I got level 6 in first day, I got level 8-9 in second day, and level 10th in third day, and I was streaming it for about half of the time on twitch.
The only reason I started slow because my starting point was about 300 corruption and I had no gear due to switch from CoF, I had to start from cheapest items, and I also started a new build.
Now I have about a million favor, I can never spend on anything. MG favor expenditure is nothing like CoF that burns favor like gasoline and it is never enough.
In my opinion both CoF and MG have some flawes, CoF is great at the start, but some unique perk that give at the hightest levels of reputation are really not worth the grind, and for some reasons the uniques item dropped from bosses donât benefit from the prophecies, this is the main problem in my opinion, the MG faction help also with these items, yo can buy them, CoF no, for apparently no reason, to solve the problem you can simply make specific prophecies for the bosses of the monoliths, but that drop their specific unique, not random as now, or at lest have more chance to drop them, so you still need to farm them but with better odds, as is supposed to be in this guild. MG instead have a poor start but better end, but also in this case the market need some change, i donât know, maybe some soft cap ranged price based of the actual average price of items, and no, the markets isnât free, the real market have some rules where you canât go under a certain price and can go to much over.
MG does not have a poor start, I bought all uniques for free as soon as I joined, I think it is rank 3 or so. Some of those boss uniques I remember had to farm for dozens of hours on CoF.
MG problems now are connected to game flaws, botsellers and RMT actors, all good items are costing billions of gold, which happened after the game economy was abused through bugs and duping.
Normal players have no chance to get good gear with ultra low drop rates and billion gold costs, only those who buy gold for real life money.
Question regarding the Merchantâs Guild: if you can just buy the gear that you want, does that not turn the game into a rep and gold farm instead of a loot farm?
Not to mention any LP gear for a build worth a darn is grossly inflated in value. Weâre talking 10-100 million or more. MG is quickly becoming garbage for non sweat lords.
A little Disclaimer:In no way i argue or claim that this Faction might not need a little tweaking or maybe some stuff adressed/adjusted etc. It was obvious from the getgo - considering the nature of the Faction Concept plus that it is a pretty unique and fresh idea, that it wonât land perfectly and that EHG will need to work on it in the long run and tweak it.
BUT
What often gets me on this debate about CoF vs MG is that people pretty much reduce it towards an efficiency lense, not looking it from a proper experience thing and how it can effects itâs overall value and longlivety.
About âExperienceâ: One basic key-difference between CoF and MG is itâs experience in terms of: How do you as player acquire the loot â and how this effects the overall experience of the Gameplay and how differently it defines fun for individual people. MG is pretty much target farming, CoF is oldschool RNG Loothunting. And both of them have their own values in terms of experience and so on. Plus obviously how you Value Items in general. So like as example:
MG gives you much more likely the experience of being able to finish your Build BiS, which sounds cool for some players⌠but comes at a cost of an experience, where you not really earned it yourself in putting in yourself and get the dopamine kick when itâs randomly dropped⌠you just buy it. Items have a different value for MG players because you donât really value the items itself but rather the monetary value it have on the market, as long itâs not for your specific class/build or a very rare potential of a class you might play ⌠the rest is just $$$. But you still be able to âfinishâ your build or work on it more progressively and have an easier time to get to the points where you can push harder the endgame content.
CoF is the opposite to this. This is centric for people who enjoy ARPGâs with selffound rng drops, and which value items better as items, because they not only measure it on the monetary side, but also on what the item actual is. You can appreciate it much more spread out stats on exalted, uniques and such, and save it up for later if you might play a class or build where this item fits on. Even further encourage you to alt because you get items which link together. And that drags you into the gameplayloop where diabloâs strenght in terms of loothunting and itemizations gets into begin with. This isnât âexactlyâ World of Warcraft or Dark Souls, where item-drops are much more specific tied to bosses for targetfarming or such - or specific spots and chests where you find them⌠they are random. But within the randomness there is a certain âbeautyâ of it because as frustrating as it might be to not getting the item you want for a long time or if every. It makes the experience so much more personal and valuable, because not everyone get it just because of it, or everyone gets it⌠but rather there are chances in both direction to maybe you will get it or even maybe not. And that also can help to boost to appreciate items in general even âmoreâ because if you find something good - even if not for your current build or class⌠it still have value because you can acknowledge how good this item potentially be and this is your own personal drop you luckily but also with some effort got. But the tradeoff for that is: You might never build perfectly BiS or class to absolute perfection (esp. in a short time.) Maybe never push endgame content as much as the ultimate min-maxers who just buy straight up stuff on MGâs side.
Another major aspect of it is, as pointed out above already, the value of items itself, and how it also can reflect within the community.
Like compare the Reddit of Diablo 4 vs Last Epoch right now. When someone post an drop he/she finally got in D4 with particular good rolls, this people still arenât excited because they got a ton other variations of it with not any real gain of value. The only rarer stuff are the uber ones, but then again you mostly only farm duriel for them. And yes i know â Blizz adresed a issue people have had with adding certain bosses which have certain loottables/droprates for people to specific farm. But then again Diablo aims more for the casual crowd and itemization and item-progression in Diablo is a problem to begin with. But my point is - people arenât really excited for the loot, because itâs much more likely to get this items than not, which doesnât give them any real value.
Look at LE Reddit - you see a ton of screenshots of people sharing what they got dropped, because items ARE valuable. Even if you get an âbadâ item getting exalted with a few t6 or t7 can mean something⌠people are excited when they get uniques with LP3 or 4, and especially when they slap items into it and it works out, and you find quite some people in the comments hyping that up as well and congratz the op. Items and Moments like this are so special for people, because itâs not guaranteed or likely, but based on the odds of luck / rng.
And donât get me wrong on this. I donât say there canât be a place for target-farming in ARPGâs, but it often alters - based on what type of player you are, in a negative way, because it takes out part of itâs appeal and most often need to be done cleverly/well. Like as example Grim Dawn have Monster Infrequents which are super target farmable⌠but this are âmostlyâ rares which have random affixes so even despite targetfarming, the items itself are rng to give them value, meanwhile most Legendaries and such are pretty random⌠that gives a good mix between(because that can be an issue for purely RNG games) â youâre stuck with your gear and donât really get something new for it⌠then targetfarm a certain mob for itâs MI - something half decent should pop up anyway⌠but you still have the classic RNG experience which defines the Genre so much.
LE in my opinion doesnât even need this because due itâs strong crafting system you normally shouldnât be stuck anyway.
Anyway thatâs my thoughts on this. Again not saying that any of them factions doesnât need any tweaks, adjustements or whatever at all, but i find from my pov really important that both devs but also players keep in mind, that the overall gameplayexperience is also a part that matters, and this faction system is so intruiging because it offers to different and distinctive experiences⌠and isnât a matter of most (or equal) efficiency. And alter/change too much on that, so it basically getâs a MG 2.0 just NPC / Soloplay, just because seemingly certain playertypes picked out the wrong factions (maybe because of social anexiety) which is already in for better targetfarming, would be really frustrating for me. At that point iâd argue it would be even better to introduce potentially a third factions which squeeze in the middle of both to where you might get less loot but better target farming (and maybe crafting advantages), but not as extreme as MG.
you can tell you dont play MG, Iâve played both, you cant buy anything above rare gear until your far past level 95. Tons of people are getting hard locked at corruption 100 cause they couldnt get any good drops during the campaign and than they cant buy anything cause the bazaar is gate keeped at level 8. Your getting good gear in CoF the moment you start getting prophecies. From level 6 to 8 in MG the only way to get favor is grinding the same monos over and over again to gain miniscule amounts of favor to than go click the list and unlist button hundreds of times. People who think MG is easy go play it, its only the try hards and no lifers getting to level 8. The MG put an extreme sour taste in my mouth its so bad.
Everyones theory on trading being more powerful is 100% correct, but not in Last Epoch, only the top 5% try hards and no lifers make it to actual trading, the rest who go MG have no magic find and no trading.
On Cycles MG is good as it force resets gold sellers which means costs will never grow so high as to make MG impossible without rmt. As on cycles you dont have the time as your limited to 4 months. On legacy there is no time limit.
After season 1 ends the cost of items on legacy will be gold cap for every item due to rmt. On legacy CoF will always be better as long as rmt exists.
Therefore best way to gear an alt is like this. Join MG, use the broken economy at start of the cycle to get 2-3lp items dirt cheap.
For your main char you want to main, go CoF, as your cof tag will remain most likely and now you got all time in the world to push as hard as you want
I hope the developers release some data on MG vs CoF balance, like what percentage plays each and how long it takes the median MG player to achieve X(like a tier 3 Julra kill) vs a CoF player.
Only then can we judge balance. Builds, luck and player skill can influence individual experience more than MG vs CoF balance but it will even out in the larger population(unless quite all skilled players play X faction) only data from a large population is trustable.
This is just completly untrue, you can buy rares farely early on, Full rares is more than enough to run emp monoâs especially if those rares have the affixes you want.
CoF you may be getting more gear but the amount of combinations that are available on an item means that you are still heavily reliant on RNG for it to be better than MG. The only way CoF will come close to MG is if you can literally CHOOSE the affixes you want to drop more frequently.
Level 8 allows you to buy ALL Exalted items. You can get exalted weapons at rank 5 which is arguably one of the most important items to have exalted. Not only that, you can buy you IDOLS at rank 4 and Uniques at rank 3.
This is pretty much everything you need to bring a build online by the time you hit rank 4, and rank 5 is a nice DPS boost in the form of exalted weapons.
You should hit close to rank 5 by the time you have unlocked emp monos, you can bost this by gambling your favor or purchasing more items that may be usable on a potential alt you want.
The simple fact is, CoF will never ever come close to MG. Even in the late game drop rates. If CoF is 3x the drop rate it is still 2% vs 6% chance. MG can probably bridge that gap via corruption. At the start of a new cycle it would potentially be WEEKS before the average CoF toon reaches the same corruption as your average MG toon.
Wife and i got rank 5 last night after like 6 days of grinding selling and buying items. Just trying to get to rank 5. We started empowered with rank 4 just a little over not much. Currently running 117 corruption im lvl 89 very close to 90 shes lvl 88 almost lvl 89
The grind to gain ranks in MG is insanely slow. Ranks 5-8 need to be consolidated down. Both exalted ranks and lp ranks need to be one rank. Jist like rank 3 when u can buy all unquiqes.
It kinda does.
I switched from T10 CoF to merchantsguild and after some farming i couldnt see why i shoud stay in MG.
You need so much gold to get good 3 LP items, and the generel droprate of items is aweful.
Imo MG is kinda underpowered if you are a average player.
The prices are through the roof and you need minimum T8 MG to actually get the nice benefits of MG.
Last Epoch has this philisophy that if you are good at the game you get the good.
Not like in Poe where you can basicly Farm in T1 Maps and still get the same good loot as in T16.
For example if i farm with my char at 500 corruption i get reputation in no time and can buy prophecys. AND i get a better chance of highler LP items due to the higher corruption + the CoF perk.
Whiles when you in c100 you take loooong to get all that, and most ppl are at 100c or below.
Same for MG.
So there is a need for a balance so lower c player can get beneits too.
Did it ever occur to you that they require this amount of gold because they are worth that much gold? Those items your are talking about ARE rare. And to be fair if you are talking 50+ mil it really is not that much once you understand the market and are able to sell items correctly, remember if you can buy items for a certain value, you can also sell them for a certain value as well.
And like with any game if you are playing a meta build then the items you want are going to cost more.
Lets do a little math, after some basic research on items I would estimate each item to have on average about 15 prefixes and 15 affixes available to them and around 8 bases. Lets say we aim for at least 2 of the stats we want and target 1 base item.
FYI This is an estimation and not 100% accurate. And this DOES NOT include the chance for exalted items. I do not have the mental fortitude right now to try to figure that out exactly. (If anyone wants to correct my math or build on this feel free)
If we have 15 Suffixes and 15 Prefixes and we want to aim for say 2 of the 15 suffixes and 1 of the prexies. This is rounded figure of around 10% chance.
Now we have 8 bases and we are targeting 1 of those 8 bases as usually this is the case. This would be a 12.5% ill round it up to 13%
Now the chance of both of these occuring naturally is about 1.5%, lets say CoF has a 3x high rate than normal so we have 4.5%.
This means every item you drop would have roughly 4.5% chance to have the right base and 2 Prefixes and 1 Suffix you want. This math does NOT include the chance to roll a bad 4th suffix on an item, nor does it take into account affix or base rarity. This is also only calculating the chance for this item to HAVE those affixes. This does not mean that any of those affixes will be T6/7.
The idea of this is to showcase just how rare it is to even get an item with 3/4 affixes you want, let alone find one that is exalted.
Now I am fully aware that you do not need 3/4 affixes to craft an item and get it to 4/4 affixes and this is a pretty much âPerfectâ item and would be an almost guarenteed 4/4 affixes with T5 or higher.
This is interesting seeing as I didnât even join a faction until mid 80âs, and I hit rank 7 before I hit 100. It will be significantly slower until you hit emp monoâs but then it shoud speed up quite a bit. But as I said in my earlier post, rank 5 you can pretty much get everything you need to get a character build working quite well.
You can sell ALL items pretty much immediately so the grind to rank 8 is almost irrelevant as this just gives you time to farm gold/favor to buy items once you hit this rank so there is no real net loss.
The grind for CoF ranks is a net loss because each rank gives you more chance at more things and while you donât have that rank you do not have that chance and are therefore theoertically losing out on drops.
I have 1 char that is MG rank 10, and 3 other chars that are CoF also rank 10, the difference is huge in drop rates in echoes and dungeons. Although a lot of shitty drops that noone needs, it makes me wanna play more, and try out different builds. I reached 1k Corruption on 3 out of my 4 chars. The only issue i have is boss drops and specific exalted items.
If they would introduce a system where you could specifically target farm boss drops in CoF: for example, a prophecy that when you kill that specific boss, has a chance to drop that boss drops uniques (doesnât matter the chance, but something to be able to target some of the low rate drops). For example i cleared Lightless Arbor i think more than 100 times, i havenât seen the chest drop yet.
Playing Market at 1000 corruption is depressing, no drops, no dopamine hits, you have all the gear bought.
