Hi Travellers! Greetings from Aus.
Quick background. I normally like POE and Diablo 3 / 4 but have had Last Epoch for a few years now.
~400 hours prior to 1.0 release. Tested most classes / masteries in that time, but didnt take any to extreme endgame (nothing beyond 500 corruption).
So far this cycle I’m nearly max level (98) on a Necromancer, playing the Wraithlords Harbour build with rank 8 COF.
I would like to start off by saying, thanks for taking all the cool ideas / community feedback onboard and integrating them into the game. Obviously there are still server / connection issues, but I think this game is fun and has alot of potential.
Lets cover both the positives and the negatives - starting with the positives. Then we can go into more general and specific feedback, with some suggestions for improvement where possible.
BIG Positives:
- FUN - The game is just fun. Partially because of the hype, but mostly because of the below:
- Campaign / story is decent, definitely better with the cinematics.
- Classes and Specs / Masteries are unique and fun. Not being able to change your mastery is a bit silly but its not a big deal.
- Character Progression is great, due in part to the awesome itemisation
- Stash Space. Its amazing to me that an apparent indie studio has unlocked the secret technology of free stash tabs. Now someone patent the idea and sell it to D4! Nah but seriously thanks EHG <3
- Itemisation is great - simple to understand but hard to master. Especially with the Glyph of Insight shenanigans.
- Crafting is cool, fresh and impactful. I still haven’t even got all of my LP uniques farmed up but I’m already on the look out for exalted bases to slam at the Eternity Cache (Temporal Sanctum crafting)
- COF seems strong and awesome, but only very new to it. Its very grindy, but rewarding - which is fantastic. No comment on MG just yet (but I will likely try it eventually).
- Loot filter is very good and I love the min maxing of the loot filter ‘mini-game’ after you get a bunch of upgrades. More notes on this below.
- Monoliths were the saving grace for the server issues, I think this was the ‘Sanctuary’ for most people. And if it didn’t exist I would probably have stopped playing by now and revisit in a few months.
- Best tooltips in any game, period. Being able to show the tier like POE is great. And being able to see MORE INFO is even better.
- In-game Guide. Its great for new players and veterans alike who have come back to the game after a long time and cant remember how things work. Wish more games had this, especially POE.
- Minions. Just came from D4 and the minions there are literally dogwater, so thanks for making a game where the minions do more than 17 damage and are viable at all stages of the game (not just from 1-50)! /Salty D4 player rant over. I do genuinely love minions and I’m glad you made them do damage! Thank you.
BIG Negatives
- Server launch was an absolute joke. In Aus we all woke up at 3am, and between 3am and 3pm we only got a few hours of play time in. ‘Party play’ was nigh on impossible.
- Since then the servers have stabilised somewhat. Either that or everyone has left the game and the original die hards remain.
- Load screens still slow and laggy
- Some load screens don’t even show up as connecting or loading zones, they just hang the game until you load in or crash
- I have a friend who still hasn’t been able to log in since day 1. He got annoyed and just went to play offline mode.
- Personally I’ve been very lucky, getting straight in while friends of mine were on queues. I’ve never had a queue, I didn’t even know there was such a thing. But I have just got stuck a bunch on trying to load into zones (day 1 and 2); trying to load into towns (first few days), and trying to play with friends (1 week in).
- Some load screens don’t even show up as connecting or loading zones, they just hang the game until you load in or crash
PSA: I would encourage people who are having server issues to try OFFLINE MODE, just to enjoy the merits of the game. It truly is quite good. Unless you care about trading or playing with friends, there is no real downside to giving Offline a go.
GENERAL FEEDBACK (And Suggestions for Improvement):
-
Acolyte
- Warlock seems cool but very flashy with lots of visual noise. Note: I have not played warlock but a friend of mine is, and when we group it hurts my eyes.
- Would be nice to have a setting to adjust the opacity on other players spells / effects when in a Party.
- I’m currently playing Necro and started with the Flame Wraiths build. Literally just found two good flame wraith idols and then the David Harbour helm dropped.
- I was super stoked and excited. Its a very cool item / idea, but it is a bit janky and lacks some polish.
- This is just a random spit ball idea, but because he’s holding a massive scythe - it would be cool if he swung the scythe to cast. Or even if you could toggle his attack stance from ‘Caster’ to ‘Melee’ so he could run up an swipe enemies.
- Warlock seems cool but very flashy with lots of visual noise. Note: I have not played warlock but a friend of mine is, and when we group it hurts my eyes.
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Wraithlords Harbour
- Great idea, however it is a bit janky as mentioned
- Wraithlord icon in the top left minion bar isn’t working properly - showing up as a ‘white square’ instead of what I would presume would be the Wraithlords face / icon.
- Bug: Flame wraiths that are summoned by the Wraithlord and are still alive at the end of a monolith, continue to exist in the ‘after monolith chest reward area’ and don’t reset when you go into your next monolith, reducing your maximum wraith count by that much.
- I.e. if 4 wraiths are alive after a mono, they continue to be alive in the ‘chest reward area’ and in the next monolith you are NERFED by “-4” wraiths until you go back to town (instant dread) (as its still counting those other 4 wraiths as being alive, stopping you from reaching the max count).
- After some testing, this isn’t just an issue with the Wraithlord, its with wraiths and minions in general. The whole ‘minions reset for each monolith’ thing doesn’t really work.
- Note: for those who are yelling at me, I know the helm isn’t designed to be synergistic with flame wraiths but I was invested into that when it dropped so I messed around with that build for a while. Having someone cast your very expensive Flame Wraiths for free is very nice QOL. But to ease your pain, I’ve since swapped to a proper Wraithlord build now with juicing the Wraithlord itself. RaizQT has a good build if anyone is interested. Props to Raiz for his “Fernando Wraithlord build”.
- Bug: Infernal Shade and Dread Shade both clip into each other and also into the Wraithlord if you spec into ‘Sequel of Avarice’ in the Summon Wraith tree, which increases his size just enough to clip.
- The ‘Empower Wraithlord’ effect from the helm should have a cooldown. Also he only consumes 2 targets per ‘consume action’. He should just consume all in one go / cast.
- The issue is that he sits there consuming minions instead of attacking monsters which are potentially going to kill you. Would be a lot smoother if he either consumed “Off the CD” or consumed all minions in one go with a quick cast. Then he can get back to work either firing out necrotic beams or summoning more wraiths.
- Targeting for minions (for casting infernal shade / dread shade) is an issue. Infernal shade is not so bad because its cheap with no CD. Infernal shade is the problem.
- Casting it on a mini wraith instead of the Wraithlord is a real problem, especially in high corruption when you need all the damage possible. Especially when 99% of your damage comes from the Wraithlord, not buffing him could mean your death.
- Suggestion: There should be an option to only cast dread shade on your wraithlord, or to let you choose which minion type to cast it on.
- Dreadshade - I would love to see dreadshade last a bit longer. Partly because of the annoying targetting. If there was a talent in the skill tree to make it last infinitely like infernal shade, that would be amazing. Make it cost like x10 more if you have to.
- I don’t think giving it a CD is a good idea, unless the targeting is fixed. Because having to wait 18sec because you cast it on the wrong wraith (when you had Wraithlord ‘targeted’) feels pretty crappy.
- Weapon prefixes - right now there are no decent Weapon prefixes for this build. There’s cast speed, which is not good if your Wraithlord is casting all your wraiths. There is mana / mana regen which is okay. But all other prefixes are dead stats.
- Minion Cooldown Recovery / Reduction. What is this stat for? I trawled through the 3rd party tools for LE to find out what type of Acolyte / Necro minion has a skill with a Cooldown and could not find anything! They literally all say “CD: 0 seconds”.
- I hope I’m missing something, but right now to me this seems like a dead stat - which is weird because its an implicit on the Wraithlords Harbour helm! Why?!
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Minion Movement
- Minions feel like they’re ‘sliding’ or ‘ice skating’ around the battlefield, often overshooting their target monster or position. Somehow this gets worse with more minion movement speed. And if you have infernal / dread shade on them, it can mean death for them if they aren’t attacking / leeching their health back.
- I know the best form of dps is to lock the minions in place for the ‘perfect ai’ but that’s only because minion movement is janky
- There is another way to combat this with the ‘Minion Traversal Boots Experimental Affix’, but I feel like these are all band-aid fixes.- Suggestion: There should be a way to control minions like wow ‘Passive, Aggressive, Assist’
- Passive - stays near you and attacks what’s close
- Aggressive - attacks the nearest target, moving closer if necessary
- Assist - always attacks the target of your spells / attacks / curses, if able
- Also thank you very much for adding a minion attack button (like the old Warcraft 3). It is very much appreciated. If only other games (cough D4 cough) can copy this now along with the stash and loot filters.
- Suggestion: There should be a way to control minions like wow ‘Passive, Aggressive, Assist’
Monoliths
- Monoliths can be a bit boring and repetitive
- Would like to see other end-game systems instead of monoliths.
- Would like to see more ‘pinnacle’ end game bosses that you can limit test your build on
Test Dummies
- Would like to see more test dummies around the place. Not sure why the one in ‘End of Time’ was removed.
- Would like to see added functionality to the test dummy to include things like ‘level scaling’.
- E.g. one that’s your level, then a boss and minion dummy for every 100 corruption up to your current corruption
- Would like to see a dps calculator similar to games like Lost Ark.
- Also in a training or testing area with those dummies that you can freely respec your skills / passive without consequence. And without the need for ‘monster experience’. Similar to the area at the Arena (west of Heoborea).
- This would help theorycrafters / testers figure out builds and synergies that aren’t obvious from the tooltips. And may help to narrow down bugs too!
Tooltips
- Cut off Tooltips (in ultrawidescreen 5120x1440).
- Firstly thanks for supporting ultrawide-screen. I play with 5120x1440 resolution. Its nice having ARPGs that don’t give black bars on the side in 2024.
- However some tooltips do get cut off, and sometimes even the text shrinks (I have less of a problem with that).
- Not sure if other players using different resolutions also have this issue, please comment below if you are and what resolution you’re playing on, ty.
- Sometimes when you visit a vendor / gambler, the tooltip text goes to size 72 font:
- its usually the text: “Purchasing this item will reveal its rarity and magical properties. Cannot be a unique or set item”
- or “[Shift-right click] to buy”.
Stash Filter Search
- Cant search for “T6” or “T7” affixes. Have also tried “Tier: 6” and “Tier: 7” as listed on the tooltip to no avail. Typing “Drop only” doesn’t work either.
- Cant search for double T6 or T7 affixes. (For those laughing, I have had a few. And maybe a few more that potentially slipped passed my loot filter. Would be nice to get item filter support for this too).
- Cant search for ‘Experimental’ affixes
- Cant search for ‘Magic, Rare, Exalted’ items
- Would be cool to see a section on Stash Filter commands in the ‘In-game Guide’ - more below.
Circle of Fortune
- Very cool system for target farming. Rewarding but requires heavy investment (play time / efficient grinding)
- I would love it if the prophecy uniques that dropped from boss kills also pulled from their loot table.
- I.e. if you’re searching for the Unique Relic Twisted Heart of Ukheiros from the Emperor of Corpses boss in the Reign of Dragons timeline - it would be awesome if the ‘UNIQUE RELIC’ prophecy reward that requires that particular boss in that particular timeline would have an increased drop rate of the Twisted Heart.
- Right now I believe that the prophecy uniques are only influencing WORLD DROP uniques. And not BOSS DROP uniques.
- Rank 9 - Drops an entire set. Unless sets get buffed heavily this seems like a meme and should be removed. I would much rather prefer to see increased droprate of rare glyphs and runes, or rare affix shards, or another ‘Lens’ slot made available in the Telescope. (I understand the 3rd lens unlocks at rank 9 - I would like to see this moved to rank 10 and a 4th lens slot added)
- I think the main disadvantage to sets is that they cannot get LP. Therefore their power is capped. They might need an update.
In-game Guide / Stash Search
- Searching for ‘Crit Avoidance’ and ‘Less Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes’ should link to the ‘Critical Strikes’ page but it currently does not. Only a small issue but I thought it was worth mentioning.
- As mentioned above, would be cool to see a section on Stash Filter commands - giving an overview of what you can and can’t search.
- Through experimentation I’ve found that the stash search functionality is directly tied to the length of the item label.
- E.g. If you have ‘Short’ labels on and search for ‘of Fortification’ it doesn’t work unless you turn on ‘Long’ labels, find that item, withdraw it, drop it on the ground again and pick it up (so its label is now refreshed as a ‘Long’ label).
- I honestly prefer short labels, because it blocks less of the ground during combat. So it would be nice to be able to search for the prefix and suffix names even while using ‘Short’ labels, or any label for that matter.
Item Forge
- Bug: Sometimes the tooltips can become ‘sticky’ and hang around for alot longer than they should. Usually happens with glyphs or affix shards.
Chat
- Let us ‘Disable public’ chat as a setting. And let it persist through logouts. Right now you have to disable it every time if you don’t want it.
Crafting Inventory
- Would be cool to sort the table by quantity of shards, to see which ones you’re missing or are low on and target farm those
Loot Filter
- Awesome filter - very easy to understand and use. I wish more games had in-game loot filters of this quality that don’t rely on external 3rd party tools. (Looking at you POE)
- Would like to see further improvements / customisation:
- Item Filter Sound
- Right now the sound is for all exalted items. Even those hidden by the filter. I would prefer only hearing a ‘tink’ when its an item that is visible by the filter
- Hide beams and stars for items for items HIDDEN by the loot filter.
- Add different colour beams on the ground and coloured stars on the map / minimap according to the item ‘Recolour’
- Add borders to items according to the item ‘Recolour’. Borders around the actual icon inside your inventory, so you can more quickly ‘link’ it to the ‘rule’
- Legendary Potential filter - Options to show 1, 2, 3, 4 LP etc
- Item perfection filter - I.e. Only show perfect (100% perfection) t5 rolls. I.e. Only show perfect implicits for a certain base type
- Trying to filter for certain uniques doesn’t work. I’ve managed to find some work arounds using item levels and base types but sometimes there’s too many options.
- Would like to see a Range for item level such as “55-60” or “item level EQUALS”, as this would help narrow the filter for specific uniques too. Not sure why this isn’t a thing, atm it shows less than, greater than but not equals lol.
- Weavers Will - would be nice to filter for the amount of weavers will, or maybe a range? “20-28” or “>20” etc.
- Bugs: ‘of Fortification’ doesn’t show up, its just a dark label with no text. Almost like an inverse loot filter. The absence of text on the black background is the only way you can see it (sometimes).
QOL:
- Would like to see bigger pickup radius on potions and gold
- Would like to see affix shards also auto picked up. Assuming the Crafting inventory can hold more shards than you will ever need, there’s no reason to ever ignore affix shards on the ground.
- Also could we tick an option in the settings to have them go straight to the Materials tab?
- It would be cool at a glance to see the corruption you have on each monolith (like at the ‘end of time’ map where it shows each alternate timeline) and maybe the current stability as well.
- (Controversial) Would be nice to have a pet that picks up items on your loot filter. I mean the iguana already has a backpack! The lore already supports it!! Ammirite?!
- Also, on that note I cant seem to claim my Twitch drops (linking my LE account to Twitch comes up with an error). Linking to steam works fine though.
- Also haven’t received my cape and bee pet. Its cool that you guys have given this for free but I don’t know why everyone didn’t just get it in one go? I did see the post about everyone getting it before 1st March though. Will report back if its not there by then.
- Would like to see chests and bosses drop their loot quicker. Sometimes you’re zooming / blasting so fast that you forget loot (an item filter sound will alleviate this issue too).
- The ‘end of monolith reward chest area’ has an eclipsing sun that is visible when you are looking at your stash chest. I think this needs to be moved out of line of sight so it doesn’t continue to burn a whole in everyone retinas. I understand town is lava but this is taking it to the next level lol.
- Otherwise that end of monolith reward chest area is really good. It would be super nice if it had the ‘Brain’ reset passive points guy there as well. Seems a lot more of a ‘Sanctuary’ now that the towns are dicey with server issues. Just fix the glare from the sun, or move it LOS and all is well =)
- ‘Mass Shatter’ - it would be nice to have a ‘mass shatter’ that shatters everything in your inventory (with a warning prompt). Or maybe make a new rune: “Rune of Mass Shattering”?
- Either that or up the droprate of rare affix shards so we are less reliant on shattering for ‘uncommon’, ‘rare’ and ‘very rare’ affix shards. At time of writing, I’m nearly level 100 and I’ve only seen a few of the ‘+level of wraiths affix shard’ drop on the ground. All the rest I’ve had to get from shattering gear.
- When you have a window open with a scroll bar and you move your mouse slightly off the scroll bar while still holding left click, the game thinks you want to move your character. And it can get kind of annoying if you don’t want to move.
- I suggest making an option to freeze character while menus are open. And then leave the current functionality in, just in case there are speed runners who need to click certain windows and still move. (RIP this cycle speed runners, maybe next cycle the servers will co-operate!).
Thanks for reading if you got this far. Let me know if you agree / disagree and why in the comments.
Kind regards,
Tylicius