A new year is upon us. As we all anticipate the release of Season 4 in a short couple of months, we also have some exciting changes to announce for Eterra Monthly. We’ve been looking at ways to level up our communication and transparency with you, our Travelers. To do this, we’re incorporating additional sections to Eterra Monthly: Development Highlights and the Feedback Forge. While these segments won’t always appear, we’re committed to including them as often as possible so we can give you a fresh look at what’s coming next.
Development Highlights are focused on giving a glimpse at work going into future updates and, additionally, an opportunity to hear directly from the development team. There may be times where we provide you all with historical insights on development decisions, artistic journeys, and more to mix it up. Any unreleased content that we share in this section is subject to change.
Next is the Feedback Forge, where we highlight feedback you’ve shared that we are actively bringing into the game. This section is all about showcasing your voices and contributions as they help shape and improve the player experience in Last Epoch. As always, we are committed to listening to our players, and we appreciate all the feedback and suggestions shared with us.
Eterra Monthly is a place to discover new information, have your voices heard, and to recap the previous month so be sure to check in at the start of each month. With all that said, let’s take a look at our very first Development Highlights in this month’s edition of Eterra Monthly.
Development Highlight: Acolyte Updates
The following information is subject to change in accordance with balancing strategies, feedback, and functionality.
Today, we will be looking at some changes to the Acolyte, with details shared from our Senior Technical Game Designer, Justin.
Hello Acolytes, last season we aimed to bring some changes to some of your minions, but realized we weren’t quite ready to ship the Skeleton adjustments. In Season 4, they’ll land, bringing you some more fun options to play with.
We’ve tweaked Summon Skeleton to give you more freedom to reign over your foes.
Fire Arrow
Fire Arrow has been reworked and now has 26 base fire damage and 130% damage effectiveness. It no longer has a cooldown and instead replaces the regular bow attack for Skeleton Archers. It now also grants Skeleton Archers 20% less attack speed.
With this Node change, Ice Arrow now converts ignite chance from all sources to frostbite chance.
Ash and Frost
Following Ice Arrow, a new node, Ash and Frost will allow your Skeleton Archers to randomly use fire or Ice arrows and receive +30% ignite or frostbite chance, depending on the arrow used.
Dread Phalanx
Instead of 80%, Dread Phalanx will now grant 100% more damage and provide 50% health instead of 40%.
Individual Operator
For our Skeleton Rogue Enthusiasts, Individual Operator has been reworked. We recently shared an update to Individual Operator that focused on using a single Rogue, and received feedback from all of you that you would much rather see more support for armies, so we changed it. Individual Operator now grants your Skeleton Rogues 25% more damage per point for each Skeleton Warrior or Archer you control. While it still has a max of 4 points, it now grants your Skeleton Rogue 50% more damage per point, and 50% increased cooldown recovery speed per point, but you can only summon up to 1 Skeleton Rogue.
Splinter Nova
Marrow Shards has received some updates as well. Bone Splinters are now affected by the entire tree, so effects like Rip Marrow, Demise, and Bones of the Follower now apply to it, and you can change your Bone Splinters into a Splinter Nova that hits all enemies around you. We've also changed many of the tree's "more hit damage" modifiers into "more damage" to allow for ailment builds. We've also improved the consistency of Spirit Feast's mana recovery.
Feedback Forge
The Feedback Forge highlights how your insights help shape the future of Last Epoch. This update showcases fixes and improvements driven by community reports and feedback. We’ll also be highlighting the community members who helped contribute to these fixes.
FIXED: Permanent Bond always changes the ability to howl if you have any non-wolf companions summoned
- With thanks to: Bella_D_Vine, Ferdous, ClamHatFiesta, and many more.
INTERACTION CHANGE:
- Summon Wolf: The Permanent Bond node will no longer cause Summon Wolf to be replaced with Howl when there is at least one active Wolf and one active non-Wolf minion.
- Added a new node, which requires 1 point allocated in Permanent Bond Lone Wolf: While you have the additional Wolf from Permanent Bond summoned, Summon Wolf is replaced with Howl, but you cannot have more than one Wolf summoned
FIXED: In offline play, defeating campaign Lagon during the first phase causes the player to be stuck on the lower level, unable to prompt dialogue to finish the quest.
- With thanks to: Lilith_Xolaani, Kunou, ElaithX, and many more.
FIXED: Players describe their resolution settings resetting whenever they quit the game or go back to the login screen. This seems to mainly/only be occurring to players who play in Windowed Mode.
- With thanks to: Bilbo1997, milkcake, Blitzt2, Bankraeuber, and more.
FIXED: Two nodes in the Sacrifice Skill Tree are not working properly - From Blood & Crimson Horror. They are not increasing the damage of the Blood Horrors, although they should be.
- With thanks to: Drimo.
FIXED: Sometimes the wolves from Summon Wolf disappear randomly. There are scant reports of other companions doing the same thing, but the wolves seem to be the main problem.
Mike’s Teasers
In the month of January, Mike’s stream kicked off with a cryptic image of what appears to be a shattered obelisk.
The following week, Mike clued us in on two new skill nodes for the Rogue: Alloy Animation and Shadow Massacre.
One more Rogue skill was revealed, but not before we saw a ring that looks like it plans to stick around longer than you might like.
The final stream of the month revealed a glimpse into Runes of Corruption and how those can impact items in various ways. Will you take the risk to corrupt your best items?
Pre-corrupted
Corrupted Ruined and Corrupted with Corrupted Affixes
Corrupted with Legendary Affixes and Corrupted Downgraded to Unique
Build Spotlight
Who says you can’t win more than once in your life? No one, that’s who. This month’s Build spotlight goes to a past Spotlight winner with another incredible build!
BlueBeyond comes in this month with a Multi-Smite Void Knight (say it five times fast), and it’s earned some respect. If you want to get up close and personal and unleash all of your fury against your enemies in a “Death by 1000 cuts” style combat, then this is the build for you. This is also a great build if you enjoy the Merchant’s Guild, so collecting the right gear is a breeze.
BlueBeyond has figured out how to combine the spell damage of Smite with the indirect cast from Multistrike's Hallowed Arsenal node. This creates some truly killer single-target damage as well as a decent amount of AOE to keep the impatient enemies at bay.
To quote BlueBeyond, “This is a dual-wielding build, which traditionally has been too squishy to play, but with the modern-day standards of Void Knight, can easily clear 1000 Corruption. Smite your enemies up to 16 times a second, stack vitality, and be the hardest hitting truck to ever Isekai Julra.”
It’s also important to note that this build has versatility in mind. If Dual-wielding isn’t your thing, an alternative has already been figured out and can be found in the build guide. It also doesn’t require ANY uniques to get started! As if that wasn’t enough, this build can also take out Uber Aberroth.
As is tradition, we will leave the juicy details for you in the Build Guide, but we can at least share with you the list of Pros and Cons to help you decide if this is the build for you.
Pros
- Insane single-target damage
- Vitality Stacking
- Easily Farmable Uniques
- All Items have alternatives
- High Move Speed
- Use abnormal Uniques to easily buy on the market
Cons
- Melee
- No good movement skill
Now that you’ve heard what this thing can do, check out the guide and try it for yourself.
Got a build you think is awesome? Did you find a cool new way to combo skill nodes for a really unique playstyle? Create a Build Guide, and you could be the next Community Build Spotlight in Eterra Monthly!
Community Fun
Over the past month, my eager attempts to return home landed me in a place I didn’t think I would survive: an Osprix War camp. Among the tents and fires and scornful looks from the soldiers, I found they all shared one thing beyond the banners of the sun god. They all loved to eat! At camp, tents circled fires that blazed with heat enough to warm you as you passed between circles. But once the towering flames died down, the camp filled with the smell of food and spices in ways I had never experienced.
I was an outsider, but the Osprix taught me how to make a hearty meal with little more than a few coals and a handful of leftover ingredients. Just the scraps I carried with me and something to wrap them in. It was simple, but sometimes I miss it.
This month, I’m happy to share this moment with you all in a way you can share with your families in a far less hostile, military-free environment.
I would like to offer a few extra notes if you’ll allow.
- If the foil is too thin or tears easily, a second sheet won’t affect the cooking time too much, so it is encouraged.
- Lean meat is best to avoid ending up with a foil bag of grease by the end. You could even poke a small hole in the bottom to help prevent this. If you’re using tofu or poultry, you shouldn’t have this issue at all.
- Have little soldiers but not out camping? Follow all of the same steps and cook it up on a grill while they set up tents in the backyard.
What's Next?
Come join us as we'll be celebrating an awesome milestone this week. Dev Q&A Stream #200 with Mike!!!! To help celebrate, we've armed Mike with some fun giveaways [and maybe even a special guest!] There is a lot to talk about coming up, and we want to share it with you. Mark your calendar, turn on your notifications, and we will see you on Twitch for the 200th Q&A Dev Stream this Friday, Feb 6th at 3 pm CST.
This has been Eterra Monthly, a report on the happenings and changes in the world of Last Epoch. We hope you have enjoyed this month’s report and will see you all again soon.
