Welcome Travelers to the Eterra Monthly October 2024 Edition!

We’ve got a fully loaded report for you today, so buckle up, and let’s get started.

A New Dawn for the People

The Immortal Emperor’s campaign for power has been halted. As immortal soldiers occupied Eterra, a large resistance was staged to fight back. The battle began on September 19th and raged until October 20th. This resistance has since succeeded against the occupying undead army, and the Immortal Empire was forced to retreat. Resistance leader Yulia had this to say,

“The travelers are a force to be reckoned with and they are here to stay. The Emperor is welcome to press his influence whenever he wishes, but we will always push back!”

Our reporters attempted to reach her for further comment but have yet to receive anything more. The travelers who fought so tirelessly found a way to rub salt in the immortal wound, by claiming replicas of the Emperor’s own Crown and have been flaunting them before him. The Emperor however, was conveniently unavailable for comment. Is this the last we will see of the Immortal Empire’s forces? Only time will tell.

Patch Review

October 20th marked the end of the Immortal Uprising Event and the battle was incredible! Travelers from around the world came together and duked it out with the Emperor’s forces including a new type of soldier, The Loyalist Undead. An elite unit of the skeleton army that packed a punch and everyone felt it. As the event came to a close, Travelers have been encouraged to check the Cosmetic Shop for a free gift for their efforts, stashed within. If you haven’t collected your own Immortal Crown, it’s not too late. This item will remain available to all event participants, free of charge.

With the end of the event came Patch 1.1.7.6. The new patch reverted a handful of changes made available by the event, and adjusted the effects of several others. For full details, read the Patch Notes Here .

Hotfix Rollout

Patch 1.1.7 was given a small hotfix for the month of October titled, “Hotfix 1.1.7.7.”
It was treated as an addendum to patch 1.1.7.6. The hotfix note reads as follows:

• Fixed an issue that would cause the Felled Woods terrain to load incorrectly

As the issue was not accompanied by any additional fixes, the information was later added to the end of the 1.1.7.6 patch notes, rather than being given it’s own page on the Forums.

Eyes on Eterra

And now for an Osprix eye view of things happening in Eterra. Over in the Felled woods, our weather team has noticed an anomaly involving thick fog and an ethereal floor causing a bit of a stir. Traveler’s are encouraged to… Wait… I’m getting word that the fog is clearing and the ground has returned to its original solid state. Well Traveler, feel free to explore to your heart’s content. We apologize for the false alarm. On to more pressing news.

Several teams have come together with a few ideas regarding Twitch Subscription rewards they feel are a little over due. The team has put out a voter’s poll found HERE. Players are encouraged to cast their votes in regards to what they would like to have access to during Twitch streams. This poll will be open until 2024-11-11T17:00:00Z after which it will be locked and the team will get to work adding the winning Emotes to the channel.

Build Spotlight

Travelers it’s that time again where we cast one of your builds in the Spotlight of Glory! This month we have something to warm up your gameplay after chilling out with the White Walker build last month.
This month’s spotlight goes to…

The Smelter’s Wrath Worldsplitter Forge Guard is a hard hitting, Harbinger deleting, Tank doused in napalm. Unlike the White Walker Cryosplosion that focused on stacking Frostbite, Smelter’s Wrath consumes enemies in a cone of fire, doubling your armor, and increases it’s own range the longer it charges. Couple this with smashing a Worldsplitter into a legendary 2-handed axe that increases Fire Melee damage, and Mana as well as mana regen, and your Forge Guard will be a walking combustion engine, melting its foes with minimal effort.
Now this build does benefit from a few other important items such as Titan Heart, Shattered Chains, Siphon of Anguish, and Eterra’s Path, but the rest is really up to you. This does require some extra effort in item farming as opposed to the showcase from last month, but we think that’s what makes this build shine; showing the power of both gameplay preferences.
You can check out the Build Guide Showcase by Dr3adful and hear more about it in their own words. The Build guide has also been made available on Lastepochtools.com so feel free to dig around and light the fires for your own Smelter’s Wrath.

Meet the Team

You, the players, have asked and we delivered. You may have seen us showcase a handful of our EHG staff on social media, but we’ve decided to expand on this initiative a little more, just for you. I got the opportunity this month to sit down with David Chen, one of the Producers here at EHG. David has been with EHG for about a year and a half, and he was more than happy to talk about his role in the studio.

Tell us a little about your job and what it includes.

I’m a producer here at EHG, basically that comes down to making sure that the features we work on get done. So, it’s a lot of planning, organizing, making sure people are doing what they need to be doing, and making sure that bottlenecks and obstacles are taken care of.

What inspired you to get into game development, and how did you end up at this studio?

Well, the studio is a different question, I think, apart from getting into games in general. Getting into games: basically at school, when I was in college, I was an electrical engineering major with a software focus. Then I was looking for jobs and I just found an opening for an engineer at a game company called Stormfront Studios. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I can do games for a living.” Because, you know, I grew up playing games and always loved it. So, I applied for that, I got it, and I’ve pretty much been in the games industry ever since.

For EHG specifically, at the time I was just looking for a good position and a good place that I could join, and EHG popped up. I checked the game out. It was awesome that it was already in early access so I could actually just play the game and see where things were. I was really impressed by the game and met with the people. They seemed like a great group of people to work with and it just happened to work out.

How does working at an indie studio differ from working at a larger studio?

I’ve actually found that the indie studio is not so different from a big studio where I’ve also worked. I think a lot of it just depends on how the teams are built. For some reason, the team here at EHG is relatively similar. The big difference is the remote aspect of it. I found just making a game remote is so different from when everyone is at a physical studio at the same time. That communication is just a very different vibe and on top of that, we’re distributed around the globe. The team chemistry and the bonding is very different. You can’t just turn around and talk to someone and ask a question. You’ve gotta ping them, hope that they’re online, and look at your pings at the same time to get an immediate response. You just have to adjust how you work a little bit differently.

How do you balance working from home with your home life?

I think it’s just a matter of being responsible for a lot of it, right? I mean, the nice thing about going into work is you go home and it can be a clear delineation between work and home life. It’s very different when you’re always checking Slack for work and I think a lot of that’s just the decision you make for yourself of like, “All right, this is how I’m going to draw my boundaries for work life balance.” and it’s very much on you. Hopefully, you’ve got a manager who understands and is on the same wave length as you in terms of when you’re on, when you’re off, and it’s kind of the expectations of the job.

For me, it’s worked out pretty well. I find that I’m pleased with both my work life and my home life right now. So, I think whatever balance it is that I figured out, it’s at least working for me.

How do you balance creativity with practical constraints like time, budget, or technical limitations?

My role as a producer, I find works a lot better when I approach it from a practical standpoint. We have so many just amazingly talented, creative people that I let them ask to do the creative side of things. It’s on our designers and our creative folks to ask for crazy ass stuff. That’s how you achieve greatness, by not caring about how hard something is or how long something’s going to take, because it gets the conversation started.

But there has to be that balance, in terms of making sure we can actually get the work done on time; that we’re not completely rearchitecting the game to get something done. And so I bring that counterweight to the creative side of things. And if you set it up with a team of people, where that conversation is open, that it’s not antagonistic, then you realize that everyone’s working towards making a great game. Then you find that balance in between, and you’re able to come up with something that is awesome, is fun, and doesn’t burn out the team to get done and keeps the game stable. All the things that have to be kept in mind in addition to “How awesome would this be?”

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned while working in indie game development?

I think it all comes down to communication. So, communicate often, communicate early is really something that just kind of works both in life as well; but certainly in games. You need everyone to be on the same page. Everyone needs to reach alignment and if you can do that, then you’ll be in pretty good shape. Related to that also is to be honest. You can do that without being cruel. If something isn’t working, if a deadline isn’t going to be reached, if something painful is coming up, it still behooves you to be honest and open about it as early as possible because it gives the team a chance to react to it. The longer you put it off, the harder it is to do something about it. So, you really gotta bite the bullet and just make things clear from the beginning that, if something’s going wrong, you have to communicate it. So, that’s something I found. It’s better to be honest than to try to spare feelings by hiding it. You don’t want to do that. In my role especially, a lot of what I try to do is let the whole team know “This is what we’re doing. This is why we’re doing it.” Give them an opportunity to respond. You want to communicate it as many times as you can, because everyone takes information in differently. And that’s kind of it. Just communicate, let people know what’s going on and, you’ll be in pretty good shape.

How do you stay motivated and creative, especially during long or difficult projects?

For me, it really just helps to have good people. I thought, at least in my career, that if I like the people I’m working with, then that is really what motivates me to want to continue to do a good job, to do right by them. More so than anything else, It helps out Last Epoch. It’s a fun game. I don’t play all the games that I work on in my spare time but, certainly I do with Last Epoch because it’s just a fun game at the end of the day. But really it’s the people and knowing that I’m helping them succeed; and that’s kind of where I get my kicks.

What kind of feedback from players do you find most helpful or motivating?

I like a healthy dialogue of “You guys are doing great.” That certainly helps motivate you to know that you’re in the right direction. I think constructive feedback is always useful because we recognize the game’s not perfect. There are problems with it and it’s good to know what people think we should be focusing on. It depends on how it’s worded; it helps if you can be honest without being a dick about it and so I think that as long as you do that, it’s always great to hear from the players. You assume positive intent, right? You know that they’re trying to make the game better. They want to have fun with it and we want them to have a good time also.

What’s a feature or design choice you’re particularly proud of in one of the games you’ve worked on?

Most of what my job is has been outside of the creative side of things. Really, whenever the game gets out the door on time and in a fun state. If the game shifts and if we were able to ship most of what we wanted to in it, then that gives me a good sense of satisfaction.

What advice would you give someone who wants to get into this industry?

You’ve got to work well with others, I think, is really what it comes down to at the end of the day. You can be the best engineer, the best artist, the best whatever, but if you’re a jerk and no one wants to work with you, dude, you make it so hard. It’s a team effort and you’ve got to be a team player if you want to make a game with a group of people. Obviously, technical acumen and being good at your job is certainly important, but I think even more important is the culture fit. You want to be someone that people want to work with.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell our readers?

Just, really, thanks for playing the game. We see the appreciation and love that we actually get from the community, and it feels really good. And if it’s making you happy, then we’ve done our job right.

A big thanks again to David Chen for talking with us. Join us to meet a new member of the EHG studio every month, and get an inside look at what it’s like to be a part of Eleventh Hour Games.

This has been Eterra Monthly, a report on the happenings and changes in the world of Last Epoch. If you’ve made it this far and are enjoying Last Epoch, we ask that you please take a moment to leave us an honest review on Steam. We hope you have enjoyed this month’s report and will see you all again soon!

Eterra Monthly: Oct. 2024 Edition