Monolith

Visual Clarity Overrated

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Good Morning Folks. On Thursday the Last Epoch Season 3 started and since then I have largely been focused on leveling. I finished Act 10 at some point on Saturday morning, and pushed into Empowered Monoliths last night around 7pm. I have a pretty solid build at the moment, but it is one that I just winged my way through rather that following a guide. In theory at some point I should probably optimize things, but I really how skill respecs work in this game. You can respec your character passives without much issue just by spending a bit of gold at a vendor to remove points and then immediately you can put them back. For skills, you remove the point… and then have to deal with not having that point until you have earned enough experience to level it back up again. I really hate this process and as a result I am avoiding it until I absolutely cannot progress any further in the current state of my build.

There are basically three things that have caused me to die in this game. The first is getting a loot lizard shrine and then freaking out about trying to chase them down and ignoring the packs of monsters between me and the lizard and just getting overwhelmed. The second is the fact that Gracie has decided that she needs to crawl up into my arms at a moment’s notice and the game does not have the pause functionality that I am so used to now from Path of Exile. The last death type is due to the fact that I have around twenty minions on screen at any given time… and I simply lose my damned cursor and given that Last Epoch does not lock the cursor to the screen area… it could be over on the second monitor. When I need to deftly blink away from some incoming attack I need to be pointing the cursor in the right direction and my old man eyes cannot see the stupid thing.

In Path of Exile I can equip a more visually distinct cursor and same goes for running a cursor pack through BlishHUD in Guild Wars 2. Unfortunately for some reason the way in which Last Epoch was built has caused them to be unable to modify the cursor at runtime, in spite of them exploring this at length. So apparently the accepted solution by the community is to run a tool called YoloMouse that you can buy from Steam for roughly $4. Aaron Action RPG has a video about setting it up for Last Epoch if you are curious. Now instead of a very hard to find cursor that blends in with everything… I have a giant 50px green arrow that clashes spectacularly with the screen and I can locate in seconds. Sometimes you just have to make adjustments… especially as your eyesight gets worse. Prime old man gaming woes.

I’ve been leveling as Necromancer with effectively 9 Archers, 5 Mages, 2 Wraiths, 1 Golem, 1 TRex, 1 Crab, 1 Random Incorrectly Named Mob, and then summon a Rift Beast when certain monsters hit 40% health. The only challenge with the build is that sometimes my army of minions gets distracted and I have to kill forcing them to stay on target. There is a bit of lag between when I command them to attack and when they actually do… but once they are on target things melt pretty quickly. I am running up to 6 Volatile Zombies at a time, with leap, and they essentially cause the equivalent of culling strike when they hit something at 15% life or lower. I do wonder if I would have better dps if I swapped my Golem for an Abomination per the trendy build… because it would have a single minion doing the majority of my damage and potentially allow me to rip through things faster.

I am running a truly aggressive number of uniques with this build… more so than I am probably comfortable with. That means I need to keep finding better copies or copies with legendary potential so I can get some of the stats that I would be missing if I were using an exalted item in that slot. This is not too terribly different from the snapshot from Friday with the addition of getting a lucky Nemesis drop of the Pale Ox chest, a slightly better Phantom Grip, a slightly better Evolution’s End, and then picking up the Primal item I am running the Tyrant’s Skull which gives me the TRex minion. Right now I am trying to chase a high LP version of Reach of the Grave but it seems like 3 and 4 LP versions are super rare. If only Cleaver Solution were worded differently… and converted Strength as additive Intelligence… I would probably be running that, but alas it is your Intelligence equals your current Strength.

I’ve unlocked all of the slots on my weaver’s tree and two are devoted to Reach trying to farm a good one to convert into a legendary. I have a Tolmats in one of the remaining slots and a Phantom Grip in the other so I can keep getting those pretty regularly. As far as my maps go I have the Nemesis Tower map in both slots because those are always useful to find on the monolith. Now I am starting to focus points on things that I actually want to unlock and the first two went into the node that makes Dungeon specific monsters appear in the monolith so that you can get those rewards without ever having to run those dungeons. Next I will probably focus on increasing the frequency of Rift Beasts in my maps so that I can hopefully farm up better copies of Tyrant’s Skull. Lastly I will probably throw points into the rest of the Loot Lizard nodes because while they cause me to play in imprudent ways… they are still a heck of a lot of fun and big loot bonanzas.

I’ve pushed The Woven faction up to level 5 and unlocked a few more maps to buy which will give me points to spend. Over on Circle of Fortunate I have it at 8 which gives items a higher chance to get legendary potential, and also higher chance of getting more of it. The biggest thing I need to watch is when I get a bunch of currency in either faction because I am notoriously bad at actually spending it down. These screenshots were taken this morning after I purposefully bought a bunch of prophecies and maps, but usually I am carrying at least 10k in each currency because I just forget about spending them. What I really want is a hideout that allows me to have a merchant from each faction in it, so that I don’t have to keep going over to an otherwise useless zone all of the time. Legitimately something akin to the Path of Exile hideout is now the thing that I think I want the most in this game.

As far as the campaign and new content goes… Act 10 was really solid. It felt a bit on the longer side, but I am not sure if that is just because I have the rest of the campaign memorized and optimized at this point. I was super happy to see the world turtle showing up in this content and lending us a hand. Originally we first saw this character in one of the weaver mas and since they already had the model it seems like a good place to add it in as they help us get across a broken bridge. There is some side content that is entirely missable but also pretty hilarious, so I suggest you duck into the areas even if the game is not pointing you into that direction. Ace told me about it which caused me to back track and figure out how to find it. In total it probably adds another hour onto the content and lets you start the Monolith at a much higher level. This also makes that first Monolith way more dicey if you are doing content skips however.

All told it is a good time… but I do admit I am feeling a bit of wanderlust and am contemplating rolling a Primalist to try out the earthquake bear thing. There is also part of me that wants to see just how badly they nerfed Judgement, and if it is still as viable for bossing and deep corruption as it was last league. I need to group up with Ace and do some nonsense because I know that will be a heck of a lot of fun, and will make everything feel more engaging. I am feeling sort of rudderless at the moment. I am having fun, but also not sure how much effort I want to put into grinding things out like I did last league. I am sure I will probably at least attempt Aberroth once, but I don’t enjoy the Harbinger chase nearly as much as I do other parts of the game. I don’t really like bossing in ARPGs… and that holds just as true for Last Epoch as it does for Path of Exile. I would be perfectly happy never pushing any higher than 100 Corruption were it not for the fact that the game sort of forces you to do so.

I am not sure what is up but I am not really feeling this league and this character as much as I did last go round. Necromancer is a way more passive gameplay style and I might try pivoting to something else and see if that brings back the magic. I will think about it today and see where it leads me. Are you playing this season? What character are you playing? Drop me a line below and let me know how you are enjoying it.

Corruption is Cumbersome

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Good Morning Folks. I’ve been playing Last Epoch almost exclusively at this point and I have not only progressed into the Empowered Monoliths but reached a point with my build where I am beginning to thrive there. Right now Last Epoch has legitimately some of the best systems design in isometric loot chase action role-playing games. Some of the new crafting options for example are exceptionally fun because they lean into this pattern of “do a thing” and then “get a crafting bench”. Temporal Sanctum as a concept was really neat, but the problem with it has been the generally shitty state of dungeons as a whole. These new systems however feel like they understand the failings of dungeons and are effectively making better versions of them.

Since I am doing fairly well in Monoliths I have begun actually caring about trying to progress the Forgotten Knights faction. This is essentially a ladder to progress your way through the endgame and involves stacking corruption and then fighting harbinger encounters at these new corruption levels. Mechanically the Faction concept is pretty cool and I have enjoyed the way they have implemented a brand new one with the Weavers. However for a game with such amazing systems design work… it is all the more jarring when you encounter a legacy fragment that is not so well thought out. Basically the entire process of stacking corruption sucks, and while they have attempted to band-aid this… I feel like the entire design needs to be rethought in a major way.

So essentially each timeline has its own corruption level which determines how much additional difficulty that timeline has. Like I said they have added band-aids in the form of a catch up mechanic to bring one timeline up to the same level as your highest progressed timeline, as well as a specific type of woven echo that lets you transfer corruption level from one character to another. However the general concept of corruption just feels bad at least compared to the other systems. Ultimately you want to build up timeline stability which allows you to fight the boss of the timeline… which adds a Gaze of Orobyss stack… which then allows you to gain more corruption when you kill the Shade of Orobyss and reset the timeline progress. This whole song and dance of limping your way through corruption levels just feels poorly thought out.

After you have reset your timeline the first time, a new node shows up called the Sanctuary of Eterra which lets you fight a little boss fight to reduce your corruption and dial back the difficulty of your timeline. This entire process was aggressively fine earlier in the life of this game, but now that we have seen the type of systems that Eleventh Hour Games is capable of producing… the entire structure of corruption just feels really bad. Clearly the team has learned a lot of lessons in system design in the years that have past since the idea of timelines and corruption was first “ideated”. I just think that they can do much better, because the entire thing feels deeply cumbersome and unwieldy.

Ultimately what I would like to see is something akin to the way that Greater Rifts are handled in Diablo III and the Pit is handled in Diablo IV. Essentially once you have reached a specific corruption level you can then set the level of your timeline up to that corruption level via a drop down or slider… and make this value be set at an account level. This makes it beneficial for a player to push as far as they can possibly go… and then easily dial things back a bit to a very comfortable and clear farming level. I cannot tell you how much it makes my eye twitch that I need to get to 175 on my timeline corruption to do the next Harbinger but it is very likely that I will overshoot that number at be running it at 178 or something like that. Having a way to clearly set the difficulty of each timeline would go so far to making the whole corruption concept feel a bit better.

I also feel like the whole concept of timeline stability is not the most amazing system in the world, but I see it as a sort of necessary evil. It serves the role of keeping someone from simply farming the same boss over and over and is an alternative to the Path of Exile design of collecting key fragments. I would rather grind Monolith Echoes and fill up an arbitrary bar than attempt to farm 10 Maven Fragments to get a key. I feel like both Corruption and Stability were designed hand in hand, but also feel like Stability can function entirely on its own without the existence of the current state of Corruption. I think EHG understands that the corruption system is problematic, otherwise they would not keep trying to apply quality of life band-aids to it. Gaze of Orobyss itself was a band-aid to allow folks to raise it faster and the account corruption transfer woven echo is brand new attempting to stabilize a different problem. Mostly I think it is time to take the sledgehammer to the system and just make it better instead of spackling over the holes.

Ending on a more positive note however… I cannot fully explain the level of joy it brings me to run around with my Travelers Backpack in Last Epoch. This is an item that was given to early players of Last Epoch in honor of them selling 500k units. You can see a higher detailed version over on the Last Epoch Forums, but it is full of so many references. It has the original kickstarter era Last Epoch logo, the rolled up thing at the top I believe is based on a desk sized mouse pad that they sent out to early backers, and there is even a tiny Mike head transposed on top of what I think is a Bee model. The map that is rolled up on the side of the backpack looks similar to the old kickstarter-era world map. Mostly it is just a really fun tchotchke showing that you have been around for awhile. I kinda hope they do more things like this in the future as they continue to transition between phases of the game.

My Own Worst Enemy

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Good Morning Folks. I failed entirely to write a blog post yesterday because I guess other things were going on. I am still playing Last Epoch and still having quite a blast… but there was a brief period of time where I was having less of one. The problem with yolo-ing your way through an ARPG is that occasionally you run into problems and you have to pivot. One of the best parts about Last Epoch is just how easy that pivot ends up being. Essentially I was steamrolling over the top of everything with great impunity… then got to empowered monoliths and started taking oneshots left and right. The difficulty curve of Last Epoch can be exceptionally steep at times and essentially I had to re-evaluate my build and figure out how to fix the problems.

So the first problem that I knew was when I hit Empowered Monoliths I had just shy of 2000 life… which was simply not enough because these mobs were taking ALL of my life at once. Another problem is that I was not crit immune, and when one of these things would hit me… it was hitting me for like 4000 health at once… and there would never be a way for me to fix that. Essentially there are two paths to remove critical strikes… one is to stack Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes to 100% and the other is to stack Critical Strike Avoidance to 100%. I went the first route… but one of the items that I have also happens to have some of the second stat. I also tried to grab as much health as I could while still maintaining 75% in all resistances… which means I am using a belt with a champion stat that I do not care about just to get hybrid health and cold resistance.

The other problem that I was dealing with was that I was just straight up getting swarmed constantly, and when I had multiple champions and weavers mobs on me at once… all doing big AOE attacks that I needed to avoid… the visual clarity went out the window. So I started trying to evaluate what was happening with my character to determine why I was having this problem. Ultimately I went all in on Divine Bolts which meant that every time I encountered a new mob I was firing off like five fireballs that went in random directions… that could often pull things off screen… causing smite to occasionally proc and do more AOE damage… leading to the end result of everything in the damned zone seeking me out to murder me. Its really great if you can just tank all the damage in the universe because your build is pulling for you… its less cool when you are a bit on the squishy side. So I dropped 3 points in one trait and 4 points in the other trait… and redistributed those points in other areas that gave me pure survival.

My updated tree looks a little bit like this. Essentially I poured more points into Holy Icon and Reverence of Duality and the end result is that I am now level 92 and have a little over 2800 health with full crit immunity which is a marked improvement. You can check out my build profile here if you are curious about more fine details than that. All told, the game once again became a pretty chill grinding experience and as of last night I started actually trying to increase corruption so that I could take out more Harbingers and progress that faction tree. I’ve never really felt much of a need or desire to push corruption before now, so we will see how this goes. I am just not a very bossing focused person in these games, and instead prefer to just keep grinding maps indefinitely.

As far as my Weavers Tree goes aka the Atlas Passive Tree for POE vets, I have gone all in on Loot Lizards. Essentially they really are the thing that makes mapping feel so damned good in this game, because they are tiny explosions of loot… and now that I have all of my points allocated into making more of them spawn it all feels so much better. I need to sort out where I am going to spend my points next however, because as my corruption levels increase I will gain access to a few more maps that require specific corruption levels to run. I think at this point I have unlocked everything that I currently have access to at least until I push to rank 8 in the Weavers Faction.

Another significant change that I made is to swap out Lunge for Healing Hands converted into a movement skill. Lunge is my favorite of the Sentinel movement abilities… it is fast and zooms to a specific target which is ultimately the behavior that I usually want in this game. However it doesn’t really have a ton of utility. Whereas Healing Hands is a pretty potent healing/regeneration ability that moves to a target location instead of a target mob… allowing you to use it as a way of speeding up moving through the gaps in mob density and also just firing it off as a point blank attack if you are stacked on top of a boss or to get out of the range of an attack quickly. Largely I did all of this to gain the extra healing from it…. and at first I thought I would be proccing it constantly, but Warpath only counts as hitting for the purpose of this ability when you first start channeling meaning that I either needed to keep pulsing the attack or just give up on the auto procs. As a result I just removed a few points and will buff the total regeneration amount once I have finished leveling back up the ability.

I will admit however that there is part of me that really wants to try out the shenanigans that Pohx is doing. Essentially Judgment can be turned into a Righteous Fire like aura ability, and you gain damage for it by stacking Healing Effectiveness… which means you are healing yourself for stupid amounts of health. Combine this with block and heal on block, you end up with a near indestructible character that can push high corruption. Now that I have started stabilizing my gear… I might start adding in some of the items for this build to my loot filter so I can farm them up while grinding monoliths to potentially run up a second Paladin entirely for the purpose of creating this build. I could of course respec my Warpath character, but I think I would rather preserve the current state of it and play up something else for the purpose of this build instead.

Mostly this morning I wanted to talk through the process of how I am fixing my build, to largely go through some of the logic behind my madness. I am hoping to push more corruption tonight and do another harbinger before moving on to a new timeline to do it all over again.

Third Time More Burny

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Friends… sometimes I get something stuck in my head that I cannot seem to forcibly dislodge. I’ve also been sick the last few days so apologies for the lack of any semblance of a post yesterday. Anyways… a while back I wrote a post talking about my attempt at creating something that feels like Righteous Fire in Last Epoch and it was great… up until the point that it was not. The build sort of just fell apart when I entered the level 100 Empowered Monoliths because I was not dealing enough damage and did not have enough survival… so basically could not keep moving forward with it. I attempted to resurrect the build and got it to a point where it felt “aggressively fine” but also not exactly what I was going for in the first place.

I had this entirely different plan and created a Paladin that I was going to do some Healing Hands nonsense with… but before long found myself leveling again with a Firestarter’s Torch and Warpath. Which led me down the path of trying to figure out how Paladin was better suited to the burnination of my dreams. It turns out yes… yes it is. However, I held off on talking about the build until I reached empowered monoliths because I did not want to prematurely share my nonsense before I knew if the wheels were going to stay on the bus this time. Today despite my generally lousy “sickboy” status… I wanted to share what I had been up to. Apologies for the thrashed state of my voice in the above video where I talk about the build and show off some empowered monolith gameplay.

So the idea is not at all dissimilar from the previous build… where I went all in on making Warpath do the fire damage things. I’m trying to do a few new things, namely since I am throwing in Judgment occasionally for more damage which causes me to stop spinning… I’ve taken Giant Splitter which does a bit AOE attack each time I stop channeling. I will likely shift around these points a bit before I land on the final configuration of the build. However, the concept is straight forward… convert all bleed to ignite and convert Warpath to fire damage so that I can scale it and the ignite damage at the same time. Also, this is what makes the build feel thematically like Righteous Fire so it is a hill I am willing to die on.

The big thing that is making the build function a little better… and is the reason why I care about it being Paladin is Holy Aura. This is the unique ability for the Paladin mastery and is just sort of a build-your-own-buff aura system. I’ve found nowhere in the game that properly shows all of the buffs that the aura is granting me so I pasted the above list from the build planner. Largely I am throwing points in fire damage, attack speed, and an ability that will proc a fire explosion whenever I have hit something 6 times in a row. I am not entirely certain if that last bit is worth it because it currently costs me 7 points to get there… and I am wondering if I would not be better off just taking flat damage scaling instead. This also serves as a burn button because when I activate the ability it increases how much of these buffs it is providing.

The thing I dig about the Last Epoch Tools Build Planner is that it collates all of the stats and gives you nice numerical rollups that don’t really exist in the game. Based on the stats in the planner I just linked it shows that I am dealing 832% increased fire damage and have 204% chance to ignite on hit… not factoring in that I have other abilities that Judgement that also have their own baked-in 200% additional chance to ignite on hit with that ability. On top of that for survival purposes, I have 18% melee leech and 7% leech off the additional damage that I am dealing over time with ignite. If I can swap some of my gear around and get more void resistance, I can throw on a shield that will generate a good deal more fire damage over time and ignite chance.

All things considered, I am pretty happy with the state of the build currently. There are a number of levers that I could pull to keep tweaking the damage while leveling the rest of the way to 100. Am I happier with it than I am with my Void Knight? Honestly, I am not sure. However, I am very happy that I did not give up on this concept and was finally able to see it the rest of the way to something viable for empowered monoliths. Would I suggest playing this build? Sure if you like burning things and want to track down either the items I am using or something that gives a similar amount of ignite chance and fire damage scaling. It is a heck of a lot of fun and offers a fairly chill playstyle which is ultimately the aspect of Righteous Fire that I loved so much. Throw on a movie or like I have recently… an audio book… and just grind out some chill monoliths for tasty loot. That really is my happy place.