Last Epoch has been praised as having one of the best crafting systems and I wholeheartedly agree.
During the campaign and leveling you can continiously craft on your items to improve them. But it is also exciting to find an upgrade on the ground (which you can craft even further!). Gearing is balanced between crafting on equipped items (up to a limit of forging potential) and looting from monsters.
But that works until you equip T20 gear, which happens around entering empowered monoliths, or maybe even earlier. From that moment on, crafting falls behind. You have to find an exalted item first, with T6/T7 tier on desired affix AND on a good base, and then you craft the rest of affixes to T5.
This is reasonable, as endgame gearing should be limited, and not be an item editor with crafting. But currently there is a void between 100 corruption and 300-400+ corruption, where you canât craft improvements, and it takes a lot of time to find an upgrade to progress further.
I had an idea to improve the endgame crafting with the following rune:
âRune of empowerement.
Upgrades random affix up one tier. Can upgrade to T6-T7. Reduces forging potential to 0.â
That rune is the final touch after which you can no longer craft item further, and since it is random affix that gets upgraded, you may not get exactly what you want. But even improving resistance to T6 could be very helpful in early corruption levels.
The rarity of such rune should be close to rune of ascendence. So you donât find it very often, but still you will have a couple of them once you enter empowered monoliths.
This is just and idea, maybe EHG have other plans to improve endgame crafting, but I just wanted to highlight the problem of gearing in early corruption levels.
Anytime a rune is suggested I always ask myself âWould I use this rune on every item?â If the answer to that is yes then I donât think the rune is good for gameplay. This will prevent players from wanting to roll their affixes or implicits.
I donât think itâs very far off from being something I could see implemented though, but I think theyâre pretty set in stone about exalted affixes being drop only.
From a game-design perspective I agree a lot with this sentiment.
Any time you give players an option, there needs to be a reason not to take that option, otherwise it has no reason being optional.
That being said, I think that the entire rune system would need a significant overhaul, at the moment it is probably the most boring aspect of the crafting system.
I think it would be nice to have a set of runes dedicated to finishing crafts like this one.
Basically a set of runes to put the finishing touches to the item, either upgrade one last modifier, reroll the numerical values (maybe with lucky values) or make a mirrored copy.
As I said, I believe that the rune system could use a rework from the ground-up (especially the runes for rerolling values), so in an hypothetical reworked system things could be different.
Would you use Glyph of Despair on every item? I assume that youâd want to, but there is an opportunity cost. First of all, glyph is uncommon, and second, it will eat up forging potential.
With my suggestion, opportunity cost is that first you will need T20+ item, as you donât want to use the rune on something that you can craft in a regular way. And the item should still have at least 1 forging potential. And after you use the rune, you no longer can tweak item further, including rerolling values within ranges.
I get that suggested rune might be a little too overpowered, and EHG may already see âT6-T7 drop onlyâ as set in stone. But I want something to improve crafting after getting T20 item.
Perhaps, we can have a new dungeon with the end reward being able to upgrade random affix up to T6-T7.
If given the choice between rerolling affix values and increasing a random affix by a tier, Iâm taking the second one every single time irregardless of if it reduces FP to zero.
Iâm not sure runes need a rework, they can already be used with glyphs and have quite strong powers.
A good example of a powerful but not a âmust useâ rune is the rune of creation. Itâs power is intrinsically rare so sparingly used and itâs not best in slot for every item. I have no reason to duplicate a sword if Iâm not dual wielding, or a ring if I need a different resistance etcâŚ
The proposed suggestion will always be wanted to finish off a craft and if made too rare youâll have people refusing to use other runes specifically because that rune exists. If too common it invalidates the other runes as you wouldnât risk bricking an item early before you can use the new rune.
I wouldnât use a despair on every item, some items have affix values too high to use a despair on in an effective way as you donât get a glyph of hope use. The opportunity cost for the suggested rune is that it must be the final step on a craft. The cost is fine, but the simple fact the rune exists will make people craft items with a little bit of forging potential remaining just so they can turn them into an exalted at a later date rather than improving them with value rerolls.
Iâd rather it not be related to crafting and maybe a more targeted farming option where you can specify an exalted affix to appear on items by sacrificing a bunch of crafting shards or something similar. (On new item drops)
I can envision situations where you would do rerolling rather than upgrading.
Just for fun let us assume that the rerolling rule is something like this:
Rune of Whateverness:
Rerolls the values of all affixes with lucky values. Reduces FP to 0.
Then, for instance, letâs say that you have an item with a t7 of an affix that you really care about but it min-rolled.
In that case, rerolling the value would be desirable over upgrading one random affix.
I would disagree with that. Look at the disparity of t5 to t6 affixes. Itâs not a normal progression.
Take for example increased damage over time before scaling values per item are applied.
T5 is 40-60%.
T6 is 75-95%.
T7 is 96-120%.
If you have an item that is four affixes you want (the only item youâre really spending despairs and other high value crafting ingredients on) hitting a random affix and upping itâs tier will always be better than rerolling a min roll T7.
The only situation I can think of is if you donât care about the other affixes or you have an item that is 4xT7.
It is true that the jump in the exalted tiers are not linear, but again, there are cases where you donât care, a resistance that is already capped, chance to shock, frailty.
Besides, upgrading a random affix is not the same as rerolling the one affix you care about.
That being said, maybe you would still never use it, I believe I would find a usecase for it.
