Last Epoch 1.0 Patch Notes

After several years in development, Last Epoch is ready to launch into version 1.0 on February 21. Even though the ARPG has steadily received new content over the years, this release patch is massive in comparison. The 1.0 update adds two new masteries: Falconer and Warlock as well as the introduction of Item Factions. Other new features include Resonances, Cycles, a Full Offline Mode, a handful of visual upgrades and massive systematic changes to the end-game, arena, campaign, and dungeons. Here are some of the most important Last Epoch 1.0 Patch Notes with the full list available here.

Last Epoch 1.0 Update Patch Notes Highlights

The full patch notes for Last Epoch 1.0 are absolutely massive. You can view them in their entirety here. However, here are some of the bigger parts of the patch:

NEW MASTERIES
- Falconer (Rogue Mastery)
- Warlock (Acolyte Mastery)
ITEM FACTIONS – Join either The Merchant’s Guild or Circle of Fortune for meaningful and rewarding choices in how to empower your loot throughout Eterra.
- Circle of Fortune – Grants you boosts to items you find through Prophecies and passive bonuses. Passive bonuses improve the rarity of the loot you find, and the quantity and quality of loot.
- Merchant’s Guild – Gives you the ability to trade items with other players through the Bazaar and directly player to player. The Bazaar is a new town where you can increase your rank with the guild, earn reputation, and unlock more powerful items via trade.
CYCLES – Cycles are Last Epoch’s version of Seasons, which will start with each major game update. Once a Cycle ends, Leaderboard placements are locked in and stored, making it impossible to submit new placements for that Cycle. All characters and items will transfer over to Legacy where pre-1.0 characters and items are. Legacy characters cannot submit new placements to the Leaderboards, or trade or party with Cycle characters.
FULL OFFLINE MODE – Added ability to launch Last Epoch in fully offline mode.
- Feature differences in Full Offline mode:
  - Bug Report and Support Ticket buttons are removed
  - Chat item linking is disabled, though chat window can still be viewed
  - Region Selection dropdown shows as unavailable
  - Online character tab is hidden
  - Cannot return to the Landing Zone page after selecting Play Offline
  - A full restart of application is required to change between Full Offline and Online modes
VISUAL UPGRADES
- Scene Variant System –
  - The scene variant system is another major system we are introducing for 1.0. It is basically a set of tools and shaders which allow us to improve the visual quality of our scenes and add more variety to the game. It allows us to create dramatically different-looking scenes by using scene variant templates.
  - With shader changes, we now can change the vegetation, wetness of our surfaces, and add puddles to the scene using just shader functions. In other words, we can now have richer looking scenes, while improving performance in the process.
  - This system allows us to bring much more variety into the game. For example monolith scene can look very different each time you will enter it.
  - Added a new system that changes the environment and appearance of Monolith zones.
- Lighting System
  - Overhauled shadows in many scenes to enhance their impact and depth
  - Light will follow the player as they progress through the scene and add directionality and dynamic feel to the shadows
    - This system has fixed performance cost which means it won’t scale with additional enemies or objects on screen
    - You can adjust these shadows using the Shadow quality settings
    - Very low shadow quality completely disables this system
  - Improved lighting and postprocessing across the game so scenes will look less washed out, have higher contrast, and a more dramatic look overall.
  - Increased quality of volumetric settings and High and Ultra settings should have increased resolution for volumetric lights
  - New Ambient Occlusion tech which will have an overall more refined and better appearance at higher settings
- 2.5D Cinematics
  - Added a new intro cinematic to the game that introduces the player to the Divine Era in Chapter 1. This replaces the old class-specific intros.
  - 8 other cinematics added throughout the campaign chapters
ENDGAME BALANCE
- You will find more details in the sections for each end game system, but we wanted to give you a quick overview of our changes
- We have made enemy power come less from endgame modifiers and more from the inherent strength of high level enemies and the base effect of corruption, primarily to achieve a more predictable experience in high corruption Monolith. Specific corruption values should feel like they mean something in terms of difficulty, instead of difficulty varying so wildly based on your current mods.
- To achieve this enemies have been buffed globally at high levels, corruption scaling has been increased, monolith mods have shorter duration and no longer scale with corruption, and high level dungeon and arena mods have been reduced in power.
- Overall we have Increased enemy health and damage globally above level 60, by around 5% at level 80 and around 25% at level 100.

About The Author

Steven Mills

Staff Writer - Steven has been writing in some capacity for over a decade now. He has a passion for story focused RPG's like the Final Fantasy franchise and ARPG's like Diablo and Path of Exile. But really, he's willing to try anything.