QUEST

• Fixed an issue where players would get the Immortal Empire quest before gaining access to that quest state of Elder Gaspar
• Fixed an issue that caused the elevator to the Council Chambers to never appear after defeating waves of monsters at the end of the Void Assault quest

CONTROLLER

• Fixed issues with interacting (such as opening a chest, or talking to an NPC) while using a controller
• Fixed an issue with mapping the “Y”/Triangle controller button
• Fixed issue with controller bindings disappearing when using a mouse
• Controller binding dialog can be closed by pressing the “B” / Circle button
• Navigation cursor refocuses the corresponding action binding button after an action is bound

UI

• Fixed an issue where once a party member enters the arena and you do NOT enter the arena, you cannot open any UI
• Fixed an issue so that “Steam Required” and “License Required” are separate errors
• Fixed issue where some enemies had no/only partial red outlines when hovered
• Fixed an issue where item tooltips displayed when the mouse was not hovering them
• Fixed issue causing “no characters found” to be overlaid on your character list at character selection
• Fixed inconsistent portraits for Maceth and Leyda

SKILLS

• Fixed a bug where Elemental Nova’s damaging area was not affected by increases to its area of effect
• Fixed issue where when returning to human form after transforming turns, the player model invisible
• Fixed most instances of a bug where channeled movement skills, particularly Flame Rush and Shield Rush, could lock the player into the movement and not visually move the player until the ability ended

OTHER

• Slightly Improved party transition times
• Fixed a visual gap in Festering Sewers
• Fixed weird visual triangles at top of screen in The Ancient Cavern
• Fixed issue with players dying prematurely by setting their actor to invincible as soon as we spawn them, then allowing grace period to overtake later
• Fixed issue with linking the game guide in chat
• Revert change from previous patch that was causing players to see other players running in place (reverted change was a fix aiming to fix players not animating when joining a scene).

CHANGES

• Require players to manually click to transition scenes during the campaign
• Various Bazaar UI/UX improvements
• Greatly reduced the sell price of Arena Keys and Arena Keys of Memory
  • Arena keys now sell for 175 (from 6500)
  • Arena keys now sell for 175 gold (from 6500)
  • Arena keys of memory now sell for 265 gold (from 7250)
  • This was done to remove the burden of optimal on MG players feeling like they needed to level up CoF and use arena key prophecies to farm gold effectively
• Added Prevention for CoF bonuses from doubling XP tome rewards in Monoliths
  • This is also technically a bug fix as the XP Tome Reward isn’t a direct item reward. Item Factions are not intended to have an effect on experience gains, only how items are obtained.

SKILLS

• Acolyte: Ghostflame: Fixed a bug where the ailment duration increase from Occult Embers did not apply to bleed duration when the skill is converted to physical by Arteries of Malice
• Sentinel: Smelter’s Wrath: Fixed an issue where it’s animation would break if it was the first ability used in a scene
• Primalist: Spriggan Form’s Healing Totems can now have cold visuals if your Spriggan Form or Thorn Totems are cold converted
• Acolyte: Chthonic Fissure: Fixed an issue where Cthonic Fissure was causing a client performance dip.
• Fixed an issue where occasionally using a transformation skill (Werebear, Lich form, etc.) the player character would become entirely unresponsive

• Fixed a bug where the Falcon’s thrown acid flasks could cause it to consume its own Falcon Mark
• Fixed a bug where Transplant was using the incorrect VFX showing some necrotic VFX at the original position
• Fixed a bug where Dive Bomb passive “Rush of the Hunt” was not scaling with points allocated

CONTROLLER

• Fixed an issue where NPC’s that could not be interacted with would sometimes have an interaction prompt spawn when approached while using a gamepad.
• Fixed an issue where, when using a gamepad, it was not possible to specialize points in the Bone Curse skill tree without relying on the Virtual Cursor

• Fixed controller navigation on the Social Panel
• Fixed controller navigation on Choose Mastery panel
• Fixed controller navigation for “Quest Completed” popup
• Fixed a bug where some controller inputs on the map locked after navigating the quest list
• Fixed a bug where the Item Gifting D-Pad navigation could break if the player closed out of the Item Gifting window with an item still in it.
• Fixed a bug where Configure Stash Tabs did not work with the D-Pad Cursor
• Fixed a bug where the virtual keyboard could enter a state where it cannot be properly closed, locking the Player out of Gamepad inputs.
• Fixed a bug where Upheaval’s VFX was playing when you were just summoning the totem

MISC

• Fixed an issue that would sometimes result in a disconnect on transition while in a party.
• Fixed an issue in the Forgotten Graves where the Infernal Husk patrols would fail to spawn a map marker.
• Adjusted the Music in scenes The Ancient Cavern, The Verdant Lakes, and The Ancient Forest

• Fixed bug where skipping Risen Lakes and having “Admiral’s Dreadnaught” quest active or complete, then returning to Risen Lakes would make the quest “Immortal Empire” incompletable.
• Fixed bug where some enemies that join combat late were not animating.
• Fixed a bug where a Last Refuge Guard’s death animation was looping
• Fixed Move Or Break Destructible left click option not working
• Fixed some clipping issues on Rogue and Acolyte, and fixed short Sentinel
• Fixed a bug where the Wraithlord would not despawn upon unequipping Wraithlord’s Harbour

UI

• Fixed issue where game version was not showing new revisions
• Fixed a bug where an item label could fail to show if you were looking at another item when it dropped.
• Fixed a bug where legacy characters could show up as an incorrect hardcore character
• Fixed a bug where dodges did not display floating combat text
• Localization changes and corrections

• Fixed an issue where opening the Ladder menu did not properly close the inventory ui
• Fixed an issue where occasionally the overlay map zoom would default to extreme zoom in making it seem like the overlay map didn’t work at all.

• Fixed a bug where occasionally, the gamble/purchase prompt in tooltip item appeared at a very large size
• Fixed a bug where non-equipable items (such as keys) would disappear if you tried to quick-move them to the forge
• Fixed bug where UI Elements for some passives were continuing to display after points in that passive were removed
• Corrected a layer issue with the Rogue T10 Helmet
• Fixed several Rogue and Acolyte animations

• Fixed an issue that would occasionally lead to a state where you can not see or pick up items on the ground.
• Fixed an issue where occasionally player characters would not load their gear visuals or display name (instead displaying the default name of a bear emoji)
• Fixed an issue in Thetima where quest icons above NPC’s would not always update properly

QUESTS & SCENES

• Fixed an issue where a boulder was in the way in Lost Catacombs Monolith Echo Scene
• Added multiple failsafes for unlocking Heoborea waypoint after completing The Scorched Grove.
• Fixed object collision on railway-stop in The Osprix Warcamp
• Fixed unreachable chest in The Burning Pier
• Fixed NPC in The Burning Pier not animating
• Fixed ground texture in Forest Trails Monolith scene
• Fixed shrine placement in The Wengari Fortress

• Fixed a section of floor being visually missing in Mak’Elka Lower District
• Fixed Alric’s Cage not visually open in The Dreadnought’s Deck

• Fixed bug where If you die on the step for killing Yulia and then return to the zone later, the positions for the Soul Cages are not shown.

CHANGES

• Added a way to remember the last chat language selected so it doesn’t always default to English, and uses the system lang the first time instead
• Added gold spawning animation
• Made performance improvements and added Scene Variants for five additional Monolith Echo Scenes, and improved performance for Welryn Outskirts
• Changed “Jump the Deck” completion to only complete when entering the next scene. This allows the quest tracker to continue pointing to the next scene if the player does not travel there for whatever reason.
• Now unlocks waypoint to End of Time after Pannion creates the Rift to chapter 2 to allow players to proceed without using the timerift
• Added check for completing Artem’s Offer for players that had the quest before the previous patch.
• Added waypoint unlock for Lake Liath when you complete the Deep Harbor questline for players that leave after completing Deep Harbor, but don’t proceed to Lake Liath.
• Added support for merging faction progress when leaving either Solo Character Found (SCF) or Solo Account Found (SAF) Challenges
  • When you abandon a SCF character this merges the faction progress with your SAF progress.
  • When you abandon a SAF character this merges the faction progress with your normal progress.
• Fixed the options in the settings panel so you can’t accidentally abandon SAF as a SCF
• Switched Brigandine Boots to use T25 boots’ 3D art for Primalist
• Added refresh on start function to social panel so it loads friends list on start instead of waiting for the social panel to be opened.
• Reduced size of Ulatri Scavenger’s Firebreath ability
• Spriggan Form’s Healing Totems can now have cold visuals if your Spriggan Form or Thorn Totems are cold converted

• Fixed a bug where the ailment duration increase from Occult Embers did not apply to bleed duration when the skill is converted to physical by Arteries of Malice in Ghostflame tree

From the launch of our Kickstarter campaign, we knew we wanted Trade to be part of the Last Epoch community, and through our time creating the world of Eterra we went through many discussions and iterations of how a trade system could exist.

As many of you know, balancing a trade system is one of the most challenging issues to tackle in a loot-based game, as it drastically impacts the item hunt for all players. Many players do not want to play an ARPG unless there is a trade economy that gives additional value to their items and enables them to create builds more reliably. Many other players voice that a trade economy ruins their enjoyment of the item hunt and don’t want to participate in those types of systems at all. While Last Epoch does offer a solo challenge mode which does mean all items are found by yourself, it also limits co-op.

After polling the community and receiving thousands of responses we found that these two camps of players are divided shockingly close to 50/50.

On December 22nd of 2022, we announced our plans for the Item Gifting System as our version of trade. This was designed to fulfill what we felt was the core necessity to trade, to be able to share items with friends you’re playing with, while protecting the itemization systems we had built elsewhere in Last Epoch. Thankfully, our community was great enough to let us know that we needed to do more. So we got to work.

After many design meetings and conversations with the community, Item Factions began to take shape - what we feel is a unique and exciting solution to the trade debate in ARPGs - a solution not seen before, and which we believe satisfies both sides of the conversation. Item Factions holds a place of pride for us, as it’s a direct showing of what can be accomplished when working closely with our community.

So the very first thing we want to do when discussing item factions is to say this: Thank You. Thank you for being part of our community, being involved in the future of Last Epoch, and continuing to push us to innovate and drive Last Epoch forward to become a great ARPG we can all enjoy.

One of the most common suggestions we received - and what other games have tried - was to have different cycles for trade or trade-free. This solution wouldn’t work for us as it would mean dividing the player base away from each other, increasing overhead for itemization, and balancing what would be effectively two games. So, the question became: how can we implement two different ways to find and acquire items without creating a division within the community?

The answer? Item Factions. A fully integrated solution into the lore and mechanics of Last Epoch, allowing players to make a meaningful and rewarding choice in how they want to empower their loot hunt in Eterra.

On February 21st, within the world of Eterra you will find two Item Factions:

• The Merchants Guild - grants the ability to trade items with other players through the Bazaar, and player-to-player
• Circle of Fortune - grants boosts to items you find yourself through Prophecies, and passive bonuses

Learn more via the lengthy blog post.

Void Prophet - The Void Prophet will replace the current Void Clerics. We’ve also reworked this enemy’s abilities to make them a bit more fair. There should be far fewer Travelers suddenly evaporating in the presence of Void Prophets without clear telegraphing.

Mildly Corrupted Cultist - A perfect example of “everything is relative”, the Mildly Corrupted Cultist is replacing many of the generic cultist enemies. This enemy gives a fair representation of the common result of what happens to a humanoid when coming into contact with the Void.

Corrupted Cultist - Of course, the prior begs the question of “relative to what?” The Corrupted Cultist is the result of the continued effects of the void on humanoid victims, and comes in to replace many of the ranged Cultist Enemies throughout the Ruined Timelines.

Bone Scavenger - One of the new Imperial Era enemies coming to Last Epoch, the Bone Scavenger displays some of the military might of the Immortal Empire with this ambushing pack creature.

Bone Sculptor - The Bone Sculptor is another Imperial enemy which you will find in the Immortal Empire’s Ranks. The Bone Sculptor is a necromancer, capable of creating hordes of zombies if left unattended; Though they aren’t afraid to get their own hands dirty as well.

Flame Paladin - Rahyeh’s forces are also seeing some bolstering in the coming war with the updated Flame Paladin. On top of a brand new look, the Flame Paladin will also be bringing new abilities to the field, helping them stand out from the standard rank and file.

One of our major goals for the game is to improve both visual quality and performance across the board. To continue chasing this goal, we are making multiple changes to our lighting systems, shaders, and more.

Historically, many of our scenes felt a bit floaty, with characters and objects not grounded in the way we would wish. A big part of this issue was missing good contact shadows and shadows in general. There are many reasons why this is not as simple to solve as it may look - the most significant reason is of course the performance.

One of the systems we have improved for 1.0 is Ambient Occlusion. Our new implementation creates much more accurate contact shadows and brings much-needed depth into many of our scenes.

In addition to ambient occlusion improvements, we are also adding a modern screen-space Soft Shadow system. In many scenes, where we previously did not have any shadows, player light is now the source of physical light where objects around the player properly cast shadow, which is increasing much more dramatic lightning in our scenes, while still keeping performance in check. Since this is screen space solution, it has fixed performance cost, no matter how many objects or monsters are on the screen.

In addition, we are reworking lighting in almost every scene in the game, with multiple goals in mind - to improve performance, to increase the visibility of the player, and frankly, to improve the visual fidelity of our scenes.

Here is our EoT scene as an example. With new ambient occlusion, shadow system, and reworked lighting, all objects in the scene feel more grounded, the player character is clearly visible and there is a much better sense of depth.

The scene variant system is another major system we are introducing for 1.0. It is basically a set of tools and shaders which allow us to improve the visual quality of our scenes and add more variety to the game. It allows us to create dramatically different-looking scenes by using scene variant templates

In the past, it was quite hard for us to create different variants of the scene, having different weather effects or changing our vegetation. In most cases, we needed to create new materials, new texture maps or assets, and decals, and combine them to achieve results we needed - which has a negative impact on performance, since it all can increase draw calls.

However with shader changes, we now can change the vegetation, wetness of our surfaces, and add puddles to the scene using just shader functions. In other words, we can now have richer looking scenes, while improving performance in the process.

This set of tools also allows us to create new scenes more quickly, allowing the level design team to focus on, well, level design, without trying to solve technical issues and challenges.

Last, but not least, it allows us to bring much more variety into the game. For example monolith scene can look very different each time you will enter it, as you can see in some of the examples below!

We have big plans for the system and you will see us utilize it more and more as the game progresses in the future.

We’ve heard all of the feedback regarding the Shaman Mastery and agree. For 1.0 we’ll be revisiting our favorite warrior of the north (sorry Grael), giving this mastery some much needed love helping to bring it up to par with the other mastery options in Eterra. With this revisit to Shaman, we won’t be doing a complete rework of the mastery; However, we know some aspects of the mastery can be a bit lacking at the moment, and we decided it needed some time dedicated to it in preparation for 1.0.

These changes are still a work in progress, so for today’s post we’ll just be speaking a short bit to one of the big improvements coming to Shaman with the reworked Tempest Strike skill. We’ll also be making changes to the Mastery’s Passive Tree to improve options in the tree and a new, as of yet to be disclosed skill. Expect more information in a later post!

Tempest Strike, as it’s currently implemented, is a spammable melee skill imbuing each strike with a chance to trigger elemental storm spells on hit, and offering elemental penetration instead of attack speed scaling. Being a hybrid skill with both attack and spell features, with the spell procs not being the most reliable, and lack of attack speed scaling, Tempest Strike has been in a fairly rough spot. As such, Tempest Strike is getting a complete rework for 1.0, keeping the same name and theme, but with completely new mechanics, skill tree, and even role as a skill.

As of 1.0, Tempest Strike will instead be a powerful high-cost combo ability. With each strike of your weapon, Tempest Strike will flow through launching penetrating icicles, creating tornadoes, and expanding rings of lightning. In its tree you’ll find the ability to specialize into each of these strikes making them more powerful, or removing them for other benefits. You’ll also find the reworked Tempest Strike will be quite favorable to building attack speed, allowing you to rage an elemental storm through hordes of enemies with a whole new suite of animations and VFX.

Speaking of storms, this change to Tempest Strike leaves a vacancy within Primalist for a low cost generator, or filler skill, tailored towards Shaman - but that’s a story for another time as we get closer to 1.0.

We’ve gotten a lot of feedback concerning endgame echo modifiers, as well as corruption scaling. As such, we’ve decided this is another great area we can add polish to with our release. In this area, there was two main pieces of feedback we wanted to address. The first is inequality and obfuscation of Echo Modifiers, and the second is the effects of scaling corruption.

With Echo Modifiers, we wanted to focus on enemy power coming less from the modifiers themselves, and more from the inherent strength of high level enemies and Corruption directly. The goal of these changes are primarily to achieve a more predictable experience in high corruption Timelines.

To accomplish this we’ve made Echo Modifiers have shorter durations (now lasting a maximum of three echoes), and importantly made these mods no longer scale with corruption or distance from center.

As we dove into echo modifiers, there was a number of mods which scaled invisibly with corruption including enemies enraging at half health, Enemies have high speed and crit chance until approached, and enemies are deadly if not damaged recently.

These mods actually scaled at the same rate as increased damage modifiers, which if you’re familiar with these mods, means these quickly became extremely deadly without clearly presenting the increasing difficulty of these mods. This will no longer be the case as these will now have fixed values alongside all other mods, including the infamous increased damage mods.

We’re still tweaking numbers for this and testing the changes, so we’re not quite ready to share numbers. These changes to Echo modifiers should make for a smoother more predictable experience, however don’t expect tackling endgame scaling to suddenly be an easier task.

While Echo modifiers are getting reigned in, we’re also shifting some of that power from scaling modifiers directly into Corruption scaling. The difficulty modifier from corruption will now scale much more quickly meaning corruption will be the primary method of scaling difficulty, and hitting these points should be both a quicker and smoother experience. For this, we feel it’s important to provide some numbers here for context, however please do keep in mind these numbers are still subject to change:

100 corruption: 60% more monster damage and health (from 50%)

200 corruption: 170% more monster damage and health (from 100%)

300 corruption: 281% more monster damage and health (from 147%)

500 corruption: 505% more monster damage and health (from 289%).

Corruption will now also slightly scale up the average legendary potential and weaver’s will values. This means item rarity from echo modifiers will increase the total number of unique item drops for more chances at Legendary potential, while Corruption will have a multiplicative effect directly increasing the chance for Legendary Potential on each Unique item which drops.