Is Last Epoch worth playing now?

Zizaran shares his first impressions regarding Last Epoch 1.1 Harbingers of Ruin.

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[alifarhadi]

Price checking is such a massive pain that after the first couple of hours you just flood the market with random stuff and random prices and hope you sell something

[martinjennings]

I agree really positive changes going forward and will continue to get better. The biggest thing they need to solve is the echos themselves are really inconsistent both in terms of difficulty and mobs. you get ones with way too many elites and one with zero eiltes. I know its on the table for 1.3 but they could make a few small adjustments to make improve them next league and also fuck the spire ones. Having to stop and interact with a league mechanic while being sniped across map sucks so much.

[Yonder]

You also know that it's an Arena when the name of the thing is "Arena". 🙂

[ericsuper]

If you already bought the game, play it. If you haven't, it's a good middle ground between PoE and D4 with extremely responsive and involved devs, an active community, very interesting systems, some of the best class fantasy in an ARPG since D2, and a lot of future potential.
If you're gonna put more than 50 hours into Cycle 1, just play circle of fortune and embrace the solo ARPG gameplay (HC or SC, both are unique and fun), and get at least to the new pinnacle boss. The cycle has a good amount of the problems he mentioned, but a lot of those pale in comparison to the massively positive endgame changes. Clicking a button for +200 stability, nobody is getting above like 15k ward anymore, masteries feel more balanced (Forgeguard is even almost meta now!), new faction/league mechanic is very cool and very, very powerful at all stages of the game, anything from level 7 to t7 intelligence red rings. Oh, and double shield is a thing. Getting to max rank is now faster and the ranks feel better to earn, dozens of new items and some new base types, new builds, all kinds of new stuff.

[MIG]

Oh, big +1 on a unique item tab. That hadn't crossed my mind yet actually but it would really help solve some tab management (read: hoarding) issues that I have.

[MiniPiez]

Already seeing huge iimprovements from 1.0 to 1.1 props to the devs, I think in a year or two this game will have many more players and will be even more fun.

[Disciple_]

The poison cyclone nemesis can be scary for melee

[Centripital]

That "thing" that's missing is each monolith does not have a visual identity.

In PoE when you enter any map (ex, Burial Chambers), you know what that map tileset looks like, and roughly what the zone feels like. It has an identity.

All monoliths in LE have no identity. Tilesets in each monolith are completely randomized so it's hard to build an association with each region. Each monolith feels like a Diablo 3 Rift, random tileset, random mobs, random everything.

I'd love to see each Monolith use similar tilesets, keep the random echo objectives and random layouts, and semi-randomize monsters in each monolith. Make the snow monolith have snow tileset. Make the fire monolith have fire tileset. Make the machine monolith have machine tileset.

[eggsnbacon]

I feel like the main thing that is missing is simply incentives for playing.

Unlike games like PoE, there are no rewards to push for in a cycle of LE. You're basically just playing for the fun of playing, which only lasts for so long. It's the main reason why so many players/streamers start strong and taper off. Until they implement cycle rewards, this trend will continue and the game will always just be the game to hold you over until the next PoE league.

I look forward to when they inevitably add these rewards, as I'm having a blast this cycle!

[lvx]

I've been enjoying LE quite a bit. They're on a pretty awesome trajectory it seems.

[MrKippers]

Last Epoch just got one of the best ARPG patches ever. A lot of pain points from the 1.0 release have been wiped or diminished significantly. A fun and simple league mechanic. And a definitive endgame goal for players to reach. The new worst problem I have with this 1.1 patch is right after entering empowered monos.

Before 1.1, you'd go grab your grand blessings for player power and then start pushing corruption on your main timeline. You're stuck at 100-200 corruption(c) for a long time since you can't guarantee the blessing you want. So near the end of the blessing grind, you're blasting content that doesn't come close to challenging you. It gets dull quick.

Now because of the harbingers, that time of boredom is extended. You need to push upwards of 300c to make the timeline harbinger show up *and* hope you get your grand blessing on that first kill. If either of these desync, now you're in the awkward situation of "Do I move onto the next mono w/o my blessing to kill the next harbinger faster? Or keep grinding for the blessing I'm missing?".

Granted, the corruption climb itself is way faster. You can go from 100c to 500c in the blink of an eye compared to last patch. You can fast track just about every mono mechanic now, except finding Orobyss. The problem is you need corruption for the timeline harbinger to appear, aka finding Orobyss. If there was a way to travel to Orobyss on a fresh timeline everytime, that would remove this issue. It'd also cut down on the time spent at 100c so you can spend more time on challenging content.

Edit: The 1.1.3 patch added a corruption catchup mechanic. Good turnaround on EHG to add this in 2 weeks. Now the biggest issue I have is arena monoliths being inferior to normal monoliths. All it needs is numerical changes. More stability, more monster density, and maybe nemesis encounters(but I do understand the risk of people resetting arena monos on repeat to grind nemesis items).

[dethdelr]

Spawn every monolith should be mandatory. Agreed

[Caine]

Put 100 hours into the game as a HCSS really nice game. Haven’t watched a guide for build and still able to play monoliths and enjoy the game without needing POE level of guides. Worth checking out if yoh wanna play a good game with consistent updates. Side note. Circle of fortune for the win.

[ren]

On 1.0 i got to lvl 100 on my Necro and got 3 alts to lvl 90+ to play around with different builds for fun. This patch i quit without even reaching lvl 90 on my main. Really not feeling the game for some reason, even though i really liked Nemesis and new uniques.

[AKristian]

Nemesis should definitely go to the core system. It makes early and midgame a more worrhy journey, not just the urge to reach the endgame for best gear ❤ And very very good for Alt characters enjoyers.

[Productive_Chad]

I disagree the monos is a pain in the ass. Having to grind corruption on every timeline is ass. That shit needs to change

[JVL]

Definitely agree. The game is on the rise. Their 1.3/1.4 endgame rework is gonna be necessary though. There's a whole lot that Last Epoch does extremely well but the monolith loop is lacking. The crafting, boss fights, build diversity, uniques, gearing system as a whole are absolutely great. Dungeons, Arena (ugh...) and Monolith loop need a rework.

[Aproximal]

The only thing that venomously pisses me off - The campaign ending. The game is 1.0. That means complete enough to launch. I get that in this day and age, that can sometimes means corner cuts. FINISHING YOUR DAMN STORY SHOULDN'T BE A CUT CORNER. And it upsets me SO much because I got actually invested in the cool idea they wanted to tell. It is a super fun game. It's classes are cool. Skills are amazing. All that is good...but god damn. A basic thing shouldn't be "a later date" deal.

[EricSpr]

As a casual I love the new power of uniques. It seems like most builds use quite a few and it’s fun to target farm for them it gives me many more hours of enjoyment in the game

[Wulfred]

if u start today. dont play merchant guild
after gold exploit market is dead for casuals