[Comprehensive Feedback] A Roadmap to Bring Players Back to Last Epoch

Feedback and Suggestions
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I’ve been following discussions across the official forums, Reddit, and Discord, and wanted to consolidate a comprehensive list of changes and ideas that could help Last Epoch retain players long-term and attract new ones.

This is not just my opinion, it reflects recurring sentiments across the community, structured into one place to encourage discussion and (hopefully) visibility from EHG.

As we’ve seen through SteamDB, player retention has struggled since Season 2. Last Epoch follows a live service model, so its long-term success depends on both new players joining and existing players continuing to engage each season.

This is a long post, so here are the key highlights (TL;DR):

  • Revamped Monolith with shared corruption and deeper customization
  • New pinnacle bosses and aspirational endgame
  • Campaign skip and reduced friction for alternate characters
  • Improved crafting and itemization
  • CoF rework focused on target farming
  • New endgame system outside Monoliths

CORE GOAL

Create a healthier game loop that:

  • Rewards long-term progression
  • Reduces friction and repetition
  • Provides meaningful endgame goals
  • Aspirational content: something players work toward, not just farm endlessly
  • Keeps older systems relevant within the evolving gameplay loop

ENDGAME (Biggest Priority)

Revamped Monolith System

  • Remove Empowered Monoliths
  • Make Monolith Area Level scale with corruption. All monoliths retain their current starting levels, but at 100 corruption they scale to Area Level 100. You can still infinitely scale Corruption with current scaling behavior.
  • Implement a Shared corruption slider across all timelines and characters: allow the player to set corruption from 0 up to the maximum amount they reached.
  • Account-wide progression (shared stash = shared corruption slider)
  • Make Quest Echoes optional, scale with corruption and offer additional rewards based on their timeline.
  • Blessing system should be expanded with more slots and new options. Quest Echoes should also offer blessings.

New Pinnacle Bosses

  • The Weaver: Upon reaching max rank on the Woven Faction, speaking to Masque should unlock a new Woven Echo that allows fighting the Weaver herself. This Woven Echo can be used directly by talking to Masque to start the fight.
  • The Judges: Exiled Mages pinnacle encounter. Completing the Rune Prison Complex Woven Echo should reward you with a Key to access The Judges pinnacle boss, probably via a new map in the End of Time.
  • Uber Aberroth: Direct access via Shattered Road, by allowing the player to use the Threshold of Eternity Woven Echo directly in the Altar of Oblivion.
  • Primordial Rift Beast: finishing a rift beast evolution/lineage should give you a new Woven Echo that allows you to fight A Primordial Rift Beast. This Woven Echo can be used directly in the egg after finishing a rift beast evolution/lineage to start the fight.
  • Woven Echoes used to access pinnacle bosses directly should be refunded if the player fails to kill them, so they can try again.

Weaver Tree Customization Expansion:

Add many new nodes to the Weaver Tree:

  • Block Mechanics nodes (no omens/rift beasts/nemesis/etc.)
  • Force Mechanics nodes (guaranteed tombs/omens/rift beasts/etc.)
  • More Echo Reward block nodes (no uniques, no exalted rewards, etc.)
  • Reward conversion: convert Exalts into Uniques or Uniques into Exalts
  • More Pack Size nodes
  • Combine Arena with mechanics: Omen arena, Primal Arena, Weaver Arena, etc.
  • Tombs/Cemeteries related Nodes:
    • Nodes that make them Smaller or Bigger
    • Improves the chance of higher-roll idol drops
    • Increases number of uses on the Woven Enchanter
  • Omens related Nodes:
    • Monsters spawn faster
    • Chance for your echoes to be infested with extra omens
    • Possessed Omens that combine Woven and Omen rewards in one fight
  • Rift Beasts related Nodes:
    • Converts Primordial Unique drops into Primordial exalted drops or More Ancient Bones
    • More control over evolutions, so the player can try to farm a specific Evolution’s End.
  • Nemesis related Nodes:
    • Nemesis Eggs converted into a random exalted item
    • Exiled Mages as Harbinger victims, combining both mechanics and adding random sealed experimental affixes to the nemesis items.
  • Buffed imprints: in season 4 we have roughly 90% less relevant drops than what we had in season 3. My suggestion is to buff imprints to be roughly 33% of what we had in season 3. The goal is to make imprints not as insane as they were before but not useless either.

Goal: Turn Monoliths into a customizable Endgame sandbox, not a repetitive grind.

Reworked Dungeons

  • Remove labyrinth structure and replace it with open objective-based maps related to their mechanics
  • All rewards rebalanced
  • New way to unlock Dungeon Tiers based on character progression
  • Add Dungeon Charms for each mechanic (omens, rift beasts, nemesis, tombs/cemeteries, exiled mages) that makes the specifc mechanic spawn within the dungeon, scaling with its reward bonuses.
  • Apply corruption to dungeons, using the proposed corruption slider, turning the Dungeon Bosses into their corrupted versions with improved and new drops.
  • Soulfire Bastion: Turn souls into a new currency in your resources tab
  • Add a new charm that teleports the player straight to the dungeon’s reward room

Reworked Arena (Champion’s Gate)

  • Faster waves, smaller arenas
  • Boss spawns every 10 waves
  • After choosing rewards, the player should also be able to choose the next challenge through different portals:
    • Rift Beast Arena with ancient era mobs that also drop ancient bones
    • Omen Arena where the omen becomes vulnerable after finishing all waves
    • Weaver Arena that spawns weaver mobs and a random Weaver Boss at the end
    • Super Arena similar to the weaver tree, with extra champions
    • Normal Arena

CLASSES & BALANCE

  • New Skills: Some masteries still lack their fifth skill. Completing these kits should be a priority to ensure all classes feel equally developed and flexible.
  • Balance Philosophy: All masteries should be reviewed every season, especially those that are underplayed or underperforming.
  • Balance shouldn’t focus on just a few standout classes. As new items and mechanics are introduced, the entire class ecosystem shifts. Regular, broad balance passes are necessary to keep the game healthy.

CAMPAIGN IMPROVEMENTS

  • Acts 11 & 12 to conclude the story (not priority but still needed nonetheless)
  • New campaign shortcuts that don’t require dungeons
  • Share bonuses and progression across characters with access to the same stash: attributes, idol slots, faction access, map unlocks, endgame progress, corruption levels, etc.

ITEMIZATION & CRAFTING

Sets:

  • Suggestion for Set items: they may rarely drop with 1 or 2 craftable slots: 1 for prefix and 1 for suffix.
  • Each slot can be crafted to tier 5 with no FP costs but costs an increased number of shards equal to the tier (tier 1 requires 1 shard, tier 2 requires 2 shards, etc.). No runes that require FP or glyphs may be used.
  • Shattering a crafted set in the Great Bridge Woven Echo may give you some shards of the crafted affixes.

Crafting Improvements:

  • More Forging Potential at higher Area Levels, especially at the endgame. Players should get on average 10 more FP at area level 100.
  • Rune of Removal with a fixed 1 FP cost, but no longer gives shards.
  • Rune of Shattering with a higher chance to give you maximum amount of shards based on the tier of affixes of the item that was shattered.
  • Rune of Havoc and Rune of Redemption FP cost reduction: 1 to 15 (from 1 to 20)
  • Rune of Refinement FP cost reduction: 1 to 12 (from 1 to 15)
  • Rune of Shaping FP cost reduction: 1 to 12 (from 1 to 25 as this cost currently feels disproportionately high compared to its impact)
  • Rune of Evolution FP cost reduced: 1 to 12 (from 1 to 25). This encourages players to try Primordial Exalts.
  • Reduced FP cost for Crafting a new affix into an item: 1 to 15 (from 1 to 18)
  • Glyph of Despair should always succeed, but the amount of tiers sealed is random, up to the tier of the affix you sealed, with lower tiers having a much higher chance. This makes good crafting bases with high tier of unwanted affixes easier to craft on.

Crafting should feel good and consistent with a certain measure of randomness, not overly punishing or entirely random.

CIRCLE OF FORTUNE (CoF) REWORK

  • New lens system focused on target farming. Each Telescope should have 4 Lens slots, each with a distinct function:
    • Item type (helmets, rings, amulets, etc.)
    • Rarity (unique, exalted, etc)
    • Location (monolith, dungeon, etc.)
    • Intensity (more rewards for more cost)
    • These changes massively reduce the amount of rerolls needed to target farm whatever players want.
    • To make up for the reduced amount of rerolls, all of these lenses should come with a small cost multiplier for prophecies
  • New CoF Ranks, keeping the same total grind for max rank:
    • Reduced LP roll penalty by runes of ascendance on COF tagged items
    • All dropped items with COF tag have a small amount of extra FP
    • Adds the effect of glyph of hope (25% chance no FP cost) when using glyphs of envy on COF tagged items

Goal: More control, less rerolls, better odds of crafting specific exalts you want.

MERCHANT’S GUILD (MG)
I’m not a big MG player. I tried it but gave up because of two main issues: trading UI and gold problems. Price checking was a chore and the economy felt unstable.

Suggestions:

  • Improve UI significantly
  • Add meaningful gold sinks
  • Address inflation and max gold limit

ENEMY BALANCE

  • Rebalance DoT damage (major issue in every season)
  • Problem enemies (like Congealed Sludge) need tuning

Difficulty should feel fair, not random or spiky.

BUG FIXES
Let’s be honest:
A LOT of bugs need fixing.

ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Add achievements
  • Cosmetic rewards only

Encourages long-term engagement. Draws in Achievement addicted players.

SUGGESTION FOR NEW SEASON MECHANIC

Add an entirely new season mechanic that is not related to monolith system. Eterra is Orobyss’ counterpart and she is not present in the endgame so far. My suggestion is to add Eterra to the endgame loop. As Orobyss is related to the corruption in the Monoliths, Eterra would instead anchor this new endgame system. This could take place in the shaded area to the right of the world map and cover all 4 Eras. This new system could have a new Pinnacle Boss: the Goddess Eterra, or a corrupted version of her.

It is also the perfect opportunity to add a meaningful alternative to the Rune of Corruption. A few suggestions that address common concerns by the community:

Three new “Divine” rune types. Once any of them is used, the item can no longer be corrupted (it becomes “Divine” instead):

  • One that applies to Idols: rerolls all its affixes, allowing them to roll up to 25% over their original maximum roll.
  • One that applies to Uniques with at least 1 LP: The rune locks 1 of its LPs, allowing you to craft one affix up to tier 5 with no FP cost, costing an increased number of shards equal to the tier crafted, similar to my Set Suggestion. The remaining LP can be used as usual in the Eternity Cache.
  • One that applies to Exalted items: increase 5 to 15 FP as long as the item still has FP left. This Rune can only be used once and the item can no longer be used in the Eternity Cache.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This game has an incredible foundation. The core systems are already strong, but they need:
• Better cohesion
• Less friction
• More meaningful progression

If Last Epoch wants to thrive as a live service ARPG, it needs to:
• Respect player time
• Reward investment
• Provide clear goals and strong aspirational content

Let’s Discuss

• What do you agree or disagree with?
• What would you prioritize?
• What’s currently pushing you away from the game (if anything)?

Would love to hear both player and dev perspectives.

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Very nice, lots of great ideas in there. You get an A+ for effort!

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Appreciate it!

A lot of these ideas come from recurring issues the community has been pointing out for a long time, like:
– Monoliths feeling repetitive over time
– Lack of meaningful endgame goals / aspirational content
– Older systems (dungeons, arena) falling behind
– CoF reroll friction and target farming issues
– Exalted farming and crafting feeling inconsistent, especially after imprint changes and new added runes
– Lackluster Sets

I tried to group those problems into more cohesive solutions rather than isolated fixes.

If I had to prioritize one, I’d say endgame. But still, I’m curious. What do you think is the biggest issue right now?

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This is how things work at the moment it’s just that normal monos are capped to 50 corruption. All this would do is mean that you have to laboriously slog from 0c up to however many you want rather than 100c.

This is coming next league.

Yes, but the entire genre is based around repitition, it’s just that LE’s repitition isn’t fun enough so people leave sooner than they would from PoE, for example. Repitition isn’t necessarily bad.

Yeah, I can agree with these.

IMO we need more (& more engaging) non-pinnacle content before we need more pinnacle content.

Yup, all of this.

I’d probably have it account-based, if you’re above lvl X (or X corruption) then you don’t need to do T1, and once you’ve done T1 you can then do any higher tier.

Arenas need to have more points where you can restart from. I don’t think there’s many people willing to put an entire day into it (& it’s not like you can go AFK for long) just to push for a higher wave. If it were more like D3’s rifts/grifts where you can restart from either the same or X waves lower (like 10, not 100) that would make it less unpalatable.

Nah, this is currently the only way to get a decent number of shards in a slightly more deterministic way.

Not sure I agree with this one, but a critical success should always seal the affix, possibly increasing it by 1.

Personally, I’d just get rid of the lenses & have selectable options, one for item type, one for rarity, one for location & one for intensity. Having to buy the lenses sucks, is meaningless busywork & it’s not like it’s a viable tax on favour.

Why would they reduce the number of rerolls? All you’ve suggested is an additional slot & the slots have a specific function. Nothing you’ve said asks for or suggests changing the proc chance.

Personally I’d also like to be able to buy multiple prophecies from a single reroll (as requested back in CT).

What LP roll penalty do you think RoA have?

They need to get rid of gold as the currency.

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They also need better rewards. Running arena for an hour will give you less rewards than running echoes for 10 minutes.

They don’t have a penalty, but they’re not affected by either CoF, corruption or area level, so it’s effectively a penalty when everything that drops will have a better chance.

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This is a well-done list of feedback. Well structured and all. Absolutely sharing this. At first glance, I know the team is aware of some topics. The team has been focused on S4 prior. Expect to see some QoL additions to CoF/MG next season, a new skill, balancing, and more.

I’d like to thank you for the time and passion you’ve put into this post. :heart_on_fire:

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They also have a 45% chance to be free, so almost half of them won’t be consumed.

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That’s only for CoF, though. And it still doesn’t come close to compensate for all the CoF bonuses that aren’t applied to it.

To be clear, I don’t think RoA needs to change. It’s something extra that is nice to have at times and can help you get rarer gear for your build. But it does have a much lower LP chance than any random drop, especially if you consider the corruption bonuses.

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They do have a penalty. This was confirmed by Mike a long time ago. They treat Area Level as it would have dropped at Area Level 100 minus some unspecified penalty.

We don’t know the specific , but with WW items you can really see that they result on average with much lower results. (My guess is 80% less LP/WW on avg.)

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I honestly thought they simply ignored area level completely. Either way, what RoA drops is a base drop from whatever level it ends up rolling in the background as. The problem is that every other drop in endgame will drop with area level 100 + corruption bonuses + CoF bonuses.
It’s not that it actually has a penalty, it’s just that it doesn’t have any bonuses. And, since it apparently does roll with an area level, it actually has better chance than most (or all) of the campaign. It’s just a “penalty” for endgame.

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That’s fair. My idea there was paired with buffing Rune of Shattering (higher chance to return max shards based on affix tiers), so it would shift the source rather than reduce overall shard availability.

Yeah, I can agree with that. Ideally we get both, but if there’s a priority, improving non-pinnacle content probably has a bigger imediate impact.

I like this idea. Instead of buying lenses, the player could just select the proposed options.

Yeah, that’s on me—I didn’t explain that clearly in the original post.

The idea is that with the 4 dedicated slots (item type, rarity, location, intensity), you effectively remove the need to reroll entirely.

For example, if I want to target farm unique daggers, putting a lens for “dagger” in the item type slot and a lens for “uniques” in the rarity slot would mean all shown prophecies match that target.

Runes of Ascendance have lower LP odds.

I see that many people don’t know this information. You can it check in tunklab calculator:

As an example, Red Ring of Atlaria has 1 LP odds of 1 in 16. But, if you use Rune of Ascendance, the odds are 1 in 23.

Really appreciate that, thank you!

Glad to hear some of these topics are already on the team’s radar, especially around CoF/MG and QoL improvements.

Looking forward to what’s coming next season and happy to expand on or clarify any of the ideas if it’s helpful.

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All of this sounds great for the player, but not for the company. It’s all work and none of it makes them money. The idea of MTX supporting the live service really is a poor model. It worked in the beginning because players didn’t know better. Now that we’ve been burned so many times, a ton of folks simply never buy anything past the initial entry price of the game. The modern exception to this is when you have a very small team and/or huge playerbase.

So how do they achieve this without selling power? Well, PoE does it via storage. But that’s because it was that way from the start. Pretty sure switching to that would not work for LE. I honestly don’t know what they could sell… Maybe a public 1-week test for the week before a season releases. Players could pay $3 or something. All progress occurs in a “test” realm that is deleted upon the beginning of the new season after the week is done.

The other option is to ditch the live service. Make content updates high quality and rolled up into DLC/expansions. Basically the same as Grim Dawn. A new character with 3 subclasses, finished campaign, and an additional endgame system along with a pass over existing classes would be an example of enough content for the first DLC.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on this topic.

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Yes & the comment I was replying was talking about CoF. It’s even in the bit I quoted:

Except you want it buffed more. Well, the OP wants them buffed more.

No, they’ve always treated it as a bit under 100.

Which is effectively a penalty.

All of the campaign & most, if not all, of normal monos.

It works for PoE, there’s a limit to how much storage a person needs each league, but if they keep on pumping out MTX that people like & want to buy, there’s no limit to that.

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I do a gree with a lot of things in here, but I also disagree with a lot of things in here.

I just find these type of posts weird when they preface that this is a consolidated or comprehensive list. It makes it sound like an unspecified portion of the community agrees with this, but it also doesn’t say how much or what points a lot of people disagree with.
It also makes it sound like they want to strenghten some of their suggestions by saying “many other people think so as well”.

Also some of these points I never heard before, so they seem pretty niche and not something that the community as a whole agrees with or brought up in a lot of discussions.

And then there are a ton of points that we basically already know are coming.

This is a terrible suggestions. Not sure who wants this or suggested this.

I already think that T2 Temporal Sanctum giving a guaranteed Legendary craft is something that is incredibly bad and should be gated much higher, but with these type of charms yo uessentially skip all the challenge and just get the rewrad of a specific dungeon. Not a fan at all.

I think they just need to give set items corrupted affixes as a positive outcome to make them compete a little bit better (again). Not sure why they didn’t do that in the first place and make all other things overtake Set Items (again) in power.

But this suggestion with some extra crafting slots is kinda cool. Having no FP cost but consumign a lot of shards would be a good shard sink for some item types and builds.

Terrible suggestion. Rune of Removal are so good at targeting certain shards. Also 1 FP is crazy. I can see reducing the FP cost avg. but 1 FP is too much.

That is already how it works. Rune of Shattering gives 0-X shards, where X is the tier of each affix.

I don’t think that the FP cost has anything to do with people not testing out Primordial Exalts. They are just a lot more work than Primordial Uniques and are a lot more specific and niche.

One thing I really really like about LE’s crafting system is, that each individual crafting method or crafting material is relatively fairly straight forward, but has a lot of nuance and small little things to improve your chances. And combining multiple different ways of crafting it really rewards people with a lot of knowledge about all these systems.

I think some of these things should be better and more clearly explained in the game guide and tutorialized, but I wouldn’t want them to simplify things like Glyph of Despair.

This one is crazy to me. I think among all other similar games, LE is already the top contender for this by a long stretch.

While I do play actively each season I don’t play as much anymore compared to EA.

But what would increase my personal retention A LOT would be good and meaningful achievments/challenges for each season. Depending on the rewards attached and how hard they are to obtain I think I would play a significant amount more each season.

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Which is basically what it is. I wish people would just say, “this is my opinion, and I hope I’ll be able to convince you through the strength of my points, even if it’s the opinion of a single player”.

Yeah. It’s very poor design. It suggests spending a lot of work redoing dungeons, and then just allowing players to skip them altogether.

I think players are great at pointing flaws, but not so great at thinking about what to do in order to fix them.

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Okay, some of these might be more niche than others.

Which ones stood out to you in that regard? I’d be happy to clarify the reasoning behind them or explain where I’ve seen similar discussions come up.

Yeah, that’s fair… 1 FP might be too aggressive, especially combined with the other crafting changes I suggested.

The main idea was to reduce how punishing Rune of Removal feels when you’re already risking deleting a desired affix. I’d still lean toward lowering the FP cost meaningfully, even if not all the way down to 1.

About the Rune of Shattering yeah, I could’ve been clearer in my original post.

What I meant is increasing the likelihood of hitting the higher end of that range (closer to X more often), so Shattering becomes a more reliable source of shards overall.

Right now, part of the reason people rely on Rune of Removal for shards is because Shattering can feel inconsistent.

My overall intent was to separate roles more clearly:

  • Rune of Removal: affix removal tool, less punishing to use
  • Rune of Shattering: more shard generation

That’s a fair point and I agree the amount of work and strength of Primordial Uniques are probably the bigger factors overall.

From my experience (especially as CoF), FP did play a role though. I’m often missing a huge amount of FP when trying to do these these steps:

  • Find the right exalted base (maybe with glyph of envy though it costs too much FP)
  • Use Rune of Evolution (maybe even with glyph of order, if FP is high)
  • Finish crafting desired affixes
  • Potentially reroll implicits and affixes
  • Corruption (if i got this far and want to risk it)

It ends up feeling risky, extremely time consuming and underwhelming compared to just building around a Primordial Unique with a T7 affix and good Corruption instead.

Same here… achievements/challenges with meaningful (cosmetic) rewards would add a lot of long-term motivation each season.

That’s a fair concern.

The intention wasn’t to make dungeons irrelevant, but to remove friction from specific mandatory interactions tied to core systems, while giving players more flexibility in how they engage with each dungeon (full clear, boss farming, or reward room focused).

For each dungeon:

  • Temporal Sanctum: Eternity Cache is such a central part of gameplay that repeatedly running the dungeon can feel like a waste of time rather than meaningful gameplay and reward.
  • Lightless Arbor: I agree this one is more tied to its reward structure and probably shouldn’t be skippable in the same way.
  • Soulfire Bastion: currently, using a portal charm to go straight to the boss can leave you with barely any souls, which makes the reward room (the Soul Gambler) feel pointless.

I also suggested that Soulfire Bastion Souls be turned into a resource in your tab, so you can:

  • Run the entire dungeon to build up souls, spend some of the souls only for the items you want
  • Once you have accumulated enough souls, you can choose to skip to the Soul Gambler to spend them
  • Use the souls you accumulated in the Soul Foundry Woven Echo

So the goal isn’t “skip everything”, but to make core reward systems more accessible while giving players flexibility in how they engage with each dungeon.

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I agree with your intention, I just don’t agree with your execution.

Crafting legendary items has become a huge part of the game, so doing Temporal Sanctum and defeating Jura all the time to do that is annoying, true.

But let’s say we want to allow players to skip that - by your suggestion, a player would still have to find the Temporal Sanctum’s key, find the reward room charm, get access to the dungeon, teleport there, interact with the dungeon entrance, click on the portal, and then use the forge (with the whole time travel thing).

That is way too much friction, too much “jank”. It doesn’t make sense to remove the main friction (having to kill Jura) and yet to keep all those little things that don’t add value to gameplay. It would make more sense to add a new mechanic that allows the crafting of Legendary items.

And then, we have the counter-point: if we remove the need to do Temporal Sanctum in order to craft Legendary items, why do it at all? Why bother with full dungeon runs when there are more accessible places to farm, or why bother with dungeon boss farm if not to craft Legendary items? There are already unique drops to each dungeon boss, yet the only one people play a lot is Temporal Sanctum.

The only dungeon that offers a unique and valuable reward is the one players do not want to have to repeat in order to get said reward. The issue here isn’t with Temporal Sanctum - is how to make dungeons both have a reward worth doing and yet make it so doing them over and over isn’t a chore.