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]

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 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