Last Epoch News

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 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 Primalist’s 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 Primalist’s skill kit before the end of the year with patch 0.8.4. For those keeping score in the community, that means you’ll have patch 0.8.4 in your hands in no more than 46 days from now.

In that time you’ll be hearing from us a lot. In fact, we’ve 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!

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We hope you’ve been enjoying our Druid Development Week so far, and thanks for joining us here again for our biggest reveal yet. We’ve 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][/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


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 didn’t 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.


Swarmblade’s 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. We’ve 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.




Swarmblade’s second skill is Dive. We knew we needed to hit the mobility aspect while also maintaining his aggressiveness. Looking at the Rogue’s 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.




Swarmblade’s 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. That’s where Swarmblade’s 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 Swarmblade’s toolkit.




With every new transformation comes a new skill tree and Swarmblade is no exception. Swarmblade’s 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 Primalist’s 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.






We’re 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 don’t 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

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 Druid’s most adaptive transformation - 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 can’t 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 nature’s creatures.
  

[h2]New Spriggan Visuals[/h2]
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 Druid’s 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.



[h2]New Transformation[/h2]
We’ve 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.

[h2]Spirit Thorns[/h2]
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.



[h2]Thorn Shield[/h2]
While we loved the theme of Root Wall, we’ve ultimately decided it wasn’t 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.



[h2]Summon Healing Totem & Summon Vines[/h2]
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 Druid’s 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 Druid’s 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

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 Druid’s skill - Entangling Roots.


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 it’s 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 skill’s area were also effectively rooted. This often created a pile-up effect as enemies were all stopping at the edge of the skill’s effected area. This made it harder to solve as completely immobilizing the enemies exacerbates the pile-up effect.
  

To combat visual noise it made sense to avoid leaving a persistent visual effect on the ground for the full duration of the root. From a mechanical perspective, losing the persistent ground effect would have the added benefit of preventing the pile up issue, as no new enemies could be rooted after the initial cast. As such, we changed the skill from having a persistent ground effect to having an initial impact that left enemies immobilized, while also suffering damage over time.



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 Druid’s 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

We hope all you Druid fans are ready for some excitement because heading into patch 0.8.4 our Primalist’s 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 Druid’s first and most ferocious transformation - the Werebear.

We’re 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 won’t 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 Werebear’s ferocious arsenal.
[h2]Swipe[/h2]
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 Werebear’s 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.


[h2]Warcry[/h2]
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.


[h2]Maul[/h2]
Maul is a new skill for Werebear, replacing Ravage. Ravage had two issues that we wanted to resolve. Firstly it didn’t 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 it’s 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.


[h2]Rampage[/h2]
Every good brawler would really love a way to get around the battlefield quickly. Especially in an ARPG. While the Werebear’s 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 weren’t 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 don’t 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 Druid’s Wearbear form in Patch 0.8.4. We hope you join us again soon to check out the exciting updates coming to the Druid’s 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