Jul 3, 2024

Harbingers of Ruin: Quality of Life & More

Last Epoch - EHG_Kain

Hello Travelers,

Welcome to the second Pre-Patch Blog Post! Today we’re going to be highlighting some of the Quality of Life changes, as well as a few other changes, coming with the Last Epoch 1.1 : Harbingers of Ruin update on July 9th.

While we’ll be covering some hot topics today, fear not, the full Patch Notes will cover everything being added, changed, or fixed in 1.1! (*Looks at word count of the Patch Note post*) Make sure to set some time aside to read those.

Mechanical Changes

In this section we’re covering some of the much requested quality of life updates to the most commonly used mechanics in game that should help Travelers as they progress through Eterra, even our Alt-oholics too!

Changes to Blessings

Blessings can sometimes be a key piece in making a build come together. Getting just the right blessing setup with a good roll can take a while to farm. The prospect of giving that up to try out another build can be daunting enough to discourage experimentation. To remedy this situation, we have added the ability to quickly and easily change your blessings without losing progress.

You will now find an NPC in the End of Time next to the Monolith of Fate entrance. Similar to the Passive Respec NPC, for a small Gold fee this NPC will enable you to swap between the Blessings your character has earned, or the minimum rolled versions of blessings earned on your other characters in the same game mode!

Wait, like a Blessing Stash?

Yep! In 1.1, after defeating a Boss and unlocking new Blessings, all of those Blessing options will be saved to the Blessing Stash at their current roll values (if higher than previously earned versions). This includes the blessings which you do not select when you kill a monolith boss. You may then switch between any of these blessings without losing the roll values you earned.

For Alts, this means once you have defeated a Timeline, you will be able to swap out a Blessing you have earned with any Blessing from another character that it shares a stash with. Blessings earned on other characters will be usable at their minimum roll values until a better roll is unlocked on the alt character.

Pre-1.1 characters will have access to their non-equipped but discovered blessings as swap options saved at minimum roll. Any currently equipped blessings will persist as an option with its current roll saved.

For Example: If Character A has earned the Grand Cruelty of Formosus Blessing with a 68% Chance to Increase Wand Drop Rate, this will be saved to their Stash. Should they earn this Blessing again at a higher value, say 85%, but choose not to take the Blessing, it will be added to their Stash at the higher roll.

Once Character B (An Alt with access to the Stash) has defeated the required Blood, Frost, and Death Timeline, they will be able to equip the Grand Cruelty of Formosus Blessing at it’s lowest value of 50% Chance to Increase Wand Drop Rate, even if they have not earned this Blessing yet. Once Character B has defeated the Timeline and earned the Blessing, the higher value roll will be available to use.

Alt characters will only have to complete the Normal version of a Timeline to access Empowered Timeline Blessings.

Ladder Improvements

We understand that Ladders and competition are important to a dedicated portion of our player base, and accuracy is an integral part of those. To expand the opportunities our players have to officially challenge each other, we are adding a brand new Level Ladder to Last Epoch. This will track the race to Level 100 by showing the leading Cycle characters with the highest experience totals and a timestamp displaying when they reached Level 100!

We have also added timestamps to Arena Ladders to show when a player earned their rank by defeating the most Waves.

Monolith Timeline Search

With 1.1, we are adding a search box to the Timeline map with buttons for common reward searches. This creates a quick way to filter and search for desired Echo types and rewards, with matching nodes highlighted on the map.

Loot Filter Improvements

Okay, okay, okay! We heard you, Loot filters are getting some new filtering options. You will now be able to add multiple affix conditions to a single rule. For example, you can have one condition for boots to only show if they have Movement Speed at Tier 6 or higher, and then another condition to also include at least Tier 5 or higher Dexterity, Vitality or Strength.

You will also now have the option to show the relevant filter rule number on the end of the label names the while the loot filter is open. You will also be able to show or hide affixes that are incompatible with the item type you are creating a rule for.

Oh, we are also including the much requested Legendary Potential and Weaver’s Will filtering. Enjoy!

Item Faction Changes

Since we introduced our Item Factions, we have always wanted to provide options that suit everyone’s preferred playstyle and also feel rewarding. Thankfully, you provided plenty of feedback and suggestions for our teams to work with and below we are sharing the upcoming New Ranks and Changes to the Item Factions for the 1.1 Harbingers of Ruin update.

Progression speed has also been taken into account when including the new Ranks, and it requires less Reputation to achieve the maximum Rank in 1.1, than it required to achieve Rank 10 in 1.0.

Also in 1.1, each Rank in Item Factions also now provides +5% increased Favor gain. At maximum rank of 12, you will have +60% increased Favor gain. However experience now scales less with corruption than it did at high corruption values and Favor gain is based on experience gain. At all normal corruption values you'll be gaining more Favor than before at high ranks, but at extremely high corruption you'll be gaining less than before. Overall this means that getting to high corruption and being able to farm it efficiently is much less important for farming Favor.

Merchant’s Guild

While we were overall happy with where item progression is in the Merchant’s Guild, there were some Ranks we felt offered very little in terms of upgrades as other Ranks included all the relevant items. To make progression feel smoother, we have split these Ranks and introduced two more. These changes are highlighted below.

We have also heard your feedback on the Bazaar search function and the team is currently working on updates to this system - especially affix searching - which we plan to release as soon as it’s ready during the 1.1 Cycle.

Merchant’s Guild Ranks

Rank 1: You can sell all items, and you can buy Normal, Magic and Rare items in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Unchanged)
Rank 2: You can buy Set items in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Unchanged)
Rank 3: You can buy Unique items with no Legendary Potential in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Unchanged)
Rank 4: You can buy Idols in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Unchanged)
Rank 5: You can buy Exalted Weapons and Offhands in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Unchanged)
Rank 6: You can buy Exalted Armor in the Bazaar or directly from other players - Boots, Gloves, Helm, Body Armor (Split from previous Rank 7)
Rank 7: You can buy Unique Weapons and Offhands with Legendary Potential in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Previously Rank 6)
Rank 8: You can buy all Exalted items in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Previously Rank 7)
Rank 9: You can buy all Unique items, including those with Legendary Potential, in the Bazaar or directly from other Players. (Previously Rank 8)
Rank 10: You can buy Legendary Weapons and Offhands in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Previously Rank 9)
Rank 11: You can buy Legendary Armor in the Bazaar or directly from other players. - Boots, Gloves, Helm, Body Armor (Split from previous Rank 10)
Rank 12: You can buy all Legendary items in the Bazaar or directly from other players. (Previously Rank 10)

Circle of Fortune

We heard your feedback on how Circle of Fortune felt as if it was lacking when farming Bosses and experimental items from Exiled Mages. To address this we have added two completely new Ranks that increase the amount of boss-specific loot and to increase the amount of experimental affix items Exiled Mages provide.

In addition to these, Rank 12 (previously Rank 10) which duplicated prophecies has received a rework. In 1.1 instead of duplicating the rewards, the prophecy now act as if you had 2 of them, meaning it can roll different Uniques, for example instead of getting two of the same rings from a single prophecy duplication, you’ll now get the ring prophecy twice which will in most cases end up granting 2 different rings.

Circle of Fortune Ranks

Rank 1: Enemies have 35% chance of dropping twice as many items (Unchanged)
Rank 2: 45% chance for Runes of Ascendance to be preserved when used on an item that requires at least Circle of Fortune Rank 1 (Unchanged)
Rank 3: Whenever an Idol Drops, there is a 25% chance for two more to drop at the same time (Unchanged)
Rank 4: When a Set item would drop, the whole set drops instead (Previously Rank 9)
Rank 5: 35% chance for double item rewards from Monolith Echoes (Unchanged)
Rank 6: Affixes are 50% more likely to be Exalted (Previously Rank 4)
Rank 7: Exiled Mages drop twice as many experimental items (New)
Rank 8: Uniques are twice as likely to have Legendary Potential (Previously Rank 6)
Rank 9: T7 Affixes are twice as common (Previously Rank 7)
Rank 10: Bosses have 150% increased drop rate for any specific rewards they have (New)
- ‘Specific Rewards’ refers to any items dropped by that Boss, for example Ravenous Void dropped by The Husk of Elder Gaspar
- ‘Bosses’ applies to all unique enemies that display a boss health bar.
Rank 11: Items that would drop as Rare have 25% chance of becoming Exalted (Previously Rank 8)
Rank 12: Prophecies grant twice as many items (Previously Rank 10 - Changed, formerly "Items from Prophecies are duplicated")
- No longer duplicates the actual granted reward, but instead considers as if you had the prophecy itself twice, meaning it can roll different Uniques, for example.

Gaze of Orobyss Changes

Corruption is an integral part of Last Epoch’s Monolith of Fate endgame system. This is a mechanic players spend a lot of time with, as it increases the amount of experience gained and the likelihood of finding rarer items, as well as unlocking the final two Blessing slots. This means becoming familiar with the Gaze of Orobyss mechanic as well, which has proven frustrating based on how it currently works. As such, we are introducing some changes to help address the most common pain points.

Previously your Gaze of Orobyss had diminishing returns, in 1.1 each Gaze of Orobyss will grant 12 Corruption. This takes away the confusion over how much extra Corruption you should expect to earn per Gaze, and you no longer feel like you can waste Gaze due to the removal of diminishing returns per additional Gaze.

Another thing to help manage Corruption, now only 4 Gazes will be consumed at one time. So instead of all Gazes being consumed at once, the rest will now carry over the next echo web. The amount of Gaze consumed is capped at 4 to avoid the possibility of adding too much Corruption and experiencing a sudden increase in difficulty after killing a Shade while increasing Corruption in your higher corruption timelines, which could lead to unfortunate player deaths. However, we do have a change to make that less painful too. Upon dying to a Shade of Orobyss, players will now only lose 1 Gaze of Orobyss instead of losing them all.

These changes also mean that Corruption can be increased faster, as consuming a full stack of Gaze (4) in 1.1 will provide 48 Corruption which required at least 10 Gaze in 1.0. No specific changes have been made to the current Corruption catch-up mechanic. So with these new changes, increasing Corruption on your lower Corruption Timelines is now faster as well.

We also know that gaining Corruption in a Party has been less than optimal, in that only the player who started the Echo would earn Gaze of Orobyss to help them increase Corruption later on. This has been changed so all players in the Party who have the required Stability to be granted a Blessing when the Timeline Boss is defeated, will also gain a stack of Gaze. These players can then increase Corruption much faster in their own Timelines.

Class Changes

Here’s where we’ll be highlighting a few of the many upcoming changes to various Skills and Passives. The team has taken onboard a lot of your feedback about how some skills feel ‘outdated’ and have amped up their arsenal, so to speak. While the full Patch Notes will cover every single change (and it’s a lot), today we’re focusing on a few frequently mentioned cases.

Channeling Skills

It’s long been a bugbear in the community that using a channeled skill stopped all Mana regeneration, especially in builds where a 0 cost channeled skill triggered another that still cost Mana, meaning players would need to ease off the gas and wait for their Mana pool to restore.

For 1.1, most channeled skills which prevented Mana regeneration while channeling have been changed. They no longer prevent base Mana regeneration, however the base Mana regeneration amount (8) has been added to their channel cost. Other modifiers to their Mana costs have been adjusted where necessary to also account for this change.

This change has been introduced so players that invest into Mana regeneration feel rewarded for doing so, without having a negative impact on players that have not.

Skill Changes

All classes are getting balance updates, so don’t worry if you don’t see your favorite skill below. The full breakdowns of those changes will be included in the Patch Note post due out in the coming days. Today we will be focusing on a few of the skills and passive changes which will be seeing more significant changes with Harbingers of Ruin.

Disintegrate

Disintegrate has historically been highly dependent on an unintended interaction between two Unique items: Ingvar’s Head, and Gambler’s Fallacy. This combination allowed you to greatly overcap critical strike chance, which offered a massive multiplier to Disintegrate. This wasn’t a particularly healthy interaction as the mechanic was easily overlooked considering the normal functions of the involved stats, and also meant that it was the only way to build disintegrate.

With this in mind, we have updated older nodes and added new nodes in for Disintegrate and its Skill Tree to give it the power it needs inherently, and stop relying on this interaction. So while combining Gambler’s Fallacy and Ingvar’s Head will no longer work in 1.1, Disintegrate should have many more build options available to it. The full list of changes will be included in the Patch Notes of course (over 25 change notes just for Disintegrate), though today we’ll have a look at some of the most impactful nodes to look forward to.

Base Skill

The Base damage on Disintegrate has been increased from 15 to 24, and it’s added damage effectiveness increased from a modest 300% to a generous 480%.

Lucomancer

Hyperfocal

Flame Vent

Shield Bash

Shield Bash as a skill is one which has been in the background for some time. We’ve even noticed when people talk about melee skills, Shield Bash often doesn’t even get a mention. Being a highly niche skill, and a support skill left it out of many builds. Because it provides a guaranteed stun, it requires a longer cooldown to prevent it from being overly abusable on bosses, however there was certainly a lot of space available to improve Shield Bash. In particular, one area of improvement for Shield Bash was as an offensive skill - which is receiving a lot of love for 1.1. Let’s take a quick look at a few of the big improvements coming to Shield Bash to help bring it into the conversation more often.

Base Skill

Shield Bash’s Base cooldown has been increased to 18 seconds, however stunning enemies will now quickly make Shield Bash available again by reducing the remaining cooldown by 20% when you stun an enemy. This counts stuns from any source, including other skills, not just stuns inflicted by Shield Bash itself, which should open up some fun build opportunities!

Flurry of Blows

Indomitable Force

Shieldstorm

Avalanche

Avalanche is a very well known skill, unfortunately for when it’s used by enemies rather than Shaman players. We’re aiming to change that in 1.1 with over 20 changes and adjustments to its Skill Tree. As with Disintegrate and Shield Bash, there’s a lot more changes you’ll find in the Patch Notes, though today we can take a look at a few of the big changes to look forward to.

Base Skill

Avalanche’s base functionality has been reworked: It is no longer a channeled spell by default. It now costs 50 mana and creates 1 larger boulder at the target location, followed by 10 smaller boulders around the target area over 2 seconds. It is now always targetable, and the boulders fall within a circle instead of an extended rectangle in front of the player. It has no cooldown.

Excavation

Alpine Guide

Stormcaller

Passives

Skills aren’t the only area receiving balance changes. We’re also visiting Passives for many masteries, with a few in particular getting more attention. While none of these qualify as “reworks”, today we want to give you a brief look at some of the many Passive changes coming for the Sorcerer, Forge Guard, and Shaman.

Sorcerer

Forge Guard

Shaman

Ward Balance

Since the introduction of Experimental items, and with them the ‘% Missing Life Gained as Ward’ affix on gloves, Ward has been a dominant force in the world of Eterra. In addition to this is the Runemaster’s ability to generate Ward, and recently, Warlock and Healing Hand’s ability to generate massive amounts of Ward. It’s little wonder how the topic of Health vs. Ward has become such a big talking point, and we haven’t been blind to the conversation.

While there’s absolutely specific changes to be introduced to reign in some of these methods of Ward generation, this isn’t the first time Ward has come up as a hot topic. Because of its nature of decaying, but otherwise being ‘infinitely’ stackable, it’s easy for Ward to quickly fall out of line. So while we’re making those individual changes to outlier methods of Ward generation, we’re also making a more significant change to Ward overall. That change, is in the Ward Decay Formula.

The biggest thing we want to clarify with this, is this formula change is not a full on nerf. While there is certainly the potential for outliers of high Ward generation being reigned in, there’s also natural, and intended methods of Ward generation which currently feel a bit too weak. As such, the change in the formula results in stronger retention of Ward when below 4,000 Ward, and to address outliers, is now a much faster decay when over 10,000 Ward. For clarity, we’re providing the exact formula’s below:

Old:

0.4 x current ward / (1 + 0.5 x ward retention)

New:

(0.2 x current ward + 0.00005 x (current ward^2)) / (1 + 0.5 x ward retention)

Trying to be a bit more readable (and for those of us that hate Maths), the change here is going from *40% of your ward per second* to *20% of your ward per second plus 0.005% of your ward squared per second*.

This means normally lower Ward generating builds, such as Ward per second, or hybrid Ward health builds will now be able to maintain their Ward a little better, but if an outlier crops up, the base formula will help limit its impact.

Outro

We look forward to seeing these changes make your journeys through Eterra feel even better and we thank you for all of your feedback and suggestions that help us continue to make the game our players want to see.

Thank you again for your continued support and can’t wait to stand shoulder to shoulder with you against the coming darkness on July 9th, when Last Epoch 1.1: Harbingers of Ruin launches!