I have been playing Last Epoch off and on for a bit now, having had it for a while but have been diving in more and more with the 1.0 upcoming. I decided to use my keys to start doing dungeons and I’ve noticed a pretty big gap in presentation of mechanics as a new player.
To put this properly into perspective, all the dungeons so far appear to have a special mechanic related to a new action button you are given, and that button is key to how the dungeon works in some way. Due to there being only a single attempt at a dungeon and the entry is limited, this means it’s extremely imperative that the player is given time to learn this new mechanic and get used to using it. Otherwise it’s going to feel frustrating and unfun to get booted out of a limit entry dungeon with zero rewards because you weren’t allowed to learn or understand the mechanic before being presented with a make or break situation.
Lightless Arbor I feel does this incredibly well. You are introduced to the light mechanic as it relates to enemies right away. It’s easy to see when you lose light, it’s easy to see when you regain it. The enemies that restore it are easy to see. And you learn proper usage of it to maintain the stacks pretty quickly. But on top of this, you also learn during the dungeon the proper mechanic for the boss too BEFORE fighting the boss. Between each level is a bonefire you have to kindle, and you are shown that the light rekindles this fire, so when you fight the boss you can see the fires on the sides and quickly learn this is what is needed to move forward as you’ve seen it before.
However Temporal Sanctum is an example of a dungeon that does this mechanic poorly. Throughout the dungeon the only reason to use the shift mechanic is to open doors to the next floor from inside the floor. The introduction to this makes it seem like the purpose of this ability is a traversal tool, and even for that it’s a very weak implementation of it. If there were more mazes and paths you had to use this ability to get through that would be nice, but it also appears to be required to get past the boss mechanics. Since you never use it one time during the entire dungeon to avoid damage or deal with mechanics, it’s unlikely you would even think about or be ready to use it during the boss fight in the ways you need to. The dungeon does a TERRIBLE job of teaching you this new ability you are required to use now to defeat the boss unlike lightless arbor.
I think that as long as these dungeons are so limited in their attempts both with a single death completely ruining your run and having to use a key to enter them, there is a lot of room for improvement in teaching these new dungeon mechanics to the player.
I could imagine Julra throwing in some abilities while she is not present and doing some voice over, similar to what she already does when you enter the dungeon.
Like a mini-version of her big explosion that you need to avoid.
I think the same logic can also be applied to Monolith bosses. Some of them have incredibly punishing mechanics and I would like to see monsters getting “mini-versions” of some of these boss abilities. Like the lagon beam, Rayeh DiveBomb/Smash etc.
At least in a monolith you are going to repeatedly see them over and over again through gameplay. I agree with the idea of miniboss versions of the final bosses peppered throughout the timeways in the monoliths leading up to them.
The big deal with the dungeons aside from their extremely punishing entry and play cost, causing you to completely lose if you fail at all, is that they introduce a new ability that you’ve never used before, that you have to use a different button for, and learn around. Not only is muscle memory a big thing there, if you don’t have any opportunity to learn the mechanics of your ability you are going to fail and failure in a dungeon is more punishing right now than any other content I have seen.
I don’t know if PoE still does this, but Sirus used to appear in conqueror maps, where he would do one of this mechanics but dealing much less damage. I think the Shaper did too in guardian maps.
Many players didn’t like this though, especially for hardcore.
At Level 95 on the 3rd iteration of the instance, you can take maybe (1) hit as a mage (with full resistance cap). You blast your way through the dungeon to get to the boss. Once there, you need to be able to cycle between worlds with the new ability, dodge the ground goo and other various dodge mechanics.
Frankly, I think it really boils down to the single attempt at the dungeon as the original author suggests. Hopefully, this mechanic gets a revisit or has some other tradeoff. I think I have read other posts that also suggests the parallel to PoE’s lab, where you get a single chance to complete a task, especially for such a critical piece to upgrade your gear. As a new player, this is really going to dissuade newer players from ever getting to the point where they can enhance their gear.
