With each patch we add new content and improve what already exists in the game. It’s no secret that player characters are among the oldest assets. The Sands of Majasa Update brought an update to the Primalist model, and the Eternal Legends Update will continue this trend with improvements to Sentinel, Acolyte and Mage.

As we mentioned in Primalist blog, we’ve also changed the topology of the models, which has improved the look of many of the animations and also affects the silhouette and detail of the characters, which is most noticeable on the face.

In the case of Mage and Acolyte, we didn’t want to completely change their appearance. We tried to keep the main features of our characters and focused mainly on visual quality improvements. We want you to still recognize the characters after these changes and we want to bring them up to our current standards.

Let’s take a closer look at Mage and Acolyte.












A few weeks ago we published a blog about a new model for Sentinel. It has not escaped many of you that in the pictures we used, the upper parts of the legs and the area around the waist didn’t look as it should. At that time, the model had not yet been implemented and was still being worked on. We have since corrected the problems with the skinning that caused these seemingly incorrect proportions.

Here is a comparison of Sentinel as it looks in our previous blog and as it looks now.


Left: The image we shared a few weeks ago. Sentinel has incorrect proportions around the upper legs area. Right: New proportions after skinning issues were fixed.


Our work on the characters does not end with these changes. The Rogue model will also get some improvements, but we know that many of you are waiting for more variation of our characters' looks when using different Armor sets.

Sentinel will get two new Armor sets in the next patch and we are working hard on more. Here is a preview of just a few that are already in various stages of development and we hope to get them into the game as soon as possible.

Please keep in mind that real game assets may differ from these artworks. Many times changes have to be made for both aesthetic and technical reasons, or they may not make it into the game at all and be replaced by a different design.







We hope you enjoyed this sneak-peek of what's in store for you in the Eternal Legends Update and beyond. Don't worry, we know what many of you are waiting for and what you want to know more about. We may have some lege... very interesting information ready for you tomorrow!

Hello all, and welcome to the November Multiplayer update!

It has not gone unnoticed that our last update was fairly light, and that we skipped our October update. I would love to take some time to break down some of the reasons why and share as much visibility and clarity on our ongoing Multiplayer work.



I'd like to make reference to something Judd discussed a bit more in-depth in our July Road to 1.0 Update:

"I cannot overstate how important it is to EHG that multiplayer is executed correctly. A bad initial multiplayer experience can harm the game for all players and jeopardize the success and reputation of the studio long term, much more than holding it until it’s ready. We want multiplayer to be enjoyable when we first release it without confusion or game-breaking bugs, even in early access. Several games with many more resources have failed to stick the landing on multiplayer, so we’re making sure to learn everything we can from those mistakes and not to repeat them. While we still may make some mistakes, we’ll be able to react and iterate on them quickly."

Through further testing of our scalability of multiplayer services over the last few months, and in the light of other recent major game launches, we recognized some core areas of our current Multiplayer experience that we would have to re-address. We wanted these to have a stable gameplay experience before we roll out even a multiplayer alpha test. We realized that some of the services we were relying on were things we should ideally build and own ourselves if we want to be able to reduce live problems as much as possible, as well as fix things quickly whenever we need to.

To put it as clearly as I can - we've experienced some setbacks and delays because we made the choice to improve a number of our services, which we believe is the right decision for the long-term health of Multiplayer. **Our intended Community Testing program for Multiplayer has moved to Q1 2022.**

The result here is that we have chosen to migrate a few of our features, where some of the other features we've now built ourselves. This has meant our previously intended Community Testing phase of multiplayer has been delayed until we're confident in the Alpha version of a number of these changes. Let me break it down visually with a quick run-down:

The core multiplayer gameplay of Last Epoch is functioning very well - we playtest every week without any issues and are making a huge number of gameplay changes to consider the impact of the multiplayer version of Last Epoch. Let me cover some of this visually:



Our multiplayer party system has been working well and we've been using it for about 8 months now. We needed to migrate it, however, as the party system relies on our account system which we are moving. We have recently just completed this and are testing it.




Very similar to the party system, it works online the same as the one you have now, but we also have to migrate it. This has been completed and is in testing.


Everything is looking great here and nothing is impacted for online gameplay. We have a lot of work to go optimizing it and we'll have to make some changes to how the game saves data since we are moving the character saving system. We are still implementing the Monolith in an online format but we regularly play the rest of Epoch together online, and have continued to work on systems such as latency compensation, as well as other elements we need to make the experience feel great.




The service we were relying on for character saves was fairly reliable at the scale we were testing at, but as we have continued to grow our playtests it increasingly became clear that this wouldn't be sufficient if we had a large influx of players. Migrating this to a more robust service has been a priority and we've been able to make gains here quickly by moving to an industry standard platform.


This is our ability to deploy patches quickly to a global audience - nobody wants to wait 7 days for a patch. We have actually been really happy with how fast we can deploy the game online - we were at least as quick as other similar games. However, because we migrated our server hosting solutions, we have to modify a lot of the scripts and tools we use to deploy the game both internally and externally. This work is ongoing but it is something we have a huge amount of experience with at this point, we are confident it will be quick by the time we move to CT testing.




This is the first of our main set of changes. We consider this of extreme importance as the integrity of the online experience will be critical to have a competitive ladder, as well as ensuring we can maintain a great community by ensuring bad actors cannot access the game again.

We are actively moving towards migrating our account system to work within an industry standard provider - work here is still ongoing and we will want this before releasing out a MP Alpha to testers.




Another area where we experienced some issues even in the single player game over the course of this year - there was more than one occasion in which we had to disable our chat. We recognized it would not scale in a way that would make us happy. We also had a number of issues this year with chat moderation, which our current chat system has not made easy to deal with. This is now actively in development using a third-party chat provider that should safely support us scaling from our current numbers up to launch. We expect this to be in when we also have our new user system for community testing.


The second of our main set of changes - an inability to login is one of the worst things that can happen for us when we go live. We know we need this critical piece of infrastructure needs to keep up with however many people decide to play at once. We're feeling good that our new provider is up to the job and should easily scale at the numbers we anticipate. We're keeping an eye on the need for a login queue, but have no immediate plans to implement one at the moment. We expect this to be in when we also have our new user system for community testing.




This is the last of our main set of changes. Adapting a general purpose matchmaker to our scene allocation needs proved to be quite challenging. We need to be able to quickly allocate game servers to handle the wide array of scenes players will be in, while keeping our server load manageable. We have successfully moved to a new platform, are regularly testing with it, and no longer have to rely on a complex matchmaker. We are really happy with our changes here but it took a few months.


One thing I'd also like to touch on a bit is our regular release of the single player version of the game. Previously we were a much smaller team, so it was often the case that we had to divide our attention between continuing to develop, test, release, and fix our single player game. Our 3 month content process is really critical for us to continue to fund the ongoing develop of Last Epoch, as well as make big changes for our current players, so this had a lot of impact on our ability to remain consistent. It is not common to build out a multiplayer version of a game while consistently releasing a single player version - but considering that the development of Last Epoch has been financed by early access, it's a challenge we've had to rise up to.

With the growth of our team, it takes time to onboard new developers into our processes. We are starting to cross this threshold with new developers that have joined the team over the last year, and are adding even more developers to resolve this conflict. Over the course of the next period of time, we are looking to merge our single player and multiplayer processes so we can put the entirety of our team on the multiplayer release of Last Epoch.



I hope this information has helped clear up the air about all the work we're putting into the development of Last Epoch multiplayer to ensure that when it releases, we do it right. We have learned a lot and are continuing to learn as we develop the platform we need to succeed now and far into the future. I know that the best time to release multiplayer is yesterday, but moving forward we're going to be a lot happier with some of the things we've rebuilt.

As a final thing, we're still hiring for all kinds of roles! Check out our postings at https://eleventhhour.games/careers for more information.

Similar to the Sands of Majasa Update, the Eternal Legends Update will bring a large number of new unique items that will either help players during leveling or help create end-game builds. A couple of weeks ago we shared some of the unique items coming to the game in the next update, and last week our backers shared their own awesome and powerful uniques - Death’s Embrace by Heavy, Prismatic Gaze by woozel and Chronostasis by Corax.

The release date for the next update is fast approaching, and we know many of you can’t wait for us to share more about Legendary items - rest assured, we’ll be talking about them very soon. But before we do, let’s take a look at a few more unique items, shall we?

All values are subject to change.















We can’t wait for you to get your hands on these new unique items, and it won’t take long. the Eternal Legends Update will be released on December 10th.

Keep an eye on our social media, as we’ll be sharing more about Legendary items and our first Dungeon soon.

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It’s no secret that the Primalist is getting a lot of attention in the Eternal Legends Update - a complete Druid mastery overhaul in addition to a new core skill. However, the Primalist is not the only character with an expanding arsenal. Eternal Legends is bringing a new Rogue skill into the game - Umbral Blades. Let’s take a closer look.

Umbral Blades is joining the ranks of quick, spammable, low mana cost Rogue skills, and is aimed at fulfilling the fantasy of masterfully throwing daggers (or swords) at your enemies. It is a 3-step combo ability. First, you throw 2 piercing blades at your enemies, next you throw 4 more, and finally on the 3rd step, you recall all of your blades back into your hands, hitting enemies along the way. Umbral Blades pairs perfectly with the Rogue’s high mobility and proper positioning as the key to success.


Note: Skill icon is not finalized.

Umbral Blades skill is using tech we developed for the Majasa boss battle, where she sends out the blood pools, then turns all these pools into orbs and float back to her. In fact, this sparked the initial idea for this new Rogue skill. We felt that recalling your abilities is something, that can be really fun to play with, offers a different playstyle, and rewards correct positioning more than other throwing skills. After extensive testing, we are happy to introduce this skill to our players.


Umbral Blades is a new 3-step combo throwing skill

Specialization trees offer a variety of powerful nodes to support different playstyles. If you wish to utilize the complex behavior of this skill or you want to simplify the interaction, there is something you will like.


Skill tree offers poison and cold conversion to support a variety of builds




Recalled blades now targeting enemies around instead of returning to you




Explosive blades with cold conversion in action




Cacophony of Steel with poison conversion.



Eternal Legends Update is packed with new content and improvements and there is still a lot we will share with our community. So stay tuned for more updates coming your way very soon.

The Eternal Legends Update is bringing a slew of improvements, changes, and new content. Yesterday we released a Dev Blog about Crafting Changes coming to Last Epoch in the upcoming patch. Today, let’s take a closer look at another weapon group getting an overhaul - Staves.

Similar to Spears, Staves will also get new 2D and 3D art and offer a wide variety of powerful implicit affixes to support even more builds. Check some examples below!


























We hope you enjoyed sneak peek of what is coming. Join us tomorrow, when we will share details about the new rogue skill.

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The core of the crafting system has existed in a similar state in Last Epoch for the last four years. In that time we’ve had a lot of positive feedback, but a lot of people have also voiced their frustrations with it. In 0.8.4 we want to carry forward the positives, while reworking the core of this system to be less frustrating, and adding more variety to how you can craft in Last Epoch.

Positives to carry forward

• Directed Crafting: You can find shards on the ground for specific affixes and use them to add that affix to items or upgrade that affix on items that already have it. This is a very intuitive system that gives a great sense of control and progression to crafting, while providing plenty of crafting items to find and collect.
  
• An element of randomness: We want to keep a degree of randomness in crafting so that it can feel exciting and unpredictable. If you know exactly how an item is going to end up when you start crafting it, the whole experience can feel flat. We don’t think that the randomness of the current system works well, it can be very frustrating, but we still believe that keeping a significant level of unpredictability in the system is very important.
  
• Most of the existing runes: The Rune of Shattering is instrumental in allowing you to target farm specific Affix Shards, and the other Runes for the most part provide interesting ways to craft an item beyond just adding and upgrading affixes.
  
• The glyph system: While we’re not keeping either of the two existing Glyphs, the system by which you can support crafts with different items to modify the outcome has the opportunity to add a lot of depth. We’re hoping to capitalize on that more in 0.8.4, rather than making it mostly a maths based decision of which Glyph is most likely to result in more opportunities to craft the item further.

Negatives we want to avoid going forward

• Irrelevant Shards: Shards for affixes you didn’t want to use felt completely useless. At worst this could undermine the feeling of having frequent useful drops that you didn’t have to spend time evaluating, like you do with equipment.
  
• Magic vs. Rare Items: With the previous crafting system it often ended up being more optimal to start crafting from a magic item rather than a rare one for several reasons. A later part of this dev blog will go into more detail.
  
• Perception of Luck: The RNG of the system functioned in a way that resulted in players generally feeling unlucky when crafting. This came from two sources, an unintuitively high chance of failure, and a lack of opportunities to feel particularly lucky.
  
  • This was mostly due to unintuitive failure chance over multiple crafts amounting from repeated attempts where failure chance is small, but not negligible. Human psychology doesn’t handle the perception of chance very well, overestimating the chance of success from a high percentage. This meant that items fractured more frequently than players expected, resulting in disappointment and frustration.
    
  • Because success chance generally stayed high, the expectation with each individual craft was for it to succeed, and this meant that each success just felt expected or even owed rather than lucky. Whenever success chance dipped low enough that succeeding wasn’t the expectation and there might be an opportunity to feel lucky, there was a strong disincentive to just stop crafting, because of the risk of a damaging or destructive fracture. For some, this lack of lucky moments could also result in crafting feeling flat or dull outside of the occasional critical success or the disappointment of an unexpected fracture.

In 0.8.4 we’re changing crafting to remove instability and fracture chance, and instead give all craftable items an amount of Forging Potential. Each craft uses a random amount of Forging Potential, normally around 1 to 15, and when an item runs out of Forging Potential it can no longer be crafted on, but until then all crafts will be successful.


This has several immediate advantages:

• Clearer Expectations: There’s an expectation for how much you can craft on an item, and it’s clear how quickly it’s going down. The point at which you can no longer craft doesn’t come out of nowhere, but gets closer and closer as an item loses more forging potential. This is particularly important for new players who don’t always initially understand that crafting is limited in the old system.
  
• Softening the Blow: It doesn’t feel as bad when an item becomes ‘uncraftable’, because the last attempted craft always still succeeds, regardless of how much forging potential was left. There’s never a time where you attempt a craft and then the item just fractures instead and you don’t upgrade the affix you wanted to.
  
• Positive RNG: This system is much more conducive to creating moments where you feel lucky. Often an item is low on forging potential and it looks like you’re only going to get one more craft out of it. But through a mix of rolling low amounts of forging potential consumed, critical successes preventing forging potential consumption, and Glyphs of Hope - you can end up being able to craft far more times than you were expecting.

As mentioned above, with the previous crafting system it was often more optimal to start crafting from a magic item. There were several causes of this that we’re planning to address with the 0.8.4 crafting changes.

• There was no good, or easy, way to get rid of mods you didn’t like. There was the Rune of Removal, but that had a high risk of removing affixes that you did want and that made the item worth crafting on in the first place. This meant that bad mods were significantly worse than empty mod slots.
  
• One of the ways we are planning to solve this is the Glyph of Chaos which can be used to reroll affixes when they’re upgraded, giving you several shots of changing an affix to one you want.

• There were only two Glyphs and they both extended the average number of times you could craft the item. Either by reducing stability added or by reducing fracture chance. There was no opportunity cost to using one of these so there wasn’t as much of an advantage to starting from an item that required particularly few crafts to complete.
  
  • We are aiming to solve this by introducing new Glyphs that allow you to push an item further or refine it at the opportunity cost of not using a Glyph that could preserve Forging Potential. For example you can use the Glyph of Order to preserve a good roll you get on a lower tier and carry that forward to higher tiers.

• Rare items started with more instability than magic items, so the gap between their mod count and total tiers could be closed more easily.
  
  • We’re flipping that around with the new crafting system so that rare items start with more forging potential than magic items, and rare items at high levels drop with even more. This means that not only will that gap be harder to close for magic items, but when crafting on rare items you’ll have more freedom to use items like the Glyph of Order without worrying as much about running out of forging potential.

On a related note, we also want to shield players from bad RNG when crafting on exalted items, as that process is inherently more risky due to exalted items being much less easily replaceable. Because of this exalted items drop with particularly high forging potential.


This patch we’re swapping the old two Glyphs for four new ones, replacing one Rune, and adding two new Runes. Three of these new crafting items will be chase items with more exciting and powerful potential outcomes than the existing Runes and Glyphs.

One of our goals with overhauling Glyphs was to make the decision around choosing the one you wanted to be based more on strategy and what sort of outcome you wanted, rather than the math of which was more likely to result in you being able to craft the item further. On account of that, the roles of the Glyph of the Guardian and the the Glyph of Stability have been rolled into the new Glyph of Hope, which gives a chance that a craft will consume no forging potential.

Glyph of Chaos

• As mentioned above this glyph rerolls an affix when you upgrade it. This means that rare items with one or two affixes you don’t want become much more viable bases for crafting. This also adds a degree of RNG that isn’t just about success, failure, or using up a resource.
  
• The Glyph of Chaos also solves another problem with the old crafting system, which was that shards of affixes you didn’t want could feel completely useless. You’ll now want to have at least a few of every shard on hand so that you can reroll their respective affixes.

Changes to Existing Runes

• The Rune of Shattering and Rune of Refinement are not changing. We like the role they played in the old crafting system and think they’ll continue to work just as well in this new one.
  
• As discussed above the Rune of Removal could lead to moments of frustration when it removed the one affix that made the item exciting for you in the first place. Of course the Glyph of Chaos provides an alternative now, but if you do want to use the Rune of Removal, the edge will be taken off the disappointment, because it’ll return a number of shards of the removed affix equal to its tier. This will allow you to more easily craft that affix onto a different item instead. This also opens up the strategy of using multiple Runes of Removal instead of a Rune of Shattering if you want to maximize the number of Shards you get from an item.

• The Rune of Shaping will no longer favour moderate rolls, making it more exciting to use and giving it more of a potential to create really powerful items. We felt comfortable doing this because with the new system we can simply balance it by giving it a higher maximum forging potential cost.
  
• The Rune of Cleansing is being removed. In 0.8.4 rare and exalted items drop with high Forging Potential to encourage crafting on those rather than creating the exact items you want from scratch, being able to use a Rune of Cleansing to turn those into high forging potential white items would bypass that, so the rune is being removed.

Rune of Discovery

• This is a new rune being added in 0.8.4. It costs no forging potential and adds random T1 affixes to all the empty affix slots on an item.
  
• This is mostly intended to provide another option for crafting in early game, where you’re not looking for a perfect item, but a grab bag of random affixes could be a potential upgrade, or you might want to round out the affixes of an item with low forging potential.
  
• All your old runes of cleansing will be turned into Runes of Discovery.

Rune of Ascendance

• The first of the three chase crafting items. This transforms an item into a random unique or set of the same type.
  
• The subtype does not matter, just the item type. For example using a Rune of Ascendance on a silver ring can result in any unique or set ring that could randomly drop, but cannot result in a unique helmet.

Rune of Creation

• Another chase crafting item, this removes all the item’s remaining forging potential, and then duplicates it.
  
• Beyond being able to equip both copies in the case of things like rings and one handed swords, this will have another use that will become clear in the run up to 0.8.4.

Glyph of Despair

• This is the only chase Glyph, and it has a particularly exciting effect. Whenever you use a shard to attempt to upgrade an affix while using a Glyph of Despair there is a chance that the affix will be sealed instead of upgraded.
  
• A sealed affix moves to its own slot and cannot be modified further. However this means that the prefix or suffix slot it previously occupied is now open to allow for another affix to be added, allowing you to craft 5 affix items.

Another change to the crafting system in 0.8.4 is that you can now see the outcome of your crafts. This display is positioned at the bottom of the crafting panel where the various fracture chances used to be displayed. It tells you what stats you gained from a craft and how much Forging Potential was lost, if any.


Community feedback is always valued and has been instrumental in providing direction for the crafting changes we’re making this patch. We hope that you enjoy the changes and that you’ll let us know how the new system feels to use either way.

See you all in Eterra.

Saving Eterra is going to take more than time, it will require becoming something else entirely: Legendary. Last Epoch is proud to announce that with Patch 0.8.4 comes the launch of our first endgame Dungeon and the rise of Legendary tiered items. See you in Eterra on December 10th for the Eternal Legends Update.

• Druid Rework
  
  • Werebear Overhaul
    
  • Spriggan Overhaul
    
  • Swarmblade Reveal
    
  • Entangling Roots
• New Primalist Skill - Upheaval
  
• New Sentinel Model
  
• Spears - Polearms Rework

• New Endgame Dungeon: Temporal Sanctum
  
• Legendary Items & Eternity Cache
  
• Revamped Crafting System
  
• New Rogue Skill
  
• New Mage and Acolyte Character Models
  
• Overhauled Character Select Screen
  
• New Unique Items
  
• and much more…

As you may have already noticed, our Primalist is getting a lot of love in patch 0.8.4. Not only is his Druid Mastery going through a complete overhaul, but he is also getting some new, powerful baseline tools added to his kit. Today, the new Primalist skill Upheaval is making its smashing reveal to our community, so hold on to your boots and lets get into the details below.


Upheaval is a powerful, semi-spammable ground slam ability. It will do decent amount of damage and have a medium mana cost. With the announced removal of Ice Thorns, Upheaval will be stepping in to fill its empty skill slot. This means that moving forward, upheaval will be an early and core addition to the Primalist theme and leveling experience.



We knew that the visuals of Upheaval needed to feel impactful for our players. We started by adding some additional screen shake, then we added another ‘slam’ visual object right when the Primalist’s weapon hits the ground.

The visual design of Upheaval also presented us with the opportunity to create a new visual skill-tool: Decals over a trail. This is a design tool that drops visual-decals every 1.5 units which results in a repeated trail of decals. This design truly realized the desired visuals for Upheaval, and we will certainly be using it to shape other future skills in Last Epoch.


Upheaval is a powerful melee attack with a solid range.

Upheaval specialization tree offers a wide variety of powerful nodes to support many different builds. Here are a couple highlights from the brand new Upheaval skill tree. We can't wait to see the earth-shaking creations from our community once they get a hold of the full skill tree.

Values have been omitted as we are still balancing the skill.






The cold version of Upheaval cast by totem.








Excavating blow with Tectonic Slam obliterating enemies.





Upheaval will be joining the Primalist’s skill kit before the end of the year with patch 0.8.4. For those keeping score in the community, that means you’ll have patch 0.8.4 in your hands in no more than 46 days from now.

In that time you’ll be hearing from us a lot. In fact, we’ve barely scratched the surface in revealing what all is coming your way. We have more blog posts, feature reveals, announcements, and trailers heading your way in the coming weeks - so stay tuned for all the news for our Ete… oops, to patch 0.8.4!

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We hope you’ve been enjoying our Druid Development Week so far, and thanks for joining us here again for our biggest reveal yet. We’ve been eager to show you all of the major changes coming to the Druid Mastery in 0.8.4 and we are finally able to do so with the third and final transformation: the deadly Swarmblade.


All imagery, animations, mechanics, and videos are captured during the development process and do not directly reflect the final product. All instances shown are subject to change as needed

When it came time to develop the final transformation for our Druid, we knew we wanted to do something unique and exciting. These goals meant we wanted to steer clear of other often used animal transformations so we could land on something fresh. When we started reviewing the stunning concept art for the Swarmblade below, we knew we found the answer.

Insects exist in many different shapes and forms so we had a lot of material to explore. As you can see in the picture below, our artists had an awesome mix of ideas for the insect-based form.





The ability to transform into a deadly flying bug that can slash your enemies to ribbons is a really fun fantasy we are excited to deliver in patch 0.8.4. The Swarmblade went through many visual and naming iterations before we had finally crafted the fearsome bug-king hunter you see below.





Transforming into the Swarmblade takes you into a spinning slash animation that we feel connects the player very well to the Swambalade fantasy - it feels visceral and impactful. This was a great feeling with most transformation situations, but in some others (for example Werebear to Swarmblade) it had to be adjusted since a massive Werebear performing a ‘full-spin’ just didn’t look right.



Swarmblade has two distinct fantasies we wanted to slice. One being a fast slashing bug and the other being the ‘hive-father’. With only 4 skills on the bar, we were aware that in order to really hit both of these we would need to have these themes overlap on some skills. Also, having a contained kit like this on a character gave us the ability to create some really exciting ability interactions.

Swarmblade’s first skill, Armblade Slash, is fast melee slash attack. It will be your most reliable attack in Swarmblade form with no cooldown and no Rage cost. We’ve designed the Swarmblade heavily around rapid melee slashing, and while Armblade Slash will be deadly, it will not be the only melee attack in your arsenal.



Swarmblade’s second skill is Dive. We knew we needed to hit the mobility aspect while also maintaining his aggressiveness. Looking at the Rogue’s Shift ability, we saw how responsive and good it felt to use, so we emulated that for Swarmblade while also decreasing the range a bit and adding a slash at the end. This allows you to either engage or disengage quickly.



Swarmblade’s third skill is summon hive. When using the ability, he throws down a hive and summons some feisty locusts to fight with him. This hits the summoner theme that a Druid should have and puts the Swarmblade as a hive-father or “king bee” of sorts. And of course, these locusts will scale with Minion Damage.



Since the hives are going to summon locusts, we designed another skill that would interact with them to help promote ability synergy. That’s where Swarmblade’s fourth and final skill comes in - Swarm Strike. Swam Strike is a 360 degree heavy spin attack that also rallies your summoned bugs around you dealing heavy AoE damage. This ability really rounds out the Swarmblade’s toolkit.



With every new transformation comes a new skill tree and Swarmblade is no exception. Swarmblade’s specialization tree is packed with a wide variety of powerful or nodes supporting different playstyles. As in the case of Werebear and Spriggan, Swarmblade also has several options to generate rage to stay in the form longer or even permanently.



An important part of our Druid overhaul is also allowing players to utilize other Primalist’s skills even while being transformed. You will find several different options inside the skill tree.



Here are a few examples of some new and powerful Swarmblade nodes.





We’re moving away from a Mana based resource for all Druid transforms and replacing it with a new resource called Rage. This new resource system comes with new mechanics to support a wide variety of playstyles including permaform builds as well as multiform builds. To catch up on the new rage mechanic we provide more info in our previous blogs - Werebear and Spriggan.

Now that all three forms are revealed we can talk about something really exciting. For those of you who prefer a more versatile approach to shapeshifting - we have added support for the powershifting playstyle, and we are so excited to see what our community can do with the power of multiform support at their fingertips.

To achieve this, there are now nodes in each skill tree that allow you to shift directly into another form without having to revert back to a human first. These direct transformations also come with an additional effect.









Thank you for joining us this week for this discovery of our newly designed Druid Mastery. We hope to see you Werebears, Spriggans and Swarmblades fighting back the void across Eterra when 0.8.4 drops later this year.

Oh and don’t worry, we have plenty more to share in the coming weeks.

Druid Rework Development Week:

1st November - Werebear Form Blog Post
2nd November - Entangling Roots Blog Post
3rd November - Spriggan Form Blog Post
4th November - New Form Teaser
5th November - Druid Rework Overview and New Form

We hope you enjoyed our new Entangling Roots design in the Entangling Roots Blog. We are thrilled to have you back again for our next reveal.

Today marks day three of our Druid Development Week, so stay tuned in the coming days to catch even more great news (full schedule below)! Today, we will be focusing on the Druid’s most adaptive transformation - the Spriggan.

The design goal of the new Spriggan form is to connect our players to the 'magical spellcaster rooted in nature' type of fantasy. This involved committing to a couple thematic design goals:

• The Spriggan would not utilize any movement abilities. Being a tree-man, he can’t move very quickly without breaking the fantasy.
  
• All attacks and spells should be deeply rooted in nature magic
  
• The two major themes expressed through gameplay should encompass the feeling of controlling the environment and summoning nature’s creatures.

The visuals for our current Spriggan form were a bit outdated and the abilities felt rather clunky and difficult to use. All around, he needed of a lot of love. Here is some of our early concept art for the model redesign:




Once we decided upon the concept art and the details within, we set forth to create a new epic model for the Druid’s Spriggan form. Complete with hardened bark, a variety of natural growth, and an ancient glowing power within, our new Spriggan form stands ready to take on any threat.



We’ve given our new Spriggan form an exciting new transformation animation and integrated the casting of a new ability while transforming: Thorn Shield. Casting Thorn Shield while transforming into Spriggan strongly communicates the fantasy of becoming a tree. It feels great in dangerous situations, and connects the player with the soul of the Spriggan fantasy.



This patch we have updates to all of the abilities which include replacing Vale Blast with Spirit Thorns, and replacing Root Wall with Thorn Shield. Let's dive into each of these decisions a bit more below.

Vale Blast, while decent at single target damage, felt rather lackluster and its theming did not fit well. Generic green laser blast of sorts doesn't really scream "nature magic." Also, we're removing Ice Thorns from Primalist this patch, so we would be lacking in any spell cast where you are creating thorns, which is very appropriate for a nature caster. So that led us to building Spirit Thorns. This is a single target, or multitarget, skill that feels much more satisfying to use than Ice Thorns or Vale Blast currently does, and really hits on that Spriggan nature theme.



While we loved the theme of Root Wall, we’ve ultimately decided it wasn’t effective or impactful enough, so it was time for it to retire. Its replacement, Thorn Shield, is a rather different skill compared to Root Wall. It forms a protective barrier of thorns around you that grants armor and reflects a flat amount of damage to attackers. When the shield expires, a burst of thorns shoots out and damages all nearby enemies. For Thorn Shield, we wanted to double down on the thorn theme, and also fully empower and support a “thorns” style of gameplay, where things die just from touching you. Being able to cast it on your companions also enables a fun playstyle where you stand back and send your thorny bear into battle for you. Or you can even sprout some thorns on your friends as they charge into the fray.



Healing Totem and Summon Vines are both keeping their current base functionality but gain visual updates and several new options in the overhauled skill tree. The reworked Spriggan Form minions often feel like new skills when using them in battle.





As we discussed in the Werebear Blog, we're moving away from a mana based resource for all Druid transforms and they will use a new resource called Rage. There will be many ways to recover Rage such as the examples below.



Similar to the Werebear, one of our major redesign goals with the Spriggan skill tree is to allow players to bring in the power of other skills while transformed. This will allow players to make more strategic decisions when choosing which other skills they wish to specialize in.



The entire Spriggan skill tree has been redesigned with the intent to allow our community of Travelers to create many new builds and explore new ways to play.

Here are some of our favorite new nodes:




Great Vine lives up to its name

Thank you for joining us for this reveal of the changes coming to the Druid’s Spriggan form in Patch 0.8.4. We hope you love the new direction for the Druid and, as always, would love to hear your feedback in the comments! We hope to see you again tomorrow for a sneak peak at our Druid’s new and final transformation!

Here is a peek at what you can expect this week! See you next time!

Druid Rework Development Week:

1st November - Werebear Form Blog Post
2nd November - Entangling Roots Blog Post
3rd November - Spriggan Form Blog Post
4th November - New Form Teaser
5th November - New Form Blog Post
5th November - Druid Rework Overview Video