Harbingers of Ruin: What’s New?

Hello Travelers!

Last Epoch’s first post-launch cycle arrives in just a couple of weeks on July 9th, and we can’t wait to talk about it any longer!

Today, we’re going to be covering the big new features you can expect with Harbingers of Ruin on July 9th! For those that were with us in beta, we had previously done a “hype week” with smaller blog posts leading up to the patch. This time around we’re going to be combining everything into two big posts, today’s “What’s New?” and a second post that will come soon covering Quality of Life, and other changes. Then as we close in on patch day, we’ll be releasing the full patch notes for everyone to have a look through and get ready for the Harbingers! Today, let’s start by jumping into the new features with Harbingers of Ruin, starting with the new Evade Mechanic!

An Evade or “dodge roll” mechanic has been a highly requested feature, and with Patch 1.1 it will become available for all classes and transformations!

Evade provides a fast, short distance movement allowing players to quickly avoid many powerful attacks. We specifically call it an “Evade” rather than a “dodge roll” for several reasons. The first is that Dodge is already a mechanic in Last Epoch, which can lead to some confusion. The second is that Evade is not always a rolling move for all characters.

First, let’s talk about how exactly Evade works. All characters will have Evade available from level 1 with a default of two charges available and a four second cooldown. As your character level increases so will Evade’s cooldown recovery speed. So as your character grows more powerful, you can also Evade more often.

It’s important to note that Evade does not grant any immunity frames. It lets you more easily avoid enemy attacks, but you are still vulnerable to damage. If you Evade but are still inside an attack area, you will still take the damage. This is why we wanted to avoid confusion with the existing “Dodge” mechanic as Evade does not provide damage mitigation. This also helps keep some of the power and identity to movement skills, as more specialized and often safer movement options.

The most important thing with introducing the Evade mechanic is that it now allows us to assume a baseline of mobility for all characters. This doesn’t mean utilizing Evade will be essential for all builds, as many players will prefer traversal abilities. Having Evade simply means we have a “lowest level” of possible mobility every player can be expected to have. This allows us to increase the base level of difficulty in some fights, regardless if players use Evade or another movement ability.

By introducing an Evade mechanic, we also open up some build opportunities within Last Epoch. Most builds currently feel forced to include a traversal skill purely for evading incoming attacks, which has a limiting impact on potential build diversity. By providing all characters a default method to quickly avoid enemy abilities, there’s not as much pressure to include a traversal skill in every build. Of course, many will still prefer one for overall speed, but it will no longer be as mandatory for survival.

We also wanted to make sure that Evade wouldn’t simply be replacing traversal abilities in general. As such, Evade will not have a skill tree or be assigned to a slot within the skill bar (you can still change its keybind). In addition, there will be powerful options to modify Evade, including a number of Uniques which can drastically change it. Some of these options will even replace Evade completely with a different mechanic, such as (double checking with design team)… summoning a crab?

Nemesis is a new random encounter system you will encounter during Harbingers of Ruin. While 1.1’s primary focus was around a Pinnacle Boss system, many players may take some time to reach that point in the game. We wanted to make sure these players didn’t feel left out of 1.1, as well as introducing more systems for everyone to engage with.

While Traveling throughout Eterra, during both the Campaign and Monolith of Fate, you may randomly come across this new encounter type: the Nemesis. Upon spotting one of these powerful warriors, slain by a Harbinger, with its armor circling around its body, you will be provided with an opportunity to add more loot to your hoard. Interacting with the remains will present you with a window showing several items available from the Nemesis, as well as three options on what you would like to do in regards to the items.

Banishing the Nemesis will cause the encounter to be put to rest, banishing both the current Nemesis, and the items it offers. This will provide you the opportunity for a completely new selection of items with the next Nemesis you find, without fighting the current Nemesis.

The second option you will be given is to Challenge the Nemesis. By selecting to Challenge, the Nemesis will rise from its grave to return to the fight. Should you succeed in putting the Nemesis to rest, you will receive all of the items which were displayed in the earlier UI. If you defeat the Nemesis, the next one you encounter will have a new set of items.

The final option you will be provided with is the ability to Empower the Nemesis. By selecting Empower, the Nemesis will awaken and attack you in its rage. Then upon defeat, it will flee instead of dropping its items. You will encounter this same Nemesis again next time, which will have the same items available but giving them potentially increased Affix Tiers, Forging Potential, or Legendary Potential. Empowering a Nemesis can also add new Affixes to items, including non-experimental Sealed affixes. Empowering is able to upgrade Sealed non-experimental affixes all the way to ranks 6 and 7, which hasn’t been possible before.

You can Empower a Nemesis twice, increasing the quality of rewards as well as the power of the Nemesis holding them. Once an empowered Nemesis has been Banished or defeated after Challenging it, the next Nemesis encountered will start over as unempowered with new items.

Nemesis can also be found with a special reward type: An Egg of the Forgotten. If you immediately challenge the Nemesis, the egg will reward a random Unique. However, you can instead replace it with your own Unique item that has no Legendary Potential. This item is then empowered through the Nemesis system, and can become a Legendary by gaining random affixes or instead even gain Legendary Potential.

And so we get into the titular system, the heart of the new Pinnacle Boss system coming on July 9th. Learn more about the history of Orenthia, The Forgotten Knight, as her past catches up with her. Align yourself with the Forgotten Knights as a new Faction, as you progress through the new Harbinger system, and eventually challenge the Leader of the Harbingers.

To gain access to the new Pinnacle boss, you will first need to challenge and defeat the Harbingers. These are new bosses which can be found deep within the Monolith of Fate. As you progress corruption in different Timelines, you will be able to encounter new Harbingers to progress your ranks within the Forgotten Knights faction and get closer to challenging their leader. Harbingers can be found in two main variants: Agile and Brute. Beyond having greatly different combat styles, the Harbingers also gain abilities from the Timeline’s boss, bringing unique considerations into each of the 10 Timelines.

You will need to defeat the Harbingers in each of the 10 Timelines before being able to access the portal to the most difficult fight in Last Epoch to date. You also have a chance to harvest an Eye from a Harbinger upon defeating them, which you will use as a currency to access the Pinnacle Boss fight. The first 10 unique Harbingers you defeat are guaranteed to provide an Eye, with a chance afterwards. This will provide you with 10 attempts at the Pinnacle Fight when you first unlock it. Once you have defeated all 10 Harbingers, you can continue to challenge the Harbingers to gather additional Eyes for further attempts.

After defeating the first Harbinger you will begin your journey with the Forgotten Knights Faction. You will find the Forgotten Knight herself in her camp upon the Shattered Road. Here you will learn of the Harbingers and Orenthia’s history. With the advice from Orenthia, you will set out on your quest to track down and end that which has caused her to all but lose hope completely.

As you make your way through the Harbingers, you will progress your Rank with the Forgotten Knights Faction. This faction is available to both Merchant’s Guild and Circle of Fortune players, rather than being an alternative choice.

As with other factions, increasing your Rank with the Forgotten Knights will grant unique Rank Reward benefits. These benefits include increasing Harbinger Unique drop chance, lucky Blessing rolls, and even an increased chance to drop a new crafting material: The Glyph of Envy.

With Harbinger Eyes in hand, and all 10 Harbingers defeated, you can make your way to the portal beyond the Shattered Road. Place an Eye upon the altar, and you will be pulled into the Harbinger’s Domain.

Within this domain, you will face off against the leader of the Harbingers, and servant of Orobyss: Aberroth. Your fight will take you through the four Eras, each presenting unique arena mechanics and empowering Aberroth with new abilities to further crush your hopes of facing the void.

With the release of Patch 1.1: Harbingers of Ruin, Aberroth will only be able to be challenged in the Online Cycle. This allows an opportunity for this new Pinnacle fight to be experienced and learned through natural progression rather than instantly solved by characters outfitted in the very best gear. Once the boss has been defeated in the Cycle, Aberroth will be made available to both Legacy and all Offline modes within the next business day. If Aberroth remains un-slain for the first week, we will automatically release the encounter to all environments to prevent too long of a delay for Offline and Legacy players.

Out with the old and in with the new. As some are aware, Bosses in Last Epoch, up until 1.1 had a “Dynamic Damage Reduction” (DDR) mechanic. One of the biggest issues with the system was little awareness about it. It wasn’t a very clear system as it didn’t have any sort of visual representation. It also was easy to misunderstand due to its dynamic nature, and generally resulted in “feelsbad” of seeing yourself doing less damage to bosses after a few hits without anything actively telling you why. While more damage per second was always still more damage per second against the boss, sometimes it didn’t feel like it because of the scaling damage reduction. Dealing more damage early on could also lull you into a false sense of security with more leech from that damage, leaving you more vulnerable later into the fight.

In response to this feedback, we’re replacing Boss Dynamic Damage Reduction with a Boss Ward system. With this new system, as a Boss reaches pre-determined breakpoints it will gain a burst of ward that then decays over time. The longer the ward is present, the faster it will decay. The goals of this are the same as the DDR system: that bosses are given a better opportunity to exist and fight back without punishing lower DPS builds that already get this experience. As the ward decays at an accelerating rate, lower DPS builds will have less total damage necessary to cut through, while higher DPS builds will continue cutting through the ward while it decays. This means higher DPS builds will still kill bosses much faster than lower DPS builds, but it does so in a way that doesn’t suddenly make bosses sponges for higher damage builds.

This system also provides a much clearer visual representation of how you’re actually progressing through the boss’ health. Previously, with DDR, because the resistance could stack up, some parts of the health bar could take longer to get through than others. This created false expectations of how long the boss was going to take to kill based on early damage.

Alongside the change from Boss Dynamic Damage Reduction to Boss Ward, we’ve made a couple of other defensive changes to bosses. Because boss health no longer has such high damage reduction for high DPS builds, it would inherently be easier to randomly stun. As such, we’ve given bosses 50% more resistance to stun and freeze (effectively adding 50% more life to their calculations for stun and freeze). We’ve also reduced the effectiveness of Slow and Chill against bosses to 50%, matching the effectiveness of these ailments on players. Lastly, we’re adding a maximum stun/freeze duration to powerful endgame bosses, such as Harbingers to increase the difficulty of “CC Locking” them.

A very common area of feedback we see is that it can feel very slow to progress through Monoliths on subsequent characters. When addressing this feedback, we didn’t want players to simply skip Monoliths as that can lead to a worse experience especially for newer players.

Alongside tweaks to stability rates, we’re also introducing the new Glyph of Envy with Patch 1.1. This item allows you to greatly accelerate progress through normal Timelines you have not completed yet, and add a large amount of stability to Timelines you have completed.

By upgrading an affix using a Glyph of Envy, it will have two effects. One on the item itself, and a second effect on your most recently accessed Timeline.

On the item, it will upgrade the selected affix as normal. In addition, every other property of the item will be changed other than Item Type. This means a ring will remain a ring, but the three other affixes as well as the Sub Type of ring will be randomized to completely new stats.

Having destabilized the item, the glyph siphons that lost stability and grants it to your most recently accessed Timeline. The bottom of the Forging window will tell you which Timeline will receive the stability. If it’s a normal Timeline and you have not already completed it, the glyph will grant that Timeline full stability. This allows you to immediately conquer the Timeline quest objectives. If it’s an Empowered Timeline or a normal Timeline you have already completed, it will instead have a moderate burst of stability added.

Glyphs of Envy can only be found within level 100 zones, and drop most commonly from rare enemies and Harbingers. This helps to reduce negative UX for new players feeling forced to use them and makes progression more even. It also prevents interruption for community race events, where a sudden Glyph of Envy could completely determine the race.

Harbinger’s Needle is a new item coming in Harbingers of Ruin to further assist with pushing Corruption. This item is very unique, in that it’s the first consumable equipped item.

If this unique item is equipped in your idol inventory when you kill any Timeline boss above 90 Corruption, you will gain three additional Gaze of Orobyss for that Timeline. Upon granting the additional Gaze of Orobyss, the item is destroyed. This allows you to quickly build large Corruption boosts.

For those unfamiliar, Gaze of Orobyss is a mechanic found within Empowered Timelines. This stackable bonus acquired from defeating Timeline bosses rewards additional Corruption the next time you defeat a Shade of Orobyss. We have some other improvements coming to Gaze of Orobyss to make it a smoother mechanic, but we’ll dive more into that in the upcoming QoL post.

Patch 1.1 will be introducing almost 30 new Unique Items to be found and built around. Most of these will be able to be found throughout Eterra, though a select few can only be found through the new bosses. Today, we’re sharing a few examples of the new Uniques you’ll be able to find on July 9th.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to join us for today’s Blog Post, covering new features coming with Harbingers of Ruin. Make sure to keep your eyes out for the upcoming post on some of the Quality of Life and other changes coming in just a couple weeks time, followed by the patch notes prior to the release of Patch 1.1 Harbingers of Ruin on July 9th at 11:00am CT!

SE MERE