[2019] Beta 0.7.3 Patch Notes

Respec Systems

• You can now remove individual points from a skill’s specialization tree.
  • Each point removed decreases the skill’s level by 1. You level up the skill as normal to regain the points removed.
  • You cannot remove a point that would invalidate other nodes you have taken in the tree. If you want to remove a point that other nodes depend on, you need to remove the dependants first.
  • The Despecialization process has not changed for switching which skills you are investing points into.
• Reworked the system for passive respecs
  • You can now respec any passive point, if the following requirements are met:
    • You must meet the requirements for all nodes you have after the respec occurs (e.g. if you have points in a node that requires level 15 in a mastery then you must maintain at least 15 points allocated to nodes with a lower requirement in the same tree).
    • If you have unlocked the mastery classes then you must maintain at least 20 points in the base class when respeccing.
  • The gold cost for respecing a passive point from a node now depends on the number of points you have invested in the node, the level requirement of the node, and whether the node is in a mastery class.
  • Gold cost no longer increases based on how many points you have refunded previously.
  • Respecs must still be performed at a Chronomancer.
• It is now possible for us to grant free respecs when a skill specialization tree or set of passives is changed in an update. This will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
• Characters brought forward from previous updates will have the correct number of passive and skill points, but they will be unallocated.

Mechanics

• Base mana is now 50 at level 1 (down from 100), but characters now gain 0.5 mana per level (scaling to 100 at level 100).
• Hardcore characters are now converted to softcore on death.
  • They lose the hardcore tag when they die.
  • Their progress no longer affects the hardcore ladder after they die.
  • They have access to the softcore stash instead of the hardcore stash after they die.
• Adjusted the bonuses that “magic” rarity enemies get.
  • Now: 80% more health, 35% more damage, 20% more item drops.
  • Previously: 120% more health, 40% more damage, 25% more item drops.
• Protections on enemies now scale to maintain the same mitigation percentage when their health is scaled from rarity or area level. Most enemies don’t have protections.
• Masochist and Solo Challenge can now be disabled for a character in the settings window. They cannot be re-enabled once turned off.
• AI range calculations now take the size of their targets into account. This should prevent minions running into large enemies rather than attacking them, and similar issues.

Buffs and Debuffs

• Buffs and debuffs on your character now appear as icons right above the action bar.
• Each effect has a border to indicate its duration, in addition to a number counter.
• Buffs have circular icons with a green border.
• Debuffs have hexagonal icons with a red border.
• Effects with multiple stacks will have the number displayed at the bottom right of their icon.
• Mousing over an icon will display a tooltip with the name and details of the effect.
• Not all effects currently appear, but the most common ones do. We will be adding more.

Campaign

• Implemented the sixth chapter of story content, including new zones, monsters and quests.
• Revamped the boss fights with Admiral Harton and Spymaster Zerrick, including new models, animations, skills, sounds and voice acting.
• Moved the encounter with Spymaster Zerrick to Titan’s Canyon and adjusted the zone’s layout.
• Reworked Maj’elka into two separate zones.
• Remodeled the Oracle’s Abode.
• Adjusted the enemy types present in Maj’elka and Titan’s Canyon.
• Added a new side quest to the Majasan Desert.
• Added the Wraith Caller to the Wraith Dunes. This is an imperial construct that can be destroyed to stop the wraiths from spawning.
• Updated chain models in zones close to the Temple of Eterra.
• Sheltered Wood is now accessed from Council Chambers after you reach the Lower District.

Social

• Added the Social panel, opened with H. (S, O, C, I, A, L and F were taken)
• You can now send whisper messages to other players with a variety of commands, followed by a space and their username. (/tell, /msg, /w, @, /dm, /message)
• Usernames with spaces have been converted to use underscores so message commands work correctly.
• You can now add other users as friends. One user sends the other a request, and if the request is accepted, the two become friends.
• You can now set a status, which will be visible to people looking at their friends lists.
• You can now block other users, preventing you from seeing their messages.
• Improved the visibility of chat text.
• Increased the character limit of chat messages to 220 (from 140).
• You now login to the game using email, which avoids what you use to login (previously username) being as public. You can choose to hide what you enter into the email field (like the password field does by default).

Skills

• Summon Skeleton is now two skills: Summon Skeleton and Summon Skeleton Mage.
• Added a skill tree for Forge Strike.
• Added a skill tree for Frenzy Totem.
• Added a skill tree for Ring of Shields.
• Added a skill tree for Soul Feast.
• Added a skill tree for Spriggan Form.
• Added a skill tree for Summon Scorpion.
• Added a new skill tree for Summon Skeleton.
• Added a skill tree for Summon Skeleton Mage.
• Added a skill tree for Tempest Strike.
• Changed Companion Activatable Abilities.
  • Each one is now an instant cast skill.
  • Wolf - Howl
    • Now grants 50% increased damage (up from 10%).
    • Now also grants frenzy (20% increased attack and cast speed).
    • Increased area of effect by 96%.
    • Lasts 3 seconds (down from 6).
    • Mana cost is now 40 (up from 18).
    • Cooldown is now 10 seconds (up from 4).
    • Can no longer stack.
  • Bear - Bear Roar
    • Now taunts enemies instead of fearing them.
    • Now heals the Bear for 50 health for each enemy taunted.
    • Increased area of effect by 125%.
    • Mana cost is now 40 (up from 18).
    • Cooldown is now 12 seconds (up from 6).
  • Sabertooth - Flurry Swipe
    • Increased base damage by 400%.
    • Increased area of effect by 125%.
    • Now has 50% reduced added damage scaling.
    • Mana cost is now 36 (up from 18).
    • Cooldown is now 10 seconds (up from 6).
  • Scorpion - Venom Nova
    • Now also releases a spiral of poisoning projectiles.
    • Poison from Poison Nova has 100% increased effect (up from 25%).
    • Mana cost is now 45 (up from 18).
    • Cooldown is now 10 seconds (up from 6).
  • Spriggan - Rejuvenating Wind
    • Now restores 150 health (up from 90).
    • Now also restores 15 mana.
    • Mana cost is now 36 (up from 18).
    • Cooldown is now 12 seconds (up from 6).
• Aura of Decay now reduces poison damage taken by 45% while active (down from 50%).
• Bone Golem
  • Now has a 15% chance to retaliate with Bone Nova when hit (previously they retaliated after taking damage equal to 12.5% of their maximum health).
  • The Bone Hail node now gives +5% chance to retaliate per point (from 5% reduced health threshold for retaliation), but can only have 5 points allocated (down from 8).
  • The Flight of the Femurs node no longer increases the health threshold for retaliation, but now increases the projectile speed by only 25% (from 50%).
  • Added a new node, "Betrayal", which triples the chance for Bone Nova retaliation when a Bone Golem is hit by its summoner or one of their allies.
• Changed Eterra’s Blessing mana cost to 32 (from 40).
• Stats from your equipped shield now apply to the shields summoned by Ring of Shields.
• Shield Rush’s movement speed now scales with increased movement speed.
• Spriggans now gain 4% increased healing effectiveness per point of attunement.
• Tempest Strike
  • The Northern Windl now has a chance to freeze.
  • Adjusted the base damage of spells so that their damage is higher and more similar to each other (with cold being lower to compensate for it having a larger AoE and a chance to freeze).
  • Adjusted skill description.
• Increased the radius of Werebear Form’s Roar by 50%.
• Clarified the tooltips of many augment tree nodes that add attribute scaling.

Passives

• Acolyte
  • Added a node which grants your minions increased armour and protections per character level.
  • Unnatural Preservation now grants 8 necrotic and poison protection (up from 7), but can only have 4 points allocated (down from 5).
• Beastmaster
  • Healing Bond now also increases companion revive range by 10% per point.
  • The Chase now also increases companion revive speed by 6% per point.
  • Partner now also increases companion revive speed by 10% per point.
• The Mage’s Elemental Cunning now also grants 5% increased elemental damage.
• Necromancer
  • Added a new node that increases your maximum number of Skeletons by one.
  • Added a new node that increases your maximum number of Skeletons by one per point, but reduces their health…
  • Added a new node that increases your maximum number of Skeleton Mages by one.
  • Added a new node that grants ward on minion death and ward retention.
  • Added a new node that increases your minions health and armour and makes them reflect a flat amount of damage to attackers.
  • Added a new node that grants you intelligence and grants your minions increased critical strike chance.
  • Added a new node that grants your minions critical strike multiplier and chill chance.
  • Added a new node that gives a chance per point for minions to die instead of you if you take lethal damage, which also increases your minions’ fire damage and bow damage.
  • Added a new node that gives you and your minions a buff on potion use, which grants health gained on hit and increases attack and cast speed. Also grants flat health.
  • Removed Bone Brewer (flat health, gain armour on potion use).
  • Removed Grave fragments (increased minion health, armour, and physical damage).
  • Removed Reconstruction (increased health regen on potion use).
  • Removed Sharpened Bones (minions have increased crit chance, but take increased physical damage).
  • Removed Sharpened Souls (minions have additional crit multi, but take increased necrotic damage).
  • Removed Taste of Death (physical and necrotic penetration).
  • Removed Undead Intellect (intelligence and chance to take less damage on minion skill use).
  • Removed Undead Devotion (chance for minions to die instead of you).
  • Removed Ward Vortex (increased ward retention and increased ward gained from Wisp Weaver).
  • Blood Armour can now have 8 points allocated (down from 10)
  • Empty The Graves no longer requires you to have used a minion skill recently, but grants 4 armour per point (down from 5), and can only have 4 points allocated (down from 5)
  • River of Bones now also increases your minions freeze chance.
  • Wisp Weaver now grants a 13% chance per point to gain ward (up from 7%) and can have 8 points allocated (up from 5).
  • Rearranged a lot of nodes and connections.
  • As an experiment this tree has many more connections than other mastery trees.
• The Sentinel’s Retribution counterattack now has a 0.2 second cooldown.
• Sorcerer
  • Added a new node that grants chill chance and a chance to chill attackers when hit (the chance to chill is doubled for cold skills).
  • Added a new node that grants increased spell damage (doubled if you have used a high cost skill recently).
  • Added a new node that grants a chance to cast spark nova on distant enemies that you crit.
  • Added a new node that grants increased elemental damage, elemental protection, and stun chance with elemental spells.
  • Added a new node that grants ward equal to your intelligence when you use a potion.
  • Removed the Brilliance nodes.
  • Removed Serum Visions (increased ailment duration).
  • Removed Reaction Point (mana cost reduction on lightning crit).
  • The nodes that grant penetration for a single element (e.g. fire penetration) now give 40 penetration (up from 30) and also grant health leech for damage of that type.
  • Arcane Avalanche no longer increases stun chance, but now freezes nearby enemies when a hit leaves you below half health. It also now grants 25% increased freeze chance per point (up from 15%).
  • Arcane Current now grants 50% increased shock effect per point (from 30%), but can only have 8 points allocated (from 10).
  • Arcane Insight’s buff now grants 15% increased spell damage and ward retention (from 15% increased elemental damage).
  • Crackling Precision now grants 10% increased crit chance, doubled for lightning skills (from 12% increased crit chance for lightning skills).
  • Cryomancer now gives 15% increased freeze chance per point instead of 2% chill chance per point.
  • Dragon Breath now goes in the opposite direction by default and the direction can be reversed by Mirror Breath (just like Dragon Mage).
  • Inferno now gives 8% increased elemental damage over time and 2% increased ignite duration (from 12% increased fire damage over time).
  • Mana Shell now gives 4 mana per point (up from 3).
  • Warder now grants 10 ward per point when you hit an enemy with a fire, cold, or lightning spell (with a separate 10 second cooldown for each element), but no longer grants health or ward retention.
  • The vitality node now also grants 4% increased chill, shock, and ignite duration per point (from 3 armour per point).
  • Many node positions have changed, especially in the top half of the tree.
• The Shaman’s Heorot’s Path node now gives 30% increased freeze chance per point (up from 25%) and can have 10 points allocated (up from 8).
• The Spellblade’s Shiver Armour node now also grants 20% chance to chill attackers when hit per point.

Items

• Added 4 new uniques.
  • Cinder Song, a wand.
  • Hollow Finger, a ring.
  • Morditas’ Reach, a polearm.
  • Orian’s Eye, an amulet.
• Bone Harvester now also grants 9 Intelligence.
• Added a new suffix for 2h weapons that adds to all your attributes (strength, dexterity, intelligence, attunement, and vitality).
• Added a Chance to Shock Attackers suffix that appears on Shields and Relics.
• Added a Flat Damage Reflected to Attackers prefix that appears on Body Armour and Shields.
• Added a Percent Damage Reflected prefix that appears on Body Armour and Shields.
  • The amount of damage reflected is calculated after your damage mitigations are applied. The damage reflected cannot be mitigated by enemies.
• Added a Critical Strike Avoidance suffix for gloves, helmets, boots, rings, and belts.
  • If you have 20% Critical Strike Avoidance means crits against you have a 20% chance to be downgraded to regular hits.
  • You can get 100% crit avoidance from 3 well rolled T5 crit avoidance suffixes.
• Added Mana suffix
  • Increased the values at higher tiers.
  • Can now roll on gloves and helmets.
  • Increased drop rate due to the changes to the mana system.
• Buffed freeze chance affixes
  • Increased the values of the Increased Freeze Chance affix. Values are about 60% higher at tier 5.
  • Increased the values of the Freeze Chance and Cold Protection affix. Values are 100% higher at tier 5. Cold protection values were not changed.
  • The Freeze Chance and Cold Protection affix can now also roll on gloves.
• The "Increased Health" and "Increased Armour and Protections" suffixes can no longer roll on gloves.
• Reduced the gold dropped by each stack of gold by about 30%.
• Adjusted item cost formula. The new formula takes affix tiers and base type level requirement into account so late game items will cost more gold. Different item types also cost different amounts of gold. For example, rings and amulets are more expensive than other items.

UI

• Updated the login screen with a new background, new information and the ability to change settings.
• Added new portraits to many NPC conversations.
• Updated the text for enemy names and modifiers.
  • Made it much easier to read, as was done with other text in 0.7.2.
  • Normal enemies have white names, while Magic enemies have blue names, Rare enemies have gold names, and Unique enemies (i.e. bosses) have pale gold names.
• Item comparison tooltips now show the change in attack rate (for weapons) alongside the other stat changes.
• Added new icons for Skeletons and Skeleton Mages.
• Improved minimap icons for minions.
• Portals now appear on the minimap.
• Added on hover glows to dialog options.
• Updated the UI for loading screens.
• Added a “Defense Stats” tab to the character sheet.
• More stats are now shown in the character sheet
  • Critical Strike Avoidance
  • Health Gained on Hit
  • Health Gained on Melee Hit
  • Health Gained on Kill
  • Health Gained on Block
  • Damage Leeched as Health
  • Melee Damage Leeched as Health
  • Spell Damage Leeched as Health
  • Damage Dealt to Attackers
  • Percent Damage Reflected
  • Maximum Companions
  • Increased Companion Revive Speed
  • Increased Companion Revive Range
  • Chance to Shock Attackers
  • Increased Healing Effectiveness
  • Increased Cooldown Recovery Speed
• Improved the appearance of the FPS display.
• The color of the FPS display is now changed by pressing shift + f11.

Sound

• Added a new music track to the title screen.
• Added a new music track for sidezones in Chapter 2.
• Every category of item (i.e. bladed weapon, blunt weapon, armour, jewellry, crafting material) now has its own set of sounds for being dropped by enemies.
• Added more sounds for melee weapons.
• Added a new sound for allocating passive and skill points.
• Added a new sound for using a potion.
• Added new crafting sound effects.
• Added a new Primalist Swipe sound.
• Replaced old hit sound effects for Acolyte minions.
• Added a new sound for summoning wraiths.
• Added new sounds for entering and exiting Reaper Form.
• Added a sound effect to the sliding door in The Oracle’s Abode.
• Removed sound effects for consuming corpses with Exhume. (Exhume still has a sound effect).
• Balanced sounds for Primalist and Acolyte abilities.
• Turned down combat dialogue lines slightly.
• Turned down void enemy death sound effects.
• Fixed Wandering Spirits rapidly repeating its sound.
• Fixed some dialogue not being affected by the Voice Acting sound slider.

Performance

• Implemented better compression and storage techniques for most textures and UI pieces. This results in less disk space being used, and less memory usage.
• Improved the performance of overlooks in zones (especially in the Imperial Era Ulatri Cliffs).
• Improved the performance of many particle effects by removing unneeded elements.
• Improved load times of many zones by simplifying colliders where possible.
• Rewrote the system for detecting what targets each ability hits. This should improve the performance of most abilities, player or enemy.
• Improved the performance of fading objects that block the camera.
• Improved the performance of skills that cast multiple smaller parts (ex. Charged Ground, Meteor Shower, Flamethrower).
• Improved the performance of move-to-attack abilities.
• Improved the performance of levelling up (less delay).
• Improved the performance of breakable objects.
• Significantly reduced the poly count of spider enemies.
• Reduced the poly count of many tiles in levels.
• Reduced extraneous log file entries.

Visuals

• Tweaked town portal visuals.
• Alric now has his own portal effect.
• Upgraded Tempest Strike’s visuals.
• Updated Manifest Weapon’s visuals.
• Added new visuals for Ice Thorns when converted to physical.
• Added a new visual for the end of Rebuke.
• Replaced the Acolyte’s wraiths with a new model.
• Added ragdolling to several types of enemies and adjusted it for enemies who already had ragdolling.
• Shield Throw, Hammer Throw, Axe Thrower, Dark Blade, and Voidfused enemies now use updated weapon models.
• The player light can no longer cast shadows.
• Hit flash intensity for larger enemies is now reduced linearly with radius, rather than quadratically (i.e. hit flash intensity reduces much less drastically as enemy size increases).
• Fixed some issues with the hit flash system that prevented it from looking as intended.
• Improved visibility of zone transition labels.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where Bone Golem’s Flight of the Femurs node did not cause bone nova to pierce.
• Fixed a bug with Elemental Nova where taking certain nodes in addition to the Luminaire node would cause the skill to stop dealing damage.
• Fixed Manifest Armour not taking half damage from all sources, like other minions.
• Fixed Mark For Death’s Bone Prison node adding a cooldown of 31 seconds instead of 20.
• Fixed Mark For Death’s Bone Prison being labelled Frenzy Totem on mouseover.
• Fixed the maximum for Reaper’s Mark scaling incorrectly, resulting in a much higher cap than intended.
• Fixed a bug where enemies hit by one of Tempest Strike’s effects could not be hit by any of the other effects triggered by that Tempest Strike.
• Fixed Tempest Strike’s physical spell counting as a melee attack instead of a spell.
• Fixed Tempest Strike’s cold spell dealing partially physical damage.
• Fixed Tempest Strike’s effects playing incorrect sound effects.
• Fixed a bug where Sabertooth’s Camouflage node did not cause the Sabertooth’s dodge rating to scale with your dexterity.
• Fixed Sabertooth’s Flurry Swipe only being able to hit a single enemy 2 times, instead of 3.
• Fixed ground effects projecting onto the Sabertooth.
• Fixed the Scorpion playing Wolf sounds when using abilities.
• Fixed a bug where companions other than wolves would not retain names after zone transitions.
• Fix a bug where move-to-attack commands could sometimes cause the player to move slowly or awkwardly when close to the target.
• Fixed a bug where using a skill with multiple projectiles on an enemy at very close range could destroy all the projectiles even though only one hit.
• Fixed a bug where skills that cast multiple parts could cast more slowly than intended at low framerates (especially if they were supposed to cast particularly quickly).
• Fixed the Lich’s Survival of the Cruel node granting too much leech.
• Fixed the Spellblade’s Shiver Armour not proccing as it should.
• Fixed a bug where ward did not have any effect on stun chance when you had negative stun avoidance.
• Fixed the health and mana numbers at the bottom of the screen and in the character sheet not matching due to different rounding.
• Fixed a bug where scaling decimal values in tooltips were displayed incorrectly for some people depending on system locale.
• Fixed the affix range display on item tooltips being incorrect for some hybrid affixes when the item had an affix effect modifier (for example, rings have no affix effect modifier but affix values on one-handed weapons are 50% higher).
• Fixed a bug where the item comparison tooltip did not show the attack rate of the equipped item.
• Fixed affix shards being displayed incorrectly while being hovered over.
• Fixed Nodachi being rotated incorrectly.
• Fixed Blood Scorpions creating blood particles after death.
• Fixed Phrax enemies not outlining correctly.
• Fixed a rock blocking the camera in Broken Hills.
• Fixed a wall blocking the camera in the Temple of Eterra.
• Fixed some crates being inside a rock in the Shattered Valley.
• Fixed a chest in Forlorn Streets being inaccessible.
• Fixed the player floating above the ground slightly in Ultatri Cliffs.
• Fixed the waypoint being off-center in the Temple of Eterra.
• Fixed stashes in the End of Time not having waypoint icons.
• Fixed a bug where challenge modes were enabled before you had beaten the campaign on one character.
• Fixed an issue preventing the ladder from updating.

No, it’s an entirely new node.

We’ll look forward to your feedback! It was a balance of looking distinct and being visible on all backgrounds.

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

The new story content starts in the Desert Waystation, which is the zone you go to before returning to End of Time.

On Standalone you need to run the Launcher.exe (which should be a folder up from where Last Epoch.exe is). You should always run the game using the launcher.