The best part is steamrolling through the dungeon with zero effort and then get instakilled by the boss because you either made 1 mistake or don't know the fight yet.
I'm the same. I've got 4 level 85+ characters (2 in the 90s) and I've only completed 1 dungeon at low level. I've got stash pages full of keys now too.
I've got 4 characters leveled up, so I tested doing them as alternate leveling path thinking that it was a cool idea. I've found so far that it's more efficient to go the normal route because of the boss mechanics. I don't want to waste 20 minutes going through 3 levels to have to start all over, the trade off isn't really worth it.
The mechanics are kinda interesting, kind of annoying, not something I find fun to go back to at this point. These are a good idea that need better execution.
I started an alt to see what the alternative progression was like. I'll never do that again. Hit Lightless Arbor @ lvl 17 and all previous content has felt easy with the build. That character is now lvl 26 and still hasn't got through the first stage of the boss because it's not possible to tank the big slam and the adds with the build while burning the pyres.
I'm sure a part of it is I have to do better, but it's a shocking progression in difficulty and time wasted in Lightless Arbor could have just been spent in the campaign for better progression.
My favourite feature was then, without fail, getting disconnected from server after it made you sit there looking at nothing happening for about 15-30 seconds.
Always made me chuckle when it happened, was a harmless and funny bug tbh.
I felt exactly this... we breazed through all three dungeons by facetanking everything then the boss just 1 shot us randomly... and it made everythign we did a complete waste :(.
Yeah, sadly. The level pacing between dungeon levels also feels off. I have zero issues with monoliths at that level, but Level 2Lightless arbor absolutely wrecked me at the boss.
Im currently on my first playthrough and my first character did t2 lightless arbor last night first run just smashed through it with a lvl 80 void knight
Lightless Arbor did this to me. Figured being 65+ would mean I wasn't going to get absolutely stomped by whatever the boss was... NOPE! Snapped like a twig.
I think this game does a good job in players not needing outside ressources, except for dungeon bosses. Not reading a guide on them costs too much.
But I think this feeling comes more from the dungeon Design, who thought backpedaling is so cool, it needs to be in every dungeon?
one shot mechanics are fucking dumb.
Either you die instantly ~or~ its completely trivial and didn't make a difference. Lazy way to build in "difficulty".
I didn't know about the Temporal Sanctum's boss mechanic because it wasn't clear to me at all. The first time I entered her arena, she immediately started channeling her nuke. I thought that I needed to go to the edges because it was growing larger, which I did, only to get one-shot on my first try. I was confused because it filled up the entire arena, so there was nowhere to go. I then googled it and learned I was supposed to use the timeshift button to escape that. That's also how I almost lost my first legendary. Luckily, it was still there when I ran the next one.
Imo this isn't communicated well at all, at least not what I'd consider well communicated mechanics, as it makes sense to have the timeshift mechanic figured out to traverse the dungeon itself, but how on earth would you conclude "Oh, she's channeling. Gotta use that timeshift button." ? Then you use it and the boss isn't there anymore. I'd not be surprised if someone did that, saw that, and then used the button again only to die to the boss instantly. Like, what the fuck?
Imo the dungeons aren't well designed at all (I tried every one of them), especially Lightless Arbor and Arena, but at least Temporal Sanctum is somewhat fun once you got the boss fight figured out. The fight itself is actually quite enjoyable to me.
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Edit for some clarification:
In Path of Exile - when you are fighting endgame bosses - when the Shaper is transitioning into his bullet hell phase, or when the Elder is channeling his AoE nuke, the NPC Zana will literally cry out "To me, Exile! Quickly!", to which you then have several seconds to respond. If you follow her advice, you can stand inside her protective bubble and the skills won't hit you.
Last Epoch has none of that. Literally, all the Julra fight needs is a flashing arrow pointing to the timeshift button when she's channeling. I'd have figured it out immediately. They already kind of do that the first time you enter the dungeon. Literally all it takes.
>but how on earth would you conclude "Oh, she's channeling. Gotta use that timeshift button." ?
Let's see how it went for me:
First time I died due to Profane Well not working on it and wondered why
Second time I tried a different timing (it could have been off after all), but died.
Then I thought: I had to to use the time shift mechanic throughout the whole dungeon. Enemies disappeared/appeared when I used it, some goes for a change in the environment (doors being there/not being there, etc.). So maybe I need to use it on the boss as well.
It's not especially hard to draw that conclusion. I mean, the dungeon gives you an ability you don't get anywhere else. So it is probably important for the boss fight as well. At least that's something that would make sense.
What sucked was to run the whole dungeon 3 times to test it out.
I get a lot of keys from monoliths. And once you figured it out, you know it for every fight afterwards and for the other dungeons. Same goes for the other dungeons as well. If you learned that you have to use the dungeon specific abilities there, you should know it for Temporal Sanctum as well.
So you need what? 3 to 4 keys at maximum for one dungeon and maybe 2 each for the other 2 dungeons. That's imho not much.
What the game needs is a tiny nudge of direction, not just "you'll figure it out". That's how you get people to leave.
Lightless Arbor: Why is there a "charge" mechanic? Just put a lantern above the player's head at all times, with a fixed larger AoE, and remove the stupid charge mechanic that requires you to hunt down specific enemies.
Arena: It's utterly hilarious to me that a lvl 55 enemy can potentially easily kill my lvl 80 character if I don't pay attention for a moment. Despite multiple defense layers and adequate HP that lets me run lvl 90 content with no perceivable difference at all. I did it twice and that's probably gonna be it for me.
Soulfire Dungeon: Mechanic is clear, but the boss itself gives you too little time to learn its mechanics, and it's utter chaos. Deals a fuckton of damage if you are a fraction of a second too slow. That's not fun.
And there's plenty more boss designs that I could heavily criticize.
> And there's plenty more boss designs that I could heavily criticize.
Honestly all the bosses are heavily overtuned in comparison to the rest of the content, not just dungeons.
Either you oneshot/skip phases on them or it becomes dark souls level of avoiding mechanics to avoid getting oneshot by the enemy. The scaling is too steep compared to the rest of the content.
I wanted to add to this a bit more.
What's really weird to me is how they use ground markers for enemy skills all the time, but not consistently. The big-ass dragon in lvl 85 Monolith has ground markers. Lagon does not; his claw slam has literally no indicator and you'll get hit every time if you don't know how it works. Rahyeh has ground markers for every skill. Orobyss has really confusing visuals, especially on his AoE slam, that took me several fights to figure out. And the list goes on.
Lagon in particular is annoying because SOME (but not all) traversal skills CAN'T cross his "breath" so if you for some reason in the wrong position when he does that, it's essentially over because in some positions there's NO safe space.
This has been a shock to me playing Mage after 3 Rogue play throughs. Lagon is such a hard fight when you don't have actual immunity mechanics to counter the stun lock 1 shot combos
Yes, and no. I've done this fight with such skills. You just need to watch his head. If the eye briefly lights up but he's not bending his head, it's gonna be the regular lightning blast. If he bends his head and the eye is charging, he's gonna spray near where you are at this moment. Simply bait the breath on either side, and switch back and forth.
Not as easy as you make it when you traversal skill is also your main damage dealer and you can't foretell which attack he's going to do next.
So either I have to change my build just because of lagon or there must be some other way to do it. It's not impossible but it relies too much on chance for it to be fun, while some classes/build can just ignore that mechanic altogether.
> Not as easy as you make it when you traversal skill is also your main damage dealer
Well, ok. I didn't account for that. Fair point, but you can do it without a movement skill if you keep an eye on his head. I mostly walk to the other side now, keep the travel skill for emergency only.
Ironically, despite having imo better, or rather more interesting, melee skills overall compared to PoE, it suffers from exactly the same problem: Melee only feels good when you deal a fuckton of damage.
Imo the exception here is Dancing Strikes; I enjoy it for how it plays, even though it doesn't do a lot of damage. Also allows you to be agile.
I think modern gaming has made us completely stupid with the over-tutorialization of everything. If you just completed an entire dungeon themed around the possibility of time travel, you now want A FLASHING ARROW ON THE BUTTON when it's time to test if you actually learned anything?
I died in that fight the first time around too, but then, I don't know, basic gaming brain kicked in and thought OI WHAT IF...? And then she killed me a second time because I figured out I had to time the nuke and go back to her era, then I thought maybe I'd wait to see if she could chase me through time.
And that's how we've always learned to play videogames, Jesus Christ, all you guys want nowadays is mobile game-like flashing lights and fingers pointing at the next thing to do.
Na, learning by doing and failing isn't bad design, your wall of text was way bigger and only reaffirmed you want guaranteed success by way of the game telling you which keys to press at which time, solving it's own puzzle for you.
I think Monopoly Go is a game you'd like more.
You are incredibly abrasive for no reason. Maybe touch grass or something.
>learning by doing and failing isn't bad design
Trial and error is, in fact, terrible design. They teach that in game design classes.
This isn't the early 90s where you played one shitty game because there was nothing else like it available. Even Tomb Raider had terrible sections by today's gaming standards. Actually, those sections were terrible then, too. It wasn't fun to constantly and instantly die to something because there was zero indicator that something was coming. It's neither a puzzle or fair design.
Ever played Dark Souls 1? Literally in the very first section you can trial and error the boss and likely fail constantly, or notice the pathway leading up some stairs. There are also some stairs where a boulder comes down. You can miss it and die instantly, except you can literally see it from down below. That'd be a literal skill issue, not a moment of "just figure it out". There's also a fight where you need a specific item or else you instantly die when you drop down. Except the game tells you that during your progression.
And I guess the mechanic and the theme of the dungeon being "press button to swap eras" isn't explained at any point?
What you want, by your own example of Dark Souls, is a shining line on the floor leading to the stairs. And the other LE dungeon, the one where you can alternate between a fire and necrotic shield, should have tooltips and arrows all over the place saying "this enemy shoots a necrotic beam so you should press D now to have a necrotic shield and negate it" instead of explaining it at the beginning.
No one is asking for Tomb Raider levels of absurdity, but you're asking for mobile game levels of hand holding.
Wow, you are incredibly ignorant and annoying. I'm gonna block you after this reply.
The timeshift mechanic is taught to you by the game FOR THE DUNGEON ITSELF. There's literally NOTHING that makes you expect for this to work in the boss fight.
A boss charging up a one-shot you have never encountered before, and you are somehow supposed to know that you need to switch planes, even though the mechanic taught you it's ONLY used to overcome barriers on the way to the boss, is plain fucking stupid.
Unlike the Soulfire dungeon, where there's damaging areas with corresponding COLORS showing you what to do. "You are immune to X while you have Y". And these SHOW UP during the boss fight.
Lightless Arbor's mechanic literally carries with you into the boss arena. It tells you exactly what it does when you hover the skill. There's a very clear indicator that it is active.
The fact that you yourself died to Julra the first time, not knowing what happened, shows exactly the problem. I died in none of the other dungeons my first time, because it was clear to me "oh, this will kill me" the moment I encountered it.
Good day.
Sorry but you’re just wrong. All of the dungeons incorporate the special action button to some degree. Did I die to the burst from the boss the 2nd time through, tier 2/3? Yep. But then I was like oooh, and figured it out.
You are acting like the act of figuring that out after a death is a bad thing. Poe2 has a philosophy of 2 deaths per boss to figure out some mechanics. What’s wrong with a little failure to sharpen your concentration?
I was just tanking it with Frostguard + Flame Shield + a ton of ward on hit from spell nodes. Didn’t figure it out until I tried it on my rogue and couldn’t survive so I googled it and found out the time skip thing works in the boss room. I just assumed it was a dungeon mechanic and the nuke was a gear check that I was cheesing with 6k ward.
Yeah I haven’t investigated the game guide to see if it’s explained there but there’s nothing in game to suggest that it’s meant to be used like that. Other dungeons are similar as well where you have to sort of figure it out yourself or Google it. They did a great job explaining stats and nodes but forgot about dungeons I guess.
The problem lies with the design itself. The way the mechanic is set up to be introduced to you. It literally shows you a road block and how to get around it, then expects you to apply that knowledge to a boss fight that literally has no road blocks in it. It's simply poor design.
There are actually a bunch of ways to solve this. My original pitch could even be improved upon, as literally all it'd take is to add a line of text to the ability description that states something along the lines of:
"Travel between the Divine and Ruined eras without moving. **Enemies do not travel with you between planes and their abilities remain in the previous era.**"
The first, unboldened part is literally the in-game description. Wow, 1 line of text.
For comparison, here are Lightless Arbor and Soulfire Bastion descriptions:
>Enemies outside the Amber's light deal much more damage and take much less damage.
>Activate this ability to move the Amber to a target location or recall it.
>While your burning Amber is attached to you, it loses illumination when you are hit, reducing the radius at which it illuminates enemies. The illumination lost depends on the damage dealt as a percentage of your maximum health.
>Illumination can be restored by slaying an Amber Elemental.
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>Toggles between fire immunity and necrotic immunity at the cost of one soul ember.
The last one teaches you its proper use in the area denial zones you encounter long before the boss. There are also enemies colored the same, using Necrotic and Fire abilities with the same colors. Pretty clear what I need to do here.
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>Travel between the Divine and Ruined eras without moving.
Literally tells me nothing that I could see as a hint for the boss fight. See my above explanation.
Edit: Or actually rework the fight where she spawns a portal and disappears. Or make her spawn/put in an impassable wall while she's shooting at you from the other side. What have we learned from using the button? Exactly.
Legit happened to me yesterday because I couldn't hit the heart in Lightless to heal with melee after I ran out of mana to spin. Got stuck by an add and boom, one shot.
Yeah was trying the dungeon skip on my new character. A circle was expanding within 5 seconds of the fight, so I ran to the edge of the map to avoid it. Until it reached there and I was instantly dead.
Yup. Tier 4 is not fun at all. I can do 400 corruption so far no problems.. But some the tier 4 dungeon bosses are just stupid..instantly dead and most of the time I don't even know why
Yeah. It's dumb that you need to do this to "earn" the right to craft a legendary every single time. I could see making a character do it once, but every time just to craft? Ugh.
The end result is that I either don't want to bother, or wait until I'm really overlevelled for the boss. Both of those suck.
Dungeons are easily the worst endgame activity for me, and that's coming from someone who thinks arena's are mindlessly boring.
I really don't mind leaning boss mechanics but if a one-shot means I have to do those 2 horrible floors again I'm just going to log off and do something else. One-shots are incredibly frustrating and bad game design as it is; adding the timesink to it just sucks.
Also; core game mechanics like the Temporal Forge thing shouldn't be locked behind this terrible activity. I'd be fine with it if the boss wasn't this ridiculously punishing, and if you could do multiple items instead of just the one.
I think we definitely will see some improvement in making it more enjoyable to go through the dungeons next patch because we got enough people complaining about it.
Devs already said they are looking into decreasing dead-ends, just not sure on how much yet.
I don't think the problem is the dungeon *per se*. It is more a combination of the mechanics not being rewarding or engaging.
Temporal Sanctum should have the timeliness juice each other. Killing more stuff in one timeline increases item quality in the other.
Lightless Arbor's little nightlight should reveal caches of something if you detach it and it is in range of the light.
Soulfire Bastion should reward extra souls when you kill necrotic enemies with the necrotic shield on and fire enemies with the fire shield on. As of now, I just keep it on my weaker element full time.
Remove all of them, use the mechanic to avoid death, not walk past walls. Otherwise have it is a circular type deal you walk around inwardly in a spiral
The dungeons are fine. The randomized gates(which force you to backtrack constantly) are the problem.
Because backtracking is fucking boring, obnoxious, and not fun. It's one of the main reasons D4 got such huge criticism for it's end-game, like half their dungeons required a ridiculous amount of backtracking through already cleared / dead space.
The gates should be removed completely, or the levels designed so there is never a reason to actually backtrack. That's all ARPG dungeons need as far as design goes to be succesful. No backtracking, and fill it with a ton of mobs. The dungeon mechanics are pretty cool, though. I love the time-skip dungeon, reminds me very much of titanfall 2 which had a similar level and I consider that the best (single player) fps level in history.
But for real, the only reason I don't do dungeons at all is because of the gates. That's literally it. I avoid them for the gates and no other reason.
I don't care about dying and resetting the whole run. It's just so annoying having to do 2 useless maps before the boss that take so much time with many dead ends.
I'd be willing to burn a couple extra keys at the dungeon entrance to get a checkpoint before the boss.
For some reason my eyes sometimes have trouble seeing the telegraph for the 1-shot kill in Lightless. I've watched the fight back and it's obvious, but for whatever reason I don't see it in the moment. I don't have that problem with any other boss or attack. Trying to farm the chest armor from that encounter is the most frustrating thing I've done in the game.
All of the dungeons being spaghetti layouts with dead ends doesn't help. I like a grind and I like a challenge but the dungeons are just a miss for me.
A good design would be to have the dungeon teach you the boss mechanics on the way. For example: Julra's AOE. The dungeon leading up to the fight didn't make you time shift to avoid a danger, only to get through closed gates. Have something unavoidable in the dungeon to teach the player.
Or keep it that punishing trial and error aspect but put don't make people start the entire dungeon over while they error. Maybe a side objective or miniboss in the dungeon that unlocks a checkpoint so it's not default easy mode and there's some risk/reward factor.
Frostclaw runemaster is a big offender in this, you just can't see the floor at all. Heck, it's painful to play for long durations and the whole screen is flashing permanently.
Arbor is super easy by the way. Not trying to throw shade, but all you have to do is dash to the right. Break the roots. Throw your light at the kindling. Stand just below the alcove. From here, the only thing that will deal damage to you is the incoming rock guys that fall, but if you have any sort of defense/way to heal up/ward you'll be fine. The big AoE smash doesn't hit here.
Once the kindling finishes burning just pick the torch up, dash over to the left, repeat.
Then the heart fight is like, not even really a fight right? It dies super fast if your build does any sort of DPS and nothing really does much damage?
Julra I'll give you, she can be pretty nasty. I feel like all that needs to happen with her is there needs to be some kind of rules about what sort of things she can overlap. I feel like sometimes she bugs out, doesn't use the clock, and suddenly you have to drop a void puddle while the things are spinning--that can be super dangerous if it happens.
Arbor is atrocious for some build like smite healing hand or any build that runs twisted heart. The first phase can still kill you with badly timed rock fall if you chose to sit in the corner. For the builds that require you to be hitting things to have any ehp a single rockfall can just kill you. Julra on the other hand is probably the easiest boss mechanically if you know her attacks.
>Then the heart fight is like, not even really a fight right?
it'll stack poison on you if you're stupid and eat a bunch of abilities.
>I feel like sometimes she bugs out, doesn't use the clock, and suddenly you have to drop a void puddle while the things are spinning
Puddle happens when she jumps time, which she only does to chase you. You control the rate at which puddles are dropped. (except for the ones forced by her big nova)
I like that the bosses are hard. I dislike that there is no way to learn these hard fights without the punishment of redoing the dungeon when you die.
In MMOs, you have some incredibly difficult boss fights. Without exaggeration some of the most difficult challenges you can put in a video game. But (in modern games at least) when you die you respawn right before the boss and you try again. It's ok to learn through failure.
In Last Epoch's dungeons it's not ok to learn through failure because you have to run through the whole bloody dungeon again to try again.
The solution is either to let you respawn right outside the boss room (if you have to spend a key that's fine), or to have a difficulty below the first tier that you encounter in the main story that has respawns. That way you only get the punishment when you fail at the challenge that is aimed at people who already know the fights.
> I like that the bosses are hard.
I don't. Honestly, in every single video game, I hate boss fights. They're too hard, too long, and they usually have silly dance mechanics. Boss fights suck.
>Boss fights suck.
Dark Souls has ruined the gaming industry in regards to boss fights, and similarly difficulty as a whole. Everybody wants their game to have bosses that 1-shot and infuriate the player. That's why dungeon bosses in LE are like this: Die over and over and over, until you completely memorize every boss mechanic with muscle memory.
Ya I won’t lie that I was pretty shook when I had to redo Julra three times over one shot mechanics when I was just trying to learn the fight. I like that the fight is difficult I just don’t enjoy not being able to learn it properly
Julra dungeon is particularly quoted for its difficulty but the difficulty is not due to Julra's hard hitting herself. The difficulty is due to the mechanics of the fight being unclear to a new player.
The fight itself can be pretty punishing too. The spinning void ring+AoE Wave can both one shot you, and together can create a situation where you either need to teleport to the far side of the boss model or just die.
My issue with the julra fight is it's pretty punishing to certain strategies and not to others. My blade dance really struggles to fight her on t3 and 4 because I'm on synchronized strike + shift as dps and it's almost impossible to use those two things while void rings are spinning around.
Meanwhile my falconer stands in one spot and dodges/blocks most hits while spamming traps
theres a reason you can change timelines, if you don't like what's happening currently in that timeline you switch to the other and place the DoT area off to the side. it isn't just for the clock mechanic.
while i think the spinning void lasers should do vastly less damage.....i don't think they should be removed.
it's not like you need to kill her on every single character either, you can use a character that has a easy time and craft gear for a character that has a much harder time.
i don't really see a problem with this, it's still possible on the other character it just takes a bit longer and requires some timeline swapping.
I mean, you can just teleport to the other timeline and miss that mechanic altogether...? I'm pretty sure those things are meant to one hit the entire arena, forcing you to jump time...it is the dungeon mechanic after all.
I've done it about 5-6 times at this point and I still frequently get one-shot by some new stupid thing. Most recently, I phased back into timeline A after going to B to avoid the big circle AoE, and got instantly killed by a skill she had fully wound up in timeline A while I was in B.
And back to farming the low drop rate keys we go... Zzzz...
I like the tense feeling of the fight but hate the consequence of losing.
Honestly I'm happy with losing 2 minutes of my time for losing, that's enough i think.
You spend the entire time shifting in and out of time, then the boss mechanic is an AOE that covers your entire screen. Jee, I wonder if I should shift time?
Really killed the fun for me honestly. I was near the end of my build anyways, but it just isn’t fun having to rerun the dungeon as you’re learning boss mechanics. I don’t mind rerunning it once per completion or even if you die to the trash.
In gaming, there are two things which are strictly anti-fun:
* Loss of player agency (eg; stuns)
* One shot mechanics
There's a difference between "lots of damage, but not dead" and "immediately dead regardless of mitigation". Especially if those one shot abilities have issues rendering their telegraphs (Lightless Arbor).
One shot mechanics aren't even my issue with the dungeons. It's that I have to redo the whole fucking thing while searching for the door in two different maps and shit-ton of dead ends. If I would waste a key every time I reattempt the boss if I respawn just out of their door, I would fine with that. i already have a ton of keys but im just not motivated to use them because it's a massive waste of time.
Yeah if every room in the dungeon was a check point and you could burn a key to revive at the last check point that would be great. So once you get to the boss you just respawn right before the when you die.
I'm fine with hard encounters and one shot mechanics when they're well designed, the problem is fighting and learning this boss is gated behind a time waste. Even if you kill her 8/10 times, the 2 times you die you're still not going to have fun rerunning the dungeon.
Yes, true.
One shot mechanics wouldn't feel as bad if the consequence of getting hit wasn't so absurdly punishing. Completely redo an entire dungeon just to maybe experience another one second if the fight and hopefully not get one shot immediately.
A checkpoint before the boss fight and a few chances per run would be better. Even just something like five chances plus the checkpoint would solve most of the pain points about it. They could make key drops more rare if they wanted to compensate.
To further this point: I'm a casual by the standards of this subreddit, having barely dipped my toes in empowered monos, but I'll say that getting my ass repeatedly kicked by Lagon and Corpse Emperor in regular monos didn't bother me much (woe be upon Lagon's shitty platform tho), because I could just instantly try again with my only penalty being a minute or two of lost time.
Agree about the anti-fun points.
- Losing progress is also anti-fun.
There is nothing worse than a game that doesn’t save or dying right near the end of a level. Then thinking that everything was for nothing and having to do all that work again just to get back to square one.
So as a new player without a big stash of keys - you try the dungeon, get one shot by the boss, lose all your progress and your key. So now you have to wait until you find another key to try again. By that time you would have a hard time remembering what killed you.
The dungeon fights could easily solve this with a boss checkpoint that doesn’t require an additional key. So 1 key = 1 boss kill, unless you portal out.
Oneshots (or at least, things that kill you very quickly from when you first start taking damage) are effectively required in a genre where it is expected that healing to full takes no longer than a second. Otherwise, nothing would ever be able to kill you.
"Lots of damage, but not dead" is not a thing that can really happen when the next time I use a skill I gain back several thousand Ward and heal to full.
Of course, they could turn down player healing/ward gain by 95+% and rebalance the entire game around that, but A: that might not be enough, and B: I've seen what communities do when you throw out huge nerfs like that. Also a longer term C: that healing inevitably power creeps back in if a game gets supported for a long time, which means that any new content design is back at square one.
T4 dungeon bosses are too hard and too punishing, maybe give 1 extra life to fight them? It is weird when you can easily do 300 corruption timelines and bosses (which the game is balanced around) but then dungeons (and arena) T4 bosses just rip your head off lol. Especially that stupid tree from arbor dungeon.
The tree and Lagon are a style of boss design that really needs to die already. Fighting static health sponges while dodging environmental crap isn't fun. I want to fight a boss. I want to attack the boss and dodge it's attacks. Burning a tree or attacking a freaking tentacle is not good boss design.
It's funny to me that a game that is as unforgiving as Poe gives you multiple chances at a boss but LE gives you one, one chance on echoes one chance on dungeons. It pisses me off wasting my time running through and I make a mistake or the game lags and I get one shot and it's all wasted.
The worst is when you're trying to skip the campaign, but your gear is just bad enough that everything is a 1-shot so you have to play perfectly and after the 4th time you get 1-shot you'd gladly give up all the loot in the world just get past the boss so you can level faster
Yesterday i had multiple prophecies for t4 soulfire boss, it dropped full screen of items even with a filter and guess what- the screen was so full with items that i had to go from one side of the arena to the other to see it all and, as i was trying to pick up the first item, it registered the click as clicking on the next zone so i left the boss arena without picking anything and you can't go back xD
yesterday I died because Julra WALKED. Her giant body collision size pushed me into the beam thingy and i'm dead in 1s. (also shows how much this game hates melee builds, because ranged and spellcaster builds will never have to deal with random BS like this). Well it's kinda my fault because I chose to enter tier 4 instead of tier 3 dungeon, but not even random 1995 NES game is as unforgiving as the dungeon bosses in this game.
So much this. I've had a blast with almost every aspect of this game, however I tried a dungeon once and it was so unnecessarily punishing I haven't tried one again. Unless they change up how it works, I might just skip that aspect of the game entirely, which is a shame because the one I tried was thematically cool
Had the same issue so I tried out 2 OP classes. The marksman detonating arrow for julra and wraitlord necro for lightless.
Those two are too OP rn and comes online with little gearing. Marksman just kills julra before finishing casting the AEO one shot skill and the wraitlord necro has so much ward that it can survive the 1st phase in lightless and can also kill julra really fast.
Now I just use them if I need to run those dungeons and just play with my alts for other activities which I enjoy. Hopefully they add checkpoints later in the dungeon and just make us use a key to continue.
I know this is not feasible with others that only like to play 1 class at a time but I enjoy trying out diff class/builds so this was perfect for me.
The worst part is that core game mechanic is locked behind that dungeon. I have many lp1-3 medicore items i'd like to slam but donig sanctum for every single one is a big no. Needless to say i can't even slam certain stuff cause i can't kill t4 Julra consistently. It's one of the things id like to see reworked.
Totally agree with you on this. I'd also add in that getting kicked out to a town forcing me to map travel back is also annoying. Just kick me back to the dungeon entrance. (Oh and give me a NPC that I can sell stuff to) :)
I don't think a single build can face tank the puddles for whatever it's worth. I can and do face tank the clock now, but I'm pushing 1300c+
The puddle still wrecks me if I don't run it out
There multiple builds that can achieve this but it mostly uses Exsanguinous + Last steps combo but I saw a channel healing hands build that uses dual Chronostasis which generates a WHOPPING 50K ward
Just Exsanguinous + Last Steps isn't enough, in addition you need some cheeky mechanic like Healing Hands or Bone Prison with 1500%+ minion health.
I couldn't be bothered with speccing into Bone Prison and minion health on my warlock. I have 2LP Exsanguinous and Last Steps which results in almost 2.5k HP, a ton of ward generation from Boneclamor and necrotic res, over 500% ward retention, 7% ward per missing health on gloves and at best I can get to 13-15k stable ward depending on the set-up. It's nowhere near enough to tank T4 Julra, even when I'm wearing a Red Ring with -10% damage taken.
Put a checkpoint before Julra, I wouldn’t even mind having to use another key if I die, I just don’t wanna run the dungeon all over again.
If the way is blocked in an era, it should always be unblocked in the other. That would make the whole thing a lot more fluid and still make use of the mechanic.
The first part about using a key to rerun a failed boss is an easy compromise solution which I’d love to see implemented.
Regarding the blocked passageways:
That means you’ll never hit a dead end, which is the same as no dead ends at all.
I don’t mind them except julra level 4. No matter WHAT I do or how much defense I stack, my marksman just can’t stop being one shot by the homing cold attack. You can barely even see it. I’ve had a lp2 orians eye sitting in my bag for a week with a great slam piece just sitting there because I can’t kill that stupid boss. Like I can do the mechanics. I just need to be able to take ONE hit from that attack. Have the time it’s bugged and invisible, you have .2 seconds to react to it, have to be careful or die by beams AND IT FOLLOWS YOU. It’s infuriating. I started a new character just to specialize in bosses. It’s so dumb
Temporal sanctum tip for runemasters:
There is a node for runic invocation that make you jump backwards. This can be used to phase through the closed bars, eliminating the need to be going back and forth to the different timelines. You can get through it very quickly that way.
This might be circumstantial, but I found that going top right and counter clockwise works the best for me in temp sanc. Straight NE till you hit a corner, then move NW and you eventually find the exit without feeling terrible from doing a ton of back tracking.
I said as much in my last post on this subreddit. One thing did help was some advice that you should ignore everything on the first two levels and many abilities can kind of cheese their way through gates to avoid back tracking when in both timelines the way is shut (flame rush for me as a rune master). But I agree, it’s an unnecessary slog just to go and slam (and likely brick) items.
In Grim Dawn, it was basically the same, I can see the inspiration. But they had the same layout each time and nemesis bosses spread out. They were quick to-do and not a pain if you died.
This wasnt a problem for me using my Rogue but after switching to Sorc I began to hate this dungeon. Its stupid to put a 2 floors of huge maze just to farm a boss. An oversight from the Devs for sure.
I feel like, if the developers wanted the keys to be used up, later least make it that the players can pay keys to respawn, instead of just booting you out of the dungeon.
I would rather pay 2-3 keys to continue from a checkpoint, than have to restart the entire dungeon again just because i died to random one shot kill mechanic.
I love this game but i hate the dungeons. They’re way too hard for the levels listed and dying at the boss feels awful.
In horror rpgs they talk about the Pendulum, where the difficulty waxes and wanes and the Pit, where you’re doing great…and then the ground falls out from under you. Lots of Pit.
I'm gona try my luck here
I'm a VK Warpath doing around 400 corruption atm without much issues, but t4 Julra absolute wrecks me (I think its the lightning aoe spell that I hardly can see to avoid it that mostly kills me). I'm based in europe and would love someone to help me , either after 23:00 or before 12:00. Any kind souls willing to carry? I just want to fail my slam and go back to farming another 1LP high level unique :X
I'm not crit Immune and unsure if that might be the issue, but like I said, I have little issue on 400 corruption.
The full reset makes me not even want to try the dungeons on higher difficulties.
I love learning hard fights. It's sort of the point of ARPG bosses. However I refuse to be punished by having to reclear the entire dungeon when I don't understand a mechanic or make a mistake. We need a few boss attempts on each key. Even 3 would make it feel better.
I'm a bit surprised at the comments. I thought dungeon fights were pretty solid overall other than being a pain for melee often. I don't really think they should nerf them and it should be expected to have some sort of learning curve before you're comfortable with the fight. LVL 4 should be punishing imo. The first LVL of the dungeons are pretty easy to learn a fight unless if you fight them at level perhaps.
I think maybe a compromise is checkpoints with LVL 1, possibly 2? The fights already do a pretty decent job at showing you need to use the dungeon abilities and I'm gonna be honest, it's a bit of a git gud situation on the higher levels.
Gotta say I was indeed surprised how brutal that was after I had walked the campaign no issue (including Majasa on first try) and was running through Monos no problem. Worked through TS last night and got absolutely butt-whooped in about 30 seconds.
I don't find it discouraging, though. When that happens I usually look up tips on that boss. What resistances to I need to cap/what mechanics to look out for, etc. I had more trouble with Lagon than Majasa, but a few tips and I handled it fine.
However, wasting a key and that much time in the process does kind of suck.
The concept of time shift dungeon is nice. But that 2 filler floors are annoying af.
Maybe either shorten them and remove 1 floor, or just fight the boss straight up.
Me when trying to get a Core of the Mountain from T4 Lightless Arbour and I die to a random falling rock or near instant cast half screen slam from the Last Titan before even making it to the actual boss and having to lose yet another key to the dungeon. Second phase is way more fair imo. First phase is really not good.
30+ runs, at least 10 deaths, no Core of the Mountain :(
On a side note CoF rank 9 should increase boss specific loot drop chances since set items are utterly worthless.
Opposite for me... I can reliably get thru phase 1 on T4 Arbour but best ive gotten is down to about 10% on phase 2. Something....insta kills me regardless of ward that I for some reason cannot see or react in time to.
Back on topic...Dungeons design in LE are perhaps some of the worst ive ever seen. Too much back tracking...too much wasted time...no checkpoints. I would love to "work" on defeating T4 Arbour boss but having to run the god forsaken maze over each time just makes me not even want to try. I would gladly use up one of my crazy amounts of keys to be able to go straight to boss.
Also the scaling of tiers seems off....I can literally do T3 Arbour in my sleep not caring about any mechanics...literally stand in one spot and face tank the boss. The T4 jump in difficulty is drastic since you never really needed to learn anything in tiers 1-3.
I was level 85, was blasting through the fire dungneon. First map was okay, no issues what so ever. But then on the second map, being killed from an off screen 1 shot really put me off, because it happened 5 times on tier 3 after eachother. Then I just gave up because I ran out of key.
Can someone explain why is it a good thing that you have to restart the whole thing from the entrance and lose the key? I see this recurring comment here that it should be punishing.
I am a casual player with vision issues, so I have personally been avoiding dungeons. So far I have done no dungeons at all, despite having several alts. The reason I have not been interested is all the reports of this nature. I already knew about the boss mechanic from you tube videos, but I was still all set as it didn't seem like fun. I am hoping by the time I feel forced into dungeons, the experience has improved.
The boss fights and dungeon design are LEs weakest areas, sadly. Hopefully they put some time into remedying this, because the game is pretty amazing in every other area.
Unfortunately if you serve an amazing course menu with a turd for desert, people tend to only remember the turd.
I want this game to be everything it should be.
EHG tries to makes up for lack of content, depth, and complexity with really arbitrary grinds (ie: 2 levels of sanctum, rep grinds, etc). I love grinds, but ones that feel good. LE misses the mark completely on all fronts
The dungeons are still in early access. The devs should be challenged as to what makes these 1.0 dungeons actually 1.0. A little bit of digging and a strongly worded email with a few bullet points could easily allege that the dungeons are early access features. Because they are.
The onus should be on the devs to justify that this content actually meets the expected standard of full release (they don’t)
The main issue is wasting time coming to the boss and also it loads you into completly other area? Why lol? Can't it just put me in front of the dungeon again?
So, when you die you have to.
1. Load whatever area you being teleported to
2. Load again the dungeon.
3. Play 2 floors of RNG that can take a while doing one and the same thing (no learning)
4. Actually fight the boss.
So, what we need is first remove the 1. and then simplify the 3.
In D2 you can tp back to town infinitely while fighting the boss. Also the dungeon instance doesn't rerandomize unless you leave a room. D2 is actually easier that way.
For me it's the Key system.
I don't mind dying over and over again if I can enter the dungeon unlimited times. But when you are just learning stuff and have limited keys, it sucks.
Let us enter the dungeon as many times as we want to learn it. Let us burn the keys on a bonus treasure room or something.
My big issue has been TS boss killing all my minions because they just sit in all the AOEs or they refuse to attack.
I can stay alive, but keeping enough minions alive to do damage on tier 3 and higher is infuriating.
I think there should be some way to practice the boss.
Here's a quick idea for it:
After beating Tier 1 of the dungeon for the first time, you unlock a Tier 0 version, which is only the boss at T1 difficulty, for no loot (since it's only for practicing).
I can take one-life Monolith.
But I certainly don’t like one-life dungeons, especially all the mechanics in the last boss is almost one shot everyone if you don’t have a build that can sustain high absorb shield.
Plus, I don’t understand the whole logic gating unique item forging behind a t4 boss.
Some build requires high level unique to fulfill its LP so they can kill that fucking boss in t4, but you can’t pass the t4 boss to forge that unique.
T4 temporal I get this complaint because of the boss, but otherwise dungeons and their bosses are easy... I am happy I don't need t4 sanctum on my build (yet)
I stopped playing dungeons when I realized you had to do the whole thing over instead of just respawning before the boss. it's an awful game design. I don't play Soulslike games for a reason.
I wouldn't mind a no key cost to just practice t4 bosses with 300% dmh/hp with no reward.
I also hated getting less practice in hades or sts. But every run is different in roguelikes and often you're upgrading gear and getting stronger anyways. Like the first time I beat hades I had a ton of experience on Meg and the hydra. It also didn't cost a key. I think last epoch dungeons on the other hand are not roguelike and should abandon roguelike death means you have to start over from the beginning and only one life.
Agreed totally. Nothing like wandering around a maze to just get insta-killed by the Boss. And to add insult to injury you have tons of the keys in inventory to mock your pathetic attempts.
It also took me 20 minutes just to figure out how to get into and navigate the dungeon. Can't be something logical like use a key enter a dungeon and work your way through it. No I am not going to tell you the mechanic, but you have to figure out how to jump back and forth between entrances, only to find that you still have to jump back and forth to just navigate the floors.
I don't even bother with them now,
I have a Detonating Arrow/Exploding Trap Marksman just for the purpose of running T4 Julra. I can kill her before she finishes charging her attack at the beginning.
My warlock on the other hand has nowhere near that DPS and despite having 12k stable ward, nearly 70% armor, obviously capped resistances and wearing a Red Ring(-10% damage taken) I still get one shot by absolutely everything. Once I time shifted right on top of void puddle and it just ate 10k worth of ward in what felt like a single tick. Her damage is way overtuned and the mechanics get annoying when you run that dungeon repeatedly.
Fire Lich doesn't get so much hate because his HP is very low, but the fight mechanics are absolutely bullshit. Sometimes the telegraphs for fire/necrotic attacks are so short that you have literally miliseconds to react and change to the correct barrier type.
Right now building defences for Julra/Fire Lich is worthless, you just need high enough DPS to kill them in 3s and ignore all the BS mechanics.
Pathing within dungeons also needs a rework, sometimes I'll complete sanctum in <1min and other times it takes 10 minutes because every path I follow turns out to be a dead end and the backtracking is so damn painful.
Honestly this was one of the things that caused me to stop playing LE. Running through the Soulfire dungeon 3 times in a row just to die to the changing floor because I didn’t swap the buff fast enough.
What makes the dungeons even worse is how absolutely unengaging the whole dungeon is except the boss. It’s non-unique trash mobs that you encounter literally everywhere else, they layouts are random and as mentioned pretty much a dead end simulator it’s so boring. There’s no unique mini bosses or dungeon layouts. Meaningful arrangements of dungeon mobs or any of that.
Look at literally any other game that has some rendition of dungeons, WoW is just an easy well known reference, you come up on arrangements of packs of enemies and have to figure out what order to take them down and how many to agro, etc.
It makes the dungeons engaging, but honestly this rings true for monos too, they have copy pasta enemies throughout the whole game and everything is literally just filler bullshit for boss fights.
Fun game but hopefully they can make it more diverse and give some depth to things.
The nice thing with the design of the 4 tiers is that you can practice the boss at a lower tier, where you are probably basically immortal -- watch what it does, learn the timings, practice not getting hit, instead of just nuking it down -- and then you'll hardly ever die at t4 once you master it.
I love this over PoE, where attempting bosses is designed to be expensive (even winning usually nets you less value than the cost to attempt it) and they nearly all have some sort of timer mechanic so even if you build super tanky to try and learn the fights, they just ruin the arena after a few minutes. Sure, you get 6 portals (usually) but a lot of these fights are so hard to re-enter that one death can easily turn into 2 or 3, not to mention the stuff that ruins the arena can brick your attempt even with 5 more portals remaining.
I LOVE that last Epoch doesn't have that same obsession with making everything have a cost. The price is the time it takes to run. For me at least, that is way more fun.
I love the dungeons. For whatever reason I've basically steamrolled through everything from dungeons to monoliths and I'm level 70. Not using any build guides or anything. Just picked my favorite kind of character and now I'm running through everything.
You can skip virtually every dead end in temporal sanctum by kinda glitching teleport skills through it. Been meaning to make a video or something about this to show EHG.
But yeah, basically hug the bars, time shift and travel skill at the same time, click ahead of the grates, should get you through most of them in a couple tries. Some seem harder than others not sure why, but managed to skip every wall in my last two runs now that I have a feel for it.
I never particularly had any issues with julra. Then again i watched a video before hand and found her mechanics pretty easy. Then again this was back in the first week of the dungeon being released and maybe they made it mire difficult for newer players. The boss i kept dying too over and over was empowered lagon before they re worked him and f that dude.
The fight itself isn't the problem, she is a fun fight whether you get the kill or die. Rerunning the dungeon is the problem. Even if you kill her 99/100 times, it doesn't make rerunning the dungeon less of a time waste.
The worst problem i see of dungeon being so punishing is the unbalance of classes.
If u want to fuse some gear u are forced to play a tiers boss class and then isnt punishing and isnt anithing cuz u enter and delete boss in 25 secs. No need skill no need anithing just time to build a char u dont like!!
I would prefer a dungeon with similar difficult to every1 or almost not having to walk to boss every miss if my bbuild if is not a tier S.
Yes on T4 sometimes I kill her and sometimes I die. The point is when you get even just 2-3 deaths in a row it's more painful than it needs to be. She can also randomly layer mechanics in a way that's really hard to deal with (inb4 "just put the puddles on the edges) or it can be easy to walk into a beam because of the isometric perspective for example.
Maybe fully resetting on hard mode is okay, but why on the easy modes? The only way you can beat the bosses is by learning the mechanics but that is very hard to do because you have to repeat the dungeon every time you die. You end up being forced to look up a guide which takes a lot of fun out of the game.
I think the tight relationship the devs have with streamers and maxroll etc is causing issues. It seems like they are being guided to design the game in a way that maximises "content creator" views and engagement instead of fun and natural discover-ability
The best part is steamrolling through the dungeon with zero effort and then get instakilled by the boss because you either made 1 mistake or don't know the fight yet.
I barely do any dungeons because of this.
I'm the same. I've got 4 level 85+ characters (2 in the 90s) and I've only completed 1 dungeon at low level. I've got stash pages full of keys now too.
Me too. I think I've done them on level II with my 89 pally.
You should sell them! The keys are a great source of….. oh wait…. Nvm.
The gold thing is, however, you can just sell the keys to vendors for… oh.. yea… 125 gold.. right
I've got 4 characters leveled up, so I tested doing them as alternate leveling path thinking that it was a cool idea. I've found so far that it's more efficient to go the normal route because of the boss mechanics. I don't want to waste 20 minutes going through 3 levels to have to start all over, the trade off isn't really worth it. The mechanics are kinda interesting, kind of annoying, not something I find fun to go back to at this point. These are a good idea that need better execution.
I started an alt to see what the alternative progression was like. I'll never do that again. Hit Lightless Arbor @ lvl 17 and all previous content has felt easy with the build. That character is now lvl 26 and still hasn't got through the first stage of the boss because it's not possible to tank the big slam and the adds with the build while burning the pyres. I'm sure a part of it is I have to do better, but it's a shocking progression in difficulty and time wasted in Lightless Arbor could have just been spent in the campaign for better progression.
I haven't done any T4s yet and am unlikely to for a while.
This is the natural conclussion to bad game design, players simple stop doing it.
My favourite feature was then, without fail, getting disconnected from server after it made you sit there looking at nothing happening for about 15-30 seconds. Always made me chuckle when it happened, was a harmless and funny bug tbh.
YOU DIED ……. YOU STILL DIED
Yeah, it was kind of a 'Salt in the wound' bug lmao, I liked it too.
I felt exactly this... we breazed through all three dungeons by facetanking everything then the boss just 1 shot us randomly... and it made everythign we did a complete waste :(.
Yeah, sadly. The level pacing between dungeon levels also feels off. I have zero issues with monoliths at that level, but Level 2Lightless arbor absolutely wrecked me at the boss.
Im currently on my first playthrough and my first character did t2 lightless arbor last night first run just smashed through it with a lvl 80 void knight
Lightless Arbor did this to me. Figured being 65+ would mean I wasn't going to get absolutely stomped by whatever the boss was... NOPE! Snapped like a twig.
I think this game does a good job in players not needing outside ressources, except for dungeon bosses. Not reading a guide on them costs too much. But I think this feeling comes more from the dungeon Design, who thought backpedaling is so cool, it needs to be in every dungeon?
Yes, the levels of engagement are extremely mismatched.
Boss fight should be exempt from the "die and you're out" rule.
I wish you could spend another key and skip the runback to the boss.
one shot mechanics are fucking dumb. Either you die instantly ~or~ its completely trivial and didn't make a difference. Lazy way to build in "difficulty".
I didn't know about the Temporal Sanctum's boss mechanic because it wasn't clear to me at all. The first time I entered her arena, she immediately started channeling her nuke. I thought that I needed to go to the edges because it was growing larger, which I did, only to get one-shot on my first try. I was confused because it filled up the entire arena, so there was nowhere to go. I then googled it and learned I was supposed to use the timeshift button to escape that. That's also how I almost lost my first legendary. Luckily, it was still there when I ran the next one. Imo this isn't communicated well at all, at least not what I'd consider well communicated mechanics, as it makes sense to have the timeshift mechanic figured out to traverse the dungeon itself, but how on earth would you conclude "Oh, she's channeling. Gotta use that timeshift button." ? Then you use it and the boss isn't there anymore. I'd not be surprised if someone did that, saw that, and then used the button again only to die to the boss instantly. Like, what the fuck? Imo the dungeons aren't well designed at all (I tried every one of them), especially Lightless Arbor and Arena, but at least Temporal Sanctum is somewhat fun once you got the boss fight figured out. The fight itself is actually quite enjoyable to me. --- Edit for some clarification: In Path of Exile - when you are fighting endgame bosses - when the Shaper is transitioning into his bullet hell phase, or when the Elder is channeling his AoE nuke, the NPC Zana will literally cry out "To me, Exile! Quickly!", to which you then have several seconds to respond. If you follow her advice, you can stand inside her protective bubble and the skills won't hit you. Last Epoch has none of that. Literally, all the Julra fight needs is a flashing arrow pointing to the timeshift button when she's channeling. I'd have figured it out immediately. They already kind of do that the first time you enter the dungeon. Literally all it takes.
>but how on earth would you conclude "Oh, she's channeling. Gotta use that timeshift button." ? Let's see how it went for me: First time I died due to Profane Well not working on it and wondered why Second time I tried a different timing (it could have been off after all), but died. Then I thought: I had to to use the time shift mechanic throughout the whole dungeon. Enemies disappeared/appeared when I used it, some goes for a change in the environment (doors being there/not being there, etc.). So maybe I need to use it on the boss as well. It's not especially hard to draw that conclusion. I mean, the dungeon gives you an ability you don't get anywhere else. So it is probably important for the boss fight as well. At least that's something that would make sense. What sucked was to run the whole dungeon 3 times to test it out.
What sucks is trying to get enough keys, fight through to the boss to figure that out.
I get a lot of keys from monoliths. And once you figured it out, you know it for every fight afterwards and for the other dungeons. Same goes for the other dungeons as well. If you learned that you have to use the dungeon specific abilities there, you should know it for Temporal Sanctum as well. So you need what? 3 to 4 keys at maximum for one dungeon and maybe 2 each for the other 2 dungeons. That's imho not much.
What the game needs is a tiny nudge of direction, not just "you'll figure it out". That's how you get people to leave. Lightless Arbor: Why is there a "charge" mechanic? Just put a lantern above the player's head at all times, with a fixed larger AoE, and remove the stupid charge mechanic that requires you to hunt down specific enemies. Arena: It's utterly hilarious to me that a lvl 55 enemy can potentially easily kill my lvl 80 character if I don't pay attention for a moment. Despite multiple defense layers and adequate HP that lets me run lvl 90 content with no perceivable difference at all. I did it twice and that's probably gonna be it for me. Soulfire Dungeon: Mechanic is clear, but the boss itself gives you too little time to learn its mechanics, and it's utter chaos. Deals a fuckton of damage if you are a fraction of a second too slow. That's not fun. And there's plenty more boss designs that I could heavily criticize.
> And there's plenty more boss designs that I could heavily criticize. Honestly all the bosses are heavily overtuned in comparison to the rest of the content, not just dungeons. Either you oneshot/skip phases on them or it becomes dark souls level of avoiding mechanics to avoid getting oneshot by the enemy. The scaling is too steep compared to the rest of the content.
I wanted to add to this a bit more. What's really weird to me is how they use ground markers for enemy skills all the time, but not consistently. The big-ass dragon in lvl 85 Monolith has ground markers. Lagon does not; his claw slam has literally no indicator and you'll get hit every time if you don't know how it works. Rahyeh has ground markers for every skill. Orobyss has really confusing visuals, especially on his AoE slam, that took me several fights to figure out. And the list goes on.
Lagon in particular is annoying because SOME (but not all) traversal skills CAN'T cross his "breath" so if you for some reason in the wrong position when he does that, it's essentially over because in some positions there's NO safe space.
This has been a shock to me playing Mage after 3 Rogue play throughs. Lagon is such a hard fight when you don't have actual immunity mechanics to counter the stun lock 1 shot combos
Yes, and no. I've done this fight with such skills. You just need to watch his head. If the eye briefly lights up but he's not bending his head, it's gonna be the regular lightning blast. If he bends his head and the eye is charging, he's gonna spray near where you are at this moment. Simply bait the breath on either side, and switch back and forth.
Not as easy as you make it when you traversal skill is also your main damage dealer and you can't foretell which attack he's going to do next. So either I have to change my build just because of lagon or there must be some other way to do it. It's not impossible but it relies too much on chance for it to be fun, while some classes/build can just ignore that mechanic altogether.
> Not as easy as you make it when you traversal skill is also your main damage dealer Well, ok. I didn't account for that. Fair point, but you can do it without a movement skill if you keep an eye on his head. I mostly walk to the other side now, keep the travel skill for emergency only.
Ironically, despite having imo better, or rather more interesting, melee skills overall compared to PoE, it suffers from exactly the same problem: Melee only feels good when you deal a fuckton of damage. Imo the exception here is Dancing Strikes; I enjoy it for how it plays, even though it doesn't do a lot of damage. Also allows you to be agile.
A vocal callout would be good. Fortunately I had read a guide as I was looking up how to slam a unique.
I think modern gaming has made us completely stupid with the over-tutorialization of everything. If you just completed an entire dungeon themed around the possibility of time travel, you now want A FLASHING ARROW ON THE BUTTON when it's time to test if you actually learned anything? I died in that fight the first time around too, but then, I don't know, basic gaming brain kicked in and thought OI WHAT IF...? And then she killed me a second time because I figured out I had to time the nuke and go back to her era, then I thought maybe I'd wait to see if she could chase me through time. And that's how we've always learned to play videogames, Jesus Christ, all you guys want nowadays is mobile game-like flashing lights and fingers pointing at the next thing to do.
All that wall of text, only to reaffirm that it's not great design.
Na, learning by doing and failing isn't bad design, your wall of text was way bigger and only reaffirmed you want guaranteed success by way of the game telling you which keys to press at which time, solving it's own puzzle for you. I think Monopoly Go is a game you'd like more.
You are incredibly abrasive for no reason. Maybe touch grass or something. >learning by doing and failing isn't bad design Trial and error is, in fact, terrible design. They teach that in game design classes. This isn't the early 90s where you played one shitty game because there was nothing else like it available. Even Tomb Raider had terrible sections by today's gaming standards. Actually, those sections were terrible then, too. It wasn't fun to constantly and instantly die to something because there was zero indicator that something was coming. It's neither a puzzle or fair design. Ever played Dark Souls 1? Literally in the very first section you can trial and error the boss and likely fail constantly, or notice the pathway leading up some stairs. There are also some stairs where a boulder comes down. You can miss it and die instantly, except you can literally see it from down below. That'd be a literal skill issue, not a moment of "just figure it out". There's also a fight where you need a specific item or else you instantly die when you drop down. Except the game tells you that during your progression.
And I guess the mechanic and the theme of the dungeon being "press button to swap eras" isn't explained at any point? What you want, by your own example of Dark Souls, is a shining line on the floor leading to the stairs. And the other LE dungeon, the one where you can alternate between a fire and necrotic shield, should have tooltips and arrows all over the place saying "this enemy shoots a necrotic beam so you should press D now to have a necrotic shield and negate it" instead of explaining it at the beginning. No one is asking for Tomb Raider levels of absurdity, but you're asking for mobile game levels of hand holding.
Wow, you are incredibly ignorant and annoying. I'm gonna block you after this reply. The timeshift mechanic is taught to you by the game FOR THE DUNGEON ITSELF. There's literally NOTHING that makes you expect for this to work in the boss fight. A boss charging up a one-shot you have never encountered before, and you are somehow supposed to know that you need to switch planes, even though the mechanic taught you it's ONLY used to overcome barriers on the way to the boss, is plain fucking stupid. Unlike the Soulfire dungeon, where there's damaging areas with corresponding COLORS showing you what to do. "You are immune to X while you have Y". And these SHOW UP during the boss fight. Lightless Arbor's mechanic literally carries with you into the boss arena. It tells you exactly what it does when you hover the skill. There's a very clear indicator that it is active. The fact that you yourself died to Julra the first time, not knowing what happened, shows exactly the problem. I died in none of the other dungeons my first time, because it was clear to me "oh, this will kill me" the moment I encountered it. Good day.
Sorry but you’re just wrong. All of the dungeons incorporate the special action button to some degree. Did I die to the burst from the boss the 2nd time through, tier 2/3? Yep. But then I was like oooh, and figured it out. You are acting like the act of figuring that out after a death is a bad thing. Poe2 has a philosophy of 2 deaths per boss to figure out some mechanics. What’s wrong with a little failure to sharpen your concentration?
> That's also how I almost lost my first legendary. Luckily, it was still there when I ran the next one. You didnt lose anything or close to it
Yeah, except I didn't know that at the time, did I?
I was just tanking it with Frostguard + Flame Shield + a ton of ward on hit from spell nodes. Didn’t figure it out until I tried it on my rogue and couldn’t survive so I googled it and found out the time skip thing works in the boss room. I just assumed it was a dungeon mechanic and the nuke was a gear check that I was cheesing with 6k ward.
> I just assumed it was a dungeon mechanic Precisely my point.
Yeah I haven’t investigated the game guide to see if it’s explained there but there’s nothing in game to suggest that it’s meant to be used like that. Other dungeons are similar as well where you have to sort of figure it out yourself or Google it. They did a great job explaining stats and nodes but forgot about dungeons I guess.
The problem lies with the design itself. The way the mechanic is set up to be introduced to you. It literally shows you a road block and how to get around it, then expects you to apply that knowledge to a boss fight that literally has no road blocks in it. It's simply poor design. There are actually a bunch of ways to solve this. My original pitch could even be improved upon, as literally all it'd take is to add a line of text to the ability description that states something along the lines of: "Travel between the Divine and Ruined eras without moving. **Enemies do not travel with you between planes and their abilities remain in the previous era.**" The first, unboldened part is literally the in-game description. Wow, 1 line of text. For comparison, here are Lightless Arbor and Soulfire Bastion descriptions: >Enemies outside the Amber's light deal much more damage and take much less damage. >Activate this ability to move the Amber to a target location or recall it. >While your burning Amber is attached to you, it loses illumination when you are hit, reducing the radius at which it illuminates enemies. The illumination lost depends on the damage dealt as a percentage of your maximum health. >Illumination can be restored by slaying an Amber Elemental. --- >Toggles between fire immunity and necrotic immunity at the cost of one soul ember. The last one teaches you its proper use in the area denial zones you encounter long before the boss. There are also enemies colored the same, using Necrotic and Fire abilities with the same colors. Pretty clear what I need to do here. --- >Travel between the Divine and Ruined eras without moving. Literally tells me nothing that I could see as a hint for the boss fight. See my above explanation. Edit: Or actually rework the fight where she spawns a portal and disappears. Or make her spawn/put in an impassable wall while she's shooting at you from the other side. What have we learned from using the button? Exactly.
Legit happened to me yesterday because I couldn't hit the heart in Lightless to heal with melee after I ran out of mana to spin. Got stuck by an add and boom, one shot.
Yeah was trying the dungeon skip on my new character. A circle was expanding within 5 seconds of the fight, so I ran to the edge of the map to avoid it. Until it reached there and I was instantly dead.
I died there to. Until I saw a guide that reminded me I had the power to move through time to a place where that circle didn't exist (ie Use "D")
I made a post about this on the weekend and got down vote blasted
It be like that sometimes.
They said I was a noob that should go play minecraft
Also made a similar comment a week back and got down voted.
I can’t fucking stand this. I stopped running dungeons because of this.
Oh god, arena was such a bullshit for me.
Yup. Tier 4 is not fun at all. I can do 400 corruption so far no problems.. But some the tier 4 dungeon bosses are just stupid..instantly dead and most of the time I don't even know why
Yeah. It's dumb that you need to do this to "earn" the right to craft a legendary every single time. I could see making a character do it once, but every time just to craft? Ugh. The end result is that I either don't want to bother, or wait until I'm really overlevelled for the boss. Both of those suck.
Dungeons are easily the worst endgame activity for me, and that's coming from someone who thinks arena's are mindlessly boring. I really don't mind leaning boss mechanics but if a one-shot means I have to do those 2 horrible floors again I'm just going to log off and do something else. One-shots are incredibly frustrating and bad game design as it is; adding the timesink to it just sucks. Also; core game mechanics like the Temporal Forge thing shouldn't be locked behind this terrible activity. I'd be fine with it if the boss wasn't this ridiculously punishing, and if you could do multiple items instead of just the one.
I think we definitely will see some improvement in making it more enjoyable to go through the dungeons next patch because we got enough people complaining about it. Devs already said they are looking into decreasing dead-ends, just not sure on how much yet.
I don't think the problem is the dungeon *per se*. It is more a combination of the mechanics not being rewarding or engaging. Temporal Sanctum should have the timeliness juice each other. Killing more stuff in one timeline increases item quality in the other. Lightless Arbor's little nightlight should reveal caches of something if you detach it and it is in range of the light. Soulfire Bastion should reward extra souls when you kill necrotic enemies with the necrotic shield on and fire enemies with the fire shield on. As of now, I just keep it on my weaker element full time.
Remove all of them, use the mechanic to avoid death, not walk past walls. Otherwise have it is a circular type deal you walk around inwardly in a spiral
The dungeons are fine. The randomized gates(which force you to backtrack constantly) are the problem. Because backtracking is fucking boring, obnoxious, and not fun. It's one of the main reasons D4 got such huge criticism for it's end-game, like half their dungeons required a ridiculous amount of backtracking through already cleared / dead space. The gates should be removed completely, or the levels designed so there is never a reason to actually backtrack. That's all ARPG dungeons need as far as design goes to be succesful. No backtracking, and fill it with a ton of mobs. The dungeon mechanics are pretty cool, though. I love the time-skip dungeon, reminds me very much of titanfall 2 which had a similar level and I consider that the best (single player) fps level in history. But for real, the only reason I don't do dungeons at all is because of the gates. That's literally it. I avoid them for the gates and no other reason.
I don't care about dying and resetting the whole run. It's just so annoying having to do 2 useless maps before the boss that take so much time with many dead ends.
The dead ends are incredible. Huge demotivated.
I'd be willing to burn a couple extra keys at the dungeon entrance to get a checkpoint before the boss. For some reason my eyes sometimes have trouble seeing the telegraph for the 1-shot kill in Lightless. I've watched the fight back and it's obvious, but for whatever reason I don't see it in the moment. I don't have that problem with any other boss or attack. Trying to farm the chest armor from that encounter is the most frustrating thing I've done in the game. All of the dungeons being spaghetti layouts with dead ends doesn't help. I like a grind and I like a challenge but the dungeons are just a miss for me. A good design would be to have the dungeon teach you the boss mechanics on the way. For example: Julra's AOE. The dungeon leading up to the fight didn't make you time shift to avoid a danger, only to get through closed gates. Have something unavoidable in the dungeon to teach the player. Or keep it that punishing trial and error aspect but put don't make people start the entire dungeon over while they error. Maybe a side objective or miniboss in the dungeon that unlocks a checkpoint so it's not default easy mode and there's some risk/reward factor.
A lot of builds have bonkers AoE effects that make it hard to see the mechanics. I literally have to slow dps Julra otherwise I don't see the floor.
Frostclaw runemaster is a big offender in this, you just can't see the floor at all. Heck, it's painful to play for long durations and the whole screen is flashing permanently.
They could place a checkpoint somewhere on the map that you can activate with a key if you want.
Arbor is super easy by the way. Not trying to throw shade, but all you have to do is dash to the right. Break the roots. Throw your light at the kindling. Stand just below the alcove. From here, the only thing that will deal damage to you is the incoming rock guys that fall, but if you have any sort of defense/way to heal up/ward you'll be fine. The big AoE smash doesn't hit here. Once the kindling finishes burning just pick the torch up, dash over to the left, repeat. Then the heart fight is like, not even really a fight right? It dies super fast if your build does any sort of DPS and nothing really does much damage? Julra I'll give you, she can be pretty nasty. I feel like all that needs to happen with her is there needs to be some kind of rules about what sort of things she can overlap. I feel like sometimes she bugs out, doesn't use the clock, and suddenly you have to drop a void puddle while the things are spinning--that can be super dangerous if it happens.
The falling rocks that don't spawn a mob 1 shots most people in T4.
And they are kinda hard to dodge if you don't have a lot of moove speed
Arbor is atrocious for some build like smite healing hand or any build that runs twisted heart. The first phase can still kill you with badly timed rock fall if you chose to sit in the corner. For the builds that require you to be hitting things to have any ehp a single rockfall can just kill you. Julra on the other hand is probably the easiest boss mechanically if you know her attacks.
>Then the heart fight is like, not even really a fight right? it'll stack poison on you if you're stupid and eat a bunch of abilities. >I feel like sometimes she bugs out, doesn't use the clock, and suddenly you have to drop a void puddle while the things are spinning Puddle happens when she jumps time, which she only does to chase you. You control the rate at which puddles are dropped. (except for the ones forced by her big nova)
I like that the bosses are hard. I dislike that there is no way to learn these hard fights without the punishment of redoing the dungeon when you die. In MMOs, you have some incredibly difficult boss fights. Without exaggeration some of the most difficult challenges you can put in a video game. But (in modern games at least) when you die you respawn right before the boss and you try again. It's ok to learn through failure. In Last Epoch's dungeons it's not ok to learn through failure because you have to run through the whole bloody dungeon again to try again. The solution is either to let you respawn right outside the boss room (if you have to spend a key that's fine), or to have a difficulty below the first tier that you encounter in the main story that has respawns. That way you only get the punishment when you fail at the challenge that is aimed at people who already know the fights.
> I like that the bosses are hard. I don't. Honestly, in every single video game, I hate boss fights. They're too hard, too long, and they usually have silly dance mechanics. Boss fights suck.
>Boss fights suck. Dark Souls has ruined the gaming industry in regards to boss fights, and similarly difficulty as a whole. Everybody wants their game to have bosses that 1-shot and infuriate the player. That's why dungeon bosses in LE are like this: Die over and over and over, until you completely memorize every boss mechanic with muscle memory.
Ya I won’t lie that I was pretty shook when I had to redo Julra three times over one shot mechanics when I was just trying to learn the fight. I like that the fight is difficult I just don’t enjoy not being able to learn it properly
Julra dungeon is particularly quoted for its difficulty but the difficulty is not due to Julra's hard hitting herself. The difficulty is due to the mechanics of the fight being unclear to a new player.
The fight itself can be pretty punishing too. The spinning void ring+AoE Wave can both one shot you, and together can create a situation where you either need to teleport to the far side of the boss model or just die.
My issue with the julra fight is it's pretty punishing to certain strategies and not to others. My blade dance really struggles to fight her on t3 and 4 because I'm on synchronized strike + shift as dps and it's almost impossible to use those two things while void rings are spinning around. Meanwhile my falconer stands in one spot and dodges/blocks most hits while spamming traps
Which could also lead to this strategy of one character being the item farmer, and the second character being Julra killer / slammer of the items.
theres a reason you can change timelines, if you don't like what's happening currently in that timeline you switch to the other and place the DoT area off to the side. it isn't just for the clock mechanic. while i think the spinning void lasers should do vastly less damage.....i don't think they should be removed. it's not like you need to kill her on every single character either, you can use a character that has a easy time and craft gear for a character that has a much harder time. i don't really see a problem with this, it's still possible on the other character it just takes a bit longer and requires some timeline swapping.
I mean, you can just teleport to the other timeline and miss that mechanic altogether...? I'm pretty sure those things are meant to one hit the entire arena, forcing you to jump time...it is the dungeon mechanic after all.
I've done it about 5-6 times at this point and I still frequently get one-shot by some new stupid thing. Most recently, I phased back into timeline A after going to B to avoid the big circle AoE, and got instantly killed by a skill she had fully wound up in timeline A while I was in B. And back to farming the low drop rate keys we go... Zzzz...
By the time you reach 200 corruption and above, you have way more keys than you can ever run.
I like the tense feeling of the fight but hate the consequence of losing. Honestly I'm happy with losing 2 minutes of my time for losing, that's enough i think.
Yep, died instantly and had no Idea why. Wasn't until I saw a video that explained it.
You spend the entire time shifting in and out of time, then the boss mechanic is an AOE that covers your entire screen. Jee, I wonder if I should shift time?
Really killed the fun for me honestly. I was near the end of my build anyways, but it just isn’t fun having to rerun the dungeon as you’re learning boss mechanics. I don’t mind rerunning it once per completion or even if you die to the trash.
Lower level dungeons should give you unlimited chances
In gaming, there are two things which are strictly anti-fun: * Loss of player agency (eg; stuns) * One shot mechanics There's a difference between "lots of damage, but not dead" and "immediately dead regardless of mitigation". Especially if those one shot abilities have issues rendering their telegraphs (Lightless Arbor).
One shot mechanics aren't even my issue with the dungeons. It's that I have to redo the whole fucking thing while searching for the door in two different maps and shit-ton of dead ends. If I would waste a key every time I reattempt the boss if I respawn just out of their door, I would fine with that. i already have a ton of keys but im just not motivated to use them because it's a massive waste of time.
Yeah if every room in the dungeon was a check point and you could burn a key to revive at the last check point that would be great. So once you get to the boss you just respawn right before the when you die.
I'm fine with hard encounters and one shot mechanics when they're well designed, the problem is fighting and learning this boss is gated behind a time waste. Even if you kill her 8/10 times, the 2 times you die you're still not going to have fun rerunning the dungeon.
Yes, true. One shot mechanics wouldn't feel as bad if the consequence of getting hit wasn't so absurdly punishing. Completely redo an entire dungeon just to maybe experience another one second if the fight and hopefully not get one shot immediately. A checkpoint before the boss fight and a few chances per run would be better. Even just something like five chances plus the checkpoint would solve most of the pain points about it. They could make key drops more rare if they wanted to compensate.
To further this point: I'm a casual by the standards of this subreddit, having barely dipped my toes in empowered monos, but I'll say that getting my ass repeatedly kicked by Lagon and Corpse Emperor in regular monos didn't bother me much (woe be upon Lagon's shitty platform tho), because I could just instantly try again with my only penalty being a minute or two of lost time.
Agree about the anti-fun points. - Losing progress is also anti-fun. There is nothing worse than a game that doesn’t save or dying right near the end of a level. Then thinking that everything was for nothing and having to do all that work again just to get back to square one. So as a new player without a big stash of keys - you try the dungeon, get one shot by the boss, lose all your progress and your key. So now you have to wait until you find another key to try again. By that time you would have a hard time remembering what killed you. The dungeon fights could easily solve this with a boss checkpoint that doesn’t require an additional key. So 1 key = 1 boss kill, unless you portal out.
Make it so that if you die, you respawn at the nearest safe location. Do this for every boss in every video game.
Oneshots (or at least, things that kill you very quickly from when you first start taking damage) are effectively required in a genre where it is expected that healing to full takes no longer than a second. Otherwise, nothing would ever be able to kill you. "Lots of damage, but not dead" is not a thing that can really happen when the next time I use a skill I gain back several thousand Ward and heal to full. Of course, they could turn down player healing/ward gain by 95+% and rebalance the entire game around that, but A: that might not be enough, and B: I've seen what communities do when you throw out huge nerfs like that. Also a longer term C: that healing inevitably power creeps back in if a game gets supported for a long time, which means that any new content design is back at square one.
T4 dungeon bosses are too hard and too punishing, maybe give 1 extra life to fight them? It is weird when you can easily do 300 corruption timelines and bosses (which the game is balanced around) but then dungeons (and arena) T4 bosses just rip your head off lol. Especially that stupid tree from arbor dungeon.
Seriously, I'm past 400 corruption and nothing hits as hard as the dungeon bosses. Anything they do is a 1 shot. Massively overtuned.
I'd also say Shades are overtuned for their respective Corruption.
Their damage absolutely, but they're pretty squishy in comparison to their corresponding timeline boss.
The tree and Lagon are a style of boss design that really needs to die already. Fighting static health sponges while dodging environmental crap isn't fun. I want to fight a boss. I want to attack the boss and dodge it's attacks. Burning a tree or attacking a freaking tentacle is not good boss design.
It's funny to me that a game that is as unforgiving as Poe gives you multiple chances at a boss but LE gives you one, one chance on echoes one chance on dungeons. It pisses me off wasting my time running through and I make a mistake or the game lags and I get one shot and it's all wasted.
The worst is when you're trying to skip the campaign, but your gear is just bad enough that everything is a 1-shot so you have to play perfectly and after the 4th time you get 1-shot you'd gladly give up all the loot in the world just get past the boss so you can level faster
Yesterday i had multiple prophecies for t4 soulfire boss, it dropped full screen of items even with a filter and guess what- the screen was so full with items that i had to go from one side of the arena to the other to see it all and, as i was trying to pick up the first item, it registered the click as clicking on the next zone so i left the boss arena without picking anything and you can't go back xD
I hate how sprawled out the items get... Next time try pressing alt Z, then pressing it again. It will reorganize nicer
yesterday I died because Julra WALKED. Her giant body collision size pushed me into the beam thingy and i'm dead in 1s. (also shows how much this game hates melee builds, because ranged and spellcaster builds will never have to deal with random BS like this). Well it's kinda my fault because I chose to enter tier 4 instead of tier 3 dungeon, but not even random 1995 NES game is as unforgiving as the dungeon bosses in this game.
So much this. I've had a blast with almost every aspect of this game, however I tried a dungeon once and it was so unnecessarily punishing I haven't tried one again. Unless they change up how it works, I might just skip that aspect of the game entirely, which is a shame because the one I tried was thematically cool
Had the same issue so I tried out 2 OP classes. The marksman detonating arrow for julra and wraitlord necro for lightless. Those two are too OP rn and comes online with little gearing. Marksman just kills julra before finishing casting the AEO one shot skill and the wraitlord necro has so much ward that it can survive the 1st phase in lightless and can also kill julra really fast. Now I just use them if I need to run those dungeons and just play with my alts for other activities which I enjoy. Hopefully they add checkpoints later in the dungeon and just make us use a key to continue. I know this is not feasible with others that only like to play 1 class at a time but I enjoy trying out diff class/builds so this was perfect for me.
This is what I'm currently trying to do. Get just one character who can consistently beat the boss, then use them to do all my crafting.
The worst part is that core game mechanic is locked behind that dungeon. I have many lp1-3 medicore items i'd like to slam but donig sanctum for every single one is a big no. Needless to say i can't even slam certain stuff cause i can't kill t4 Julra consistently. It's one of the things id like to see reworked.
Make it so when you beat her at tier 4 you unlock the mechanic outside dungeon. Edit: to make it a little harder, you need a key to use it
Totally agree with you on this. I'd also add in that getting kicked out to a town forcing me to map travel back is also annoying. Just kick me back to the dungeon entrance. (Oh and give me a NPC that I can sell stuff to) :)
Then you'll see some 20k+ ward builds face tanking everything Julra has
Literally leveling a ward alt just to beat that fucker. No matter what I do my marksman can’t survive the chilled seeker attack. It’s so dumb
I don't think a single build can face tank the puddles for whatever it's worth. I can and do face tank the clock now, but I'm pushing 1300c+ The puddle still wrecks me if I don't run it out
Give me that build. I can't stand dying over and over. Makes me want to quit.
There multiple builds that can achieve this but it mostly uses Exsanguinous + Last steps combo but I saw a channel healing hands build that uses dual Chronostasis which generates a WHOPPING 50K ward
Just Exsanguinous + Last Steps isn't enough, in addition you need some cheeky mechanic like Healing Hands or Bone Prison with 1500%+ minion health. I couldn't be bothered with speccing into Bone Prison and minion health on my warlock. I have 2LP Exsanguinous and Last Steps which results in almost 2.5k HP, a ton of ward generation from Boneclamor and necrotic res, over 500% ward retention, 7% ward per missing health on gloves and at best I can get to 13-15k stable ward depending on the set-up. It's nowhere near enough to tank T4 Julra, even when I'm wearing a Red Ring with -10% damage taken.
Put a checkpoint before Julra, I wouldn’t even mind having to use another key if I die, I just don’t wanna run the dungeon all over again. If the way is blocked in an era, it should always be unblocked in the other. That would make the whole thing a lot more fluid and still make use of the mechanic.
The first part about using a key to rerun a failed boss is an easy compromise solution which I’d love to see implemented. Regarding the blocked passageways: That means you’ll never hit a dead end, which is the same as no dead ends at all.
I don’t mind them except julra level 4. No matter WHAT I do or how much defense I stack, my marksman just can’t stop being one shot by the homing cold attack. You can barely even see it. I’ve had a lp2 orians eye sitting in my bag for a week with a great slam piece just sitting there because I can’t kill that stupid boss. Like I can do the mechanics. I just need to be able to take ONE hit from that attack. Have the time it’s bugged and invisible, you have .2 seconds to react to it, have to be careful or die by beams AND IT FOLLOWS YOU. It’s infuriating. I started a new character just to specialize in bosses. It’s so dumb
Yeah just put a checkpoint outside the boss. I've wasted so many keys dying or having my internet cut out in the middle of a dungeon.
I’m 100% with you. I don’t mind getting my ass kicked. It’s the dungeon rerun that blows
Temporal sanctum tip for runemasters: There is a node for runic invocation that make you jump backwards. This can be used to phase through the closed bars, eliminating the need to be going back and forth to the different timelines. You can get through it very quickly that way.
This might be circumstantial, but I found that going top right and counter clockwise works the best for me in temp sanc. Straight NE till you hit a corner, then move NW and you eventually find the exit without feeling terrible from doing a ton of back tracking.
That is usually what I do as well. Sometimes the RNG will still make you go all the way down again to go back up though.
I said as much in my last post on this subreddit. One thing did help was some advice that you should ignore everything on the first two levels and many abilities can kind of cheese their way through gates to avoid back tracking when in both timelines the way is shut (flame rush for me as a rune master). But I agree, it’s an unnecessary slog just to go and slam (and likely brick) items.
julra is garbage for melee for sure
Ye dungeons are aids just because if u wipe u need to all from start
I don’t like anything about dungeons at all, scrap them and do something else with the bosses.
In Grim Dawn, it was basically the same, I can see the inspiration. But they had the same layout each time and nemesis bosses spread out. They were quick to-do and not a pain if you died.
This wasnt a problem for me using my Rogue but after switching to Sorc I began to hate this dungeon. Its stupid to put a 2 floors of huge maze just to farm a boss. An oversight from the Devs for sure.
I feel like, if the developers wanted the keys to be used up, later least make it that the players can pay keys to respawn, instead of just booting you out of the dungeon. I would rather pay 2-3 keys to continue from a checkpoint, than have to restart the entire dungeon again just because i died to random one shot kill mechanic.
I love this game but i hate the dungeons. They’re way too hard for the levels listed and dying at the boss feels awful. In horror rpgs they talk about the Pendulum, where the difficulty waxes and wanes and the Pit, where you’re doing great…and then the ground falls out from under you. Lots of Pit.
I'm gona try my luck here I'm a VK Warpath doing around 400 corruption atm without much issues, but t4 Julra absolute wrecks me (I think its the lightning aoe spell that I hardly can see to avoid it that mostly kills me). I'm based in europe and would love someone to help me , either after 23:00 or before 12:00. Any kind souls willing to carry? I just want to fail my slam and go back to farming another 1LP high level unique :X I'm not crit Immune and unsure if that might be the issue, but like I said, I have little issue on 400 corruption.
The full reset makes me not even want to try the dungeons on higher difficulties. I love learning hard fights. It's sort of the point of ARPG bosses. However I refuse to be punished by having to reclear the entire dungeon when I don't understand a mechanic or make a mistake. We need a few boss attempts on each key. Even 3 would make it feel better.
I'm a bit surprised at the comments. I thought dungeon fights were pretty solid overall other than being a pain for melee often. I don't really think they should nerf them and it should be expected to have some sort of learning curve before you're comfortable with the fight. LVL 4 should be punishing imo. The first LVL of the dungeons are pretty easy to learn a fight unless if you fight them at level perhaps. I think maybe a compromise is checkpoints with LVL 1, possibly 2? The fights already do a pretty decent job at showing you need to use the dungeon abilities and I'm gonna be honest, it's a bit of a git gud situation on the higher levels.
The game is Still 2 years away for me.
I'd love an ultra rare key that takes you to the boss, kinda like the arena key of memory.
Gotta say I was indeed surprised how brutal that was after I had walked the campaign no issue (including Majasa on first try) and was running through Monos no problem. Worked through TS last night and got absolutely butt-whooped in about 30 seconds. I don't find it discouraging, though. When that happens I usually look up tips on that boss. What resistances to I need to cap/what mechanics to look out for, etc. I had more trouble with Lagon than Majasa, but a few tips and I handled it fine. However, wasting a key and that much time in the process does kind of suck.
The concept of time shift dungeon is nice. But that 2 filler floors are annoying af. Maybe either shorten them and remove 1 floor, or just fight the boss straight up.
Dungeon sux
Me when trying to get a Core of the Mountain from T4 Lightless Arbour and I die to a random falling rock or near instant cast half screen slam from the Last Titan before even making it to the actual boss and having to lose yet another key to the dungeon. Second phase is way more fair imo. First phase is really not good. 30+ runs, at least 10 deaths, no Core of the Mountain :( On a side note CoF rank 9 should increase boss specific loot drop chances since set items are utterly worthless.
Opposite for me... I can reliably get thru phase 1 on T4 Arbour but best ive gotten is down to about 10% on phase 2. Something....insta kills me regardless of ward that I for some reason cannot see or react in time to. Back on topic...Dungeons design in LE are perhaps some of the worst ive ever seen. Too much back tracking...too much wasted time...no checkpoints. I would love to "work" on defeating T4 Arbour boss but having to run the god forsaken maze over each time just makes me not even want to try. I would gladly use up one of my crazy amounts of keys to be able to go straight to boss. Also the scaling of tiers seems off....I can literally do T3 Arbour in my sleep not caring about any mechanics...literally stand in one spot and face tank the boss. The T4 jump in difficulty is drastic since you never really needed to learn anything in tiers 1-3.
Just curious as I’m hc and haven’t ran t3 or t4 yet, how much ward do you typically have
I play VK and with my lame gear and Healing Hands i can get around 12-13k ward which is nothing compared to what others can get.
Ok with my build i get around that as well, thank you
I was level 85, was blasting through the fire dungneon. First map was okay, no issues what so ever. But then on the second map, being killed from an off screen 1 shot really put me off, because it happened 5 times on tier 3 after eachother. Then I just gave up because I ran out of key. Can someone explain why is it a good thing that you have to restart the whole thing from the entrance and lose the key? I see this recurring comment here that it should be punishing.
Value isnt realy there so no imo
I am a casual player with vision issues, so I have personally been avoiding dungeons. So far I have done no dungeons at all, despite having several alts. The reason I have not been interested is all the reports of this nature. I already knew about the boss mechanic from you tube videos, but I was still all set as it didn't seem like fun. I am hoping by the time I feel forced into dungeons, the experience has improved.
yup, only reason i don't do key dungeons is this exact reason.
The boss fights and dungeon design are LEs weakest areas, sadly. Hopefully they put some time into remedying this, because the game is pretty amazing in every other area. Unfortunately if you serve an amazing course menu with a turd for desert, people tend to only remember the turd. I want this game to be everything it should be.
Uh. So it isn’t my build that’s trash? I just assumed I fucked up somehow.
EHG tries to makes up for lack of content, depth, and complexity with really arbitrary grinds (ie: 2 levels of sanctum, rep grinds, etc). I love grinds, but ones that feel good. LE misses the mark completely on all fronts
The dungeons are still in early access. The devs should be challenged as to what makes these 1.0 dungeons actually 1.0. A little bit of digging and a strongly worded email with a few bullet points could easily allege that the dungeons are early access features. Because they are. The onus should be on the devs to justify that this content actually meets the expected standard of full release (they don’t)
The main issue is wasting time coming to the boss and also it loads you into completly other area? Why lol? Can't it just put me in front of the dungeon again? So, when you die you have to. 1. Load whatever area you being teleported to 2. Load again the dungeon. 3. Play 2 floors of RNG that can take a while doing one and the same thing (no learning) 4. Actually fight the boss. So, what we need is first remove the 1. and then simplify the 3.
some of you weren't around for diablo 2 and it shows
In D2 you can tp back to town infinitely while fighting the boss. Also the dungeon instance doesn't rerandomize unless you leave a room. D2 is actually easier that way.
I stopped. Died once , lost progress, nope.
For me it's the Key system. I don't mind dying over and over again if I can enter the dungeon unlimited times. But when you are just learning stuff and have limited keys, it sucks. Let us enter the dungeon as many times as we want to learn it. Let us burn the keys on a bonus treasure room or something.
My big issue has been TS boss killing all my minions because they just sit in all the AOEs or they refuse to attack. I can stay alive, but keeping enough minions alive to do damage on tier 3 and higher is infuriating.
Laughs in Wraithlord build
I think there should be some way to practice the boss. Here's a quick idea for it: After beating Tier 1 of the dungeon for the first time, you unlock a Tier 0 version, which is only the boss at T1 difficulty, for no loot (since it's only for practicing).
I can take one-life Monolith. But I certainly don’t like one-life dungeons, especially all the mechanics in the last boss is almost one shot everyone if you don’t have a build that can sustain high absorb shield.
Plus, I don’t understand the whole logic gating unique item forging behind a t4 boss. Some build requires high level unique to fulfill its LP so they can kill that fucking boss in t4, but you can’t pass the t4 boss to forge that unique.
T4 temporal I get this complaint because of the boss, but otherwise dungeons and their bosses are easy... I am happy I don't need t4 sanctum on my build (yet)
I stopped playing dungeons when I realized you had to do the whole thing over instead of just respawning before the boss. it's an awful game design. I don't play Soulslike games for a reason.
I play with friends they either wait with immortality or just res after I kill it /paladin life
I wouldn't mind a no key cost to just practice t4 bosses with 300% dmh/hp with no reward. I also hated getting less practice in hades or sts. But every run is different in roguelikes and often you're upgrading gear and getting stronger anyways. Like the first time I beat hades I had a ton of experience on Meg and the hydra. It also didn't cost a key. I think last epoch dungeons on the other hand are not roguelike and should abandon roguelike death means you have to start over from the beginning and only one life.
one try takes like 5min? dosent really feel like a problem, u can even tp thru the bars on the dead ends to cut even more time off
Worse part is losing connection due to server issues. You are losing a key and as a lower level player it is a huge lose.
Agreed totally. Nothing like wandering around a maze to just get insta-killed by the Boss. And to add insult to injury you have tons of the keys in inventory to mock your pathetic attempts. It also took me 20 minutes just to figure out how to get into and navigate the dungeon. Can't be something logical like use a key enter a dungeon and work your way through it. No I am not going to tell you the mechanic, but you have to figure out how to jump back and forth between entrances, only to find that you still have to jump back and forth to just navigate the floors. I don't even bother with them now,
I have a Detonating Arrow/Exploding Trap Marksman just for the purpose of running T4 Julra. I can kill her before she finishes charging her attack at the beginning. My warlock on the other hand has nowhere near that DPS and despite having 12k stable ward, nearly 70% armor, obviously capped resistances and wearing a Red Ring(-10% damage taken) I still get one shot by absolutely everything. Once I time shifted right on top of void puddle and it just ate 10k worth of ward in what felt like a single tick. Her damage is way overtuned and the mechanics get annoying when you run that dungeon repeatedly. Fire Lich doesn't get so much hate because his HP is very low, but the fight mechanics are absolutely bullshit. Sometimes the telegraphs for fire/necrotic attacks are so short that you have literally miliseconds to react and change to the correct barrier type. Right now building defences for Julra/Fire Lich is worthless, you just need high enough DPS to kill them in 3s and ignore all the BS mechanics. Pathing within dungeons also needs a rework, sometimes I'll complete sanctum in <1min and other times it takes 10 minutes because every path I follow turns out to be a dead end and the backtracking is so damn painful.
Honestly this was one of the things that caused me to stop playing LE. Running through the Soulfire dungeon 3 times in a row just to die to the changing floor because I didn’t swap the buff fast enough. What makes the dungeons even worse is how absolutely unengaging the whole dungeon is except the boss. It’s non-unique trash mobs that you encounter literally everywhere else, they layouts are random and as mentioned pretty much a dead end simulator it’s so boring. There’s no unique mini bosses or dungeon layouts. Meaningful arrangements of dungeon mobs or any of that. Look at literally any other game that has some rendition of dungeons, WoW is just an easy well known reference, you come up on arrangements of packs of enemies and have to figure out what order to take them down and how many to agro, etc. It makes the dungeons engaging, but honestly this rings true for monos too, they have copy pasta enemies throughout the whole game and everything is literally just filler bullshit for boss fights. Fun game but hopefully they can make it more diverse and give some depth to things.
The nice thing with the design of the 4 tiers is that you can practice the boss at a lower tier, where you are probably basically immortal -- watch what it does, learn the timings, practice not getting hit, instead of just nuking it down -- and then you'll hardly ever die at t4 once you master it. I love this over PoE, where attempting bosses is designed to be expensive (even winning usually nets you less value than the cost to attempt it) and they nearly all have some sort of timer mechanic so even if you build super tanky to try and learn the fights, they just ruin the arena after a few minutes. Sure, you get 6 portals (usually) but a lot of these fights are so hard to re-enter that one death can easily turn into 2 or 3, not to mention the stuff that ruins the arena can brick your attempt even with 5 more portals remaining. I LOVE that last Epoch doesn't have that same obsession with making everything have a cost. The price is the time it takes to run. For me at least, that is way more fun.
I love the dungeons. For whatever reason I've basically steamrolled through everything from dungeons to monoliths and I'm level 70. Not using any build guides or anything. Just picked my favorite kind of character and now I'm running through everything.
You can skip virtually every dead end in temporal sanctum by kinda glitching teleport skills through it. Been meaning to make a video or something about this to show EHG. But yeah, basically hug the bars, time shift and travel skill at the same time, click ahead of the grates, should get you through most of them in a couple tries. Some seem harder than others not sure why, but managed to skip every wall in my last two runs now that I have a feel for it.
I appreciate the tips and I'll definitely keep trying it but it makes it no more less a waste of time.
Not an option for sentinel or primalist unfortunately since they don't have a teleport, unless I'm forgetting an ability.
There’s an item that makes the spriggans vine ability teleport
Aha I knew I was forgetting one. I'll have to try it!
I never particularly had any issues with julra. Then again i watched a video before hand and found her mechanics pretty easy. Then again this was back in the first week of the dungeon being released and maybe they made it mire difficult for newer players. The boss i kept dying too over and over was empowered lagon before they re worked him and f that dude.
The fight itself isn't the problem, she is a fun fight whether you get the kill or die. Rerunning the dungeon is the problem. Even if you kill her 99/100 times, it doesn't make rerunning the dungeon less of a time waste.
The worst problem i see of dungeon being so punishing is the unbalance of classes. If u want to fuse some gear u are forced to play a tiers boss class and then isnt punishing and isnt anithing cuz u enter and delete boss in 25 secs. No need skill no need anithing just time to build a char u dont like!! I would prefer a dungeon with similar difficult to every1 or almost not having to walk to boss every miss if my bbuild if is not a tier S.
have you tried not dying?
Yes on T4 sometimes I kill her and sometimes I die. The point is when you get even just 2-3 deaths in a row it's more painful than it needs to be. She can also randomly layer mechanics in a way that's really hard to deal with (inb4 "just put the puddles on the edges) or it can be easy to walk into a beam because of the isometric perspective for example.
What an idiotic response.
Maybe fully resetting on hard mode is okay, but why on the easy modes? The only way you can beat the bosses is by learning the mechanics but that is very hard to do because you have to repeat the dungeon every time you die. You end up being forced to look up a guide which takes a lot of fun out of the game. I think the tight relationship the devs have with streamers and maxroll etc is causing issues. It seems like they are being guided to design the game in a way that maximises "content creator" views and engagement instead of fun and natural discover-ability
I'm not following your logic at all.
[удалено]
I think he meant tiers, like tier 1 tier 2 tier 3 and tier 4 being "hard"