I started playing this game about a year ago, and I’ve picked it up and put it down several times since. I’ll be blunt: the thing that makes me put it down every time is making a 2nd character and going through the low-level monoliths. There isn’t a nice or positively constructive way to say it. Monoliths suck before they’re empowered.
I see a lot of suggestions about monoliths. No one really seems happy with them, and there’s several reasons why, but I think the biggest one is that getting to Empowered Monoliths gets incredibly repetitive and tedious very quickly.
I agree with this, but the issue is, a lot of the suggestions that I read involve totally reworking monoliths, which is not feasible or realistic. They also fail to consider that the issue with monoliths isn’t structural — they feel fine to play, and once you get to empowered monoliths the game picks up (for me, at least).
The core issue with monoliths is that doing them doesn’t actually represent a risk.
Everything else in this game that’s fun involves some sort of risk. Crafting, creating a legendary item, gambling, playing hardcore…they all have you asking the quintessential ARPG question: “Did I just screw up?” (or the alternative: “How can I prevent myself from screwing up?”). I’ve never asked that question while grinding through the low-level monoliths. And, of course, this might be a draw for some people — being able to boot up an ARPG without having to hassle with PoE’s myriad of systems or Grim Dawn’s tedious level design can be really fun…but there should be the option to have more for those who want more.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I think I’ve come up with a very simple solution that could realistically be implemented without removing the accessibility of Last Epoch: spending materials to make monoliths harder and more rewarding.
I think a simple interface where you pop in crafting shards to increase the damage, speed, and HP of enemies could work. But ideally it would be a Hades type situation where you could tick boxes for certain modifiers. I think a large spectrum from easy (complete the monolith within the time limit or else you get no loot) to build-disablingly difficult (your character can not generate ward or regenerate life) would be good. I’m sure someone with more knowledge of the game could come up with some really unique ones.
Overall, this solves several problems, such as:
- An easy sink for crafting materials that might not see much use that gives them value in the future economy
- A way to speed up stability in monoliths while still staying in line with EHG’s position on progression (think how you can go through a dungeon if your build is good enough to skip the campaign)
- Providing another gold sink
- A way to stress-test builds that isn’t the Arena
This isn’t perfect, however. I think the biggest issue would be that spending 15 seconds for your mods on each monolith would arguably be worse than what we have now. In PoE, you can pre-roll your maps, but that isn’t an option with Last Epoch. The best option that I’ve been able to come up with has been to provide around three to five presets that allow you to quickly choose your mods and be on your way. It feels like there would be better options, but I’m a forum poster, not a game developer.
I also think that tweaking rewards to scale correctly would be a little difficult. You probably wouldn’t want it to spit out the loot you put in 1-to-1, but if you don’t make it rewarding enough, it just becomes a way for people to grind stability faster. Which isn’t bad, but it’s boring. I think a system where difficulty increases in a relatively exponential way while rewards scale linearly might be the best call…but again, I’m complaining on a forum, I don’t actually have much expertise on the subject.
I’d really like to hear some ideas on this — either ideas for new mods or reasons why it totally wouldn’t work. I haven’t played the game since a bit after Julra was introduced, so I’m not privy to the game’s systems right now.