The world of Eterra is getting its newest “season” for action RPG fans.

Last Epoch just released its new 1.1 update today. It’s called Harbingers of Ruin and features new bosses and new post-game activities. Yes, you have to start a new character in this new season, but that’s part and parcel of seasonal action RPG combat, especially when it’s getting live updates and has online play.

Here’s what’s new in the Harbingers of Ruin update:

Evade

Evade is an additional special ability available to all classes, and not on the action bar.

• Evade works similar to movement abilities but:
  • Is not a traversal skill.
  • Is available from level 1, and cannot be unequipped or swapped with other player skills.
  • While evading, players can still take damage (no immunity frames).
• Comes with 2 charges, and a short cooldown.
• Evade gains cooldown recovery speed per character level
• Can be modified by abilities, affixes, and blessings.
• Can be modified drastically by Uniques.
• Added evade animations for all classes and transformations

Harbingers of Ruin

Access to the Pinnacle Boss is initially disabled.

• Only Online Cycle characters will have access to the Pinnacle Boss upon release.
• It will become available to all modes (Offline and Legacy) the next business day after someone defeats the Pinnacle Boss, or a week after release. Whichever comes first.
• You must slay all 10 Harbingers to gain the ability to challenge the Pinnacle Boss.
• After completing the Harbingers questline, you may spend 1 Eye to challenge the Pinnacle Boss.

Harbingers

• Each of the 10 Monolith Timelines has an associated Harbinger, spawned on defeat of the Timeline Boss.
  • Harbingers absorb abilities from the Timeline Boss that spawns them.
• The first Harbinger is unlocked after you kill the Timeline Boss in the final level 90 Normal Monolith Timeline.
  • Harbinger fights can then be toggled on/off from the Boss Echo rewards panel
• Subsequent Harbingers are encountered by killing bosses in Empowered Monolith Timelines, at increasingly higher Corruption levels.
  • Once a Harbinger has been defeated, it will continue to spawn in that same Empowered Timeline (if toggled on)
• Defeated Harbingers drop Harbinger Eyes. These items act as keys to access the Pinnacle Boss.
  • Harbingers are guaranteed to drop an eye on first kill, with a chance to drop after that.
  • Killing your first Harbinger now also unlocks Empowered Timelines
    • Because of this, Alt characters can now get Empowered Timelines unlocked a bit earlier (after conquering the first level 90 Timeline instead of the third). Example:
      • 1st Character – Conquers the three required Level 90 Timelines, unlocks Empowered Monoliths. Can now go conquer Empowered Timelines for Harbingers.
      • Alt Character – Conquers 1 Level 90 Normal Timeline, Empowered Monoliths unlock, can now go conquer Empowered Timelines for Harbingers.

Forgotten Knights Faction

• The Forgotten Knights Faction tracks your Harbinger progress. There’s also a Harbinger quest line.
  • This faction is separate from the existing Item Factions.
  • The Forgotten Knights is an Endgame Faction unlocked after you kill your first Harbinger.
  • Like other factions, Forgotten Knights progress is shared among characters sharing a stash
  • Faction progress is only advanced by the requirements of killing new Harbingers, in new Timelines, at the set level of Corruption
• Ranks in the Forgotten Knights Faction are unlocked with each additional Harbinger kill:
  1. +40% chance for Nemesis items to include an Egg of the Forgotten
  2. +10% chance for doubled Stability gain
  3. Double Harbinger Needle drop chance
  4. +6 Maximum Forging Potential gained by Empowering a Nemesis
  5. +20% additional Glyph of Envy drop chance from Harbingers
  6. The tiers of sealed affixes added by Empowering a Nemesis are 15% higher on average
  7. +1 Corruption gain per Gaze of Orobyss
  8. Blessings roll their value twice and pick the highest roll
  9. Double chance for Harbingers to drop their specific Uniques
  10. Slaying a Harbinger grants 1 additional Gaze of Orobyss
• Shattered Road zone added, home of the Forgotten Knights Faction.

Party Play

• Players must have unlocked the level 90 Timelines in order to be able to join the Forgotten Knights Faction. This means that a player must be able to start an Echo by themselves in one of the level 90 Timelines.
• As a guest, defeated Harbingers will only progress the Forgotten Knights Faction and drop guaranteed Eyes as long as the difficulty and Timeline requirements are met. These can be viewed in the Factions panel.

Nemesis System

The Nemesis system introduces new random encounters that can spawn throughout the Campaign, Monolith, and Dungeons.

• They first appear as a floating pile of armor around the body of a powerful warrior that’s been slain by a Harbinger
  • Clicking on the Nemesis brings up a menu where you can see four items from the slain warrior
  • These items are always Rare, Exalted, or Unique, with bonus chances of being the latter two. They can’t be idols.
    • For characters above level 50, at least one item will always be a Unique
    • Nemesis type and stats are determined by zone spawned in
    • Nemesis loot rolled is determined by character level
  • You have three options in that menu
    • Banishing the Nemesis, losing access to the items.
    • Challenging it, causing you to fight it and gain the items at the end of the fight.
    • Empowering it, causing you to fight it, but allowing it to escape through a time rift at the end of the fight.
• If you Empower a Nemesis, your next Nemesis encounter will feature a time rift instead of the warrior’s body and the items offered will be the same ones as before, but upgraded.
  • Rare and Exalted items can have their affixes upgraded up to Tier 7 and also increase their Forging Potential to beyond the normal limit.
    • They can also gain sealed affixes, up to T7. Exalted sealed affixes were previously unattainable (aside from Exalted experimental affixes when using a Rune of Research on an existing Exalted experimental affix).
  • Unique items have a chance of gaining Legendary Potential, or becoming a Legendary item, with random affixes added to them.
• You can Empower a Nemesis up to two times, before you must challenge it.
• After Banishing or Challenging a Nemesis your next encounter will have a fresh set of items.
  • These items will not change once they’ve been Empowered once.
• Whenever you defeat a Nemesis, regardless of whether you Challenged or Empowered it, it will also drop a pile of crafting materials. It will not drop regular loot to avoid confusion with the four items offered.
• At high levels, Nemeses may carry a special item as one of their rewards, The Egg of the Forgotten. This item can be replaced with one of your Uniques that lacks Legendary Potential or Weaver’s Will, allowing you to upgrade that Unique by the Empowering the Nemesis.
  • The chance of this item appearing scales from 0% below level 60, then 20% at level 60, up to 60% at level 100.
    • Rank 1 of the new Forgotten Knights Faction provides an additional +40% chance for the Egg of the Forgotten to spawn.
  • If you do not replace the Egg, it will randomly transform into a different Unique.

Upgradable Nemesis Weapons

• Nemeses can also drop Vengeful weapons that seek out the destruction of the Harbingers that killed them
• Killing a Harbinger while having one of these weapons equipped upgrades it to an “Avenged” version with improved stats
• There are Nemesis weapons for every weapon and off-hand type