So i just bought Last epoch and playing it to see if the genre has changed enough after 10+ years to be a fresh experience. I just beat the husk of pannilon, and having fun so far. But the part that has me concerned is the end game.
Grimdawn was fun for a while, but it was just a bunch of rifts, making it a chore. Does last epoch have any end game? If not I will still play it likely to level 100.
Thanks for your responses, and your time WeAreViledNationYT
Last Epoch currently has dungeons which have different difficulty tiers, from tier 1 up to tier 4 as of now, and the Monolith of Fate.
The MoF functions similarly to Diablo’s rifts, or I suppose a less clunky version of Grim Dawn’s rifts too.
You go into a map, kill a bunch of enemies and complete some basic objective like capturing a point, surviving an ambush, or killing a boss, and you leave. Rinse and repeat while you farm nearly a dozen different monolith islands, each with their own end of path boss which has it’s own drop table.
Each island also gives different blessings, which function as character-wide buffs you can obtain from killing said island bosses, each with a range of % stats, some give increase drop chance for a particular type of item, others give huge buffs of resistances or crit avoidance.
After you clear all monolith bosses you can Empower your MoF, which basically just unlocks a Master-mode that starts all islands at level 100 where you can scale it’s difficulty endlessly, theoretically.
I say theoretically cause in order to increase difficulty and loot-drops you need higher corruption levels, which you need to clear maps, find a node for the Shade of Orobyss boss, kill it, and repeat. Each time it’s killed your corruption for that islands also goes up. Most builds that aren’t super meta min-maxing nerds typically shoot for between 250-400 corruption for endgame, but some builds have definitely gotten much higher than that.
There’s also arena, but that’s very self explanatory. It’s an endless PVE-fest where you kill as long as you can, and it’s not really my favorite thing to do.
I love Monolith farming and dungeons. MoF is like a more advanced version of GD’s and Diablo’s rifts, while dungeons are very similar to Grim Dawn’s roguelike dungeons where you get a key to enter, you die or leave the dungeon and you need a new key.
Dungeons also have amazing gold sinks as well as the means to create Legendaries, which is the strongest item rarity in the game. It’s a purple Exalted item mashed into an Unique item that randomly takes on certain affixes of the former.
Is it endless content? No. Is it a fair bit already with more to come? Yes.
They have also promised new endgame content post-1.0.
Huh, I’ve always seen monoliths as a mix between PoE maps and delve. Different experiences, different perspectives, I guess 
Yeah, the modifiers kind of act like an increasingly difficulty. There’s also a strategy involved. For instance, yesterday, I just ran into a rash of crappy mod choices (mob endurance, haste/frenzy on hit and enrage). So I had to plan out the Rare mobs X nodes and save them for before the boss fight, so I could use up all the really crappy ones before engaging the boss. Sometimes the modifiers feel shitty, sometimes they are more in your favor… but I like that there’s a strategy involved to how you use them, because it can really affect your chance of success against the boss. Try engaging Emperor of Corpses with Frenzy/Haste on hit and Enrage at 1/2 Health.
You also get that in delve. Different nodes will have different enemies and the more you delve the harder stuff gets. As I said, I think it’s more of a perspective thing.
It should be noted that the devs are changing the monolith formula to where the difficulty will come mainly from corruption level and not individual echo mods.
Thank you for your replies. That information is helpful. I think ir has potential with the islands as that sounds a lot more nuanced. Making legendaries seems cool. Assuming it doea not take 1000 hours to get one like in WoW should be neat.
I am lvl 20 right nowl have a lot of questing to do before i hit 100. See you all in a few weeks
Keep in mind the grind to 100 will take longer after 1.0 as well. The devs outlined their ideal for the 1-100 experience, and the later part of it will take more investment after release (getting from 1-75/80ish should be about the same, but getting higher will take longer). There is also more end-game activities in the works. Overall, I think there’s plenty of good to come. It just depends on what kind of game you enjoy – a punishing min/max game, like POE, an arcade-ish, insta-gratification game like D3, or a mix of the 2, which is more like LE.
It kinda depends. Some uniques would gain more power from having the additional affixes & those uniques have a lower chance to get Legendary Potential (LP is a stat uniques can have with values of 1-4, that being the number of affixes that are randomly chosen from the exalted item to be added to the unique). So if you’re trying to get a 4LP unique where that unique has a very low chance to get LP, then that’s going to take a very long time (like, age of the universe for the uniques with lowest chance for LP). Uniques that don’t gain as much power from the additional affixes will have higher chance & those are much more doable.
The moment ot moment gameplay and individual Echoes are not that much different from Grim Dawn’s Shattered Realm.
But the Monolith of Fate has a more grand overarching theme and purpose with individual timelines, different things in different timelines e.g. specific target farming opportunities etc.
Will you like it? Very likely. For how long? That is highly subjective.
At the end it very subjective but this type of genre has relatively monotone gameplay with only progression and personal goals giving you the longjevity.
You will easily get a few hundred hours out of the game, multiple hundred hourts if you wanna play multiple chars.
The devs are already have 2 major expansions to teh endgame system planned and they will come soon after 1.0. Mayb 1.1 maybe 1.2.
A pinnacle boss didn’t make it for 1.0 but is still planned.
I highly assume this pinnacle boss would come with some other additiosn to the Monolith as well.
I was actually thinking about the difference between GD and LE at end-game. Both are equally enjoyable, but feel different. I don’t personally spend a ton of time in GD’s Shattered Realm or Crucible. So the end-game is more boss and item hunting in the campaign map. While LE is all about running Monoliths, farming blessings and BiS gear, along with the occasional Dungeon – either for a specific drop, LP craft or just to break up the monotony of endless Monolith runs.
I think the biggest strength of LE is, that the players feel like they have a big impact on what they do and what the rewards are.
Grim Dawn is just 5 quick runs in succession and at the end you can choose to go further or not.
When you decide to end you get one giant loot explosion.
In Grim Dawn the target farming mostly comes from Monster Infrequents, which is one of the best systems GD has to offer, but it works so well because the prefix/suffix system in GD is much more simple (with only one prefix and oen suffix). A majority of the power of a item coems from the base type.
I don’t know if something akin to Monster Infrequents would fit into LE, but I could see either special bases or special affixes for each timeline, that maybe get their own echo rewards nodes.