I thought it would be fun to try and come up with 3 dungeon ideas for LE. Without any expectations, just for the fun of it. Let’s see what you guys think.

My guidelines were:

- More player choice / agency and less “brain dead” monster slaying

- Some originality to the ideas. Not just copy – paste from other games.

- Reasonable efforts to develop, not too farfetched.

- Good fit to the current style / gameplay of the game

IDEA 1 : Build your own boss

In short - You choose what 5 abilities the final boss will have

In this dungeon the player goes through several stages (lest say 5). Ti make it easier to develop the areas can be similar to a regular map area with monsters to slay, nothing too fancy. Those areas are completed after killing enough monsters, reaching a door at the end or something else… doesn’t matter.
After every area there is a choice to make – which ability (choose 1 of 3) will the boss at the end receive? In this way after 5 areas, you would have “build” your own boss to fight that we include the mechanics / abilities you have chosen.

IDEA 1 : Build your own boss

EXAMPLE:

As I have tried to visualize with this image, in this example we have done the 5 areas and chosen 5 abilities, for example:

1. Boss summons a powerful bone golem
2. Casts a massive AOE void spell
3. Casts frozen wave
4. Regular attacks have “some crazy number” % chance to ignite
5. Casts bolts dealing high necrotic damage

All those spells should be massive deal, not just something that you can easily ignore. Otherwise there is no point, people will just click whatever and get bored fast.

For example Ability 4 in the example – “Regular attacks ignite” should give you some crazy number of ignite stacks – 30, 50, 80 ?? Something that will take 33% or more HP of a character with good defenses.

Choices should really matter. And if you pick 5 OP spells that synergies well with eachather it should be an almost impossible boss to beat.

Best strategy to deal with this dungeon would be to choose spells that your build can handle. You have a lot of quick HP recovery / reg – you choose the ignite. You have a good movement skill that you can cast often – choose the massive AOE void spell (option 2 in the example) with the idea to easily dodge it. And so on.

IDEA 2: A helping hand

In short - In the dungeon you have a companion / minion and you choose which 5 abilities it will have (both defensive and offensive)

The companion can be some kind of monster. Even reusing a model that is already in the game, like on of those giant beetles would be fine.

In the very beginning and after each area you choose what to add to your companion. The monsters are very hard and get insanely hard by the end. So without OP abilities for your companion, you shouldn’t be able to succeed.

The map layout is just a relatively straight corridor with monsters attacking you as you and the companion approaches them.

The minion can’t be killed, moves with OK speed, goes and attacks monsters with you (with somewhat weak regular attacks). Thus, your job is to make him stronger and much more useful to you. It will be there with you when you fight the boss as well!

There should be some mechanic that prevents you from rushing forward without the companion.

Choice between both offensive and defensive abilities

IDEA 2: A helping hand

EXAMPLE

Lets see an example what this minion can have (as already made choices. Total of 5, with 1 of 3 presented on every choice)

1. Strong regeneration aura for you and 50% effect on your minions
2. The companion gets a large AOE attack that shred (a lot of) armor
3. A powerful AOE lightning storm that is cast manually by the player with the “D” keyboard key with long (60 sec?) cooldown. Capable of clear almost the whole screen
4. Slow aura with 50% effect on the boss
5. A strong single target toxic / poison attack. Will help a lot with the boss, but puts you in danger as it is almost useless for the big groups of hard monsters you will have to fight in the hardest last part of the dungeon.

To stress it again – the monsters should be super hard and the companion should really be useful to beat them. For example, you should be swarm from time to time and beg that your “screen clear” ability from part 3 in this example is available. They should be tanky enough so that the armor shred (ability 2 in this example) that the companion applies really help clear them. The slow aura should be noticeable. Something like 50% slow of both movement and attack speed. And so on...

Remember that the choices should help you not only with clearing the monsters, but also with the OP boss at the end, making them even more important.

IDEA 3 : How much will you sacrifice?

In short - A big door with super hard monsters + impossible boss behind it, but also 6 other smaller doors, with each one making the final encounter more possible, but reducing the reward in exchange. You choose how many you do before the big door.

Final idea – here you can go straight to the fun part. If you want you skip all the “choose this and that” and go straight for the final area, which includes tons of monsters and then a big bad boss. All of them, of course, super OP (did you expect something else?)

But this won’t be advisable to do. Almost certainly anyone who tries will be one-shot or won’t have enough damage to clear the area.

What can help you with doing this dungeon is 6 different and much smaller side areas. You can choose how many you want to do 1, 2 or all of them… Every completed area weakens the monsters and the boss substantially.

You know in advance what debuff /nerfs you can apply from each sub-area. Informed decision is important here.

The catch is that with every “weakening” of the final monsters/boss you also sacrifice a bit from your potential reward.

So this is the interesting part – what is the absolute minimum that your build would manage? If you go to the final area (from which there is no turning back) too early – you lose, get nothing. If you overdo it and go too late you will have an easy time but would wonder what kind of rewards you missed because of your suboptimal choice to weaken the monsters and boss too much.

IDEA 3 : How much will you sacrifice?

EXAMPLE

1. Debuff 1 – monsters and boss have substantially reduced armor BUT they no longer drop runes and crafting materials

2. Debuff 2 – monsters and boss can no longer crit BUT boss drops max 1 unique item

3. Debuff 3 – monsters and boss have high % chance to get shock when hit BUT they don’t give any EXP

4. Debuff 4 – monsters and boss have -50% lower fire resist BUT monsters no longer drop any items (boss unaffected)

5. Devbuff 5 – monsters and boss take 50% increased damage from mele attacks BUT boss and monsters no longer drops any exalted items

6. Devbuff 6 – monsters and boss can’t damage your minions BUT monsters and boss drop 33% less items

So in this example obviously nobody would take all 6 debuffs, but almost everybody would take debuff 3 (free shock, and nobody cares about EXP in such a dungeon). And then 1 or 2 more that suit your build.

A necro with fire minions can take both debuff 4 and debuff 6. Seems like a fair trade to me. A necro that have >1000% minion health can even skip debuff 6 and get a full unaffected loot drop from the boss.

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So those were some suggestions I had. Main goal – interesting choices to make and really hard dungeons that can not be just speed ran ignoring their core mechanics.

Would you like to play such dungeon in Last Epoch one day? If you could add just one of them which one, will it be?

Thanks for reading!

p.s. Remember, this is just a fun though experiment. I know that writing a post on Reddit won't magically make the devs develop any of those ideas. I am fine with that😊

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