Multiplayer Monolith Progression (Read "Official Last Epoch Multiplayer FAQ" first)

How will Monolith work in a party?
Any player will be able to click the monolith stone to bring up their run of that timeline and choose an echo. Other players in the party can then follow that player into their echo, help them complete it, and share the rewards. The stability reward will go towards each of the players’ individual runs of that timeline, as will quest echo completion. However other players’ quest echo runs and stability will not be reset if they complete the third quest echo in another player’s timeline run.

The last sentence here:

However other players’ quest echo runs and stability will not be reset if they complete the third quest echo in another player’s timeline run.

Seems to counteract the idea mentioned here:

We want the decision of playing with others to depend on whether you like spending time adventuring with other players, and try to steer away from it being a much more efficient way to beat content or get loot. Besides having an organized or synergistic team that can defeat enemies faster than a solo player, we are not planning to incentivize parties with additional rewards.

Giving each player of a party the same stability, but then not taking that stability away means they can complete rounds of quest monoliths equal to the number of players in a party (N). This makes it just under N times more efficient to farm for quest boss drops as a party than as a solo player.

I’m going to assume that each player will also get their boss unique/set item, resulting in N*N number of boss drops per stability farmed up. Assuming N=4 in this case, 16 chances at one of the 15% drop rate uniques. My not so great at statistics math puts that at 92.5%. I’m willing to accept that my math is wrong, but still, 16 chances for a unique for the same time spent (or less than if done efficiently) as a single player getting 1 chance is a bit absurd, yes?

I’m all for party play and for party play having the advantage (I love playing aurabot in PoE), but these two statements seem very contradictory to me.

You make a good point here but I think the unique drops are tied to quest echo completion (or at least the first instance you kill the boss in your timeline) and not the boss kill. Unsure if that’s what they have planned given:

Do I get blessings if I help my friend kill a monolith boss?
Yes.

I foresee the gameplay loop to then be - run a timeline in a group by having everyone run separate echoes or together (think bounties from D3). Complete the first 2 quest echoes in any player’s timeline then each player will “host” their third quest for completion. Once everyone has completed the third quest echo you may proceed together to the next timeline.

The blessing portion alone makes me uneasy. I thought they were designed to be a chase “item” and you outline the problem with the current implementation of multiplayer. Perhaps this is a concession to the fact that most players would leave the party after the first 2 quest echoes were completed if there is essentially no reward for them sticking around.

One of the options during a spoiler poll on a dev stream was something along the lines of “increasing the number of blessings offered”. So there is a possibility that the number of blessings offered to the “host” of a quest echo is different than the other players which is a good solution in my opinion.

Unique drops are definitely tied to the boss kill, as exemplified in the currently bugged fact that the Frost Lich Frosmoruss (sp) can repeatedly drop the unique if you intentionally fail the encounter after killing him by portaling out before you rescue the Wengari Chief. (DO NOT DO THIS, EHG has stated you may brick your quest progression.)

Also, my point is mainly in regards to endgame farming, not standard monolith progression. I agree in the sense that before unlocking empowered monos, the group would simply do the quest progression once, then proceed onwards to the next mono. However, endgame farming for a chase item such as The Fractured Lance, Last Steps of the Living, or any of the other 15% drops are now 4-16 times easier (depending on how the instanced drops work) to farm in a group scenario than solo. I’m not sure how drop chances for empowered drops would work in this scenario, if it’s 10% for each party member or 10% for the whole party, but either way just from being able to effectively farm 1/4 the stability required to run 4 quest loops, I see party play being FAR more efficient for this case.

I was affected by that bug and they have since patched it. I know for certain they patched the quest completion portion and I believe I’ve seen other people post that the unique drop exploit is no longer possible by tping out.

I figured people would run the same monolith building up stability & doing the quest echo, then when everyone has enough stability for the boss, they each sequentially act as party leader to “consume” their stability to do the boss before moving on to the next party member’s spin of the boss-loot wheel.

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Yep, that’s what I was trying to say. Thank you for putting it more concisely.

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This is what I’m saying would be (total party members)^2 times more efficient than solo play as well, assuming boss loot is instanced and you get a drop for each party member each time the boss is fought.

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Glad I’m not the only one who caught that!

I may be wrong. But my guess would be that the devs have some pretty clear philosophical ideas about how they would like MP to be. But didn’t have time to iron out the details yet. So when they do share preliminary implementation approaches, we will find that the details are rough on the edges.

Again, pointing this out is not intended to put down the devs and their effort. But to highlight precisely how this is one of those things that’s easily caught by community members as we consider how to abuse the hell out of the devs’ systems. And hence why I had been advocating for the devs to share their philosophy and approach with us early so that we can flag these out to them.

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Agreed, if we can show that their current intended functionality can be easily abused to have unintended consequences I have no doubt that they will go back and review it.

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