Fans of ARPGs are eating well right now, with Diablo 4 Season 5 proving a lot of fun and the Path of Exile Settlers of Kalguur league putting a city-building spin on the beloved free Steam game. 2024’s newest upstart on the scene, Last Epoch, is deep into its second seasonal ‘cycle’ right now, and now developer Eleventh Hour Games announces its first major event. Alongside it, however, the team has made the bold decision to deploy a “full cycle refresh” that will see everyone get a fresh start, as it attempts to resolve its damaged in-game economy.
The Last Epoch Imperial Uprising event arrives Thursday September 19, and is set to run for a full month. You’ll be putting the Immortal Emperor back in his place by slaying hordes upon hordes of skeletons in all shapes and sizes across the RPG. To celebrate the event, you’ll also get increased faction reputation gain, gold drops, and unique drop rates, and can also expect to see far more of the undead appearing in the endgame Monoliths.
There are more changes and quality-of-life upgrades rolling out too. These include a range of new and updated shrines, dungeon improvements, a new priority system for stash tabs, loot lizard encounters, and improvements to the search function at the Bazaar. EHG isn’t planning to include any balance changes, however, “as this is not the start of a new patch cycle but a refresh and reset of the economy of 1.1 with a bit of spice added.” Full details will be revealed just prior to the event’s arrival, on Tuesday September 17.
As mentioned, landing at the same time as Imperial Uprising is a full cycle refresh. While EHG emphasizes that this “is not patch 1.2, just the continuation of patch 1.1,” all existing characters in the Harbingers of Ruin season will be moved to the legacy cycle, ladders will be reset, and the economy will begin anew, in a move the dev hopes will “level the playing field and set the stage for new challenges and victories.”
While that might sound dramatic, it’s worth noting that if you’re primarily a solo player who prefers to use the Circle of Fortune faction to boost your loot drops rather than the trade-driven Merchant’s Guild, you can keep playing your character as normal over on the legacy side until the next cycle begins and won’t really notice any difference aside from the ladder reset. You’ll still be able to take part in the Imperial Uprising event, too.
So why the change? The simple answer is that EHG is responding to community calls for an economy reset, with gold exploits and duplication bugs tearing apart the games trading economy. “Game difficulty should be balanced by player skill and effort, not by someone’s ability to exploit game mechanics or violate Terms of Service,” EHG writes. “When these things happen, we understand the frustration they can cause, and rest assured, we take it very seriously.”
Beyond this, the team also says it has “several requests that would improve the game’s quality of life, and waiting for a full-cycle patch to deploy them is longer than we want the community to have to wait. While the ability to deploy Cycle changes won’t always happen, this upcoming event seems like the perfect time to do so.”
“Quite simply, we have many things we want to implement sooner rather than later, and our players have been offering great suggestions on which we want to act. We feel a cycle event and refresh would be an ideal way to implement some of these changes and gather feedback for other related features that we are potentially looking to move forward with in subsequent cycles.”
EHG also asks players for feedback on this change. Opting to reset the cycle midway through the planned schedule is certainly a dramatic move. While the option is there for players to stick to the characters they’ve been playing over in the legacy cycle, some users in the comments say they’re concerned about how moving to the legacy side will affect aspects such as their stash tabs.
The Last Epoch Imperial Uprising event runs from Thursday September 19 through Sunday October 20. Once it ends, your characters will continue in the seasonal cycle until patch 1.2 arrives to kick off the game’s third season. In conclusion, EHG announces one final piece of news – Last Epoch will officially be Steam Deck Verified from September 19, meaning it should be an even better fit on Valve’s handheld.
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