Last Epoch Harbingers of Ruin: New Changes and Content
Eleventh Hour Games has ended the first Cycle for Last Epoch, now bringing a ton of new features and content for players to chew through. After receiving a ton of player feedback from the community, the game’s second Cycle sees more systems and mechanics coming into play for Harbingers of Ruin. This patch will also see some overhauls and changes to existing systems to provide a far better user experience and accessibility. We will discuss each new mechanic in detail and what it means for Last Epoch.
Central to this patch is the arrival of Aberroth, the servant of Orobyss, and the many Harbingers that follow his command. They further Orobyss’ goal of swallowing every single Timeline into the Void, unmaking Eterra in the process.
Table of Contents
New Class-Agnostic Skill: Evade
Now that most modern ARPGs have a dedicated dodge roll or evade button that adds a measure of skill in boss fights, Last Epoch has followed through with the community’s request for a similar feature. Much like its contemporaries, Last Epoch’s evade skill allows players to easily dodge boss attacks and AoEs. However, this evade does NOT have invulnerability frames, nor does it provide damage mitigation, as players can still take damage while in mid-animation. The Evade will start with two charges, with a four second cooldown
Since this skill will be available to all classes at level 1, Eleventh Hour Games hopes to give players a better experience by having a default movement ability for classes that unlock their traversal skills later. For classes without a powerful traversal skill, the Evade will gradually have more cooldown reduction as their character increases in level. Evade should not be confused with Dodge, as Dodge is a passive stat that determines the likelihood of a character taking damage when hit.
While Evade does not come with its own skill tree, new Affixes will be added to the game that can augment it with new effects and bonuses.
New Enemy Type: Nemesis
Previously, the only endgame provided in Last Epoch was the Shade of Orobyss fight for his Unique loot. After completing his fight in the Empowered Timeline, there was nothing else to do. In order to provide players with boss challenges while still in the leveling process, Harbingers of Ruin has introduced the Nemesis enemy type.
The Nemesis is a boss that will randomly spawn in the level the player is currently in. These bosses will have powerful abilities and will introduce a deterministic loot system once they have been slain.
Interacting with a Nemesis’ corpse will display the loot it will drop and provide three different options: Banish, Challenge, and Empower.
- If the player chooses to Challenge the Nemesis, it will come back to life and fight again. Once its killed again, it will drop all the loot that was shown on the corpse’s menu.
- If the player instead chooses to Banish the Nemesis, this will permanently kill it, but its loot will not drop. This option is for players who want to reroll for a new loot pool from a different Nemesis.
- If the player opts to Empower the Nemesis, not only will it come back to life, but will be filled with rage, making it more powerful the next time you see it. When you choose this option, its loot will also be enhanced with higher Affix Tiers, Legendary Potential, or Forging Potential. This is for players who want to enhance an already powerful loot pool and want to min-max their rewards. Empowering can be done twice at maximum and once the Nemesis is defeated, the next one will be reset to base power.
One unique item that Harbingers can drop is the Egg of the Forgotten. This Egg can be converted into a random Unique item when a player challenges a Nemesis while it’s in the loot pool. Alternatively, the Egg can be replaced with a Unique item in your inventory that has no Legendary Potential or Weaver’s Will. This is a way to invest in a Unique item to make it more powerful through the Empower mechanic through the Nemesis.
The Forgotten Knight Faction, Harbingers, and Aberroth
The Forgotten Knight, previously an NPC with a small role in the story, will now have her own faction that ties into the new Pinnacle boss, Aberroth. To join this faction, players must first clear a level 90 timeline in the Monoliths of Fate. After defeating the boss there, a Harbinger will appear, starting another boss fight. The Harbingers will have their own abilities and skills that truly make them challenging to face. Once you defeat your first Harbinger on an alt account, this will unlock Empowered Timelines for you.
After slaying a Harbinger, players can take its Eye and return to the Forgotten Knight to officially join her faction.
To face Aberroth, leader of the Harbingers, players will need to do an Empowered Timeline and clear each one of them by killing the Harbinger associated with it. The first 10 Harbingers will guarantee a drop of its Eye, which is the currency required to enter the portal to Aberroth’s fight. Once this is done, subsequent Eye drops will be by chance.
Aberroth, much like the Shade of Orobyss, will have different boss mechanics that change depending on the Era that you fight him in. He’ll be available to Online players first, but once defeated, will be available for both Online and Legacy mode.
Overhauls to the Dynamic Damage Resistance System
One major criticism that players had for Last Epoch was the introduction of the Dynamic Damage Resistance system. This essentially provides bosses with a hidden damage resistance stat that scales to a player’s DPS, preventing most bosses from being killed quickly. This system artificially extends boss fights regardless of the build players use.
To make this system more transparent and intuitive, this system is replaced with the Boss Ward system. When players reach certain thresholds of a boss’s health, it will gain a Ward that absorbs damage, which can be seen as a blue highlight on its health bar. This Ward will decay as time passes, accelerating the longer it stays up. The Boss Ward will still incentivize high DPS builds while giving low DPS characters a chance to go past its Ward.
This system will still give bosses enough longevity to unleash their bevy of attacks and mechanics, but it will also provide visual feedback to players, making their mix-max builds more satisfying. Due to this change in damage reductions, bosses will now be more resistant to stun and freeze, preventing them from getting CC’ed too much.
New Glyph: Glyph of Envy
Part of this update is the introduction of the Glyph of Envy. This glyph will have two different effects: First, it will upgrade the current affix that is chosen. However, this will completely reroll all other affixes, implicits, subtype and stats of the item, except for its item type.
For example, if a player uses the Glyph of Envy on a Broadsword to upgrade a Frost Damage affix, that item will turn into a Falchion with a Frost Damage affix. This means that it will remain a sword with Frost Damage, but everything else about the item is significantly different.
The second effect is that the item will be destabilized, which transfers it into the Timeline that you have recently entered. If it affects a Normal TImeline that hasn’t reached full Stability yet, it will be fully stabilized by the time you re-enter it, allowing you to immediately fight the final boss.
This glyph will drop from Elites and Harbingers in level 100 zones to balance the distribution of power.
New Idol: Harbinger’s Needle
When running the Monoliths of Fate, one risk-reward system that gave players more access to powerful loot was the Gaze of Orobyss stacks. When players defeat the Shade of Orobyss, this adds Corruption to the timeline, making enemies more powerful, but enhancing loot drops even more. The Gaze of Orobyss also allows the Shade to drop unique gear based on the number of Gaze stacks. This mechanic was a fairly lengthy process to undergo, especially on Normal Timelines. With this new update to Last Epoch, players can expedite the Gaze of Orobyss process by using a Harbinger’s Needle.
This item is consumed when you kill a Timeline Boss while the Monolith is above 90 Corruption. This will grant that timeline 3 more Gaze of Orobyss stacks, making farming for items like Omnis, Apathy’s Maw, Shattered Chains and Stymied Fate faster to start.
More Unique Gear
Of course, no major update to an ARPG is complete without the addition of new loot to chase. There are 30 more Unique items to look out for, with some being exclusive to certain Harbingers and bosses. These include:
- Phase Point Quiver
- 140% Dodge Rating
- X% Increased Dodge Rating
- X% chance to gain Dusk Shroud on Dodge
- X% chance to gain a Black Arrow on Dodge
- 1 Bow Void Damage per Dusk Shroud when using Black Arrow
- +3 to Dark Quiver
- Event Horizon Two-Handed Mace
- X% Penetration Against All Resistances
- Hitting an enemy with a melee attack grants a stack of Dilation
- 15% more melee damage per Dilation stack
- 5% less attack and casting speed per Dilation stack
- 5% less movement per Dilation stack
- All Dilation stacks are lost on Evade
- X% Increased Movement Speed
- X% more damage to Slowed Targets
- Aberroth’s Command Sceptre
- Void Cleave is an instant cast and no longer counts as a movement skill
- Void Cleave no longer requires a sword
- Ravaging Auras created by Void Cleave last 8 second slonger and have 40% Void Penetration
- X% Increased Damage over Time
- X% Increased Area for All Skills
- X% Void Penetration
- Wall of Nothing Body Armour
- X% chance to take 0 damage when hit
- X% Ward Decay Threshold
- X% Endurance Threshold
- X% of Endurance Threshold added as Ward Decay Threshold
- X% Ward per Second
- Nihilis Amulet
- X to All Skills
- X% reduced Mana regen
- X% more Armor
- X% to All Resistances
- X% of current Health and Ward are lost when you use Evade
- X seconds of Frenzy when you use Evade
Quality of Life Changes
While we won’t get into detail with the QoL updates for Last Epoch, we will list each update for players to look forward to in the future. These are the following:
- Timeline Blessings can now be stored at dedicated Blessing stashes
- New Level Ladder, along with improvements to existing Ladders
- Search bar and filters added for Timelines
- More filtering options added for loot filters
- Updates to Merchant’s Guild and Circle of Fortune rank rewards
- Changes to Gaze of Orobyss mechanics, mitigating stack loss on death
- Channeled skills no longer halt mana regeneration, allowing for longer uptime
- Runemaster’s Disintegrate skill now comes in stages, ramping up damage
- Sentinel’s Shield Bash now gets cooldown reduction for every enemy stunned
- Shaman’s Avalanche is no longer channeled; instead, a single-cast AoE
- Passive changes for Forge Guard, Sorcerer, and Shaman
- Changed to Ward Generation and Ward Decay formula
The game is reaching its first official update after its full release from Early Access. Last Epoch will continue to receive even more support from Eleventh Hour Games, ensuring that this will be the most modern ARPG to date. Even with this news, there will be even more QoL changes in the near future.
