Eterra Monthly: Dec. Edition 2025

EHG_Wick · January 9, 2026, 5:00pm

Hello Travelers,

Welcome back to Eterra in the year 2026! We hope your winter holidays gave you all a chance to relax and enjoy yourselves. The team is now back to work and eager to kick off the year in the best way possible. But we have to take a look at the month of December to close out 2025. Let’s get started!

Eyes on Eterra

We heard you loud and clear, Travelers. December brought you a massive info update regarding Season 4, complete with a detailed roadmap for both Season 4 and 5, as well as a peek into Last Epoch’s first expansion, Last Epoch: Orobyss. If you didn’t get to check out the post, you can find it right here and see for yourself. But let’s look at just a few things from each season below.

Season 4: Shattered Omens, will continue the chaos caused by the end of Chapter 10 last season by opening up Omen Windows. Omen Windows are a brand new season mechanic in which travelers will enter the area and release a new enemy called Omens. Fend off a hoard of creatures to make the Omen vulnerable to damage, then take the fight right to it. Omen Windows, like all other season mechanics before it, are here to stay and will add to the combat experience for many seasons to come.

Season 5 also brings a season mechanic called Rage of Morditas. The details are still too distant to report on just yet, but simply knowing Morditas is free and filled with bloodlust is enough to send a chill down your spine that has nothing to do with the weather. We can say that Season 5 will add Item Faction Mechanic Improvements and a new Paladin skill called Radiant Lance.

Last Epoch: Orobyss is the first expansion coming to Last Epoch, and it’s going to be huge! Strap in because we will be seeing 2 new campaign chapters to end the Orobyss Saga, New Endgame Pinnacle bosses, Skill System expansions, Monolith changes, UI improvements, Audio, Combat, and performance improvements. These are just a few of the things we know about coming to Last Epoch, and the excitement in the studio is stronger than void sludge. We can’t wait to show you all more, and as if we couldn’t say it enough, we could not have done this without you all. So thank you again, as always.

Community Feedback Survey

Keeping the ball rolling by listening to the community and the things they want to see in Last Epoch, the Player Experience Team sent out a survey to see exactly what you wanted. We learned a lot and are working hard to make sure everyone gets a bit of something, and if possible, a lot of everything! The survey itself has closed, but the comments are still open and encouraged. So even if you missed your chance to vote, you can still let your voice be heard. Click Here to take a look at what the community said, and while you’re there, let us know if anything was missed. We want to continue to improve the Last Epoch experience; we just need you to help us achieve it.

Mike’s Teasers

Mike was away on a well-deserved vacation after years of an almost endless stream of… well… streams. While there were no teasers to be released in the month of December, a major shout-out should be made to Derrick, Player Experience Manager, for stepping up to the plate and spending time with everyone right before the holidays. So, thank you, Derrick, and thank you to everyone who came around to support the streams as the studio closed out the year.

Build Spotlight

It’s time for another Community Build Spotlight! Closing out the year with a bang can be hard to do. So, instead, we decided to take a look at a long-time favorite skill and end the year with Eterra-shattering impact. The SSF Meteor Sorcerer by Terranisaur is our pick for this month for more than a few reasons, and we hope you will enjoy it as much as we do.

First things first, this build is beginner-friendly. As Last Epoch continues to grow, it’s important to reach out to the new travelers every once in a while and help them get started. This build seems like a great way to do that.

Meteor itself has always been a reliable high impact skill that has been in circulation for years. You know it, you love it, so why not use it to its maximum potential? But this one skill would probably burn up in the atmosphere if it weren’t supported by easy gearing, easy leveling, high damage output, bonus burst damage, and a list of perks in this build that make it a great season starter.

It’s important to remember that sorcerers in any world are typically squishy, and this one is no different. So do your best to keep moving with teleport and evade while your Mana regenerates. If you can manage all of that and grab three important pieces of gear, you’ll be in great shape to rain down cosmic hellfire.

As always, we aren’t going to give away the details here, so go check out the Official Build Guide to get yourself started!

Community Fun

The year has ended, but in the northern hemisphere of Eterra, the cold weather is just getting started. Thankfully, I ran into Guardsman Wick, who, despite the fact that the world seemed to be ending around us beneath purple ooze, took his time and offered me a meal that kept me warm and feeling better than I had since I got here. He called it Grole and Rice Stew, and it was wonderful beyond words. I am not exaggerating when I say it has become one of my favorite dishes. I even managed to sneak a glance at his notes, and this is what I found:

A few days later, and this dish only got better! I was amazed to learn just how versatile it was; changing proteins or seasoning ratios didn’t make it any better or worse. Like the world of Eterra and it’s eras, it just evolved into something new but still familiar.

A word of caution. Be careful making the roux. It’s so hot, another guardsman stuck his finger in it and only found relief by plunging his hand into void ooze, which somehow is less painful.

Please be safe.

What’s Next?

As you know, the countdown to Season 4: Shattered Omens has begun. In just a few short months, Season 4 will launch, and we hope to see you all there. Stick around for more updates and announcements coming soon, as well as the return of Mike’s Q&A Streams on Twitch!

This has been Eterra Monthly, a report on the happenings and changes in the world of Last Epoch. We hope you have enjoyed this month’s report and will see you all again soon.

Entrr_Username · January 9, 2026, 6:19pm

“In just a few short months, Season 4 will launch”
But we already had season 3 for “a few short months”. Crazy how you guys couldn’t even be on season 2 a year later and now you won’t even be on season 4 two years later. You guys mentioned making DLC classes because the MTX weren’t profitable yet you’re still casually making us wait another season length despite the dwindling player count still dwindling.

And on the subject of the roadmap, is season 4 not even going to have new uniques or balance changes? I mean you listed that as separate bullet points for season 5 and Orobyss.

psychodrive · January 9, 2026, 9:25pm

Every season has uniques and balance changes. It’s more likely that either

uniques and set items / balance are a focus of season 5 or
the amount of information available about s5 is limited but s5 would have looked tiny on the roadmap without the extra line items

Dubh · January 9, 2026, 9:29pm

Glad ye and Mike got some rest. I cannae wait for the new content and the season 4

Entrr_Username · January 9, 2026, 11:33pm

They also mentioned it for Orobyss, so it’s definitely just padding. They launched this game too early.

Incursio · January 10, 2026, 4:13am

please buff some of those useless uniques!

FrodoFraggins · January 10, 2026, 5:18am

So, I’m kind of hoping this won’t simply be added to all of the existing encounters in maps. As I think it’s time to take a Torchlight Infinite approach of pulling many of these things out of maps and into their own side content that players can choose to run. I feel like maps themselves are already kind of bloated.

While I don’t play TL:I anymore, they’ve definitely done a great job of offering diverse endgame choices, with their own loot trees. I find mono’s quite tedious and simply don’t want more things to slow down their progress.

Macknum · January 10, 2026, 7:51am

I guess this would take the lead if there was a “Most useless Eterra Monthly” competition. This was… like good for nothing?

Shathor · January 10, 2026, 2:33pm

I fully agree. Unfortunately it was already stated in announcement post that Omen Windows are going to be bloating the maps even more:

Omen Windows appear as a new type of random encounter throughout both the campaign and the endgame.

Also why in the campaign? Nemesis, Rift Beasts, Loot Lizards and the like completely disturb and derange the character progression even more than it already is. If campaign is reported as boring, fix the campaign and the dungeon skip system. (Champions I find interesting though because they are “unavoidable” and a danger early on. They don’t feel “bolted on”. Exiled Mages are redundant anyway for the most part. Should be reworked too. So much work huh).
It’s also funny that you can select Weaver Tree nodes or run certain echoes to have Tombs, Nemesis, Rifts appear even more. They appear already on every second map regardless!!

Macknum · January 10, 2026, 2:53pm

because it’s a good thing. Why should SEASON mechanics only be like “you can find our new mechanic in a very small part of the season! So don’t fear the mechanic you will most likely not even see it before you stop playing again!”. Season mechanics you can find throughout the game are awesome because EVERYONE who playes the game for hours or days will interact with it.

And you can ignore most of it if you want to. You don’t lose anything when there is ADDITIONAL content… what’s the matter?

Shathor · January 10, 2026, 3:11pm

To give you something to look forward to in the endgame for example. We spend the most time in endgame anyway. Tombs / Cemeteries don’t appear in campaign and it doesn’t bother either. Also they are not SEASONAL mechanics. They are core mechanics.

Why should anyone forgo additional power. It’s like willingly hampering their character (like Veteran boots). The problem is that it completely breaks one of the fundamental building blocks what makes an ARPG good: character progression.
People have been complaining for years now that the campaign is nothing more than a lengthy tutorial. Every mob / boss just drops dead and you can stand in telegraphed enemy abilities all day long. The power creep is one major reason for that but also Nemesis etc. in the campaign.
These mechanics just feel bolted on and unnatural. In maps it doesn’t matter. But in campaign it does. They appear on almost every campaign map. It breaks the flow so much.
Another example are Rifts. They being in campaign means you can already buy the most powerful item + Evolution’s End before entering or in early endgame annihilating everything soon’ish. (Seriously thoughtless decision to be able to simply buy these powerful primordial items just like that and forgo the excitment and dopamin a significant drop could have caused). No wonder most people play a season for a few days and blaze through content that was month in the making.

Macknum · January 10, 2026, 5:41pm

Yeah but you lose nothing if it is there in the campaign. Looks at all the mechanics in the campaign and compare them to the same mechanics on 1k+ corruption. Those are 2 different worlds.

Okay my bad… then again this makes your take even worse . “Leave the core mechanics out of a core part of a game!”. Makes evven less sense .

Yeah why? it’s there so it’s fair game to use it. Almost noone complained about the idotic level of powercreep EHG added with primal gear. It’s completely over the top and an addition in power noone needed implemented in such a boring way it hurt. Why should I leave mages behind? or Lizards? Or Nemesis? As you said it’s a core mechanic .

Yeah it still is so everything that is not stirctly campaign slog is a nice thing to see.

This highly depends how you play the game. If you take the shortest ways possible you see them rarely. if you look into every corner of the map you find a lot of stuff… almost like you have a benefit from exploring but I guess that’s a sideeffect that wasN#t tintentional.

Yeah and you know that how? For all I can tell they might or might not offer a substantional reward. Then agai nit’s EHG and I won’t be suprised if they implement something silly again.

Most people need more then a day to blaze through it. Heck I can’t even force myself to play LE for days. If the next season isn’t staring in a time I have nothing else to do I won’t even touch it because it offers nothing intresting to me and from what I know about it it sounds like an early aprils fool season… wait… maybe they need to fix something and it starts in april and will be more fitting I don’t know,

tldr… having core mechanics in a core part of the game makes complete sense to me.

Shathor · January 10, 2026, 6:58pm

You loose proper character progression and flow during the campaign. Nemesis gives you too strong items early on, like many uniques and rare items. Loot Lizards + Rift Beast adds runes, glyphs and shards. Rift Beast then adds a strong primordial and Evolutions End.
(On a tangent, what’s EHGs obsession with the Loot Lizards. They are just annoying right now. Diablos loot goblins are exciting because they need to be discovered, are really rare outside of events and give a relative high reward.)

I notice none. They work the same way. Except the addition of the Nemesis egg (but that’s before 1k corruption)

They are core endgame mechanics. In campaign they just feel thrown in there and bolted on. No proper introduction with ties to the campaign, nothing.

There’s a lot of complaint. Or worse, people just left because there’s no point.

It’s what I do, but I see at least one of them every map.

Maybe 3 or 4 days, max. two weeks if you’re not a completely new to the game. That’s just sad.

It means you don’t want proper character progression or can’t be bothered to play the campaign again. Why don’t you just load up a legacy character and experience the new stuff from that?

Macknum · January 11, 2026, 1:10am

The tombs I had in campaign were a piece of cake and with xyz corruption they become a completely beast to tackle. In the campaign I was about to skip them because they bored me out of my mind and at certain corruption levels they became painfull and you need to look out for a lot more stuff.
If you don’t see any different there you are most likely playing better fledged out builds or you have far more skill what isn’t a high bar to pass ^^.

Maybe in your fever dream. You already said they are core mechanics not season mechanics. Now they are core season mechanics? Dou you change the script to suit the point you try to make many more times? Just asking because then I don’t have a good laugh about this conversation but get annoyed.

About primals? Yes. You are the first one who is complaining about additional content to play in a game.

Then you have a different gaming experince then I do. I can only speak for myself and maybe I’m unlucky and you have more luck or it’s confirmation bias but at some points I had arround 5 maps wihtout finding anything while running it down for the targets in the mono.

Worst case were 8 maps without anything “special” when I tried to get a nice round number like 10 ^^. Well 8 is pretty round as well.

We never had proper character progression even if you remove all seasonal, core or core endgame mechanics. The game is a mess, was a mess for a long time and EHG is just putting gasoline into the fire. As I said multiple times… we can’t tell what is fine or a good progression because there is no balancing and no goals set in LE so everything could be completely fine or already to messed up for EHG to get it into controll so it stays shit.

Shathor · January 11, 2026, 2:17am

No wonder you were skipping them, because they don’t appear in campaign. Besides that, you’re talking about difficulty. The mechanics don’t change at all except Nemesis egg.

You should read. I replied with “They are core endgame mechanics”. Endgame != Seasonal.

It’s complaints about the powercreep that the primordials provide in response to your earlier statement:

Well, to be fair the complaint is in conjunction with that there’s nothing to do with the power except Uber. But is that nuance all that different to “powercreep”?

I personally found it quite ok. Especially before 1.0. But they dumbed down, let powercreep rampage and adding the endgame mechnics until it became the shambled state it is in now.
Is it okay to break the campaign even more so players are done and over with even faster?

Kulze · January 11, 2026, 6:02am

Hard NO!
That’s a factually wrong statement, introduction of new mechanics inside the campaign has been the downfall of many games in the past… and has caused serious issues for as many as well.

We can even look over at PoE again and see what it did. More and more mechanics were introduced into the campaign, it was cluttered, a complete mess and even nowadays holds some problematic issues still with Betrayal encounters happening and being frustrating at the last Acts as well as Incursion not unlokcing until you actually do it in the campaign area (which it likely is too hard to handle properly for most at that moment since it has a vastly higher difficulty then the area).

A campaign is supposed to be a cohesive solid experience, not a shifting disastreous mess.
It’s a core reason as to why the campaign feels awful, because it’s a patchwork of changes and additions rather then a properly managed experience.

It actually also does.

We have 2 issues which need to be handled in game-design related to it:

If it’s a chosen thing then choice paralysis has to be taken into account, and the psychological measures being taken to reduce the impact of it as much as possible.

If it’s inside the core gameplay loop then it has a risk of ripping you out of your gameplay loop, which is a powerful tool to do and when overused causes immense mental fatigue. This causes perception of the product plummet.

So the generalized argument you make isn’t upholding. It’s a major development point which has been found out over decades and thousands of games until it - for good reason - was established that you gotta manage those things very intricately.

Agreed.

And exactly that, yes… 100%!

I do, I loose the feeling of a cohesive campaign, which is a important thing.

Imagine going into the game as a new player and the game bombards you with a mess of switching difficulty, random mechanics that make no sense to exist for you as nothing’s explained as to why they are there… how do you feel? Confused? Overwhelmed? Will you stay? Probably not.

That’s the wrong way around.

You don’t fix the campaign by adding non-campaign stuff.
You fix the campaign by making the campaign stuff good. Hence by managing walk-times, backtracking, providing - optional - breaks in pacing and making it mechanically solid.

What is talked about here does the opposite.

What?
Core endgame mechanics was stated… not core season.
At least react to the things which @Shathor says and not the words you faultily read and then try to make a point out of that.

That paragraph of yours was utter nonense.

Then don’t argue for throwing more canisters in!
Argue to stop that crap and make a proper cozy campfire.

Macknum · January 11, 2026, 8:35am

There you go. If it’s not in the campaign it’s about endgame. If it is in the campaign it’s for everyone at all times ^^.

Once you called them core mechanics, then core endgame mechanics how it suitet your fancy. Not in this case yes. Got all mixed up if stuff is now seasonla, core or core endgame stuff .

Powercreep in a campaign you need no power for? Had another goo laugh this morning . From my point of view we only have a campaign to hold back people for a few hours because if we could start at some kind of war up mono till level 50 and then go into normal monos people would most likely stop playing even faster.

I said it many times… the game went downhill after 0.8.

Ounds more like a wet noodele… enlighten me!

Name 5

Hundrets of thousands of players playing each season? I guss LE want this done to them as well.

The campaign is a mindless walk in the park. This would only change if they introduce hard stuff to it. As long as the added content is childsplay everything is cohesive. BTW most people don’t want to level in a campaigna again and again because it’s to static… just sayin.

Nah we don’t . If it’s there I do it. Simple as that. Still you can ignore it if you want to, most people simply don’t want to.

Ohhhh your feefees?

On a more serious note… if every game caters to my feelings and not to what is good in the eyes of the devs more games would be much more sucessfull…

OK real serious now… If the devs want it to be in the campaign they made up their mind. There is most likely a reason for it. We talk about unlaid eggs. I haven’t read any news this stuff will be everywhere in the campaign and I’ve read no insightfull news how this is even handled.

I played PoE in the beta then didn’t play it for a long time and came back in season whatever and was happy to face all the different stuff they implemented.

But it’s a core mechanic if it is added to the campaign

Yeah to much back and forth. I call stuff that is introduced seasonal mechanics. The he said they are core mechanics, just to switch it to core endgame mechanics later on while I was still processing core mechanics.

You need to read a lot more to find the back and forth about this but there I clearly missread.

Kulze · January 11, 2026, 10:53am

Core defines not where exactly it is positioned.
It only defines that it is in the main progression line.

Otherwise it would be auxiliary. And if it’s a time-based thing it’s seasonal (albeit the mis-use of seasonal as ‘in this season introduced’ is widespread… depending on notion we need to differ between the identical wording for different meanings hence further).

So yeah, easy to mess up there.

Yeah, and that’s the issue. So instead of aggravating the issue we should solve it I would argue

For campaign downfalls because of changes to campaign areas?

Ubisoft open world games function at the same concept, with usually providing a free open world which gives you dozens if not hundreds of side-missions available at once and not hidden and gradually unraveled.

Then we got Dungeon Siege 3, which went the direction of tutorializing the whole campaign it feels, without the great Hack’N’slash feeling that made the series strong at the beginning.

Starfield, which besides being a repetitive shallow game gave players base-building, ship-building, random questing, weapon adjusting and so on all at once, which made it one utter incoherent mess… rather then gradually implementing it at the proper timing.

Black Desert Online is currently failing because of the same reason, decliding steadily as the sheer amount of available mechanics during progression which are more and more outdated and unfinished piling up, leading to many people not even making it to end-game and those that do being underwhelmed as a massive amount of mechanics suddenly just fall away in importance completely.

We can even say that for example Gran Turismo 7 with the changes to the campaign reward system falls into the same category of ‘Changes to established campaign causing downfalls’ falls into that area.

Destiny 2 has lost a massive amount of goodwill because of it as well, be it their horrendous ‘vaulting’ which is entirely removing campaign mechanics or introduction of power level caps and more during progression. It’s turned away a ton of players over the years and was initially received ridiculously well, now it’s fairly strained in staying online, Bungie is overall not doing well at all…

Substancially decreased engagement time and many long-time players and content creators leaving at that time… which was exactly what allowed LE to even exist in the first place as there were ‘things to fix’ and unhappy players without alternative options fitting them better.

Just because you’re the only one with a specific target audience doesn’t mean you do it great… it only means it’s not so bad that people would do something else entirely instead. With competition this changes… and LE was meant - but isn’t remotely still sadly - to be PoE competition. That’s why it got fixed. Thanks EHG for that… but it should’ve been a massive amount of pressure towards GGG instead rather then this mild nudge. That’s what was expected back then.

Exactly!
That’s the problematic point! Fix it, not exerbate it!

Yeah, true.
But at the same time then it’s my task as someone vocal to point out it’s a negative thing to do. Either they listen to me and those mentioning it being an issue or not… the result will be clear when it happens anyway, or over long periods of time.

And obviously there’s a reason for it… unless they’re utterly incompetent I hope they don’t do things without a reason, especially not when their game struggles and has basically no leeway to divert failure in the future.

Abberroth is also core… but you don’t slap him into the campaign Would argue that being bad.

Same with any current mechanics added retrospectively into the campaign.
It was acceptable with mages as they got little effect… it got problematic with Nemesis and went absolutely nonsensical with loot lizards being there.
The campaign was a mess before introducing power creep into it… that part is supposed to be rock-solid and well-feeling after all. Why? Because it’s before the shifting establishing end-game. The earlier in a game the more polished it’s supposed to be to get to that point… and the further along the more polish is needed. In LE it’s a complete mess from start to finish by now… you cannot switch up stuff in content and expect it to stay functional and balanced after all…
You gotta provide a good balanced and mechanically polished experience, which is opposite of a shifting experience.

Macknum · January 11, 2026, 2:39pm

having something that makes me walk different paths and what is a fun activity is making stuff better not worse from my point of view.

Sounds like campaign downfalls for your taste. Googeling all those games don’t offer lots and lots complains at all. There are so little it was even hard to find them O.o .

Strange sounds like we talk about different stuff. We still talk about Path of Exile right? Still going strong even when there are plenty of other games or even a second part. PoE is ran down fast if you know what to do. A friend of mine is kind of “Yeah I play the PoE season!” a week later he’s done. That’s PoE for most people and still there are a lot of streamers arround each season… So i still don’t get what you are on about.

When? they wanted to be a game between D3 and PoE. So it’s neither aiming for D3 players or PoE players but the inbetween and there is not much room inbetween ^^.

Yeah and having things that change the pace a bit are welcome to me. Making it even more bland isn’t a good thing what they did with all that different dungeon items to skip even more.

Hey at least I would run even faster if he’s on a map all of the sudden… would increase the speed for me a lot ^^.

But by the other dudes terminology Abberoth is core endgame not core

No problem with either for my part.

Makes no difference for the campaign. The shitshow stays the shitshow and needs a ton of work to beremotely intresting at all. Adding or removing content isn’t doing the trick here.

If this was the case LE would be DOA because it was a mess and a half to begin with.