I have only just returned to the game as of v0.8.4e and played for roughly six hours to get a feel for the new crafting system. Upon launch I cleared my stash of unique items without Legendary Potential and Exalted items that had such low Forging Potential that they could not be redeemed (and believe me, I tried).
My highest level character was level 77 when I started, working through level 80 monoliths. I eventually got some keys and ran the Temporal Sanctum dungeon twice (once at the first tier, once at the second).
In my six hours of gameplay I managed to collect:
- Sanctum Key: 7
- Unique gear: 20 (six with LP=1, one with LP=2)
In my initial review of the game I had praised the crafting system for respecting the players time invested and the effort put towards the item - that is to say, an individual feels satisfied using the system and agrees with the rate of time versus the rate of rewards. Games such as Path of Exile do not respect the players time and require a large investment for a minor reward.
As an individual who does not often have a lot of time to play Last Epoch because of work, school, and family, I always appreciated how it felt like I was making progress each time I got to play. While I may be in the minority and fall outside of the target demographic, I would like to see EHG continue with this structure.
Crafting, moving forward, should be designed in a way that enables players to recycle items and retain the value of their time invested. Despite finding twenty unique items in my six hour run, only one of them was something that I would use for a build across my three characters - if I ever came across a unique that I cared about building for, I would want a way to ensure that it could be preserved.
Legendary Items Should Retain Legendary Potential
Once a Legendary item has been crafted, it should retain its original Legendary Potential so that it can be re-rolled by running the dungeon again and placing it into the eternity cache:
- A legendary item could be used for either the unique slot (retaining the unique items traits) or the Exalted slot (considering the added affixes from the Exalted item).
When a player finally finds the unique they have been hunting, it would be discouraging knowing that it could not be changed in the future and the individual would have to once again grind for the chance to get that item.
Unique Items Should Be Guaranteed Legendary Potential
I have seen this specific idea voiced in the forums on several occasions since v0.8.4 came out and I agree. Players should be adequately rewarded for their time, especially considering that there are so many layers of RNG:
- The unique items being chased are NOT guaranteed to drop.
- The unique item has a higher chance of rolling with less Legendary Potential.
- The unique affixes and implicits cannot be modified through crafting, meaning the player can receive a low end roll.
Unique items - and to a further extent, Set items - should each start with at least one Legendary Potential. Respect the players time - as it stands, unique items without potential are hardly ever worth keeping.
Exalted Affix Requirement Should Scale With Legendary Potential
Currently, a player is required to have a Unique with at least one Legendary Potential and an Exalted item with a minimum of four affixes (the max craftable outside of the Glyph of Despair, which cannot be added). The affix requirements should be brought into line with the Legendary Potential:
- LP=1 requires an Exalted item with at least one affix.
- LP=2 requires an Exalted item with at least two affixes.
- LP=3 requires an Exalted item with at least three affixes.
- LP=4 requires an Exalted item with all four crafted affixes.
This change would enable more control when combining items with lower Legendary Potential, allowing for greater player satisfaction. Furthermore, this system would directly benefit the ability to recycle unwanted Legendary items (as described above).
In conclusion, I actually find the new crafting system to be just as intuitive as the previous one with more unique ways to interact with late-game drops.
I still strongly believe that the Forging Potential could still be tweaked across several systems - for example, the Rune of Removal should not use as much, if any, Forging Potential.
I plan on doing another longer run over the holidays to collect more data, but I imagine that my general thoughts will stay the same.
Edit;
One thing that I would like to point out is the fact that the Gambler seems entirely pointless now - the likelihood of getting a usable base item to craft with is astronomically unlikely. This does need to be addressed.
TLDR;
Summary
- Legendary items should keep their Legendary Potential in order to be recycled back through the Eternity Cache system.
- Unique items should be guaranteed at least one Legendary Potential
- The Exalted affix requirement should be equal to or greater than the Legendary Potential of the item (LP=1 requires 1+ affix on Exalted item, LP=2 requires 2+ affixes, etc.)