Eterra Monthly: Jan. Edition 2026

EHG_DerrickG · February 2, 2026, 5:00pm

Hello Travelers!

A new year is upon us. As we all anticipate the release of Season 4 in a short couple of months, we also have some exciting changes to announce for Eterra Monthly. We’ve been looking at ways to level up our communication and transparency with you, our Travelers. To do this, we’re incorporating additional sections to Eterra Monthly: Development Highlights and the Feedback Forge. While these segments won’t always appear, we’re committed to including them as often as possible so we can give you a fresh look at what’s coming next.

Development Highlights are focused on giving a glimpse at work going into future updates and, additionally, an opportunity to hear directly from the development team. There may be times where we provide you all with historical insights on development decisions, artistic journeys, and more to mix it up. Any unreleased content that we share in this section is subject to change.

Next is the Feedback Forge, where we highlight feedback you’ve shared that we are actively bringing into the game. This section is all about showcasing your voices and contributions as they help shape and improve the player experience in Last Epoch. As always, we are committed to listening to our players, and we appreciate all the feedback and suggestions shared with us.

Eterra Monthly is a place to discover new information, have your voices heard, and to recap the previous month so be sure to check in at the start of each month. With all that said, let’s take a look at our very first Development Highlights in this month’s edition of Eterra Monthly.

Development Highlight: Acolyte Updates

The following information is subject to change in accordance with balancing strategies, feedback, and functionality.

Today, we will be looking at some changes to the Acolyte, with details shared from our Senior Technical Game Designer, Justin.

Hello Acolytes, last season we aimed to bring some changes to some of your minions, but realized we weren’t quite ready to ship the Skeleton adjustments. In Season 4, they’ll land, bringing you some more fun options to play with.

We’ve tweaked Summon Skeleton to give you more freedom to reign over your foes.

Fire Arrow

Fire Arrow has been reworked and now has 26 base fire damage and 130% damage effectiveness. It no longer has a cooldown and instead replaces the regular bow attack for Skeleton Archers. It now also grants Skeleton Archers 20% less attack speed.

With this Node change, Ice Arrow now converts ignite chance from all sources to frostbite chance.

Ash and Frost

Following Ice Arrow, a new node, Ash and Frost will allow your Skeleton Archers to randomly use fire or Ice arrows and receive +30% ignite or frostbite chance, depending on the arrow used.

Dread Phalanx

Instead of 80%, Dread Phalanx will now grant 100% more damage and provide 50% health instead of 40%.

Individual Operator

For our Skeleton Rogue Enthusiasts, Individual Operator has been reworked. We recently shared an update to Individual Operator that focused on using a single Rogue, and received feedback from all of you that you would much rather see more support for armies, so we changed it. Individual Operator now grants your Skeleton Rogues 25% more damage per point for each Skeleton Warrior or Archer you control.

Splinter Nova

Marrow Shards has received some updates as well. Bone Splinters are now affected by the entire tree, so effects like Rip Marrow, Demise, and Bones of the Follower now apply to it, and you can change your Bone Splinters into a Splinter Nova that hits all enemies around you. We’ve also changed many of the tree’s “more hit damage” modifiers into “more damage” to allow for ailment builds. We’ve also improved the consistency of Spirit Feast’s mana recovery.

Feedback Forge

The Feedback Forge highlights how your insights help shape the future of Last Epoch. This update showcases fixes and improvements driven by community reports and feedback. We’ll also be highlighting the community members who helped contribute to these fixes.

FIXED IN SEASON 4: Permanent Bond always changes the ability to howl if you have any non-wolf companions summoned

With thanks to: Bella_D_Vine, Ferdous, ClamHatFiesta, and many more.

INTERACTION CHANGE IN SEASON 4:

Summon Wolf: The Permanent Bond node will no longer cause Summon Wolf to be replaced with Howl when there is at least one active Wolf and one active non-Wolf minion.
Added a new node, which requires 1 point allocated in Permanent Bond Lone Wolf: While you have the additional Wolf from Permanent Bond summoned, Summon Wolf is replaced with Howl, but you cannot have more than one Wolf summoned

FIXED IN SEASON 4: In offline play, defeating campaign Lagon during the first phase causes the player to be stuck on the lower level, unable to prompt dialogue to finish the quest.

With thanks to: Lilith_Xolaani, Kunou, ElaithX, and many more.

FIXED IN SEASON 4: Players describe their resolution settings resetting whenever they quit the game or go back to the login screen. This seems to mainly/only be occurring to players who play in Windowed Mode.

With thanks to: Bilbo1997, milkcake, Blitzt2, Bankraeuber, and more.

FIXED IN SEASON 4: Two nodes in the Sacrifice Skill Tree are not working properly - From Blood & Crimson Horror. They are not increasing the damage of the Blood Horrors, although they should be.

With thanks to: Drimo.

FIXED IN SEASON 4: Sometimes the wolves from Summon Wolf disappear randomly. There are scant reports of other companions doing the same thing, but the wolves seem to be the main problem.

Mike’s Teasers

In the month of January, Mike’s stream kicked off with a cryptic image of what appears to be a shattered obelisk.

The following week, Mike clued us in on two new skill nodes for the Rogue: Alloy Animation and Shadow Massacre.

One more Rogue skill was revealed, but not before we saw a ring that looks like it plans to stick around longer than you might like.

The final stream of the month revealed a glimpse into Runes of Corruption and how those can impact items in various ways. Will you take the risk to corrupt your best items?

Pre-corrupted

Corrupted Ruined and Corrupted with Corrupted Affixes

Corrupted with Legendary Affixes and Corrupted Downgraded to Unique

Build Spotlight

Who says you can’t win more than once in your life? No one, that’s who. This month’s Build spotlight goes to a past Spotlight winner with another incredible build!

BlueBeyond comes in this month with a Multi-Smite Void Knight (say it five times fast), and it’s earned some respect. If you want to get up close and personal and unleash all of your fury against your enemies in a “Death by 1000 cuts” style combat, then this is the build for you. This is also a great build if you enjoy the Merchant’s Guild, so collecting the right gear is a breeze.

BlueBeyond has figured out how to combine the spell damage of Smite with the indirect cast from Multistrike’s Hallowed Arsenal node. This creates some truly killer single-target damage as well as a decent amount of AOE to keep the impatient enemies at bay.

To quote BlueBeyond, “This is a dual-wielding build, which traditionally has been too squishy to play, but with the modern-day standards of Void Knight, can easily clear 1000 Corruption. Smite your enemies up to 16 times a second, stack vitality, and be the hardest hitting truck to ever Isekai Julra.”

It’s also important to note that this build has versatility in mind. If Dual-wielding isn’t your thing, an alternative has already been figured out and can be found in the build guide. It also doesn’t require ANY uniques to get started! As if that wasn’t enough, this build can also take out Uber Aberroth.

As is tradition, we will leave the juicy details for you in the Build Guide, but we can at least share with you the list of Pros and Cons to help you decide if this is the build for you.

Pros

Insane single-target damage
Vitality Stacking
Easily Farmable Uniques
All Items have alternatives
High Move Speed
Use abnormal Uniques to easily buy on the market

Cons

Melee
No good movement skill

Now that you’ve heard what this thing can do, check out the guide and try it for yourself.

Got a build you think is awesome? Did you find a cool new way to combo skill nodes for a really unique playstyle? Create a Build Guide, and you could be the next Community Build Spotlight in Eterra Monthly!

Community Fun

Over the past month, my eager attempts to return home landed me in a place I didn’t think I would survive: an Osprix War camp. Among the tents and fires and scornful looks from the soldiers, I found they all shared one thing beyond the banners of the sun god. They all loved to eat! At camp, tents circled fires that blazed with heat enough to warm you as you passed between circles. But once the towering flames died down, the camp filled with the smell of food and spices in ways I had never experienced.

I was an outsider, but the Osprix taught me how to make a hearty meal with little more than a few coals and a handful of leftover ingredients. Just the scraps I carried with me and something to wrap them in. It was simple, but sometimes I miss it.

This month, I’m happy to share this moment with you all in a way you can share with your families in a far less hostile, military-free environment.

I would like to offer a few extra notes if you’ll allow.

If the foil is too thin or tears easily, a second sheet won’t affect the cooking time too much, so it is encouraged.
Lean meat is best to avoid ending up with a foil bag of grease by the end. You could even poke a small hole in the bottom to help prevent this. If you’re using tofu or poultry, you shouldn’t have this issue at all.
Have little soldiers but not out camping? Follow all of the same steps and cook it up on a grill while they set up tents in the backyard.

What’s Next?

Come join us as we’ll be celebrating an awesome milestone this week. Dev Q&A Stream #200 with Mike!!! To help celebrate, we’ve armed Mike with some fun giveaways [and maybe even a special guest!] There is a lot to talk about coming up, and we want to share it with you. Mark your calendar, turn on your notifications, and we will see you on Twitch for the 200th Q&A Dev Stream this Friday, Feb 6th at 3 pm CST.

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.

UPDATE: We’ve removed the sentence Individual Operator now grants your Skeleton Rogues 25% more damage per point for each Skeleton Warrior or Archer you control. While it still has a max of 4 points, it now grants your Skeleton Rogue 50% more damage per point, and 50% increased cooldown recovery speed per point, but you can only summon up to 1 Skeleton Rogue from the above Acolyte information as this changed based on feedback.

Travoas · February 2, 2026, 5:17pm

Thank you, I like the addition of the Feedback Forge. I know you can’t put everything that people provide feedback for into this, but at least you are giving us something.

Entrr_Username · February 2, 2026, 5:48pm

I appreciate the fact you guys being more responsive to feedback… but still making us wait even longer for season 4 after waiting 9 months for season 2 (still not letting go of the fact the game was somehow still on season 1 for its first anniversary) is just not something I, and many others, can get behind. And the fact that you guys are acting like it’s no big deal when PoE 1 and 2 are still pushing out leagues at a consistent rate, while this game’s been averaging 1k players for the past few months… It’s not really a surprise that you guys weren’t making much revenue.

Kulze · February 2, 2026, 6:25pm

A couple of months is not ‘short’, please stop it with those lines, they don’t do anyone well. A few months is a few months. We know you guys would’ve loved to provide things earlier. We would’ve loved to have things earlier. It’s not the case. Say it as it is. Don’t do the ‘talk everything nice’ stuff. It’s not good, it’s detrimental.

Besides that nitpicking:

Great to see you’re actually providing relevant information besides auxiliary stuff! The development highlight is great already.
Hearing that skeletons just weren’t ready would’ve been great to know when relevant rather then now. But nonetheless still good to know it’s because of that.

Transparency, and that’s a part of it. If something’s not ready say it, then people at least know ‘we’re working on it actively’.

Yeah, the effectiveness definitely does something, but sadly archers are not very strong anyway. They are… ok?

We can expect a 20% DPS boost there, not the world, the issue for skeletons is survivability. They aren’t up for a long time since they get smashed to pieces in seconds, hence we either need them to be more tanky… or to get a significant (100%+) boost in DPS to make up for it.

That’s the starting line.

Ash And Frost:
How are we supposed to scale ignite and frostburn chance on skeletons?

Dread Phalanx:

It’s a significant defensive downside as there’s less individuals to focus on for the AI, hence the chance for a projectile to be intercepted or the aggro being taken by one of your minions is lower.

50% health is the major issue here, the 100% damage is fine. 20% size makes the hitbox a bit better but doesn’t in any way make up for them being paper.

Individual Operator:

If it focuses on an army then ‘Individual’ isn’t quite fitting there. But otherwise… ok?
The rogue is interesting definitely… but a single one at a maximum base skeleton count of 6 that means we get 125% more damage potentially, with the baseline 250% still existing.

Since we can increase skeleton count appropriately though the common count is 3 + 3 from the tree + 1 from the ring + 2 from passives for a total of 9 (Unless I forgot something).

That means the max bonus we can generally have is 200% more and 400% increased. Which yeah… is decent.
We already use 9 points solely to achieve the +3 in the tree though, hence we have baseline 11 points left. To achieve the expected rogue build we need 7 more, hence we got 4 points left for other things.

Those 4 points go for 3 into more damage (top from center) and 1 into speed (left from center) and hence you’re ‘done’ baseline. Hence we cannot go into defensive nodes for them without crippling the upsides the rogue provides sadly.

This is a very very mediocre chance.

Overall the sekeleton rework is underwhelming. It doesn’t address the core issues related to them. I recommend sitting down properly and heavily thinking about what the actual issues are before we have - again - a ‘we need to rework the rework 3 times to even get the baseline going’.

Top tier new section, love it. Showcases actual changes, just what’s needed!

They are utterly underwhelming given that we have no smooth progression to get towards a reasonable use of them.
Unlike in PoE they’re extreme fringe cases currently given that we have no way to reliably gather legendary items with the proper Affixes already on it… and hence cannot afford to loose the current item we use at a risky gamble.
And by the time it would become viable to actually do it the drop-rate of the respective item is so miniscule together with a fitting drop (or craft) from an exalted with then a RNG gated slam for the right result that we cannot expect to get duplicates.

This mechanic is ill-fitted for the current stage of the game and solely a high-stakes gamble mechanic which is prone to provide more frustration then good.

Overall:

Hefty improvement of Eterra Monthly! Kudos to you guys.

Hopefully you’ll also be able to react accordingly given that we can provide proper feedback with those sneak-peeks in terms of development you’re providing us. I can say as someone who loves zoo-builds this is utterly underwhelming sadly and would’ve hurt the game substantially if released because people then once more would go with ‘that’s it?’.

beserkjay · February 2, 2026, 6:53pm

I am by no means a great player but I do enjoy the playstyle of having a bunch of rogues shredding things. I am worried how the changes to Dread Phalanx and Individual Operator will no longer let you stack more damage on rogue minions.

Here is my build for reference: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/QnaaNXKV

Thank you for consideration and the great game!

Heavy · February 2, 2026, 6:55pm

What did they do to make you think that though?

EHG does know that its not great, but they can’t magically deliver updates faster. Do you think they like these timeframes?

This is a damned if they do damned if they don’t situation. If they would speed up things and not deliver good quality people will be not happy. If they take too long people will not be happy.

Zeckar · February 2, 2026, 7:21pm

This isn’t as much of an issue in the current season. We have way more life scaling, they were buffed, and most skeles builds want Dread Phalanx for the more HP. That combined with the armor from Dread Shade and more HP from Tyrant’s they are fine.

This node is like the standard for Skeletons. This buff is great.

3 base, 1 mastery, 2 passives, 3 tree, 2 from rings, 1 from chest, 1 from champion affix (13 total). I usually don’t count the champion mod and say 12 max. 200% more dmg base from the node and 1100% more damage for the other skeletons w/o Dread Phalanx

Kulze · February 2, 2026, 8:08pm

Absolutely! It’s ‘less’. Which is a good start.

But for defensive/offensive split we always need to take into consideration uptime.
If your skeletons get blasted to smithereens (they still do, lasting longer in lower corruption at least) then you need to re-cast them, which takes time, removes defense (projectile blocking and aggro) and offenses (no skeleton no damage )

This has always been the balancing act of zoo-builds. Since you don’t focus on something individually but ‘all of it’ you have a swarm but every individual is comparatively ‘weak’. Both in offense and defense compared to a ‘focused build’ like the Wraithlord for example was (and partially still is).

Which is another major issue. Not that it exists… or the functionality itself… but the targeting.

I can’t name how often I’ve re-buffed the same minion 5-10 times because targeting your own minions is absolutely awful. Every loss of a minion takes considerable time to bring it back up to max power because of it. Not only are the suicidal (expected) but we don’t have anything of the sorts like ‘buff unbuffed creature’ for those situations.

It’s the core QoL for those things lacking at times, and different games provide different solutions.
PoE has ‘passive’ buffs, you don’t target, your buff through auras for example.
Other games focus on individual minions so you actually can target em.

If you’re not in either situation you need a workaround which is still lacking currently.

In a zoo you don’t tend to go dual as much as I remember, unless something has changed.
Forgot the chest and mastery though, thanks!

And yeah, champion is a mess.

psychodrive · February 2, 2026, 8:12pm

Heya folks.

Build graphic and text for the featured build seem to have different creator names.

Also, am I crazy or did you change the game UI font?

Zeckar · February 2, 2026, 8:19pm

I mean the survivability problems are effectively a non-existent issue unless you’re pushing past 1k, maybe even 2k corruption. Uber is a different beast and has problems for minion army builds outside of just the survivability, so it’s meh to balance around that.

Zoo builds and Rogues at this current state are better offensively and even defensively due to shield and Tyrant’s scaling a lot of stats that are applicable to you defensively and can boost your minion’s damage. The only solo minion build really at the pinnacle is Abom, and then way down the list would be the A tier builds like Flame Wraiths, Skeleton Rogues, Minion Army, etc. Most everything else falls below these builds.

QoL is lacking and targeting could be better, for sure. I’ve made suggestions and reports on it multiple times. Though it’s not that often you reapply as minions are in most cases lasting your whole play session and most buffs have infinite duration. Also, pro tip, if you aren’t aware, aim at the minion’s feet for targeting shades.

Incursio · February 3, 2026, 12:24am

Looking forward to some of this! Hype train incoming!

Inci86 · February 3, 2026, 5:43am

This it totaly tonedeaf. You are still limiting the number of rogues, which is the problem in the first place. Unless the node changes all minions base damage to poison, the node is useless for buiding the pioson army necromancer build. The whole point of the complaint was STOP LIMITING OUR NUMBER OF MINIONS WE CAN SUMMON WITH THE NECROMANCER!!! If this is the price for makeing our minions more sturdy and deal more damage, than find other ways to buff them, by haveing more and more minions and just scrap the whole limiting the numbers. There is no difference between BM and Necro if the only way to make minions stronger is by limiting their numbers. For BM fantasy it makes sense, for Necro it doesn’t. Untill you realise this the minion army necro will always be less powerfull, than single minion necro builds, which again, doesn’t make any sense. Or maybe instead of changeing the functionality of the node, to match its name, change its name to match the current functionality. And next time instead of twisting our complaints inside out, just ACTUALLY LISTEN, UNDERSTAND and do what the community wants.

peinshakoff · February 3, 2026, 6:41am

Big thanks, this bug drives me mad

Lack of “bow” necro minions to combo them with - that is a problem. +melee+bow or +spell+bow affixes for minions still a secondary choice after +melee+spell in weapons

Kulze · February 3, 2026, 7:50am

Yeah, if you’re quite good in outfitting your minions and get good legendary drops. Before the rework they started to struggle at ~300c, now they do at ~500c. And I don’t mean the ‘I cannot progress’ struggle but rather then type where unless you had the option to actively go into minion health rather then focusing primarily on damage (which lets you at least advance) they are dust in the wind in quite a short timeframe.

But especially for zoo builds… we wanna have minion count. The wave of summons to wash over whatever stands in its way, right?
So… the reduction of Rogue minions isn’t really… doing anything?
And yes, they overall are ‘better then before’… but related to what? Wolfes? Former Wraithlord? Abom?

Wraithlord 1.1 was one absolute monstrum. Finnicky to handle with the movement but powerful beyond end.
Wolfes currently are really strong as well, severely outperforming any zoo build.
And Abom? Simply superior in terms of defense and offense while also allowing single-focus basically, which the lack of should be a respective downside of the ‘horde summoner’.

Compared to the ‘competition’ in builds zoo builds are lackluster. It’s a lower-end mediocre build currently in a environment where ‘basic’ Aberroth can be killed by any build without issues and corruption pushing and uber Aberroth are our sole goals for anyone playing longer-term in any form.

It does really well for overall experience in the campaign, good there, but it falls short beyond sadly.

Yep, absolutely so. Focusing on them provides no upside, mages simply are superior.

I mean… we got 4 ‘core types’ of minions available, and each is supposed to have a distinct upside, but they don’t currently properly. We got melee, archers, mages and rogues. Melee should hold the line better, they’re not distinct enough in survivability compared to the others. Archers don’t distinct themselves from mages at all, they’re pure DPS dealers… so why mages aren’t auxiliary with crowd control built in is something I don’t understand, would distinct them properly. And rogues are supposed to be fast hitting crit+poison things… which they not really do either, but demolish everything as the absolute best direct DPS unit available… when they’re supposed to be DoT centric

It’s just all a bit backwards in my mind, the distinction between zoo… solo-minion/focus-minion… archetypes of summons and so on.

Arrix · February 3, 2026, 3:02pm

I love the Feedback Forge. Awesome stuff right there and a good reason for me to actually look forward to the Eterra Monthly since I keep pretty up to date with most of the teases.

I really like this Monthly, please keep it up.

Gilavar · February 3, 2026, 3:16pm

One of the best EMs . Thanks!

Zeckar · February 3, 2026, 5:38pm

Gear progression is short and easy, especially for Necro. You get so much benefit from single stats in the current season. You don’t need to invest in minion health much at all currently. A single more health multiplier and int/vit stacking is more than enough to have them never die. Idk where you get the notion they just die. It’s just not the truth in practice, if you’re building a proper build.

The optimal lazy minion army build is 2 Wraiths, 5 Death Knights, 5 rogues, and 1 Revenant. you can even opt to go 8 rogues and 1 warrior, instead. It performs well at 1k corruption. It’s probably the 2nd or 3rd best Necro build in terms of dps and on par with OG Wraithlord. People really overestimate how good Wraithlord was especially in comparison to the power we have now. Wolves don’t beat any zoo build on Necro. Abom is really the only outlier on Necro. The builds that lag behind it are Flame Wraiths which is up to 20 minions, Zoo Necro which is 13-17 minions, and finally Rogues which are 5-9 minions. All of which have higher damage potential than any other build on Necro outside of Abom.

The issues with beating Uber are more than just survivability. It’s doable, but hard to manage so many minions. Flame Wraith has the best and easiest potential to do that content as it plays like totems.

They inherently hit 2x per attack. Poison and Crit are their specialty. Lethal Concentration is an extremely easy build to get going for gear and crit has really good damage ceiling. Both builds exceed 15 million dps.

Magaziniac · February 3, 2026, 6:54pm

No one on PoE2: “I really love the kiss/curse mechanic on every cool skill”
EHG: “Let us introduce kiss/curse, you’ll love it.”

Shathor · February 3, 2026, 11:18pm

If season 4 comes March 26th, then it is 7 months and 5, 6 days since season 3. That’s technically not “even longer” than 9 months.
But yes, it is a long time.

Kulze · February 4, 2026, 12:17am

Don’t worry though… it’s just ‘a few short months’ ahead!
If EHG ever says ‘it’ll take a while’ I can make a 5 year plan at the minimum!