
Flame Burst
(requires Combustion) +5% explosion critical strike chance.
Lingering Flames
If no target is within range of your target location the shade will wait up to 10 seconds for a target to come within range and then attach to it.
Purgatory
(requires Lingering Flames) Infernal Shade gains 40% increased damage each second that it is unattached to a target.
Hellfire
You may cast Infernal Shade on a ground location without a target in range. Infernal Shade has a chance to shred nearby enemy fire protection each second, but now has a cooldown (3 seconds).
Fiend Hunter
(requires Hellfire) [35%] increased cooldown recovery speed per point.
Screenshots
Using Infernal Shade its possible to put the hurt on multiple groups at once.
Alternatively, you can kill enemies even quicker by stacking the areas of effect!
Beta 0.7.9f Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-08-19 18:15:01 CET ] [ Original post ]
Monolith of Fate
- You now lose fewer Echoes Conquered after dying or leaving an Echo early.
- All quest echoes now scale to a maximum of at least a 40% chance to encounter. Later quest echos still take longer to encounter on average.
Skills
Assemble Abomination
- Now somewhat more likely to be targeted by enemies.
Disintegrate
- Increased base damage by 17%.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the loading screen after creating a new character would not disappear if you had no saved characters.
- Fixed a bug where many zones would drop items with much lower affix values than intended. This was most noticeable in the Monolith of Fates Ending the Storm timeline.
- Fixed the transition between the End of Time and Monolith of Fate being difficult to click on.
- Fixed a bug where enemy damage and health in the Arena scaled up much faster than intended.
- Fixed an oversight causing Formosus Phylactery to deal much more damage than intended.
- Fixed a bug causing settings for the overlay map to work inconsistently.
- Fixed a bug where the chance to fire 6 additional projectiles effects for Hungering Souls (on its tree and on Idols) were rolled separately. This meant that you could fail to fire extra projectiles despite having a combined total of 100%.
- Fixed the Paladin passive Prayer Aegis granting 7 health per point rather than the stated 10 health per point.
- Fixed a bug preventing the bridge in The Precipice from being smashed by the boss.
Beta 0.7.9e Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-08-12 19:30:42 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to be more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
Beta 0.7.9e Patch Notes
Skills
Warpath
- Dark Nexus now causes you to gain 7 mana every 3 seconds (from reducing channel cost by 2).
- Zweihander Reichweite increases area by 50% (from 35%) and requires 2 points in Reckless Combatant (from 3).
- Reckless Combatant now increases melee damage while spinning rather than Warpath Hit damage.
- Nodes that previously had the condition "while not using a shield" now have the condition "while using a two handed weapon".
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug preventing the Frost Clan chief from spawning in Wengari Battleground.
- Fixed a bug causing game audio to not play and gameplay errors on macOS.
- Fixed a regression affecting the game's ability to recover data after a crash.
- Fixed a bug where portalling out of Echo of a World and then returning would always display the Fall of the Outcasts timeline, rather than the timeline you were last in.
- Fixed a bug where respawning in Echo of a World could cause the Fall of the Outcasts timeline to be displayed, rather than the timeline you were last in.
- Fixed a bug where more monolith modifiers were removed than intended when losing progress at a medium to high amount of Echoes Conquered.
- You can no longer use town portals to return to Echoes in the Monolith of Fate.
- Fixed a bug where progress was not saved to the Ladder unless you levelled up or completed a wave in the Arena with the Ladder open in-game.
- Fixed a bug where the overlay map would be returned to default settings when reloading the game. Opening the settings panel returned it to how you set it.
- Fixed a bug where item tooltips could flicker on and off in some situations.
- Fixed cases of effects on the ground (e.g. cracks or moss) projecting onto characters.
- Fixed a bug where using Shield Rush without a shield used the wrong animation.
- Fixed a cause of placeholder text being displayed when Monolith modifiers are removed.
Beta 0.7.9d Release and Patch Notes
Listed by Timeline level to avoid spoilers.
[ 2020-08-08 14:59:46 CET ] [ Original post ]
Monolith of Fate
Timeline Progress Saving
- When you die in the Monolith of Fate or leave an Echo before completing the objective, your progress in that Timeline is no longer reset.
- Instead, you lose a number of Echoes Conquered and active modifiers, and can continue the run from there.
- Quest Echo completion is not lost when your run is set back.
- The UI for selecting your next Echo now shows how many Echoes Conquered are required to have a chance to find the next Quest Echo.
Boss Balance
Listed by Timeline level to avoid spoilers.
- All bosses grant significantly more XP.
- Level 55
- Boss deals 15% less damage.
- Level 62
- Boss deals 12% less damage.
- Boss has 7% less health.
- Spiral attack no longer ignites.
- Level 68
- Boss deals 15% less damage.
- Boss has 6% less health.
- Double cone attack deals 25% less damage.
- Damage over time trail deals 17% less damage.
- Melee range blast attack has a smaller hitbox and the indicator lasts much longer.
- Level 75
- Miniboss in second Quest Echo deals 32% less damage.
- Primary boss deals 7% less damage.
- Level 80
- Boss deals 5% less damage.
Empowered Timelines
- Increased the mod effect modifier for the empowered Fall of the Outcasts timeline to 170% (from 140%).
- Increased the mod effect modifier for the empowered Black Sun timeline to 160% (from 140%).
- Increased the mod effect modifier for the empowered Ending the Storm timeline to 135% (from 125%).
Enemies
- Further shifted the effective health of bosses towards health rather than resistance.
- Lagon's sweeping beam attack deals 10% less damage.
Visuals
- Fixed missing fireball textures. This affected the player, as well as several enemies and minions.
- Updated the visuals for Fireball (as compared to 0.7.9).
- Updated the visuals for Tornado (including Fire Tornado).
Sound
- Added new cast sounds for Tornado and Fire Tornado.
- Added new sounds for Rive.
- Added environmental sounds to the Character Select screen.
- Added sounds to buttons on the Login screen.
- Reduced the volume of the Temple Guardian awakening.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the void damage per fire aura bonus from Dark Shroud of Cinders was applied an additional time whenever your stats updated and never reset.
- Fixed a bug where the reward chest in Echo of a World was hard to click.
- Fixed a bug where the Grand Resonance of the Sea blessing had no effect.
- Fixed a bug where Lunges sound effect remained at the location where the player used Lunge. The sound now travels with the player.
Beta 0.7.9c Release and Patch Notes
We have been reading your feedback across Last Epochs official forum, community Discord server, community subreddit, and elsewhere. Please note that the goal of hotfixes released one day after the previous update are to make quick adjustments which require minimal QA time and iteration. More extensive changes based on your feedback are planned, however these will take longer to create and test. Thank you for your patience, and for your feedback. Please do keep the feedback coming.
We are broadly happy with how boss fights are currently taking - however, we recognize that drastic drop offs in damage feel punishing and result in frustratingly low damage numbers. We'll be shifting some of bosses' baseline survivability from resistance to health, and having bosses begin fights with damage resistance which wears off over time. These changes should result in damage numbers being both larger and more consistent without having a significant impact on how long it takes to kill bosses. Our goal is for improving your character's damage to always cause them to kill bosses more quickly, but not to the extent that relevant boss fights become trivialized - for example, maybe increasing your character's damage by 80% causes them to kill bosses 50% more quickly. We will continue to monitor your feedback and will work to address it more in future updates once we've had the chance to iterate on the system internally.
[ 2020-08-06 19:43:16 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to be more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official forum!
Beta 0.7.9c Release and Patch Notes
Monolith of Fate
- Abomination boss
- Tail slam deals 25% more damage
- Necrotic projectiles deal their maximum damage once they have reached their maximum range rather than continuing to increase in damage on their way back.
- They now deal 150% more damage at maximum range and when returning (from 200% at maximum range, up to 400% depending on travel duration).
- There is no longer a penalty to the experience you gain from a zone if your character is a higher level, as long as the area level is above 53.
- Quest Echoes can now appear earlier in all timelines, and the chance to encounter one has been increased.
Developer Commentary
We have been reading your feedback across Last Epochs official forum, community Discord server, community subreddit, and elsewhere. Please note that the goal of hotfixes released one day after the previous update are to make quick adjustments which require minimal QA time and iteration. More extensive changes based on your feedback are planned, however these will take longer to create and test. Thank you for your patience, and for your feedback. Please do keep the feedback coming.
Enemies
- The temporary damage resistance system for bosses is now much more subtle: each stack of resistance is weaker and lasts for a shorter duration.
- Bosses have much less base damage resistance. With a normal amount of temporary resistance, the damage they take is more comparable to other enemies.
- Increased boss health to compensate for having lower damage resistance.
- Bosses also start with some extra resistance which drops off while you fight them, so they no longer take far more damage at the start of a fight. This should prevent the frustrating slow down in the damage you deal to bosses.
Developer Commentary
We are broadly happy with how boss fights are currently taking - however, we recognize that drastic drop offs in damage feel punishing and result in frustratingly low damage numbers. We'll be shifting some of bosses' baseline survivability from resistance to health, and having bosses begin fights with damage resistance which wears off over time. These changes should result in damage numbers being both larger and more consistent without having a significant impact on how long it takes to kill bosses. Our goal is for improving your character's damage to always cause them to kill bosses more quickly, but not to the extent that relevant boss fights become trivialized - for example, maybe increasing your character's damage by 80% causes them to kill bosses 50% more quickly. We will continue to monitor your feedback and will work to address it more in future updates once we've had the chance to iterate on the system internally.
Sound
- Made Haruspex Orians voice lines easier to hear in combat.
- Added a sound for breakable doors.
- Reduced the volume on several sound effects;
- Abyssal Orbs explosions
- Ice Nova
- Tempest Strike
- Devoured Husks attack swing
- Magma Gorns vocals
- Ravenous Voidforms slam attack
- Time Rift opening sound
Items
- Reduced minion reflect affix values by approximately 25%.
Bug Fixes
Assemble Abomination
- Fixed a bug where Devour consumed all minions in range, rather than up to 5.
- Fixed a bug where various types of Wraith and Bone Golem did not count as different types of minions for the Death in the Family and Epicurean nodes.
- Fixed a bug where the 30% increased damage per consumed minion effect was not working.
- Fixed a bug where the minions animations did not line up with when damage is dealt.
- Fixed a bug where The Quick and the Dead could not be taken after investing two points in Consume (the connection only worked one way).
- Fixed a bug where Consume applied to all damage, rather than just hit damage.
Miscellaneous
- Added a potential fix for killing the Bones of the Outcasts in The Ransacked Camp not completing the quest.. Please post on the bug reports forum with a screenshot and log file if this is still occurring.
- Reverb sound volume is now controlled by the Sound Effects Volume slider.
- Fixed a bug where % reflect and flat reflect (thorns) mechanics were not affected by increased/more damage taken modifiers. Previously, Marked for Death did not increase damage taken from reflect, and boss damage resistance did not reduce damage taken from reflect.
- Fixed various issues with node tooltips for Bone Curse, Dread Shade and Assemble Abomination.
- Fixed a bug where the search bar for the gambler could not be cleared using the x button.
Patch 0.7.9b Release and Patch Notes
Characters with Bone Curse specialized will receive a free respec for its tree.
[ 2020-08-05 18:58:33 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to be more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
Patch 0.7.9b Release and Patch Notes
Monolith
- The third Quest Echo for the The Black Sun timeline now appears 2 echoes earlier on average.
- The lightning dragons in Dragons Grotto now count as bosses, rather than minibosses. This means they now gain temporary damage resistance like other bosses.
- Chill and slow chance mods now give enemies 40% less chill and slow chance than before.
Enemies
- Adjusted the effective health of bosses to be weighted more towards health than resistances. This does not change the time it takes to kill them, but will make damage numbers larger.
Skills
Bone Curse
Characters with Bone Curse specialized will receive a free respec for its tree.
- Crippling Anguish can have 4 points allocated (from 3).
- Signet of Agony now requires points in Crippling Anguish instead of Acute Infliction, and is no longer compatible with Illusion of Pain.
- Added a new node behind Signet of Agony that increases Bone Curse damage, but makes it linger for a shorter duration if not reapplied.
- A lot of nodes have moved around visually to accommodate this, but there are no other real changes to connections or requirements.
Sound
- Added footstep sounds for Assemble Abomination.
- Added a new sound effect for Swipes Wild Calling node.
Uniques
- Added new unique gloves, Mortalitys Grasp.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where characters that had Mark for Death specialized before it was removed were unable to specialize in a different skill using that slot.
- Fixed projectiles colliding with invisible objects in the Oracles Abode, Titans Canyon, Yulias Haven, the Immortal Summit, the Gates of Solarum, the Frozen Roots, Canyon Stronghold, and Solarum Ascent.
- Fixed some breakables being inaccessible in Ruined Shrine.
- Fixed a bug where the gold costs to reroll Echo choices in the Monolith of Fate were much higher than intended.
- Fixed a bug where Shard of the Shattered Lance and Fragments of the Shattered Lance would drop as unique items instead of set items.
- Fixed a bug that prevented Dragonflame Edict from creating Dragonflame Novas.
- Fixed a bug where Smites Descend node did not add a cooldown until your character was reloaded.
- Fixed a bug where using instant cast skills after casting Smite (with the Descend node) would cause you to teleport.
Beta 0.7.9 Release and Patch Notes
[previewyoutube=ZPze1y4-YL4;full][/previewyoutube]
While Acolyte has been a strong class historically, before 0.7.8 it had by far the lowest amount of available skills and specialization trees, especially the Necromancer. Additionally, our plans for the class skills (including Warlock) have changed since the class was first designed a few years ago. With this patch, Acolytes now have a comparable (but still the lowest) amount of skills with specialization trees to the other classes and they better represent our plans for the class.
Due to size constraints, this section of the Patch Notes is not available on Steam. Click here to view it on the official forum for Last Epoch.
Previously, it was possible to have a complete set for 2 of the 4 set affixes, but this always required taking up prefixes on the same 4 item slots. This reduced item diversity in the late game. Now, you can still complete 2 set affixes, but doing so doesnt always require affixes on the same 4 item slots. This allows for more flexibility in what affixes you choose.
Generally, swords, axes, maces and sceptres have more melee damage than before, while spears and staves have less melee damage than before.
Due to size constraints, this section of the Patch Notes is not available on Steam. Click here to view it on the official forum for Last Epoch.
Due to size constraints, this section of the Patch Notes is not available on Steam. Click here to view it on the official forum for Last Epoch.
Due to size constraints, this section of the Patch Notes is not available on Steam. Click here to view it on the official forum for Last Epoch.
Due to size constraints, this section of the Patch Notes is not available on Steam. Click here to view it on the official forum for Last Epoch.
[ 2020-08-04 20:08:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
Beta 0.7.9 Release and Patch Notes
[previewyoutube=ZPze1y4-YL4;full][/previewyoutube]
Monolith of Fate
- The Monolith of Fate is now its own zone connected to the End of Time. It consists of several islands, with each containing a Timeline representing a reality that never was.
- Starting a Timeline gives you the choice between two Echoes, each with a layout, modifier to enemies, and a modifier to the rewards you receive.
- All Echoes in a given Timeline now have a fixed level, rather than scaling to your characters level.
- As you conquer more Echoes in a row, you will have a chance to encounter Quest Echoes, and finally a boss for the Timeline.
- Defeating the boss of a Timeline will unlock the path to the next Timeline. Choices you make during a Timelines quests can impact which Timeline you unlock next.
- After a Timeline has been conquered you can choose between one of three random Blessings. Blessings are permanent increases to either your characters stats or chance to find particular items, and they apply in all parts of the game.
- You can replace the Blessing granted from a Timeline by defeating its boss again.
- As you progress you will be able to empower Timelines you unlocked previously. This allows you to gain Blessings that grant even more power, but all Echoes are raised to level 100 and the modifiers applied to each Echo are larger.
- Added 24 new Echo layouts distributed amongst all Timelines.
- Added 21 new Quest Echoes.
Tier 6 and 7 Affixes
- Items can now drop with Tier 6 and Tier 7 affixes. These items have the Exalted rarity, which is color-coded purple. Exalted items are not available from the gambler or shop.
- Tier 6 and 7 affixes cannot be created through crafting. Crafting on Exalted items otherwise behaves the same as Magic and Rare items,
- Tier 5 affixes now start dropping on items at level 32, instead of at level 81. Tier 6 affixes start dropping at level 55, while Tier 7 affixes start dropping at level 90.
- The top range of most Tier 5 affixes have been reduced somewhat alongside them being made more common. Tier 6 and Tier 7 affixes can have much higher values than Tier 5 affixes.
- The stat ranges for Tier 7 affixes are much larger than the stat ranges for Tier 6 affixes.
Uniques
- Added a new unique relic, Muramas Hilt.
- Added a new unique relic, Melverns Writ.
- 17 new unique items have been added that are exclusive to various Quest Echoes in the Monolith of Fate.
Item Sets
- The 3-piece set bonus for the Pebbles set now grants +15 damage for Skeletons (from +10).
Skills
While Acolyte has been a strong class historically, before 0.7.8 it had by far the lowest amount of available skills and specialization trees, especially the Necromancer. Additionally, our plans for the class skills (including Warlock) have changed since the class was first designed a few years ago. With this patch, Acolytes now have a comparable (but still the lowest) amount of skills with specialization trees to the other classes and they better represent our plans for the class.
Assemble Abomination
- New skill unlocked at 40 points into Necromancer passives. Includes a specialization tree.
- Assemble Abomination is a channeled skill that absorbs minions around the target. When channeling stops, a hulking Abomination is created, which decays over time.
- Abominations gain health equal to the max health of minions consumed and 30% increased damage for each minion consumed.
- The specialization tree for Assemble Abomination contains nodes that unlock additional abilities for your Abomination to use based on what minions you absorb.
Bone Curse
- New skill unlocked at character level 8 for Acolytes. Replaces Mark for Death, and includes a specialization tree.
- Bone Curse applies a curse to all enemies in an area for 8 seconds. Hitting an afflicted enemy causes Bone Curse to hit them, dealing physical damage. The hit damage is tripled if you inflicted the hit yourself.
- 20% of your added spell damage applies to Bone Curse hits. Bone Curse hits cannot apply ailments (such as Ignite and Damned) from sources other than its specialization tree.
Dread Shade
- New skill unlocked at 30 points into Necromancer passives. Includes a specialization tree.
- Applies a Dread Shade to a targeted minion. The affected minion and all minions around it deal 25% more damage (multiplicative with other modifiers), but the affected minion loses 3% of its maximum health per second for each second the Shade has been active.
- Dread Shade expires when the minion dies, or after 20 seconds. You may have up to 4 Shades active at once.
Exhume
- Removed from the game.
Mark for Death
- Removed from the game.
- The base Mark for Death effect still exists in the game, and is available from sources such as Idols, passives, and specialization trees.
Passives
Sentinel
- Armour Clad grants 15 armour (from 10).
- Juggernaut grants 8 fire and void protection (from 5).
- Overwhelm grants 8% increased melee stun chance (from 5%).
- Relentless grants 20 stun avoidance (from 15).
Forge Guard
- Rallying Block now grants 10 armor and elemental protections on block per point (from 10 per point), but the buff now has a maximum of 10 stacks.
Arena
- Increased overall scaling speed by 9%.
- Reduced the bonus to experience gained (based on current wave) by about 50%.
- Enemies deal more damage than before based on wave number. The increase is 22% at wave 100, 46% at wave 200, and 76% at wave 300.
- Enemies have more health than before based on wave number. The increase is 17% at wave 100, 34% at wave 200, and 56% at wave 300.
Controller Support
- Skills are now used in the direction your character is facing, rather than where your cursor is pointing.
- Targeting in combat now compensates to target the nearest enemy, as long as youre facing in generally the right direction. The currently targeted enemy has an arrow over its head.
- Interactions outside of combat (i.e. talking to NPCs, opening the stash) also use this new targeting system.
- Fixed a bug where controllers did not have a way to command minions with default bindings. The default button for this is the Y button (Xbox), which used to open a town portal. The town portal can still be opened using the right d-pad button.
- The circle menu (accessed by pressing select) now has a shortcut for Crafting, rather than Friends. Also fixed a bug where the Character shortcut did not work.
- Updated the graphics for the circle menu.
- You can now rebind the left and right d-pad buttons to any action.
Game Balance
Damage Over Time
- Each stack of poison increases poison damage taken by 5% (from 7%).
- Ignite deals 9% more damage.
- Bleed deals 10% more damage.
- The Increased Minion Damage Over Time prefix grants up to 100% damage (from 120%) and can no longer roll on amulets.
- The Increased Damage Over Time prefix can no longer roll on gloves or belts.
Dodge
- Adjusted the dodge formula so that dodge chance is slightly lower, especially at high levels. (5s in denominator changed to 6s).
- The dodge rating suffix now gives lower values of dodge rating from T2 onwards, with the T5 giving around 20% less dodge rating on average.
- The dodge rating on potion use prefix now gives up to 550 dodge rating (from 800).
Health
- Characters now gain 6 maximum health per level (from 5).
Skill Balance
Due to size constraints, this section of the Patch Notes is not available on Steam. Click here to view it on the official forum for Last Epoch.
Items
Mage Armour
- Archmage Robes now grant 20% to 40% of mana spent gained as ward (from 3 to 9 adaptive spell damage), and grant 180 armour (from 170).
- Added the Celestial Robes base type, which has new art and stats identical to 0.7.8 Archmage Robes. Requires level 72.
- Added the Celestial Helmet base type, which has new art and grants 125 armour and 5% to 12% increased mana. Requires level 71.
- Diadems now also grant 15 to 35 mana, but only grant 55 armour (from 100).
Primalist Armour
- Added new art for the Wild Armour base type.
- Added the Shamanistic Garb base type, which grants 172 armour and 30% to 60% increased minion damage. Requires level 62.
- Added the Horned Cowl base type, which has new art and grants 124 armour and 2% to 4% of damage leeched as health on hit.
Sentinel Armour
- Added new art for the Solarum Plate base type.
- Replaced the Solarum Helm with the Winged Helm, which has the same stats and new art.
- Added the Augury Plate base type, which grants 280 armour and 7% to 11% increased mana regen. Requires level 65.
- The Battered Helm, Crested Helm, Worn Plate and Iron Cuirass base types grant 5 more armor than before.
- The Solar Plate base type now grants 20 more armor than before.
Set Affixes
Previously, it was possible to have a complete set for 2 of the 4 set affixes, but this always required taking up prefixes on the same 4 item slots. This reduced item diversity in the late game. Now, you can still complete 2 set affixes, but doing so doesnt always require affixes on the same 4 item slots. This allows for more flexibility in what affixes you choose.
- Added a new Set Armour and Void Protection prefix that rolls on gloves, boots, amulets and relics.
- Added a new Set Necrotic and Poison Protection prefix that rolls on gloves, boots and rings.
- Set Health now also rolls on gloves and boots, but no longer rolls on rings.
- Set Dodge Rating now also rolls on gloves and boots, but no longer rolls on amulets or relics.
- Pre-existing items that would have incompatible set affixes (i.e. Set Health on a ring) will have these affixes converted to Increased Armour prefixes. This is to avoid characters having more than 4 of a given Set Affix which would be very unbalanced.
Weapon Implicits
Generally, swords, axes, maces and sceptres have more melee damage than before, while spears and staves have less melee damage than before.
- Broadswords have 12 melee physical damage (from 11).
- Deicide Swords have 53 melee physical damage (from 50).
- Divine Sceptres have 55 melee physical damage (from 52).
- Moonstone Sceptres have 52 melee physical damage (from 45).
- Bladed Maces have 50 melee physical damage (from 40) and require level 50 (from 40).
- Flanged Mace have 60 melee physical damage (from 52) and require level 62 (from 57).
- Raider Axes have 49 melee physical damage (from 40) and require level 55 (from 45).
- Welryn Axes have 52 melee physical damage (from 47).
- Kraken Beaks have 90 melee physical damage (from 80).
- Steel Axes have 81 melee physical damage (from 74).
- Terror Maces have 104 melee physical damage (from 90) and require level 68 (from 65).
- Sovnyas have 88 melee physical damage (from 95).
- Ranseurs have 80 melee physical damage (from 82).
- Talon Spears grant 25% to 35% chance to gain haste on hit (from 3% to 6% movement speed).
- Oracle Staves have 75 melee physical damage (from 81).
- Zweihanders have 77 melee physical damage (from 76).
- Titan Blades have 90 melee physical damage (from 85).
Other Changes
- Increased the drop rates of class specific affixes.
- Increased Mana Regen shards now drop more often. The drop rate for this affix on equipment items is unchanged.
- Increased the values of stun avoidance affixes by about 60%.
- The Solarum Greaves base type now grants 90 armor (from 75) and has new 2D art.
- Arena Keys now sell for 6500 gold (up from 200). Doubled the gold dropped by Shrines of Wealth.
- The +1 to all attributes suffix can no longer roll on staves.
- Alt text descriptions now clarify that Bone Golem specific affixes apply to all types of Bone Golem.
Sound
Due to size constraints, this section of the Patch Notes is not available on Steam. Click here to view it on the official forum for Last Epoch.
Quests
- Quests are now shown on the world map next to the waypoint for its next objective.
- Hovering over the Era tabs on the world map lists all active quests you have in that Era.
- Main quests and side quests are now shown separately in the Quest Journal.
- Side quests are now a different color in the Quest Tracker (right side of the screen).
- Improved the design of the quest marker arrow on the minimap.
- The wave fight on the Soul Wardens Road is now activated by proximity, rather than clicking on the spear wall.
Animation
- Implemented a complete new set of animations for the Sentinel class. Includes idle, running channeling, melee and spell casting animations, with variations based on the type of weapon equipped.
- Judgement, Rive and Forge Strike have had their timings sped up to feel more responsive and match new animations better.
User Interface
- Choosing the Move or Attack option for your movement key (left click by default) now allows you to pick which ability slot will be used when you press your movement key while hovering over an enemy. This cannot add a 6th skill slot to your bar.
- The stash, shop, gambling and arena menus now close automatically after walking away from them in zones.
- The Store Crafting Items button now has a glowing border if you have crafting materials in your inventory, to help draw new players to it. The button will not highlight if youve used it during the current game session.
- Improved the skill icons/descriptions displayed for each class when creating a new character.
- You can now search buyback tabs in shops.
- You can now move items into the crafting menu directly by pressing shift and right click.
- Added new decorations to loading screens that depend on the Era youre traveling to.
Enemies
Due to size constraints, this section of the Patch Notes is not available on Steam. Click here to view it on the official forum for Last Epoch.
Visuals
Due to size constraints, this section of the Patch Notes is not available on Steam. Click here to view it on the official forum for Last Epoch.
Optimization
- Improved game start-up time for most system configurations.
- Improved the performance of loot.
- Improved performance in End of Time, Echo of a World, Gladiators Rest and Realm of the Forgotten.
- Improved the performance of applying ailments (i.e. bleed, poison, ignite).
- Improved the performance of enemies triggering sound effects.
Bug Fixes
Due to size constraints, this section of the Patch Notes is not available on Steam. Click here to view it on the official forum for Last Epoch.
Introducing Tier 6 and 7 Item Affixes
[ 2020-08-04 00:00:54 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers! While we endeavor to post as much of our content on Steam as is feasible, our Developer Blogs are available exclusively on Last Epoch's official website. Here's a link to the post! We hope to see you there! steamhappy
New Primalist and Mage Armor Model Sets
Patch 0.7.9 focuses heavily on endgame content - and obviously you should look good when youre in it! Along with the Sentinel, both the Primalist and Mage will be getting additional armor models in Patch 0.7.9. These models will be used for the highest level bases. Which ones your favorite?
[ 2020-08-01 20:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum!
New Primalist and Mage Armor Model Sets
Patch 0.7.9 focuses heavily on endgame content - and obviously you should look good when youre in it! Along with the Sentinel, both the Primalist and Mage will be getting additional armor models in Patch 0.7.9. These models will be used for the highest level bases. Which ones your favorite?
Primalist
Full Set
Helm
Body Armor
Gloves
Boots
Mage
Full Set
Helm
Body Armor
Gloves
Boots
Venturing Inside the Revamped Monolith of Fate
Ever wonder where potions come from? Now you know!
This fight features a set of dragons.
The water seems peaceful. Don't be deceived.
A new destination, Ledria lies to the east of Welryn.
A massive undead dragon, a hoard of zombies, all in a confined space. ...why don't you handle this while I wait back here?
The presence of Orobyss will be felt inside the Monolith. We'll be back tomorrow to post about something else coming in Patch 0.7.9. See you then!
[ 2020-07-31 23:30:19 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the community? Join us on the official forum! Howdy, Travelers! It seems our latest Developer Blog, End-Game System Update: Monolith of Fate, has piqued your interest! While Judd took the opportunity yesterday to describe the upcoming changes to the Monolith of Fate, we also wanted to show you specific examples of new content. Patch 0.7.8's Chapter 8 set a new standard for boss fights in Last Epoch, and we've invested even more time into designing the boss encounters for the revamped Monolith! Four of the screenshots below feature new boss fights. Let us know which you're most excited for!
Canyon Stronghold
Ever wonder where potions come from? Now you know!
Dragon's Grotto
This fight features a set of dragons.
Drowned Thetima
The water seems peaceful. Don't be deceived.
Fall of Ledria
A new destination, Ledria lies to the east of Welryn.
Rotting Hoard
A massive undead dragon, a hoard of zombies, all in a confined space. ...why don't you handle this while I wait back here?
Ruins of Solarum
The presence of Orobyss will be felt inside the Monolith. We'll be back tomorrow to post about something else coming in Patch 0.7.9. See you then!
End-Game System Update: Monolith of Fate
[ 2020-07-30 21:51:10 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hi Travelers! While we endeavor to post as much of our content on Steam as is feasible, our Developer Blogs are available exclusively on Last Epoch's official website. Here's a link to the post! We sincerely hope you'll join us there and give us your feedback!
Patch Preview: Beta 0.7.9
Our next content patch approaches, and today were spilling the beans on what you can expect! Patch 0.7.9 will be the largest update we have released for Last Epoch to-date. This patch is also the first to include a Phase 4 item from our Early Access Development Forecast.
Patch 0.7.9 focuses on the endgame, with changes and additions coming to both the available content and the rewards available for engaging with that content. Were also replacing and adding many new sounds and replacing all animations used by the Sentinel class.
Patch 0.7.9 includes multiple new skills, each of which has a full-sized specialization tree.
While Patch Preview threads focus on game updates, we are also currently investing significant resources into out-of-game projects. In the months following Patch 0.7.9's release we plan to completely replace the core https://lastepochgame.com website and our support site. Longer term goals include replacing the in-game chat system and the launcher for our standalone client
[ 2020-07-28 00:45:23 CET ] [ Original post ]
Patch Preview: Beta 0.7.9
Our next content patch approaches, and today were spilling the beans on what you can expect! Patch 0.7.9 will be the largest update we have released for Last Epoch to-date. This patch is also the first to include a Phase 4 item from our Early Access Development Forecast.
Overview
Patch 0.7.9 focuses on the endgame, with changes and additions coming to both the available content and the rewards available for engaging with that content. Were also replacing and adding many new sounds and replacing all animations used by the Sentinel class.
Highlights
Systems
- Significantly fleshed out the Monolith of Fate system.
- We are working on a Developer Blog to share with you later this week.
- Monolith of Fate zones will no longer scale with character level. It is important that endgame content includes concrete goals, and the progression to higher level content makes improvements to your characters feel more rewarding.
- It will be possible to empower lower level content in the Monolith of Fate, and the rewards for completing that content will become more powerful as a result.
- Implemented the Blessings feature.
- This will be outlined in the above Developer Blog on the Monolith of Fate changes.
Items
- Implemented Tier 6 and Tier 7 affixes.
- We are working on a Developer Blog to share with you early next week.Affixes above tier 5 are not craftable.
- Tier 6 & 7 affixes are intended to be a long-term goal, and not an expectation at any point in the game.
- The intention is to widen the gap between easily obtainable rares and close to perfect rares, in order to keep rare drops exciting for much longer and gives us more room in which to balance uniques.
Skills
Patch 0.7.9 includes multiple new skills, each of which has a full-sized specialization tree.
- The Acolyte class has a new skill called Bone Curse.
- The Necromancer class has a new skill called Assemble Abomination.
- We have posted a preview of Assemble Abomination here.
- The Necromancer class has a new skill called Dread Shade.
- We have posted a preview of Dread Shade here.
- The Acolyte class has had its Exhume skill removed from the game.
- This removal is intended to be permanent.
- The Acolyte class has had its Mark for Death skill removed from the game.
- The base marked for death effect can still be applied through alternative means, such as class passives and other skills trees. Only the active skill is being removed.
- This removal will be permanent, with Bone Curse intended as its replacement.
Animation
- All of the Sentinels animations have been replaced.
- Weve posted a preview of some new animations here.
Level Design
- While a new Chapter is not included in Patch 0.7.9, there is a comparable number of zones being added in the update which will be available through the Monolith of Fate.
- The End of Time zone has received a visual upgrade.
User Interface
- Active quests are now shown on the world map.
- Some UI windows now close in response to movement.
- For example, windows associated with a stash or vendor NPC now close if you move far enough away from the stash or vendor, respectively.
- Buy Back tabs can now be searched.
Quality of Life
- Improved targeting for users of controllers.
Optimization
- Improved game start-up time for most system configurations.
- Improved the performance of loot.
After This Patch
While Patch Preview threads focus on game updates, we are also currently investing significant resources into out-of-game projects. In the months following Patch 0.7.9's release we plan to completely replace the core https://lastepochgame.com website and our support site. Longer term goals include replacing the in-game chat system and the launcher for our standalone client
Sentinel Animation Updates
[ 2020-07-22 19:30:18 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers, Patch 0.7.9 includes new animations for the Sentinel class! Unfortunately, the Steam platform isn't a great place for a large number of short videos. We'd love for you to see this post and give us some feedback, so please check it out here on Last Epoch's official forum. We hope to see you there!
Quest-Related UI Improvements Coming in Patch 0.7.9
[ 2020-07-18 00:10:30 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official forum! In Patch 0.7.9 we're updating some elements of our user interface to make it easier to tell which zones you need to visit in order to progress the quests currently available to you. This work includes multiple individual changes;
- Mousing over a tab in the world map will now display the quests active in that era.
- Mousing over a zone on the world map will now display the quests active in that zone.
- Zones with quests based in them will now alternate between showing whether they contain a waypoint (and if so, whether it has been activated) and a quest icon.
New Skill Coming in Patch 0.7.9: Assemble Abomination
Assemble Abomination's skill art As with all newly added skills, Assemble Abomination will arrive in Last Epoch will a full-sized specialization tree. We hope you're looking forward to Patch 0.7.9 as much as we are!
[ 2020-07-13 23:45:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official forum!
Patch 0.7.9 brings with it a variety of new skills!
One of the entries in our recent poll was Assemble Abomination. Due to both a request and us accidentally leaking the tooltip for Assemble Abomination in-game (oops!), today we're taking a look at this exciting new skill coming to Necromancers in our next content patch.
Hold the ability key to absorb minions in an area. When you release, summon a single hulking abomination with added health and more damage per minion absorbed. The abomination's health decays increasingly quickly over time.
The minions absorbed as part of this dark ritual are no mere sacrifice! The brute you stitch together will behave differently depending on its composition. Absorbing skeletal mages will allow the monstrosity to unleash Hungering Souls upon its foes, while consuming a bone golem during its construction will allow the abomination to use a mighty stomp attack.
Assemble Abomination abilities
- Bone Golem: Stomp
- An AoE melee attack with a high chance to stun.
- Skeletal Archer: Bone Nova
- Periodically fires arrows in all directions.
- Skeletal Mage: Devouring Souls
- The base version of Hungering Souls.
- Skeletal Warrior: Double Strike
- Two simultaneous melee attacks.
- Wraith: Soul Reave
- The base version of Harvest.
- Unannounced minion: Unannounced skill
- It, like, does things. And stuff.
Assemble Abomination's skill art As with all newly added skills, Assemble Abomination will arrive in Last Epoch will a full-sized specialization tree. We hope you're looking forward to Patch 0.7.9 as much as we are!
The Poll Winner: Let's Look at Dread Shade!
[ 2020-06-24 17:00:22 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved in the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official forum!
Dread Shade is a Spell coming to Necromancers in Patch 0.7.9.
The base functionality of the skill causes a massive damage buff to apply in an area around a minion. That minion will be subjected to increasingly large amounts of damage each second, and the buff will end when the minion dies or after 20 seconds - whichever happens first.
Gallery
Specialization Tree Nodes
- Dread Shade is cast on enemy targets instead of minions. Minions within the area of effect are buffed as normal. The enemy is neither buffed nor subject to health degeneration. Duration reduced to 10 seconds.
- Dread Shade drains the health of all affected minions. Doom Brands are applied to affected minions, causing them to explode on death dealing Necrotic Damage to nearby foes.
- Dread Shade now affects you and other non-minion allies in addition to minions.
- Dread Shade applies Damned to affected enemies and minions each second.
- 1 stack per point; maximum of 3.
- Damned deals Necrotic Damage Over Time, and scales with generic increases to damage, and increases to Necrotic Damage, Damage Over Time, and Spell Damage.
- Area of effect increased by 100%. Dread Shade now buffs minions outside the area of effect. Dread Shade no longer buffs minions within the area of effect.
Our New Skeleton Models
[ 2020-06-23 19:33:57 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the game's official forum! Last month we posted about our plan to replace the skeleton models used in Last Epoch. In that post we shared some of the concept art we had created for these new skeletons, and since then our Art Team have been working hard to bring them to [strike]life[/strike] undeath. These new skeletons aren't finished just yet - we're still discussing some of the finer points that goes into making models for our game, such as making adjustments to the palette for greater contrast between different materials (particularly between the leather and bone).
Skeletal Assassin
Skeletal Warrior
Skeletal Archer
Skeletal Caster
Beta 0.7.8f Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-06-17 21:30:43 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
Death Seal
- Reduced Wave of Death's base radius by 5% (reverting the increase from 0.7.8e).
- Mortal Pulse reduces damage by 50% (from 25%).
- Tachycardia increases wave frequency by 12% (from 20%).
- Cycle of Decay grants 20% more damage (from 25%) and can have 3 points allocated (from 4).
- Curdled Flesh grants 2% more damage per stack (from 3%), but is still capped at 60%.
- Carrion Breath grants 35% increased area (from 40%), and can have 4 points allocated (from 5).
Smite
- Increased Smite base damage by 11% to match its added damage scaling.
Spirit Plague
- Deals 13% more damage.
- Discharge now requires 3 points in Efficacious Application (from 5).
- Now states its added damage effectiveness in its tooltip.
Tempest Strike
- Added a node that restores mana when Tempest Strike fails to proc any sub-abilities (Lightning Bolt, Earth Spike, or Northern Winds).
Vale Spirits
- Increased damage by 15%.
Passives
Shaman
- Tempest Form also grants 1 mana on Tempest Strike use per point.
- Sky Armour grants 20 armour per point (from 10).
Uniques
Torch of the Pontifex
- Cremate duration reduced to 1.5 seconds (from 4 seconds).
- Doubled Cremates base damage and added damage effectiveness.
Items
- The "of Symbiosis" Acolyte specific affix now grants 14% to 35% increased spell damage per Skeleton Mage. It previously gave +14 to 35 necrotic spell damage due to a mistake.
Enemies
Skullen Pyromancers
- Now deal 33% less damage with Fire Spray
- Are now considered level 33 enemies, rather than level 31 enemies. This will make their health slightly higher in the campaign, but scale less at endgame.
Visuals
- Fixed a bug where Torch of the Pontifexs Cremate effect appeared as a pink circle, and improved its visuals compared to before the bug.
- Added a visual effect for after the player is teleported during the Lagon fight.
- Improved the visuals for Thorn Shield (Ice Thorns node).
Sound
- Added vocal sounds that play when abilities are used for enemies in Chapter 2.
- Added a charge up sound for Sapphiral enemies.
- Adjusted sounds for many enemies early in the game.
- Adjusted sounds for elemental hits to fall off (become quieter) at a shorter distance.
- Added new sounds for Tempest Strike, including the base ability, Charged Stone, Northern Winds, Perfect Storm and Tempestuous.
- Added new sound effects for Bees.
- Added new sounds for Revenants.
- Added a looping fire sound for Flame Wraiths.
- Added sounds for Focus nodes that deal lightning damage.
- Added a new sound for Wave of Blood.
- Added a new sound for Necrotic Mortar.
- Added a new sound for Lightning Wave.
- Improved sounds for Spectral and Blood Golems (Bone Golem variants).
Optimization
- Improved the performance of Tempest Strike.
Bug Fixes
- We have identified and resolved a prevalent crash affecting Windows users with AMD video cards. (Stack Trace: WriteParticleMeshIndices).
- We'd like to thank AMD for collaborating with us on this issue and the resources they provided us.
- Fixed a bug where the Character Introduction videos would fail to play on Linux. This meant the game got stuck on a black screen when creating a character, requiring a game restart.
- Fixed a bug that caused log files to be very large (d3d11: failed to lock buffer).
- Fixed a bug where freezing a Siege Golem would not always cancel its ballista attack.
- Fixed the Increased Shield Throw Critical Strike Chance affix granting more critical strike chance rather than increased critical strike chance.
- Fixed a bug where Drain Life's poison conversion node did not give it the poison tag.
- Fixed Holy Auras Expedite node not granting Haste on hit.
- Fixed some icons in Reaper Forms tree appearing as a blank image.
- Fixed a bug where the Increased Warpath Area stat from Idols only applied while using a shield.
The Next Set of 3d Armor Models Coming for the Sentinel
[ 2020-06-17 00:00:18 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join the discussion on the official forum!
As Last Epoch continues its journey through Early Access, one of the most common pieces of feedback we receive is that many of you eagerly look forward to additional armor models being available.
Heres a preview of a new look coming to Sentinels as part of a future update;
Let us know what you think, Travelers! Are you looking forward to donning this armor?
Beta 0.7.8e Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-06-11 19:32:56 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
Death Seal
- Fixed a bug where Sanguine Subvention (health leech) did not work.
- Sanguine Subvention now grants 0.2% leech per second sealed, not the 1% that it stated before.
- Blood Bond now grants minions 10% more damage (from 7%).
- Corrupted Consciousness grants 1% increased damage per 3% missing health (from 1% per 2% missing health).
- Pustulent Presence grants 1% poison chance per 3% missing health (from 1% per 2% missing health) can have 4 points allocated (from 5)
- Frenzied Accord's damage and crit chance modifiers are now multiplicative.
- Lethal Release is now multiplicative with other modifiers.
- Sanguine Wave can have 3 points allocated (from 5).
- Base damage and added damage effectiveness reduced by 17%.
- Mortal Pulse causes death waves to deal 25% less damage.
- Damage multipliers from missing health, duration, and the tree are now multiplicative with each other rather than additive, and no longer only affect hit damage.
- Now deals more damage based on the flat duration that Death Seal was active, rather the proportion of its maximum duration that had passed. This means that increasing Death Seals maximum duration no longer decreases Death Waves damage if triggered early.
- The numerical values of its damage multipliers from time and missing health are now listed on its tooltip.
- Fixed a bug where the Death's Breath node granted increased radius rather than increased area. To maintain similar resultant AoEs the following changes have been made:
- Increased Death Wave's base radius by 5%.
- Death's Breath now grants 40% increased area per point (from 20% increased radius).
- This results in the following change in radius (compared to 0.7.8d) at the following number of points invested in Death's Breath:
- 0: +5%
- 1: +4%
- 2: +1%
- 3: -3%
- 4: -6%
- 5: -9%
Reaper Form
- Health drain accelerates more quickly while in Reaper Form. The formula for health drained per second is now 0.06t^2 + 0.3t +2 (instead of 0.05t^2 + 0.3t +2), where t is the number of seconds you have spent in Reaper Form.
- Reap now has a 3 second cooldown (from 2 seconds).
- Added a new node near the start of the tree that reduces Reap's Cooldown by 17% per point and can have 2 points allocated.
Spirit Plague
- Discharge causes Spirit Plague to spread after 3 seconds (from 4)
- Laceration grants 30% chance (from 25%) and can have 5 points allocated (from 4)
- Plague Burst grants 10% spread chance (from 15%)
- Toxic Transmission can have 2 points allocated (from 3)
- Gift of Death requires 1 point in toxic transmission (from 2)
- Enfeeblement reduces damage by 5% (from 6%)
- Anguish can have 2 points allocated (from 3)
Storm Totem
- Deals 15% more damage.
Summon Wolf
- Patient Hunters now grants 15% more damage over time and also grants 15% increased bleed effect (from 25% more damage over time).
Summoned Wraiths
- Health decay for all types of Wraiths is now slower initially, but accelerates more rapidly.
- Wraiths, Flame Wraiths, and Putrid Wraiths deal 25% more damage.
- Blood Wraiths deal 108% more damage, but attack 29% more slowly. This results in a dps increase of about 49%.
Transplant
- Disabled the Ossification node (Bone Armor damage immunity) because when combined with Death Seals Skeletal Sheath node it allowed for almost constant damage immunity.
Warpath
- Unchained grants 6% more hit damage (from 5% increased crit chance).
- Quicksilver Wind grants 10% increased movement speed (from 8%), but can have 4 points allocated (from 5).
- Whirling Blades grants 10% more hit damage while spinning (from increasing Warpath's hit damage by 10%) and is now multiplicative with the increases from Reckless Combatant, Warbringer, and Draining Assault.
- Draining Assault now grants 15% more damage while spinning (from increasing Warpath's hit damage by 15%) and is now multiplicative with the increases from Reckless Combatant, Warbringer, and Whirling Blades.
Enemies
- Adjusted item drop rates from different enemy rarities.
- Reduced the base chance for enemies to drop items by 3%.
- Increased the chance for magic enemies to drop items by 13%.
- Increased the chance for rare enemies to drop items by 25%.
- The Rare versions of enemies that have high amounts of health now gain a smaller amount of health as area level increases.
- All Rare enemies have an increase to their health that is based on the level of area they are in.
- This increase was already smaller for enemies that naturally have lots of health, and has been made even smaller with this patch.
- At level 100, tanky rare enemies (such as Siege Golems) will have up to 8% less health compared to 0.7.8d, and 13% less health compared to 0.7.8.
- Haruspex Orian (Ulatri Cliffs)
- Increased item drop rate.
- Can now drop potions when hit like other bosses.
- Deals 7% more damage and has 5% more health.
- Umbral Pursuers have 17% more health and always drop items.
- Reduced the initial damage of Scorched Earth (sky laser that leaves burning ground) by 33% for Winged Fires and by 20% for the Covenant of Dominion.
- Immortal Overseers have 38% more health and deal 20% more damage.
- Siege Golems deal 10% less damage over time.
- Feline Chimeras, Avialine Chimeras, Blood Chimeras, Giant Scorpions, Osprix Vanguards, Profane Flesh, and Voidfused Earths no longer spawn in arenas that have significant elevation changes.
Visuals
- Added a visual effect for Liath teleporting during her fight.
- Reduced the intensity of the Scorched Earth ability used by Winged Fires.
User Interface
- Passive nodes in the lower section of all mastery classes now list Requires Mastery Quest Completion after the level requirements.
- Changed crafting item labels to a lighter color.
Uniques
- Plague Bearers Staff can now roll up to 220% poison chance (from 250%).
Sound
- Improved the sound effect for Lagons slam attacks.
- Changed the sound used for Frenzy Totems Tether effect.
- Changed the sound used for Blood Tether and Blood Burst.
- Updated the sound for Warpath.
- Added new sounds for Aura of Decay and procs from its skill tree.
- Siege Golems have a better windup sound for their ballista shots.
- Replaced Pyre Golems sound effects.
- Added a new sound effect for Bone Prison (Mark for Death node).
- Added a new sound effect for Bone Armor (Transplant and Death Seal node).
- Added new sound effects for Bone Minions (Transplant node).
Optimization
- Improved the performance of buffs and debuffs.
- Improved the performance of ailments in many situations.
- Improved the performance of the Primeval Dragons magma shake ability.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed the Beastmasters The Chase node granting an incorrect amount of attack speed.
- Fixed a bug where Arcane Ascendances Tranquility node did not add mana efficiency.
- Fixed an oversight where hits from Manifest Weapon could proc Manifest Weapon (from an Idol affix).
- Fixed a bug where Marrow Shards' Blood Assassin, Marrow Death, and Femoral Offering nodes affected Bone Splinters, rather than the Marrow Shards themselves.
- Fixed a bug where the increased crit chance granted by Marrow Shards Dark Reverie node only affected physical skills.
- Fixed a bug where the reduced mana cost from Sacrifice's Blood Weavers node did not scale with points allocated.
- Fixed a bug where Warpaths nodes that granted you stats for not having a shield would not work unless you had taken a node that grants you stats regardless of weapon type.
- Fixed a bug where the Mage's idol affix for Increased Ignite Effect and the Sentinel's idol affix for Increased Bleed Effect were not working.
- Fixed Poison and Ignite showing incorrect values in the character sheet for damage and duration.
- Fixed a bug where the Beta Endpoint quest could start earlier than intended.
- Fixed a bug where the first exit of the Frozen Roots led to the Wengari Fortress instead of Farwood.
Poll Time! Which Skill Should We Preview Before Patch 0.7.9?
[ 2020-06-10 23:00:58 CET ] [ Original post ]
A number of new skills are coming in Patch 0.7.9! Being an unusually sadistic group of individuals, we decided it'd be fun for [strike]us[/strike] you if you got to choose which [strike]two skills we don't preview[/strike] skill we post a preview of before the patch! We're not posting any names, but we are providing the finished skill art for each skill. You have a week to decide, and you can always change your mind by choosing to vote for a different option. Here's the link!
Concept Art for the Nagasa
The most pious and stern of the Nagasa, the members of this caste are also known as the Diamond Matrons. They form the primary leadership of Majelka and the rest of Majasan society, with Vessel Maiden Apophis acting as a figurehead.
Members of the Emerald Caste are the most swift and agile of the Nagasa. Their roles in Majasan society reflect this, with them acting as spies, saboteurs, and assassins.
There are no living Nagasa in the Imperial Era. The undead wretches encountered in this time are covered in decaying wrappings and gold trinkets, mostly confined to the catacombs.
[ 2020-06-09 21:00:27 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the official Last Epoch forum! The Nagasa are the followers of Majasa, dwelling in the deserts of the south under her rule. They are divided into a strict caste system based upon the gems embedded in their bodies.
Diamond Caste
The most pious and stern of the Nagasa, the members of this caste are also known as the Diamond Matrons. They form the primary leadership of Majelka and the rest of Majasan society, with Vessel Maiden Apophis acting as a figurehead.
Emerald Caste
Members of the Emerald Caste are the most swift and agile of the Nagasa. Their roles in Majasan society reflect this, with them acting as spies, saboteurs, and assassins.
Nagasa in the Imperial Era
There are no living Nagasa in the Imperial Era. The undead wretches encountered in this time are covered in decaying wrappings and gold trinkets, mostly confined to the catacombs.
Beta 0.7.8d Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-06-03 19:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
Aura of Decay
- Now applies poison to enemies 4 times a second (from 3).
- No longer grants 50% increased poison damage while active.
- The Seeping Wounds node grants 12% bleed chance per second (from 8%).
Black Hole
- Increased duration by 10%.
- Now deals damage more frequently, but deals somewhat less damage each time. This will make its damage more consistent.
- Now fades out when the skill ends.
Bone Golem
- Bone Golems (and their variants) deal 15% more damage and pull aggro from 6% further away. This affects the range at which enemies decide to attack the Golem over other targets, not the range at which they decide to enter combat.
Flame Ward
- Fixed a bug where it gave 10 ward regen by default in addition to its other effects.
- Now grants 400 ward on use (from 300).
Smite
- Converting Smite to a Void skill now also converts the Fissures it creates.
Wandering Spirits
- Spectral Putrescence now grants Spirits a 40% chance to cast a projectile each second (from always casting every 2 seconds).
- Fixed a bug where Soul Of Filth reduced the poison interval by 10% rather than increasing the frequency by 10%, which made it somewhat stronger than intended.
- Thin Veil increases reveal rate by 7% (from 8%) and no longer reduces damage.
Warpath
- You can now move through enemies while channeling Warpath.
Other Changes
- Earthquake, Erasing Strike, Forge Strike, and Judgement now have 300% added damage effectiveness (from 250%).
- Increased Earthquakes radius by 20%.
- Slightly reduced the maximum distance Ice Shards from Ice Barrage travel.
- Manifest Armor now deals 67% more damage.
- Increased Marrow Shards base damage by 18% and its added damage effectiveness by 10%.
- Increased the base damage of Soul Feast by 40%.
Visuals
- Updated Meteors visual effects, including a simpler ground indicator for when more than two meteors are created with one cast.
- Updated Teleports visual effects.
- Updated Warpaths visual effects, which now vary depending on the weapon you have equipped.
- Quest objective indicators and arrows are now silver for sidequests.
Uniques
Eye of Reen
- Fixed a bug where Reens Ire was not granting Critical Strike Multiplier.
- Now displays a buff icon in the UI showing the current number of stacks.
Sound
- Music tracks now smoothly crossfade from one to another when loading a new zone.
- Increased the volume of footstep sounds.
- Changed out many old sounds that were used by Primalist skills and summons for newer ones.
- Added new sounds for Meteor.
- Added a new sound for Teleport.
- Added new summoning and attack sounds for most Acolyte minions.
- Void Husk enemies now use more fitting sounds.
- Updated the sound for Manifest Weapon.
- Updated the sound for Riposte (Vengeance proc).
- Adjusted sounds for the Spreading Frost boss.
- Added a sound for the bridge breaking in The Precipice.
Quests
- Improved the To Shell With It quest so its easier to complete, and fixed an issue that may have prevented some characters from completing it.
Enemies
Enemy Limits
- Individual enemy types can now be restricted to be less common in the Arena and the Monolith.
- Siege Golems and Marsh Beetle Queens are now limited to 1 per wave in the Arena.
- Siege Golems, Wengari Matriarchs, Wengari Patriarchs, Wengari Raid Leaders, Wengari Beastmasters, and Marsh Beetle Queens can no longer appear in such larger numbers in the Monolith.
- Siege Golems no longer spawn in arenas that have significant elevation changes.
Siege Golem
- Immolating Aura now has a 1.5 second delay with an indicator before damage is dealt.
- Reduced Immolating Aura duration to 6 seconds (from 8 seconds).
- Increased Immolating Aura damage somewhat now that it is easier to avoid.
Health Scaling
- Adjusted how Rare enemy health scales with area level. Rares have more health earlier on, but reach about the same amount as before at high levels.
Optimization
- Improved the performance of the Architect Liath fight.
- Improved the performance of tracking health status (i.e. low/high health) and events (i.e. on hit, on kill).
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue preventing save data automatically recovering after a OS-level crash or power outage. Characters that were lost in these cases after the release of 0.7.8 should be restored.
- Fixed a bug where stash tabs would reference the wrong tab in some cases. Existing stashes should be automatically fixed if theyre having this issue.
- Did a pass over all passives to correct nodes that have different values than stated on their tooltips.
- Fixed a bug where many stats that depended on having a certain health percentage did not work, such as damage and ailment chance.
- Fixed a bug where your weapon's attack rate would not apply after loading or equipping an offhand until you equipped a weapon another time.
- Fixed a bug where Forged Weapons (such as from Forge Strike) would have very low attack speed if you were unarmed or affected by the previous bug.
- Fixed a bug where Eterras Blessings Triage was always targeting the player by mistake.
- Fixed Meteors Cycle of Fire node not working.
- Fixed a bug where the connection between Ice Barrages Shattered Skin and Jagged Ice nodes did not work.
- Fixed an oversight where the Ice Shards of Skeleton Cryomancers did not have a freeze rate and their Mortars only had half the freeze rate that they should.
- Fixed a bug where Smite would not create a Fissure if its initial hit killed the target.
- Fixed a bug that prevented buffs granted for inflicting Spirit Plague on enemies from stacking.
- Fixed a bug where Storm Totems Shockfury and Shielding Totem nodes were not working.
- Fixed a bug where the Beastmaster's The Chase node was not working.
- Fixed a bug where Death Seals Devouring Release node would create Hungering Souls too close to the ground, preventing them from hitting targets.
- Fixed the Druid's Natural Duality node not granting armor and protections.
- Fixed a bug where the Druid's Turtle Form node had a level requirement of 20, rather than 15.
- Fixed a bug where the Druid's Unstable Ground node had a level requirement of 15, rather than 20.
- Fixed the Forge Guard's Javelineer node granting 10% increased crit multi instead of 10% added crit multi.
- Fixed a bug where the Heal on Block stat from the Forge Guard's Rejuvenator node did not show on the character sheet.
- Fixed the Lich's Decaying Form node not increasing poison damage taken.
- Fixed the Lich's Mental Cacophony node granting increased mana instead of added mana.
- Fixed the Sentinel's "of Sword Mastery" and "of Crushing" affixes granting generic added physical damage rather than added melee physical damage.
- Fixed the Shamans Ancestral Speed node not granting haste.
- Fixed a bug where the Shaman's Tempest Form node granted +1 strength per point rather than +10 health.
- Fixed a bug where taking the Sorcerers Mirror Breath node would break the functionality of the Dragon Breath node.
- Fixed the Future Mind node on the Void Knight tree saying that it still gave 3 health (when it now gives 5).
- Fixed a bug where Spriggan Form and Werebear Form did not have footstep sounds.
Beta 0.7.8c Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-05-29 00:19:16 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Improved our ability to debug stability issues.
- The of Warding idol affix now grants 3 to 8 ward on melee hit for Huge idols (from 4 to 10).
- The Alchemists prefix now grants up to 80 ward on potion use (from 60, with similar increases at lower tiers as well), and can now also roll on body armour.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed multiple new transform related suffixes saying increased increased in their names.
- Fixed the new of the Parasite, of Shielding and of the Abomination affixes being prefixes when they were supposed to be suffixes.
- Fixed an oversight where the of the Abomination affix could roll on Primalist gear, not just Acolyte gear.
Beta 0.7.8b Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-05-27 20:23:54 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
- Spirit Plague is now correctly considered a Curse.
- Clarified Mark for Deaths tooltip to say its a Curse.
- Clarified Harvests tooltips to state that Harvest interacts with all Curses, not just Mark for Death
Items
- Class incompatible items (e.g. acolyte helmets if you're a mage) drop twice as often as before above level 50. They are still less likely to drop than items that are specific to your class.
- The Mana Regen suffix can now roll up to 17% (from 15%).
- Fixed a bug where Mage had an additional Freeze Rate per Stack of Chill affix in addition to the one it shares with Primalist.
- Added a new Acolyte specific suffix that adds minion freeze rate multiplier.
- Existing items with extraneous mage freeze rate per chill affix will now have the new minion freeze rate multiplier affix.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the Ruined Shrine zone for the Monolith would fail to create an objective.
- Fixed some zones in Chapter 8 having different music than intended.
- Fixed a bug where deleted characters would still be shown in the list of characters until the game was restarted.
- Fixed an error that could occur when loading saves from 0.7.7 into 0.7.8 for the first time.
- Fixed some bugs with transitioning between different animations on the Mage.
- Fixed a bug where Spriggan Forms animations acted as if you were holding a two-handed weapon.
- Removed the waypoint from the Northern Stream.
- Fixed water flickering in the Moonlit Shrine.
- Fixed an object blocking the camera in Corrupted Lake.
- Fixed the Primalists Ancient Call passive granting incorrect stats.
- Fixed Death Seals Life Tap node not working.
- Fixed Smites tags not changing when converted to another damage type.
- Fixed Lightning Blasts Insidious Conduction node stating it added a channel cost of 20. It actually adds a channel cost of 40.
- Fixed a bug where the health bars above enemies would have inconsistent sizes, and improved their performance.
- Fixed a bug where Bone Harvester and Torch of the Pontifex recast the last skill you killed an enemy with, rather than their intended on kill effect.
- Fixed a bug where Urzils Pride was scaling incorrectly.
- Fixed a bug where class requirements in comparison tooltips would incorrectly show as red.
- Fixed the Freeze Rate per Stack of Chill affix having a typo in its name.
- Fixed a bug where the Reduced Health Cost Of Spells affix for Acolyte armor was increasing the health cost of spells.
- Fixed a bug where the Sentinel's Void Damage Over Time Idol affix had been accidentally deleted.
- This will not fix existing idols, where it has unfortunately been replaced by the Acolyte's new +1 skeleton affix, which is less than useful for Sentinels.
Beta 0.7.8 Release and Patch Notes
Death Seal
Channeled Mana Cost
Class Specific Items
Changes to affix pools on class specific items Body Armor and Helmets are now class specific, so affixes that are not used by that class will no longer roll on them. Other slots are not affected unless stated.
New Uniques
Due to size constraints, this section is not available here on Steam. Please click here to view this specific section on our forum.
Due to size constraints, this section is not available here on Steam. Please click here to view this specific section on our forum.
Due to size constraints, this section is not available here on Steam. Please click here to view this specific section on our forum.
[ 2020-05-26 17:01:55 CET ] [ Original post ]
Note: Due to the size of this update, we are unable to fit every change into a single Steam post. The Passives, Skill Balance, and Bug Fixes sections have thus been omitted. The patch notes can found in their entirety here, along with a video from our Game Director, Judd Cobler.
- The 8th chapter of story content is now available, featuring an encounter with a third deity of the world of Eterra: Lagon, the god of storms and the moon.
- Added animals in the background that will move and make sounds when approached.
- Replaced some of the Rime Giants in the Frozen Roots with Cave Bears.
- The arena now scales up three times as fast after wave 150.
- For example, wave 200 is now as difficult as wave 300 was before, and wave 433 is as difficult as wave 1000 was before.
- Wave 150 was chosen for the start of this as it's the wave at which the arena is the same level (100) for every character. For characters below level 100 the arena level scales up from their level to 100 linearly between wave 50 and wave 150.
- You can now buy additional stash tabs using gold directly in the stash window.
- Each stash tab can now have a custom color, icon, and name set.
- Stash tabs can now be sorted into categories. Clicking on a category will show only the tabs it contains, allowing you to easily navigate between many tabs.
- Tabs can be navigated through a horizontally scrolling list at the top of the window, or displayed in a vertical list grouped by category.
- You can now perform a search across all tabs simultaneously in the vertical list view. All tabs that do not contain the search term will be hidden, leaving a list of tabs with matching contents.
- Added the Game Guide, which explains many key concepts and mechanics.
- The default keybind for the Game Guide is G.
- Pages contain links that will automatically open other pages, and you can search the guide for keywords.
- Topics currently include the crafting system, items, defensive mechanics, and some combat mechanics.
- We have plans for additional pages, and welcome feedback about the system. Let us know what topics you think should be covered, and if any explanations could use improvement.
Death Seal
- New skill which is unlocked at Lich level 30.
- Death Seal is an effect that removes Ward and caps Health for your character. While active it increases damage dealt and reduces damage taken; when toggled again, it unleashes a wave of damage.
- Includes a specialization tree.
- New skill which is unlocked at Acolyte level 15.
- Spirit Plague is a Necrotic Damage Over Time skill that can spread to other enemies.
- Includes a specialization tree.
- Reworked base skill functionality. Ice Barrage is now a single cast skill which sends a series of Ice Shards in the direction you cast it, while allowing you to move and use other skills freely.
- Now has a specialization tree.
- The lower section of all Mastery Class trees, as well as the upper section of your chosen Mastery's tree, are now unlocked when you choose your Mastery in the Realm of the Forgotten.
- Base Class trees now have two additional rows for passives at the top, but Mastery tree nodes still only require you to have level 20 in the Base Class to allocate points in them.
- New nodes have been added and many more have been changed. See the Passives section below for more details.
- Halved the respec cost of base class nodes.
- You can now respec the nodes in the Base Class to bring your Base Class level below 20, as long as you don't have any points in Mastery tree nodes (Mastery tree nodes still require level 20 in your Base Class).
- The unlock order for some skills has been changed alongside this update:
- Defile is now unlocked at Acolyte level 20, rather than Acolyte level 15.
- Volcanic Orb is now unlocked at Mage level 15, rather than Sorcerer level 5.
- Focus is now unlocked at Mage level 20, rather than Mage level 15.
- Sacrifice is now unlocked at Necromancer level 10, rather than character level 10.
- Serpent Strike is now unlocked at Primalist level 20, rather than character level 12.
- Smite is now unlocked at Sentinel level 20, rather than Paladin level 10.
Channeled Mana Cost
- Channelled abilities no longer apply a mana drain, but instead have a mana cost per second, which is affected by modifiers to mana cost.
- Channelled abilities with a channel cost now disable your mana regen while channelling. This is stated in the tooltips of these abilities.
- Many skills and skill nodes have been changed as a result of this, and are listed below.
- Your skills now gain experience faster at higher character levels (up to 91).
- Skills require more experience to reach high levels.
- Skills take longer to reach level 20 for the first time than in 0.7.7.
- Respeccing an ability to level 20 is faster than before once you are above level 80.
- Skills that you started levelling later more quickly catch up to skills that you started levelling earlier.
- A full pass was made on skill node tooltips to improve accuracy. Main points:
- Ensure the value on the tooltip matches whats being applied.
- Clarify whether stats granted to the player and allies are multiplicative or not.
- Clarified all Damage Conversion node descriptions to clearly state whether all damage is converted, or just the base damage of the skill.
- The Ice Thorn Totems node now converts 50% of thorn totems' thorn base damage to cold (from 0%) and grants 15 freeze rate (from 10).
- Fixed a bug where the Molten Shield node on Shield Throw did not always correctly convert increased stun chance to ignite chance (not enough ignite chance would be added in some cases, and the stun chance would not be removed).
- Fixed a bug where the Blood Feast node on Soul Feast did not actually convert any damage.
Class Specific Items
- Body armor and helmets are now base class specific, with each class having different implicits.
- Added 8 new base types of body armor and helmets for each base class. The 2d art for each base type now matches the 3d art on your character.
- Different classes will have different affix pools on these slots. For example, minion health will not roll on Mage body armor and helmets.
- Rare affixes exclusive to certain base classes have been added.
- Existing armor types have not been altered and can be equipped by all classes, but will no longer drop or be available at shops and the gambler.
- Uniques will in general remain usable by all classes and how they drop has not changed. Some uniques will be class specific.
- Clicking on a crafting item on the ground now picks up all nearby crafting items automatically.
- Changed the base attack of Broad Swords to 1.15 (from 1.08).
- Improved the 2d art for the Sovnya, Talon Spear, Naginata, and Rusted Glaive polearm base types.
- Reduced the maximum roll of Chance to Ignite (from 24% to 20% for large idols).
- Increased the value of the Glancing Blow affix (from 8% - 22% to 10% - 25% for adorned idols).
- Reduced the maximum roll of the Mage Increased Ignite Effect affix (from 14% to 11%).
- Increased the value of the Primalist Chance On 10 Or More Mana Spent To Cast Lightning At A Nearby Enemy" affix (from 15% - 40% to 18% - 50%).
- Increased the value of the Primalist "Chance To Gain Haste For 3 Seconds When You Summon A Totem" affix (from 7% - 19% to 12% - 34%).
- Increased the value of the Mage "Ward Gained When Damage Leaves You At Low Health" affix (from 25 - 80 to 35 - 100).
- Increased the value of the Acolyte "Increased Minion Cooldown Recovery Speed" affix (from 9% - 25% to 12% - 35% for huge and adorned idols).
- Reduced the value of the Primalist Minion Poison Chance affix (from 19% - 52% to 11% - 30% for huge idols).
- Reduced the value of the Acolyte Spell Poison Chance affix (from 16% - 42% to 15% - 35% for huge and adorned idols).
- Reduced the value of the Sentinel Increased Armour affix (from 22% - 60% to 15% - 35% for ornate idols).
- Reduced the value of the Mage "Increased Mana And Armour affix (from 15% maximum to 12% maximum on ornate idols).
- The "Chance To Cast Soul Feast When You Cast Transplant" prefix now rolls on Huge Immortal Idols, rather than Ornate Bone Idols.
Changes to affix pools on class specific items Body Armor and Helmets are now class specific, so affixes that are not used by that class will no longer roll on them. Other slots are not affected unless stated.
- Increased minion health, minion health regen, minion dodge rating, and minion damage over time cannot roll on helmets or body armors that are specific to Mages or Sentinels.
- Strength and Attunement cannot roll on helmets or body armour that are specific to Mages or Acolytes.
- Intelligence cannot roll on helmets or body armours that are specific to Primalists or Sentinels
- Damage Dealt to Mana Before Health can now only roll on Mage helmets and Mage body armour (it could never roll on non-class specific base types).
- Ward Gained On Potion Use cannot roll on helmets or body armours that are specific to Primalists or Sentinels.
- Increased Shock Effect can now roll on Mage helmets and Mage body armour.
- Can now only roll on shields (from shields, helmets, body armour, and belts).
- Provides a flat amount of armour and protections rather than increasing armour and protections.
- Is now twice as rare and only starts spawning from level 55 onwards (from level 45).
- Existing items that had the increased armour and protections suffix will have the new armour and protections suffix even if the suffix can no longer roll on that item type.
- Added a new hybrid health suffix that grants added and increased health which rarely spawns after level 45 on gloves, boots and belts.
- Increased mana regen now rolls on rings, relics, and gloves, instead of wands, sceptres, and staves. Its values have been reduced to account for being able to have it on multiple slots at once.
- Existing increased mana regen suffixes have been converted to the new hybrid health suffix.
- The block armour prefix has been replaced by Health Gained on Block.
- The Increased Health suffix grants up to 13% increased health (from 15%), and can no longer roll on shields.
- Increased Armour can roll up to 35% (from 60%) and can no longer roll on gloves.
- The Glancing Blow suffix (not set) now grants 12% to 15% at tier 5 (from 12% to 13%).
- Added protection affixes (cold, fire, lightning, void, necrotic, poison) can now roll up to 320 (from 300).
- The Added Melee Crit Chance prefix grants 2% to 6% crit chance (from 3% to 7%, values for 1h weapons).
- Adjusted the "reduced damage taken on block" affix to have wider ranges at mid tiers (its minimum and maximum values have not changed).
- The "Glacial" freeze rate and cold protection prefix can roll up to 200% freeze rate multiplier (From 150%), and 10% increased cold protection (from 20%).
- The block effectiveness (renamed from block protection) prefix can roll up to 800 (from 600).
- Added Armour can now roll up to 200 (from 180).
- The set added health affix can now roll up to 35 (from 30).
- Added elemental protection can now roll up to 220 (from 180).
- Set elemental protection can now roll up to 75 (from 65).
- Set increased health regen can now roll up to 35% (from 30%).
- Added health can now roll up to 90 (from 80).
- Ward on Kill can now roll up to 20 (from 25).
- Attunement can now spawn starting at level 6 (from 10).
- Dexterity can now spawn starting level 3 (from 15).
- The fire protection suffix can now spawn starting at level 1 (from 21).
- Renamed the added health affix to of Life from of the Giant.
New Uniques
- Added new unique boots, Sulorons Step.
- Added a new unique helmet for Mages, The Ashen Crown.
- Added a new unique body armor for Acolytes, Shroud of Obscurity.
- Artors Legacy now has the Lupine Helm base type, making it exclusive to Primalists. It now requires level 42 to equip.
- Culnivar's Claim now also adds 14 to 20 spell lightning damage.
- Kermodes Cage now has the Nomad Garb base type, making it exclusive to Primalists.
- Plague Bearer's Staff is now a Gate Staff rather than a Composite staff.
- Sunforged Cuirass now has the Solarum Plate base type, making it exclusive to Sentinels.
- Urzils Pride now grants 1% increased mana regen per 100 lightning protection instead of 1% increased mana regen per 100 armour.
- Urzils Pride now also grants 100 to 200 lightning protection.
- Urzils Pride now grants 125 armour (from 25).
- Ward Retention has 50% reduced effect compared to 0.7.7.
- This means that having 80% ward retention in 0.7.8 will be the same as having 40% ward retention in 0.7.7. This does not mean that ward will decay twice as fast.
- Removed Block Armour and renamed Block Protection to Block Effectiveness. Block Armour only applied to physical damage, while Block Protection applied to all damage types. Removing Block Armour reduces unnecessary complexity.
- The Steel Aegis node on the Sentinel tree now gives 50 block effectiveness (from 60 block armour).
- The Flawless Defender node on the Forge Guard tree now gives 60 block effectiveness (from 50 block armour).
- The Honour node on the Paladin tree now gives 40 block effectiveness (from 50 block armour).
- The Avenger's Wrath node on the Shield Throw tree no longer gives 1% crit multi per block armour (it still gives 1% crit multi per block effectiveness).
Due to size constraints, this section is not available here on Steam. Please click here to view this specific section on our forum.
Due to size constraints, this section is not available here on Steam. Please click here to view this specific section on our forum.
- Implemented a footstep sound system. The player now makes sounds while walking, which dynamically change based on the surface underfoot.
- Added a new sound for Hammer Throw.
- Added a new sound for Snap Freeze.
- Added a new sound for Mark for Death and Defile.
- Added a new sound for Smite.
- Added a sound for Death Screechs used by Avaline Chimeras.
- Added sounds for Fume enemies.
- Added new sounds for Wengari Berserker spin and charge attacks.
- Added multiple new sounds for Desecrated Flesh enemies.
- Added new sounds for Profane Flesh attacks.
- Added new sounds for Yulia in the Immortal Summit.
- Added a new sound for unique items dropping.
- Added a sound effect for the Temple Guardian being activated.
- Added sounds for opening doors in the Temple of Eterra.
- Added sound effects for bridges and doors in the Immortal Summit.
- Added ambient sounds to Chapter 7.
- Adjusted sounds for many enemies in Chapter 7.
- Adjusted call-to-arms (aggro) and death sounds for enemies in Chapter 5.
- Improved sound effects for the Primeval Dragon boss.
- Implemented a complete new set of animations for the Mage class. Includes idle, running channeling, melee and spell casting animations, with variations based on the type of weapon equipped.
- Added a new casting animation for Marrow Shards.
- Added a confirmation window for the Reset Monolith button and moved it to the top left of the screen.
- Quest pulses on the minimap are now disabled when the relevant quest is untracked.
- Updated the design of the character sheet.
- Updated the design of the Skills window.
- Improved shadows and texturing on the action bar.
- Added an option to always have the comparison displayed on items. When this option is enabled, holding the ctrl key hides the comparison display.
- Further improved the chats profanity filter.
- Mouse wheel + and - can now be bound to actions (i.e. movement).
- The tags display for skills now says Damage over Time instead of DoT.
- Increased duration of shrine buffs by 50%.
- Gold shrines now drop significantly more gold.
- The health increase per level that rare enemies get is now smaller for enemies that are inherently tanky. For example, at level 0 a rare Marsh Beetle Queen still has a 300% more health modifier from its rarity, but at level 100 it will now have a 612.5% more health modifier, rather than an 800% more health modifier. Meanwhile, the health modifier of a rare Void Leech is unchanged.
- Lithrac
- 20% increased health.
- Now resistant to lightning damage rather than all elemental damage.
- Slightly more resistant to lightning damage than before.
- Marsh Beetle Queens
- Turn more slowly during attacks.
- Stop turning earlier when using their slam.
- Their slam deals less damage.
- Sapphirals' charged lightning ability is now interrupted by stun, freeze, and death, but deals 10% more damage.
- Reduced the Wengari Patriarch's pursuit range for buffing allies by 60%. Previously in Monolith zones he would often end up running away from the player to cast buffs.
- Rime Giants turn less while using abilities.
- Giant Rats are now easier to hit.
- Increased the health of Immortal Eyes by 50%.
- Increased the health of Immortal Watchers by 125% (their health relative to their level now matches Immortal Eyes).
- Adjusted the Primeval Dragons fire breath so you can no longer avoid it by standing in the Dragons head.
- Improved the Ice Nova used by Frozen Dryads.
- Improved casting visuals for Soul Feast.
- Improved the visuals for Marrow Shards
- Updated the timing and ground-level visuals for Smite.
- Improved the death visuals for Lupine Remnants.
- Improved the visuals for Smites lightning node.
- Improved the visuals for Arcane Ascendance.
- Improved the visuals for Mana Strike.
- Reduced the installed size of the game by about 30GB. This was accomplished by improving texture compression and reducing reliance on optimizations that required extra data being stored. This should also reduce the size of future patch downloads.
- Improved the performance of hideable objects throughout the campaign, such as pillars, walls, and trees.
- Improved the performance for lots of visual effects.
- Improved the performance of damage numbers.
- Improved the performance of displaying FPS.
- Improved the performance of saving character information.
- Improved the performance of Ice Elementals.
- Improved the performance of Hammer Throw.
- Improved performance in the Council Chambers.
- Improved performance in the End of Time.
- Improved performance of the Character Select screen.
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[Developer Blog] Making Base Classes More Distinct
[ 2020-05-26 00:00:54 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey, Travelers! Mike has posted our latest Developer Blog, Making Base Classes More Distinct. Developer Blogs are when members of the team take a deep dive into a particular aspect of Last Epoch's design, explaining not just changes that will be made, but the reasoning behind those changes. This latest Developer Blog focuses on changes to items and class passives coming in Patch 0.7.8. Unlike most of our posts, Developer Blogs are only available on the game's official forum. We sincerely hope you take the time to check out the post and leave us your feedback. We'll see you there!
Patch Preview: Beta 0.7.8
The issue preventing us from updating Last Epoch on Linux has been resolved. We are QAing Patch 0.7.8 on Linux and correcting any issues we come across. While we would like to release the patch for Linux at the same time as Windows and Mac, it will likely be delayed. Were currently working on an overhaul of ability tooltips. This will entail an update to their visual style, as well as improved clarity of information such as what stats minions scale with. P.S. Did you catch Thyworm interviewing a member of EHG staff yesterday? We posted it here!
[ 2020-05-21 21:00:45 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join the discussion on the official forum!
https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/patch-preview-beta-0-7-8/20097
Patch 0.7.8 brings the hotly anticipated eighth chapter of storyline content, a number of new features, changes to class passives and items, and some technical advancements.
Content
- This patch includes the eighth chapter of story content!
- The stash is being overhauled and will have many more features than before.
- Patch 0.7.8 includes the Game Guide!
- This was previously known as the Mechanics Guide.
- Crafting items are being given a vacuum effect - click on one, loot 'em all!
- The world of Eterra is now home to a variety of critters.
- Walking in Last Epoch now has suitable audio.
- The Acolyte now has a new skill called Spirit Plague.
- Spirit Plague is a Necrotic Damage Over Time skill that can spread to other enemies.
- Spirit Plague has a specialization tree.
- The Lich now has a new skill called Death Seal.
- Death Seal is an effect that removes Ward and caps Health for your character. While active it increases damage dealt; when toggled again, it unleashes a wave of damage.
- Death Seal has a specialization tree.
- The Mage skill Ice Barrage has been redesigned.
- Ice Barrage now has a specialization tree.
- Unannounced change. Check back soon!
- Unannounced change. Check back soon!
- All helmets and body armor now have 2d art that matches their 3d art.
- A floating Ward bar can now be displayed above your character.
- We have overhauled many UI windows, including skill trees and the character sheet.
- Blocking players now hides their messages in general chat in addition to preventing PMs.
- Replaced the system used to filter chat messages.
- Replaced all animations used by the Mage class.
- We posted a preview of some new animations here.
- The button to reset the Monolith of Fate has been moved. Clicking on it will now trigger a confirmation dialog to avoid cases of the Monolith being reset by accident.
- Lightning Blast no longer crashes the game.
- We're removing 70% of the game!
- This refers to optimizing of the game's install size; no content is being removed.
- Improved the performance of displaying damage numbers.
- Improved the performance of displaying the client's FPS.
- Improved the performance of objects that are set to dynamically fade to avoid obscuring the character being played, such as trees, walls, and pillars.
The issue preventing us from updating Last Epoch on Linux has been resolved. We are QAing Patch 0.7.8 on Linux and correcting any issues we come across. While we would like to release the patch for Linux at the same time as Windows and Mac, it will likely be delayed. Were currently working on an overhaul of ability tooltips. This will entail an update to their visual style, as well as improved clarity of information such as what stats minions scale with. P.S. Did you catch Thyworm interviewing a member of EHG staff yesterday? We posted it here!
A Game Guide Is Coming in Our Next Update!
The search bar is shown on the left, while Rune of Shattering is a link to another page. The Game Guide was previously known as the Mechanics Guide. While its name has been updated, it will still serve the same goal of explaining the games features and mechanics.
[ 2020-05-19 21:00:41 CET ] [ Original post ]
Ever wanted to better understand crafting instability, learn more about the differences between hits and damage over time, or get a better handle on how protections work? Good news! Starting in Patch 0.7.8, you can press G to [strike]git gud[/strike] Game Guide! The Game Guide features;
- Pages which each explain one facet of Last Epoch.
- Collapsible categories that group related pages together.
- A search bar to help you quickly find what you're looking for.
- Links to related pages for additional information.
The search bar is shown on the left, while Rune of Shattering is a link to another page. The Game Guide was previously known as the Mechanics Guide. While its name has been updated, it will still serve the same goal of explaining the games features and mechanics.
The New 'Moonlit Shrine' Track Coming With Chapter 8
[ 2020-05-14 21:31:47 CET ] [ Original post ]
As you know, the upcoming Patch 0.7.8 features the eighth chapter of campaign content. In addition to new zones and new enemies, a new chapter means new music! Here's the new 'Moonlit Shrine' track coming as part of this update; [previewyoutube=sJ4lYYo60xU;full][/previewyoutube]
Patch 0.7.8 Completely Overhauls the Stash
Starting later this month, you will be able to;
[ 2020-05-13 19:45:34 CET ] [ Original post ]
In Patch 0.7.8 we are overhauling the stash, introducing a lot of new features and options! Note: This post describes features coming to Last Epoch in a future update. While some of these may require that in-game currency be spent to unlock them, the below features will not be microtransactions ("MTX") and will not require real-world money to obtain.
List of New Features
Starting later this month, you will be able to;
- Buy additional stash tabs for gold.
- Change the color of stash tabs. *
- Choose icons to prepend to the names of stash tabs. *
- Rename stash tabs. *
- Assign stash tabs to categories (or tab tabs, if you prefer).
- Move stash tabs from one category to another.
- Open a Quick View window to see which tabs are in each category.
Stash Tab Customization Options
Stash Tabs and Categories Preview
Quick View Preview
Full Stash Preview
New Forum Features Are Now Available
[ 2020-05-12 04:04:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
We've added new features to the official forum for Last Epoch! The most significant changes are;
- A link to a Dev Tracker has been added to the top of index pages.
- We plan to ultimately replace this with an alternative that will omit forum posts in the categories Customer Service, Technical Support, and Bug Reports.
- Forum threads now contain navigational tools to go to later (and earlier) EHG posts.
- The Announcements, Developer Blogs, and Patch Notes categories now display a notice that new threads can only be created by Eleventh Hour Games staff.
- This is just a clarification of existing behavior.
- When bookmarking a thread it is possible to have the forum send you a reminder of the thread at a time of your choosing. This is optional; bookmarks can be saved without one.
- Forum threads can now be set to automatically delete responses of a certain age. To prevent abuse, this can only be enabled by EHG staff. If you would like to request that one of your threads be configured in this way, please post in Customer Service.
Click One, Loot Many: Crafting Items Receiving a Vacuum Effect
[ 2020-05-09 21:45:19 CET ] [ Original post ]
We're implementing a vacuum effect where, if you pick up an Affix Shard, Glyph, or Rune, you will automatically loot all other nearby crafting items. This feature will be included in Patch 0.7.8.
Patch 0.7.8 Brings Footsteps to Last Epoch
[ 2020-05-08 23:32:16 CET ] [ Original post ]
A commonly requested feature, footsteps are being added in Patch 0.7.8. As your character traverses Eterra, you'll hear the sound of his or her boots making contact with the ground. The sound will vary depending on where you are; you may hear the sound of someone walking on solid rock, splashing through the water, or something else! Here's a video showcasing some of the sound effects; [previewyoutube=ctKTbSz7dzw;full][/previewyoutube]
Bringing More Life to the World of Eterra
[ 2020-05-07 23:45:50 CET ] [ Original post ]
In our upcoming update, Patch 0.7.8, we'll be introducing a variety of critters to the game to help the world of Eterra feel alive. We've been very very sneaky and very very quiet to get a few sightings of them.
Be careful! Bad things happen if you accidentally step on one. steamsad
If you stay very still, you might catch a glimpse of one.
Sometimes they'll be in places you can't reach.
Often they'll blend in well with their environment.
They may flee when approached.
Mage Animation Updates
[ 2020-05-07 00:30:48 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers, Patch 0.7.8 includes some updated Mage animations! Unfortunately, the Steam platform isn't a great place for a large number of short videos. We'd love for you to see this post and give us some feedback, so please check it out here on Last Epoch's official forum. We look forward to seeing you there!
Updating the Skeletons Used in Last Epoch
[ 2020-05-05 23:02:50 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the Last Epoch community and be able to click on the images to see larger versions of them? Consider joining us on the official forum for Last Epoch. We're replacing the skeletons used in Last Epoch! The skeletons our Art Team are working on will not just look better than the dated models we currently use, they will also perform better due to having lower poly counts. We're creating new models for both summoned minions and enemies, so this will bring performance improvements when large numbers of skeletons are on the screen, regardless of whether they're your army or the sinister forces of the Immortal Empire.
Concept Art
Two New Enemies Coming in Patch 0.7.8
It is said that Lagon created the Meruna from the broken body of an ancient sea titan. The Meruna Siren is a spell caster that supports the brutish Meruna Ogres in combat, using her mastery of the ocean and fiendish voice to batter enemies while remaining out of reach. (The Meruna were previously known as the Nereid.)
Rahyehs armies make use of fire elementals that power their metalcraft. The Winged Fire is a particularly ornate construct, incorporating the imagery of Rahyehs wings and halo in its design.
[ 2020-05-04 23:00:47 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to get more involved with the Last Epoch community, and view the Ability Previews we weren't able to embed into this post? Join us on the game's official forum! With new zones come new enemies! We've prepared previews of two enemies coming in Patch 0.7.8 which consist of lore snippets, design sheets, and screenshots. The enemies featuring in today's post are the Meruna Siren and the Winged Fire.
Meruna Siren
Meruna Siren Lore
It is said that Lagon created the Meruna from the broken body of an ancient sea titan. The Meruna Siren is a spell caster that supports the brutish Meruna Ogres in combat, using her mastery of the ocean and fiendish voice to batter enemies while remaining out of reach. (The Meruna were previously known as the Nereid.)
Meruna Siren Concept Art
Meruna Siren Screenshot
Winged Fire
Winged Fire Lore
Rahyehs armies make use of fire elementals that power their metalcraft. The Winged Fire is a particularly ornate construct, incorporating the imagery of Rahyehs wings and halo in its design.
Winged Fire Concept Art
Winged Fire Screenshot
Patch 0.7.8 Removes 70% of the Game
[ 2020-05-03 17:00:59 CET ] [ Original post ]
Greetings, Travelers! As you know, our content patches include targeted optimizations. Patch 0.7.6 removed a few sources of stutter and fixed specific skills not being performant, and Patch 0.7.7 significantly improved framerates in many instances. Patch 0.7.8 will be continuing this trend. One of the focuses of our efforts for Patch 0.7.8 is reducing the size of a Last Epoch install. I use Windows, Linux, and macOS regularly. On Windows 10 my Last Epoch folder is about 47.5 GB in size, on Ubuntu 20.04 it is around 50 GB, and on Catalina 10.15.4 it is approximately 51 GB. Internally, we have Windows builds just over 12 GB in size. In Patch 0.7.8 we will be adding another chapter of story content, however, we anticipate the game remaining 15 GB. Effects of this optimization will include;
- Future patches entailing smaller downloads
- Fresh installs of the game having smaller downloads
- Less space being required during the patching procedure
A Sneak Peek at Chapter 8
[ 2020-05-02 23:03:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hi Travelers!
As you know, the upcoming Patch 0.7.8 includes Chapter 8 of our campaign.
Today we've prepared some screenshots showing both zones visited previously during other Eras, and all-new zones never seen before. While we're excited to show these to you, we ask that you remember they remain works in progress - Patch 0.7.8 is still weeks away.
As an aside, we recently unleashed EpochBot on the Last Epoch Discord server!
Have you joined us on Discord yet?
New Lagon Wallpaper!
[ 2020-04-20 23:00:30 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers!
We've created some splash art of Lagon to celebrate him making a splash in Patch 0.7.8.
Will you pledge your allegiance to Eterra's servant by using it as your wallpaper?
[table]
[tr]
[th]Resolution[/th]
[th]Download[/th]
[/tr][tr]
[td]4k[/td]
[td]Link[/td]
[/tr][tr]
[td]1440p ultrawide[/td]
[td]Link[/td]
[/tr][tr]
[td]1440p[/td]
[td]Link[/td]
[/tr][tr]
[td]1080p ultrawide[/td]
[td]Link[/td]
[/tr][tr]
[td]1080p[/td]
[td]Link[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
Beta 0.7.7f Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-04-14 16:10:26 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes
- Improved chat stability, specifically cases where messages would not be received.
- Added a mitigation for save data corruption as we work on a full fix. Data is now additionally saved to a _temp file, so it can be replaced manually.
- Fixed a bug which sometimes caused the player to spawn into an incorrect location when entering a zone.
- Fixed a bug where Sigils of Hope still had a base duration of 12, rather than the stated 15.
- Fixed the clear option for modifier items in the crafting window not working.
- Fixed a bug where modifier items could be greyed out when applying shards.
- Fixed movement could become unresponsive if there were enemies targeting the player that could not reach them.
- Fixed a bug where the boss fight against Zerrick would not spawn grubs or change the music.
Beta 0.7.7e Release and Patch Notes
Due to some oversights, Spriggan Form builds in 0.7.7 were able to get far more totems active at once than we intended. In addition to addressing the root cause of this, weve made some changes to Spriggan Form and the totems in question.
[ 2020-04-06 16:25:42 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
Due to some oversights, Spriggan Form builds in 0.7.7 were able to get far more totems active at once than we intended. In addition to addressing the root cause of this, weve made some changes to Spriggan Form and the totems in question.
Spriggan Form
- Summon Healing Totem no longer has a cooldown by default.
- Summon Vines no longer has a cooldown.
- Nodes that affect Healing Totems (such as Spiked Totem) now only affect Healing Totems created by the Summon Healing Totem skill, and say so on their tooltips.
- Spiked Totem now causes Healing Totems to have the same mana cost, cooldown, and totem limit as Thorn Totem.
- This is a separate limit, so with this node you can have 2 Healing Totems and 2 Thorn Totems by default.
- Added a new node behind Spiked Totem that increases your maximum number of Healing Totems and causes you to always summon 3 Healing Totems at once.
- Removed Second Wind. It had no effect as Healing Totems were cooldown gated rather than having a hard limit.
Healing Totem
- Increased base health by 67%.
- Decreased health scaling by 17%.
Thorn Totem
- Characters that are specialized in Thorn Totem will receive a free respec for its tree.
- Thorn Totems now deal 33% more damage and have 20% more health.
- Added a new node that increases Thorn Totems' hit damage for each stack of poison on the target.
- Added a new node that increases Thorn Totems' crit chance and damage.
- Oaken Protection grants 20% more health (from 15%) and can have 5 points allocated (from 7).
- Shred Armour grants 20% armour shred per point (from 15%) and can have 5 points allocated (from 6).
- Torrent of Thorns can have 3 points allocated (from 4).
- Totemic Wisdom can have 5 points allocated (from 6).
- Rotten Core now connects to Lasting Affliction.
- Unhollow Core now connects to the new crit chance and damage node.
- Guided Thorns requires 4 points in Oaken Protection (from 5).
- Lasting Affliction now requires 3 points in Venom Tipped Thorns (from 4).
Sound
- Added environmental sounds to Chapter 5 and Chapter 6.
- Added new call to arms (aggro) sounds for many void enemies.
- Added new sounds for Bone Golems.
- Added death sounds for Giant Scorpions.
- Added new emerge and death sounds for Voidfused Earths.
- Added a new attack sound for Weathered Statues.
- Ice Thorns now uses cold on-hit sounds.
- Static Orb now uses lightning on-hit sounds.
- The ice attacks used by the Frost Worm monolith boss no longer sound terrible.
Uniques
- Defiance of the Forgotten Knight
- Now grants 50% to 70% increased void damage (from 30% to 70%).
- Now grants 50% less void damage taken on block (from 40%).
Items
- Added an "Increased Totem Damage" suffix for Nomad Idols.
- The Jolting affix for Arcane Idols now grants 30% to 80% shock chance with lightning spells (from 16% to 42%).
- Shrewd idols now grant 13% to 30% ward retention (from 15% to 40%, values are for maximum size idols).
- of Preservation idols now grant 13% to 30% ward retention (from 22% to 60%, values are for maximum size idols).
- Early game shields now give more block protection than before.
- Tower Shields now give armor rather than block armor (they still give block protection.
UI
- You can now quick-equip a 2H weapon if you only have an offhand equipped.
- Updated the art for the move or attack and move or attack breakable icons on left-click.
- Added a new icon for Drain Life.
Performance
- Improved initial loading times (from desktop to login), particularly for installs on hard drives.
- Mitigated some additional causes of stutter.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a likely cause of the large visual artifacts some users saw in zones like the Ulatri Cliffs, the Armoury and the Lower District. Please let us know on the bug reports forum if youre still encountering this issue.
- Fixed a bug where tagged leech stats (i.e. physical damage leeched as health) did not work unless you also had an untagged leech stat.
- Fixed a bug that caused Aura of Decay to apply poison and other ailments too frequently.
- Fixed Swipes Natural Cadence node not working.
- Fixed a bug where Healing Totems affected by Thorn Totems tree would cast thorns less frequently and at a shorter range than intended.
- Fixed a bug where the Crow nodes on Eterras Blessing would use the targets health after the heal occurred. This made the low life node harder to trigger and the high life node easier to trigger.
- Fixed Giant Scorpions not having death animations.
- Fixed a bug where Voidwing Nests would not animate each time they spawned a Voidwing.
- Fixed a bug where the sliders for Overlay Map zoom and opacity did not work.
- Fixed a bug where the quest A Long Detour could fail to complete in some situations.
- Fixed a bug where the Beta Endpoint quest would become available too early.
- Fixed some barrels being out of bounds in the Smelting Halls.
- Fixed being able to get stuck inside of a rock in the Precipice.
- Added some additional failsafes for quest bugs.
- Fixed Admiral Harton having some missing sounds.
Choose the Skill Tree You'd Like to Help Design!
[ 2020-04-03 22:01:10 CET ] [ Original post ]
One of the defining features of Last Epoch is its skill system. As part of our work to raise the standard of the game across the board, we have been reworking existing specialization trees in cases where we felt they were not as interesting, as fleshed-out, or offering as many options as some of our newer specialization trees. A recent example is Patch 0.7.7's redesign of Lightning Blast's tree. We have selected five skills with trees we plan to replace. Today we're posting a poll so you can choose which of these you would like to help us design! The winner of the poll will be opened up to community suggestions, similar to Aura of Decay, Shatter Strike, and Summon Scorpion. Click here to see the poll!
Beta 0.7.7d Release and Patch Notes
Tempest Strike
[ 2020-03-31 06:05:22 CET ] [ Original post ]
Missed the patch notes for 0.7.7? Read them here!
Skills
Tempest Strike
- Augury grants 10% chance to proc per point (from 5%) and can have 3 points allocated (from 5)
- Winter's Chill grants 75% freeze rate multiplier (from 50%), but can have 4 points allocated (from 5).
- With the Winds crit chance bonus now also applies to Lightning Bolt. Previously it only applied to Tempest Strike.
- Chilling Blows can have 4 points allocated (from 3).
- Reinforced Stone can have 4 points allocated (from 3).
- Static can have 4 points allocated (from 3).
Performance
- Improved the performance of Sleet Weavers and Ice Weavers.
- Improved the performance of Voidwing Nests.
User Interface
- Several options are now saved between game sessions:
- Chat messages
- Chat filter
- Minimap zoom
- Overlay map zoom and opacity
- Chat can now be enabled/disabled under the Social tab in Settings. Previously the option was only present on the side of the chat window.
Uniques
- Added new art for Areks Bones and Heirloom of the Last Nomad.
Enemies
- Reduced the health of Marsh Queen Beetles by 13%.
- They will still be quite strong at endgame but this is due to the scaling system rather than the enemy itself. Well be looking into this in future.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug preventing some users from loading characters or creating new ones, particularly after a crash.
- Fixed the Reset Monolith button not working.
- Fixed Arcane Ascendances nodes that interact with its cooldown working incorrectly.
- Fixed Lightning Blasts Mortal Capacitor node not working correctly.
- Fixed a possible cause of players sometimes getting stuck when returning to Echo of a World.
- Fixed Shrines sometimes being inaccessible in the Burning Forest monolith layout.
- Fixed a bug where the extra proc chance from Tempest Strikes Charged node only applied when below 20% health rather than 35%.
- Fixed a bug where blood scorpion enemies were not animating correctly.
- Fixed Ucenui Sphere not specifying the cooldown for creating Water Orbs on its tooltip. The cooldown is 3 seconds.
New Item 2d Art Coming Soon
[ 2020-03-30 22:02:54 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers!
In Patch 0.7.7 we implemented a large number of new unique and set items. We noted in the patch notes that two of these had temporary 2d art which we would be replacing in the future.
While this art wasn't ready to be included in update 0.7.7b (released on Saturday) or update 0.7.7c (released yesterday), we expect to have this art ready in time for 0.7.7d.
Here's the art we've created for them;
Heirloom of the Last Nomad.
Areks Bones
Beta 0.7.7c Release and Patch Notes
Lightning Blast
[ 2020-03-30 02:03:09 CET ] [ Original post ]
Missed the patch notes for 0.7.7? Read them here!
Skills
Lightning Blast
- Re-added the Hypercharge node: When doublecasting, Lightning Blast has a chance to quadruple cast.
- Decreased the delay between double casts to 0.25 seconds (from 0.5 seconds).
- You can no longer double cast (or quadruple cast) while channeling Lightning Blast.
- Anomalys Anticipation node now reduces the cooldown of Anomaly by 1 second per point (from 20% reduced cooldown recovery speed per point)
- This means that the cooldown goes 12 -> 11 -> 10 -> 9, rather than 12 -> 10 -> 8.6 -> 7.5
- Increased the base damage of Time Rot by 17%.
Uniques
- Kermodes Cage now only grants mana on kill while in Werebear Form.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug with the scaling of Necrotic Wisps that made them vastly overpowered in the Arena.
- Fixed a bug preventing the Magma Arena from loading.
- Fixed a bug where having Entangling Roots equipped would cause increasing lag over time, especially if you had the Nourish node equipped and opened the skills window rapidly.
- Fixed Lightning Blasts Convergence node not working.
- Fixed Anomalys Swiftrest node granting 30% cooldown recovery speed per point, rather than the stated 10%.
- Fixed a bug where Rebuke would not start channelling if the location under your mouse was not accessible.
- Fixed Lightning Blast not playing a sound if you have the Focal Blast node.
- Fixed a bug where it was hard to see the details of a Shrine if you had recently hovered over an enemy.
- Fixed a missing material on Ethereal Revenants.
- Fixed the keybind display for the Portal button expanding into the next slot on some keybinds.
- Fixed the tooltip for Judgements Holy Blast node not stating what it does.
Beta 0.7.7b Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-03-29 14:42:32 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey Travelers! We've just released a fix for several issues that have been reported in 0.7.7, and we're working on more, so keep the bug reports and feedback coming! Missed the patch notes for 0.7.7? Read them here!
Skills
- Drain Lifes Eternal Servitude node now allows 5 Wandering Spirits to remain active per point, and can have 3 points allocated (from 1).
- The node previously did not have a cap, due to an oversight. Wandering Spirits is an instant cast skill, and so it can be cast while channeling Drain Life.
- Drain Lifes Soul Bond node can have 2 points allocated (from 1).
- Clarified that Lightning Blast cannot fork if you have taken Focal Blast on the relevant tooltips.
User Interface
- Improved how the minimap reveal distance lines up with the edge of the minimap.
- Improved the color and edges of buff and debuff icons.
- Reduced the space between paragraphs in tooltips.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the entrance to the Ruined Coast for the Sapphire Tablet quest was blocked.
- Fixed a cause of a large stutter while Holy Aura or Sigils of Hope is equipped.
- Fixed a bug preventing cosmetic pets from showing in the cosmetics panel.
- Fixed a bug that caused characters to not show up on the ladder.
- Fixed some skills showing as having a skill tree when they havent been implemented yet.
- Fixed a bug where Spirit Plague showed as being unlocked at 15 points into Acolyte. Defile is now shown, as intended.
- Fixed a bug where the stats Forged Weapons (Sentinel minions) gained from your weapon was cumulative. The more weapons you summoned, the bigger than stats gained.
- Fixed Ring of Shields Enduring Defense node not working.
- Fixed a bug where the Mana Strike tree changes intended for 0.7.7 were not included by mistake.
- Fixed location notifications having artifacts in their backgrounds.
- Fixed a few typos.
Beta 0.7.7 Release and Patch Notes
This patch brings Shrines to the world of Eterra! Shrines are magic constructs which spawn randomly and have random properties. The Shrines of each Era have different appearances and their own pools of effects. Shrines can bestow powerful buffs or valuable loot - will you risk choosing to activate them? We previously posted the concept art we created for Shrines! This includes the model for each Era, along with how they update visually upon being used and their duration expiring. If you haven't seen it already - or just want to see it again - you can find it here.
Prior to joining newly created characters in The Forest Trail, you will now be shown a video which explores that character's backstory. These are voice-acted, and each class has its own video. It is possible to skip them if you would prefer to get straight into the action.
Last Epoch now supports Steam Cloud! Steam Cloud will store progress-related data so that it is available on multiple computers. We will not be using Steam Cloud to save settings-related data such as custom keybinds. Note: Please see this support article for more detailed information on how this works.
Weve gone through nearly every zone (Campaign, Monolith and Arena) and implemented a number of graphical changes, alongside adding new assets, improving layouts and performance upgrades. Highlights include:
Patch 0.7.7 includes five new item sets and 10 new unique items.
Sentinel
General
Aura of Decay
Elemental Nova
Entangling Roots
Abyssal Echoes
Base Spell Damage
This patch features an overhaul of our user interface, with many individual UI elements such as buttons and sliders updated with a new design. This has not yet been rolled out to every UI window, however the majority of these have already been changed. Maps
[ 2020-03-28 19:30:32 CET ] [ Original post ]
Patch 0.7.7 is now available for Windows and macOS! Due to a technical issue, we are still working on making this update available for Linux. We anticipate this happening next month.
New Features
Shrines
This patch brings Shrines to the world of Eterra! Shrines are magic constructs which spawn randomly and have random properties. The Shrines of each Era have different appearances and their own pools of effects. Shrines can bestow powerful buffs or valuable loot - will you risk choosing to activate them? We previously posted the concept art we created for Shrines! This includes the model for each Era, along with how they update visually upon being used and their duration expiring. If you haven't seen it already - or just want to see it again - you can find it here.
Character Introductions
Prior to joining newly created characters in The Forest Trail, you will now be shown a video which explores that character's backstory. These are voice-acted, and each class has its own video. It is possible to skip them if you would prefer to get straight into the action.
Steam Cloud
Last Epoch now supports Steam Cloud! Steam Cloud will store progress-related data so that it is available on multiple computers. We will not be using Steam Cloud to save settings-related data such as custom keybinds. Note: Please see this support article for more detailed information on how this works.
Graphical Updates
Weve gone through nearly every zone (Campaign, Monolith and Arena) and implemented a number of graphical changes, alongside adding new assets, improving layouts and performance upgrades. Highlights include:
- Greatly improved performance by rewriting terrain shaders
- Greatly enhanced lighting and color grading (including volumetric effects)
- More breakable objects, with new models and effects
- Overhauled chest visuals
- Improved textures for objects that are made of Void
- Improved particle effects and decals in zones
Skills and Specialization Trees
Skills
- The Lich class now has access to Drain Life.
- This is a channeled skill which deals necrotic damage over time to up to 3 enemies at the target location, leeching 30% of the damage done as health.
- Drain Life skill is unlocked by investing 5 points into Lich Passives.
- The Forge Guard class now has access to Smelter's Wrath.
- This is a melee attack that is channeled for up to two seconds before dealing fire and physical damage in front of you. Channeling increases the range and damage.
- Smelter's Wrath is unlocked by investing 30 points into Forge Guard Passives.
- The Void Knight skill Anomaly has been redesigned.
- Anomaly is now a combo ability; casting it a second time ends its effect early.
- The Acolyte skill Cremate has been removed pending a rework.
Specialization Trees
- Anomaly, a Void Knight skill, now has a specialization tree.
- Eterra's Blessing, a Primalist skill, now has a specialization tree.
- Drain Life, a new Lich skill, has a specialization tree.
- Smelter's Wrath, a new Forge Guard skill, has a specialization tree.
- Lightning Blast, a Mage skill, has had its specialization tree redesigned.
Equipment
Patch 0.7.7 includes five new item sets and 10 new unique items.
Item Sets
- Added the three-piece 'Forgotten Knights Regalia' set.
- Added the three-piece 'Last Bear' set.
- Added the three-piece 'Last Mountains Burial Garb' set.
- Added the three-piece 'Sunforged Masterpieces' set.
- Added the three-piece 'Pebbles Playthings' set.
Unique Items
- Added a new unique one-handed mace, Bloodgeon.
- Added new unique boots, Firey Dragon Shoes.
- Added a new unique belt, Jungle Queens Chaps of Holding.
- Added a new unique body armor, Kermodes Cage.
- Added a new unique belt, Legacy of the Quiet Forest.
- Added a new unique ring, Liaths Signet.
- Added a new unique relic, Ucenui's Sphere.
- Added a new unique one-handed mace, Areks Bones.
- This item has temporary art which will be replaced in future.
- Added new unique gloves, Maehlins Hubris.
- Added a new unique ring, Heirloom of the Last Nomad.
- This item has temporary art which will be replaced in future.
Passives
Sentinel
- Juggernaut now grants 5 fire and void protection per point (from 4% increased armour).
- Overwhelm now grants 1 melee physical damage (from 5% increased melee damage) and requires level 0 (from level 10).
- Gladiator now requires level 5 (from level 0).
- Aegis of Renewal now requires level 15 (from level 10).
- Added more connections.
- Added a new top tier passive, Corrosive Consciousness, which grants increased spell damage and damage over time.
- Mind Over Body can now have up to 10 points allocated, down from 20.
- Rune of Awe now grants you and your minions 2 adaptive spell damage rather than +10% base spell damage.
- Added a new node that grants 1 adaptive spell damage and 3% increased cast speed.
- Archmage now grants 1 adaptive spell damage rather than +10% base spell damage, and the bonus is tripled if you have at least 200 maximum mana, rather than doubled.
Skill Balance
General
- Increased the experience required to reach higher skill levels.
- Level 10 requires 7% more XP.
- Level 15 requires 19% more XP.
- Level 20 requires 33% more XP.
- Damned ailment
- Can now stack.
- Deals half as much damage as before.
- Now reduces enemy health regen by 20%.
- Increased the base damage of the Time Rot ailment by 50%.
Acolyte Skill Balance
Aura of Decay
- Aura of Decay is now unlocked at 10 points in Lich, rather than 15.
- Detonate Corpse is now unlocked at character level 20, rather than at 15 points in Acolyte passives.
- Defile is now unlocked at 15 points into Acolyte passives, rather than at 5 points in Lich passives.
- Elemental Weakness reduces elemental protection by 100 per point (from 10).
- Gaze of Granite reduces stun protection by 100 per point (from 50).
- Metal Rot reduces armour by 100 per point (from 15).
- Weak Constitution reduces poison protection by 100 per point (from 35).
- Waivering Resolve reduces necrotic protection by 100 per point (from 35).
- Soul Feast is now unlocked at 15 points in Lich, rather than 10.
- Added a new node that increases the effect of Damned applied by Soul Feast.
- A New Master can have 3 points allocated (from 2) and connects to the new node, rather than No Rest for the Wicked.
- Casting Soul Feast again no longer cancels additional casts from Renewed Feast.
- Devour increases area by 40% per point (from 20%).
- Incision grants 15% bleed chance per point (from 10%).
- The ward generation penalty on Grim Affliction is now 20% (from 25% stated, 15% actual), and is now multiplicative with the ward generation bonus on Soul Bastion, rather than additive.
- Engorged can have 1 point allocated at maximum (from 3).
- Soul Seeker can have 4 points allocated at maximum (from 5).
- Renewed Feast requires 3 points in Grim Affliction (from 2).
- Increased the attack speed of Skeleton Warriors by 25%.
- Skeleton Warriors now alternate between two different melee animations.
- Skeleton Rogues now have 30% more melee attack speed.
- Gravetide now grants 3 adaptive spell damage (from 15% base spell damage).
Mage Skill Balance
Elemental Nova
- No longer has the elemental tag. Other elemental skills (which have either fire, lightning, or cold tags) do not have the elemental tag, so this could be confusing.
- Characters with Focus specialised will receive a free respec for its tree.
- Instant Mana nodes
- This branch is very strong when fully invested. However, the first node has a strong downside, which feels bad to take.
- Null Profusion grants 20% of maximum mana instantly (from 25%), but adds an 8 second cooldown (from 10 seconds).
- Null Infusion now also adds 1 second to the cooldown duration, and can have 4 points allocated (from 5).
- Calm Mind has been reworked, it can only have 1 point allocated and adds 3 seconds to the cooldown duration, but causes the mana gained from the Null Profusion and Null Infusion nodes to also be gained as ward.
- Lightning Wave nodes
- Most of these nodes were too weak to be useful, except for Unstable Energy, due to an oversight.
- The Lightning Waves cast by the Energy Overflow and Energy Battery nodes now scale with intelligence.
- Energy Battery grants 20% of mana gained as lightning damage (from 10%).
- Energy Overflow grants 8% of your maximum mana as lightning damage (from 3%).
- Unstable Energy has been reworked, and now increases the damage of lightning waves from Energy Battery and Energy Overflow by 30% while at max mana.
- Fixed a bug where Unstable Energy granted 10 times the stated amount of lightning damage.
- Other changes
- Desperate Meditation can have 4 points allocated (from 5).
- Inner Growth grants 6 health per second (from 5).
- Nerve Center increases the duration of ailments applied by Focus by 15% (from 5%), and can have 4 points allocated (from 5).
- Clarified several tooltips.
- Reduced the added damage scaling of the smallest explosion to 100% (from 150%).
- Reduced the added damage scaling of the largest explosion to 400% (from 500%).
- Reduced the base damage of the middle and largest explosion by 13%.
- Added a new node behind Teleport Strikes that makes Mana Strike auto target enemies close to the cursor, like how Rip Blood does.
Primalist Skill Balance
Entangling Roots
- Mana cost increased to 60 (from 40).
- Radius reduced by 9%.
- Damage increased by 25%.
- The patches from Roots of Lapp are now placed 5 to 6 metres from the centre (from 0 to 5 metres).
- The area penalty from Roots of Lapp is now multiplicative with the area increase of Grove Master, rather than additive.
- Frenzy Roots now grants 12% increased attack, cast, and movement speed (from 15%).
- Venomous Pack grants 30% poison chance (from 40%)
- Plentiful Thicket (+1 patch) now requires Overgrown Path (patches are in a line).
- Wardens of Farwood now grants your Spriggans 5 spell fire damage (from 25% base spell damage).
- Increased the base damage of Earth Spikes, Lightning Bolt, and Northern Winds by 35%.
- Apex Predator now grants 50% Ravage damage (from 30%).
- Ursine Heart now grants 40 armour and protections (from 50), and 4% increased armour and protections (from 5%) and can have 5 points allocated (from 6).
Sentinel Skill Balance
Abyssal Echoes
- Abyssal Echoes now benefits from added spell damage.
- Abyssal Orb has had its base damage increased by 67% and its added damage effectiveness reduced by 50%.
- Increased added damage effectiveness by 25%.
- Increased added damage effectiveness by 25%.
- Prismatic Fury now grants 75 Elemental penetration per point (from 25).
- Hope now grants 12% health globe chance (from 10%).
- Judgement's range no longer scales with weapon range. Range scaling caused the skill to miss close targets when using polearms.
- Judgement now uses a slam animation with 2h weapons equipped rather than a forwards stab animation.
- Increased added damage effectiveness by 25%.
- Added a new node behind Touched by Fire that increases melee fire damage if you have used ring of shields recently.
- The Immolation node now scales with increases to damage over time and spell damage.
- Displacement's health increase is now multiplicative and also increases duration by 100%.
- Defensive Shields grants 3% block chance (from 5%), but now also grants 30 block protection.
- Amass now also adds 5 mana cost per point.
- Aegis of Life now grants the shields 15% increased health effectiveness per point (from 10%) and can have 4 points allocated (from 5).
- Touched by Fire now grants 3 additional fire damage (from 4).
- Banding can have 5 points allocated (from 6).
- Healing Shields can have 4 points allocated (from 5).
- Martyr Shields can have 4 points allocated (from 5).
- Increased the base duration of each sigil to 15 seconds (from 12).
- Word of Power now only increases melee damage instead of all damage.
- Descend now deals twice as much damage and scales with spell damage, but now adds 20 mana cost (from 5) and gives smite a 6 second cooldown (from 5).
- Righteous Flurry now also buffs cast speed (it used to only buff attack speed).
Item Balance
Base Spell Damage
- All sources of base spell damage have been converted to adaptive spell damage. This primarily affects items, as well as some skill tree nodes.
- Adaptive spell damage adds flat damage to spells. The type of damage matches the base damage of the spell it is applying to, meaning the same stat applies fire damage to fire spells, and cold damage to cold spells.
- Changed "chance to gain 50 ward when hit" idol affixes, to "chance to gain 30 ward when hit", and reduced the maximum chance granted from a single Idol by 20%.
- Glass Idols can now spawn with a suffix that grants lightning skills a change to apply a spark charge on hit.
- Glass Idols can now spawn with a suffix that grants a percentage of your mana spent as ward.
- Uniques and Idols can no longer be bought in shops.
- Halved the chance of finding Unique or Set items via gambling.
- Items from the gambler now roll their implicit values when bought, rather than being visible beforehand. The possible range is showned before you buy.
- Items from the gambler cost 50% more gold.
- Items in the buy back tab now cost the same amount of gold that they were sold for.
- Added various color variations for armor models. We do plan to add more new models in the future, but this will help visual variety in the meantime.
- Health potions on the ground are no longer automatically used when at full health and full potions.
- Rebalanced the drop rate of items from all sources. Weve added lots more breakable objects, so in general breakables drop less items while enemies drop more.
- Reduced the drop rate of Unique and Set items by 17%.
- Rare items are now slightly less common at low levels.
- Adaptive spell damage changes
- The base spell damage implicits on other caster weapons have been converted to Adaptive Spell Damage at approximately 20% of their previous values. This will provide the same damage increase as before.
- Obsidian Wands now grant 7 to 12 adaptive spell damage and 2 to 5 spell physical damage (from 45% to 70% base spell damage).
- Ice Sceptres grant 5 to 16 spell cold damage (from 25% to 80% base spell damage).
- Copper Amulets now grant 2 to 3 spell lightning damage (from 5% to 15% base spell damage).
- Noble Raiments now grant 2 to 3 adaptive spell damage (from 3% to 15% base spell damage).
- Increased mana regen can now roll on sceptres.
- Cold Stone Wands have been renamed to Obsidian Wands.
User Interface
This patch features an overhaul of our user interface, with many individual UI elements such as buttons and sliders updated with a new design. This has not yet been rolled out to every UI window, however the majority of these have already been changed. Maps
- The minimap can now have its zoom level adjusted.
- The zoom level is controlled by buttons within the minimap itself.
- The overlay map's zoom level and opacity can now be adjusted.
- These are changed from within the settings menu.
- (The default keybind for this map is the Tab button.)
- Improved the appearance of the fog of war's border.
- The figures next to the health and mana globe match newer designs for those characters.
- The textures for health and mana have been updated, and the corresponding numbers are now shown inside of the globe.
- The overall layout remains the same.
- Added an arrow between the amount of protections you have and the percentages. This shows that the percentage is derived from the flat amount.
- Improved the explanation of how protections work.
- The crafting window now automatically re-fills the modifier and support item slots with the last items you used.
- Support items are now disabled when using a Rune of Shattering, because they had no effect but would be consumed anyway.
- The number of shards you have is now displayed in the Crafting Items tab of the Inventory.
- Added a button to open the Crafting window from the Crafting Items tab of the Inventory.
- Controllers now require a button press to be 'enabled' after starting the game. This does not affect the ability to hot swap between inputs during game, but should resolve some bugs.
- The list of characters on the character select screen can now be filtered by base class or challenge options.
- Added an option to disable the profanity filter.
- Added a notification that will prompt you to press a button to start using a controller once it is detected.
- Improved the contrast between unlocked and locked Idol slots.
- The labels for each zone transition are now visible at all times.
- Added new loading screen art for the Council Chambers, Welryn, and the End of Time.
- There is now floating text when you pick up a potion, similar to the text for picking up gold.
- The menu button at the bottom now displays the keybinds for each window.
- The show info button in the crafting menu can now hide the info
- Notifications for skill unlocks, specialization slot unlocks and skill levels are now on the left side of the screen.
Sound
- Added volume sliders for Environmental and UI sounds.
- The default setting for each audio category is now 70%. All users audio settings have been reset to default.
- Replaced the sounds that play when enemies will hit.
- Added new ambient and environmental sounds to the first 4 chapters of the game.
- Added new sounds for breakable objects.
- Added a new sound for active waypoints.
- Added new sounds for town portals.
- Added a new sound for sorting items.
- Added new sounds for Primalist totems.
- Added a new sound for summoning skeletons.
- Added a new sound for Anomaly.
- Added a new sound for Detonate Corpse.
- Added a new sound for Eterras Blessing.
- Added a new sound for the Raptors Paralyzing Spit.
- Added a new sound for Soul Feast.
- Added new sounds for Tempest Strike and its procd effects.
- Added a new sound for Tornado.
- Replaced very old sounds on many skills with new placeholders. The old sounds were much lower quality, so using another sound made recently is better while waiting for new sounds to be made.
- Added new death sounds for many types of enemies:
- Void
- Skullen
- Osprix
- Gorns, Groles and Myrcfeet
- Spriggans
- Statues
- Forgotten Shades
- Featherless Raptors
- Soul Cages
- Added new sounds for Wengari Hounds.
- Added new sounds for Crow enemies.
- Added new sounds for Immortal Eye enemies.
- Added a new sound for the Ice Bolt used by Ice Golems.
- Added new sounds for Frozen Druid attacks.
- Adjusted the volume levels of various sounds.
- The skill on cooldown voice line is now only played when you press a skill button a second time. It wont trigger if you were holding the button from a previous cast.
Animation
- All animations have been replaced for the Primalist.
- We plan to make further adjustments and then revamp the animations for all other classes in the future.
- Reduced the casting time for Reaper Form, Spriggan Form and Werebear Form.
- mproved the death animation for the Primal Scorpion so it lines up better with its Downed indicator.
Visuals
- Camera lerping has been added. This makes the camera smoothly change between positions, which looks better. This is especially noticeable when using movement skills or quickly changing direction.
- The character select screen now zooms in on existing characters to display them in more detail.
- Adjusted screenshake for all player abilities.
- Osprix enemies in Chapter 1 and 7 now have all-new models and animations.
- Updated the visuals for each type of Forge you encounter in the Monolith of Fate.
- Added new portal visuals. This is used for the players town portal, as well as the Arena and Monolith portals
- Improved the visuals for all Primalist totems.
- Added new visuals for Anomaly.
- Added new visuals for Eterras Blessing.
- Updated visuals for Rip Blood.
- Improved the visuals for the Temple Guardian in the Courtyard.
- Improved the visuals for Idol of Loathings attacks in The Precipice.
- Upgraded the visuals for most enemies in Chapter 4.
- Magma and Aqua Gorns now darken when they die.
- Added runes to the sides of Jahith Bears.
Monolith of Fate
- Added a new monolith mod that increases enemies' health and makes them focus on attacking players.
- Replaced the reflect monolith mod with one that gives enemies a chance to mark for death on hit.
- When a monolith timeline rolls a miniboss to kill as its objective, the miniboss has 150% more health (from 200%), grants 150% more experience (from 200%), and deals 40% more damage (from 20%).
Enemies
- Added monster suffixes such as "high fire damage and fire protection", for fire, cold, lightning, void, necrotic, and poison enemies. These suffixes only spawn on monsters of the correct element.
- Added a new monster suffix that makes enemies focus on attacking players.
- Increases to effective health and damage from area level now ramp up slightly faster, but the maximum increase is the same. This addresses an issue where reaching high arena waves was easier at lower levels for some builds.
- Increased the health of enemies in zones above level 25, up to 16%.
Bosses
- Bosses and minibosses now take 40% less damage, but have 40% less health. This makes effects that scale with the percentage of an enemys health stronger, such as Freeze and Stun.
- Bosses are now more likely to prioritise attacking the player over attacking minions.
- Elder Pannion now deals 40% more fire damage, and 20% less lightning damage.
- Haruspex Orian
- 67% more health in the Ulatri Cliffs.
- 100% more health in endgame.
- 67% more damage in endgame.
- The Idol of Loathing now deals 25% more damage.
- Increased the health of the Wengari Raid Leader.
Other Enemies
- Added Zombie enemies to Chapter 4.
- Added Beetle enemies to Chaper 1 and 4.
- Avian and Aviline Chimeras
- Now use rapid peck attacks more frequently, but normally uses a basic attack or two first.
- 25% increased movement speed.
- 30% increased attack speed with basic attacks.
- 20% increased attack speed with rapid peck attacks.
- Flame Gryphons
- 30% more health.
- Rare Flame Gryphons deal 10% less damage.
- You can no longer take multiple hits from a single eruption, which should make it much harder to be one-shot by.
- Imperial Assassin
- Increased size, damage and health.
- Now also have a dash attack.
- Now appear in smaller packs.
- Improved visuals, including weapon trails.
- Giant Scorpions no longer resist physical damage.
- Skeletons summoned by Bone Cairns have 33% increased attack speed and now alternate between two melee animations.
Performance
- Greatly improved the performance of the terrain system by rewriting shaders, achieving a gain of at least 10 FPS for most zones in our testing.
- This testing was done on Windows 10 with a Ryzen 5 1600 and RX 480 8GB. The game was ran at 1080p borderless window and Medium quality settings.
- Greatly improved garbage collection, which is a major source of frame rate stutter. Garbage collection is when unneeded data is cleared from memory. This is now required less often, and the process itself has less performance impact.
- You can now limit the games framerate to a value you specify to reduce how many resources the game takes, particularly when streaming.
- The framerate of the game can now be limited while its in the background (tabbing out).
- Load times have been improved, particularly in zones with many NPCs.
- Death visuals for enemies are now pooled. This improves framerates and stutter in combat, especially against void and skeleton enemies.
- Slightly optimized the visuals for many player skills.
- Improved the performance of magic/rare enemies, especially those with Rampancy.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where it was possible to equip idols that required a different class.
- Fixed a bug where items could be deleted by mistake when sorting an inventory or stash tab that was full (or nearly full).
- Fixed a bug where clicking outside of the chat window would prevent the player from moving.
- Fixed a cause of node allocations failing to save.
- This only affected trees that have had a free respec granted. Any allocations made during the session when you first specialized the tree (for skill trees), or the first session with that character (for passive trees) would not be saved.
- Fixed a bug where health leech from skill trees would not be affected by global modifiers (i.e. increased health leech).
- Fixed a bug where searching inside of a skill tree would not work for some trees.
- Fixed a bug where Abyssal Echoes Dissolving Blight node reduced movement speed rather than armor.
- Fixed a bug where Abyssal Echoes Sonority node would cause the skill to become invisible.
- Fixed a bug where Abyssal Echoes Temporal Reaving node would decrease the damage over time enemies take, rather than increasing it.
- Fixed a bug where Arcane Ascendance would remain toggled on if you died while it was active.
- Fixed Arcane Ascendances Acuity node not working properly.
- Fixed a bug where Aura of Decays Feast of Souls node did not require Aura of Decay to be active.
- Fixed a bug where Bone Golems Marrow Eater node would cause skeletons to not be subtracted from your minion count on death. This means the games count of how many minions you have would keep increasing.
- Fixed a bug where Earthquakes Lightning Storm duration did not scale with points allocated.
- Fixed a bug where Enchant Weapons Icicle Strike node did not proc.
- Fixed Erasing Strike granting the old kind of Void Essences (effectively giving the wrong stats).
- Fixed a bug Erasing Strikes Harbinger of Thirst and Mark of the End nodes reduced damage taken instead of increasing damage taken.
- Fixed a bug where Forge Strikes Detonating Ground did not ignite.
- Fixed a bug where Harvests Undead Harvest node reduced all damage enemies take by 0.05, rather than increasing the damage they took by 5%.
- Fixed a bug where Hungering Souls Fire Skull node didn't swap the skills necrotic tag for a fire tag.
- Fixed a bug where Mana Strikes Mana Cleave node did not work.
- Fixed a bug where Ring of Shields Touched by Fire node only affected melee attacks.
- Fixed a bug where Ring of Shields Sturdy Shield granted a tiny amount of block protection, rather than increasing block protection.
- Fixed a bug where Sigils of Hopes Faith node included Ward in its threshold, so the heal could be procd while at full health.
- Fixed Sigils of Hopes Word of Power node not working.
- Fixed a bug where Smites Aftershock node did not increase the duration of Fissures.
- Fixed a bug where Smites Unbalanced Scales node could hit targets that were off screen.
- Fixed a bug where Soul Feasts Renewed Feast could cause Soul Feast to be recast many more times than intended.
- Fixed a bug where Statics Surge node would only grant charges for crits caused by Discharge, rather than all skills.
- Fixed a bug with the Summon Skeleton Mage tree where you could not take the Gray Merchant node after taking the Pyromancers node, despite a visible connection.
- Fixed a bug where Summon Wolfs Snarl node did not grant increased melee damage.
- Fixed Transplants Siphon node not working.
- Fixed Transplants Violent Emergence node not working.
- Fixed an incorrect VFX being used when Tempest Strikes Perfect Storm procs.
- Fixed a bug where Volatile Reverals Harbinger of Dust and Time Rifts nodes reduced damage taken instead of increasing damage taken.
- Fixed various inconsistencies in skill node tooltips.
- Fixed a bug where using a companion ability could trigger Aspect of the Shark, which is supposed to only trigger on melee attacks.
- Fixed a bug where the Lichs Mind over Body node increased health drains rather than draining an amount of health.
- Fixed a bug where the player would rotate slightly when on slopes, which gave a stuttery appearance to movement.
- Fixed a bug where stationary enemies and Spires were affected by knockback.
- Fixed a bug where the Hidden Gems quest would become uncompletable if you left the zone after triggering the encounter with the Imperial Assassins in Majelka.
- Fixed an issue where the ice wall in the Tomb of Morditas could trap minions behind it.
- Fixed a bug where the cinematic camera movement could play when returning to Council
- Chambers, rather than only the first time you enter the zone on a character.
- Fixed a bug where idol affixes that gave a chance to summon Putrid Wraiths or Flame Wraiths did not work.
- Fixed a bug where the Shrewd idol prefix was granting "increased increased ward retention" rather than increased ward retention.
- Fixed a bug where unequipping Soulfire allowed its buff to be stacked.
- Fixed a bug where Sentinels would hold Nodachi backwards.
- Fixed a bug where enemies would continue to animate while frozen.
Screenshots of the User Interface in Patch 0.7.7
[ 2020-03-24 01:07:53 CET ] [ Original post ]
Patch 0.7.7 includes an updated action bar.
In Patch 0.7.7 it is possible to filter characters by base class or by type (e.g. Hardcore).
Note: Please do not look too much into the classes shown here; we will not be releasing new classes until they have a full set of passives and a substantial number of specialization trees.
Were updating our menu so that related entries are now grouped together. Additionally, the menu now shows the keybind for each entry so that it is easier to learn their keybinds.
As we previously teased, it will be possible to alter the zoom and opacity of the map.
Were also implementing new volume sliders due to the additional sounds coming in 0.7.7.
Patch Preview: Beta 0.7.7
Patch 0.7.7 raises the bar in many areas. The update features a massive graphics overhaul, many new ambient and environmental sounds, user interface improvements, and lots more. This patch includes a very large number of small changes: for example, chests you find in zones have new models, a new visual effect surrounding them until they have been opened, a new visual effect that is played when they are opened, and a new sound effect is played when they are opened. While these are not listed here in the Patch Preview thread, they will be included in the Patch Notes.
Features
We've made the difficult decision to hold back Chapter 8 so that we have more time to spend both on that content, and also more time to spend on improving currently available content. Don't worry - Lagon is still approaching - he's just a little further out. We have recently recruited an Animations Lead! If you'd like to see an example of his work, pay a visit to the Osprix Warriors in Chapter 1's The Southern Plateau. We will be replacing many of the animations currently implemented, however this will take time. We have multiple new skills in development, which will likely be included in Patch 0.7.8. Prior to the release of Patch 0.7.8 we hope to release a new launcher for the standalone client which will reduce the amount of space needed during game installation and patching.
[ 2020-03-20 23:35:15 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to become more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the game's official forum! https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/patch-preview-beta-0-7-7/18082
Overview
Patch 0.7.7 raises the bar in many areas. The update features a massive graphics overhaul, many new ambient and environmental sounds, user interface improvements, and lots more. This patch includes a very large number of small changes: for example, chests you find in zones have new models, a new visual effect surrounding them until they have been opened, a new visual effect that is played when they are opened, and a new sound effect is played when they are opened. While these are not listed here in the Patch Preview thread, they will be included in the Patch Notes.
Highlights
Features
- Patch 0.7.7 brings Shrines to Last Epoch!
- The location and modifiers of Shrines is random.
- We've posted the concept art for Shrines here.
- This patch includes Character Introductions for every available base class!
- Steam Cloud is now supported by the Steam client!
- If you currently do not play through Steam, installing and opening the game through Steam will cause your existing save data to be synced.
- If you do not currently play through Steam and would like to begin doing so, please see this support article for instructions on how to link your accounts.
- This patch features significant changes to lighting and postprocessing in many zones.
- Improved many environmental models and textures throughout the game.
- Many zones now have new ambient sounds.
- Some zones now have new environmental sounds.
- The Acolyte now has a new skill called Drain Life.
- The Acolyte now has a new skill called Spirit Plague.
- The Forge Guard now has a new skill called Smelter's Wrath.
- The action bar has been reskinned.
- Improved the display of keybinds on skills in the action bar.
- Overhauled many UI elements such as buttons, tabs, checkboxes, and scroll bars.
- It is now possible to alter the zoom level of both the minimap and the overlap map.
- The opacity of the overlay map can now be adjusted.
- Items in a vendor's buyback tab now cost the amount of gold they were sold for.
- It is no longer possible to equip Idols with an unmet class requirement.
Optimization
- We have created more performant shaders for most outdoor zones.
- We have been addressing one cause of long loading times on a zone-by-zone basis. The more non-hostile NPCs in that zone, the more substantial this improvement will be.
- Superior garbage collection has removed one source of stutter.
- The term garbage collection refers to the process of memory thats no longer needed being released back to the Operating System so it can be used by other processes.
After This Patch
We've made the difficult decision to hold back Chapter 8 so that we have more time to spend both on that content, and also more time to spend on improving currently available content. Don't worry - Lagon is still approaching - he's just a little further out. We have recently recruited an Animations Lead! If you'd like to see an example of his work, pay a visit to the Osprix Warriors in Chapter 1's The Southern Plateau. We will be replacing many of the animations currently implemented, however this will take time. We have multiple new skills in development, which will likely be included in Patch 0.7.8. Prior to the release of Patch 0.7.8 we hope to release a new launcher for the standalone client which will reduce the amount of space needed during game installation and patching.
'Lightning Blast' Tree Preview
[ 2020-03-19 21:31:20 CET ] [ Original post ]
Note: This tree is a work in progress. Nodes may be added, removed, or changed. Lightning Blast is one of the oldest skills in Last Epoch! In Patch 0.7.7 we're going to breathe new life into its specialization tree by adding new nodes, and removing some existing nodes and updating others. The goal of this rework is not only to increase the number of options available, but also to make each of these individual options more interesting. As with previous specialization tree previews, we've prepared a page on our website where you can mouse-over nodes on the tree to see their tooltips, just like in-game. Here's a link! Which node is your favourite, and why is it Hypercharge?
Shrines Are Coming to Last Epoch!
[ 2020-03-13 23:31:04 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to become more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the game's official forum!
[url=https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/shrines-are-coming-to-last-epoch/18213]https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/shrines-are-coming-to-last-epoch/18213
We're bringing Shrines to Last Epoch!
Shrines are magical constructs found in the world that can be activated by clicking on them. They have a variety of exciting effects - such as summoning enemies for you to fight, spawning temporary allies to assist you in combat, and granting powerful, time-limited buffs.
Shrines can only be activated once. Activating a Shrine is optional; it is possible to simply walk past one without clicking on it. A Shrine may be more dangerous than it initially seems.
The Shrines from each era have their own unique model. Additionally, their appearance will update when they are activated, and again when their duration expires. We've posted the concept art for each of these models below. Which one's your favourite?
Increasing the Number of Unique and Set Items
[ 2020-03-12 00:01:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to become more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the game's official forum!
https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/increasing-the-number-of-unique-and-set-items/18166
We've heard your feedback that you want more items to hunt!
In Patch 0.7.7 we're bringing multiple new Item Sets and Unique Items to expand the options available for gearing your characters and to shake up the meta which has set in.
Not familiar with sets in Last Epoch? They consist of a small number of pieces - typically three - and are designed to increase the options available for when you're building a character. We are mindful of the dangers of incentivizing people to collect a large number of items that synergize with each other, and we don't plan to introduce sets appreciably larger than existing sets.
In Last Epoch, Unique Items and Item Sets are not intended to be superior to well-crafted items and exceptional loot - however, we do want a substantial number of these to provide interesting options that regular items cannot. While we haven't yet decided whether we will be posting previews of some of these items or allowing you to discover them organically, we did want to let you know that there are more of these items coming in 0.7.7 than in most patches.
The 2d art for the Forgotten Knight set.
As an aside, both Unique Items and Idols will no longer be sold by vendors in Patch 0.7.7.
Would you like a preview of a couple of Unique Items, or of a single Item Set? Let us know!
Last Epoch Wallpapers
[ 2020-03-07 03:00:34 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to become more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the game's official forum!
https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/last-epoch-wallpapers/18090
Recently, a member of the community expressed an interest in using a Last Epoch-themed wallpaper on our community Discord. While we havent created dedicated art for this purpose just yet, weve gathered some of our most suitable art and compiled it below.
Want to join us on Discord? Here's the invite link: https://discord.gg/lastepoch
Character Introductions in Last Epoch
[ 2020-03-05 23:31:05 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to become more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the game's official forum!
https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/character-introductions-in-last-epoch/18058
Hey Travelers!
As you know, we're currently in Phase 2 of our Early Access Forecast.
One of the exciting entries from this phase is our Character Introductions, short videos which play immediately after character creation to show you what brought that character to the Forest Trail on which you first encounter them. Each class will have their own introduction.
While we don't want to spoil these ahead of time, today we're excited to share still images from two of them. The characters we've chosen are the Mage and the Primalist; with the Mage taking a look back, and the Primalist looking forwards to what lies ahead of him.
Which class's introduction are you most excited for?
New Portal Coming in Patch 0.7.7
[ 2020-03-04 23:35:37 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to become more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the game's official forum!
https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/new-portal-coming-in-patch-0-7-7/18037
In Patch 0.7.7 we're replacing the portal used to return to town!
Our current town portal
Sam from the Art Team has created a new portal which includes a visual effect for the portal opening, particles being pulled inside, and a new slimmer and vibrant design.
[previewyoutube=D66hXxtFItU;full][/previewyoutube]
Want more Last Epoch news? Make sure to drop by tomorrow! :)
Ambient Sounds Being Added in Patch 0.7.7
[ 2020-03-04 02:38:18 CET ] [ Original post ]
In Patch 0.7.7 we will be implementing graphical improvements for many zones. Additionally, we will also be introducing new ambient sounds to help the world of Eterra feel more alive! John the Vegetable Smasher has been working to add the sounds of rivers, birds, and plenty more besides so that your time in the world of Eterra is a little more immersive. Here are a couple of short teasers we've prepared; [previewyoutube=oXypFjscvj0;full][/previewyoutube] [previewyoutube=uYHyqr55BmA;full][/previewyoutube] We'll be back with more news tomorrow. See you then!
An Early Look at Graphical Improvements Coming in Patch 0.7.7
[ 2020-03-03 00:02:57 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to become more involved with the Last Epoch community? Join us on the game's official forum!
https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/an-early-look-at-graphical-improvements-coming-in-patch-0-7-7/17961
We are currently performing a pass over zones in Last Epoch to improve their lighting, replace some lower quality assets, and address some feedback that Chapter 1 feels a bit too 'idyllic'.
We've gathered a collection of Before & After screenshots;
Due to shader improvements also coming in Patch 0.7.7, these graphical improvements will be joined by significantly improved performance in most outdoor zones.
Make sure to check back tomorrow for more news!
God of Sea and Storm: Lagon Approaches
[ 2020-02-13 03:05:01 CET ] [ Original post ]
Want to become more involved with the Last Epoch community?
Join us on the game's official forum: https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/beta-0-7-6-patch-notes/17347
Lagon.
God of the West, Lord of Sea and Storm - and star of our beta trailer!
Created by Eterra eons ago, this unpredictable deity will be making his imposing presence felt in Chapter 8. Will you survive your encounter with this ancient and terrible creature?
Patch 0.7.7 is shaping up to be one of our largest updates ever! This huge content patch includes Lagons Temple. Closer to the release of Patch 0.7.7 we will be explaining how we plan to convey the sense of being underwater without any of the awkward movement and combat associated with the oceanic zones seen in other games.
On behalf of the entire team, I sincerely want to thank you for the incredibly positive response to our recent update, [url=steamcommunity.com/games/899770/announcements/detail/1718622067693465779
]Patch 0.7.6. We spent longer than usual testing this update prior to its release, which seems to have been reflected in the feedback we've seen.
The Idols feature and streamlining of the first couple of chapters, in particular, were very warmly received. Were excited to be working on new content again - and we look forward to telling you more about Patch 0.7.7 over the coming weeks.
Last Epoch Beta Trailer
[previewyoutube=IA4auxVRQYw;full][/previewyoutube]
Beta 0.7.6c Release and Patch Notes
Ice Ward
[ 2020-02-03 16:00:05 CET ] [ Original post ]
Idols
- Made generic idol affixes much rarer on class specific idols. Having generic affixes is important so players dont get unlucky and have no idols that benefit them, but they were too common compared to class specific affixes.
- Rebalanced many idol affixes
- Many class specific affixes have been buffed.
- Class specific leech affixes have been nerfed.
- Less damage taken affixes have been nerfed (and no longer actually granted reduced damage taken).
- Generic health and protection suffixes have been nerfed.
- Fixed an oversight where shared damage affixes (e.g. increased lightning damage + increased minion lightning damage) did not roll on class specific idols.
- Fixed an oversight where Adorned Immortal Idols could have a ward retention prefix and a ward retention suffix.
- Fixed the descriptions of a lot of idol affixes (including cases of "increased increased").
- Fixed cases where idol prefixes had suffix style names and idol suffixes had prefix style names.
Skills
Ice Ward
- Unclouded Mind now grants 10% increased mana regen per point (from 25% reduced mana drain), and can have 3 points allocated (from 4).
- The previous effect could make other skills that drain mana free.
- This has the same effect at max points if Ice Ward is your only skill that drains mana.
- Aim is to make the Scorpion a more attractive option to poison builds, rather than just having an extra wolf.
- Concoction now grants 25% poison chance (from 10%)
- Miasma now grants venom nova 30% area and 30% poison chance (up from 25%).
- Blood Poisoning is now multiplicative with other modifiers.
- Noxious Carapace is now multiplicative with other modifiers.
- Patient Hunters now gives 25% more damage over time per point (from 50%).
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where enemies in the Monolith of Fate and Arena would not take damage if the player was level 89.
- Fixed a navigation issue in Lost Refuge.
- Fixed several effects from Arcane Ascendances skill tree triggering even if Arcane Ascendance was not active.
- Fixed Arcane Ascendances Mark of Thunder not dealing damage and not disappearing.
- Fixed an issue where Volcanic Orb could move backwards if you reduced its movement speed enough.
- Fixed skills bound to ` displaying as back quote in the action bar.
Beta 0.7.6b Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-02-02 05:59:10 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes
- Slightly reduced the drop rate of Idols.
- Slightly improved performance in the Gates of Solarum.
- Improved the performance of magic/rare enemies, especially those with Rampancy.
- Improved the appearance of skill/passive node dropshadows.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where items that used to have old glancing blow affixes could get stuck in the crafting panel and prevent that character from being loaded. Characters affected by this bug can now be loaded.
- Fixed a bug that caused some stash items to disappear when opening 0.7.6 for the first time. Unfortunately this wont help players already affected.
- Fixed a bug where animations would not play and class info would not update when creating the first character on a fresh install of the game.
- Fixed a bug where minions could count towards your companion limit and prevent summoning additional companions. This was most noticeable with Wolves and Keepers Gloves.
- Fixed a bug where items were misaligned in the stash.
- In the crafting panel affixes already on the item (that are not at max tier) are once again always shown at the top of the shard list.
- In the crafting panel affixes that are compatible with the item are shown before incompatible affixes.
- Fixed a bug where Bees summoned by Keepers Gloves did not expire after a duration.
- Moved Captain Ansel in the Council Chambers to avoid quest UI becoming stuck open once camera movement happens.
- Fixed gs being cut off by the crafting windows search bar.
- Fixed an incorrect loading screen displaying when the game is first started.
- Fixed some skill node tooltip errors.
Beta 0.7.6 Release and Patch Notes
[ 2020-02-01 02:01:33 CET ] [ Original post ]
Patch 0.7.6 is now live and introduces the brand new Idol system! Idols are items featuring exciting stats and passives designed to further buildcrafting and the item hunt. Additionally, we are making a large number of improvements to the game, touching on areas including combat, character control, enemy scaling, crafting, and more. The Patch Notes for this update are actually so long that they don't fit into this Steam post; so please check them out on our forum!
Customizing How LMB Behaves
Each of the options available has its own skill art, so it is always clear which behaviour the LMB is currently using. The specific art being used in Patch 0.7.6 may be revised in future.
Thank you for the feedback we have received from you regarding LMB's behaviour - and please do let us know both how you feel about the two options being added in Patch 0.7.6, and how they feel after the patch is released and you've had a chance to test them.
[ 2020-01-30 05:00:54 CET ] [ Original post ]
Our upcoming update, Patch 0.7.6, focuses on improving quality of life and addressing player feedback. Something we hadn't been ready to commit to being included in 0.7.6 at the time of the Patch Preview being posted was a change to the left mouse button ("LMB"). Currently, the LMB is used exclusively for movement so that characters will always respond intuitively to user input. We believe that this is a good choice to have for default behaviour. In Patch 0.7.6, we are implementing two alternative behaviours for the LMB. The options which will be available are;
- Move Only
- Move or Break Destructible
- Move or Attack
Each of the options available has its own skill art, so it is always clear which behaviour the LMB is currently using. The specific art being used in Patch 0.7.6 may be revised in future.
Thank you for the feedback we have received from you regarding LMB's behaviour - and please do let us know both how you feel about the two options being added in Patch 0.7.6, and how they feel after the patch is released and you've had a chance to test them.
Patch Preview: Beta 0.7.6
With Patch 0.7.6 we are taking the opportunity to focus on community feedback and implement some changes which have been requested over both the short- and long-term. We'll be posting the patch notes in their entirety when releasing the patch.
We are streamlining Chapters 1 and 2 to improve the new user experience. One of the design goals with Chapter 1 had been to make repeated use of time travel due to it being a core part of Last Epoch. We also wanted to do this to introduce the player to the various eras in Eterra's history, and the different factions from those eras. We have consistently seen feedback that the beginning of the story can be difficult to follow, and so we are reducing the number of time travel occurrences - for example, you no longer briefly visit the Imperial Era in Chapter 1 - and the number of enemies involved.
Patch 0.7.6 removes one source of stutter, improves the performance and appearance of Ambient Occlusion, and improves the performance of several skills and enemies.
We have already started working on Patch 0.7.7, which will be the next content patch. Work is under way on Chapter 8, which is likely to be one of the first Phase 3 entries from our Early Access Forecast to be made available. Work continues on the remaining Phase 2 entries, such as the Character Introductions and the Mechanics Guide.
[ 2020-01-24 02:01:56 CET ] [ Original post ]
Welcome! Patch Preview threads are where we spill the beans on upcoming updates so you know what to look forward to. Read on to see the details of our next patch, or view the same post on our official forum if you'd like to get more involved with the Last Epoch community.
Overview
With Patch 0.7.6 we are taking the opportunity to focus on community feedback and implement some changes which have been requested over both the short- and long-term. We'll be posting the patch notes in their entirety when releasing the patch.
Highlights
Systems
- This patch implements the previously-unannounced Idol system!
- Idols are a brand new type of item. They are intended to facilitate further fine-tuning of builds with niche and, in some cases, class-exclusive affixes.
- Idols are equipped in their own exclusive 4x4 grid in the inventory.
- Idols come in a variety of sizes from 1x1 all the way to 4x1 or 2x2.
- Larger Idols are more powerful than smaller ones.
- Some Idol affixes are exclusive to specific base classes.
Endgame Changes
- We're adding three new Arena zones in this patch.
- Disclaimer: Your safety in the new zones is not guaranteed.
- The Monolith of Fate will no longer offer modifiers which are already in effect.
- Five new modifiers are being added to the Monolith of Fate.
- The chest rewards from the Monolith of Fate will scale with the number of enemies killed.
- Enemies are being weighted for this - a group of small, low-health enemies will contribute about as much to your rewards as an individual, larger enemy.
Campaign Changes
We are streamlining Chapters 1 and 2 to improve the new user experience. One of the design goals with Chapter 1 had been to make repeated use of time travel due to it being a core part of Last Epoch. We also wanted to do this to introduce the player to the various eras in Eterra's history, and the different factions from those eras. We have consistently seen feedback that the beginning of the story can be difficult to follow, and so we are reducing the number of time travel occurrences - for example, you no longer briefly visit the Imperial Era in Chapter 1 - and the number of enemies involved.
Quality of Life Improvements
- It is now possible to move through your minions.
- This patch includes the Buy Back feature!
- We've posted all of the details of how it works here.
- Improvements are being made to mousing-over creatures in Last Epoch, with the goal of making it easier to see the health bars of enemies who are obscured by minions.
- We are adding fly-out menus to the Modifier Item and Support Item sections of the crafting window which allow you to access your Runes and Glyphs, respectively.
- We are updating approximately half of our skills to make using them feel more responsive.
- We have written a Developer Blog about these changes.
- Additional skills have been updated since this was posted.
- We have written a Developer Blog about these changes.
Bug fixes
- We are improving the handling of peripherals to resolve cases where the game detects a controller (perhaps erroneously) and fails to accept input from mice and keyboards.
- We are resolving an issue where characters could continue taking damage for a short period of time when entering Time Rifts.
Optimisation
Patch 0.7.6 removes one source of stutter, improves the performance and appearance of Ambient Occlusion, and improves the performance of several skills and enemies.
After This Patch
We have already started working on Patch 0.7.7, which will be the next content patch. Work is under way on Chapter 8, which is likely to be one of the first Phase 3 entries from our Early Access Forecast to be made available. Work continues on the remaining Phase 2 entries, such as the Character Introductions and the Mechanics Guide.
'Buy Back' Is Coming to Last Epoch!
[ 2020-01-21 00:01:04 CET ] [ Original post ]
We're working on implementing Buy Back! This system is undergoing internal testing, and the expectation is that it will be included in our upcoming content patch, Patch 0.7.6. So, let's take a look at how this feature will work in Last Epoch! Vendors will remember the items you have recently sold, up to a maximum of 20 items. Items which are removed from this list through you continuing to sell additional items will be lost forever; buying back more recently sold items will not cause older ones to re-appear. The Buy Back feature will persist across client restarts, and each of your characters will have their own list of up to 20 items. It will not be necessary to return to the specific vendor you originally sold the item to - and in addition to offering his usual services, Artem the Gambler will offer the Buy Back feature in both End of Time and The Council Chambers. The list of items eligible for Buy Back will not be presented in any particular order. The price of items eligible for Buy Back will be the amount of gold you received when selling them.
Making Skills Feel More Responsive
Each skill animation has three phases, which are;
Impact Impact is the moment during the animation in which the skill takes effect; for example, the moment in which the Fireball skill's projectiles are created and begin moving forwards.
Follow Through Follow Through consists of the character transitioning back to their regular standing pose. It is sometimes partially skipped so that characters can move sooner after activating a skill.
In Patch 0.7.6 we are updating many skills with some of the following changes;
Here are the skills we will be updating; ACOLYTE
[ 2020-01-16 21:02:24 CET ] [ Original post ]
We are in the process of updating skills to make them feel more responsive. This work has included changes to their animations - so before we explain the adjustments we'll be making, we'll be taking a brief look at the different phases of skill animations.
A Skill Animations Primer
Each skill animation has three phases, which are;
- Anticipation
- Impact
- Follow Through
Impact Impact is the moment during the animation in which the skill takes effect; for example, the moment in which the Fireball skill's projectiles are created and begin moving forwards.
Follow Through Follow Through consists of the character transitioning back to their regular standing pose. It is sometimes partially skipped so that characters can move sooner after activating a skill.
The Changes We're Making
In Patch 0.7.6 we are updating many skills with some of the following changes;
- Some skills are having the duration of their anticipation reduced, and the duration of their follow through increased. What this does is allow the impact - when a skill deals damage or heals - to occur sooner, without changing the total animation time.
- The follow through part of an animation can be partially skipped, allowing characters to move (but not use skills) sooner after that skill is used. The proportion of follow through which allows you to move is different for each skill. We are reviewing the proportions for every skill, and many skills will allow you to begin moving sooner after their use. This prevents a character from being trapped in place for too long.
- Each skill has an 'ability time' which dictates how long a character must wait before using the next skill. We are shortening this for some abilities so there is less of a pause between skills. This change is being made to fewer skills than the previous two.
The Skills Being Adjusted
Here are the skills we will be updating; ACOLYTE
- Hungering Souls
- Mark For Death
- Marrow Shards
- Rip Blood
- Sacrifice
- Summon Bone Golem
- Summon Skeleton
- Summon Skeleton Mage
- Summon Wraith
- Elemental Nova
- Fireball
- Focus
- Glacier
- Lightning Blast
- Mana Strike
- Snap Freeze
- Static Orb
- Black Hole
- Meteor
- Volcanic Orb
- Flame Reave
- Shatter Strike
- Maelstrom
- Summon Thorn Totem
- Summon Frenzy Totem
- Entangling Roots
- Spriggan Form abilities
- Root Wall
- Vale Blast
- Avalanche
- Summon Storm Totem
- Tornado
- Shield Throw
- Forge Strike
- Healing Hands
- Judgement
- Sigils of Hope
- Smite
- Abyssal Echoes
- Devouring Orb
Eleventh Hour Games Are Attending PAX South!
[ 2020-01-03 21:37:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey everyone!
We're excited to announce that we're bringing Last Epoch to PAX South!
Members of our development team, our art team, our Creative Director, our Narrative Director, and our Game Director will be there - and we want to talk to you!
Whether you want to give us some feedback in person, ask us some questions about the game, or just jump on a computer and play it for a bit, make sure to pay us a visit.
We'll be there January 17th - 19th!
You can find the official PAX site here: https://south.paxsite.com/
If you plan on attending PAX South, make sure to follow us on Twitter and drop us a Like on Facebook so you don't miss any of our messages surrounding the event;
We can't wait to see you there!
Beta 0.7.5d Release and Patch Notes
[ 2019-12-24 17:05:00 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
Earthquake
- These changes are to compensate for the loss of a guaranteed stun on the Entangling Roots tree in 0.7.5, and make some balance adjustments.
- Mana cost reduced to 55 (from 70).
- Added damage effectiveness increased to 250% (from 200%).
- Added a new node that adds a guaranteed stun and a cooldown.
- Added a new node that increases stun duration and cooldown duration.
- Small changes have also been made to the requirements of some nodes.
Erasing Strike
- Added damage effectiveness increased to 200% (from 170%)
- Strength scaling changed to 5% increased melee damage (from 4% increased melee damage).
Forge Strike
- Characters with Forge Strike specialized will receive a free respec for its tree
- Added a new node behind Put to the Sword that increases bleed effectiveness.
- Forged by Fire can have 4 points allocated (up from 3), and adds 10 fire damage per point (up from 7).
- Mass Production now adds a 5% chance to summon weapons (it previously stated 8% increased chance).
- Well Forged Weapons now grants 25% increased summoned weapon duration (it previously stated 20%) and can have 4 points allocated (down from 5).
- Removed the Patient Strike node as its damage increase was not working.
- Slightly adjusted connections and requirements
Maelstrom
- Cyclone now prevents Maelstrom from freezing enemies, but also grants 5% increased global physical damage per stack of Maelstrom.
Sigils of Hope
- Each Sigil grants 4 fire damage (down from 5)
- Each Sigil grants 25% increased health regen (up from 20%)
- Characters with Sigils of Hope specialized will receive a free respec for its tree.
- Iron Sigils grants 40 armour per point (down from 50).
- Meditation now doubles health regen from Sigils rather than providing 100% increased health regen per Sigil.
- Sigils of Despair no longer doubles the added damage, but now also grants 15% increased void damage per Sigil.
- Sign of the Guardian grants 1% block chance (from 2%) and 15 block protection (from 5).
- Adjusted some connections and requirements.
Mechanics
- The death screen now shows the type of damage that dealt the killing blow in addition to the name of the ability.
- Your skills are no longer put on cooldown when you transform back to human form. Cooldowns are tracked while transformed, so if a cooldown has 10 seconds remaining and then you transform for 8 seconds, that cooldown will have 2 seconds remaining.
Sound
- Improved Avalanches sound to be less jarring.
- Fixed Solar Auxiliary enemies not having impact sounds for their arrows.
- Fixed Wengari Raider enemies not having impact sounds for their melee attacks.
- Adjusted the volume levels of enemies in Chapter 7.
Enemy Balance
- Further reduced the damage of Fire Paladins Earthquake attack.
- Reduced the damage of Holy Fire Novas from Rare Osprix Vanguards by 12%.
Performance
- Improved the performance of Avalanches visuals.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed item tooltips getting stuck open in some situations.
- Fixed item tooltips displaying icons with incorrect colors if you had hovered over a shard beforehand.
- Fixed duplicate set items causing tooltip to show a higher tier set bonus.
- Fixed instability in tooltips not being shown when moving the mouse between items.
- Fixed the hybrid health leech affix having a tier 3 range of 70% to 20% leech, rather than 17% to 20%.
- Fixed being unable to use Shield Rush if you changed your weapon, which made it seem as if you no longer had a shield equipped.
- Fixed Flame Ward not granting 30% less damage taken as stated on the tooltip.
- Fixed a bug where "while channelling" stats did not work with Warpath.
- Fixed Flame Ward's Barrier node not granting less damage taken.
- Fixed bugs where Forge Strikes Mass Production and Well Forged Weapons nodes had no effect.
- Fixed a bug where Forge Strikes Put To The Sword node did not increase attack speed.
- Fixed Maelstroms Votex node increasing the damage of Maelstroms cast on yourself, rather than just those cast on your totems.
- Fixed various bugs with the buff display for Sigils of Hope.
- Fixed a bug where the Faith for Sigils of Hope triggered on every hit, rather than just hits that dealt more than 25% of your health.
- Fixed a bug where the Decree of Flame node for Sigils of Hope had no effect.
- Fixed a bug where respeccing the Sigils of Despair node for Sigils of Hope would have no effect until the character was reloaded.
- Fixed the poison chance granted by Skeleton Mages Putrid Essence node not being converted to ignite chance for Pyromancers or chill chance for Cryomancers.
- Fixed the Diode node for Static granting too much added crit chance.
- Fixed Storm Totems Stormrider node granting 30% movement speed per point rather than the stated 10%.
- Fixed the Paladins Shield Wall node granting 5% block chance per point, rather than the stated 3%.
- Fixed a chest being difficult to open in Majelka.
- Fixed Artems icon disappearing in the Council Chambers in some situations.
Beta 0.7.5c Release and Patch Notes
[ 2019-12-20 21:52:41 CET ] [ Original post ]
Performance
- Optimized the visuals for Abyssal Echoes, Bone Slam (Bone Golem), Blood Splatter, Detonate Corpse, and Glacier.
Enemy Balance
- Reduced the damage of Flame Paladins, Ice Weavers Osprix Vanguards, and Rime Giants.
- Increased the damage of Yrun.
Item System
- You can now right click on the modifier or support item slot to empty it.
- You can now swap out modifier and support items by right clicking, even if an item is already in the crafting window.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Runes and Glyphs besides Rune of Removal and Glyph of Stability not appearing in the Crafting Items tab. The items themselves were not deleted, so you will have the correct amount of each type after updating to this patch.
- Fixed being unable to view comparison info and other data for items on the ground using modifier keys (alt and ctrl).
- Fixed Runes being deleted if they are in the crafting panel and then replaced by a Shard.
- Fixed Heoborea failing to load if you had loaded multiple characters in a single game session.
- Fixed a bug where Frozen Ire did not remove its per level bonus when unequipped.
- Added more failsafes for item loading and saving.
- Fixed being able to drag items while holding right click.
- Fixed the sound for dropping items also playing when items are picked up.
- Fixed the Mirage Staff base type not fitting in the hands of the player correctly.
Beta 0.7.5b Release and Patch Notes
* Fixed an error with loading certain types of shards which prevented some characters from being loaded. * Fixed exiting to character select and then loading another character causing a variety of odd behavior, including enemies idling in place after death and load screens getting stuck. * Fixed a bug where an item's fractured status was not being saved correctly. * Fixed some drop rates for Uniques being incorrect. * Fixed a bug where shards would rarely fail to drop. * Fixed a non-functional type of Rune dropping. * Instability is no longer shown on the tooltips of items that cant have instability. * Fixed an oversight where Increased Elemental Damage could not roll on staves. * Fixed Wandering Spirits Spectral Putrescence node not adding the poison tag to the skill. * Fixed Flame Wards Selfless Sorcery node mentioning another node by the wrong name. * Fixed a click sound being played multiple times when loading a character. * Fixed Earthquake having a minion tag in its tooltip. * Fixed ground affects unintentionally appearing on the Primal Sabertooth.
Runes and Glyphs besides Rune of Removal and Glyph of Stability are not present in the Crafting Items tab.
[ 2019-12-19 23:25:33 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
Earthquake
- Now unlocks at Shaman level 10 (down from 15).
Ice Thorns
- Improved targeting on slopes.
Reaper Form
- Damage that brings you out of Reaper Form now bleeds through to your regular health. If you have 500 max health, and 100 remaining health in Reaper Form, taking a 200 damage hit will leave you on 400 health, not 500).
Sigils of Hope
- The Decree of Flame node can now have a maximum of 3 points allocated (down from 5). Characters with more than 3 points in this node will have the extra points respecced for free.
Items
- Increased the gold value of staves and catalysts.
Visuals
- Updated the appearance of bees summoned by the Keepers Gloves.
Bug Fixes
* Fixed an error with loading certain types of shards which prevented some characters from being loaded. * Fixed exiting to character select and then loading another character causing a variety of odd behavior, including enemies idling in place after death and load screens getting stuck. * Fixed a bug where an item's fractured status was not being saved correctly. * Fixed some drop rates for Uniques being incorrect. * Fixed a bug where shards would rarely fail to drop. * Fixed a non-functional type of Rune dropping. * Instability is no longer shown on the tooltips of items that cant have instability. * Fixed an oversight where Increased Elemental Damage could not roll on staves. * Fixed Wandering Spirits Spectral Putrescence node not adding the poison tag to the skill. * Fixed Flame Wards Selfless Sorcery node mentioning another node by the wrong name. * Fixed a click sound being played multiple times when loading a character. * Fixed Earthquake having a minion tag in its tooltip. * Fixed ground affects unintentionally appearing on the Primal Sabertooth.
Known Issues
Runes and Glyphs besides Rune of Removal and Glyph of Stability are not present in the Crafting Items tab.
- We have found a fix for this issue which will be in a patch soon, and the items have not been deleted. This fix was found after the patch process had started for this release so we decided to get these fixes out first.
Beta 0.7.5 Release and Patch Notes
Added Chapter 7. This addition includes new zones, quests, enemies, music, and sound effects. Travel back to the Divine Era and witness a conflict between gods. Contend with Rahyeh's armies, and explore the mysteries of Heoborea.
This patch introduces three new specialization trees, including two for brand new skills.
You can now use the gold you gain during gameplay to purchase unidentified items of a certain base type (e.g. you can buy an Eastern Blade). Once you purchase an item, its rarity and affixes will be revealed. Artem, the Gambler NPC, can be found in the Council Chambers and the End of Time.
We have rewritten the backend for items and storage to improve performance and remove some long-standing bugs. Additionally, this rewriting has facilitated the following;
The aim here is to remove the melee aspect because that overlaps with Earthquakes niche, while modernizing the tree and making it more useful overall. Due to the significance of the changes, players will receive a free specialization tree respec.
Due to the significance of the changes, players will receive a free specialization tree respec.
We want to buff Spriggan Form, while also shifting some of its power from base defensive stats to damage and the nodes on its specialization tree. Due to the significance of the changes, players will receive a free tree respec.
Currently this skill is too strong and needs to be reduced in power. These changes should also make it easier to remain shapeshifted for longer without significantly investing into Critical Strike Chance. Due to the significance of the changes, players will receive a free tree respec.
Our performance-orientated work in Patch 0.7.5 focused primarily on reducing stuttering. While we have not eliminated all sources of stutter, it should be less common than before. Additionally, we have optimized the labels for equipment.
[ 2019-12-18 18:14:09 CET ] [ Original post ]
Campaign
Added Chapter 7. This addition includes new zones, quests, enemies, music, and sound effects. Travel back to the Divine Era and witness a conflict between gods. Contend with Rahyeh's armies, and explore the mysteries of Heoborea.
Skills
This patch introduces three new specialization trees, including two for brand new skills.
- Added a new skill, Earthquake, which is unlocked by spending 15 points in Shaman passives. Earthquake is a melee attack that hits all enemies around you, and then sends tremors out to nearby enemies.
- Added a new Mage skill, Flame Ward, which is unlocked at level 9. Flame Ward grants Ward, causes you to take less damage, and have a chance to retaliate with flames for 3 seconds. This is intended to replace Fire Shield and Ice Ward once other changes happen to the class.
- Added a specialization tree for the Paladin skill, Sigils of Hope.
Item Gambling
You can now use the gold you gain during gameplay to purchase unidentified items of a certain base type (e.g. you can buy an Eastern Blade). Once you purchase an item, its rarity and affixes will be revealed. Artem, the Gambler NPC, can be found in the Council Chambers and the End of Time.
Item System
We have rewritten the backend for items and storage to improve performance and remove some long-standing bugs. Additionally, this rewriting has facilitated the following;
- Items can now be moved by clicking and dragging.
- Items in shops appear red if you dont have enough gold to purchase them.
- Stash tabs can now be sorted and searched.
- Holding alt and ctrl now also shows the ranges of implicit modifiers (previously it would only work with affixes).
- Items with multiple implicit values can now have separate implicit rolls (e.g. a Jeweled Circlet can have high implicit spell damage, but low implicit mana. Previously both would be high or low).
- Runes and Glyphs automatically go to the crafting material inventory
- Items that you are too low level to equip have an x in the bottom right corner.
Skill Balance
Black Hole
- Heat Wave now grants 20% ignite chance per point (up from 10%).
- Red Giant now also increases the duration of Black Hole by 80%.
Disintegrate
- Increased base damage by 25%.
Entangling Roots
The aim here is to remove the melee aspect because that overlaps with Earthquakes niche, while modernizing the tree and making it more useful overall. Due to the significance of the changes, players will receive a free specialization tree respec.
- Increased damage by 60%.
- Reduced mana cost to 40 (from 50).
- Added 10 new nodes (focused on bleed, poison, healing, and minions).
- Removed Eternal Imbuement, Eterra's Might, Crushing Force, and Staggering Impact nodes
- Nodes that buff you or your minions now buff within the area rather than having a fixed duration.
- Bountiful Harvest now grants 100% chance to create a Healing Nova (up from 34%).
- Empowered Bites grants 40% bleed chance for Bears (up from 34%), can have 5 points allocated (up from 3), and now also affects Sabertooths, but no longer affects Serpents.
- Fleeting Grove grants 40% mana efficiency per point (up from 30%).
- Imbued Sap grants 30% increased damage per point (up from 25%), but can only have 3 points allocated (down from 4).
- Lasting Briar gives 20% increased duration per point (up from 15%).
- Mystic Roots now increases damage by 20% per point (from 25%) and can have 5 points allocated (from 8).
- Roots of Lapp increases mana cost by 50% (up from 20%).
- Venomous Pack grants 40% poison chance for Wolves (up from 34%), can have 5 points allocated (up from 3), and now also affects Serpents and Scorpions.
- Grove Master can have 3 points allocated (up from 2).
- Poison Ground can have 5 points allocated (down from 6).
- Adjusted many connections and requirements.
Glacier
Due to the significance of the changes, players will receive a free specialization tree respec.
- Increased base damage by 18%.
- Increased freeze rate by 30%.
- Added a node that grants ward on crit
- Added a node that increases hit damage and mana efficiency
- Added a node that gives more damage against rares and bosses
- Added a node that doubles the chill chance from the tree and gives more damage against chilled enemies
- Added a node that grants the Rime buff on cast, which grants global increased damage over time and freeze rate multiplier.
- The Destruction nodes grant slightly less hit damage than before
- Frost Grip now also grants freeze rate multiplier, but can only have 5 points allocated (down from 6).
- Perma Frost now grants 150% freeze rate multiplier (up from 100%).
- Moderate Vortex now increases Rime duration, but no longer increases hit damage.
- Greater Vortex now increases Rime effect, but no longer increases hit damage.
- Resplendent Frost now grants 4% base crit chance per point (from 3%), but also grants -15% crit multi.
- Rejuvenation now only procs on crit, rather than on every hit.
- Static Collapse no longer reduces crit chance, but instead prevent crits from dealing extra damage.
- Changed many connections and requirements.
- Hammer Throw
- Increased base damage by 12.5%.
- Disintegrating Aura now deals 30 void damage per second (up from 20).
Ice Thorns
- Cold Prison now also grants 1 base cold damage per point.
- Ritual Briar now grants 8% increased damage, doubled if you have a totem (from 12% increased damage while you have a totem).
Maelstrom
- Increased base damage and freeze rate by 50%.
Marrow Shards
- Carving now grants 40% increased Bone Splinters damage per point (up from 25%).
- Gouging Splinters now grants 50% Bone Splinters bleed chance per point (up from 25%).
- Blood Assassin can how have 3 points allocated (up from 2).
- Crimson Ivory can now have 4 points allocated (up from 3).
- Dark Precision can now have 3 points allocated (up from 2).
Rive
- Focused Strike now requires 4 points in Concentration (up from 1).
- Opportunist now grants Rive 10% more critical strike chance against ignited targets per point (down from 16%).
- Reclamation now grants 5% leech per point (from 10%) and can have up to 2 points allocated (down from 3).
- Savagery now grants 20% more damage to ignited targets per point (down from 34%).
- Twisting Fangs now grants the second strike 50% chance to ignite per point (down from 100%).
Shatter Strike
- Increased base damage by 80%.
Smite
- Increased base damage by 13%.
- Increased added damage scaling by 50%.
Spriggan Form
We want to buff Spriggan Form, while also shifting some of its power from base defensive stats to damage and the nodes on its specialization tree. Due to the significance of the changes, players will receive a free tree respec.
- No longer grants 150 elemental protection and armour, but still grants attunement and vitality.
- Summoned Vines now have an additional 4% chance to poison on hit per point of attunement.
- Vale Blast deals 40% more damage.
- Deep Roots now grants root wall 35% more health (from 12% increased health).
- Fury of the Glade now grants a 7% chance to cast Vale Blast per point (up from 5%) and can have 5 points allocated (up from 3).
- Grove of Hemlock now grants a 34% chance to cast poison nova per point (up from 25%) and can have 3 points allocated.
- Nurture now grants Healing Totems 20% increased healing effectiveness per point (up from 7%).
- Permafrost grants a 6% chance to cast Ice Thorns per point (up from 4%) and can have 5 points allocated (up from 3).
- Purification can have 3 points allocated (up from 2).
- The piercing thorns skill (used by Vines if you take the Razor Vines node) now deals 100% more damage.
- Reinforced Totem now grants Healing Totems 20% more health and duration (from 10% increased health and 3% more duration).
- Skin Like Bark now grants 60 armour and protections (up from 50) and heals for 60 (up from 50).
- Thick Tendrils now grants summoned Vines 20% more damage and health (from 12% increased damage and health).
Summon Bear
- The Primal Bears Roar ability now has a significantly larger area of effect.
Wandering Spirits
- Now scales with increased damage over time.
Werebear Form
Currently this skill is too strong and needs to be reduced in power. These changes should also make it easier to remain shapeshifted for longer without significantly investing into Critical Strike Chance. Due to the significance of the changes, players will receive a free tree respec.
- No longer grants 100% increased melee damage, 150 elemental protection and 150 armour. Still grants strength and vitality.
- Roar now costs 10 mana (down from 15).
- Enrage can now have up to 4 points allocated (up from 2).
- Removed Spell Mastery.
- Wizened Claws now causes increases to spell damage to also apply to melee damage, and can only have one point allocated.
- Added a new node that causes increases to spell damage to also apply to crit chance.
- Adjusted some connections and requirements.
Uniques
- Most uniques now have varying rolls on some of their affixes, with the averages being higher than their previous static values.
- Added a new unique sceptre, Frozen Ire.
- Beast King can now also roll on the Raider Axe base type in addition to its current base type.
- Eterra's Path's vine to entangling roots ratio has been changed to 4 (up from 3).
- Decayed Skull and Snowblind can now also spawn on the Gladiator Helmet base type (in addition to their normal base types).
- Mourning Frost now gives 3% to 10% increased health (from 10% less health).
- Prism Wraps now gives 2% to 8% elemental leech (down from 30%), and now also gives 30% Increased Critical Strike Chance.
- Urzil's Pride now gives 1% increased mana regeneration per 100 points of armour (down from 2%).
- Volcanus now also has 37% to 57% increased fire damage.
- Yrun's Wisdom now gives 3% melee leech while below 65% health (down from 30% leech).
Items
- Added staves, which are a two-handed weapon option for caster and hybrid builds. Each staff grants varying amounts of added melee physical damage and base spell damage, as well as subtracting from spell mana costs.
- Added catalysts, which are off-hands tailored toward casters. Each catalyst grants intelligence, and higher tier items also grant base spell crit or ward per second.
- Added three new affixes that spawn later in the game.
- Increased Minion Spell Damage prefix, which rolls on Staves and Catalysts.
- Increased Damage While Channeling prefix, which rolls on Staves, Relics and Amulets.
- Armour and Protections While Channeling Suffix, which rolls on Staves, Relics and Rings.
- Damage Dealt to Mana Before Health prefix
- While you have this stat, each point of mana is now worth 5 points of health (e.g. if you take 100 damage with 10% damage dealt to mana, you will lose 2 mana and 90 health).
- Has up to 50% higher values on body armour
- Can not additionally roll on helmets
- Stat is now shown in the character sheet
- Throwing Attack Affixes
The aim is to adjust throwing attack scaling to more closely resemble that of other attacks and spells. This change is meant to be fairly neutral overall.
- The Throwing Attack Damage and Mana Cost prefix now grants added throwing attack physical damage rather than increased throwing attack damage.
- Increased Throwing Attack Speed can no longer roll on amulets or relics and has lower values.
- Increased Throwing Attack Damage has lower values.
- Added a new cursed prefix on rings and amulets that adds lots of fire damage to throwing attacks, but increases fire damage taken.
- Reduced the values of the hybrid health leech affix, especially at high levels, and changed it to spawn on gloves rather than amulets (it can still spawn on rings and relics as well).
- All polearms that previously added generic crit chance now add melee crit chance.
- Polearms add less melee crit chance than before.
- Eastern Blades and Katanas now have an attack rate of 1.25 (up from 1.2).
- Naginatas now have an attack rate of 1.05 (up from 0.97).
- Nodachis now have an attack rate of 1.1 (down from 1.15).
Enemies
- The Heals if not damaged recently monster affix now has a visual effect that intensifies when it begins healing, and can no longer spawn alongside an Increased Health or High Stun Avoidance mod.
- Added a Deadly if not damaged recently monster affix which causes enemies to deal twice as much damage.
Mechanics
- You can now leech off of damage you deal to yourself or your minions.
User Interface
- Redesigned the cursor to make it easier to keep track of while in combat.
- Improved the appearance and layout of the inventory.
- Runes and Glyphs have been moved from a fly-out sub-menu of the inventory to a new tab of the inventory to make them easier to find.
- Updated the equipped item and stats overview sections to match other parts of the user interface.
- Updated the background and border art for items.
Sound
- Added two new music tracks for Chapter 3.
- Added new sounds for the Idol of Loathing.
- Added several new sound effects for abilities used by Void enemies;
- Abyssal Aura
- Devouring Void
- Erasing Blow
- Summon Effigy of Decay
- Void Breath
- Void Drain
- Void Spit
- Delayed explosions
- Added sounds for the stash opening and closing.
- Added a new sound for Glaciers area of effect marker (before it deals damage).
- Added a new sound for Charged Ground.
- Adjusted the levels for Avalanches sound effect.
Visuals
- Improved the visuals for mossy rocks in Chapter 1.
- Improved lighting for Chapter 1, Chapter 3 and Chapter 5.
- Improved terrain in Chapter 3 and Chapter 5.
- Improved some textures and models for Chapter 6.
- Added a new visual for Avalanches physical conversion.
Performance
Our performance-orientated work in Patch 0.7.5 focused primarily on reducing stuttering. While we have not eliminated all sources of stutter, it should be less common than before. Additionally, we have optimized the labels for equipment.
Bug Fixes
- Items in the stash no longer cause lag when entering the game.
- Corrected a rare bug where large amounts of items could be deleted on character load.
- Resolved cases of items becoming stuck or overlapping other items.
- Fixed a bug where item tooltips would sometimes get stuck open when moving from one item to another.
- Fixed bugs where item tooltips would potentially not disappear when the inventory is closed or when the mouse leaves the inventory area.
- Fixed a large number of situations where movement abilities could take you outside of the play area of a zone.
- Fixed a bug where abilities that grant resources to their caster could collide with other abilities, causing them to behave as if they hit a wall.
- Disintegrate can no longer be dodged.
- Maelstrom can no longer be dodged.
- Warpaths damage now scales with Strength.
- Fixed a bug where the Detonate Ground nodes in Forge Strike were not properly applying increased damage or ignite chance.
- Fixed the damage increases from multiple Glacier nodes not stacking.
- Fixed Maelstroms Calm node not scaling as more points were allocated.
- Fixed Statics Reverberation node granting too many charges when hit.
- Fixed the Druids Vale Warrior passive not increasing physical damage.
- Fixed the Lich passive Wands of the Fallen not working.
- Fixed the Lich passive Symbol of Decay not working.
- Fixed the Paladin passive Staunch Defender not working.
- Fixed a bug where the Terror Mace multiplied the amount of increased stun chance you had rather than just giving you increased stun chance.
- Fixed a visual issue with the keybinds UI.
- Fixed the Shamans Rune of Awe passive not increasing base spell damage.
- Fixed ragdolls behaving erratically in certain locations.
- The health bars for Sludge enemies no longer clip into their bodies.
- Fixed the exit from Ruined College taking you to the start of the Ruins of Welryn.
Beta 0.7.4b Release and Patch Notes
[ 2019-11-20 01:26:17 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
- Disintegrate
- Increased base damage by 43%.
- Maelstrom
- Freeze Rate now scales with attunement.
- Power of the Storm now strikes enemies around the most recent target you cast Maelstrom on, rather than always targeting enemies around you.
- Storm Totem
- Increased base health and health scaling by 33%.
- Now costs 20 mana (up from 16).
- Thorn Totem
- Increased base health and health scaling by 33%.
- Now costs 18 mana (up from 16).
Passives
- Primalists will receive a free passive respec due to Shaman changes.
- Sentinels will receive a free passive respec to resolve missing passive points due to Aura of Divinity being removed in 0.7.4, as well as new Paladin changes.
- Lich
- Added a node that converts all sources of health leech to increased damage at 10 times their value (e.g. 1% of damage leeched as health becomes 10% increased damage).
- Paladin
- Added a new node that grants health, armour, and critical strike avoidance.
- Changed Defiance to give attunement and increased elemental protection rather than health and armour.
- Reworked the Holy Symbol node; it now heals 15 per point and has a 100% chance to proc on block, but has a 3 second cooldown.
- Adjusted some connections and requirements.
- Shaman
- Added a node that makes it so that when you kill a frozen enemy, you heal a random totem to full, refresh its duration and give it a permanent damage buff.
- Added a node that grants health, mana, and a chance to cast Maelstrom when hit.
- Added a node that gives totems health, armour, and stun immunity.
- Hail Bringer now gives 10 cold protection (up from 6), and 10% chill chance (up from 6%), and also grants 10% freeze rate multiplier.
- Heorot's Path now also applies to your minions.
- Removed the node that increased armour and elemental protection on spell cast.
- Removed the node that gave increased health, mana, and cooldown recovery speed.
- Sorcerer
- Replaced the mana armour node with a new node that grants +% base spell damage (doubled if you have over 200 maximum mana).
- The Insight buff from Arcane Insight now gives 20% increased elemental damage and 20% ward retention per point (from 15% increased spell damage and 15% ward retention).
Items
- Wand Base Types
- Added Infernal Wands, which requires level 60 and grants similar base spell damage to old Prophecy Wands, but also grants increased cast speed.
- Prophecy Wands now require level 73 (up from 64) and grant substantially more base spell damage.
- Existing Prophecy Wands will be converted to Infernal Wands to avoid players from level 64 to 72 being unable to equip their current weapon.
- Imperial Wands now require level 47 (from 50).
- All other wands (except Burning Branches) grant slightly more base spell damage.
- Sceptre Base Types
- Added Divine Sceptres, which requires level 75 and are substantially more powerful than Moonstone Sceptres.
- All Sceptres (except Acolyte starting sceptres) now grant more base spell damage.
UI
- The list of characters on the main menu now displays which Mastery Class a character is, rather than always displaying the Base Class.
- Moved Nests of the Fallen on the world map to better reflect the layout of zone exits in Yulia's Haven.
Visuals
- Improved the appearance of Summon Skeletons Fire Arrow and Ice Arrow abilities.
- Improved the appearance of Thorn Totem projectiles.
- Improved Maelstroms visual effect.
- Rip Bloods Blood Catalyst node now causes a slight delay between each recast.
- Improved lighting effects in the Temple of Eterra and Sanctum Bastille.
Enemies
- Increased the Idol of Loathings base damage by 14%.
Sound
- Added new sound effects for the Idol of Loathing.
- Added a new teleport sound effect for Devoured Husks.
- Updated some more enemy void abilities to use new sounds.
- Increased the volume of Primeval Dragon roars.
- Improved Maelstroms sound effect for when there are multiple stacks.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where Shades for all base classes would appear in Realm of the Forgotten, rather than just Shades for your base class. This resulted in there being 5 times as many enemies as intended.
- Fixed a bug where characters who had entered the Ancient Cavern could not respec from the Chronomancer in The Council Chambers.
- Fixed the entrance Time Rift from Ancient Cavern loading to an endless load screen rather than the Precipice.Added a failsafe so that completing Ancient Hunt automatically completes Ancient Path if it was skipped (due to using an old character).
- Fixed a bug where the cannot respec popup for passives would fail to show the class's name correctly in cases where you had a node with a requirement of at least 20 in the same class that would become inaccessible.
- Fixed a bug where characters created before 0.7.4 were shown on the ladder. The ladder has been cleared to fix this, however any character that was created in 0.7.4 will be re-added as soon as they complete an Arena wave or level up.
- Fixed Enchant Weapons Conduit node not working.
- Fixed Enchant Weapons Overloaded node causing all elemental attacks over Enchant Weapon's duration to be free rather than just the first one.
- Fixed the Primal Wolfs Leap ability not having a cooldown.
- Fixed Summon Raptors Broken Tooth node causing the Raptor to stop moving if you had Fury Leaps Pack Leader node.
- Fixed Reaper Forms Vile Shroud node not working.
- Fixed Reaper Forms Soul Shroud node giving a larger amount of intelligence for each time you entered Reaper Form.
- Fixed several skill node tooltips having overlapping text.
- Fixed the Beastmasters Writhe node only granting 8 dodge rating per point, rather than 10.
- Fixed a bug where the Paladins Holy Nova node healed for 33% less than Holy Symbol and did not have attunement scaling for its healing.
- Fixed a bug where the Shamans Shattered Heavens node granted 200% increased spell cold damage per point rather than 2 added cold spell damage per point.
- Fixed Close Calls increased dodge rating for each hit you have blocked recently not working.
- Fixed a bug where the increased minion damage over time affix did not function correctly.
- Fixed being able to leap out of bounds in Ancient Cavern.
- Fixed a rock blocking the camera in Ancient Cavern.
- Fixed a camera blocking issue in the Armory near the entrance from Upper District.
- Fixed the wave fight in the Armory getting stuck in some situations.
- Fixed being able to leap out of bounds in Corrupted Lake.
- Fixed projectiles being blocked in some parts of the Precipice.
- Fixed the notification for Mastering showing the incorrect class name in some situations.
- Fixed the hybrid Freeze Rate Multiplier and Cold Protection affix using the old increased freeze chance terminology.
- Fixed Gaspar having a white square icon in some situations.
- Fixed Increased Chance to Find Potions not displaying in the character sheet (was always 0).
- Fixed the Necromancer and Lichs icons being swapped in the Mastery selection window.
- Fixed a bug where enabling just one type of overhead health bar could actually enable all types of health bars.
Beta 0.7.4 Release and Patch Notes
[ 2019-11-15 17:03:55 CET ] [ Original post ]
Mastery Class System
- Your Mastery Class is now selected after completing a quest you receive when you first visit the End of Time.
- Previously, you simply had the option to choose your Mastery Class after investing 25 points into its passives.
- The quest allows this decision to be a more involved and satisfying process, and to occur at a fixed, earlier part of the campaign.
- Choosing a Mastery Class now grants access to an exclusive skill and special passives.
- Necromancer: Summon Wraith. +1 maximum Skeleton. +1 maximum Skeleton Mage. Your minions deal 50% increased damage.
- Lich: Reaper Form. 1% of damage dealt is leeched as health. Spells and melee attacks deal increased damage equal to your percentage of missing health.
- Sorcerer: Meteor. +50 mana. Spells deal increased damage equal to their mana cost.
- Spellblade: Shatter Strike. 5 ward gained on melee hit. Mana spent on melee attacks is converted to ward.
- Beastmaster: Summon Raptor. +1 Companion summon limit. You and your minions deal 50% increased melee physical damage.
- Shaman: Storm Totem. -5 totem mana cost. +10 attunement. Your elemental protections are doubled while you control a totem.
- Druid: Werebear Form. When leaving a transformed state, you gain 70% damage reduction for 2 seconds. 20% increased health and mana.
- Void Knight: Erasing Strike. 50% increased melee void damage. Your melee attacks and void spells have a 10% chance to be repeated by an echo half a second later (excludes movement abilities).
- Forge Guard: Forge Strike. 30% more armor and fire protection (multiplicative with other modifiers). 3% less damage taken for each hit you have taken recently (up to 30%).
- Paladin: Holy Aura. You deal increased fire and physical damage equal to your percent health remaining. 1% increased healing effectiveness per point of attunement.
- Characters from previous game versions who are not the appropriate mastery will no longer be able to use these exclusive skills. For example, a Beastmaster from version 0.7.3 will no longer be able to use Storm Totem.
- Characters created before 0.7.4 that have already ascended to a Mastery Class will not need to complete the Mastery quest, and will have the appropriate bonuses.
Time Rifts
- Inside a Time Rift, the Epoch brings you through time to a different era, while remaining in the same physical location.
- Inside Time Rift zones you will see first-hand the difference that time has made to the land around you, and the creatures that inhabit it.
- There are currently 6 Time Rift zones throughout the campaign, with plans to add more.
Campaign
- Reworked much of the layout for Chapter 2.
- Last Archive now leads into the Precipice.
- The Precipice now leads into either the Upper District or the Armory.
- The Upper District now leads into the Armory.
- Overhauled the design of the Precipice.
- Adjusted the layout for the Sapphire Quarter.
- The player faces now faces the same direction on both sides of the transition between Lower Sewers and Barren Aqueduct.
Skills
- Added a new Primalist skill, Maelstrom, which is unlocked at level 15 in the class and has a specialization tree. Maelstrom deals cold damage in an area around yourself for 8 seconds and can be stacked multiple times.
- Added a new Sorcerer skill, Disintegrate, which is unlocked at level 15 in the class and has a specialization tree. Disintegrate is a hybrid fire and lightning channeled beam that pierces enemies.
- Added a new Spellblade skill, Static, which is unlocked at level 30 in the class and has a specialization tree. Static allows you to build up static charges while moving and taking damage, which you can expend to shoot lightning at nearby enemies.
- Added a specialization tree for Enchant Weapon.
- Added a specialization tree for Judgement.
- Added a specialization tree for Manifest Armour.
- Removed the Sorcerers Innervate skill.
- Increased the freeze rate multiplier granted by many nodes
- Avalanche - Dead of Winter: 50% (up from 10%).
- Black Hole - Deep Space: 75% (up from 30%).
- Elemental Nova - Elemental Tranquillity: 40% (up from 25%).
- Glacier - Perma Frost: 100% (up from 50).
- Ice Thorns - Cold Prison: 40% (up from 30%).
- Ice Thorns - Farwood Heart: 40% (up from 25%).
- Shatter Strike - Lingering Chill: 40% (up from 20%).
- Shatter Strike - Solidify: 40% (up from 30%).
- Summon Sabertooth - King of the Tundra: 40% (up from 15%).
- Summon Scorpion - Ice Sting: 60% (up from 50%).
- Tempest Strike - Winter's Chill: 50% (up from 30%).
- Volcanic Orb - Freezing Orb: 40% (up from 25%).
- You can now use Companion Abilities when at your Companion Limit even if you are not at the summon limit of that specific minion.
- Increased Summon Bears Roar and Werebear Form Roar area of effect by 40%.
- Avalanche
- Precision now adds +2 to Avalanches mana drain, or +2 mana cost if Avalanche is not a channeled skill.
- Naturally Occuring now increases mana efficiency by 10% per point (down from 15%).
- Unyielding Storm now increases duration by 15% per point (down from 20%).
- Harsh Winter now increases damage by 10% per point (down from 25%).
- Grounding now increases damage by 15% per point while you have an active totem (down from 30%).
- Storm Slide now adds 10 base lightning damage to boulders within range of a Storm Totem (down from 20).
- Storm Front now causes boulders to drop 5% more frequently per point (down from 10%).
- Mountains Fury now increases the area of effect for each boulder by 15% (down from 25%).
- Frosted Front now increases the duration of Frozen Ground by 40% per point (up from 20%).
- Explosive Impact now causes boulders to fall in a 25% larger area and grants each boulder 25% increases area of effect (up from 15% for each).
- Adjusted node positions and requirements. Existing characters that are specialized in Avalanche will receive a free respec.
- Black Hole
- Reduced cooldown to 14 seconds (from 16 seconds).
- Now requires Sorcerer level 30 (up from 15).
- Focus
- Damage now scales with intelligence once you have taken nodes that give it a way to deal damage.
- Forge Strike
- Added melee damage now applies at 200% effectiveness (up from 150%).
- Frenzy Totem
- Now unlocked at level 15 in Beastmaster, rather than level 15 in Primalist (replaced by Maelstrom).
- Holy Aura
- Holy Aura has been one of the strongest Sentinel skills and often drew other masteries into Paladin just for it. It is now exclusive to Paladin, but we wanted to rework the skill regardless.
- Passive effect is now: Grants 30% increased damage and +60 elemental protection.
- Concentration increases Holy Auras active duration by 50% rather than doubling its effectiveness.
- Concentrations added cooldown has been reduced to 5 seconds (from 10).
- Faith now grants 3 ward per second per point, rather than 1 per point on melee hit.
- Faiths Reward now grants 400 ward to all affected allies, rather than removing ward decay during Holy Auras active effect.
- Fanaticism now only grants increased melee attack speed, rather than increased attack and cast speed.
- Reduced Flame Bursts damage by 40%, but it now scales with Attunement, Spell Damage and Fire Damage.
- Flame Burst now requires 8 points while passive and 4 hits while active to trigger.
- Flame Burst no longer has extra damage for you getting the last hit.
- Inspiration now grants a 1% chance per point to gain the Inspiration buff when you are hit, which increases cooldown recovery speed by 20%. Previously the amount of cooldown recovery speed changed with points spent.
- Punishment now applies the Slow ailment to enemies rather than directly reducing their movement speed.
- Redemption now grants increased healing effectiveness rather than flat health regeneration.
- Swiftness now grants 20 dodge rating per point, rather than 15% increased dodge chance per point.
- Time Strike now grants 10% increased crit chance per point (from 2% reduced movement speed and 1% base critical strike chance per point).
- Removed Fleet-Footed and Focused Fervor
- Added Burning Blows, which grants 10% increased fire damage per point.
- Added Determination, which grants 10% increased physical damage per point.
- Added Strength From Afar, which grants 12% increased throwing attack damage and stun chance with throwing attacks.
- Added Expedite, which grants 4% increased throwing attack speed per point and a 4% chance per point to gain Haste for 1 second on hit.
- Reworked node requirements and connections.
- Characters who are specialized in Holy Aura will receive a free respec.
- Judgement
- Now costs 45 mana (up from 40).
- Damage over time is now increased by your healing effectiveness and well as increased damage over time (muiltiplicative with other modifiers).
- Doubled the base value for damage over time.
- Ring of Shields
- Now gains 5 base health per player level and point of attunement (down from 10).
- Spriggan Form
- Ice Thorns cast from Root Walls now benefit from your Ice Thorns specialization tree.
- Reduced Permafrosts chance to cast Ice Thorns per point from 5% to 4%, and reduced the max points from 4 to 3. This has been changed because each cast of Ice Thorns is more powerful now.
- Static Orb
- Doubled projectile damage.
- Increased base damage of explosion by 20%.
- Mana cost increased to 18 (from 15).
- Summon Sabertooth
- Fixed a bug where it had 750 base health, rather than the intended 200.
- New base health is 240.
- Health gained per player level is now 12 (from 10).
- Health gained per point of strength is now 12 (from 10).
- Increased damage by 25%.
- Summon Scorpion
- Increased base movement speed by 18%.
- Halved the cast duration for Poison Lob.
- Summon Skeleton Mage
- Removed one of the nodes that grants you an additional Skeleton Mage. This is to account for the Necromancers Mastery bonus.
- Added a new node that grants ward per second and crit avoidance to your Skeleton Mages.
- Adjusted node connections.
- Characters who are specialized in Summon Skeleton Mage will receive a free respec.
- Tempest Strike
- Nodes that disable one of the proc spells now increase the chance to proc the other spells by 8% (up from 5%).
- Earthquake now increases Earth Sprikes area by 50% per point (up from 25% per point)
- Adjusted node positions and requirements. Existing characters that are specialized in Tempest Strike will receive a free respec.
- Werebear Form
- The node that causes you to cast Ice Thorns on transform no longer roots you for 2.1 seconds. It now freezes you for 1 second, during which you are invulnerable.
Node Tooltips
- We have created a new design for node tooltips to better fit our new UI design, and to improve how well they convey information at a glance.
- New tooltips contain two sections: A detailed explanation of the nodes effect, and a list of each stat that is added, with icons for each type of stat.
- New tooltips have been implemented for all Acolyte and Mage skills, including their masteries (except for Fire Shield and Ice Ward, which will be replaced).
- The new design will be brought to other classes and the Passives window in future updates. In the meantime, these areas use the updated visual style but still use the old style of text.
- See an example of the new design here.
- This redesign has also allowed us to better standardize and improve how we describe mechanics in skills.
Passives
- Necromancer
- Tyrants Legion (+1 Skeleton, but reduced Skeleton health) can now only have 2 points allocated (down from 3). This is to account for the Necromancers Mastery bonus.
- Paladin
- Removed Aura of Divinity (increase the stats granted by Holy Aura by 10% per point).
- Primalist
- Primal Medicine now also increases minion damage.
- Added a new node that increases physical, cold, and lightning damage.
- Added a new node that increases companion health and companion revive speed.
- Added a new node that increases totem health and makes totems immune to poison damage.
- Removed the node that increased chance to find potions and health gained from potions.
- Removed the node that gave an extra companion slot (this bonus has been moved to the Beastmaster's Mastery bonus).
- Added some node connections.
- Void Knight
- Singular Purpose now grants 10% increased void damage and protection per point (up from 5%).
- Rot Grip now grants 4% chance to inflict time rot per point (up from 2%).
- The node that granted health and dexterity now grants health and attunement.
- Added three new nodes that involve increasing the chance for your abilities to echo.
Mechanics
- Potions by default now heal 50 + 4x health, where x is your character level (up from 50 + 2x). This is about an 80% increase in healing at level 100
- Bosses can now drop potions when hit.
- Player skills are now 50% more likely to stun targets. This bonus is doubled for melee abilities.
- Renamed "Increased Freeze Chance" to "Freeze Rate Multiplier" to make it clearer that it multiplies your freeze rate/chance rather than adding a flat chance to freeze.
Items
- Potion Affixes
- Overall, potion affixes are rarer and roll on fewer slots. Most of the common ones now relate to ward, and rarer ones are only available on belts.
- The full list of changes was explained in a post on our forum.
- Added a new Increased Spell Critical Strike Chance prefix which can spawn on wands, sceptres, amulets, and relics.
- Added a new Increased Minion Damage Over Time prefix that rolls on Helmets, Rings, Amulets, Relics, and Sceptres from level 48 onwards.
- Added a new Ward Gained on Kill Prefix that rolls on Amulets from level 40 onwards.
- Added a new Increased Elemental Damage Over Time prefix that rolls on Belts, Rings, Amulets, Relics, and Wands from level 50 onwards.
- Bronze Sceptres and Ice Sceptres now grant % base spell damage in addition to their existing implicits.
Uniques
- Added a new unique helmet, Boneclamor Barbute
- Added a new unique 1h axe, Undisputed.
- Added a new unique relic, Orchirians Petals.
- Exsanguinous now causes you to gain 20% of your missing health as ward per second (up from 15%).
- Tempest Maw
- Now grants -4 totem mana cost.
- No longer grants 4 mana on hit.
- Grants +75% base spell damage (up from 70%).
UI
- Updated the class badge section of the passives panel
- Increased the size of class badge
- The base class is now labelled base class
- The mastery you have ascended to is now labelled mastered
- Mastery exclusive passives and skills are shown at the top of the panel or when hovering over the class icons.
- Locked skills in the Skills Window again have an icon to show if they have a skill tree, and you can view the trees before unlocking the skill.
- Improved the layout of icons for minions in the top left of the screen.
- Increased Base Spell Damage is now shown in the character sheet.
- Item tooltips now label what each hotkey does.
- Skill cooldowns on tooltips now display to the nearest tenth of a second when below 1.5 seconds.
- Added a loading screen tip that states that blood spells and the bleed ailment deal physical damage.
- There are now different decorations on the loading screen when entering Imperial Era zones.
Ladder
- The ladder is now available from our website here: https://lastepochgame.com/ladder with additional features.
- Each character shows which skills they have equipped
- Account names are displayed in addition to character names
- The maximum Monolith streak that a character has achieved is now displayed.
- There are separate ladders for softcore, hardcore, softcore solo and hardcore solo.
- The ladder can be restricted to only showing a certain base class.
- You can order the list of entries by character level, max Arena wave or max Monolith streak.
- In-game, the 4 tabs are now: Hardcore, Softcore, Hardcore Solo and Softcore Solo. Each tab shows both character level and arena wave.
Visuals
- Updated lighting for the Character Select screen.
- Updated lighting in Chapter 1, 2 and 5 zones.
- Improved the End of Time
- Added new vegetation.
- Replaced the staircase.
- Improved the background starfield and floating objects.
- Tweaked lighting.
- Greatly improved the visuals for void environment objects that are in Chapter 2 and 3 zones.
- Greatly improved the aesthetics of the Armory.
- Added more details to some Chapter 6 zones.
- Improved hit flash visuals. They use a new material that makes them more consistent, and last longer on hits that kill.
- Updated models and animations for the Primal Wolf and Primal Sabertooth.
- Reduced the visual noise of, Avalanche, Blizzard Totem (Storm Totem node), Entangling Roots, Meteor and Ring of Shields.
- Tweaked the appearance of Skeleton Rogues.
- Improved the visuals for Abyssal Echoes.
- Updated visuals for Manifested Swords and Axes.
- Void Spectres now have a higher quality model and texture.
- Updated Soul Cage enemy visuals.
- Void Thrall capes now use cloth physics.
- Made the overhead visual for stun easier to see.
- Added new icons for Erasing Strike, Judgement and Transplant.
Graphics Settings
- Settings will be reset to Medium the first time you open the game after updating to this patch.
- There is now an apply button for graphics settings. Text will display prompting that you have unsaved changes, and the changes will be cleared if you close the window.
- There is now a clearer change in performance and visuals when going through the levels of Master Quality, due to more parameters changing at each tier.
- Adjusted the values of several settings internally.
- Reduced the number of options overall by combining multiple options amd removing unnecessary entries.
- Improved resolution changing functionality.
Sound
- Added a new music track for some Time Rifts.
- Added new attack sounds for Chapter 1 enemies
- Skullen Chuckers
- Osprix / Haruspex Orian
- Necrotic Wisps
- Caver Lurkers
- Added new attack sounds for Chapter 2 enemies
- Voidtouched Archivists (Ice Flurry)
- Voidfused Armour
- Abyssal Sundering
- Various void explosions
- Added new sound effects for player skills
- Judgement
- Manifest Armour
- Added new sounds for several new Time Rift enemies
- The sound for Wandering Spirits now fades out when the skill ends.
- Decreased the volume of the Primalists Swipe.
Enemies
- Soul Cages now release their souls at 30% health, which stops their long range attack.
- Reduced the damage of the explosion that happens when a Void Bolt creates a pool by 40%. Void Bolt is used by various void enemies including rare Voidforms.
- Osprix Warriors deal 25% less damage with fireball.
Performance
- Significantly improved the performance of most outdoor zones (and some indoors). We observed an average 7 fps improvement at 1080p Medium settings on a system with a Ryzen 5 1600 and a RX 480.
- Improved load times for first loading a character, using a waypoint or the map window, and using a town portal.
- Optimized the visuals of Avalanche, Bone Nova, Entangling Roots, Meteor, Ring of Shields and Sacrifice.
- Improved the performance of necrotic volley attacks used by some enemies.
- Improved the performance of Manifested Swords and Axes.
- Improved the performance of the Frost Wyrm enemy.
- Improved the performance of many stat calculations.
- Improved the performance of lights in the Ulatri Cliffs (Imperial).
Bug Fixes
- Fixed multiple Black Hole nodes not working.
- Fixed Focus Null Profusion and Null Infusion nodes working when your mana is positive.
- Fixed Focus Null Infusion node not scaling with points allocated.
- Fixed Forge Strikes Patient Strike disabling use of the skill.
- Fixed Frenzy Totems Furious Cry node not working.
- Fixed Glaciers Greater Vortex overriding the damage increase from Glaciers Greater Destruction.
- Fixed Holy Auras Shelter from the Storm node overriding the skills base effect.
- Fixed a bug where Mark for Death could be dodged.
- Fixed a bug where the Primal Scorpions retaliation with Poison Pool was taking into account hits against the Player rather than itself.
- Fixed a bug where Rives effects that triggered on kill with the third hit were not working.
- Fixed Smites Epicenter node not working.
- Fixed Spriggan Forms Healing Totem not benefitting from your Thorn Totem tree when you have the Spiked Totem node.
- Fixed Spriggan Forms Natures Bounty node granting an inconsistent refund amount if you also had the Petrify node.
- Fixed Static Orb spawning slightly behind the player.
- Fixed Teleports Mana Tunnel node changing Teleports cooldown to 13 seconds instead of 10 seconds.
- Fixed Tempest Strikes Upheaval node causing Earth Spikes to spawn on top of each other, rather than in a line.
- Fixed Transplant sometimes hitting too many enemies with Rip Blood.
- Fixed Transplant targeting enemy corpses for Rip Blood.
- Fixed Werebear Forms Skull Crush node not working properly
- Fixed Werebear Forms nodes that cast Ice Thorns not benefitting from your Ice Thorns tree.
- Fixed Werebear Form and Summon Bears Roar being the same ability in code, resulting in incorrect functionality.
- Fixed Wraiths created by Summon Wraith not following the player.
- Fixed a bug where AI with a preferred target would use abilities at ranges below their minimum range against that target. For example:
- The Sabertooth using its leap without moving against enemies targeted using the target command (A).
- Enemies using abilities with minimum range against a Bear or player that had taunted them.
- Fixed knockback effects pushing stationary enemies below the ground. This could cause Spires in Monolith zones to be unkillable.
- Fixed the Necromancers Summon Wraith and the Void Knights Anomaly and Ravaging Stance skills unlocking at incorrect levels.
- Fixed the Sorcerers Arcane Avalanche freezing all enemies around you when you were hit.
- Fixed a bug where the Sorcerers Arcane Current node gave 30% increased shock effect per point instead of 50%
- Fixed the Sorcerers Warder passive granting ward retention and health rather than ward on hit with elemental spells.
- Fixed a bug where damage over time could not freeze even if it had a freeze rate.
- Fixed a bug where Summoned Death Knight floating health bars would not display correctly.
- Fixed skill cooldowns being rounded incorrectly on skill tooltips.
- Fixed the crafting help tooltip being hidden behind the Inventory.
- Fixed the Exit Game button on the character select screen not working.
- Fixed a display error with the dropdown for online status in the social panel.
- Fixed the waypoint for Liath Grove not appearing on the minimap.
- Fixed Venom Weaver enemies not outlining correctly on mouse-over.
- Fixed Wisps in Ulatri Cliffs granting much more xp than intended.
- Fixed a bug where the "Rare enemies regenerate health" monolith mod caused all enemies to regenerate health
- Fixed projectiles sometimes being blocked in Echo of a World.
- Fixed a chest in Fallen Tower being inaccessible.
- Fixed a tree being placed inside of a rock in Forest Trail.
- Fixed a room in the Majelkan Catacombs being difficult to enter.
- Improved pathing at the exit to the Oracles Abode.
- Fixed an area in the Temple of Eterra blocking projectiles.
- Fixed crates spawning on top of the player after exiting the Welryn Catacombs.
- Fixed an area near the entrance to Welryn Catacombs blocking projectiles.
- Fixed Yulias Refuge being called Yulias Haven on its loading screen.
Patch Preview: Beta 0.7.4
Content Patch 0.7.4 focuses on the savagery of the Ancient Era. Dragons, dinosaurs, and... er... plants (they're carnivorous!) roam the world of Eterra. To help you survive this perilous time, the patch also brings powerful new skills, trees, and improvements for mastery classes. We aim to release Patch 0.7.4 during mid-November.
Mastery System Overhaul Rather than being an event contained entirely within the user interface, mastery classes are now chosen during a quest available at the End of Time. Mastery classes now immediately grant an exclusive skill and powerful passive bonuses when chosen. Two examples of these passive bonuses include;
Items
As with most updates, Patch 0.7.4 includes optimisations to improve performance. Shader improvements have resulted in an average increase of 5 - 10 FPS in most areas. This change was observed across minimum, average, and maximum framerates, on a system running Windows 10 with a Ryzen 5 1600, an 8GB RX 480, and 16 GB of RAM. We have rewritten the backend for our graphics pipeline. While primarily done to resolve bugs, we anticipate this resulting in improved framerates in some situations.
We're holding back the implementation of Minion Stances to a later patch as we would not have sufficient time to adequately QA it in time for the release of Patch 0.7.4. We are rewriting the code related to item storage, and in a future patch we will be adding search bars to stash tabs. This rewrite will also resolve several item-related bugs. We are preparing to update our game engine. This will take a significant amount of time to QA, however it will bring improvements of its own while also facilitating us making additional optimisations ourselves. We won't be releasing a demo until after this update, as subsequently updating the demo would otherwise require an excessive amount of work.
[ 2019-11-06 23:14:50 CET ] [ Original post ]
Overview
Content Patch 0.7.4 focuses on the savagery of the Ancient Era. Dragons, dinosaurs, and... er... plants (they're carnivorous!) roam the world of Eterra. To help you survive this perilous time, the patch also brings powerful new skills, trees, and improvements for mastery classes. We aim to release Patch 0.7.4 during mid-November.
Highlights
Mastery System Overhaul Rather than being an event contained entirely within the user interface, mastery classes are now chosen during a quest available at the End of Time. Mastery classes now immediately grant an exclusive skill and powerful passive bonuses when chosen. Two examples of these passive bonuses include;
- Druid: When leaving a transformed state you gain 70% damage reduction for 2 seconds.
- Void Knight: Your Melee Attacks and Void Spells have a 10% chance to be repeated by an echo 0.5 seconds later (does not affect movement abilities).
- The Spellblade skill Static and its specialisation tree are making their debut in Patch 0.7.4.
- The Sorcerer's Disintegrate and its tree are being added.
- The Primalist is getting Maelstrom and a stormy tree to go with it.
- The Beastmaster is acquiring Summon Raptor and a specialization tree for it.
- Enchant Weapon
- Judgement
- Manifest Armor
- Archyrean
- Chyrean
- Magma Gorn
- Oasiain Gorn
- Primeval Dragon (unique)
- Orchirian the Rampant (unique)
- Hulking Overgrowth
- Skittering Undergrowth
- Vinewalker
- Idol of Loathing (unique)
- Lost Eye
- Void Shifter
- Voidfire Growth
Items
- Two unique items are being added; one helm, and one one-handed axe.
- Potions are being buffed and their affixes are being reworked.
- Well be posting details of these changes before Patch 0.7.4 is released.
Optimisation
As with most updates, Patch 0.7.4 includes optimisations to improve performance. Shader improvements have resulted in an average increase of 5 - 10 FPS in most areas. This change was observed across minimum, average, and maximum framerates, on a system running Windows 10 with a Ryzen 5 1600, an 8GB RX 480, and 16 GB of RAM. We have rewritten the backend for our graphics pipeline. While primarily done to resolve bugs, we anticipate this resulting in improved framerates in some situations.
- We are aware that there is a bug affecting Vertical Sync, and this has not yet been addressed. The issue is on our radar and will be corrected in a future update.
- Avalanche
- Entangling Roots
- Meteor
- Ring of Shields
- Sacrifice
After This Patch
We're holding back the implementation of Minion Stances to a later patch as we would not have sufficient time to adequately QA it in time for the release of Patch 0.7.4. We are rewriting the code related to item storage, and in a future patch we will be adding search bars to stash tabs. This rewrite will also resolve several item-related bugs. We are preparing to update our game engine. This will take a significant amount of time to QA, however it will bring improvements of its own while also facilitating us making additional optimisations ourselves. We won't be releasing a demo until after this update, as subsequently updating the demo would otherwise require an excessive amount of work.
Beta 0.7.3c Release and Patch Notes
[ 2019-10-08 15:30:09 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
- Root nodes for skills now use the same tooltip as the skill itself by default.
- Changed Focus Energy Infusion node
- Previous: for 5 seconds after you finish channelling gain 1% movement speed per 10 mana gained. Could allocate up to 5 points, but the node was bugged so that additional points had no effect.
- New: When you finish channelling gain, haste for 1 second per 20 mana gained (up to 10 seconds). Can only allocated 1 point (additional points in the node will be respecced for free).
- Skeleton Archers
- Changed the base cooldown of fire arrow to 6 seconds.
- Arrows are created significantly earlier in the fire animation to look more natural and help the Archers hit moving targets.
- Arrows are now created at the bow rather than at the centre of the Archer.
Passives
- There is now an explanation popup for whenever a passive node is not allowed to be respeced.
Items
- Adjusted the rarity of Increased Cold and Increased Lightning Damage affixes to be in line with Increased Fire Damage affixes on all item types. Previously Increased Cold Damage was rarer on wands, and Increased Lightning Damage was more common on swords.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a forge location not working in Forlorn Streets.
- Fixed a bug where you could sometimes respec passive nodes that you shouldn't be able to due to incomplete requirement checking.
- Fixed inconsistencies in how ward retention was worded. It is now always +% ward retention rather than increased ward retention.
- Fixed several cases in which ward retention was actually increasing your added ward retention, rather than granting added ward retention.
- Fixed a bug where enemies or minions with no targets in range could select an ability that was on cooldown. If they themselves were a valid target for this ability this could result in them not moving. One manifestation of this bug was Skeleton Warriors with Bone Armour being reluctant to move.
- Fixed a bug where Aura of Decays Decripify node did not convert poisons applied to you to armour shred.
- Fixed a bug where Aura of Decays Plague Bearers node had no effect.
- Fixed a bug where taking both Black Holes Binary Star and Stability nodes would cause the skill to stop working.
- Fixed a display error with Harvests Blood Sculptor node.
- Fixed Reaper Forms Herald of Rot also poisoning the player.
- Fixed a bug where Summon Skeletons Necrotic Conviction was only affecting Skeleton Rogues.
- Fixed a bug where Summon Skeletons Multishot node increased the cooldown of Fire Arrow by 4 seconds per point, rather than 1 second per point.
- Fixed the version number on the login screen not matching the version number in the top left of the screen.
Beta 0.7.3b Release and Patch Notes
[ 2019-10-05 16:19:32 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
- Added a Transform tag to all transform skills.
- Black Hole
- Cooldown reduced to 16 seconds (from 20 seconds).
- Damage increased by 17%.
- All types of Bone Golem now have 60% more melee damage, but 36% less melee attack speed than the regular Bone Golem had in 0.7.3.
- Forge Strike
- Strength now increases all Forge Strike damage, not just physical damage.
- Attunement now increases damage similarly to Strength, rather than adding flat physical damage.
- Attunement now also increases the damage of Forged Weapons.
- Your weapons attack rate now applies to Forged Weapons.
- Forged Weapons expire after 10 seconds by default rather than having decaying health.
- Forged Weapons now gain 15 health per character level.
- Forged Weapons now draw slightly less aggro.
- Forged Weapons now use Forge Strikes icon and a new model.
- Added the Minion tag to Forge Strike.
- Manifest Armour
- Stats granted by your body armour, helmet, gloves and boots now also apply to your Manifest Armour.
- Slightly increased base movement speed.
- Reaper Form
The aim of these changes is to address the fact that many nodes only benefit Reap.
- Added a new node that grants a chance to mark enemies for death on hit while in Reaper form (with the chance doubled for Reap).
- Added a new node that grants a chance to cast blood tether on attackers when hit.
- Added a new node that makes the amour bonus from Soul Shroud also apply to Poison and Necrotic Protection. (this replaces the node that granted increased armour and protections if you had killed an enemy with Reap recently).
- Dark Harvest makes Reap kill enemies below 6% of their maximum health per point (up from 5%).
- Deaths Door now also grants 25% increased damage while at low health in Reaper Form and can have 4 points allocated (up from 3).
- Deathtouch Scythe now grants +2 necrotic damage with spells and attacks while in Reaper Form, doubled for Reap (from +5 necrotic damage with Reap), and can now have 4 points allocated (up from 3).
- Harbinger of Blood now also grants 10% increased health leech while in Reaper Form.
- Herald of Rot now also grants 10% poison chance per point while in Reaper Form and can have 5 points allocated (up from 3).
- Ravenous Doom now grants 5 health gained on kill while in Reaper Form, doubled for Reap (from 10 health gained on kill with Reap).
- Stable Disturbance now also grants 10% increased damage over time while in Reaper Form.
- Sweeping Scythes makes Reap move you 15% further per point (up from 10%), but can only have 2 points allocated (down from 3).
- Venomous Coating now also grants 10% poison duration while in Reaper Form.
- Adjusted node connections.
- Players with Reaper Form specialized will receive a free respec.
- Sacrifices Altar of Flames now gives Sacrifice the Fire tag.
- Shatter Strike
- Winter's Boon can now have only one point allocated (down from 3), but increases the threshold by 25% per unique ability used (up from 5% per point).
- Whiteout now also reduces attack speed by 10%
- Obliteration increases the threshold by 50% per point (up from 40%).
- Adjusted connections.
- Players with Shatter Strike specialized will receive a free respec.
- Sigils of Hope
- Amended the description to clarify that it only affects you and not allies (it will affect allies in future).
- Changed the description to clarify the effects of the buff.
- Now increases health regen by 20% per Sigil (up from 10%).
- Static Orb
- Increased damage of the orb itself by 50%.
- Halved the added damage effectiveness of the orb to keep its damage stats in line with other skills.
- Explosion damage increased by 67%.
- Increased Storm Totem damage by 43%.
- Changed Summon Skeletons Impatience node
- Can now have 4 points allocated (up from 3).
- Now also increases Bone Armour duration by 1 second per point.
- Now grants 30% cooldown recovery speed per point (down from 35%).
- Increased Thorn Totem damage by 25%.
- Vale Spirits
- Can no longer take damage (previously they couldn't be hit, but could take damage over time).
- Now deal physical damage instead of lightning damage.
- Adjusted spell hit vfx and sound to feel more fitting.
- Adjusted their spell's base damage and added damage scaling so that their ratio is more similar to other skills.
- Reduced base damage by 18%.
- Increased added damage scaling by 50%.
- Warpaths mana drain per second is now on its main tooltip, rather than alt. Warpath has an initial mana cost of 10, then costs 20 per second.
Passives
- The Necromancers Effigies node no longer gives you a chance to sacrifice your minions and heal to full instead of taking lethal damage. It now gives you a chance when you take a hit on low life to consume one of your minions, stealing its current health for yourself.
Items
- Added a new unique body armour, Valeroot.
- Added a new unique 1h axe, Tempest Maw.
- Added Forest Garb, a new body armour base type that grants armour and healing effectiveness.
- Added Bladed Mace, a new 1h mace bace type that grants increased physical damage.
- Added Raider Axe, a new 1h axe base type that grants added crit chance.
- Adjusted defensive affix rarity
- Elemental, Poison and Necrotic Protection suffixes are more common and start spawning slightly earlier.
- Suffixes that give you a chance to retaliate with an ailment when hit are less common.
- The added potion health prefix is rarer.
- The increased health regen on potion use prefix is rarer and starts spawning later.
Enemies
- Rare Fallen Osprix now deal 13% less damage with their fire aura.
- Increased Zerricks health by 20% in Titans Canyon.
- Added a new entrance animation for Zerrick.
- Voice lines for Harton and Zerrick are no longer played in a random order.
UI
- Buff and Debuff icons no longer show the seconds remaining as a number in the center of the icon. This will return as an option later.
- Hardcore and Solo Challenge are now always available when creating a new character
- Masochist is still only selectable if you have completed the campaign at least once.
Performance
- Improved the performance of Lightning Nova.
- Improved the performance of abilities that attach to targets.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed various bugs with the search bar for passives and specialization trees.
- Fixed a bug with passive respecs where the system only checked for if you had enough points to reach the next row of passives, rather than checking that you could reach the next highest node you invested in.
- Fixed a bug where Hollow Finger wasnt dropping.
- Fixed added and increased sources of the same stat in a single tree overriding each other (ex. Holy Auras Redemption grants added health regen and Vital Boon grants increased health regen).
- Fixed a bug where entities would sometimes stop moving towards a target and attack while just out of range.
- Fixed a bug where Pyre Golems, Blood Golems, and Spectral Golems were attacking 20% more slowly than regular Bone Golems.
- Fixed Hungering Souls tree not working.
- Fixed Ring of Shields Enduring Defense node lengthening the duration of Ring of Shields incorrectly.
- Fixed Shatter Stikes Whiteout saying that it increased mana cost by 50% per point when it actually increased it by 75% per point.
- Summon Skeleton Bone Armour
- Fixed a bug where instead of reducing damage taken, Bone Armour would increase damage taken by a larger amount each time the Skeletons cast it.
- Fixed a bug where Bone Armour's base cooldown was 0.9 seconds instead of 10 seconds
- Fixed a bug where Skeletons would not cast Bone Armour on allies even if you had the correct node.
- Fixed Skeleton Rogues having a higher aggro range than intended.
- Fixed Summon Spriggans nodes not applying stat buffs.
- Fixed allocating a point into Summon Spriggan not resummoning your Spriggan.
- Fixed Death Knights not having minion healthbars.
- Fixed Pyre Golems fire visual being below the ground.
- Fixed an object blocking the camera in The Immortal Summit.
- Fixed a pillar blocking the camera in Barren Aqueduct.
- Fixed a navigation issue in the Oracles Abode
- Fixed a navigation issue in the Upper District.
- Fixed the character sheet tooltip for intelligence showing that it gave 5% ward retention if you hovered over the number.
- Fixed a few bugs with minion ability tags for Summon Skeleton and Summon Skeleton Mage.
- Fixed the mana globe appearing empty and the health globe overflowing on some Linux systems.
- Fixed the option to disable the health bar directly above the player not working until you exited to character select.
Beta 0.7.3 Release and Patch Notes
[ 2019-09-28 14:12:32 CET ] [ Original post ]
Respec Systems
- You can now remove individual points from a skills specialization tree.
- Each point removed decreases the skills level by 1. You level up the skill as normal to regain the points removed.
- You cannot remove a point that would invalidate other nodes you have taken in the tree. If you want to remove a point that other nodes depend on, you need to remove the dependants first.
- The Despecialization process has not changed for switching which skills you are investing points into.
- Reworked the system for passive respecs
- You can now respec any passive point, if the following requirements are met:
- You must meet the requirements for all nodes you have after the respec occurs (e.g. if you have points in a node that requires level 15 in a mastery then you must maintain at least 15 points allocated to nodes with a lower requirement in the same tree).
- If you have unlocked the mastery classes then you must maintain at least 20 points in the base class when respeccing.
- The gold cost for respecing a passive point from a node now depends on the number of points you have invested in the node, the level requirement of the node, and whether the node is in a mastery class.
- Gold cost no longer increases based on how many points you have refunded previously.
- Respecs must still be performed at a Chronomancer.
- It is now possible for us to grant free respecs when a skill specialization tree or set of passives is changed in an update. This will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
- Characters brought forward from previous updates will have the correct number of passive and skill points, but they will be unallocated.
Buffs and Debuffs
- Buffs and debuffs on your character now appear as icons right above the action bar.
- Each effect has a border to indicate its duration, in addition to a number counter.
- Buffs have circular icons with a green border.
- Debuffs have hexagonal icons with a red border.
- Effects with multiple stacks will have the number displayed at the bottom right of their icon.
- Mousing over an icon will display a tooltip with the name and details of the effect.
- Not all effects currently appear, but the most common ones do. We will be adding support for more.
Campaign
- Implemented the sixth chapter of story content, including new zones, monsters and quests.
- Revamped the boss fights with Admiral Harton and Spymaster Zerrick, including new models, animations, skills, sounds and voice acting.
- Moved the encounter with Spymaster Zerrick to Titans Canyon and adjusted the zones layout.
- Reworked Majelka into two separate zones.
- Remodeled the Oracles Abode.
- Adjusted the enemy types present in Majelka and Titans Canyon.
- Added a new side quest to the Majasan Desert.
- Added the Wraith Caller to the Wraith Dunes. This is an imperial construct that can be destroyed to stop the wraiths from spawning.
- Updated chain models in zones close to the Temple of Eterra.
- Sheltered Wood is now accessed from Council Chambers after you reach the Lower District.
Social
- Added the Social panel, opened with H. (S, O, C, I, A, L and F were taken)
- You can now send whisper messages to other players with a variety of commands, followed by a space and their username. (/tell, /msg, /w, @, /dm, /message)
- Usernames with spaces have been converted to use underscores so message commands work correctly.
- You can now add other users as friends. One user sends the other a request, and if the request is accepted, the two become friends.
- You can now set a status, which will be visible to people looking at their friends lists.
- You can now block other users, preventing you from seeing their messages.
- Improved the visibility of chat text.
- Increased the character limit of chat messages to 220 (from 140).
- You are now required login to the game using your email, which avoids what you use to login (previously username) being very public. You can choose to hide what you enter into the email field (like the password field does by default).
Skills
- Summon Skeleton is now two skills: Summon Skeleton and Summon Skeleton Mage.
- Added a skill tree for Forge Strike.
- Added a skill tree for Frenzy Totem.
- Added a skill tree for Ring of Shields.
- Added a skill tree for Soul Feast.
- Added a skill tree for Spriggan Form.
- Added a skill tree for Summon Scorpion.
- Added a new skill tree for Summon Skeleton.
- Added a skill tree for Summon Skeleton Mage.
- Added a skill tree for Tempest Strike.
- Changed Companion Activatable Abilities.
- Each one is now an instant cast skill.
- Wolf - Howl
- Now grants 50% increased damage (up from 10%).
- Now also grants frenzy (20% increased attack and cast speed).
- Increased area of effect by 96%.
- Lasts 3 seconds (down from 6).
- Mana cost is now 40 (up from 18).
- Cooldown is now 10 seconds (up from 4).
- Can no longer stack.
- Bear - Bear Roar
- Now taunts enemies instead of fearing them.
- Now heals the Bear for 50 health for each enemy taunted.
- Increased area of effect by 125%.
- Mana cost is now 40 (up from 18).
- Cooldown is now 12 seconds (up from 6).
- Sabertooth - Flurry Swipe
- Increased base damage by 400%.
- Increased area of effect by 125%.
- Now has 50% reduced added damage scaling.
- Mana cost is now 36 (up from 18).
- Cooldown is now 10 seconds (up from 6).
- Scorpion - Venom Nova
- Now also releases a spiral of poisoning projectiles.
- Poison from Poison Nova has 100% increased effect (up from 25%).
- Mana cost is now 45 (up from 18).
- Cooldown is now 10 seconds (up from 6).
- Spriggan - Rejuvenating Wind
- Now restores 150 health (up from 90).
- Now also restores 15 mana.
- Mana cost is now 36 (up from 18).
- Cooldown is now 12 seconds (up from 6).
- Aura of Decay now reduces poison damage taken by 45% while active (down from 50%).
- Bone Golem
- Now has a 15% chance to retaliate with Bone Nova when hit (previously they retaliated after taking damage equal to 12.5% of their maximum health).
- The Bone Hail node now gives +5% chance to retaliate per point (from 5% reduced health threshold for retaliation), but can only have 5 points allocated (down from 8).
- The Flight of the Femurs node no longer increases the health threshold for retaliation, but now increases the projectile speed by only 25% (from 50%).
- Added a new node, "Betrayal", which triples the chance for Bone Nova retaliation when a Bone Golem is hit by its summoner or one of their allies.
- Changed Eterra's Blessing mana cost to 32 (from 40).
- Stats from your equipped shield now apply to the shields summoned by Ring of Shields.
- Shield Rushs movement speed now scales with increased movement speed.
- Spriggans now gain 4% increased healing effectiveness per point of attunement.
- Tempest Strike
- Northern Wind now has a chance to freeze.
- Adjusted the base damage of spells so that their damage is higher and more similar to each other (with cold being lower to compensate for it having a larger AoE and a chance to freeze).
- Adjusted skill description.
- Increased the radius of Werebear Forms Roar by 50%.
- Clarified the tooltips of many augment tree nodes that add attribute scaling.
Passives
- Acolyte
- Added a node which grants your minions increased armour and protections per character level.
- Unnatural Preservation now grants 8 necrotic and poison protection (up from 7), but can only have 4 points allocated (down from 5).
- Beastmaster
- Healing Bond now also increases companion revive range by 10% per point.
- The Chase now also increases companion revive speed by 6% per point.
- Partner now also increases companion revive speed by 10% per point.
- The Mages Elemental Cunning now also grants 5% increased elemental damage.
- Necromancer
- Added a new node that increases your maximum number of Skeletons by one.
- Added a new node that increases your maximum number of Skeletons by one per point, but reduces their health..
- Added a new node that increases your maximum number of Skeleton Mages by one.
- Added a new node that grants ward on minion death and ward retention.
- Added a new node that increases your minions health and armour and makes them reflect a flat amount of damage to attackers.
- Added a new node that grants you intelligence and grants your minions increased critical strike chance.
- Added a new node that grants your minions critical strike multiplier and chill chance.
- Added a new node that gives a chance per point for minions to die instead of you if you take lethal damage, which also increases your minions' fire damage and bow damage.
- Added a new node that gives you and your minions a buff on potion use, which grants health gained on hit and increases attack and cast speed. Also grants flat health.
- Removed Bone Brewer (flat health, gain armour on potion use).
- Removed Grave fragments (increased minion health, armour, and physical damage).
- Removed Reconstruction (increased health regen on potion use).
- Removed Sharpened Bones (minions have increased crit chance, but take increased physical damage).
- Removed Sharpened Souls (minions have additional crit multi, but take increased necrotic damage).
- Removed Taste of Death (physical and necrotic penetration).
- Removed Undead Intellect (intelligence and chance to take less damage on minion skill use).
- Removed Undead Devotion (chance for minions to die instead of you).
- Removed Ward Vortex (increased ward retention and increased ward gained from Wisp Weaver).
- Blood Armour can now have 8 points allocated (down from 10)
- Empty The Graves no longer requires you to have used a minion skill recently, but grants 4 armour per point (down from 5), and can only have 4 points allocated (down from 5)
- River of Bones now also increases your minions freeze chance.
- Wisp Weaver now grants a 13% chance per point to gain ward (up from 7%) and can have 8 points allocated (up from 5).
- Rearranged a lot of nodes and connections.
- As an experiment this tree has many more connections than other mastery trees.
- The Sentinels Retribution counterattack now has a 0.2 second cooldown.
- Sorcerer
- Added a new node that grants chill chance and a chance to chill attackers when hit (the chance to chill is doubled for cold skills).
- Added a new node that grants increased spell damage (doubled if you have used a high cost skill recently).
- Added a new node that grants a chance to cast spark nova on distant enemies that you crit.
- Added a new node that grants increased elemental damage, elemental protection, and stun chance with elemental spells.
- Added a new node that grants ward equal to your intelligence when you use a potion.
- Removed the Brilliance nodes.
- Removed Serum Visions (increased ailment duration).
- Removed Reaction Point (mana cost reduction on lightning crit).
- The nodes that grant penetration for a single element (e.g. fire penetration) now give 40 penetration (up from 30) and also grant health leech for damage of that type.
- Arcane Avalanche no longer increases stun chance, but now freezes nearby enemies when a hit leaves you below half health. It also now grants 25% increased freeze chance per point (up from 15%).
- Arcane Current now grants 50% increased shock effect per point (from 30%), but can only have 8 points allocated (from 10).
- Arcane Insight's buff now grants 15% increased spell damage and ward retention (from 15% increased elemental damage).
- Crackling Precision now grants 10% increased crit chance, doubled for lightning skills (from 12% increased crit chance for lightning skills).
- Cryomancer now gives 15% increased freeze chance per point instead of 2% chill chance per point.
- Dragon Breath now goes in the opposite direction by default and the direction can be reversed by Mirror Breath (just like Dragon Mage).
- Inferno now gives 8% increased elemental damage over time and 2% increased ignite duration (from 12% increased fire damage over time).
- Mana Shell now gives 4 mana per point (up from 3).
- Warder now grants 10 ward per point when you hit an enemy with a fire, cold, or lightning spell (with a separate 10 second cooldown for each element), but no longer grants health or ward retention.
- The vitality node now also grants 4% increased chill, shock, and ignite duration per point (from 3 armour per point).
- Many node positions have changed, especially in the top half of the tree.
- The Shamans Heorot's Path node now gives 30% increased freeze chance per point (up from 25%) and can have 10 points allocated (up from 8).
- The Spellblades Shiver Armour node now also grants 20% chance to chill attackers when hit per point.
Mechanics
- Base mana is now 50 at level 1 (down from 100), but characters now gain 0.5 mana per level (scaling to 100 at level 100).
- Hardcore characters are now converted to softcore on death.
- They lose the hardcore tag when they die.
- Their progress no longer affects the hardcore ladder after they die.
- They have access to the softcore stash instead of the hardcore stash after they die.
- Adjusted the bonuses that magic rarity enemies get.
- Now: 80% more health, 35% more damage, 20% more item drops.
- Previously: 120% more health, 40% more damage, 25% more item drops.
- Protections on enemies now scale to maintain the same mitigation percentage when their health is scaled from rarity or area level. Most enemies dont have protections.
- Masochist and Solo Challenge can now be disabled for a character in the settings window. They cannot be re-enabled once turned off.
- AI range calculations now take the size of their targets into account. This should prevent minions running into large enemies rather than attacking them, and similar issues.
Items
- Added 4 new uniques.
- Cinder Song, a wand.
- Hollow Finger, a ring.
- Morditas Reach, a polearm.
- Orians Eye, an amulet.
- Bone Harvester now also grants 9 Intelligence.
- Added a new suffix for 2h weapons that adds to all your attributes (strength, dexterity, intelligence, attunement, and vitality).
- Added a Chance to Shock Attackers suffix that appears on Shields and Relics.
- Added a Flat Damage Reflected to Attackers prefix that appears on Body Armour and Shields.
- Added a Percent Damage Reflected prefix that appears on Body Armour and Shields.
- The amount of damage reflected is calculated after your damage mitigations are applied. The damage reflected cannot be mitigated by enemies.
- Added a Critical Strike Avoidance suffix for gloves, helmets, boots, rings, and belts.
- If you have 20% Critical Strike Avoidance means crits against you have a 20% chance to be downgraded to regular hits.
- You can get 100% crit avoidance from 3 well rolled T5 crit avoidance suffixes.
- Added Mana suffix
- Increased the values at higher tiers.
- Can now roll on gloves and helmets.
- Increased drop rate due to the changes to the mana system.
- Buffed freeze chance affixes
- Increased the values of the Increased Freeze Chance affix. Values are about 60% higher at tier 5.
- Increased the values of the Freeze Chance and Cold Protection affix. Values are 100% higher at tier 5. Cold protection values were not changed.
- The Freeze Chance and Cold Protection affix can now also roll on gloves.
- The "Increased Health" and "Increased Armour and Protections" suffixes can no longer roll on gloves.
- Reduced the gold dropped by each stack of gold by about 30%.
- Adjusted item cost formula. The new formula takes affix tiers and base type level requirement into account so late game items will cost more gold. Different item types also cost different amounts of gold. For example, rings and amulets are more expensive than other items.
UI
- Updated the login screen with a new background, new information and the ability to change settings.
- Added new portraits to many NPC conversations.
- Updated the text for enemy names and modifiers.
- Made it much easier to read, as was done with other text in 0.7.2.
- Normal enemies have white names, while Magic enemies have blue names, Rare enemies have gold names, and Unique enemies (i.e. bosses) have pale gold names.
- Item comparison tooltips now show the change in attack rate (for weapons) alongside the other stat changes.
- Added new icons for Skeletons and Skeleton Mages.
- Improved minimap icons for minions.
- Portals now appear on the minimap.
- Added on hover glows to dialog options.
- Updated the UI for loading screens.
- Added a Defense Stats tab to the character sheet.
- More stats are now shown in the character sheet
- Critical Strike Avoidance
- Health Gained on Hit
- Health Gained on Melee Hit
- Health Gained on Kill
- Health Gained on Block
- Damage Leeched as Health
- Melee Damage Leeched as Health
- Spell Damage Leeched as Health
- Damage Dealt to Attackers
- Percent Damage Reflected
- Maximum Companions
- Increased Companion Revive Speed
- Increased Companion Revive Range
- Chance to Shock Attackers
- Increased Healing Effectiveness
- Increased Cooldown Recovery Speed
- Improved the appearance of the FPS display.
- The color of the FPS display is now changed by pressing shift + f11.
Sound
- Added a new music track to the title screen.
- Added a new music track for sidezones in Chapter 2.
- Every category of item (i.e. bladed weapon, blunt weapon, armour, jewellry, crafting material) now has its own set of sounds for being dropped by enemies.
- Added more sounds for melee weapons.
- Added a new sound for allocating passive and skill points.
- Added a new sound for using a potion.
- Added new crafting sound effects.
- Added a new Primalist Swipe sound.
- Replaced old hit sound effects for Acolyte minions.
- Added a new sound for summoning wraiths.
- Added new sounds for entering and exiting Reaper Form.
- Added a sound effect to the sliding door in The Oracles Abode.
- Removed sound effects for consuming corpses with Exhume. (Exhume still has a sound effect).
- Balanced sounds for Primalist and Acolyte abilities.
- Turned down combat dialogue lines slightly.
- Turned down void enemy death sound effects.
- Fixed Wandering Spirits rapidly repeating its sound.
- Fixed some dialogue not being affected by the Voice Acting sound slider.
Performance
- Implemented better compression and storage techniques for most textures and UI pieces. This results in less disk space being used, and less memory usage.
- Improved the performance of overlooks in zones (especially in the Imperial Era Ulatri Cliffs).
- Improved the performance of many particle effects by removing unneeded elements.
- Improved load times of many zones by simplifying colliders where possible.
- Rewrote the system for detecting what targets each ability hits. This should improve the performance of most abilities, player or enemy.
- Improved the performance of fading objects that block the camera.
- Improved the performance of skills that cast multiple smaller parts (ex. Charged Ground, Meteor Shower, Flamethrower).
- Improved the performance of move-to-attack abilities.
- Improved the performance of levelling up (less delay).
- Improved the performance of breakable objects.
- Significantly reduced the poly count of spider enemies.
- Reduced the poly count of many tiles in levels.
- Reduced extraneous log file entries.
Visuals
- Tweaked town portal visuals.
- Alric now has his own portal effect.
- Upgraded Tempest Strikes visuals.
- Updated Manifest Weapons visuals.
- Added new visuals for Ice Thorns when converted to physical.
- Added a new visual for the end of Rebuke.
- Replaced the Acolyte's wraiths with a new model.
- Added ragdolling to several types of enemies and adjusted it for enemies who already had ragdolling.
- Shield Throw, Hammer Throw, Axe Thrower, Dark Blade, and Voidfused enemies now use updated weapon models.
- The player light can no longer cast shadows.
- Hit flash intensity for larger enemies is now reduced linearly with radius, rather than quadratically (i.e. hit flash intensity reduces much less drastically as enemy size increases).
- Fixed some issues with the hit flash system that prevented it from looking as intended.
- Improved visibility of zone transition labels.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where Bone Golems Flight of the Femurs node did not cause bone nova to pierce.
- Fixed a bug with Elemental Nova where taking certain nodes in addition to the Luminaire node would cause the skill to stop dealing damage.
- Fixed Manifest Armour not taking half damage from all sources, like other minions.
- Fixed Mark For Deaths Bone Prison node adding a cooldown of 31 seconds instead of 20.
- Fixed Mark For Deaths Bone Prison being labelled Frenzy Totem on mouseover.
- Fixed the maximum for Reapers Mark scaling incorrectly, resulting in a much higher cap than intended.
- Fixed a bug where enemies hit by one of Tempest Strikes effects could not be hit by any of the other effects triggered by that Tempest Strike.
- Fixed Tempest Strikes physical spell counting as a melee attack instead of a spell.
- Fixed Tempest Strikes cold spell dealing partially physical damage.
- Fixed Tempest Strikes effects playing incorrect sound effects.
- Fixed a bug where Sabertooths Camouflage node did not cause the Sabertooth's dodge rating to scale with your dexterity.
- Fixed Sabertooths Flurry Swipe only being able to hit a single enemy 2 times, instead of 3.
- Fixed ground effects projecting onto the Sabertooth.
- Fixed the Scorpion playing Wolf sounds when using abilities.
- Fixed a bug where companions other than wolves would not retain names after zone transitions.
- Fix a bug where move-to-attack commands could sometimes cause the player to move slowly or awkwardly when close to the target.
- Fixed a bug where using a skill with multiple projectiles on an enemy at very close range could destroy all the projectiles even though only one hit.
- Fixed a bug where skills that cast multiple parts could cast more slowly than intended at low framerates (especially if they were supposed to cast particularly quickly).
- Fixed the Lichs Survival of the Cruel node granting too much leech.
- Fixed the Spellblade's Shiver Armour not proccing as it should.
- Fixed a bug where ward did not have any effect on stun chance when you had negative stun avoidance.
- Fixed the health and mana numbers at the bottom of the screen and in the character sheet not matching due to different rounding.
- Fixed a bug where scaling decimal values in tooltips were displayed incorrectly for some people depending on system locale.
- Fixed the affix range display on item tooltips being incorrect for some hybrid affixes when the item had an affix effect modifier (for example, rings have no affix effect modifier but affix values on one-handed weapons are 50% higher).
- Fixed a bug where the item comparison tooltip did not show the attack rate of the equipped item.
- Fixed affix shards being displayed incorrectly while being hovered over.
- Fixed Nodachi being rotated incorrectly.
- Fixed Blood Scorpions creating blood particles after death.
- Fixed Phrax enemies not outlining correctly.
- Fixed a rock blocking the camera in Broken Hills.
- Fixed a wall blocking the camera in the Temple of Eterra.
- Fixed some crates being inside a rock in the Shattered Valley.
- Fixed a chest in Forlorn Streets being inaccessible.
- Fixed the player floating above the ground slightly in Ultatri Cliffs.
- Fixed the waypoint being off-center in the Temple of Eterra.
- Fixed stashes in the End of Time not having waypoint icons.
- Fixed a bug where challenge modes were enabled before you had beaten the campaign on one character.
- Fixed an issue preventing the ladder from updating.
Beta 0.7.2b Patch Notes
[ 2019-08-16 16:56:22 CET ] [ Original post ]
UI
- Overhauled the appearance of NPC dialog windows. Some additional changes are planned.
Skills
- Improved Minion Command system (A)
- If there are no enemies near the target point minions will attack the closest breakable to the target point
- If there are no enemies or breakables near the target point minions will move to the target point
- Improved the performance of giving minion commands
- Aura of Decays Aura of Terror node now grants 34% chance to fear per point (up from 11%).
- Ice Thorns
- Reduced damage and freeze chance by 10%.
- The Farwood Heart node now gives 25% increased cold damage and freeze chance per stack (from 20% increased damage and freeze chance per stack).
- Reaper Form
- Removed the node that causes you to cull enemies with any skill while in Reaper Form.
- Added a new node that increases the health that Reap restores on hit and increases your healing effectiveness while in Reaper Form.
- Replaced the node that gave you poison chance while in Reaper Form with a node that poisons all nearby enemies when you enter Reaper Form
- Dark Harvest causes Reap to instantly kill enemies below 5% health per point (down from 10%).
- Death Comes Quickly now gives 25% chance per point to gain swiftness (up from 20%), and can have 4 points allocated (up from 3).
- Haunting now gives 20% increased area of effect per point (up from 7%), but can only have 2 points allocated (down from 3).
- Stable Disturbance causes your health to decay 10% slower per point (down from 20%), but can have 4 points allocated (up from 3).
- Reaper's Curse now gives 25% increased damage and crit chance (from 20% increased crit chance and no increased damage).
- Death's Door gives 1% more damage for each 1% missing health (from 10% increased damage).
- Cursed with Knowledge now gives 1 armour per point per intelligence (from 1 health per point per intelligence).
- Phantom Restoration now grants flat ward on hit with reap, and ward retention while in Reaper Form (from giving you ward equal to a percentage of the base amount you heal when you hit an enemy with reap).
- Sharpened Scythes now gives +10% crit multi per point, doubled for Reap (from 10% increased crit multi).
- From the Grave now resummons up to 1 Skeleton per point (used to give ward retention).
- Infected Steel now gives Reap +100% poison chance, but stops it critting. It now also changes Reaps visual to be poison themed.
- Grave Chill now converts poison chance from the tree to chill chance and gives reap a freeze rate based on your intelligence. It now also changes Reaps visual to be cold themed.
- Reaper's Mark can now stack up to 25 times (up from 20).
- Sweeping Scythes makes Reap move you 10% further per point (up from 5%), but can only have 3 points allocated (down from 5).
- Changed several node names and descriptions.
- Rearranged some nodes.
- Adjusted the area of effect for Rebuke to better match its visuals.
- Shatter Strike
- Icy Flow now grants 20% mana efficiency per point (from 25% per point).
- Razor Ice now increases frostbite effect by 30% per point (from 5% for each point of intelligence).
- Chillflame now requires 4 points in Razor Ice.
- Adjusted node descriptions.
- Transplant
- Adjusted Bone Armor to be [4%] less damage taken and [100] armor per point instead of [10%] less damage taken per point.
- Plated Bone now multiplies Bone Armors effect by 10% per point rather than adding another 10% less damage taken modifier per point.
- Werebear Forms Overwhelm node now causes enemies to be stunned for 1 second rather than the default 0.4 seconds.
Voice Acting
- Disabled out of mana line
- Reduced the chance for being-hit and on-kill voice lines to play.
Visuals
- Improved the visuals for Shield Rush.
- Updated the visuals for Volcanic Orb.
- Updated the visuals for Void Arrow (enemy attack).
- Updated Ice Vortex visuals.
- Updated visuals for Argolos the Blessed.
- Updated Alrics portal visuals.
- Updated the fire visuals in End of Time.
- Tweaked waypoint visuals.
Animations
- Improved Primalist run animations.
- Improved the Sentinels run animation bobbing.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a rock blocking the camera in The Armoury.
- Fixed some ledges being clickable in The Armoury.
- Fixed some objects being clickable in the Desert Arena.
- Fixed the waypoint minimap icon being in the wrong position in Fallen Tower.
- Fixed a pillar blocking the camera in Flooded Cavern.
- Fixed some enemies spawning off of the walkable area in Flooded Cavern.
- Fixed pillars in The Forsaken Trail being clickable.
- Fixed a tree blocking movement in Frozen Woodland.
- Fixed a missing texture in Gladiator's Rest
- Fear not, The Imperial Dreadnaught is now The Imperial Dreadnought.
- Fixed being able to get past some railings in Imperial Thetima and Lagonian Port.
- Fixed a navigation issue in Lake Liath.
- Fixed movement issues with certain tiles in the Lotus Halls.
- Fixed the minimap for the Majelkan Catacombs having a missing segment.
- Fixed an NPC being inside a cart in The Outcast Camp.
- Fixed Ruined Shrine not having a minimap.
- Fixed a chest being unreachable in Serpentine Desert.
- Fixed an unreachable part of Shrouded Plateau being on the minimap.
- Fixed a wall blocking the camera in Titans Canyon.
- Fixed some small visual issues in the Ulatri Cliffs (Imperial).
- Fixed a bug where spires could be pushed or pulled and this could result in them ending up out of bounds.
- Fixed collision issues with some types of rocks.
- Fixed a wailing sound effect playing in places that werent intended.
- Fixed the name zones sometimes wrapping to a new line above the minimap.
- Fixed the Druids Woodlore passive granting 2 vitality to the player instead of 1.
- Fixed Aura of Decays Loathing node not working.
- Fixed Aura of Decays Poison Skin node not poisoning enemies.
- Fixed Aura of Decays Poison Skin node not increasing self-inflicted poison stacks per allocated point.
- Fixed nodes for Fireball that add additional projectiles adding twice as many as intended.
- Fixed Ice Thorns Thorn Shield node causing it to revert to Thorn Bursts behavior.
- Fixed the increased area of effect node for Rebuke not increasing the visual size of Rebuke.
- Fixed Shatter Strike having the wrong icon for its root node.
- Fixed Shield Throws Avengers Wrath node granting far too much crit multi.
- Fixed two of Teleports nodes that cast Elemental Nova not stating they do not work when Elemental Nova has a cooldown.
- Fixed Transplants Thanatophobia node stating it has an effect on departure instead of arrival.
- Fixed Transplants Bone Armor triggering without putting points into it.
- Fixed a bug where the self bleed from Transplant's Hemophilia node was applied to you once for every enemy hit, instead of just being applied once.
- Fixed Bone Minions counting towards your total amount of Skeletons, meaning they would override summoned Skeletons.
- Fixed Werebear Forms Rip and Tear node stating it procd on entering Werebear Form instead of on using Roar.
- Fixed Werebear Forms Wild Command not working.
- Fixed Werebear Forms Wizened Claws snapshotting stat increases.
- Fixed Werebear Forms Wizened Claws also increasing melee crit chance.
- Fixed Entangling Roots being oriented incorrectly when triggered by Werebear Forms Woodland Bear if you had the Overgrown Path node.
- Fixed Werebear Forms Ursine Knowledge node not returning you to human form at 30% health.
- Fixed a bug where damaging yourself or allies could proc effects like chill and retaliation.
- Fixed a bug where minions commands would occasionally target the wrong enemy.
- Fixed using an instant cast skill triggering a voice line.
- Fixed a number of bugs with the chat system.
Beta 0.7.2 Patch Notes
[ 2019-08-09 15:00:19 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
- Added an augment tree for Avalanche.
- Added an augment tree for Rive.
- Added an augment tree for Reaper Form.
- Added an augment tree for Shatter Strike.
- Added an augment tree for Shield Throw.
- Added an augment tree for Transplant.
- Added an augment tree for Werebear Form.
- Thorn Burst is now Ice Thorns
- Deals cold damage instead of physical
- Fires less projectiles, but heat seeks towards enemies
- Re-worked much of the augment tree.
- Added a new Primalist skill, Tempest Strike, which is a short range melee attack that has a 20% chance to trigger lightning bolts, northern winds, and earth spikes.
- Removed Summon Vale Spirit. It will be reworked into other skills/passives in the future.
- Adjusted minion scaling and defences
- Minions now have half as much health as before, but take half as much damage from all sources. This will make the effectiveness of healing, leech etc. on them more comparable to how effective it is for players.
- The health of Totems, Manifest Armour, Bone Golems, Scorpions, Skeletons, Spriggans, Wolves and Vine Walls were only reduced by 40% rather than 50%.
- The health of Wraiths and Revenants were reduced by 60%
- Bone Golems retaliate with Bone Nova after taking 50 damage (down from 100).
- Increased Manifest Armour's health scaling because the Sentinel has fewer sources of minion defense.
- Primal Serpents now gain health per player level, and gain added health per point of strength and dexterity, rather than gaining increased health.
- Increased Poisonous Vine damage by 11%.
- Armour Shred now reduces armour by 100 per stack (up from 40)
- Frostbite now deals 15 damage and subtracts 50 cold protection (from 10 damage and 40 cold protection).
- Black Hole
- Changed base cooldown to 20 seconds (up from 10).
- Reduced outer pull radius by 22%.
- Reduced pull strength on more distant enemies.
- We plan to re-work Black Hole in more depth later on, but for now its just too strong.
- Elemental Nova
- Added a node to the lightning nova area of the tree that makes elemental nova channelled.
- Added a node that reduces the mana drain from channelling, while also reducing area of effect.
- Added a node behind the channelled node that disabling lightning nova (allowing non-lightning nova channelled elemental nova).
- The Ascended Current node now gives 80% increased shock effect per point (up from 50%).
- Erasing Strike is now unlocked in the Void Knight tree rather than the Sentinel tree. The unlock levels of some other skills have been adjusted to accommodate this.
- Marrow Shards Shredding Bones node now has a 20% chance to shred armour per point (up from 14%), but can only have up to 5 points allocated (down from 7).
- Rip Blood
- Rip Blood can now trigger up to 2 blood splatters per cast (up from 1). This means that the Splatter and Eviscerate nodes are no longer mutually exclusive in terms of usefulness.
- Splatter now has a 20% chance to cause a blood splatter per point (up from 17%).
- Reworked Shield Throws base functionality
- Now ricochets between enemies and then returns to you.
- Ricochets to additional 2 targets after the initial target.
- Also hits enemies it passes through on the way to its targets.
- Fragments no longer shatter off on hit.
- Has a 2 second cooldown that starts when the shield returns to you.
- Reduced mana cost to 20 (from 30)
- Increased damage by 43%.
- Increased added damage scaling by 100%.
- Increased throw speed by 12%.
- Shatter Strike now creates two ellipse areas of effect which start behind you and end in front of you.
- Previously, Shatter Strike was a single sweep that traveled clockwise.
- Smite
- Fixed some bugs with Smite that made it overpowered.
- Increased base damage by 20%.
- Reduced mana cost to 3 (from 7).
Voice Acting
- Each base class now has some unique voice lines that they say when reaching certain points in the story, for a total of 35 unique lines.
- Each base class now has voice lines for taking damage, running out of mana, being unable to pick-up/equip items, and being unable to use a skill.
- Music and other sound effects will decrease in volume when story dialogue plays.
- Added voice lines for several NPCs
- Dolus
- Elder Erza
- Elder Gaspar
- Haruspex Orian
- Keeper Balthas
- Trader Corbin
Sound
- Added 6 new music tracks to the start of the game.
- Added sounds for hovering over and clicking on menu buttons.
- Added a sound for opening and closing the inventory.
- Replaced sound effects for all base Mage skills that werent changed in 0.7.1
- Elemental Nova
- Fire Shield
- Focus
- Ice Barrage
- Lightning Blast
- Mana Strike
- Static Orb
- Replaced sound effects for many Acolyte abilities
- Exhume
- Harvest
- Hungering Souls
- Mark for Death
- Marrow Shards
- Rip Blood
- Sacrifice
- Transplant
- Wandering Spirits
- Replaced sound effects for several Primalist abilities
- Fury Leap
- Ice Thorns
- Serpent Strike
- Summon Sabertooth
- Summon Wolf
- Thorn Totem
- Replaced the whoosh and impact effects made by all melee weapons.
- Replaced or improved sounds for all enemies in Chapter 3.
- Added a new skeleton death effect.
- Added multiple sounds for picking up gold.
- Adjusted the listening perspective. This means that sounds will not fade out as aggressively as the source gets further from the center of the screen.
- Adjusted the volume of many combat effects such as on-hit sounds, whooshes and void enemy attacks.
Visuals
- Overhauled the visuals for Chapter 1.
- Replaced nearly all environmental objects in the Temple of Eterra
- Overhauled the Imperial Dreadnought zones.
- Improved Post-Processing in all levels.
- Added Volumetric Lighting to the light sources and camera of most zones.
- Improved reflection for most zones and objects by making better reflection probes.
- Improved Character Selection Screen visuals.
- Implemented Contact and Soft Shadows
- Overhauled the vegetation system.
- Experimental implementation of TAA (disabled by default), which can provide a sharper image and improved appearance of the game in motion.
- Added new models for breakable objects.
- Updated the effects for items that are on the ground.
- Updated on-hit effects for most melee skills.
- Updated visuals from summoning and around totems.
- Updated Aura of Decays visuals.
- Updated Avalanches hit indicator effect.
- Avalanches impact visual now matches its area of effect better.
- Improved Elemental Novas visuals.
- Updated Entangling Roots' visual effects.
- Updated Shatter Strikes visuals.
- Spriggan Forms Vine Walls now have random size and rotation to decrease uniformity.
- Adjusted Tornados visual effects.
- Updated the lightning storm effect, which is used on skills like Storm Totem and Tornado.
- Giant Scorpions now play a fiery vfx on their tails during the anticipation of tail attacks.
- Tweaked Haruspex Orians textures.
- Updated the beam effect for the Oculus Mortis enemy.
- Updated the attacks of Voidfused Armour.
- Added an effect for enemy skeletons that rise from the ground.
- Increased the size of player models by about 4%.
- Adjusted the maximum zoom level.
- Temporarily removed stat-based visual effects on items due to the system not supporting our new weapon models yet.
Levels
- Added 4 new Monolith of Fate layouts.
- Breakable objects now have an outline when you mouse over them.
- Some Ruined Era levels now have lootable corpses.
- Reworked the presentation of time travel events.
- Re-worked talking to Elder Gaspar when you first enter the End of Time.
- Added more background NPCs to inhabited zones.
Performance
- Re-worked the shadows system to use fewer resources by reducing shadow cascades.
- Improved the Vertical Sync system.
- Improved item tooltip performance.
- Improved the performance of the on-hover outline system.
- Improved the performance of all UI windows, especially parts that fade or animate.
- Globally improved the performance of spawning enemies.
- Improved the performance of Static Orb.
- Fixed a bug where overhead enemy health bars were reducing performance.
Mechanics
- Items placed in the crafting window are now saved and loaded.
- The distance at which enemies target the player now better matches the visible area. These means that enemies will generally aggro from further away than before, but are less likely to aggro from below the edge of the screen.
- Because of the camera angle, the distance between the player and the top of the screen is actually much larger than the distance to the bottom.
- Reduced the distance minions will target enemies from by 8%.
- Reduced the distance enemies will follow the player from by 13%.
- Chill can now stack up to 3 times (from 1) but now inflicts 12% less attack, cast and movement speed (down from 25%).
- Slow can now stack up to 3 times (from 1) but now inflicts 20% less movement speed per stack (from 45%).
Passives
- Necromancer
- Added 4 new nodes.
- Removed the node that gave you increased crit chance on minion skill use.
- Tyrant grants 3% increased health per point (down from 6%) and can have a maximum of 8 points allocated (down from 10).
- Taste of Death grants 35 penetration per point (up from 25).
- Rotting Army gives 7% minion poison chance and 17 poison protection (from 5% and 15)
- Undead Intellect has a 5% chance to proc its buff per point (up from 4%), but can only have 15 points allocated (down from 20).
- Rite of Undeath no longer gives your minions additional necrotic and elemental protection, but instead increases their necrotic and elemental damage.
- Embrace of the Grave no longer gives your minions elemental protection, but now gives your minions 5% increased armour and physical damage.
- Marrow Armour now drains 4% of your current health per second, regardless of the number of points invested (from 1% per point).
- Reconstruction can have 8 points allocated (down from 10).
- The Paladins Divine Essences now last 10 seconds (up from 7).
Items
- Replaced the 3d models for all weapons.
- Added a new suffix that gives a chance to chill attackers.
- Added a new suffix that gives a chance to slow attackers.
- Added a new suffix that gives increased armour and protections.
- Added a new prefix for one-handed swords that gives +% base spell damage.
- The increased spell damage prefix can no longer spawn on or be applied to one-handed swords.
- The chance to chill suffix on weapons is now called "of Sleet" rather than "of Frostbite" to prevent confusion with the Frostbite ailment.
Animation
- Added alternate idle animations for each base class which trigger randomly.
- Updated the attack animations for each base class.
- Improved animations for the character select screen.
- Fixed run animations not speeding up in some situations.
- Updated the Mages run animation
- Improved weapon positioning for the Mage.
- Fixed some clipping issues with the Mage.
- Updated the Primalists idle animation.
- Fixed the Primalists feet clipping below the ground in some situations.
- Fixed a rotation issue with a new Primalist armor set.
- Implemented better animations for all NPCs.
- Capes on Skeletons (friendly and enemy) now move using cloth physics.
Uniques
- Arboreal Circuits Illusory Tree's now gains health per point of strength and attunement you have, but only lasts 8 seconds (down from 20).
UI
- Dialogue windows now automatically close when you walk away from NPCs.
- Added a special notification for entering certain zones that are important to the story.
- Greatly improved the visibility of text that appears in the HUD (ex. quest objectives).
- Improved the visibility of the minimap.
- Improved clarity of all text
- Updated the appearance of the health bars at the top of the screen for enemies and allies.
- Text labels above NPCs and doors now stays the same size as you zoom in or as it gets closer to the camera.
- Improved the visuals (and information of some) for level up, skill unlock, crafting, arena and quest notifications
- Updated the animations for objectives in the quest tracker panel.
- Added a text pop-up for picking up gold.
- Improved the appearance of minimap icons.
- Added a loading screen tooltip to clarify that minions take 50% less damage.
- Added an explanation to the character sheet for the behavior of having an ailment chance above 100%.
Enemies
- Added a new monolith boss.
- Changed Void Maggots to Voidfire Maggots that explode on death.
- Removed Soul Prisons (Soul Cages remain).
- Void Drain from rare Void Leeches now has a time limit of 3 seconds, but leeches 40% of damage dealt as health (up from 25%).
- Adjusted Imperial Scouts
- Increased projectile speed by 36%
- Reduced damage by 10%
- Increased movement speed by 10%
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Aura of Decays Corruption node tooltip not changing as you invest more points.
- Fixed Aura of Decay's Plague Rat node not scaling the visual area of effect.
- Fixed Frenzy Totem granting an inconsistent amount of Increased Attack Speed.
- Fixed a bug where Glaciers Static Collapse node was setting the total added crit chance given by the tree to -5%, rather than just subtracting 5%.
- Fixed Mark for Deaths Desecration node interacting incorrectly with the skills base effect.
- Fixed using Reap while exiting Reaper Form causing you to re-enter Reaper Form immediately.
- Fixed a bug where Rebuke's damage did not increase when you were hit while channelling Rebuke as specified in the tooltip.
- Fixed Rebuke not correctly increasing its damage when the player is hit.
- Fixed Sacrifices Catalyst of Horror increasing mana cost by a different amount than stated.
- Fixed a bug where Smites increased damage from its tree applied twice (multiplicatively).
- Fixed a bug where added crit multi from Smites tree was also being applied as "more base crit multi".
- Fixed Smites Righteous Overload not working.
- Fixed a bug where the Smite teleport node was not adding a cooldown.
- Fixed Spriggan Form's Root Wall's health not scaling with attunement or health.
- Fixed Storm Totems Discharge node not causing a nova on death.
- Fixed Storm Totems Frostbite node not working correctly.
- Fixed Storm Totems Icicles node not working correctly.
- Fixed Storm Totems Shockfury node not granting added lightning damage to minions.
- Fixed Summon Sabertooths Heavy Paws node not applying additional damage.
- Fixed Thorn Totems Rotten Core node not working correctly.
- Fixed Tornados increased duration node not working.
- Fixed using Wandering Spirits with the Spectral Putrescence node stopping player movement temporarily.
- Fixed a bug where non-transform skills would go on cooldown when you came out of a transformed state.
- Fixed a bug where Claw Totems were not scaling at all with level or attunement.
- Fixed a bug where Healing Totems were not gaining extra health per attunement.
- Fixed Poison Vines not scaling correctly with attunement or health.
- Fixed Divine Essences only increasing melee damage, instead of all damage.
- Fixed the Druids Defense of the Heart giving a different amount of increased protections than stated.
- Fixed a bug where the Druids Regrowth passive would not grant additional mana if you manually returned to Human Form.
- Fixed the Lichs Darkguard passive not working.
- Fixed the Lichs Dance with Death node giving you 4x effectiveness at low health instead of 3x as stated.
- Fixed a bug that made the Paladins Aura of Divinity passive not affect the passive part of Holy Aura.
- Fixed a bug where the Shamans Elemental Shrines passive gave stats per totem instead of flat stats.
- Fixed the movement speed buff from Eterras Path working incorrectly.
- Fixed the elemental protection reduction of shock changing with sources of increased elemental protection.
- Fixed the armour reduction effect of armour shred changing with sources of increased elemental protection.
- Fixed a bug where the "gains damage when hit" and "gains haste and frenzy when hit" monster mods were triggering off of any damage, not just hits.
- Fixed an enemy ability causing log file spam.
- Fixed being able to Fury Leap through the floor near the Last Refuge Outskirts bonus chest.
- Fixed Janeus clipping through the ground in End of Time.
- Fixed the affix lists scrollbar not moving all the way to the top or bottom of its frame.
- Fixed the health text above the health globe wrapping to a new line in some situations.
- Fixed Eterras Blessing using different icons in the skills and passive windows.
- Fixed a visual error with connections to Summon Sabertooths Fury Swipes node.
- Fixed a bug that would not let you shatter a fractured magic or rare item.
- Added additional failsafes for inventory bugs.
What We've Been Working On Where to Find Us!
[ 2019-07-11 16:32:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
It's been a busy time at Eleventh Hour Games! We'd like to provide an update regarding what we've been working on, as well as announcing some changes we've decided on.
- We are currently working on two upcoming content patches.
- Our next update, Patch 0.7.2, is slated for early August.
- Expect to see a Patch Preview thread posted in the near future!
- Patch 0.7.3 will focus on adding new content to the game in the form of additional Chapter content, Time Rifts, new enemies, new skills - and more!
- We have changed our position on a public roadmap, and we are actively working on one which we aim to release within the next couple of weeks. The goal will be to balance our need to remain agile and flexible, with the community's desire to have some insight into the order in which things will be developed. The design and level of detail have not yet been finalized. It will not be as precise as our internal roadmap.
- The free demo is scheduled for release in Q3 2019.
- This had been deprioritized due to the number of small updates released soon after Patch 0.7, and the delay these caused subsequent content patches.
- Our KickStarter page contained an estimated release schedule featuring an open beta expected to begin in January. After much internal discussion, we have chosen to remove the open beta from our roadmap. We believe the benefits of being able to concentrate on finishing the game in the final months of pre-release development outweigh the value of having an open beta - particularly when a free demo will be available.
- We're in the process of reaching out to members of the community entitled to Unique Item Design Collaborations to ask whether they are ready to begin designing their unique items. Thank you for your patience as we work through the list.
- The wiki has a list of completed community-designed unique items here.
- We're currently creating a schedule for other types of design collaboration.
- As you may know, we have been making progress on voice acting. As the VA for playable characters is uniquely capable of conveying useful information to the player, it will be among the first to be made available in future patches.
- Staves and Catalysts (off-hands) will be the next item types to be implemented. It's currently too early for us to confirm the exact patch they will be introduced in.
- We're expecting to attend another three conventions this year, and we'll be announcing these closer to the time of our attendance. We look forward to meeting some of you!
- Six people joined the team across May and June;
- Three people have joined our art team.
- One person joined the development team.
- One person joined the QA team.
- One person joined the sound team.
Beta 0.7.1b Patch Notes
[ 2019-06-19 15:49:37 CET ] [ Original post ]
Campaign
- Added a small wave fight to the Soul Wardens Road.
User Interface
- Further tweaked the item tooltip UI.
- Changed the 2d art for Turquoise rings.
Skills
- Increased the damage of Possess (the ailment inflicted by Hungering Souls and Skeleton Mages' default spell) by 14%.
Animations
- Improved the blending between attack animations for the Sentinel.
- Improved the Acolytes posture in animations to appear more natural.
Performance
- Improved the performance of grass shadows.
- Improved the performance of screen space reflections.
- Fixed time travel effects being loaded even if you havent time traveled, which consumed some resources.
Enemies
- Rare Highland Bears now use a roar that grants Frenzy to nearby allies instead of an avalanche variant.
- Rare Ulatri Scavengers now use a roar that grants Haste to nearby allies instead of an avalanche variant.
- Rare Ice Golems now use a variant of Avalanche (they previously had no rare specific ability).
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where you could craft items of a higher level than your character could equip.
- Fixed the Poison Barrage node on the Aura of Decay tree causing the Poison Bolt cooldown to be reduced every time you activate aura of decay.
- Fixed a bug where the Respite node on the Aura of Decay Tree gave health regen during Aura of Decay rather than after deactivating it.
- Fixed a typo in Summon Bears tooltip.
- Fixed the Paladins Divine Bolt not working.
- Fixed a visual issue with Dreamthorn.
- Fixed Stormbreakers model sometimes floating above the players hands.
- Fixed the Primalist's wolf head helmet displaying incorrectly during some animations.
- Fixed some instances of the Acolyte's longer idle animation not being interruptible.
- Fixed Stormbreakers alt tooltip flickering.
Beta 0.7.1 Patch Notes
[ 2019-06-14 18:45:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
Monolith of Fate
- Progress in the Monolith is now saved when you log out or switch characters, allowing you to continue a run at a later time.
- Once you have conquered 10 timelines subsequent mod options become increasingly difficult with each timeline you conquer, causing the difficulty (and rewards) of the monolith to scale up infinitely.
- Added two new zone layouts.
- Added three new monolith modifiers.
- There is now a reset monolith button that resets your number of timelines conquered to zero.
- Increased monster density by about 10% in most zones.
- Reduced distance between packs in The Serpentine Desert.
- The crit chance mod adds 25% Critical Strike Chance to enemies (down from 30%)
- The crit chance mod now gives more increased rarity and experience than before.
- Two new unique items have been added.
- Alchemist's Ladle
- This item is no longer dramatically more rare than other unique items.
- Chance to apply ailments increased to 15% from 5%.
- Bone Harvester
- Doubled the base health of Skeleton Harvesters.
- Skeleton Harvesters now scale with Intelligence and level.
- Added The Claw unique brass amulet as a low level version of The Fang.
- Existing The Fang amulets will change into The Claw.
- The Fang
- Now grants 60 health (up from 50).
- Now grants minions +12 melee physical damage.
- Now grants minions stun immunity.
- Changed to the Bone Amulet base type (which requires level 56).
- Prism Wraps
- Changed the leech effect from On Hit to On Crit.
- Wing Guards
- Adds 150 dodge rating (up from 120).
- Now grants 5% chance to gain Haste for 1 second on hit.
- No longer adds 40 health.
- Yrun's Wisdom
- Now grants 65 health (down from 100).
- Added a new set of armor models for the Acolyte and Primalist.
- Added the Noble Sash base type (requires level 32).
- The Bronze Belt base type now requires level 44 (up from 35).
- The Ranger's Belt base type requires level 60 (up from 42).
- Reworked amulet base types
- Added 4 new amulet base types.
- Adjusted amulet level requirements (highest is now 76).
- Added new art for all amulet base types.
- Silver Amulets now grant a larger amount of Increased Critical Strike Chance.
- Brass amulets now grant more lightning protection and also grant +% base spell damage.
- Added new 2d art for some one-hand weapons.
- The Health Regen and Elemental Protection affix is now a pure health regeneration prefix, and grants a larger amount of health regeneration.
- Increased the maximum value of the Minion Health Regen prefix to 300% (from 150%).
- Increased the Tier 4 and Tier 5 values of armour and protection suffixes.
- Dexterity shards are now more common.
- Increased Throwing Attack Damage shards are now more common.
- Both types of glancing blow shard are now rarer.
- Set affix shards are now rarer.
- Reduced the value of attribute affixes (e.g. Strength, Intelligence...)
- Max value on body armour is now 12 (from 15)
- Max value on amulets is now 10 (down from 12)
- Max value on other items is now 8 (from 10)
- Reduced the max health on the health + glancing blow prefix to 20 (from 25)
- Reduced the max value of the increased health suffix to 15% (from 18%)
- The Throwing Attack Damage and Mana Cost prefix now reduces mana cost by 3 (down from 4). Hammer Throw's cost has decreased from 4 to 3, however.
- Added some new loading screen hints for various mechanics.
- Adjusted minion AI so that it is better at saying close to your character.
- Unequipping The Fang or The Claw now unsummons extra wolves if you are above your maximum number of wolves without it.
- Base health regeneration per second is now 6 + (0.14 per level), up from 6 + (0.08 per level).
- Related affixes have also been buffed.
- Potions now heal for a base of 50 + (2 per level) health, up from 50 + (1 per level).
- Ward now decays at a base rate of 40% of current ward per second (from 20% per second).
- Intelligence now grants 4% ward retention per point (down from 5%).
- Rare Highland Bear
- Avalanche
- Now deals 11% less damage.
- Now has a 19% increased delay,
- Cooldown increased from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
- Avalanche
- Aura of Decay
- Now has a specialization tree.
- Smite
- Now has a specialization tree.
- Bear Form
- Ravage
- Now has a minimum mana cost of 2.
- Range no longer scales with weapon range.
- The Stagger ailment that it inflicts no longer stacks.
- Stagger now reduces armour by 100 (up from 30).
- Stagger now increases damage taken by 10% (up from 3%).
- Swipe
- Now costs 3 mana by default (down from 5), but has a minimum mana cost of 2.
- Ravage
- Black Hole
- The Endless Maw node now grants 30% increased duration per point (from adding 1 second to duration per point)
- The Scattered node requires 2 points in Endless Maw (up from 1)
- Erasing Strike
- Certain Erasure now grants +25% Critical Strike Multiplier per point (down from 40%).
- Fire Shield
- Now has a 20% chance to retaliate when hit, rather than retaliating whenever you take 30 damage. The previous scaling dates back to the pre-alpha, which was much shorter.
- The retaliation spell is now referred to as Flame Bolt to help clarify that it doesn't scale with your Fireball tree.
- The node that used to reduce the retaliation threshold now adds 5% chance to retaliate when hit per point.
- Frenzy Totem
- Now grants 20% attack and cast speed by default (down from 23%)
- Buff now has 1% increased effect per point of Attunement.
- Buff no longer flickers to twice its value repeatedly in character sheet.
- Hammer Throw
- Hammer Throw now costs 3 mana (down from 4)
- Added a new node that grants a limited stacking buff that increases damage and critical strike chance.
- Added a new node that causes the stacking buff to also grant ignite chance.
- Steadfast Path grants 35% chance to deal double damage (up from 30%)
- Catapult now adds 3 to mana cost per point, instead of reducing damage by 20% per point.
- Disintegrating Aura now adds 12 to mana cost (up from 10).
- Swapped the effects of Ballista and Zealot's Conviction. Now the cost reduction node is behind +projectiles, and the double damage chance node is behind spiral.
- Zealot's Conviction now grants 13% chance to deal double damage per point and can have 5 points allocated (from 10% chance per point and a max of 3 points).
- Avatar of the Spire (hammer nova) now also adds 4 base physical damage.
- Shattering force grants 20% chance to shred armour per point (up from 15%).
- Harvest
- Removed the Slow Decay node which granted ward retention on hit.
- Added a new node that increases the ward gained by your minions.
- Ghost Conduit no longer requires points in Mirror Soul.
- Mirror Soul can now have a maximum of 1 point allocated (down from 4).
- Sacrifice
- Reduced mana cost to 25 from 30.
- Spriggan Form
- Vale Bolt
- Renamed to Vale Blast to better reflect that it is not a projectile.
- Now costs 3 mana by default (down from 5), but has a minimum mana cost of 2.
- Now deals physical damage rather than lightning.
- Summon Vines
- Now costs 12 mana (down from 18).
- Now summons 3 vines (down from 4).
- Vines' damage and health now scale with Attunement.
- Vale Bolt
- Summon Skeleton
- Summoned skeleton archers deal 20% more damage.
- Summoned skeleton mages deal 30% more damage.
- Summoned skeleton warriors deal 40% more damage.
- Teleport
- Now has a base cooldown of 4 seconds (up from 3).
- Ether barrier grants 7 ward per point (down from 8).
- Out of Body now converts 3% of health to ward (down from the 4% previously shown on the tooltip and the 10% it was actually giving).
- Transplant
- Now has a base cooldown of 4 seconds (up from 3).
- Thorn Totem
- Venom Tipped Thorns now grants 20% poison chance per point and can have up to 5 points allocated (from 14.3% chance and up to 7 points).
- Lasting Affliction now grants 15% poison duration per point (down from 17%) and requires 4 points in Venom Tipped Thorns (down from 5).
- The bonuses on transformation granted by the Druid nodes Primal Shifter and Restoration now last for 10 seconds (up from 4).
- Shaman
- Added several new nodes.
- The Conflux node now has a clearer description and requires 3 points in either of the nodes that proc the lightning it improves.
- The Conflux node now increases the lightning's damage by 20% per point (up from 15%) and can have 5 points allocated (up from 1).
- Adjusted the positions and effects of many nodes.
- Overkill damage no longer counts for leech. This means you can't leech for more than the damage it took to kill an enemy.
- Sources of Damage Leeched as Health have been made approximately half as powerful as they were before.
- The Hybrid Health Leech affix grants up to 40% increased health leech (down from 50%).
- The Hybrid Health Leech affix can no longer spawn on gloves, but can now spawn on rings and relics. It can still spawn on amulets.
- The Melee Damage Leeched as Health affix is now a prefix.
- The fog of war on minimaps will no longer reset when your character leaves a zone.
- Fog of war will not be saved inside the Monolith of Fate. This is primarily due to the fact that the Monolith of Fate will use procedural generation in future.
- The locations of permanent minions are now shown on the minimap.
- Unique items and set items now have icons on the minimap.
- Replaced the item tooltip UI with a new design. This design shows an item's 2d art, clearly displays the hotkeys, and allows you to see the tier & range of affixes on the item.
- Items you pick up are now highlighted until moused-over.
- Several miscellaneous improvements to the chat window.
- Time travel transitions now fade to loading screens instead of just staying on black.
- Updated vertical lightning effects for Storm Totem, Fury Leap and some other skills.
- Updated Lightning Blast's effect.
- Updated Rive's effect.
- Updated Warpath's effect.
- Ephemeral Stance
- Erasing Strike
- Fireball
- Glacier
- Hammer Throw
- Juggernaut Stance
- Lightning Blast
- Lunge
- Manifest Weapon
- Shield Rush
- Snap Freeze
- Teleport
- Vengeance
- Warpath
- Adjusted the layout of the Shattered Valley and Welryn Outskirts.
- Added a new sidequest to the Ruins of Welryn.
- Added a training dummy to the End of Time.
- Adjusted shadows, reflections and other graphical effects to improve performance while maintaining a quality standard.
- Improved the performance of Poison and Ignite.
- Improved the performance of effects that repeatedly apply in an area, such as Frenzy Totem.
- Various miscellaneous improvements to calculations and reduced memory allocation.
- Fixed the resolution being incorrect at character select screen & when the client starts.
- Fixed a bug where Blood Tethers from Oculorum Mortis enemies would persist after they were supposed to end.
- Fixed Chimaera's Essence Unique Amulet not dropping.
- Fixed the Glancing Blow Chance and Health affix shard not dropping.
- Added world map labels to zones that were missing them.
- Fixed some item level requirements being lower than intended.
- Fixed waypoint visuals applying to the Mage's new armour.
- Fixed a bug where Ragnar was showing up in Gladiator's Rest.
- Fixed the Sane Cultist not giving you a quest if you talked to them a second time, rather than accepting the first time.
- Fixed a bug where taking any node that changed Black Hole's cooldown would approximately halve the cooldown.
- Fixed Elemental Nova's Ascended Current granting half the increased shock effect it should.
- Fixed the Spellblade's Mind Flame scaling off of Attunement rather than Intelligence.
- Fixed the Beastmaster's Caustic Poisons granting added poison damage instead of increased.
- Fixed some enemy and environment effects spamming log files.
- Fixed a bug where you were immune during Reap's movement
- Fixed a bug where the Wraith Feast node on the Harvest Tree wasn't working.
- Fixed a bug where Storm Totem was not gaining stats from Attunement and levels.
- Fixed a bug where in the Rip Blood tree the Marrow Drinker node overrode Arcane Fortress node.
- Fixed many debuffs not affecting enemies correctly.
- Fixed Avalanche having a one time cost instead of a channeled cost.
- Fixed a bug where you could take a node that required 25 points without mastering in Shaman
- Fixed a few later Shaman nodes requiring an incorrect number of mastery points.
- Fixed the Forge Guard's Lethal Strikes node giving 10% increased Critical Strike Multiplier instead of +10% Critical Strike Multiplier.
- Fixed a bug where Rainbow Edge was giving 20% shock, ignite, and chill chance instead of 25%.
- Fixed a bug where an armour affix or elemental affix could occasionally not change value when upgraded from Tier 3 to Tier 4.
- Fixed the "increased armour and protections" stat not being reflected in the character sheet correctly.
- Fixed on-hit flash effects persisting in some cases.
- Fixed a bug where Teleport's Stable Bubble was giving 4% increased ward retention, rather than 10% ward retention
- Fixed a bug where leaving a zone while hovering over an enemy could cause the enemy's information to get stuck on the main enemy health bar.
- Fixed a bug where leech was not being randomised along with hit damage.
- Fixed a bug where Stagger visuals persisted after it wore off.
Beta 0.7.0h Patch Notes
[ 2019-05-18 11:01:14 CET ] [ Original post ]
Skills
- Tweaked several Tornado nodes to make it a bit more powerful at low investment.
- Lasting Storm: max points 5-> 4. value per point 20% -> 25%.
- Strength of Air: max points 5-> 4. value per point 20% -> 25%.
- Hurricane: max points 5-> 4. value per point 20% -> 25%.
- Frequent Lightning: max points 5-> 4. value per point 30% -> 35%.
- Overcast Skies: max points 5-> 4. value per point 30% -> 35%.
- Debris: max points 5-> 4. value per point 17% -> 22%.
- Inferno: max points 8-> 4. value per point 25% -> 50%.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug introduced in 0.7.0g that caused most monolith rewards to fail to spawn and issues with dropping items from inventory.
- Fixed a bug where basic stats (flat damage, increased __ chance, protections, etc) from the augment trees of Bear, Thorn Totem and Storm Totem were not being applied correctly. These skills should feel significantly stronger.
- Fixed a bug where Tornados Lasting Storm was actually giving 70% per point.
- Fixed Warpaths Enduring Deflection granting block armour instead of block protection.
- Fixed multiple Beastmaster passives mistakenly counting minions as companions.
Beta 0.7.0g Patch Notes
[ 2019-05-17 17:07:25 CET ] [ Original post ]
Chat
- Improved fading behavior for individual messages and when the chat loses focus.
- The chat window now fades away when you click outside of it.
- Replaced the Press enter to open text with a small chat button
- Fixed input being blocked by the chat window when it is closed.
- Fixed some visual issues of the chat window ui.
- Fixed a minor performance issue with automatic scrolling.
Items
- Added a new higher tier of mage armour models
- Updated on-ground item glow effects
Skills
- Added a node to the wandering spirits tree that causes wandering spirits to be revealed around the target location rather than around you
- Updated the portraits for Bone Golem variants
Enemies
- Void mauls and The Effigy of Oblivion no longer spawn in the arena as some of their skill effects would clip with the ground and become difficult to see.
UI
- The era is now shown on loading screens beneath the zone name
Bug Fixes
- Skills are now removed from your action bar if you refund passives points such that you no longer have access to a skill. Your specializations will be unaffected.
- Fixed Focus Energy Battery, Energy Infusion and Minds Shield scaling off of max mana rather than mana gained while channeling focus.
- Fixed Glacier's Cold Snap and Greater Explosion nodes not increasing damage.
- Fixed Lunge always costing 1 mana instead of scaling with distance
- Fixed the tooltips for several Mana Strike nodes not scaling when you put in more points (the effects themselves were working)
- Fixed Storm Totems Shield Totem node not working.
- Fixed the Druids Natural Duality and Strengthened Bond nodes counting your number of minions, rather than companions.
- Fixed the Druids Return to Dust node not working.
- Fixed the Lichs Ageless Ascetic not leeching life.
- Fixed the Paladins Flash of Brilliance granting increased blind chance instead of added.
- Fixed the Paladins Light of Rahyeh not increasing Fire Damage.
- Fixed the Spellblades Arcane Warden not working.
- Fixed the Void Knights Heavy Endurance node not working.
- Likely fixed a bug where the Mage would gain a pale white overlay over its model.
- Fixed a bug where using the short item names option would display the internal name of an item rather than the display name.
- Fixed a small memory leak that occurred when equipping an item.
- The Increased Freeze Chance alt tooltip no longer incorrectly specifies "spells"
Beta 0.7.0f Patch Notes
[ 2019-05-15 19:56:00 CET ] [ Original post ]
Mechanics
- Increased base player movement speed by 5%.
- Note that this change is multiplicative with sources of Increased Movement Speed.
- When you are stunned, you now become immune to stuns for 1 second after the stun ends.
- You no longer have to attack the door in the Welryn College.
- Capped the max respec cost per point at 5000 gold temporarily so that people don't get left with impossible to respec characters.
Skills
- Teleport
- Flat ward node grants 8 ward per point (down from 10).
- The intelligence scaling ward node requires 4 points in the flat ward node (up from 3).
- The health to ward node now converts 4% of current health per point (down from 10%).
Items
- Glancing Blow affix changes
- "Glancing Blow and Armour" can no longer spawn on amulets or relics.
- "Glancing Blow and Armour" can now have up to 15% glancing blow chance at T5 (down from 17%).
- Added a "Glancing Blow and Health" prefix that spawns on the same base types as "Glancing Blow and Armour", and has the same values for glancing blow.
- This should increase the flexibility of capping glancing blow chance by allowing you to have some items with two glancing blow chance prefixes, while also reducing the power of individual glancing blow affixes.
- Reduced the maximum value of the Increased Movement Speed affix from 35% to 25%.
- Reduced the maximum value of implicit Increased Movement Speed on boots from 20% to 15% and adjusted values on earlier base types.
- Reduced the added armour implicit of Fur Boots to 20 (from 25)
- Rahyeh's Light will no longer refresh fire shield if it's not on your action bar.
Bug Fixes
- Reverted an optimization change that unintentionally led to texture quality being greatly reduced at high settings in many cases.
- The event information panel is now hidden properly when there is no upcoming event.
- Fixed a bug where Rip Bloods Arcane Absorption could trigger off of any hit, not just ones from Rip Blood.
- Fixed Volatile Reversals end rift spawning at the start location instead.
- Fixed a bug where stun immunity would prevent you from being frozen by Snap Freeze's self freeze node
- Fixed the Sorcerers Dragon Mage passive scaling incorrectly
- Fixed the Sorcerers Mirror Breath adding a new effect rather than replacing the existing one.
- Fixed the Sorcerers Lightning Rider stacking if respecd and taken again.
- Fixed the Paladins Rahyehs Strength stacking if respecd and taken again.
- Fixed the tooltip for Summon Wolfs Fight and Feed not updating
- Fixed the Paladins Redemption not requiring points in Penance.
- Fixed being able to drag specialization slots.
Beta 0.7.0e Patch Notes
[ 2019-05-13 16:04:33 CET ] [ Original post ]
Monolith of Fate
- Timeline modifiers now grant increased experience.
- There is now an objective arrow pointing towards bosses.
Items
- The Sentinel's Armour visuals now vary based on base types.
- There are two variations for helmets, gloves and boots.
- For body armour the combination of chest and pauldron visuals is different for every base type.
- Changed the level requirement formula so that more emphasis is put on the highest affix tier an item has.
- Old: level requirement = highest tier + sum of tiers to
- New: level requirement = (2 x highest tier) + sum of tiers
- The values for each tier have been changed from 1, 4, 7, 12, 17 to 1, 3, 6, 10, 14.
- Glyph of Stability
- Now reduces instability added by 0% to 60%.
- Instability added is no longer always rounded up.
- Reduced values of glancing blow at most tiers (the max value of tier 5 has not changed).
- Increased the values of the armour and protection affixes (including flat, increased and set affixes).
- Increase the values of set increased health regen.
- Changed starting Sentinel shield name from "Knight Shield" to "Renegade Shield".
Skills
- Improved the behavior of skills that pull enemies. Enemy movements should be less erratic than before.
- Increased Tornados damage by 17%.
- Improved the wording of Enra's Technique on the Hammer Throw to better describe its interactions with other nodes.
- Improved the way Warpath is controlled while using a controller.
Passives
- The Vitality node at the start of the Sentinel class now grants 10% increased health regen per point, rather than 10 health per point.
Enemies
- Rare Highland Bears' ice attack takes 62.5% longer to hit and deals 16% less damage.
- The "of Blades" increased damage monster suffix can now only spawn in level 10 and higher zones.
UI
- Refactored camera zoom. It should be much more responsive and less buggy at lower framerates.
- There is now an additional confirmation panel before you leave the arena.
- Player movement and camera zooming is now disabled when the mouse is outside of the game window.
- Made the background of mastery descriptions slightly transparent so that players better understand that there are nodes behind them.
- Scrolling in the chat window while it is open will no longer cause the camera to zoom.
- Monster outlines and health bars will correctly update based on whether they are under the chat window and whether it is open / closed.
- The overlay map now remains open when you travel to a new zone.
- Reduced the size of the NPC dialogue window to account for the chat.
- Adjusted profanity filter to make it less overzealous.
Bug Fixes
- Likely fixed the game crashing on startup for some users. A framework we use was incompatible with older CPUs (AMD Phenom II and Intel Core 2 and earlier). We have updated to a newer version of the framework which includes a workaround.
- Fixed a bug where items could fracture when improving the tier of an affix even if the panel displayed 100% success chance.
- Fixed a bug where if an item fractured while you were trying to add a new affix then the affix would be added regardless.
- Fixed a bug where the rarity and level requirement of an item wouldn't be increased when crafting in some situations.
- Fixed at least some situations where the crafting materials panel became stuck open.
- Fixed a bug where certain abilities like void drain and blood tether would persist indefinitely if you changed zone while they were active on you.
- Fixed a bug where the Lichs Soul Maw node only applied to spell damage.
- Fixed a bug where the Paladin's Shield Wall node was giving 20% reduced dodge rating rather than 25% less dodge rating.
- Fixed the Void Knights Void Bolts passive unlocking at level 15 instead of level 10.
- Rebuke
- Fixed the armour and elemental protection nodes not gaining extra benefits from additional points.
- Fixed buffs not persisting correctly after channeling ended.
- Fixed the void essence on hit node not working.
- Fixed portal hitboxes not matching the visuals.
- Fixed the values for instability added by a craft displaying incorrectly when a Glyph of Stability is used.
- Fixed the quest pulser in The Wasteland being in the wrong spot.
- Fixed an animation error with Shield Rush.
- Fixed some stretching present in Acolyte and Sentinel animations.
- Fixed the shop being unusable with a controller.
- Fixed an error in the Spriggans companion ability tooltip
- Fixed Liath Grove being misspelled on the world map
- Ended Geovas experiments in levitation.
Beta 0.7.0d Patch Notes
[ 2019-05-08 16:53:05 CET ] [ Original post ]
Arena
- Dying in the Arena now ends a Hardcore character and removes the Deathless tag, as it does on the outside.
- The start next wave panel now has an option for leaving the arena and claiming rewards.
- Selecting this option takes you to a small zone containing a reward chest and a portal back to The End of Time.
- If you die in the Arena instead of choosing to exit then you cannot claim these rewards.
- Made Arena Key drops more consistent
- Can no longer drop from the arena chest with less than 5 timelines conquered
- Guaranteed drop when timelines conquered is a multiple of 5
- 5% drop chance when timelines conquered is greater than 5, but not a multiple of 5
Monolith
- Increased the density of enemies in the monolith (by around 15%, varying from zone to zone)
Performance
- Fixed an issue with the outline system (glowing effect around enemies and allies) that caused the effect to be reapplied every frame
- This system was quite old and was interacting incorrectly now that the engine has changed
- In my testing, framerate in campaign levels improved by about 5 fps in combat (High preset, 1080p, RX 480 8GB, Ryzen 5 1600)
Skills
- Rebuke
- Cooldown changed to 5 seconds (up from 4)
- You can no longer be stunned while channelling Rebuke
- The increased maximum duration node now grants a 12% increase per point (down from 15%) and can have up to 2 points allocated (down from 3)
- The increased health regen while channelling node now grants 25% per point (up from 20%)
- Ailment Chance nodes grant 8% chance per point (up from 5%)
- Increased ailment duration node grants 8% increased duration per point (up from 5%)
- The armour and elemental protection nodes now apply while channelling and have higher values
- Removed the node that granted stun avoidance while channelling
- Removed the node that granted ward retention while channelling
- Added 6 new nodes
- Adjusted a few connections
- Fixed a bug where taking a node that increased the cooldown recovery speed would almost half the cooldown
- Fixed a bug where a node was giving 2000% increased armour per point instead of 20%
- Vengeance
- Added three new nodes centred around reduced armour and fire protection on hit.
- Renamed Dark Blade to Iron Blade to better reflect its damage type.
Items
- Glyph of Stability now causes a craft to add 5% to 45% less instability (used to be 80% less to 40% more)
Quests
- Most objectives now explicitly state which zone you need to go to.
UI
- Increased the opacity of NPC dialogue to improve visibility.
- Chat now scrolls properly along with new chat messages.
Visuals
- Updated Erasing Strike and Void Rifts
- Updated Lightning Blast
- Improved lighting detail in all desert levels. This will make this patch larger to download on some platforms.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed being unable to view skill trees in the skills panel before you unlocked them by levelling up (you were able to in the past).
- Fixed a bug where teleporting out the starting area in a monolith zone with a spire objective would result in the spires failing to spawn.
- Fixed a bug where certain nodes could cause hovering over a skill icon to add an instance of attribute scaling to it each frame, causing severe fps drops or crashes. This is what led to the Primalists skill panel freeze issue.
- Potentially fixed issues with starting the game via Steam on Mac and Linux.
Beta 0.7.0c Patch Notes and Status Update
[ 2019-05-06 23:30:38 CET ] [ Original post ]
Our second patch to Beta is now live!
Load Times
- Fixed an issue with the mini-map system which caused some zones to take several minutes to load, and likely contributed to load times elsewhere.
- Reworked and optimized the loading process itself to further decrease load times. Some parts of it were necessary in the past due to engine constraints, but those are no longer needed.
Arena
- Increased arena difficulty scaling speed by about 50%.
Skills
- Avalanche
- Reduced the area of effect of each snowball by 29%
- Adjusted the visual indicator to match the area of effect (previously it was drastically undersized)
- Black Hole
- 10% reduced duration
- 20% reduced outer pull radius
- Cooldown increased to 10 seconds (from 8 seconds)
- Slightly reduced pull strength
- Increased base damage per second from 4 to 16
- Reduced added damage effectiveness per second from 2 to 1
- Reduced Hammer Throw's aura default damage per second from 30 to 20. It was mistakenly dealing fire damage but was already quite powerful, so this has been changed now that it scales as you would expect.
- Teleport
- The node that grants ward based on your intelligence grants 1 ward per point of intelligence (down from 2) and can have a maximum of 1 point allocated (down from 5)
- The node that grants a flat amount of ward now grants 10 per point (down from 25)
- Fixed a bug where the node that granted increased elemental damage didn't work
- The node that grants increased cooldown recovery if you have teleport recently can have up to 2 points allocated (down from 4)
- The node that adds a cooldown now requires one point in the node that increases the duration of buffs, rather than being connected to the start
- The node that increases the duration of buffs now requires 2 points in the previous node (down from 3)
- The node that casts Elemental Nova at the location you teleport from now requires one point in the node that casts Elemental Nova at the location you teleport to. This node does not work if Elemental Nova has a cooldown.
- Added a new node that casts Elemental Nova half way between the location you teleport from and the location you teleport to. This node does not work if Elemental Nova has a cooldown.
- Added a new node that converts 10% of your current health per point to ward at twice its value
- Added a new node that grants stun immunity if you have teleported recently
- The Catalyst of Fire node on the Flame Reave tree grants 10% chance to cast fireball on hit (down from 15%), and can have a maximum of 4 points allocated (down from 7).
- Increased Storm Totems damage by 40%
- Companion active abilities
- Increased cooldowns from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.
- Abilities cast 2.5 times as fast
- Increased the effects granted by 25-50%
- Howl now lasts for 6 seconds.
- Adjusted companion activatable ability scaling
- Previous scalings were mostly bugged and have been removed.
- Added attunement scaling of 2% mana efficiency per point.
Zones
- The Waystation Complex has temporarily been made a side zone while issues are investigated. This means you can go directly to the MajElkan Waystation from Titans Canyon.
- All transitions updated to have better labels and be more consistent in 'clickability' and functionality.
- You can no longer die while loading or time travelling.
Uniques
- Ward Trail now grants 20 ward on dodge (down from 40)
UI
- Improved the appearance of the chat UI.
- Improved the fading and opening behavior of the chat. It no longer opens when clicked, for example.
- When you show/hide ground items, it is now shown to you in chat.
- The overlay map no longer closes when you open other windows.
- The Enter Arena window no longer closes when you open another window.
- Tutorial tooltips now auto close after 15 seconds.
- Added spell crit chance to the character sheet.
Enemies
- Soul Geyser field now creates 3 delayed Soul Geysers rather than 4.
- Soul Geysers deal 14% more damage.
- The twinned and rampancy monster mods are now mutually exclusive as their interaction was buggy.
- Improved the animation timings of several enemies to better line up with when damage occurs.
- Abyssal Crawlers
- Bloated Husks
- Smoldering Lithracs
- Umbral Crawlers
- Void Cultist
- Void Mauls
- Weathered Statues
- Rare Highland Bears now use avalanche (non-channelled variant with only one snowball) instead of glacier
- Storm Remnants and Flame Remnants will prioritise attacking each other from a 25% higher range than before.
Visuals
- Further optimized the trails behind void enemies.
- Greatly improved the base and aura effects for Fire Shield.
- Improved skeleton archer effects.
- Improved Soul Geyser visuals.
- Improved the visuals of venom spit abilities.
- Improved the shock ailment effect.
- Improved the attack effects of Void-touched Spriggans.
- Improved Volcanic Orbs initial explosion on both fire and ice versions.
- Improved Voidfused Earths ranged attack.
- Improved the summon effects for Effigies of Ruin.
- Improved the visuals for Swipes Spirit Wolves.
- Updated the visuals for Weathered Statues and the boss at the end of The Courtyard.
- Updated visuals on Jewelled Scuttlers and Blood Scorpions.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where dying with an ailment or debuff would result in it becoming permanent until you left the game.
- Fixed the stash in the Council Chambers being difficult to click on.
- You can no longer re-enter the arena via a town portal.
- If you open the monolith chest and exit the zone the chest will not reappear when you enter the zone until you complete another monolith timeline.
- Fixed a bug where wearing The Fang would cause your Summon Wolf skill to be replaced by Wolf Howl on your bar if you had one fewer than your maximum number of wolves.
- Fixed a bug where the ignite chance for the holy aura tree was not being applied properly
- Fixed a bug where the number of skeletons you could summon after taking the Dread Phalanx node on the Summon Skeleton tree was calculated incorrectly often resulting in you having one less maximum skeleton than intended.
- Fixed loading issues with the transfusion and mind warden nodes on the Mana Strike tree. This lead to points in one moving to the other on load.
- Fixed a loading issue with some nodes in the Spellblade passives, which lead to points moving to different nodes on load.
- Fixed the Woe node on the Void Knight tree not applying stats correctly
- Fixed Hammer Throw's aura dealing fire damage instead of void damage
- Fixed Mark for Deaths Desecration tooltip not visually changing per point.
- Fixed Decayed Skull granting 80% increased damage rather than 80% increased necrotic damage
- Fixed a bug where the monolith completed panel would remain open if you left the monolith zone without clicking the open portal button
- Fixed some issues where you would have to repeat parts of the encounter in the Lower District.
- Fixed parts of the Sane Cultists quest being repeatable.
- Fixed a bug where the game loaded a deleted solo characters stash when you created a new solo character with the same name.
- Fixed an oversight where the Ruined College's area level was 5. It has been changed to 23.
- Fixed the checkmarks for challenge modes being too far to the left.
- Potentially fixed player health not showing up on Linux systems with AMD GPUs.
- Fixed Dolus having a dialogue icon since he's too wrapped up in his own stuff to talk to you, kind of rude I know, but he's going through a lot right now.
- Crash in Waystation Complex - This has temporarily been circumvented by making the zone optional.
- Users being stuck on Please Wait - This only happens on some systems so this is difficult to track. Weve added more debug info to the game so please let us know if this is affecting you at support@lastepochgame.com.
- Login/email issues - We had some issues with our email service which have been resolved but we are looking into the email verification system. Again, if youre having issues please email us!
- Game freezing when opening skills as a Primalist - We need more information on this, so please take a look at https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/game-freezes-when-opening-skills-speciziliations-tab/13319/. It may be tied to Companion skills so let us know if it continues to happen when you remove those skills from your bar.
- Performance - This also varies from system to system but weve identified a few specific areas we can make improvements in soon.
- Pets - Were working to ensure that everyone has their pets in-game.
Beta 0.7.0b Patch Notes
[ 2019-05-02 16:06:35 CET ] [ Original post ]
Our first patch to Beta is live!
Arena
- Approximately doubled arena scaling. The goal is that you will die, rather than logging out.
Skills
- Bone Golem
- Bone Growth noe grants +7 health per point (up from 5) and requires 3 points in Amalgam of Mages (up from 2)
- Amalgam of Rogues now grants melee attack speed and movement speed per point, but only 7% of each (from 8% melee attack speed) and has a max of 5 points (up from 4).
- Twinned Golems health modifier is now 35% less (from 45% less) and it requires 4 points in Amalgam of Rogues.
- Unnatural Speed now grants 4% increased movement speed per point (from from 10%) and also grants 4% increased movement speed to all nearby minions. Has a max of 4 points (down from 5).
- Storm Totem
- Now has 50% added damage effectiveness (down from 100%)
- The flat damage node now grants +4 damage per point.
- The flat crit node now grants +3% per point (down from 8%)
Enemies
- Soul Spear now deals 17% less damage and the AI now uses it at ranges of 4 to 9 metres, rather than 0 to 8 metres.
- The following enemy types can no longer spawn with the "Summoning" monster mod;
- Immortal Eye
- Oculus Mortis
- Soul Cage
- Soul Carrier
- Soul Prison
- Avialine Chimera
Visuals
- Improved Meteor, Lightning Blast, and Glaciers vortex visuals.
- Added a casting effect for enemies using Soul Spear so it is easier to anticipate.
- Improved visuals for Flame Remnants, Frost Wyrms and Headless Acolytes.
- Improved the visuals of the enemy Soul Arrow ability.
Bug Fixes
- Potentially fixed crashing issues when loading zones by adding mipmaps to newer enemies. Mipmaps allow the game to use less memory (at the cost of quality) if memory is running low, so the fact that these were missing may have been causing crashes when memory ran out.
- Fixed the game attempting to login via Steam from the Standalone client if the steam client was open in the background.
- Fixed A Study in Time being impossible to complete.
- Added failsafes to the Admiral Harton encounter to prevent the questline from stopping.
- Likely fixed a bug with the Sane Cultist.
- Fixed many effects with the Elemental tag not working, such as increased elemental damage and chance to ignite with elemental skills. (Effects tagged Fire, Lightning and/or Cold were not affected.)
- Fixed multiple Storm Totem nodes not working
- Fixed item tooltips continuing past the edge of the screen (which has been a long-time bug).
- Fixed a bug with the Wolf Howl vfx.
- Fixed some zone transitions automatically being used when you were close enough.
- Fixed the world map opening to the wrong tab in End of Time and Echo of a World.
- Likely fixed a bug where the character model could go invisible after transforming back to human form.
- Fixed the trails behind Void enemies occasionally having a very large performance impact.
- Fixed incorrect login errors being shown.
Working through some last minute technical problems
[ 2019-04-30 16:10:18 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hi everyone! We've encountered some last minute technical problems we're working through. We'll be posting an update 20 minutes from now. Update #1: Due to the unforeseen technical issues we are rescheduling our launch. The current ETA is four hours from now. Very sorry about this! Update #2: You can now buy and play Last Epoch through Steam! We're very sorry about all of the technical problems we've suffered today. Update #3 Our servers are still experiencing very high load, so login is not working fully yet. There are many people who have logged in, but it will be a while before things return to normal. We are hard at work solving issues that arise and immense amount of traffic is being processed as best it can. Launch periods for games are extremely taxing as there's always issues that were unforseen and it's very difficult to anticipate everything. We thank you for bearing with us, and hope you can all experience Last Epoch very soon!
Beta Trailer Release Date Announcement
[ 2019-04-12 19:49:09 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello, Travelers! The entire Eleventh Hour Games team is excited to announce some long awaited news beta will drop on April 30, 2019, and it will be available on Steam! Thats right, beta is almost here. And with this release, we have some exciting things in store for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA4auxVRQYw What's New in Beta?
- Our first end game system, the Monolith of Fate
- 2.5 more chapters of story content (up to 5 chapters total now)
- 2 new mastery classes
- 12 new skills
- 6 new skill trees
- UI updates
- Paladin: Take up the holy warriors mantle and charge shield first into combat to cast judgment on your foes! Surround yourself with Sigils of Hope to ward off the wicked. Fortify yourself and your allies with the power of your Holy Aura as you smite your enemies with Sky Bolts!
- Druid: Your connection to Eterra now flourishes and grows wild! Command the might of the forest by taking on the form of the Spriggan or transform into a fearsome Werebear and maul your foes with primal strength. You are the avatar of Eterras latent power and a bastion against all that would threaten her!
- Shaman: Avalanche
- Spellblade: Enchant Weapon and Shatter Strike
- Forge Guard: Aegis, Forge Strike, and Manifest Armor
Last Epoch
Eleventh Hour Games
Eleventh Hour Games
2019-04-30
Indie RPG Adventure Singleplayer EA
Game News Posts 425
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
🕹️ Partial Controller Support
Mostly Positive
(88800 reviews)
https://lastepochgame.com
https://store.steampowered.com/app/899770
Last Epoch combines time travel, exciting dungeon crawling, engrossing character customization and endless replayability to create an Action RPG for veterans and newcomers alike. Travel through the world of Eterra’s past and face dark empires, wrathful gods and untouched wilds – to find a way to save time itself from The Void.
Key Features
- 15 Mastery Classes
Begin your adventure as a base class which can then specialize into one of three Mastery Classes. When specializing into a certain Mastery you will be able to access new skills and specialize your playstyle! - Customize each skill
Every active skill has its own augment tree that can completely change how the skill functions. Transform your skeletons into archers, your lightning blast into chain lightning, or make your serpent strike summon snakes to fight alongside you! - Lose yourself in the item hunt
Fill your arsenal with magic items you craft to perfection, change the rules of your build with powerful unique and set items, and always have that next upgrade just on the horizon with Last Epoch's randomized loot system. - Explore a vast world throughout time
The world of Eterra is home to many factions and secrets. Travel to different points in time to change the world's fate, and fight to set it onto a new path. - Endless replayability
With a wealth of classes and skills to customize, deep game systems, randomized loot, and continuing development, Last Epoch is a game that will keep you coming back. - Easy to learn, hard to master
We're committed to making our gameplay approachable through breaking up the required learning and being transparent. At the same time, overcoming some of the most challenging content will require deep knowledge and pushing your build to its limits.
MINIMAL SETUP
- OS: Ubuntu 16.04
- Processor: Intel Core i5 2500 or AMD FX-4350Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: nVidia GTX 660ti or AMD R9 270 with 2+ GB of VRAMNetwork: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 20 GB available space
- OS: Ubuntu 18.04
- Processor: Intel Core i5 6500 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: nVidia GTX 1060 or AMD RX 480 with 4+ GB of VRAMNetwork: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 20 GB available space
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