I’ve updated the following sections of this thread. I’ve included all the updates in this post so that you don’t have to go hunting around all of the sections to find the new stuff.
This update contains plenty of new details, mostly thanks to McFluffin, LizardIRL, and Terek for asking some great questions which EHG were happy to answer with new information. If you’ve already watched both of the videos posted above then not much else is new here.
Unfortunately I’m running out of space, apparently poor planning on my part
If I’ve missed anything or you find any errors please let me know. Thank you!
We also got another news article from Gamescom.
Release Date
August 23, 2023
Judd: That is certainly the intention right now. However, it is very dependent on the quality of the game at that point. We want to make sure that the game is at the quality that our players expect and deserve. If it is not ready by then, we’ll be comfortable holding on to it either way. 1.0 is coming out not too far in the future anyway at this point.
Source: Website Link
September 8, 2023
Mike: We have no plans or desires to push 1.0 into 2024 at all.
If something goes really really wrong, it could theoretically delay the launch. I have confidence in this release window being met.
Source: Discord Link
Cycles
September 6, 2023Rhykker: 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, 2023Terek: 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
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
Server Performance/Stability
September 6, 2023Terek: So with 1.0 getting closer than ever, is there going to be any improvements to multiplayer?
Judd: Yes! [laughs] Yes, absolutely. So this is actually the number one priority within the studio – is to make sure that all of our multiplayer features and all the server performance is improved. This is something that the playerbase will be seeing throughout the next many patches. Patch 0.9.2 comes with a lot of improvements. We have a lot of stuff slated for 1.0 but things like reducing the time between loading scenes and making it so that when you have four Necromancers in endgame with a hundred skeletons a piece isn’t making servers light on fire. Doing things like the social features, making sure that those update more quickly when you’re interacting with those. Those are all things that we absolutely know need to be improved and are actively working on.
Source: YouTube Link
Character Creation Options
September 6, 2023McFluffin: We used to have a lot of community events earlier in the development process which was kind of the way we made our own sort of seasons while we were waiting for the development of the game. VisionGL was running tournaments and there was lot of cool stuff that we were able to do. Unfortunately some of that stuff hasn’t been able to be done lately with some of the changes, especially to multiplayer. Do you all have any plans to address that and bring that stuff back so the community can start to do some cool things again?
Judd: We do. I think Mike actually has a good answer for this one.
Mike: Yes, we are definitely looking to bring that type of interaction back with our community because this was something that I really enjoyed watching myself. Watching those races it was just a ton of fun to see and the restrictions that were put on those characters and how people adapted to those situations to make cool new builds and things. So those were events that we really enjoyed watching ourselves. With the changes that were required to come with our initial version for account found instead of character found solo versions, we are going to be adding back in “Solo Character Found” options to multiplayer. So this will re-enable the ability for people to have completely fresh starts where there’s no interaction from previous characters, not just your own things you’ve found.
Source: YouTube Link
Character Limit
September 8, 2023
Mike: Yeah, I’ve gotten approval for this but it just didn’t make it in pre-patch so it should hopefully be 1.0, assuming nothing goes wrong.
Source: YouTube Link
Dungeons
September 6, 2023LizardIRL: How does EHG feel about the current state of dungeons?
Mike: Yeah, we’re really happy with how dungeons fit into our endgame plan as a whole. We think that they provide a really interesting space for us to experiment and give interesting and deep experiences that are unique to that specific dungeon. However, there’s a few shortcomings when it comes to the early stages of each dungeon with the procedural generation and getting to the boss. We’re really looking to improve those and really make the whole thing just be a fun and interesting experience.
Source: YouTube Link
Monolith of Fate
September 6, 2023LizardIRL: Talking about the monolith, a lot of people have been asking for a faster way to progress towards monolith, especially with second characters – how to get too empowered faster, especially if you’re a bit experienced. Is this something that EHG is considering?
Mike: Yeah absolutely. We’re pretty happy with how the first character experience is when you first get into the monolith and you’re still learning how things are going or you’re at the start of a cycle start and your character doesn’t have any gear that it’s relying on from previous characters you’ve been playing or you’re playing solo or something like that. So we’re pretty happy with how that progression and pacing is going. There’ll be some changes there but we’re really looking at targeting changes on follow-up characters, like you said, where you already maybe have a bunch of gear stashed and you don’t need to grind at all for some key pieces for your build and you’re already up and running and online. So you’re maybe a little bit more powerful than you would be if you were going through for the first time.
So these follow-up characters, we’ve got some changes planned and they’ll be coming in 1.0 primarily that will help with these secondary characters getting to empowered faster and really just staying challenged is really the important part. It’s so you’re not feeling like you’re going through stuff that you’re maybe over leveled or overpowered for and you still feel like what you’re doing is progressing your character and not just getting through some checkpoints.
Source: YouTube Link
September 6, 2023Terek: Currently, the way corruption and echo modifiers interact between each other can create unpleasant difficulty spikes. Are there any plans to address this?
Karv: Absolutely. So currently there’s a bit of a problem where you can have a 200 corruption echo with a lot of modifiers and because the modifiers scale with corruption they can be way more difficult than say a 400 or even a 500 corruption echo that has no modifiers. So we want to change it so that corruption is the primary way to, I guess like, check your builds power and what the difficulty is so that it’s way easier, especially for the community, to discuss build power. This is so that you don’t just randomly see people making videos or talking about how their build is so good doing 600 corruption without modifiers and then you have people struggling with the same build trying to follow it doing crazy, crazy modifiers on like 300 corruption. Obviously we have other changes like Judd mentioned about expansions to the monolith that we want to do that are different, but the corruption changes are definitely coming.
Source: YouTube Link
September 6, 2023McFluffin: So sticking with the monolith, another topic is blessings. So I personally really like blessings. I love that they’re target farmable and I can continue to farm the same boss until I get the blessing and the roll that I want but one pain point for a lot of players is that if you have a good blessing and you decide to replace it and then want to go back later you have to do the process all over again and that isn’t always necessarily the most fun thing to do. Do you all have any plans to address that?
Judd: Uh, yes. No, we completely agree with you. So we are making a change there, and I believe that this is new information. Whenever you obtain a blessing you will actually be able to store that permanently and then you’ll be able to swap between the different blessings that you have. Also, when you obtain the blessings and you swap between them they will retain the roll in which you receive them. The mechanic in which we are going to allow players to swap between them is not completely defined yet but we don’t believe that’s going to be a hard thing to figure out and so this will be coming in the future.
Source: YouTube Link
September 8, 2023
Mike: We do have some plans for things to do with monolith next patch. Nothing on the same scale as like a new dungeon system. Nothing on that scale, but there’s some. This patch had a bunch of little tweaks and changes to the monolith system and next patch will have tweaks and changes to the monolith system too. Maybe something a little bit bigger, I don’t know yet. The main focus is not specifically on monolith changes. I think the monolith is in a really good spot.
Oh there’s, okay, what am I’m talking about – there’s definitely a change to the monolith coming because it didn’t quite making into this patch, though I thought in my head that it did. Yeah, there’s stuff coming – mechanical changes that will affect everyone. For example, there are changes to the blessings and how they work that are coming. So you’ll be able to switch blessings a lot easier than now for ones you’ve already earned. Also, we’re improving the unlock time for empowered monoliths for follow-up characters after your first playthrough in any given environment – so ladder, non-ladder, or whatever you want to call it. So yeah, there’s definitely room for improvements and there are things planned.
I still really want to add like a – monolith is really hard to add a pinnacle boss to because it has infinite corruption scaling. There’s always a situation you can be in where some boss is better than the uber boss of the monolith. So if you put a boss in the monolith that says like you have to beat every timeline in empowered to even attempt it, or maybe you have to find some specific item to even attempt it – if we were to hypothetically do something like that there’s always the potential for the Shade of Orobyss to be harder to fight based on corruption.
We’re also putting more weight behind corruption in the monolith as well, just so that you don’t get into situations where you’re like this build is a 6,000 corruption build but can’t do certain 200 corruption areas, you know, that sort of thing. I’m being a little hyperbolic but you get the idea.
Source: YouTube Link
Future Plans
September 6, 2023Rhykker: So you’ve got the five base classes, Runemaster is a mastery of the Mage, and three masteries per class. Going forward, what’s the plan post launch with that?
Judd: Yeah, so the team loves creating classes and skills. That is something that we just enjoy as a studio. So post the 15 masteries that we’ll have with 1.0 there’s certainly more to look forward to if people enjoy different classes. I’m not ready to talk about any of those just yet but there is certainly lots of great stuff with the masteries that we have in the game and coming with 1.0 and 0.9.2.
Source: YouTube Link
September 6, 2023Rhykker: We got a lot of different skills, there’s roughly about 120 skills in the game?
Judd: Yeah, there’s a 119 skills in the game currently with skill trees, which is awesome. Tons to play with there. We are going to be continuing to implement more skills in the future, of course, like we had talked about. We’ll also be revisiting old skill trees in the game as we continue to produce new tech and we and the community have new awesome ideas that we’re excited about putting into those. So we’ll be continuing to add skills and then go back and iterate on them as we have new and cool ideas.
Rhykker: When you say adding new skills, do you mean just for new masteries and new classes or also for existing ones?
Judd: Yeah, so we actually do have plans to add more skills to a number of base classes and masteries into the game but, of course, also the new masteries, yes.
Source: YouTube Link
September 6, 2023McFluffin: Could you guys tell us a little bit about your plans going forward for endgame?
Judd: Yeah, absolutely. There is a lot. Endgame is of course extremely important in these games. The vast majority of time that people are going to spend in an ARPG and Last Epoch is in endgame so we’re going to spend a very disproportionate amount of time investing in the endgame expansion. To give you a couple examples here we have multiple endgame expansions for the Monolith of Fate already planned, another one kind of stirring up already in addition to that – some fun stuff coming there, and we’re going to continue to implement dungeons. We like dungeons because they’re a curated experience where we get to implement new mechanics and have these pinnacle bosses with these cool unique rewards. So we’re going to continue to do those and invest in those higher tier dungeons that players can really sink their teeth into.
We’re going to continue to implement more random events and encounters so that as you’re traversing through these endgame areas, especially in the Monolith of Fate, it stays fresh and exciting and you don’t know exactly what’s around the corner. Another one is that we want to implement some pinnacle uber bosses that are more static in scale so that you can really gut check your gear and your build amongst the community.
So those are just a few of the things that we have coming for endgame but there’s going to be a lot of really great stuff coming here and as we are continuing to develop the game for many years into the future you can absolutely suspect that much of that will be going into the endgame portion of Last Epoch. It’s very important.
Source: YouTube Link
September 7, 2023
Judd: We’re definitely getting better at designing these classes and have a larger and more experienced team than we used to. We’ll continue going back to bring other classes, skills, enemies, visuals, etc. up in quality. We certainly agree that there’s plenty of opportunity to make lots of improvements in content we’ve been implementing over the years and we’ll balance those efforts with brand new content additions. The goal is to make the game bigger and better every few months which will include a wide variety of updates.
Source: Reddit Link
Balance
September 6, 2023
Mike: 1.0 will have some bigger balance changes, it just didn’t line up here to do yet.
Source: Discord Link
Boss Mechanics
September 6, 2023LizardIRL: Boss damage reduction has been quite controversial since its release and we’re wondering what you guys think about it and are you guys looking at it? Please help.
Mike: Yeah, for sure. Adaptive boss damage reduction is not achieving the goals we want the system to achieve right now and we definitely have some plans to shake things up there. We really want to have something in its place that’s going to allow both first-time players and veterans to really just have a much better experience with it. There will still be a system in its place, so it’s not just going to be removed completely but it’s going to be a lot more fun to interact with and something that you can play with and not just smash your head against.
LizardIRL: Okay…I’ll take your word for it and you’ll hear us. [laughs]
Mike: I expect so. [laughs]
LizardIRL: Of course.
Mike: Yeah we really like designing engaging boss fights and it’s something that we really want to have be a highlight for players experience as they’re playing the game. We know that the current boss adaptive damage reduction system can be a little bit frustrating for players and we’ve got some new plans in order to make it an interesting mechanic to play with instead of something that you’re just fighting against.
Source: YouTube Link
Zone Save State
June 30, 2023
Mike: Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to be there for 1.0, sorry. But yeah, it sucks and we want to fix it.
Source: YouTube Link
September 10, 2023
Mike: Just to be clear for anyone who might be new to LE, this is not a design decision. The intent is to have it not reset but we have so far been unsuccessful in this endeavor. It is on our list to fix.
Source: Reddit Link
Weaver’s Will Uniques
September 8, 2023
Mike: Um, I think that sounds like a really cool idea – to be able to like modify the destiny of that…just to maybe like peek at the prophecy of what that item is going to be or have some way to really showcase how that gets picked more deterministically a little bit, possibly, I don’t know. There were definitely no hints in that whatsoever, I swear.
Source: YouTube Link
Gear Progression
September 6, 2023Terek: How does EHG feel about the current gear progression? You were talking about trade, so how will Item Factions affect it?
Karv: Oh yeah, so of course you’re going to be trading so you’re going to have access to better items faster than before so you’re going to be able to destroy your enemies way faster. Also, the Circle of Fortune guys, like myself, can boost their item drops through prophecies to be able to target farm more and they’re also going to be getting better gear. So our power is going to be higher than the enemies would normally be. We have a bit of a low point in the early endgame where we have a bit of a plateau when it comes to the gear progression. So obviously the ceiling is going up now as you’re going to be able to trade for items so the plateau is like way up there now, and the same goes for the Circle of Fortune.
So that means that there’s going to be power creep – so the players are going to be stronger than the enemy so we have to understand that. So we have two things; one thing that we’ve already been doing, which is whenever we have a major patch we are increasing the monster health and damage. You can see this in the patch notes if you go way back. The second thing we’re doing is we’re making better monsters that are smarter, have cooler abilities, they’re way more engaging, and we’re reworking old and kind of bad monsters into way better ones as well.
Source: YouTube Link
Class Design
September 6, 2023Rhykker: Amongst those 15 current masteries, each of them seems to fill some unique niche. How do you manage to keep adding more and make them all remain distinct?
Judd: Yeah, that’s a great question. So going into the design process of that a little bit you, of course, start with defining a strong class fantasy for a class when you’re working with the team there. You look at maybe what doesn’t exist in the game or what might be lacking or if there’s an element that might not be utilized enough in the game. Another tactic we use is making sure that we define what a class is not going to have. So, for example, the Mage class does not have minions and will not have minions and that keeps it from being so that the classes end up being homogenized in a way that we don’t want to end up having.
Rhykker: That’s very interesting. So for every class you kind of have like a “is not list” on it?
Judd: We do and it’s not always, you know, minions or something like that but there will usually be things that we say like this class isn’t going to have this type of element associated with it or it won’t have this mechanic or something like that. It does help us keep them differentiated.
Source: YouTube Link
Remaining Masteries
September 8, 2023
Mike: Yeah, this goes back to keeping the classes distinct and interesting. So with Necromancer one of the biggest things they have in their arsenal, the main defining thing, is that they’re a summoning class. That’s like the big thing about them and if we did Warlock as a summoning class too then there’s not really a lot of room for anything else in that mastery because you’d have two summoning classes and then one non-summoning class and you’d go okay, well the majority of the class specific stuff has to be minion builds and that’s really narrow for a lot of people. That’s not to say that we won’t eventually make a fourth mastery that has minions involved in classes that have two masteries already, but it just wasn’t time to add a second minion mastery to Acolyte.
I really think Warlock’s going to be awesome. I’m excited for it and work is well underway. I think Justin said he completed one of the mutators yesterday or the day before and there’s another one that’s well underway too, it’s great.
Source: YouTube Link
Missing Skills
September 8, 2023
Mike: So one thing we did decide this patch recently – so previously in the past I’ve always come into to the skill trees and been like, and lets just pretend that Frost Claw doesn’t exist and there’s this perfect grid of all of them, and I’m like see how they all fill up nicely. [Mike has the Skills & Specializations window for Mage open] It’s perfect and everything, great. Yeah they’re all going to be like this. Well…we decided that, why are we making them all the same anyways? Is it just for symmetry? Just so that it looks nice, like what’s the deal? Why are we even doing this? Um, and we couldn’t really come up with a good answer other than that it looks tidy and you don’t have people asking if there’s more skills coming or something like that.
There’s always going to be more skills coming and as soon as we start adding more skills it’s going to be off anyways so we figured hey, let’s just start putting it off now. This is part of the justification for adding Frost Claw because this does put it off from every other class immediately. So yeah, every class and every mastery will not have the same number of skills and the same skill complement as each other at 1.0. Maybe some mastery gets a sixth skill, probably not. Maybe some mastery launches with only four skills, you know, that sort of thing. There will be some slight variances in the number of skills that you see but it’s mostly just because we’re not using that as a constraint anymore.
Source: YouTube Link
Skill Updates
August 25, 2023
EHG: We are planning reworks to Shaman. But they’re post 1.0 and we’re not ready to talk about them yet.
Source: Twitter Link
September 8, 2023Mike: I do think that there’s a lot of room for more complexity, more depth in some of these older classes that haven’t had much love in a long time. Like Shaman’s probably a prime example of that where it’s got a lot of room to stand out and shine but it just doesn’t yet. It’s going to be a constant thing we’re doing all of the time – updating classes and making new, awesome stuff.
Source: YouTube Link
September 11, 2023
Mike: Our primary focus for next patch for skill updates is going to be on the Falconer and Warlock. There are a few others that we would really like to work on if possible but aren’t guaranteed.
Source: Discord Link
Chapters 10-12
September 6, 2023Rhykker: Is the campaign something you plan to expand upon with future either cycles or expansions or anything?
Judd: Yeah, absolutely. So we’ll be continuing to add more chapter content to the game. There’s a lot of story that we intend to tell with Last Epoch and we’re not trying to rush a number of these story arcs. So the story of Last Epoch will continue to evolve and be told for many patches into the future, absolutely.
Rhykker: Now you guys have the whole time travel element to the story. I feel that kind of gives you a lot of leeway in being able to continue the campaign in interesting ways by well, go back in time and something else happens.
Judd: Absolutely. Yeah, time travel is going to enable us a lot of great things, it already does, but for the future development of the game 1.0 is just kick off and the things that we’re able to do with time travel are going to be really, really awesome. Also, it lays a really great foundation for endgame because we get to go and tell the stories in different timelines and realities of what could have been and that gives us this foundation to just expand upon forever. So if we’re developing the game for many, many years into the future this does really good stuff for us.
Source: YouTube Link
Campaign Skip
September 6, 2023Rhykker: When we’re looking at the cycles, do we replay the campaign every cycle or do we have an option of skipping the campaign?
Judd: Yeah, good question. So we do think that the campaign is an important part of the experience of creating a new character and so we intend for players to play the campaign. Now there are things like dungeons in the game which can help you skip a swath of content especially if it’s your second character in a cycle, it’s an alt, and you have these dungeon keys. So there are ways to speed up that progression but yes, we do feel it is important to make sure that players get to experience the campaign when they go into a new cycle. Also, we’ll be continuing to add cool stuff and random events and things like that so that it’s not just the same exact thing every single time.
Source: YouTube Link
Marketing
September 6, 2023Rhykker: So right now what are you most excited about?
Judd: Oh, so much. So right now it’s really great to be able to share the game with so many people. We’ve been very reserved about marketing the game and attending events and things like that because we want to make sure that the game is in a really great spot before we go out and start to market the game. So being able to share it right now while the game is in a good spot and people are really enjoying it has been fantastic.
Source: YouTube Link
Achievements
September 12, 2023
Mike: We won’t have the achievement system ready for 1.0. It is however something we are planning on making. We plan to avoid achievements like “kill 10 skeletons” and focus more on interesting achievements like “kill the 1st boss with no weapons equipped at under level 10” or something like that. (I just made that up). I don’t know how many we plan to add initially. I would guess more than 20 and less than 100. I know that’s a big range and I’m not giving you much info but we just don’t have it decided yet.
Source: Discord Link
Cosmetics
July 18, 2023
Judd: This is simply not implemented yet but certainly on our radar and will be coming. It’s just not as high priority as some of the things that we have those engineers working on before 1.0.
Thank you for supporting our team and LE! We very much appreciate it.
Source: Reddit Link
Controller Support
September 8, 2023
Judd: Haha I won’t promise it just yet for 1.0 but our developer who’s implementing gamepad updates mentioned it earlier today as something he’d like to work on. https://imgur.com/a/qdQ9qjp
I think we’d all like it!
Source: Reddit Link
Transmog System
September 12, 2023
Mike: The ability to change the visuals of a non-mtx item into another is planned. We don’t have an ETA on that sort of functionality and I’m not sure how it will be implemented.
Source: Discord Link
4 Likes
, so I did have to shift two sections (Dodge-roll Mechanic and Passive Tree Mastery Bonuses) out of Classes, Skills, & Passives and into Miscellaneous. Future updates to this thread will likely be more sparse as I’ll only be including new information rather than almost everything that’s said about a topic. The Roadmap to 1.0 and Beyond section is unaffected by this as it still has plenty of space available.