Hello everyone.
One of the things that i love in ARPG’s like Diablo and especially PoE besides killing monsters, many of them, is the loot and the grind for the next shiny upgrade.
I don’t mind that early game and even while doing the campaign my upgrades are scarce and i wouldn’t expect to valuable loot like rares or uniques to drop while doing the campaign but of course that i do hope it improves over time.
While I would trust Lizard 'cause I know he knows his stuff, I’m not sure I’d give the same courtesy to a rando on the internet who starts their post off with “I haven’t found a loot upgrade since level 8. I’m level 55.” Maybe they’re just used to more numerical progression (ie, D3 & that has to compactify numbers using SI units).
Gear is a little flat from about levels 1-30. You will see the same base types a lot and have very few shards the first time around to really interact with crafting something unique. There still aren’t many uniques in general and I would assume many archetypes just don’t have something to shoot for right now. I know as someone who plays a lot of Forge Guard I have no actual unique to shoot for at the moment. All the minion type unique are basically built for necromancer.
That being said this is the type of problem that naturally sorts itself out with time. Classes and skills are still seeing major changes from update to update and that makes it hard to offer a selection of gear to fit everyone’s needs. For example:
A day or two ago a major change happened to armor bases for the Sentinel class where it’s crit avoidance bases in Solarum armor were swapped out for endurance bases. This was a major change that literally made it impossible for any of the sentinel masteries to become crit immune without now having to sacrifice 2-3 suffixes of health. I’ve been doing gear swaps on the builder to find where this comes out as a net positive since Sentinels have notoriously bad access to endurance threshold but its at least worth testing.
At the very least when you hit monos and can build fairly unique rares that are highly customizable. Yes some of the base types are still boring and no there isn’t something for everybody at the top, but that’s where our feedback comes into play.
I found 4 “uniques” so far (and plenty of “rares”). I have only played for a few hours, my character isn’t even level 10 yet.
If anything, I’d say that’s too generous! Honestly though, so far it has felt pretty good. Far too early to tell, of course, but from what little I have played, the volume and quality of drops feels pretty good, without being excessive. I’m getting upgrades now and then, but I don’t have to swap out my gear every 3 seconds either, which is nice.
It seems like there is going to be a greater emphasis on crafting and the specifics of your skill specializations as other sources of power, and we won’t be fully relying on loot drops to increase player power anyway. But I’m just guessing until I get further into it.
Yep yep, glad I am not the only one…
The drop rates, at least for uniques, have been enormously boosted in this patch.
I don’t know if it is a bug, a miscalculation, or just a choice.
I’m 180 hours deep and have leveled a few characters to 70 and beyond. Loot picks up later on. Especially when you get something interesting that you craft into something great. There are wild uniques out there.
To be honest, loot was somewhat meh until 45 each time. It’s a fairly good rate of significant upgrades these days doing the level 90 monoliths. Get yourself a loot filter set up and grind monoliths and things can be fairly good.
i wouldn’t say “really bad”, it’s just kinda meh. I didn’t feel uniques were too rare - the complainer is either exaggerating about that or just unlucky. It also sounds like they werent using the crafting system properly - this is an obligatory part of the progression starting very early on. Finding a great item that’s already ready to use is barely a thing.
I do think the overall criticism of the itemisation as “boring” is totally fair
Unique design isn’t very good on average - many are uninteresting as well as strictly weaker than easily obtainable crafted rare items. Legendary crafting eventually gives some of these unique bases a purpose but they stil feel less interesting than good designs would’ve imo.
Some rares and exalts are strong and interesting, but there are entire slots that are basically underwhelming. Even when the itemisation feels impactful, it has a huge problem of predictability. You tend to have a very specific idea of which affixes you need in each slot. You don’t rlly get the excitment of tweaking your build to fit in a really cool item you found - either it’s a perfect fit or you may as well stick to a basic crafted t20.
The random guy you are referring to is probably a kid that doesn’t know how to manage loot.
You could be lucky with crafting and maybe a few pieces out of your entire gear get lucky and go from level 10 to 60.
You will get upgrades more often than not if you pay enough attention (IE not hide too much/too early with item filters).
Gear is not as decisive as in other ARPGs, this is due to how you get progression from many sources, and gear is not multiplicative of your power unlike other ARPGs. Also what decides your damage is mainly your skill and skills perks chosen, everything else usually adds very little on top, gear included. A good boost in damage, other than maybe a change to a great weapons in the early game, rarely will net you more than 15% extra damage, you could get more from a single skill perk.
Sounds not too good, but it has its benefits, is less likely to hit a wall due to bad luck in weapons, for example. I prefer more decisive gear though.
Bad and Boring? No, not really no. I would not say that exactly.
But I want to say it is in some cases in the MMmeeehhhh Category.
When you do get some things you do kind of go - Well, this was a nice item, but it will actually fit more to A Paladin then my Class. Or a Rogue for that matter.
I had a level 85 char and haven’t found an item upgrade in 20-30h playing. The most intresting part of the game is there story part when you need some resis at best. Before and after it the itemisation in LE is boring most likely due to the fact that you can play the game naked(Outside of belt for potions and mandatory uniques fpr your build) while still beeing able to play most of the content.
I realy wish they work on the balancing of items vs passive tree vs skill tree and come up with something good because right now I’m realy not happy with the items ingame and the little impact they have not to start with the useless shitty uniques that are ingame for no reason but to fill the loot tables with useless stuff.
in my almost 400 hour experience loot at the start is nothing special but you def can get upgrades. I rather get a okish base and craft my own leveling item of it.
So in my opinion loot early game is ok ish.
Beside that the unique drop rate is way better at the moment which makes it more fun for me.
In the endgame loot is more than fine.
I complaint two years ago A LOT about the uniques not being really unique but more like powerfull rares.
A lot since changed for the good and now there are wayyyy more ( a lot in my opinion) really interesting and/or build enabling uniques.
Beside that you have exalted gear which is one of the best things for me in an ARPG.
The only way you can get those is of drops.
Uniques can be upgraded which is really unique aswell so again gearing in LE in my opinion is more than fine.
I think the map system and things to do in the monolith itself could be way more interesting so you got more to do beside killing monsters. But thats a different topic which i talked about earlier so thats off topic.
Long story short i think gearing is nice in Last Epoch especially considering its in Beta.
I have 167 hours on live and I’ll say the loot is decent in terms of “being cool” and modifying builds in a meaningful way.
However, the method of getting the loot is boring and somewhat uninspired. So grinding away for a key unique with a subpar build doing the same 3 monolith objectives 1000+ times to get the item you need, the LP on it and the exalted item with the correct stats for just one item is the part that sucks the most. Especially with how non-boss loot isn’t farmed very well in groups anymore due to 3 of the 4 party members not getting controllable rewards.
So when you hear people saying loot sucks, I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that. But the general feeling of disappointment is still there.
Waaaaaaaaaaait a second! 1% of your drops are good? Sounds like cheating to me! For me it’s more like .0002% of all drops are worth to take a second look at them an 5% are craft worthy and 1% of there might end up good and I don’t talk about exalts with fitting affixes or uniques with LP .
My two cents would be to have a form of guaranteed but tiny upgrades as you play, not necesseraly in the form of items, basically something similar to Blessings or a slightly different way of how the blessings work.
Example:
Instead of random Blessing value roll, to start of with lowest value but each time you finish the echo, to have that blessing numeric value increased by a small fraction of a percent. By doing this you constantly work towards increasing the specific blessing benefit you chose, increasing it’s power as you play with that Blessing equipped, and there is a feeling of steady progress for you as a player. Not only does this brings a small but steady progress, it gives more unique identity to you as a player and a sense of acomplishment while working towards your goal.
I think it incentivises the player more, compared to the current system where you are just struck with RNG value after finishing a monolith.
Example II:
On the other hand similar mechanics could be implemented for items, for example to enchant (Only one) piece of gear, that gives you another affix of your choice, which value increases the more enemies you kill (with a cap of course) and perhaps a bonus stat once you reach the cap. Kill to benefit ratio can be absurdly low, it’s more about having the feeling of progress than actual benefit, so it’s not something tryhard players can achieve in 48h sleepless gaming session to get it over with.
I am not recommending this because I would want some free/easy power boost, but so there are some systems in the game that provide small but consistent progress to players so every minute you play can feel rewarding in the long run.
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