Last Epoch Developer Stream
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.
Last Epoch News
Community Designed Unique: Reveal!
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, we’ve 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. We’re also looking at the SFX for Volcanic Orb, however, today’s reveal will be covering some of the updated Visuals for Volcanic orb, the new Unique Spear, and the first reveal of the completed Unique item’s stats!
So without further ado, allow us to introduce you all to your new unique item:
We’re really excited about where this new unique can be taken. We’ve seen what can happen with Void based mages in the past, and we’re 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. We’ll be monitoring the power of this unique closely on release to ensure it meets what we’re 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 it’s destroying the hordes of the Void a little too easily, we’ll make sure it has a good solid home in Last Epoch as the very first Community Unique. So, with that, let’s 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 - we’re 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 you’re following closely to the orb to be getting hit by shrapnel.
As mentioned, we’re 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, we’ve 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 we’ve 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 we’re 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 we’ve learned a lot through this event. We’re 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 we’ll 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!
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, we’ve 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. We’re also looking at the SFX for Volcanic Orb, however, today’s reveal will be covering some of the updated Visuals for Volcanic orb, the new Unique Spear, and the first reveal of the completed Unique item’s stats!
So without further ado, allow us to introduce you all to your new unique item:
Lament of the Lost Refuge
We’re really excited about where this new unique can be taken. We’ve seen what can happen with Void based mages in the past, and we’re 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. We’ll be monitoring the power of this unique closely on release to ensure it meets what we’re 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 it’s destroying the hordes of the Void a little too easily, we’ll make sure it has a good solid home in Last Epoch as the very first Community Unique. So, with that, let’s 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 - we’re 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 you’re following closely to the orb to be getting hit by shrapnel.
As mentioned, we’re 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, we’ve 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 we’ve 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 we’re 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 we’ve learned a lot through this event. We’re 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 we’ll 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
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 Year’s World Bee Day
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 world’s 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 it’s 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.
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 we’ve always dreamt about building. We strive to be open and communicative with our community, to listen to our community’s 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 don’t know. We know where it started. Early on in Last Epoch we released Keeper’s Gloves and Keeper’s 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 we’re 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 we’d like to share today.
We’ve 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.
[h2]Bloodkeeper’s Nest[/h2]
The first Creator Unique we’d like to show is the new “Bloodkeeper’s 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.
[h2]Hive Mind[/h2]
The second Creator Unique we’d like to show is the “Hive Mind” created with K1ngisback. This unique Rogue helm focuses on hybridizing the rogue’s 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, you’ll 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 Keeper’s Gloves, and Keeper’s Idols, because both of these new Uniques will be released with the next major update! I know I’m very excited to have more bee swarm viability. If you’re 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, we’ll 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 you’re 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!
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 world’s 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 it’s 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 we’ve always dreamt about building. We strive to be open and communicative with our community, to listen to our community’s 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 don’t know. We know where it started. Early on in Last Epoch we released Keeper’s Gloves and Keeper’s 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 we’re 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 we’d like to share today.
We’ve 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.
[h2]Bloodkeeper’s Nest[/h2]
The first Creator Unique we’d like to show is the new “Bloodkeeper’s 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.
[h2]Hive Mind[/h2]
The second Creator Unique we’d like to show is the “Hive Mind” created with K1ngisback. This unique Rogue helm focuses on hybridizing the rogue’s 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, you’ll 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 Keeper’s Gloves, and Keeper’s Idols, because both of these new Uniques will be released with the next major update! I know I’m very excited to have more bee swarm viability. If you’re 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, we’ll 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 you’re 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
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.