Last Epoch News

The Eternal Legends Update (Patch 0.8.4) will arrive tomorrow, December 10th!

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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
  

Check out the full Patch Notes here!

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][/previewyoutube]



In the Eternal Legends Update you will discover and explore Eterra’s 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!


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[h2]Swarmblade[/h2]
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 Swarmblade’s movement ability which also damages all enemies in its path.



Swarmblade’s third skill is Summon Hive. When using the ability, he throws down a hive and summons some feisty locusts to fight alongside him.



Swarmblade’s final skill is Swarm Strike, a 360 degree heavy spin attack that also rallies your summoned bugs around you dealing heavy AoE damage.



[h2]Werebear[/h2]
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.





[h2]Spriggan[/h2]
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.





[h2]Entangling Roots[/h2]
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

[h2]Forging Potential[/h2]
In 0.8.4 we’re 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.



[h2]New Runes and Glyphs[/h2]
We’re 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.



[h2]Crafting Outcome UI[/h2]
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:





[h2]And so much more[/h2]
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.

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.


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 unique’s 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, you’ll 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 can’t 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 didn’t 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 doesn’t 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 we’ve 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.


[h3]Can I use an exalted item with only 2 affixes on it to improve my chances of pulling the right affix?[/h3]
No, it doesn’t matter how much Legendary Potential the unique item has, the exalted item must always have exactly 4 unsealed affixes.

[h3]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?[/h3]
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.

[h3]Do tiers of mods on the exalted item weight which mods get transferred to the legendary item?[/h3]
No, each affix has the same chance to be chosen. Get them all up as high as you can before you use it.

[h3]Can I use an exalted item with 0 remaining Forging Potential?[/h3]
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.

[h3]Does level requirement of a Legendary item go up to the level of the exalted item?[/h3]
Yes, the item level is recalculated based on the affixes brought over.

[h3]Will my existing uniques gain Legendary Potential?[/h3]
Sorry, no. You’ll have to hunt down some new ones.

[h3]Do I have to bring the unique and exalted item with me into the dungeon?[/h3]
No, there is a stash in the Eternity Cache room.

[h3]Can I do any more crafting on the Legendary Item after it’s been made?[/h3]
No, we currently don’t have and don’t plan to add any way for you to further improve Legendary Items after they are made. This isn’t set in stone but it’s unlikely to change.

[h3]What exactly affects the amount of Legendary Potential that a unique item gets?[/h3]
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, it’s probably better to farm where more of that unique drops. This might not always be true but don’t expect to frequently find even 3Leg uniques in a level 100 zone. These high potential items are very rare.

[h3]Can a Legendary Item be reforged as a unique into a new Legendary using a new exalted item?[/h3]
No, only unique items may be placed in the Eternity Cache with an exalted.

[h3]Do all unique items drop with at least 1 Legendary Potential?[/h3]
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.

With each patch we add new content and improve what already exists in the game. It’s 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, we’ve 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 didn’t 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.

Let’s take a closer look at Mage and Acolyte.

[h2]Mage[/h2]





[h2]Acolyte[/h2]





[h2]Sentinel Corrections[/h2]

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 didn’t 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.

[h2]What else we are working on beyond 0.8.4?[/h2]

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 lege... very interesting information ready for you tomorrow!

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 it’s 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 we’re making sure to learn everything we can from those mistakes and not to repeat them. While we still may make some mistakes, we’ll 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:



[h2]Party[/h2]
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.



[h2]Friends[/h2]

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.

[h2]Gameplay[/h2]

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.



[h2]Characters[/h2]

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.

[h2]Deployment[/h2]

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.



[h2]Users / Game Access[/h2]

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.



[h2]Chat[/h2]

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.

[h2]Login[/h2]

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.



[h2]Game Server / Matchmaking[/h2]

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.

[h2]Final Thoughts[/h2]

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.