Good Morning Folks! Since Path of Exile II is awaiting a patch, I figured I would spend some time doing something else. Sunday I started an Acolyte and turned her into a Necromancer going down the path of doing a fairly common minions build since that is what I played almost 300 hours of in Path of Exile II. It is wild just how comfortable Last Epoch is compared to Path of Exile. While the game is lacking at the endgame, and hopefully the big April patch will alleviate that a bit… the leveling experience is so freaking cozy. By my play session last night I was starting in on Monoliths and having a grand old time with my army of horrible children.
I played quite a bit in September when they did the Cycle Refresh and had gotten my Circle of Fortune faction up to rank 11. This made leveling a new character feel amazing, because I was constantly getting really interesting items. More than that the Nemesis system feels phenomenal at low levels because you are regularly getting pretty interesting unique items turned into legendaries with random stats attached to them. The only negative about the Nemesis systems… is that it makes all of the other content feel significantly worse. Rogue Mages for example need a rework because it feels like they only drop Clutch Plates for a 77 Honda Civic Hatchback… which is awesome if you need one of those but otherwise pretty forgettable.
Some of the items that I am seeing from drops are wild. Path of Exile II wanted to make loot on the ground matter and failed miserably at that, but honestly… that is precisely the state of Last Epoch right now. This is an item I picked up off the ground… that has 3 Tier 6 affixes… one of which sealed so that i could in theory roll off one of the other affixes trying to get something with better synergy. Granted I don’t plan on playing a character that needs any of those things, but it is still a wildly compelling item. Given enough time spinning the randomizer I will start seeing items that DO have the stats that I want on them. The fact that I can target specific monoliths for specific gear slots… and also throw Runes of Ascendance at random items use that trying to get the Uniques that I want. I feel like I have so many options to either farm perfect loot, or perfect less than perfect loot.
Right now I am mostly wearing a bunch of weavers will items, because they were handy and often have interesting results. I’m also running two Hollow Fingers which give me extra skeletons. I had one with two legendary potential and attempted to turn it into a ring with Minion Health and Minion Damage, but unfortunately hit flat health instead. Still a reasonable item to use but not necessarily an ideal item. That is one of the things that I dig about Last Epoch is that you can get to a pretty reasonable gear state easily, and then slowly over time attempt to improve upon it by making more Legendary items or lucking into some really tasty drops.
I am sure when the POE2 patch drops I will be back over there testing out the changes, but for the moment I am living my best life in Last Epoch. This game is so damned good, and really… once it has the amount of content that Path of Exile does… it is going to be the easy winner for my attention. I am definitely looking forward to April and the next Cycle where they are supposedly focusing on the endgame entirely. The monolith is a good core, but it just needs more surprise content to borrow a term from the POE2 patch announcement over the weekend. Monoliths feel great when you have a Nemesis, Rogue Mage, and a loot chest… and feel pretty awful when none of those spawn. The more of those little doses of joy that they can pack into the mapping experience, the better the game is going to be.
I’m really looking forward to a return to LE. Just been waiting on a big enough patch as the reason to actually turn that into action.