Last Epoch News

Hello Travelers,

We’ve heard you and we have some exciting news to share with you today. You may recall back in December we released our plans for Item Gifting in Last Epoch. Since that time, we’ve been engaged in an ongoing conversation with the community about Trade. Many players expressed they were excited by our decision to champion finding loot, and many others have voiced their disappointment, letting us know that they were sincerely looking forward to trading their treasures in Eterra.

We’ve made it clear in the past that we want Last Epoch to be a place where you can come to slay monsters and find great gear upgrades, and it still will be. However, it is equally important to us that we remain a studio that listens and is grounded in our community.

In short, we want Last Epoch to be the ARPG that rewards you for hunting items the way you most enjoy, no matter which side of the trade conversation you’re on. So, we’ve been hard at work discussing, debating, and consulting with some of our trusted community members, and we’re happy to present you with the following:

[h2]Item Factions[/h2]
We are pleased to introduce you to an early peek at the feature design of our new Item Factions System in Last Epoch. Inside, you will find two powerful factions - The Merchant’s Guild and the Circle of Fortune, ready to accept and reward your allegiance in Eterra.



Along your travels in Last Epoch, you will encounter factions of Eterra’s denizens and may choose to align yourself with them. Aligning with a Faction will allow you to gain both Reputation to improve your rank within that faction, and Favor to spend on that faction’s services and rewards. Climbing ranks within a faction will unlock their unique perks, services, and rewards.

The Merchants’ Guild and the Circle of Fortune are the first two factions that we’ll introduce in Last Epoch, and your choice of allegiance will determine the way your character obtains and exchanges items in the endgame. Each character can only represent and gain reputation with one of these factions at a time, enabling their exclusive benefits.

Characters may swap between factions at any time. Equipping items found while in the Circle of Fortune will require ranks in that faction and equipping items purchased through trade while in the Merchant’s Guild will require ranks in that faction. So, switching between them is more akin to respeccing your character rather than something you’ll want to do routinely.

Details:

• You can have different characters in the same Cycle in different factions
  
• Faction reputation is shared account-wide
  
• Faction reputation resets each Cycle
  
• When a Cycle ends and characters are transferred to the permanent non-Cycle environment, their Faction progress will be carried over
  

[h2]The Factions[/h2]

Below are a few reward examples you can expect when aligned with the Circle of Fortune:



Circle of Fortune is a mystical Faction that had banded together to seek fortune through arcane research and astrology. Aligning with the Circle of Fortune will grant you powerful benefits towards finding more and better items. You will also have the ability to purchase Prophecies with Favor which will bend fate to your advantage and help you find the specific items that you’re looking for.


Below are a few reward examples you can expect when aligned with the Merchants’ Guild:



The Merchants Guild is a prosperous organization that believes in prosperity through commerce. Aligning with the Merchants Guild will allow you to trade increasingly powerful items as you gain reputation and give you access to the Bazaar where you can browse and search for items that other players have listed and list items on the Bazaar yourself. All types of equipment, such as idols, uniques, and even legendary items can be traded with other players if you have a high enough rank, but crafting materials cannot.



The Bazaar will be a new trade-focused zone for players aligned with the Merchants’ Guild. Here you can gather, socialize, barter, and trade your wares throughout the market. Players will search through a variety of stalls for player-listed items, which you can buy and sell for gold with advanced searching functionality, no purchase delay, and no tax on the gold cost of the item.



We’ve heard from the community that sharing items with friends is important to their enjoyment of Last Epoch long term. We agree, and so we are continuing to support Item Gifting between friends and party play regardless of your faction choice. To this end we’re doing two things:

1. Item Gifting as experienced in the multiplayer tests and in 0.9 will remain. If you are with a player fighting enemies and an item drops you’ll be able to freely give your teammates that item if you wish.
   
2. We’ll be introducing a new item type called Resonances that drop when you’ve played alongside a player for a very extended period of time. Using a resonance on an item will enable it to be gifted to that player even if they were not present when the item dropped.
   
3. 
   

[h2]Thank You to Our Community[/h2]
Thank you for all the passion and constructive criticism you’ve shown in these conversations. We’ve been listening carefully, collecting your feedback and creating a solution that champions the diverse nature of our players. We are building Last Epoch for all of you, with all of you, and as ARPG gamers ourselves that came together to make this game, we value your ideas and opinions.

We are very excited about introducing Item Factions and invite you to continue the conversation with us. It’s worth noting that these systems will not be included in Patch 0.9, but we will be aiming to get them into subsequent patches this year. Resonances may be added sooner than Factions on account of their smaller scope.

[h2]Still have questions?[/h2]
Check out our FaQ over on our forums!


Thank You,
Last Epoch Team

Hey Travelers!

Signup for Last Epoch’s Free Multiplayer Beta Playtest is now live on Steam!

If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to introduce your friends to Last Epoch, there is no better time than right now. You don’t need to own a copy of the game; all you need is a Steam account. Head over to our steam page and hit the sign-up button!



When can we sign up?
Right now!

When can we play?
Thursday February 23rd @ 10am CST through Monday February 27th @ 10am CST

What the Free Multiplayer Beta includes

• First Look at the upcoming 0.9 Patch
  
• Play for free with up to 3 friends in your party!
  
• Adventure through the first 4 chapters
  
• Access to 12 Class Masteries.
  

We are looking forward to seeing you in Eterra,
Last Epoch Team

Hello Travelers!

Yesterday we announced our 500,000 units sold milestone, and today we present to you a gift from the entire Last Epoch team!

Introducing, the Traveler’s Backpack.

This exclusive gift is our way of thanking you, and commemorating our shared journey with all of you who were with us from the start and those of you who are joining us just before we step into the world of Eterra together.



Spoiler Warning - Below is a list of each item on the backpack itself.

[expand]


Starting in the Top Left, and going around clockwise!

1. The Last Epoch Logo Patch - This was the first version of the Last Epoch logo revealed during our Kickstarter launch.
   
2. The original Symbol of Eterra
   
3. Bee-Mike - A wonderful momento from our Dev Mike and his Bee-Themed streams!
   
4. In the map pocket on the right side - Map of Eterra
   
5. The Bedroll on Top - Our first support pack playmat from our Kickstarter.
   
6. Fools! Fools! - One of our favorite quotes from our resident disgruntled Mage.
   
7. Rahyeh’s Reserve Hot Sauce - created for the 2022 April Fool’s Day by team member Wick, and showcased in a special hot wings episode on the Weekly Dev Stream.
   
8. The Material of the backpack itself is 100% authentic grole hide. (All grole hide was ethically sourced
9. from a series of ones and zeros.)
   
10. Navigational Instruments - Every Traveler needs tools to read their maps.
    
11. Zizaran Campaign Mug - from our earliest campaigns to support Last Epoch!
    
12. Primalist Patch - The OG class icon to showcase the Primalist.
    
13. A Skullen figurine - Remembering the early times of Last Epoch!
    
14. Epog!
    
15. Where would we be without the ever-present reminder of Multiplayer When?
    
16. Orian’s Eye - Always watching you. Waiting. :slight_smile:
    

[/expand]

If you happened to notice either in the game or watching someone’s stream, we had a sneak peek at this item during our last 2 events.



The Travelers backpack back slot cosmetic will be given to ALL owners of Last Epoch who own a copy prior to the Multiplayer Beta Patch 0.9, coming on March 9th, so there is still time to get the game and the backpack!

If you are thinking about jumping into the world of Eterra there is still time to also get the original supporter packs, but those will be going away during our March 9th release, and a new set of supporter packs will become available. The price for Last Epoch will still remain the same, so you don’t need to worry about a price increase when the launch happens.

A note about current supporter packs and upgrading:
[expand]

If you purchased the game through our website, and would like to upgrade your supporter pack, you can have this done through a support ticket to the link below.

If you purchased the game through Steam, or via a Steam Key, and you’d like to upgrade your supporter pack to a higher tier pack before 0.9, we can’t technically do an upgrade. However, since your purchase on Steam is already considered the Ardent Gladiator supporter pack, and you wish to upgrade to one of the other packages (only available until March 9th), we can offer an additional 350 cosmetic coins as we cannot refund Steam purchases in any way. We can do this for you by submitting a ticket to the link below after purchasing the desired pack.

Link: https://support.lastepoch.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=1260808459030
[/expand]

Thank you to everyone who has helped us on this incredible journey and we look forward to seeing you all showing off your Backpack!

Thank You to everyone,
Last Epoch Team

Hello Travelers,

First and foremost, we would like to thank all of you who participated in the Pack the Server Event Week. We understand it was a lot to ask to sign up for the event, and changing around branches on Steam to get involved, and we greatly appreciate everyone who took the time and effort to do so. This event was able to provide us with all sorts of great information from not only our backend systems but all sorts of feedback provided directly by all of you.

Bugs were encountered and squashed. The servers struggled and were improved. Over the course of the event, we released several hotfixes to improve and fix various issues brought to our attention, and eventually even released the last remaining endgame system to the event, the Arena, alongside a number of server-side improvements which made it possible.

One of the things we were able to test to great results was our ability to quickly develop and QA changes based on feedback, complete a build for the fix and release the build within a short timeframe. On the day the event started, the client released at 10:00AM CT, then only 6 hours later were able to release the first hotfix for several bugs, as well as adjust to feedback changing the beta disclaimer to only display once per account. Over the event, we also continued to get a lot of great feedback regarding the various performance, scenes, VFX, and SFX sounds, which were great to read and feel the excitement for 0.9. Overall, we were very happy with the results of the event.

As we continue to close in on 0.9 (less than a month away!) we’re focusing almost entirely on resolving the remaining bugs as all core systems for 0.9 are in place. That means all the little bugs regarding quest state tracking, channeling skills, controller adjustments, and continued endgame server performance are the items on our remaining hitlist for 0.9. Of course, we still have one more upcoming event on Feb 23rd, the Open Beta Event, in which all steam users are able to participate, even if they don’t currently own Last Epoch.

Over the coming weeks, we will be posting more information regarding the launch of 0.9 Convergence, some more specifics on some of the changes you all got to experience, and of course as we close in on patch day itself, the much-anticipated patch notes!

Thank you, everyone, we hope you enjoyed your time during this preview of 0.9, with the zone reworks, skill changes, and of course the early multiplayer beta allowing us to get the servers tuned for the much-anticipated release of the multiplayer beta on March 9th.

We hope to see you all there on March 9th for Beta Patch 0.9 - Convergence!

Hello Travelers!

This past weekend we held our first of multiple multiplayer events, the “Invitational”, which went exceptionally well. The aim of this event was to gather feedback, test our live operations procedures, and give the community their first full look at playing together with friends in Last Epoch. We were able to capture a ton of significant data and feedback to help us prepare for the multiplayer release coming with Last Epoch: Convergence on March 9th.

From what we observed, many of the participants thoroughly enjoyed the new and updated campaign zones, all the VFX, SFX, and music changes, which was fantastic to hear. We also received a lot of positive feedback regarding the ease of grouping up, and generally feeling great playing together for hours on end, outside of a few minor bugs (we’re on them!). Some issues that we are aware of and have been actively working on did rear their heads during this event, such as server-side performance in end-game activities and specific late-game team strategies that were providing too great of a bonus for groups. While we were aware of these kinds of things, from the event, we were able to get a better view of where these impacts are coming from, have made some adjustments to our priorities, and have already made some changes for the next events.

We want to go over some of this feedback and what kind of differences you can see between the Invitational event, future events, and Patch 0.9.



[h2]Server-side performance[/h2]

One of the last things we saw during the event, but one of the first we want to address, is some late-game activities server-side performance. While participants agreed that client-side performance has improved significantly with this release, we did encounter some issues with server performance for endgame builds that can spawn a lot of objects. As mentioned, this was something we were already aware of and actively working on for 0.9. However, the event was able to show us a few specific things that were leading to more performance loss than others.

One of the largest offenders we were able to identify was server lag encountered when groups would split up within an area to individually tackle different parts of the zone. This caused a number of issues, including many actors to all be activated at once, and the server needed to handle that data flow for each player. We’re already well along on a fix for this which should greatly help reduce that performance hit, and while it won’t be in place for Thursday’s event, it will be in place shortly after. There are other hidden things we’re working on (like excessive server logging); however, we think this was one of the more visible issues, and so wanted to make sure we’re addressing it here.

Another offender we saw with ‘lag’, was actually not performance at all. We found some participants who were experiencing lag were actually being assigned to incorrect server locations, such as European players being issued North American servers. This is something we immediately began investigating, and have some changes in place to help address incorrect server allocations which should help with many of these scenarios. In conjunction with the added ability to see server region with the latency tooltip, we expect this to help improve the experience when partying with various players, as well as being able to recognize reasoning for certain ping values.

[h2]Gameplay[/h2]

Of course, there was a lot of gameplay experience feedback provided that we’re acting on as well. For the next event, we’re prioritizing some of the quickest improvements we can get in in time. Some adjustments are technically smaller things, like adjusting the latency bar to represent expectations with ping values better, and adding server information to the latency tooltip, however, this can have a much larger impact on user experience and received more feedback than we expected. As such, we’re working on adding these two items for the event this Thursday.

One of the more common areas of feedback we received during the event was that the campaign was made a bit too easy when in a full party. In response to this, we’re going to be bumping up enemy health scaling for the next event. We’re doing this in smaller increments, so we don’t over-correct, as many of these players are highly experienced players, but we’ll be continuing to monitor feedback on this and adjusting as well.

We also heard from participants that they really enjoyed the new online monolith experience with seamless transitions between Echoes and Echo of a World (the rest area in monoliths). For the campaign, though, the length of some loading screen times was a common topic. We have some adjustments already in the pipe to help reduce these loading screen times, which we’re hoping to have in for this Thursday’s 10k event.

[h2]Itemization[/h2]

Another common topic of feedback was item gifting and the user experience of it. While feedback noted that the interaction felt really good with gifting, and it was a strong addition to gameplay, currently, once you gift an item to a party member, that item can’t be gifted again. Being unable to gift it further caused a couple of negative experiences during the event, so in response, we’re changing this so that when an item is gifted, it retains its ‘giftability’ status and can still be gifted to all the same people who were eligible for it. While this does offer a bit more power to the gifting system, we want to prioritize a fun experience.

Many keen-eyed community members also called out that there seemed to be something up with item drop rates during the event, and that some things appeared a little more common than normal. They’re correct! In response to feedback from both previous blog posts, and event feedback, we’re adjusting some drop rates. In particular, this means making ‘rarer’ idols such as Smite on Throwing Hit not as rare, culling some of the lower level drops - converting them into crafting material drops, and adjusting the distribution of exalted items to make drops more exciting rather than all the focus being on echo reward nodes. We’re continuing to tweak this to reach an even better state in the looting and gearing experience in Last Epoch, and are actively watching feedback on this topic.

We also see the efficiency of boss farming in multiplayer talked about frequently. We currently have an active plan to bring this in line that we’re working on implementing. When you participate in a monolith boss fight in multiplayer, in order to get rewards you will need to have sufficient stability for the fight, and receiving rewards from the fight will cost your stability. So while you can participate in any boss fight, in order to get rewards you need to have, and spend the stability for it. This means you won’t be able to farm stability once as a group, then chain bosses with each party member. While this change won’t be in place for Thursday’s event, we wanted to acknowledge that we do hear this feedback, and are actively working on it!



There are, of course, many other things we’re continuing to work on, and with our next pre-patch event in only a few days, we’re hard at work on getting everything ready for this Thursday’s 10k Multiplayer Beta week-long event. We’re really excited to get everyone in the community into the experience, as well as the big Pack the Server party, where we’ll ask everyone to help us break things on Saturday. There’s a lot to see and explore with 0.9, including many new unique items, base item changes, updates and adjustments to almost every skill in the game, new zones, VFX, SFX, Enemies, and a whole bunch more. Even if you’re not a big ‘multiplayer’ enthusiast, there’s still a lot to see and check out in this patch.

If you haven’t yet had an opportunity to sign up for the 10k event, you can quickly and easily do so here: https://events.lastepoch.com/packtheserverparty. We hope to see all of you in Eterra in just a couple of days.

Until then Travelers, may the bees be with you!