[2023] Trade development update - Introducing merchants guild and circle of fortune factions

Hello Travelers,

We’ve heard you and we have some exciting news to share with you today. You may recall back in December we released our plans for Item Gifting in Last Epoch. Since that time, we’ve been engaged in an ongoing conversation with the community about Trade. Many players expressed they were excited by our decision to champion finding loot, and many others have voiced their disappointment, letting us know that they were sincerely looking forward to trading their treasures in Eterra.

We’ve made it clear in the past that we want Last Epoch to be a place where you can come to slay monsters and find great gear upgrades, and it still will be. However, it is equally important to us that we remain a studio that listens and is grounded in our community.

In short, we want Last Epoch to be the ARPG that rewards you for hunting items the way you most enjoy, no matter which side of the trade conversation you’re on. So, we’ve been hard at work discussing, debating, and consulting with some of our trusted community members, and we’re happy to present you with the following:

Item Factions

We are pleased to introduce you to an early peek at the feature design of our new Item Factions System in Last Epoch. Inside, you will find two powerful factions - The Merchant’s Guild and the Circle of Fortune, ready to accept and reward your allegiance in Eterra.

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Along your travels in Last Epoch, you will encounter factions of Eterra’s denizens and may choose to align yourself with them. Aligning with a Faction will allow you to gain both Reputation to improve your rank within that faction, and Favor to spend on that faction’s services and rewards. Climbing ranks within a faction will unlock their unique perks, services, and rewards.

The Merchants’ Guild and the Circle of Fortune are the first two factions that we’ll introduce in Last Epoch, and your choice of allegiance will determine the way your character obtains and exchanges items in the endgame. Each character can only represent and gain reputation with one of these factions at a time, enabling their exclusive benefits.

Characters may swap between factions at any time. Equipping items found while in the Circle of Fortune will require ranks in that faction and equipping items purchased through trade while in the Merchant’s Guild will require ranks in that faction. So, switching between them is more akin to respeccing your character rather than something you’ll want to do routinely.

Details

• You can have different characters in the same Cycle in different factions
• Faction reputation is shared account-wide
• Faction reputation resets each Cycle
• When a Cycle ends and characters are transferred to the permanent non-Cycle environment, their Faction progress will be carried over

The Factions

Below are a few reward examples you can expect when aligned with the Circle of Fortune

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Circle of Fortune is a mystical Faction that had banded together to seek fortune through arcane research and astrology. Aligning with the Circle of Fortune will grant you powerful benefits towards finding more and better items. You will also have the ability to purchase Prophecies with Favor which will bend fate to your advantage and help you find the specific items that you’re looking for.



Below are a few reward examples you can expect when aligned with the Merchants’ Guild:

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The Merchants Guild is a prosperous organization that believes in prosperity through commerce. Aligning with the Merchants Guild will allow you to trade increasingly powerful items as you gain reputation and give you access to the Bazaar where you can browse and search for items that other players have listed and list items on the Bazaar yourself. All types of equipment, such as idols, uniques, and even legendary items can be traded with other players if you have a high enough rank, but crafting materials cannot.

Bazaar1800×656 1.54 MB

The Bazaar will be a new trade-focused zone for players aligned with the Merchants’ Guild. Here you can gather, socialize, barter, and trade your wares throughout the market. Players will search through a variety of stalls for player-listed items, which you can buy and sell for gold with advanced searching functionality, no purchase delay, and no tax on the gold cost of the item.

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We’ve heard from the community that sharing items with friends is important to their enjoyment of Last Epoch long term. We agree, and so we are continuing to support Item Gifting between friends and party play regardless of your faction choice. To this end we’re doing two things:

1. Item Gifting as experienced in the multiplayer tests and in 0.9 will remain. If you are with a player fighting enemies and an item drops you’ll be able to freely give your teammates that item if you wish.
2. We’ll be introducing a new item type called Resonances that drop when you’ve played alongside a player for a very extended period of time. Using a resonance on an item will enable it to be gifted to that player even if they were not present when the item dropped.

Thank You to Our Community

Thank you for all the passion and constructive criticism you’ve shown in these conversations. We’ve been listening carefully, collecting your feedback and creating a solution that champions the diverse nature of our players. We are building Last Epoch for all of you, with all of you, and as ARPG gamers ourselves that came together to make this game, we value your ideas and opinions.

We are very excited about introducing Item Factions and invite you to continue the conversation with us. It’s worth noting that these systems will not be included in Patch 0.9, but we will be aiming to get them into subsequent patches this year. Resonances may be added sooner than Factions on account of their smaller scope.

Still have questions?

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FAQ

• How will you balance MG vs CoF?
  • We aim balance the two factions so that each feel like viable options and you can choose between them based on which playstyle you prefer rather than which one is optimal. There will always be an asymmetry between them, so perfect balance isn’t necessarily possible, but we do have a lot of variables we can control to try to keep them in line, including the rate at which you climb ranks, the Favor costs of buying and selling various item types, the power and Favor cost of prophecies, and the potency of the various CoF item bonuses.
• Can I play with opposite faction people?
  • Yes.
• If I’m MG and I’m playing with a friend who is CoF, can we gift items between us freely?
  • Yes, however items found while CoF that they gift to you would require you to switch to CoF and rank up to use.
  • Items found from monster drops while representing MG can be freely gifted and used like normal and do not have a Faction Requirement.
• What happens to my gear when I switch factions?
  • You are required to unequip it but it will sit in your inventory and stash just like any other gear that you no longer meeting the equip requirements for.
• Will Resonances let me gift non-crafting material CoF items to MG?
  • Yes, however it does not remove the CoF Faction Requirement so the MG player would have to switch to CoF to use the item.
  • It also doesn’t matter which faction you were representing when the resonance dropped.
• Am I going to have to manually store each Resonance in my stash?
  • No, they will be stored in your crafting materials window in a distinct search and sort list.
• Are there restrictions on which items can be traded in MG?
  • Which item types are possible to be traded is dictated based on your rank in the MG.
  • Initially you will only be able to trade Normal, Magic and Rare items.
  • As you advance in the guild, you’ll be able to trade set items, idols, uniques, exalted items, uniques with Legendary Potential and even Legendary Items.
  • Once fully ranked up, all types of equipment are available to be traded, though each trade will have an associated favor cost.
• How do I interact with the trade economy? Person-to person? Auction House?
  • Both person to person trading and an asynchronous Bazaar will be available.
  • Person to person trading is mostly intended to be used for trading between friends.
• How long does it take to fully rank up in a faction?
  • Achieving max rank will likely happen after reaching level 100 if you only rank up your factions with 1 character.
  • Faction progress is shared cross characters in the same cycle though.
• When can I start earning ranks in a faction?
  • Factions are initially available towards the end of the campaign. However once you’ve already joined a faction on one character their representatives will show up earlier for subsequent characters, so that you can join them more promptly.
• So if I’m playing CoF and then decide to switch to MG, I can’t use any of my gear?
  • You will need to acquire a new set of gear to use, yes. The most straightforward way to do this is through crafting on items you gamble or buy from the vendor after switching. Nevertheless it will be a road bump and typically switching factions will be more like a significant respec to your character than something you’ll want to do routinely.
  • You can also preempt switching your primary character with another and get started before fully switching.
  • Since items are giftable when found together cross faction, you can also get a jump start from someone in the other faction if you want.
• What if I want to play both factions and switch regularly?
  • Totally fine, it will mean maintaining 2 different gearsets if you would like to do both.
  • The goal is for most people to pick whichever playstyle they prefer and focus on one faction.
  • There is no intended efficiency gain to be had by frequent switching.
• Is this the only faction system that we will ever get?
  • We don’t yet have concrete plans regarding additional factions, but we do have more ideas for the system that we’re excited to explore. However additional factions are unlikely to relate so directly to mass item acquisition and are unlikely to be mutually exclusive with CoF or MG, so you’ll be able to join them and gain ranks with them even if you’re aligned with one of those two as well.
• Is there any way to resell items?
  • No. Items bought through the Bazaar cannot be resold.
• Can I trade crafted items?
  • Yes, as long as you could trade it before you crafted on it too. Crafting on an item does not change its tradable status.
• Can I trade crafting materials (e.g. shards, glyphs) and/or keys?
  • No.
• What is the trading currency?
  • Gold.
  • What about face to face trading, can I use items instead?
    • No. Only gold.
  • Can I drop trade?
    • No. Dropped items are instanced and other players can’t see them.
• How will the bazaar system work? Will it be easy to find the upgrades I’m looking for (i.e. search function)?
  • Each base type has a stall associated with it. e.g. Helmets, Wands or Idols.
  • Once you find the right stall, all items in that category are available from that one place.
  • You can input very specific search and sort parameters to find exactly what you are looking for in that category.
  • Delivery is immediate once you decide to purchase.
• Are Solo characters CoF by default?
  • No, they play like normal characters, and will need to join a faction at the same spot in the campaign. However they won’t be able to buy items from other players, so joining MG would have little benefit and we may disallow it.
• Does direct trading cost favor?
  • Yes, the same amount as using the Bazaar.
• Is there any way to sell items with a CoF requirement as a MG player at all?
  • No. Items with a CoF requirement can’t be sold.
• Will gifted items be able to be re-gifted to eligible parties?
  • Yes.
• Will every item drop with a Faction Requirement on it?
  • No, dropped items only receive a Faction Requirement if dropped while you are representing CoF.
• Does progress towards dropping a Resonance with a specific player persist through multiple play sessions?
  • Yes, even if they or you are playing on different characters in those different sessions.
• Can an item be gifted or traded after being gifted via a resonance?
  • It can still be gifted to the original owner or other players it could have been gifted to before. However, like other gifted items, it cannot be sold.
• What determines what faction rank an item requires to use?
  • The MG rank required to equip a bought item is normally equal to the rank requirement to buy or sell that item type, e.g. rank 1 for normal, magic, or rare items, and rank 2 for set items.
  • Legendary items, and uniques with legendary potential are an exception to this, as they only require the rank required to buy or sell a regular unique of that type.
  • The CoF rank required to equip an item is normally one less than the CoF rank you were when the item dropped, but it is always between 1 and 5.
• How will the addition of these factions affect the balance of the game as a whole?
  • These factions add a powerful source of items regardless of which faction you pick, and so without further changes they would lead to a dramatic increase in player power and the game becoming a lot easier. To counteract this we will increase the power of monsters and also adjust item drop rates and rewards at relevant levels.
    
    However, once you have a few ranks in CoF you will have a comparable quantity and quality of item drops as the current game, so that sense of generous item drops will remain intact, and the rest of the ranks will exist on top of that as a deterministic grind towards further improving the loot you find.
    
    Meanwhile if you’re in MG you will find fewer items than you currently would in endgame, but you will be able to trade for the specific items you want, enabling you to acquire those much more smoothly and deterministically. Selling many of the great items you find will also act as a powerful source of gold, enabling you to either buy more equipment from other players, or to acquire more items to use or sell by spending it in the Vaults of Uncertain Fate.

As addressed in the FAQ, you can’t because the items would have a CoF requirement. Items with a CoF requirement can’t be sold at the Bazaar.

Fine details like these are not completely set in stone and could evolve slightly. The current intent is that it is double the chance to have any LP. Also we mention that this is not part of 0.9 in the closing paragraph.

Yes, you can have multiple characters simultaneously in both factions. You can switch back and forth between them as you please.

Progress in each faction is shared so you can level up your MG rank in one and your CoF in another and then switch back and forth if you want and both characters have access to the ranks in both factions.

There currently are no plans to give any direct gold farming bonuses to CoF. They technically have a slight boost to finding gold through adventuring because they will find more gear but with sale prices so low compared to just finding gold from the monolith and that you can make more gold through selling items at the Bazaar, it will not be advantageous to farm gold on CoF to use as MG.

1. Yes, however, as it states in the FAQ, the item will still have the MG requirement so you would have to switch to the MG and rank up before being able to use it.
2. We will do something to make sure the integrity of the market is functional when Item Factions launch.

CoF will certainly be a powerful and enjoyable way to play… but buzzing around different Bazaar stalls in a group of online players is something that I haven’t seen before and think wlll feel quite magical . Leaning #teamMG myself!

There’s a healthy amount of people in the studio leaning to both sides though!

Drops are still instanced and your increased drop rate has no impact on party members.

Keys are not currently planned to be tradable. Initial plan is “things that can be equipped” (idols can be equipped).

Pretty sure it’s multiplicative but I’m not confident on this one.

The last we talked on this we were leaning towards adding a CoF or MG tag to the user within the same leaderboard. Subject to change though

Primary method of favor gain is simply adventuring. Go kill monsters and interact with the end game systems. Special events would be cool and are possible in the future.

You can’t trade it back.

No, items that organically drop while representing MG are not MG locked.

Items will require to have non-conflicting faction requirements and if either item has a faction requirement, the resulting Legendary will have that same requirement.

1. Unaffected, you just can’t actually trade as MG so that seems like an unhelpful choice to me.
2. Undecided yet, leaning towards 1 ladder with tags to show which faction you are in but are open to feedback on this.
3. For that cycle, yes. It’s split on “stash lines”.

I still maintain that 4/4 = 1/1. If it’s a major problem in practice, we will address it but at the moment we have no mechanical changes planned.

Current plan is just the X as though you are too low level and a tooltip tag at the bottom, possibly only in the alt version.

Literally discussed this idea at one point.

We will have systems in place to combat resonance farming abuse attempts.

Some of these details are still subject to change as they are tested and we receive feedback on them.

Favour costs are primarily balanced around what tier of item it is. So a unique item with 3LP will have a higher favour cost than a magic item.

We pretty intentionally left off specifics of what each prophecy does. I think you’re thinking about the right sort of thing but not likely to be able to say “I want this specific item with these specific stats dropped from this specific person”. More along the lines of things similar to “the next unique that drops is guaranteed to have LP” or something kinda like that ish.

As for Bazaar search/sort, it will be very powerful and very low friction.

The gifting system is unchanged at its core so you can still gift CoF tagged items and they retain the CoF tag.

None of this will be included in 0.9 at all. Gifting only in 0.9.

Yes.

There is no such thing as party drop rates so it is unaffected.

Welcome back! Yea, 4 years is a while eh?

The current plan is to include this in offline too.

No, the gear you trade for as MG will not be usable when you switch to CoF. If you plan to play CoF long term, it is best to start, and stay as, CoF.

What if you could play without them and still use the same content? The concern I usually see here is not being able to play with the new updates as they come out. We are currently planning on having cycles (leagues, seasons, ladders) but not locking content to the cycle itself.

You can play cross factions so you won’t need to distinguish like that. I’m not sure if we will have a specific forum badge or something.

Exactly how favor costs are calculated could change and will likely include more than just the category that they fit into but the main distinction is planned to be which category.

Each Resonance will be usable on specific item types, see the example image.

As for ‘very extended period of time’, we don’t have any more specific information available at this time. It is something that will come down a lot to testing a feedback.

Progression as a CoF vs MG will be very similar. Forgoing all the MG specific items to switch to CoF will be slower than just starting and playing as CoF in the first place.

I agree that the primary issue with this system is the complexity. It is something we have tried very hard to mitigate. Unfortunately it is quite heavy and as such, there are some misunderstandings and assumptions going on. I’ve got a dozen other questions to get to here so I won’t go too deep but the short version is that we don’t intend for switching to be a common thing to do but rather a safeguard to prevent players from wasting their time in one and deciding that they want to switch.

Edit: Our community has also made it very clear that there is something between SSF and free trade that is extremely desired by a very significant portion of the community.

These switching strategies will ultimately slow down your progression.

You go to the boots stall and it lists all boots that you could possibly buy. Then you go to the gloves stall right beside it and it lists all glove that you could possibly buy.

this is changing in 0.9

You can’t gift in SSF. The confusion here comes from using SSF and CoF interchangeably.

Yes, the thing is that it will be just better to play CoF from the outset in this situation.

SSF stands for Solo Self Found.

CoF players can play with MG or CoF players that are also non-SSF

SSF-MG is a little weird and I suspect that it will become a sort of meme challenge mode as a joke.

I don’t understand at all. The stuff you get from (the bazaar) being MG would instantly become unusable when you switched and the stuff you found would be more plentiful if you had just started as CoF in the first place.

There is no efficiency gain to be had by switching.

Ohhhhh, with the assumption being that MG would be notably faster to obtain gear in.

Yea, there we go, same page! As soon as we opened up multiplayer, RMT was possible. It’s going to be an ongoing situation to navigate and we have plans to contain it.

Yea, ultra late cycle going real hard, this could be something you try out I guess. I think you’ll find that it won’t work but I’ll be keeping an eye out.

Early CoF will be lower than now while late CoF will be higher.

MG will be lower.

Disclaimer: We haven’t completely nailed down how the transition from cycle to non-cycle reputation will be yet.

I think it’s easier to forget the characters all together.

This is how I think it will work.

You get your non-cycle MG to 3 and your CoF to 5.

You get your cycle MG to 2 and your CoF to 8.

Cycle rolls over

You now have non-cycle MG 3 and CoF 8
and
Cycle MG1 and CoF1

0.9 will not have this option. We are working on an automated support request system that will delete your solo progress so you can reset if you want as a temporary solution until we have a more appropriate option for race style environments. The option came down to this or no solo at all this patch.

Undecided at the moment. I would be very surprised if we took the sum of the two or some combination. I was deciding between the higher of the two or just always whatever is already on non-cycle.

Edit: can’t do whatever is on non-cycle as then you wouldn’t be able to equip stuff, has to be the higher of the two at least.

I’m not quite sure I understand. You’ll be able to check all similar listed items in game via robust search and sort functionality. We haven’t discussed an “auto-pricer” system that attempts to give you what it thinks it’s worth based on the market. While not impossible, I think this would lead to a lot of poorly priced items by newer players.

Edit: I’m now picturing people putting up terrible items with a few really specific high value affixes for very low gold to try and force the auto-pricer to lower the value of specific actually good items so they can be bought cheaper or something. Just seems like a whole kettle of fish.

Yup, this is just the closest we can do for 0.9

Thanks
The most common negative that we got as feedback that we’ve gotten so far is that it’s too complex. We think it’s not too complex but it’s definitely something we are going to need to work at to make accessible for less dedicated players. Hopefully for most people the decision is as simple as “Do I want to trade or not?”

Sorry, I edited the post, it has to be the higher of the two or else gear could fall off.

Current plan is to require you to go to the Bazaar zone to look at what is for sale.

I think this is in the FAQ but I’m not sure. Just in case, yes, that’s right. They will work similarly to the crafting materials and not take up inventory space.

I mean, we haven’t talked about it but I’ll push for that.

Prophecy details are in short supply at the moment. A rough example is that you will buy them with favour from a CoF representative. Then they will have some specific item finding augmentation. An example of the style of thing they could do is something similar to “the next unique item that you find is guaranteed to have at least 1 LP” or something along those lines, ish.

Yea, I wouldn’t hold out for that one. I can see why it would make sense and it might happen. Best to be conservative with early guesses though.

I can’t really share specifics on this sorry. Personally, when I read that, I’m thinking that I’m generally using Prophecies as enhanced target farming to significantly sway RNG in my favor but not necessarily guaranteeing specific drops. I can see some combinations or situations where you could guarantee a drop.

As another example of a maybe possibly “what if” option, “The next monolith timeline boss kill, will not drop the two most common options available.” So if it has 4 options and you put yourself in a corruption range that means you can’t get option 4, it guarantees option 3. This sort of thing I could see happening.

Super not set in stone yet and I just made that example up as I was typing this post.

Like a “find similar items” option, I like that. I’m not sure if things like that will be in version 1 but I can see that as a follow-up feature. Sounds cool.

No, they will not be available in 0.9.0

We’ve got a few very specific dials that we can turn to adjust MG’s power or CoF’s power (or both) relative to each other if one turns out to be notably stronger than the other in practice. It is set up to be balanceable with regards to each other. They don’t really have much direct impact on each other. They have the indirect impact that you mentioned above for sure but we’ve worked in the tools to be able to adjust that ourselves if necessary.

It’s really interesting, we’re getting quite a few people suggesting that MG is going to completely eclipse CoF.

We’re seeing a similar number of people suggesting that CoF is going to completely eclipse MG.

I don’t think that it’s an easy thing to predict really given how big the changes are from what we already have. In order to improve the quality of CoF drops, we are introducing the Prophecy system. It’s not gone into detail on in the main post but essentially it will be a Favour sink that will allow you to influence your drops so you can more easily target specific items.

We also have several dials that we can turn for both factions which will adjust their relative power. Chief among them is simply the Favour costs of everything. CoF falling way behind? Prophecies 50% off, get 'em while they’re hot! (Disclaimer: just a random example, not an exact action that will necessarily be taken)

It is going to be tough to balance the system. I think we’ve put enough different ways we can adjust their relative power that we should be able to get them in a similar spot.

I could be wrong about this one and it will be subject to change but I think it has to be multiplicative in order to be a consistent relative power to MG.

I understand the pull to try and draw conclusions from the limited set of early details regarding balance but please be careful with the assumptions and read the whole post for more information (including the FAQ).

The lack of rank explicitly stating that you can trade LP uniques doesn’t imply that it won’t exist (it will). The FAQ talks about being able to trade items all the way up to and including Legendaries. Each Faction will have 10 ranks. At max MG rank, all types of equipable items will be tradable at the Bazaar.

I understand the desire for open trade but in order to accomplish our goal of not splitting the community and allowing people to play together regardless of the selected faction, we need to be able to balance the relative power of each. Even if you couldn’t play together, we would need to be able to balance the relative power. This means that we need to have dials on both sides of the equation. So, we are going to keep the limiters on trade.

I can’t speak for them but I suspect that the implication is that if the two options are roughly in the same ballpark of balance but if finding items was moderately worse, they would not use the trade system even if it was available.

Nothing, they will continue to be on sale.

I would like to add that attempting to play both factions simultaneously through frequent switching will not yield an efficiency bonus over playing in just one.

Yup, this is the main angle that gets presented. However, the favour costs and opportunities of each faction mean that you would be foregoing some bonus in each to dip into the other. It works out to be more efficient to just play one or the other.

You’re absolutely right that this will be very difficult to balance. It doesn’t need to be perfect and probably can’t ever be absolutely perfect. There are however 2 major variables missing from this calculation that will make it way easier to balance it. Favour costs on both sides of the equation. You can directly manipulate the relative power of each faction by adjusting the rate at which you can interact with them. If MG is a clear front runner then we can slightly reduce the cost of prophecies and slightly increase the cost of interacting with the Bazaar. These also get broken down further because we can adjust these more granularly. Each Prophecy has its own cost, we can adjust different item types in the Bazaar and we can adjust buying and selling independently.

Together, these form a pretty complex system. Part of why we have this more complex system is so that we have these dials to turn to be able to fine tune the relative power between the two.

Well, we’ll just have to see if we’ve baked in enough room for adjustments to get them lined up or not.

Equipable items only. However you can sell “shatter fodder” to effectively buy affixes.

I learned my lesson with systems like that, never again.

The old crafting system had a step like that and we got daily reports of bugs in it not following probability properly. It was as close to perfect distribution as you could expect from anything short of a research paper.

No, this is not an abuse case. This scenario is missing some steps.

After you swap, you would first have to vendor some items, craft them to a point where you could use them a bit. Level up your MG rank and gain a bunch of favor. Then buy all the items you want as though you were MG all along but took a massive detour and wasted a ton of time as CoF.

If the implied last step of this scenario is then to swap back to CoF, you end up swapping back and putting your original gear back on.

So the potential for abuse here is negative as this would put you right back where you started with no gain and a ton of wasted time.

Edit: I was mistaken that the final step was to shatter the purchased items for use in CoF and while this is possible, it’s still not an abuse case because you could just get those same crafting materials as CoF while still utilizing the other CoF benefits and not eating up time gaining MG favor with a lesser gearset.

We have considered this for sure and it’s in the conversation. The one caveat is that these bonuses can only apply to items that are CoF tagged like the example rank 2 perk shows in CoF.

Oh yea, you can do that. It’s still just going to be better to stay as CoF. You can just use the CoF systems to farm those same affixes and call it a day.

Sounds like you’ve got it all straight. In that scenario, the downside is just that you’ve got multiple gear sets to maintain.

Edit: oh and you’re split farming favor so you’re still just getting half benefit from each.

Hey there, just wanted to clear up a couple things. I think that calling MG non-SSF guild and CoF SSF guild are misleading, mostly because (and I’m sure you know this) SSF means Solo Self Found. Neither MG or CoF restrict your play to solo and neither restrict the items you use to self found only. We do have an optional Solo Challenge mode which is the same as SSF mode that you can do if you want to.

All items obtained by using your factions special bonuses (Bazaar for MG and drops for CoF) carry a rank requirement to equip, similar to a level requirement. This means that if a CoF player is giving items to a MG player, those items are limited to being used only while the player is representing the CoF. The MG player would need to switch over to CoF and gain some ranks before being able to use it. The items can’t be sold at the Bazaar.

The main goals that we have for this system are:

• An optional asynchronous trade system.
• Comparable efficiency between trade and non-trade.
• Allow everyone to play together.
• Avoid exploit cases to prevent unfun burdens of optimal play.

This was the simplest and most complete system that we have been able to devise which satisfies all of these goals well. It is also important to note that interacting with these systems will be very low friction. So for example, if you are looking for a specific Helmet to buy from the Bazaar, you just have to go there, walk up to the helmet stall, apply filters for what type of item you’re looking for (very specific options), and then buy the one you want. Delivery is immediate and you can start using it right away.

I don’t think this is really the opposite approach from PoE but just different. I think that it’s kinda hard to put it into PoE terms because the games are built on different systems.

Having said all that, if you have suggestions on how to improve the system, while maintaining our goals, we are always listening for good ideas.

Edit: aaaaaand it looks like other people already said half that stuff.

I’m sorry we couldn’t see eye to eye on this.

I understand that this is a high tension topic and I would urge everyone to just remember to keep it respectful and about the issues. Taking little shots here and there isn’t constructive.

You can use resonance on traded items. It however does not remove the MG tag from those items so it would need to be used by someone who also has the required rank of MG.

Resonancing an item can’t be undone. It’s like a crafting material in a way, you can’t unshatter an item.

Idols will be included in both the MG and CoF systems. They will follow the same rules and restrictions as all other equipment.

It will naturally keep MG in check because as items are purchased, they are removed from the market but the gold isn’t. So, eventually prices will rise on items and selling something and then using the gold on the vaults will become more lucrative. This will drain the market of gold and item prices will drop again.

We do plan to add more gold sinks which don’t directly compete with the vaults.

Let’s ease up a bit of them here eh? It’s ok to be critical of the system too.

Maybe, we’re still deciding on that, I can see the appeal for it but it’s not necessarily something we want to expose.

The second question is tougher to answer so I’ll answer something else instead that should clear this up. You can only gain progress towards and drop a resonance for people that are currently in your party and zone. Getting one to drop that is associated with one person in your party doesn’t affect them dropping for other people.

The resonance items themselves only drop while you are playing with people.

Resonance can be used on equipment items to make that equipment behave as though that person was with you when the equipment dropped.

So you’re playing with your friend Bill and you find a resonance. Later Bill logs off but you keep playing and the perfect item for Bill’s build drops.

The next day, you’re playing with Bill and you apply the resonance to the item then you gift the item to Bill.

This allows you to share items that you find with people that you frequently play with.

It’s still undecided, the CoF area wouldn’t serve much of a purpose but it could be cool.

This is the same info in the initial post so I’m not quite sure what’s different.

The purpose of resonance is to allow you to gift the really stand out items that really hurt when they drop alone to the people you play with most frequently. It’s not for creating an open gifting environment with your friends list.

We don’t know what the minimum duration that this will be yet.

It’s a lot easier for us to reduce the duration that extend it so we will likely start with it slightly on the high side. I’m not talking anything ridiculous like 24 hours of playtime for one but it needs to be significant.

This timer is one of the key elements that keeps RMT at bay.

It should hopefully feel very natural.

It also doesn’t matter what order the item and the resonance drop in, so if you are short, just play together and you can eventually give it over.

I was going to bicker about what it actually says but that doesn’t matter.

If we were to implement the system which you are recommending, it would enable full open trade for CoF. This is something we aren’t prepared to do.

I’m sorry but if you’re looking for more open trading among friends than the resonance system offers, you’ll need to play as MG.

I’m sorry if this isn’t the case but I think we might not quite have communicated the details of the system properly. Have you read through the FAQ section at the bottom of the initial post yet?

I’d also like to avoid calling CoF, SSF. While it will work on SSF, it’s designed to be exactly what you’re looking for I think.

The rewards listed for both are examples, each goes up to rank 10 and CoF will also have access to prophecies which will be a favor sink similar to how the bazaar is the favor sink for MG.

and hey, it might just not be what you’re looking for.

If it makes you feel any better, that’s what I thought you meant. That’s why I was saying CoF was what I thought you were looking for. You can play as though trade doesn’t exist and still be efficient.

My statement is directly extrapolated from trasochi’s.

Edit: I would like to note that attempting to nail down details like which rank things become roughly equivalent to now is a bit of a fool’s errand. I’m sure our initial numbers won’t survive first contact with testing.

The positive question of a negative statement always trips me up so I’ll just explain the situation.

The time limiting is not specifically there to just limit RMT but it does help.

You can gift a 4LP item using resonance.

The main purpose for resonance is to be able to give those really special stand out, perfect for their build items to a friend who you play frequently with.

Edit: I just got the question, the game doesn’t care which order the items dropped in.

No, as it states in the initial post above, this will not be included in patch 0.9 on March 9th.

Ideally, they would be identical. Obviously that’s not going to happen. We don’t have a specific maximum acceptable difference that we’ve picked out. It’s going to be more “get it as close as we can with these tools”. Then evaluate how close it is and look to feedback. Then decide if we need to add more tools to get it closer or not. If we do want it closer, add the tools, and go back to the start of this process. Repeat until we are happy.