Good Morning Friends! Right now I have to say I am thankful for Last Epoch. It is weird to me that this game that I had written off back in 2018, had morphed into almost exactly the game that I have always wanted. Granted I would still love to see more endgame options added in because effectively you have 3 wildly different dungeons, a horde-mode-like arena, and then monolith echos which are the equivalent of Path of Exile mapping. I would still love to see someone other than Diablo III implement the equivalent of bounties and an entirely alternate system for leveling other than doing the story. Last Epoch suffers from the same problem as Path of Exile where doing the acts over and over does tend to drag on a bit. I’ve been wanting to level up and try out a primalist and the only thing holding me back is needing to repeat all of the story content again. Even if they added an alternative step so that when you get to the first interaction with the Epoch, you had the alternative path shifting into effectively an endless version of the monolith echoes that dumped you out into the end of time.
Speaking of paths and timelines… I spent a lot of Tuesday night unlocking pathways that I had not opened up. There are still technically a few alternate paths between timelines that I have not unlocked but I at least have access to all of them directly now. Knowing what I know now… I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and could have taken a much shorter route to the final three. Essentially at a bare minimum, it seems like you have to clear seven timelines before being able to unlock the empowered monolith. The path I wound up taking would have put me through eight before I went on my side jaunt to unlock the rest of the timeline islands. The final three islands are a bit of a chore and I’ve actually taken a death in them so I am in no real rush to meet those bosses.
I honestly struggled a bit with the Emperor of Corpses in the level 85 timeline, in part because once again I was overthinking things. In the above screenshot, you see this giant hurricane attack with the area around the boss being the safe zone. Prior to that, the boss does a close AOE attack and I thought I would have to dance on the line between these two attacks. That meant that inevitably I would lose some minions because they would be slow getting out of the hurricane of death. What I finally realized is that I can stand in the small AOE without taking significant damage, so I could simply stay in close range at all times and just need to move away from the head of the dragon to avoid breath attacks. Again like the Rahyeh my interpretation of the fight was making everything much harder than it actually needed to be.
Last night I dinged 84 and have almost filled up enough Stability in The Last Ruin to start working on boss progress for that timeline. However, I think what I am going to do is fill up the bar past the third node, and then shift timelines and start working on another one to get it filled as well. The goal is to gain a few levels and be a bit closer to level 90 before I face any of the last three timeline bosses. I could probably yolo my way through the timelines and rush the final bosses, but I prefer to level and potentially gain a bit more gear before stepping into those fights. My tendency will always be to over level encounters because in truth I don’t really “crave” challenging fights in the same way some people do. I am fine with them if I have to deal with them, but I would rather “roflstomp” things when possible. I play ARPGs for the power fantasy achieved through leveling and gearing more than any sense of overcoming difficulty.
My gear is still a bit of a mess. Right now I have a lot of less-than-perfect items and still am wearing three slots that are yellow that I have not found a purple worth equipping yet. My resistances are still a mess with absolutely nothing in the poison and void category. I’ve heard that the real win here is to get resistance through blessings and that once you get access to empowered blessings these help significantly. I have a lot of minion health and less raw minion damage… because I’ve just happened into a few pieces with significant T6 minion health rolls on them. This makes my minions super tanky but maybe take a bit longer to shred bosses… but generally I am okay with that.
I realize that Last Epoch is still very much a pre-release game but I am anxious for them to implement some cosmetics other than pets, and the upcoming backpack. Like I am mostly fine with the way my character looks… but at some point would love to see something other than “Night Hag” has my graphical options. Maybe it is just the phenomenal necromancer graphics from Diablo IV coming into play here, but I would love to be able to equip a consistent look and stick with it all the way through leveling. I am always more than happy to spend money on making my character look cool while leveling rather than looking like an unmatched outlands era fury warrior. I am hoping that when 1.0 lands this is one of the systems that also open up because I am more than happy to give them more than my initial $30 to keep the game running and evolving.