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Summon Skeleton was originally implemented at the conclusion of Last Epoch’s pre-alpha stage of development, and was one of the largest specialization trees ever created. We have periodically altered the tree as we attempted to fit options to unlock additional skeleton types, options to remove skeleton types, options to enhance the various skeletons, options to increase your total skeletons cap, and other nodes within a single tree.
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In a future patch, we will divide Summon Skeleton into two distinct skills. Summon Skeleton will summon skeletons associated with physical damage. Skeleton Warriors and Skeleton Archers will be summonable by default. A new skill, Summon Skeleton Mage will, as the name might suggest, allow you to summon Skeleton Mages by default.
Both skills will have specialization trees which allow you to add additional skeleton types to their pool, and to remove skeleton types from their pool. Nodes designed to enhance the skeletons themselves will benefit from being more focused, due to fewer skeleton types being available. Both trees will also allow you to increase the number of skeletons you can summon with their respective skills. Our current plan is for Summon Skeleton to have a default cap of 3, and for Summon Skeleton Mage to have a default cap of 2. Please note these are provisional numbers offered prior to us playtesting internally, and are thus likely to change as we continue to iterate. Nevertheless, we wanted to share our current plans with you.
At Eleventh Hour Games we believe that most ARPGs in the market today focus on either being intuitive and approachable, or on offering depth and complexity. With Last Epoch we intend to compete on both counts. To restrict skeleton summoning to a single specialization tree would mean either limiting the options provided, or making an unwieldy, cumbersome tree which fails to meet our standards. Dividing Summon Skeleton into multiple skills allows us to deliver on the customization we wish to offer, without the baggage of false choice afforded by options incapable of contributing to your chosen build.
We’ll show you previews of the two specialization trees closer to their release when they are being iterated on less frequently. Until then, we wanted you to know not only that the issue of Summon Skeleton’s current iteration not being ideal was on our radar, but also how we plan to address it. We have discussed this extensively internally and this has been our preferred solution for some time. We look forward to having more details to share with you!
