[Unofficial] Roadmap to 1.0 and Beyond

AndrewTilley · July 24, 2023, 6:14pm

Multiplayer

Item Factions

While the Faction System as a whole is not tied to multiplayer its first implementation, Item Factions, will however see significant multiplayer integration, specifically with the Merchant’s Guild.

From what we can gather they’re currently working on the back-end systems to enable asynchronous trade. Also, the UI has been designed but not yet implemented and many pieces of concept art for its story elements appear to be complete. This system is scheduled to release at 1.0.

June 23, 2023
Q: I was wondering if there is an estimate date to launch the system for the 2 factions that will allow trade/solo playing for character progression?

Mike: Quite frequently when this question comes up it gets phrased in an SSF/non-SSF or trade/solo type framing and I feel it’s very important to make it very clear that the trade factions, the Item Factions is what it’s actually called, so the Item Factions have an incidental connection to party and SSF play but don’t have a literal or mechanical or real connection. So you can play SSF as Circle of Fortune and you can play non-SSF as Circle of Fortune. It doesn’t matter, you can do both. So it’s not the SSF faction and the non-SSF faction. Now if you’re playing SSF you’re going to want to play Circle of Fortune because you can’t interact with the trade faction anyways, so there is some loose connection there. I just wanted to make that clear. You can still play with other people and use the item gifting system to transfer items between each other the way it is now and it will be with the resonance system added on top as well as a CoF player. That all still works together and that’s not going anywhere.

As for when that will happen, I don’t have any details on the release date for that. We do plan to have it in by 1.0. When’s 1.0? No details on that, sorry.

Source: Forum Link

June 23, 2023
Q: What is the primary purpose/design intent behind factions?

Mike: One of the primary goals for the factions system as a whole is to have a progression system for your characters that are not tied directly to experience, something that you can continue to improve and expand upon and have progress in post level 100 or something that you can work on across multiple characters. It’s not coupled to a single character, a single experience bar, it’s progress that’s outside of that. That’s one of the main goals of the overarching system. Specifically the Item Factions, that are going to appear as the first factions available, a big part of the goals there is having trade in the game without ruining the game for people that don’t want to play trade. That’s basically it.

Source: Forum Link

During the June 30, 2023 dev stream Mike shows off concept art of the Merchant’s Guild leader.

NPC - Merchant’s Guild Leader - Concept Art

June 30, 2023
Q: Concerning factions, any ideas around a Crafter’s Guild?

Mike: Yeah, I mean, Circle of Fortune’s going to have crafting benefits. We’ve already shared that. In the initial post one of the graphics has like – there’s graphics there that’s like, “example bonuses that could come from the guilds” or whatever and I’m pretty sure one of them is a bonus to crafting.

Aaron: I thought it was legendary potential drop, but was it actual crafting?

Mike: Uh, I might just be spoiling stuff right here. [Mike laughs]

Aaron: That’s okay, I can’t remember it. Everybody is going to have a good chance of crafting in Circle of Fortune.

Mike: With Circle of Fortune a lot of it is with the prophecies and stuff like that. A lot of it is revolves around you acquiring the gear yourself. That’s sort of the primary theme, is like how you’re…

Aaron: Yeah, solo self-found.

Mike: I really want to avoid that term, solo self-found, because it doesn’t have anything to do with solo.

Aaron: That’s true, because you don’t have to be solo. You could play with Merchants’ Guild, you could play with friends…

Mike: Exactly, and it’s not strictly self-found either because you can still do item gifting.

Source: YouTube Link

July 14, 2023
Q: I asked a bit earlier today about this in Discord, but could you expand a little bit on the “favor” system in factions? Like how you get it and stuff, or is that still to be announced?

Mike: Yeah, I can explain that…happy to. All of what I’m about to say is available in the original Item Factions announcement post. All of this information is there. So there’s nothing new, there’s nothing hidden, there’s nothing being revealed. This is all already public available information.

As you progress through the storyline eventually you’ll get to a point where you have to select an Item Faction to be a part of. I say have to, but there’s a possibility that you might not actually have to do it but you should because there’s no reason not to. I mean, other than some weird extra challenge, but I digress. Anyways, so you’ll get to pick your faction, either Circle of Fortune or Merchant’s Guild. You’ll be representing the faction you’ve selected, but you can also switch between them. You can just be like, ‘Okay I want to switch to the other one.’ No problem, go ahead.

As you kill enemies you will gain favor for the faction you’re representing and then you can spend that favor on the faction specific mechanics. The favor is faction specific as well, so you can’t just farm favor as Circle of Fortune and then switch and use that favor as the Merchant’s Guild. Circle of Fortune favor and Merchant’s Guild favor are distinct. Yeah, I think that’s pretty much how favor works.

As you spend favor – so like, for example, things you can spend favor on in the Merchant’s Guild will be like, ‘Oh you want to post something for sale? It costs favor. You want to buy something that’s posted for sale? It costs favor.’ As you do actions that cost favor, like buying and selling things in the Merchant’s Guild, your reputation with that faction will increase. Once your reputation hits a certain threshold it will increase in rank and at each rank new actions or abilities are unlocked. With the Merchant’s Guild primarily that means new types of items that you can buy and sell, but there are other things as well. Some of those examples were listed in the Item Factions announcement post.

The reason I’m explaining this with Merchant’s Guild and not Circle of Fortune is because I remember that post this morning and I think you were asking specifically about Merchant’s Guild.

Reimer: [In Twitch comments] We would like to get into that system more in the future, but it’s too early to elaborate on it right now.

Source: YouTube Link

July 28, 2023
Q: When it comes to the trade faction, Merchant’s Guild, how hard will it be to obtain the “currency” to sell and buy items?

Mike: Well, every time you kill an enemy you’ll get some of it or like progress towards – it’s just killing enemies. So real easy. [Mike laughs] There’s no random drop luck associated with it, it’s just killing enemies. It’s the same way to get favor, which is the term for it. The same way you get favor for Circle of Fortunes is killing enemies as well. You only get favor for the faction you’re currently representing. So if you’re representing the Circle of Fortune and you kill enemies then you’ll get Circle of Fortune favor. If you’re currently representing the Merchant’s Guild and you kill enemies then you’ll get Merchant’s Guild favor. Then you use that favor to interact with the systems for those factions. So you’ll spend Circle of Fortune favor in order to interact with Circle of Fortune mechanics, like buying prophecies and things like that, and you’ll spend Merchant’s Guild favor on interacting with the Bazaar. Buying and selling items will cost some amount of favor based on what you’re buying and selling.

Source: YouTube Link

July 28, 2023
Q: I’m worried about the amount of gold you can make with trade and how you can reinvest it into Lightless Arbor to basically get a shit ton of potential more gold and so on. Was this a conversation in the team, and can we expect a Lightless Arbor nerf because of it or will it not be a problem most likely?

Mike: Lightless Arbor will likely act as a tempering mechanic for runaway gold prices on the bazaar. Basically it’s just a really good gold sink. And yes that does mean that we may adjust the rate at which it provides gear and/or the gold cost of each type of option. (We do this anyways already though)

This is possibly concerning if you are more interested in playing the CoF. However, CoF will have tools in their arsenal to get more out of all sorts of item drop systems, including Lightless Arbor.

This is a key relationship that we will monitor closely and adjust based on feedback, data and our observations.

Source: Discord Link

During the August 4, 2023 dev stream Mike shows off concept art of a new NPC. While not explicitly stated, one can assume this new NPC is likely associated with the Item Factions.

NPC - Concept Art

August 7, 2023
Q: If at all possible please remove direct person to person trade from the MG factions, and make the anonymous trade as close to 100% anonymous as possible.

Mike: Direct trading will still come with the exact same limitations and costs as using the bazaar. You just have to coordinate the trade yourself so it’s harder. The only upside to direct trading is that you’ll know who you are trading to.

The obvious concern here is that people will sell huge items for unreasonably cheap in game for real money outside right? We have many restrictions and requirements in place that make item selling en masse, at best, very impractical and easily detectable. If you are selling many things to many different people for 1g all the time, that’s going to be super suspicious.

You have to level up your MG rank in order to sell the big ticket items, this is a lengthy process that adds to the time cost of making a new account after getting caught. You also can’t hide items on mule accounts due to the 1 time traded rule. You also have to farm favor to do the selling each time. You can’t move the items around various accounts so you have to sell on the same account as farming.

So while it might be possible to slip a few RMT sales under the radar here and there, it’s not going to be viable to set up a business on it. We currently predict that we will be able to keep the RMT to a level that is invisible to almost everyone while still providing the functionality of person to person trading for those that want it.

All of this is subject to change based on what actually happens and we will be keeping a close eye on it. With the current plan, one thing I am confident in though, you won’t see mega expensive top tier items for sale on day 1 of a cycle.

Q: That all sounds very intimidating.

Mike: We’ve put a lot of complex stuff in place to fine tune the numbers and prevent exploitation but using the system will be very streamlined. This should all sit comfortably under the hood and you can pay as much attention to it as I do my car.

It’s also an optional system because you can just pick CoF instead and still do limited friend trading with resonances. Party drops being tradable in the party is also sticking around.

Source: Reddit Link

August 11, 2023
Q: Is trading coming with 1.0 or before?

Mike: It’s not coming before 1.0. Before 1.0 would mean next patch, it’s not coming next patch. It’s not done. We’re still working on implementation. The UI has been designed, but not implemented. It looks fantastic, it’s not finished, but what’s there looks fantastic. We’re working hard to get real powerful search and sort functions in there.

Um, like really specific details – I know one, the loot filter intentionally leaves things out so there’s very intentionally things that you cannot specify in your loot filter and we’re not really planning on changing that too much. There’s a few things we’re changing to make it a little bit better, or a little bit more open, but for the most part – so there’s a bunch of things that your loot filter just can’t do and we’re not putting the same restrictions on the Bazaar search and sort.

So you’ll be able to specify very specific – the plan, it’s not finished yet, so like the plan is that you’ll be able to specify very specific items. For example, filtering by legendary potential is something that we are planning on doing for the Bazaar but is not available in the loot filter. There’s way more specific things but that’s just the one that comes to the top of my mind.

Source: YouTube Link

[ Table of Contents ]

Cycles

Cycles are Last Epoch’s equivalent of seasons or leagues. Not a whole lot about these has been explicitly nailed down yet, outside of its content being initially available to all realms (Legacy, Cycle, and Offline) albeit with some minor differences between them. To what extent this changes in the future will likely depend on player feedback and engagement.

The content that is added in these cycles is expected to be similar to expansions for the game, at least for the foreseeable future until they’ve added all of the features that they feel are core to the overall experience. The timeframe for how long these core additions will occur is unknown at this time. At some point it’s expected they’ll transition to content that only remains for that cycle. The current release target for cycles is every 3-4 months.

At 1.0 all existing characters will transition to Legacy (non-cycle) and a new cycle will start where fresh characters are created that can participate in the ladder and an economy reset. At the conclusion of each cycle all existing cycle characters will move to Legacy and a new cycle begins.

December 9, 2022
Q: Even though I like PoE, I feel that there are too many league mechanics at once and everything gets mixed together, it’s overwhelming. Do you plan to have rotating cycle mechanics? For example, a new cycle starts you add the new mechanic and you “keep” 3 or 4 other cycle mechanics and remove the rest during this cycle?

Mike: I think we’ll – a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B probably. It really depends on what it is and when it happens. Part of why there’s that issue in Path of Exile is because it’s been going for so long and there are so many cycles and so many leagues that they’re overlapping and have a ton of mechanics and things like that that have become incorporated over the years. We definitely don’t have that problem right now and, at least initially, chances are most league mechanics will become evergreen right off the bat. They’ll probably feel more like little mini-expansions rather than just a league mechanic, at least initially. This is generally what I think will happen.

So I think, at least initially, they’ll probably be mostly, if not all, evergreen mechanics. I don’t know how else to say it, that’s a Magic term, but things that will just stay moving forward. This is partially because we want to build up that list of endgame mechanics and in-game activities to do. Then, I think, likely as we get further along and there’s a better stable of fun, interesting, and unique mechanics to play with at the endgame then we might see some taking the place of other ones, things like that possibly, but that’s quite a ways down the road.

Source: YouTube Link

March 17, 2023
Q: Will the online characters be wiped at the release of 1.0?

Mike: We have no plans to wipe characters. Sometimes we make horrible mistakes and things go terribly wrong and it’s possible that could happen, but we have no plans to wipe any characters.

The plan for the 1.0 release is to take all of the characters that are existing and move them into a standard League or standard cycle, don’t know what we’re going to call it yet, but it’ll be very similar to the way that Diablo and Path of Exile use their standard and non-ladder systems. As 1.0 starts, a new ladder will start and everyone who wants to compete on the new ladder will need to start a new character. There will not be any content differences between cycle and non-cycle characters. So if you don’t care about the ladder at all and want to just keep playing on your character you’ve been playing on before that’s totally fine.

Source: YouTube Link

April 7, 2023
Q: Will 1.0 release with a cycle?

Mike: Ah, kind of…yes. I’m going to say yes.

Q: Will we keep our current online characters when 1.0 releases from the current patch?

Mike: Yes.

Q: If a cycle feature works well, will they have a chance to become core, similar to how PoE runs their leagues.

Mike: So we are not planning on maintaining two game versions simultaneously. So 1.0 is a cycle, a new ladder starts, all the characters that are currently on the ladder get pushed to standard, but the game mode content and the game mode availability we do plan to push out to all characters simultaneously, or at least very shortly after. I don’t know if we’ve quite nailed down the details on that but I don’t think there’s going to be, at least for the first like probably couple of years or so…I guess, that dynamic of will it get rolled into standard? Well no, it’s just already there – or yes, it’s already there…depending on how you want to look at it. So it’s a little different.

Source: YouTube Link

April 7, 2023
Q: When you start with cycles, will you be using the short league format to experiment with cool stuff?

Mike: At least initially, the goals for our cycle content will be pretty core game focused right off the bat because we know there’s a lot of things – like there’s a lot of things we want to add to the core game that we’re like, ‘This needs to be in and this needs to be in and this needs to be in’ that we just…it takes so long to get this stuff in. My goodness the volume of content that PoE pumps out is shocking. We’re working on a very similar style game, like in the same genre, with the same sort of plan for cyclical content – the volume of stuff they pump out is astounding. Wow! We want to be pumping out content at the same rate, you know. That’s our goal, that’s what we’re striving for. It’s a lofty goal but we’ll do our best.

Source: YouTube Link

April 28, 2023
Q: How many cycles ahead is work already being done, even if just conceptually?

Mike: We have sort of like – it’s hard to quantify. So it’s not like we’re working six cycles ahead or anything like that because we have like probably realistically two, is probably an accurate number, but we have brainstorming pools of ideas for cycle content and mechanics that’ll show up later and things like that. So when we go to actually add something in that category we can look at these and decide what we want to actually pull from, but it’s not like there’s a list of, ‘Alright cycle one, 1.1, it’s going to have this and 1.2 is going to have this’ or anything like that. We haven’t laid them out that explicitly, but there’s a few things – like you talk over the years and you’re like, ‘Okay well this has got to get in quick so that’s probably going to be a really early cycle, so one of the first couple, and this can wait a little bit so that’ll be one of the next ones after that but still quick enough that we have to get it in.’

Source: YouTube Link

April 28, 2023
Q: Will cycle mechanics stay in standard and/or future cycles after the current cycle ends, or once it ends the mechanic is gone?

Mike: The current plan for the first initial set of cycles that happen is to have them be immediately rolled out to everyone and automatically rolled into everything. This is because a lot of the initial mechanics that we introduce through cycles are things that, given a magic wand, we would just include with 1.0 and we think it’s important to have them as part of the game regardless.

I could see in a few years from now the system changing to, or maybe less than that as well, but the system changing at some point to have a split environment for standard and cycle. At least right now it’s a lot less work for us to not split that environment. Also, the things we’re introducing we know we want to introduce anyway. So if we wait and don’t add them to standard we know that it’s going to be missed.

There’s a pretty big incentivizing factor to get people to play on the ladder by saying like, ‘Hey there’s this cool new feature over on the ladder, come play the ladder’, but at least initially we don’t think that’s going to be something that we need to incentivize very much. We’d rather just get the content out to everyone because we know a lot of people will sometimes just play the new cycle for the new content even though they have zero interest in the ladder at all, which isn’t awesome. So if we can avoid it we’d like to.

Like I haven’t actually taken a D2 ladder seriously in forever but I still always make ladder characters no matter what. Part of that is, yes, there’s runewords that aren’t available on non-ladder…yada, yada, yada, but they’re available because so many characters have transitioned over.

Source: YouTube Link

June 30, 2023
Q: After 1.0 comes out, how long do you guys plan it’ll take until the first cycle?

Aaron: 1.0 will be cycle one.

Mike: Yeah and that’s the thing, it’s kind of hard to like define a cycle. I’d kind of argue that we’re in cycle zero right now.

Aaron: Yeah. Well most people – I don’t want to speak for anybody, but I normally think of like a cycle as a start over point where there is something new to do. Like, you know, in the genre there’s a new dungeon, there’s a new skill, there’s new items, there’s a fresh ladder, there’s…

Mike: That’s the key for me…is the fresh ladder, and that’s probably just because I’m so used to playing D2. Because for the longest time that was like the only – like there was nothing new that changed.

Source: YouTube Link

June 30, 2023
Q: Does this game have seasons and, if so, how long do they last?

Mike: So we’re calling them cycles. They’ll be, initially, a little bit longer. It’ll basically be like ladder resets and on patch timing they’ll be roughly similar – the plan is to have them be roughly similar to PoE right now. They might be longer though. We might have like – I know we’ve talked about split seasons as an option where it’s a two patch cycle, where it’s technically one season, and there’s a ladder reset in the middle. I know we’ve talked about having – there’s lots of things we’ve talked about doing that are a little bit different. There’s lots of great suggestions that come in all the time that we talk about. We get tons of community suggestions around this type of topic and we pay attention to those and discuss them.

But yes, we are doing cycles. I’d say there’s a very high probability that how those manifest specifically will evolve over time. So we might go into 1.0 being like alright we’re going to do a new cycle every patch, and let’s say there’s roughly three or four of those a year, and then we get six months down the line and we’re like this isn’t really working, let’s adjust this. So I can’t say for certain how that’s going to look because a lot of the details of things like that get adjusted on the fly based on what’s happening in the game, what’s happening in the community, what’s happening from feedback, and all that sort of stuff. Their frequency will be up for changing, I think, so I don’t want to give a hard number on that.

Source: YouTube Link

June 30, 2023
Q: Will cycles be like PoE with new characters each time?

Mike: Yeah, so if you want to start in the new cycle then yes, it’s a fresh stash and fresh characters. You’re starting from scratch. It’s like you just bought the game brand new and you’ve got nothing. Start over, go have fun! We do know that there’s a lot of people that get discouraged by restarting and still want to play the new stuff. So we’re trying to make it a little bit more friendly in that not all of the content, actually most of the content…at least initially, will be rolled out simultaneously – we’re planning to anyways. This is still a little up in the air, but the current plan is to roll content out simultaneously for a new cycle and old cycle, for the most part. There might be certain elements that don’t.

Aaron: So the idea would be if you want to take part in the new ladder then you’re required to play the new season.

Mike: Exactly. And there might be somethings – so maybe we’ll say like… So none of this is official. None of this is real. It’s just examples I’m taking from other stuff. Let’s say, for example, there was a new cycle and we implemented Delve. I’m just going to use PoE terms. So we implement Delve as a new gameplay mechanic and we add Shako, Grandfather, and Windforce as new items to the game. Maybe that Delve mechanic gets rolled out to everyone right away and those three new uniques are cycle-only uniques and you’ve got to play the new cycle to find those new items, and then these other six items are for everyone or something like that. Maybe some pieces of it are cycle-only things or maybe all of it’s cycle-only or maybe none of it’s cycle-only. However, I’d say likely, initially at least, it’ll be some split of cycle-only and non-cycle-only stuff.

Aaron: Because you want to give the player a reason to start a new character instead of, you know, using they’re already level 100 character…I’m sure.

Mike: Yeah, a lot of it is like, ‘Hey there’s cool stuff to play in the new cycle and it gets the economy rolling for the people who are playing Merchants Guild in the new cycle’ and all these sorts of things. Because as a new player coming in usually the best time to join is the start of a new cycle or slightly before so you get used to the game and then you can start in earnest at the start of a new cycle, or something like that. We really want to have that new cycle environment and experience be possible and to thrive and be interesting and exciting and all sorts of stuff. We don’t want to just – because there’s a lot of people that are very turned off by having to start a new character. We don’t want to cut them out and so there’s going to be some experimentation in finding a balance there, I think.

Aaron: Yeah because the balance is what brings the player back to start the new cycle while simultaneously, you know, the casual that doesn’t have the time or the want to start a new character to do so.

Mike: Yeah.

Source: YouTube Link

July 14, 2023
Q: Is there going to be support for people playing offline or non-cycle? Or is it going to be pushed pretty hard like D4 for example?

Mike: So, at least initially, the vast majority, possibly all things, will be rolled out simultaneously to everyone and it won’t matter if you’re cycle or not to get the new stuff. That could change over time if we’re like, ‘Oh no one’s playing cycle.’ So then maybe we start putting, I don’t know, some unique items that start in the cycle and then get rolled into everything or maybe some other little thing that’s cycle initially or something…I don’t know. We’ll be looking at feedback a lot for that.

Anyways, the initial plan at least is to have things be pretty universal to begin with because a lot of the stuff that we’re going to be adding in for cycle content are things that we’re like, ‘Man if we had an extra two years to develop we’d slap this in for sure.’ However, we just got to get something out the door that’s like a, ‘Hey this game’s ready to go. What do you guys think?’ We’re very happy with what 1.0 is going to be as well.

Source: YouTube Link

July 28, 2023
Q: Do you guys have a backlog of ideas for future seasons mapped out?

Mike: Ah, not specifically. It’s not like, ‘Hey this season’s going to be this mechanic and this season’s going to be this mechanic’ or anything like that but we do have tons of ideas that we’ve got that are on the list of things that’ll happen. So yeah, there’s a bunch of season ideas we’ve got in a big document and there’s a couple that we’re like ‘These ones will probably be earlier than the other ones’ type thing, but when it comes time to pick the next one and design the next one we’ll go back to that list and look at new ideas and things like that. So they’re not set in stone but yeah, we’ve got a ton of ideas. Ideas are the last thing we’re lacking in every category.

Source: YouTube Link

September 6, 2023
Rhykker: When you’re going to be doing your content rollouts, is that going to be with your cycles?

Judd: Yes, yes. So cycles in Last Epoch – and I know a lot of people have a lot of questions about cycles in Last Epoch so maybe I’ll talk to that for just a second. Cycles in Last Epoch will be very similar to what you might see in Diablo with seasons or Path of Exile with leagues. So we’ll be releasing cycles with a large amount of content additions which will come out, you know, every three to four months and what they’ll do is it’ll introduce fresh leaderboards and a fresh environment for characters to start on an even playing field. We will take existing characters and we’ll put them into the “legacy mode” so characters won’t be wiped or anything like that, you’ll still be able to access your characters of course.

I guess another thing to touch on here is that we have so many things that we want to add to the base foundation of the game. So with these cycles we’ll be adding a number of things to the endgame systems and skills and masteries and stuff like that and we won’t be getting to things like temporary cycle mechanics that we’re just going to utilize and then throw away afterwards. It is very likely that we do temporary cycle mechanics in the future – I would say maybe even the more distant future but there’s so much that we want to add to the base game still that we’ll continue to do that through the cycle releases and the patches.

Rhykker: Okay, so if I’m understanding this correctly, at least for the first few cycles if someone doesn’t want to start a new character from scratch whatever content rollouts will still be coming to, you said, whatever the non-cycle will be?

Judd: Yes, yes…absolutely. Yes.

Rhykker: Okay, gotcha.

Source: YouTube Link

September 6, 2023
Terek: So is 1.0 the first cycle?

Mike: Yes, 1.0 is the first cycle. We’ll be adding in new content with every single cycle that comes along and initially those cycles will be included in our base mechanics as well. Everyone who’s playing on the cycle when a new one starts will have those characters transitioned into the legacy system where they’ll be able to keep playing their characters, keep interacting with the new content and keep having fun. However, anyone who wants to engage in the ladder and compete with other players will start over from scratch. This will provide, especially for people who are playing in Merchant’s Guild, this will provide an economy reset so they’ll be able to start from scratch and really have a lot of fun with a fresh economy.

Source: YouTube Link

September 8, 2023
Q: Why should players who do not care about ladders play the cycles if there will not be an exclusive cycle mechanic and all content will also be available on standard servers?

Mike: So the plan, at least initially, for cycle content is to have that be released everywhere simultaneously. It’s possible that we may make certain – like maybe there’s a unique item or something that’s only craftable if you’re on the ladder. For example, maybe Fractured Crown can only be found when you’re playing a cycle or something like that. Or maybe there’s like a race event and the first thousand people to get to level 90 or to beat Lagon in empowered, I don’t know what, but they get some sort of bonus and maybe that’s like an item in game…though it’d probably be a cosmetic. It’s possible there could be some small things, initially, that would be a reason to play cycle if you’re not interested in the ladder.

The primary reason to play cycle, initially, is going to be that you’re interested in the ladder and also an economy reset. So with the Merchant’s Guild coming out there’s a huge economy paradigm shift that’s going to happen. Having that be an economy where people who have been playing for thousands of hours just drop and immediately be able to list things, well after they’ve earned the favor, that are significantly better will make things a little weird initially. So I would recommend starting 1.0 in the new cycle but you don’t have to.

Source: YouTube Link

[ Table of Contents ]