Last Epoch patch 1.0.2. purposefully breaks a popular gold farming strategy

Last Epoch is officially out of early access, and Eleventh Hour Games is supporting the game’s first cycle with regular updates and bug fixes. 

As far as updates go, patch 1.0.2 isn’t particularly expansive. It primarily addresses some small bugs that have cropped up in various aspects of the game from quest interactions to UI details. It does make adjustments to two skills – the Warlock’s Ghost Flame and the Falconer’s Dive Bomb – but only because the abilities were causing performance issues in the game. Any serious balance changes will have to wait a while because, as Eleventh Hour says in the patch notes, “Our current stance is that we won’t issue mid-cycle changes for balance.” 

While the developer won’t be changing class balance in the middle of a cycle, it did include one potentially innocuous seeming change in this patch that does have a dramatic effect on the game’s balance as a whole. Arena Keys have had their price significantly dropped, meaning that one of the best gold farming strategies in the game has just been wiped out.

Eleventh Hour talks around the issue in the patch notes, but it primarily involves Last Epoch’s guild system. Essentially the developer noticed that some players were using a Circle of Fortune alt character to quickly amass Arena Keys, and therefore ridiculous amounts of gold, with buffs from the guild. Then they would switch back to their Merchant Guild character and dominate the marketplace with their riches. Think of it like money laundering with an ARPG twist. This change is definitely going to hurt solo players who relied on the Arena Key gold farm to pay for their stash-hoarding habit, but in the end, it’s probably a healthy move for the game.

You can read the full patch notes below:

Bug Fixes

Quest

• Fixed an issue where players would get the Immortal Empire quest before gaining access to that quest state of Elder Gaspar
• Fixed an issue that caused the elevator to the Council Chambers to never appear after defeating waves of monsters at the end of the Void Assault quest

Controller

• Fixed issues with interacting (such as opening a chest, or talking to an NPC) while using a controller
• Fixed an issue with mapping the “Y”/Triangle controller button
• Fixed issue with controller bindings disappearing when using a mouse
• Controller binding dialog can be closed by pressing the “B” / Circle button
• Navigation cursor refocuses the corresponding action binding button after an action is bound

UI

• Fixed an issue where once a party member enters the arena and you do NOT enter the arena, you cannot open any UI
• Fixed an issue so that “Steam Required” and “License Required” are separate errors
• Fixed issue where some enemies had no/only partial red outlines when hovered
• Fixed an issue where item tooltips displayed when the mouse was not hovering them
• Fixed issue causing “no characters found” to be overlaid on your character list at character selection
• Fixed inconsistent portraits for Maceth and Leyda

Skills

• Fixed a bug where Elemental Nova’s damaging area was not affected by increases to its area of effect
• Fixed issue where when returning to human form after transforming turns, the player model invisible
• Fixed most instances of a bug where channeled movement skills, particularly Flame Rush and Shield Rush, could lock the player into the movement and not visually move the player until the ability ended

Other

• Slightly Improved party transition times
• Fixed a visual gap in Festering Sewers
• Fixed weird visual triangles at top of screen in The Ancient Cavern
• Fixed issue with players dying prematurely by setting their actor to invincible as soon as we spawn them, then allowing grace period to overtake later
• Fixed issue with linking the game guide in chat
• Revert change from previous patch that was causing players to see other players running in place (reverted change was a fix aiming to fix players not animating when joining a scene).

Changes

• Require players to manually click to transition scenes during the campaign
• Various Bazaar UI/UX improvements
• Greatly reduced the sell price of Arena Keys and Arena Keys of Memory
  • Arena keys now sell for 175 (from 6500)
  • Arena keys now sell for 175 gold (from 6500)
  • Arena keys of memory now sell for 265 gold (from 7250)
  • This was done to remove the burden of optimal on MG players feeling like they needed to level up CoF and use arena key prophecies to farm gold effectively
• Added Prevention for CoF bonuses from doubling XP tome rewards in Monoliths
  • This is also technically a bug fix as the XP Tome Reward isn’t a direct item reward. Item Factions are not intended to have an effect on experience gains, only how items are obtained.

Ghostflame and Dive Bomb

Ghostflame

• Fixed a bug where Ghostflame’s Spirit Kindling could apply to the player if it had previously hit a Wraith during its lifetime and was not currently hitting a Wraith

Dive Bomb (hotfix soon)

• Changed Cloud Gatherer to only apply to any individual Smoke Bomb one time.