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Almost Righteous Fire

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Hey Folks! I’ve been down a rabbit trail for the last few days in Last Epoch where I started a brand new character. Initially, it started out as a “I lapped my friends, so I should start something new so I can play with them” which led me to start a Forge Guard character. Forge Guard is in the same Sentinel class that Void Knight is but in theory, its tree is all about minions and catching things on fire instead of purple damage. I thought it might be fun to play around with some of the minion options there as something a bit different from the Necromancers and Beastmasters that I have played before. However, while I do have a large lad that follows me around… I wound up going down a slightly different path. I should note this build is a sort of “yolo” from start to finish and I didn’t really set out with a clear plan in mind.

Yesterday I recorded a video because I was afraid this nonsense that I had created would not stay viable for long. It all started when I made the fateful decision to use a level one equippable unique called the Firestarter’s Torch. This essentially is a relatively mediocre item save for the percent chance to apply spreading flames. For anyone who has played Last Epoch, this is essentially ignite proliferation, and very rapidly I noticed that this could catch the entire screen on fire. So I leaned into this nonsense and before long I was wearing Calamity, 2 Sunwreaths, and a bunch of other random uniques and just dealing all the fire and ignite damage that I could. The above video shows some of the gameplay around level 29ish of me just setting the world on fire in a very Righteous Fire feeling manner.

The real “star player” of the build revolves around leaning upon Warpath once again to do spinning nonsense. I picked up the mandatory nodes to make the ability no longer cost mana, and then immediately dove into the path that causes Warpath to bleed… and then converts all bleeding damage to ignite chance and the base damage type of Warpath over to Fire instead of Physical. From there I made it so that every second I am casting Smite, and specced into the fire path of that ability as well so that I am constantly lighting everything on fire. Making it even more nonsensical I equipped Vortex Pennant that makes it so that while I am channeling Warpath I am throwing axes in random directions… and the axe hits themselves also ignite. For bonus nonsense, at some point, I am going to try and get some of the Idols that make it so that thrown axes cause Smite on hit.

The end result is this rolling inferno that ignites everything I touch, as well as a lot of things just off-screen through either the interaction with spreading flames, or when one of my axes makes contact with something and ignites it and everything it passes through. I’ve been building more and more into fire penetration which is making everything go so much faster. Like even one point of fire penetration chance was a noticeable difference and the next few points in Warpath are going to go for another fire penetration node as I am wielding a sceptre.

At the moment I am still running the same no-LP Firestarter’s Torch, but now that I am starting Monoliths I am going to be trying to farm one with at least Legendary Potential on it. I dropped one Sunwreath for a well-rolled exalted ring with some survival on it in addition to fire damage over time and fire damage. I am trying to find some All Resist on Channeling relics to try and create a Legendary out of Vortex Pennant because I am going to really need that affix to fix some of my resistance problems. Right now honestly the biggest thing that I need are some more levels. I have a pair of Fiery Dragon Shoes and a Rahyeh’s Light Shield that I plan on throwing on once I can equip them. I’ve also got a Solarum plate Exalted that I am going to throw on for some survival, +2 Warpath, and the implicit fire damage mod.

I can’t say this is the best bosser in the world, but I certainly ripped through Lagon without any issues. At this point I am in the Black Sun Monolith and am still Deathless, so that is at least something. My clear speed still feels pretty solid given that I am never running out of resources and can just keep rolling forward over top of things. I am kinda in a weird place ability-wise because right now… the only things that truly matter are Warpath and Smite. For the moment I am running Ring of Shields, because I thought it might be a nice damage booster with some survival baked in. The big problem there is that it just does not last long enough, and costs way the hell too much mana to cast. Since I am not regenerating mana at all while channeling… and I am always channeling… nothing has great synergy with Warpath. The proc at the end of the Forge Guard tree is only a 3% chance on hit and that just never seems to be up. The node is still worth it because it gives my minion a ton of health though but I plan on speccing out of Ring of Shields entirely and picking up Sigils of Hope at some point.

That leads me to Manifest Armor, the only minion available to a Forge Guard that I am actually using. Right now he is essentially a giant walking flamethrower. I am tanking for him and that is mostly working out fairly well. I’ve put points into inheriting stats from my Helm, Body Armor, and Shield and everything else has gone into the fire line making him ignite everything. He does a non-zero amount of damage because when I forget to summon him it is a noticeable difference. However, I am mostly playing a Warpath build that happens to have a DPS pet, and not necessarily playing a true Minions build. His survival is good enough to keep him up through almost everything, and it doesn’t cost a ton to summon him in the middle of combat if he happens to fall down. It honestly reminds me of the way that Beastmaster felt in Rift, where you mostly just had a pet following you as added damage and not necessarily a tanking scenario.

All told though I am really freaking happy with the current state of the build and am interested to see how it evolves as I get through the normal monoliths and move into empowered. At the moment with a mix of health, armor, block, leech, and middling resistances I seem to have really solid survival. That all may change once the damage and health pools increase significantly. I think I am going to take it pretty slow though on getting through monoliths. I say that… and then this is a character that I created late Sunday night and is now in Monoliths as of Tuesday evening. I may or may not know what “take it slow” means.

Nearing Ninety

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Good Morning Folks! This weekend was a weekend where I pretty much played nothing but Last Epoch. Given how much I focus in on a single game and then just beat the crap out of it… this should shock no one. What might shock some players however is that I was able to play Last Epoch without a ton of issues in spite of all of the server issues. Unfortunately, this is a side effect of me being in the “endgame” and essentially once you are in Monoliths the game is perfectly fine. The problem that seems to plague players is zoning in and out of shared social hub towns, and the beginning of the game sees you bouncing back and forth from quest zones to the town hub three or four times in a row. This means that without a lot of patience, a lot of players are just hitting a brick wall.

Last Epoch has had over 1000% growth in player numbers since the beginning of this launch. Ultimately the day one numbers blew out of the water any preplanning that had been done for the game, and the Game Director said that his pre-launch comments have aged like milk. Last Epoch has bypassed the highest peak concurrency numbers for Path of Exile on Steam which took place during the Crucible league. I am not sure how this compares to lifetime numbers for Path of Exile as there is no real way to quantify players who use the standalone client. I know they have said most of their player growth was on Steam and that the console player base only represents about 10% of the total. So Last Epoch probably does not have more concurrent users than the entirety of Path of Exile, but it is still impressive to see it pass the Steam numbers.

Another impressive stat is that currently, Last Epoch is number three on the global top sellers list on Steam. Essentially you can count this as the second highest-selling game because number two is Counter Strike 2 a free game, and also given that CS has massive ban waves… it is likely a fair number of those are new account sign-ups involved in the RMT trade. Coincidentally Helldivers 2… the number one game is also having massive issues keeping up with the player growth and keeping their servers online. Both games are in similar situations, from Indie studios that have never had this level of growth. In the case of Last Epoch, its previous peak was around 40k players, and even back then it struggled… and I assume that they planned for maybe seeing 100k players… not over 250k. I am not sure if we have seek the true peak yet, but things are at least getting better. Each day has been a bit more easy to get into game and into monoliths, and last night things were comfortable enough that I actually rolled my first alt.

On Friday I finished up the campaign and started in on Monoliths and by about mid-day on Saturday I had reached Empowered Monoliths. From that point forward I have been working on farming some specific gear pieces. Originally I needed a chestpiece from the boss at the end of the Stolen Lance timeline, but I’ve kept doing it because I have my corruption up there. One of the drops that I need from Orobyss only shows up once you have at least 120 Corruption Level. In theory I should shift over to do another timeline that actually drops gear slots that I care about, but I have not wanted to put in the work to get the corruption level to the sweet spot again. I had allowed my corruption to get up to around 150… which is way too high for the current state of my build and had to lower it a bit.

As far as “gear for my build” goes I have picked up four pieces. Darkstride boots I got from my friend Ace and it allowed us to test out the trade resonance system. Shortly after that, I picked up a Siphon of Anguish which is a common drop from any corruption-level version of Orobyss, and have since upgraded that to an LP2 version. I’m just hunting for a good ring to try and smash onto it before converting it into a legendary. Apathy’s Maw dropped pretty quickly once I got into Empowered Monoliths but I am obviously hunting for a version of it with legendary potential so I can hopefully add some crit to it. The last item that I picked up is the Wings of Argentus which drops from God Hunter Argentus in the empowered version of The Stolen Lance timeline. I’ve done the fight six times I believe and it is one of the most technical fights I have experienced in the game so far, but unfortunately, I’ve not seen any more chestpieces let alone any with legendary potential. The last chase unique would be Shattered Chains which can drop from Orobyss in any timeline that is at a minimum of 120 Corruption.

As far as the rest of my gear… I’ve mostly been looking for survival stats… resists, health, armor and then anything that can increase either void damage or void melee damage. My worst pair of gear is my gloves, but I have yet to find anything that I can reasonably slot in without giving up my health. I am already teetering on the edge of 2000 hitpoints and I don’t want to drop much lower. The second “worst” item that I am using is my relic… which has two stats on it that are completely useless… but also gives me the needed 43% to All Resistances while Channeling which allows me to pretty much hit the resistance cap on everything. My second ring is something that I picked up while leveling and just have not found anything worth replacing it but I did pick up a LP1 Liath’s Signet if I can find anything to smash into it to gain a bit of health. That would allow me to back off on some of the resistances that I have in my idols since it gives me 75% to all elemental resistances while channeling, and due to Warpath, I am always channeling.

Since Last Epoch lacks any sort of API system that allows for a way to view your build and gear offline… I figured I would take a screenshot and then highlight the tooltip for my main damage-dealing ability. I feel pretty squishy now that I am raising my corruption levels. When I was up around 150, it felt like I was teetering on the brink of oblivion pretty much all of the time. Now that I have dialed things back to around 120, it seems more reasonable. I think once I get better gear though I should be able to push up to 200 without much issue. The big problem that I have is when I have a bunch of rares stacked on top of each other, and it becomes very hard to see the visualizations for all of their big attacks. If any two attacks are stacked on top of each other… I am dead and my leech just cannot keep up with it. At 150… it was enough for a Rogue Mage to one-shot me at times if their mechanics landed just right.

All of this… is why yesterday I decided that I needed to “alt” a bit. I did find out something really cool. Once you have chosen a faction on your first character, there is an NPC for each faction in the very first town so you can choose your faction for your alts easily. I had wondered how all of the gear I have been collecting that is tied to Circle of Fortune would work out, because most of it is great for alts. Once I picked my faction I could equip all of it just fine and was up and running quickly. For the moment I am going for a bleed wolves build on my Primalist, but might shift that up later as I get different gear. I pretty much had all of the uniques needed for bleed wolves sitting in my bank, so that was a no-brainer.

I am still having a freaking blast and the prophecy system is so damned good. For example, this is a screenshot of me killing a mob that triggered two different prophecies… one to drop 5 pairs of unique boots and another to drop a unique bow. I love that you can stack them up like this and then when they trigger get a massive loot fiesta. All told I am very happy with the current state of Last Epoch and once the servers calm down and they manage to work out the kinks around “matchmaking” aka zoning in or out of social hub towns… I think the game is going to be in a phenomenal state. I played with my friend Ace quite a bit this weekend and it was so much fun. Very chill hanging out with friends and gameplay time, and I am there for it. For reference, it took roughly an hour to get a resonance, and I am hoping in the coming days/weeks to get some game time in with all of my circle of friends playing this game so I can build up resonances with them as well.

Are you playing Last Epoch? Have you been able to fight the servers and get some leveling in? What are your thoughts? Drop me a line below.

AggroChat #468 – Accessible Design Is Important

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Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! We are back after taking a break last week due to the limited number of folks available.  This week we start off with a topic that has bounced around a bit on our docket.  Namely, we marvel at just how balanced City of Heroes/City of Villians is and what a pinnacle of system design it really is.  Bel spent a bit of time playing Nightingale now that is available in early access, and talks about the mess of a game that it is.  Finally, we dive into our primary topic this week and talk about the Last Epoch 1.0 launch and how phenomenal the game feels right now despite all of the server-side woes.

Topics Discussed

  • City of Heroes/City of Villains
    • How is the design so balanced?
  • Nightingale
    • Not a Bad Game, but Not a Great One Either
  • Last Epoch
    • The 1.0 Launch Woes
    • The Massive Graphical Overhaul
    • Why we love the game
    • Accessible Design Matters

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Circle of Fortune

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Good Morning Friends! I am nearing the end of the campaign. Last night before I finished up for the evening I got to the beginning of Chapter 9 and I believe level 55. This morning before sitting down to write I made it into Majelka in the Divine Era and apparently, you don’t have to finish the campaign to join a faction. Once you zone into town one of the quest givers will offer you access to either the Bazaar or the Observatory aka the headquarters for each faction. I joined the Circle of Fortune because in truth my preferred method of play is “Guild SSF” where you are mostly SSF but have a group of friends that you trade among. Trading feels like a necessary part of playing Path of Exile, and I am hoping that is not really the case in Last Epoch.

So far faction gains seem pretty quick. I did a single quest after joining the faction and am already sitting at rank 2. Upon joining the faction you immediately get a 35% additional chance at loot drops which seems pretty solid, and in theory, should make up for the general nerfs in loot drops that took place between 0.9.2 and 1.0. I am really happy that I managed to join so easily because as I started grinding out monoliths I really wanted it to count towards faction progress. I did have around 400 Favor but I spent some of it on my very first prophecy.

Once you enter the observatory, there are four telescopes that you can use to purchase prophecies. Each gives you access to a type of loot… Armor, Jewelry, Weapons, or Idols. Each prophecy has a favor cost associated with it, and has some specific parameters that will trigger the drop. The one I purchased was for a pair of rare crusader gloves, that will drop whenever I kill a boss. Since I have not finished the campaign I am hoping that this will trigger when I fight the final boss of the game if not sooner on an individual zone mini-boss. The one I have highlighted is for clearing Soulfire Bastion and will reward an exalted ring.

The prophecy seems to narrow down the type of loot that can drop, and then you can purchase lenses from another vendor that socket into the telescope further limiting the specificity of the drop. For example, the one I have highlighted gives you a 20% chance of a prophecy rewarding a one-handed axe. So in theory, if you have a prophecy that rewards a unique weapon, you might be able to skew the results to potentially drop one from the pool of available axes or hammers etc. I’ve not seen evidence yet of a prophecy specifically indicating that a named unique item will drop, but it at least might allow you to put your thumb on the scale to skew it in that direction. When combined with the existing methods of targeting specific slots via the monoliths… it might be enough to allow one to target farm specific gear.

When you start a character, you have a tag on your character sheet indicating that you are “Deathless” and I officially lost mine last night. I was playing from the couch with a laptop and at some point during Chapter 8, Josie decided to crawl out onto my chest and block my ability to see the screen. She is my baby girl and I did not want to disturb her because if she wanted attention… she was going to get attention. However, before she left I apparently managed to get killed by something that was near where I was idling. Kind of a bummer but I had to die at some point, and at least I can’t be blamed for this one. My cats have been the cause of many deaths, and I can’t get too worked up about it.

I continue to be overwhelmed by just how many facelifts the game got. For example, this abattoir in the Imperial undead area used to just be this hallway with grinders on either side. Now there is this whole raised catwalk and such with mood lighting, and it looks so much better. The sewers similarly in the same region got a massive rework and I will be playing along and just be struck with how good the game looks now. Maybe this doesn’t mean anything to someone who has not been playing this game for a few years but so much work went into the 1.0 release and I can see it clearly.

There are still plenty of problems though with servers and connections. Yesterday the game hit a new peak for concurrent players, and I imagine over the weekend this number is going to raise considerably higher. All in all though I knew what I was getting in for when they announced that they had passed a million copies sold. I am still able to play, the zone times just take for freaking ever. I am hoping they manage to scale things up and iron out the bugs and get everything nice and stable within a week. Right now the core problem seems to be surrounding the multiplayer nature of towns… because the only real issues that I have are either zoning into a town or zoning out of a town. When I am bouncing between single player quest instances, everything seems pretty solid.

The team at EHG is still doing a phenomenal job of communicating with the players and really, that is all I can ask of them. This is their first major launch and most of them did not come from the games industry at all. I think in the grand scheme of things they are doing pretty good for their first time dealing with the massive onslaught of players trying to play their game at the same time.