about 1 month ago - EHG_Kain - Direct link

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Victory Travelers!

Thirty-one days after the Immortal Emperor let loose his loyalists legions into the world, the uprising has successfully been quelled. With a total of 760,523,009 skeletons slain, the Immortal Emperor has realized their grave error and been forced to pull his forces back to standard deployments. To reward your efforts in stopping this uprising, Yulia has managed to acquire a special item from the Emperor’s personal stash for you, which you will be able to claim from the in-game MTX shop (at no charge) to add to your cosmetic inventory.

This marks the end of the Immortal Uprising Event. We hope everyone enjoyed all the event had to offer, and with Eterra returning to a more peaceful state, we wanted to go over what’s happening in the trenches, and what to expect as we continue onwards to 1.2

End of Event Patch

Over the course of the event, we’ve been closely monitoring feedback and thoughts regarding features introduced with The Imperial Uprising, such as the event buff modifiers. Originally, we had planned to simply remove the temporary buffs, and Loyalist Undead packs with the end of the event. In this feedback we’ve seen very positive responses to some of the buffs, and many requests for some of the effects to remain in place.

The much beloved Loot Lizards, as well as the new shrines were always planned to stay after the event, and will continue to be able to be found in-game. We also want to clarify that the Cycle Refresh which started with the event will be continuing through to patch 1.2 - the refreshed Cycle does not end with the event.

We want to cover some of the changes we’re making in response to your feedback, all of which is immediately in effect with the end of event patch released today. The temporary event buffs and Loyalist Undead packs have been removed as planned, though we’re making some changes to Item Faction Favor costs and Rank requirements (these are buffs), as well as some changes to the Loot Lizards.

For the full patch notes, please check out the Patch Notes post here: Last Epoch Patch 1.1.7.6

Favor and Reputation Changes

We’ve been watching player’s excitement around higher drop rates and the ability to interact with factions more frequently with more expendable favor. In response to this feedback, we’re lowering many favor costs and reducing the Reputation required to advance Faction Ranks. With these changes, we want players to keep the feeling of advancing factions quicker and offer more opportunities for interacting with their chosen faction.

  • Reduced Faction Gambler item costs by around 35% on average and made them more varied.

Circle of Fortune

  • Reduced the cost of most prophecies by around 30% (this varies case by case due to aggressive rounding).
  • Reduced the cost of Exalted Helmet, Boot, and Relic prophecies by slightly more than 30%.
  • Reduced the cost of Legendary Potential prophecies by around 50% in total.

Merchants Guild

  • Bazaar purchase Favor cost changes:
    • Idols cost 600 (from 800)
    • Experimental affix tiers add 300 to Magic and Rare item costs (from 400)
    • Set items cost 240 + 4 x level requirement (from 300 + 4 x level requirement)
    • Uniques with 0LP cost 800 + 4 x level requirement (from 1200 + 4 x level requirement)
    • Uniques with LP cost 3000 + 1000 x LP^2 + 40 x level requirement (from 4000 + 1500 x LP^2 + 40 x level requirement)
    • Legendaries cost 6000 + 1000 per affix tier + 40 x level requirement (from 8000 + 1500 per affix tier + 40 x level requirement)
    • Exalted items cost 2000 + 200 per T6 affix + 1400 per T7 affix + 400 per Experimental affix tier (from 2500 + 250 per T6 affix + 1500 per T7 affix + 600 per Experimental affix tier)
  • Listing costs remain at 25% of buy costs with a minimum listing cost of 150.

Rank Requirements

  • Measured from previous Rank, not cumulative;
    • Rank 3 requires 2000 reputation (from 3000)
    • Rank 4 requires 7500 reputation (from 11500)
    • Rank 5 requires 20000 reputation (from 37500)
    • Rank 6 requires 40000 reputation (from 75000)
    • Rank 7 requires 70000 reputation (from 125000)
    • Rank 8 requires 110000 reputation (from 200000)
    • Rank 9 requires 180000 reputation (from 300000)
    • Rank 10 requires 320000 reputation (from 500000)
    • Rank 11 requires 500000 reputation (from 750000)
    • Rank 12 requires 800000 reputation (from 1100000)

We will continue to monitor player feedback on these changes, so please let us know how they feel in our Forums, Discord and Reddit.

Loot Lizard Changes

The other big area of excitement we saw from players aside from the Item Faction buffs was the increased access to Unique item drops. So, while the temporary Random Unique Item drop rate buff is being removed, we’re including adjustments to Loot Lizards, bringing the Unique Item drop rate back to similar rates as seen during the event. Patch 1.2 will be introducing many additions that will give players exciting new ways to target desired loot alongside the new content being added at that time, though these changes should help provide more opportunities for Uniques overall, including immediately before patch 1.2 arrives.

We have reduced the overall spawn rate of Loot Lizards, and adjusted the chances for each type of Loot Lizard to spawn, as well as their loot pools to make them more rewarding when you do encounter them for an overall buff.

Updated Loot Lizard occurrence rate changes (values are for level 90+):

  • 4% fewer yellow and purple lizards.
  • 27% fewer blue lizards.
  • 25% more white lizards (the ones with orange beams that give Uniques).
  • 7% more big green lizards.

Other changes:

  • Loot Lizards now wait 40 seconds after last taking damage before burrowing underground to escape (increased from 20 seconds).
  • Lizards drop 2 fewer shards on average.
  • Yellow, purple, and green lizards drop slightly more Exalted items than before.
  • White lizards drop slightly more Unique items at level 60+.

Event Cosmetic Reward

As promised from Yulia, your efforts in quelling the uprising are being rewarded with a unique event cosmetic. While the Immortal Emperor was busy lashing out at his failing Loyalists, Yulia was able to access his personal stash, and commandeer his very crown for you.

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This cosmetic can be acquired by visiting the MTX shop in-game and redeeming it to your cosmetics inventory (for no cost). As with all cosmetics, this cosmetic is currently only available in Online mode.

Continuing to 1.2

One of the changes we’re making internally in preparation of 1.2 is upgrading our Unity engine from 2019 to 2021, this gives our teams a lot more development tools and features to work with. The engine upgrade will be releasing before 1.2, however with such a significant code change, this means the end of the event patch will be the last patch for a short while. To be clear, today’s patch will not be the last patch before 1.2. Patches will be on hold until we can release the engine upgrade, and not have to replicate changes to the 2019 version in order to release them to the live client.

This will of course mean things will feel a bit quiet on the development side while we’re hard at work behind the scenes, so we’re also going to be stepping up our communication even further with a whole host of posts coming before 1.2. This includes our new Eterra Monthly newsletter, blog posts covering what different departments are up to and interviewing team members, as well as blog posts covering features coming in Season 2!

That’s right, we’ve also heard the feedback regarding the naming for our major content patches (eg. 1.2) and will as of this very moment, in this very sentence, at this very time of the year, localized entirely within our community, be changing that naming convention to Seasons, starting with patch 1.2 being referred to as Season 2. While we may still use the patch number in specific places, we hope this convention change to Seasons will help to clear up misunderstandings regarding what is a Major content patch, and expected to be the start of a fresh Cycle.

Join us later this week for our next blog post as we talk about the Music of Eterra, and have a QA session with our Lead Composer, Erik Desiderio.

Until then Travelers,

May Gregory the Grole grant you safe travels as you protect Eterra

about 1 month ago - /u/EHG_Kain - Direct link

Originally posted by Spendinit

All great changes. There was one thing in particular, though, that jumped out at me the second I read it. "Patch 1.2 will be introducing many additions that will give players exciting new ways to target desired loot " I would love to hear a little more about this lol

Haha, for sure! We wanted to mention that we have more systems coming, but not quite ready to share the details on them. Keep an eye out for when we start posting more detailed information about Season 2!

about 1 month ago - /u/EHG_Kain - Direct link

Originally posted by StudentOfMind

Why did you end up going with the term "Season" instead of "Cycle"? The game is about Time, I thought "Cycle 2, Cycle 3, Cycle 4..." had a nice thematic ring to it, and would actually fit into the lore of the End of Time. I imagine because Season is more generic and easily identifiable?

Also, further feedback, it's not a big deal since the event was so short and it seems a lot of the modifiers are rolling into the base game somewhat, but please don't run temporary loot/drop buffs during seasons. If I wasn't able to play during Imperial Uprising, but wanted to play in 1.1.7 now (say I didnt hear about Imperial Uprising until it was too late, or i was busy IRL), it would feel really bad knowing that not only did I miss out on the buff, but that the entire economy has been impacted by those buffs. I'd already be behind as is from starting late, but it'd be even worse since I never got to fight those loyalist packs.

I propose to follow PoE and run these sort of temporary events in temporary seasons. Once the event ends everything goes into standard and the regular Season is left unimpacted. Otherwise, ensure temporary events have no gameplay impact.

Really sweet MTX reward though, thank you for that

Why did you end up going with the term "Season" instead of "Cycle"? The game is about Time, I thought "Cycle 2, Cycle 3, Cycle 4..." had a nice thematic ring to it, and would actually fit into the lore of the End of Time. I imagine because Season is more generic and easily identifiable?

Because our content is released to both Legacy and Cycle, Online and Offline, there is a distinction between the "Cycle" game mode, which is a fresh start typically coinciding with the release of a major content addition, and the Season, which is (now) the term for the new major content release. This separation would make less sense if new content was exclusive to the fresh start environment, as it is in some other games.

about 1 month ago - /u/EHG_Kain - Direct link

Originally posted by TheGingr

Do we have any timeline for season 2 starting?

Season 2 is slated for Q1 2025

about 1 month ago - /u/EHG_Kain - Direct link

Originally posted by StudentOfMind

So let me ask this since I'm still vaguely confused. PoE has league content, core game content updates and balance passes. Everything gets captured in a patch. League content is specific to the league, but core game content and balance passes impact both the league and standard play.

In that context, what would a "cycle" be considered and what would a "Season" be considered? Would "Patch" be retired?

"Cycle" is the game mode. When we use the term "Cycle", we're specifically referring to the fresh start environment.

"Season" is the event of releasing a major content addition to the game, as well as the duration for which that specific new content is the latest major content, before the next Major Content patch is released.

"Patch" is the set of file changes, or changelog being released to the game. In reference to a Season, this would be a Major Content Patch. In addition to Major Content Patches, there are also regular patches (the ones we release weekly following the start of a Season), and Hotfix patches.