Last Epoch News

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.

We’re 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 doesn’t 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 won’t trip many people up, and if someone is unsure about an item’s 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 it’s the wrong item type (e.g. “I’m guessing that Lucerne is a Polearm”).
  

Now, let’s take a closer look at some of our new Spear weapons, which you will be able to find in 0.8.4.
[h2]Sun Spear[/h2]


[h2]Trident[/h2]


[h2]Ice Spear[/h2]


[h2]Coiled Bident[/h2]


[h2]Dragonslayer Glavie[/h2]


[h2]Deicide Lance[/h2]


We’ll 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

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. We’ll 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

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. We’ll have more to share on our plans for updating chat in the near future.



We know players are excited about multiplayer in Last Epoch and we can’t 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 what’s coming to the game next. And in the spirit of these changes, today we’d 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. Let’s 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 we’ve iterated on their design a lot internally to ensure that they enhance Last Epoch’s itemization by providing great end-game chase and make item drops more exciting. . We’re 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. You’ll 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:

• 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
  

We will share more about these changes in the upcoming weeks, but for now, enjoy this sneak peek of our reworked Werebear gameplay.





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 Epoch’s 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 we’re nearing completion brand new models on all of our in-game weapons and offhands.

Many visual effects, that don’t 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 Epoch’s character creation and selection screen is also showing its age as many have pointed out. We understand that first impressions are very important and we’re 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.

We’ll 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 you’ve provided to Eleventh Hour Games. We’re working hard to make Last Epoch a game that you want to come back to for years to come.

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.

[h2]Multiplayer Stability and Scale[/h2]

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.

[h2]What are our goals for October?[/h2]

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

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.

[h3]Javelin[/h3]

• 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).
  

[h3]Consecrated Ground[/h3]

• 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).
  

[h3]Shield Bash - Kindling node[/h3]

• 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.

[h3]Drain Life[/h3]

• 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.

[h3]Dread Shade[/h3]

• The Lone Watcher node on the Dread Shade tree grants 100% increased duration (from 50%).
  

[h3]Judgement[/h3]

• 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.
  

[h3]Mana Strike[/h3]

• 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 Strike’s skill tree.
  

[h3]Wandering Spirits[/h3]

• 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).
  

[h3]Warpath[/h3]

• 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.
  

[h3]Tooltips[/h3]

• Added alt text to Javelin’s Siege Barrage and Divine Fury nodes to state that they are incompatible.
  
• Added alt text to Summon Wraith’s Twin Souls and Covenant of Souls to state that they are incompatible.
  
• Fixed Static Orb’s Scatter Blast node stating the small orb did less damage, and clarified that only the small orbs can’t pull or explode.
  
• Clarified Divine Essence’s tooltip to state that it excludes healing over time effects.
  

• 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.
  

• 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.
  

• 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).
    

• 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 Lich’s 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 Puncture’s 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.