The highly anticipated item faction system is coming to the full release of Last Epoch, on February 21st. 

With this innovative new way, players can participate in the deep and rewarding item hunt that Last Epoch offers, in a way that they like to play. 

Intro

By joining the Merchants Guild, you will be able to buy, sell, and trade items through the bustling bazaar. Or, if you choose to join the Circle of Fortune, you’ll set your sights on the stars and be able to bolster your item acquisition through Prophesies and increased item drop rates. So, this faction system is the result of many years of debating what the ideal trade system should look like in a loot-based ARPG.

If you have observed carefully, you will know that players of ARPGs are split nearly down the middle when it comes to those who want their experience to heavily trade and an economy, and those who want to focus on finding items themselves or, with close friends. So, it would be great if the developers of Last Epoch could provide players from both factions with a tailor-made and exciting path to finding top-tier items through the item faction system!

Item Faction System

In Last Epoch 1.0, you will join a faction once you reach the great mercantile city of Maj’Elka. 

When you select to join the Merchants Guild or the Circle of Fortune, a new interface will become available that will let you access details about your current status with your faction (known as reputation), how much Favor you currently have and what benefits your faction is currently providing you. Let’s talk about these briefly. 

Reputation

Reputation within a faction is a core part of how a faction is going to be benefiting you on your journey. As a representative of that faction, you will continue to increase your reputation by killing enemies and completing quests. 

For the Merchants Guild, this includes participating in the bazaar and completing trades at your current level. And for the Circle of Fortune, this means completing prophesies that will divine certain items after fulfilling the foretold conditions. 

Through earning reputation, you will ascend ranks within your faction, earning your unique benefits and options. Once you have earned reputation within a faction, that reputation stays with your account, in that game mode. This means, if you rank up a cycle character, all of your other cycle characters will have that rank when they join the same faction, and contribute to that faction’s reputation gain. You may switch factions and earn and maintain reputation with them with no penalty to your earned reputation with the other. 

There are currently 10 ranks to achieve in each faction. With the later ranks requiring quite a bit of commitment in order to obtain. So, while you have the freedom to change your faction at any time, you will want to pick a faction and stick with it to reach the most powerful benefits that they have to offer.

It is important to note that you can only be a member of one faction at any given time per character. And items earned with the benefits from those factions will require that you are aligned with them in order to use them. So, most players will want to stick to a faction that rewards their preferred playstyle. 

Favor

Next, let’s talk about Favor. Favor is the currency you will earn while slaying enemies or completing quests for each of the factions. 

Favor is separate from reputation. This currency can be used to either complete trades with the Merchants Guild or acquire new prophesies from the Circle of Fortune. And if you find yourself with excess favor, you can always spin the wheel with the faction gambler. 

Item Gifting

Item gifting to party members has been in the game for a while now and it isn’t going anywhere. 

However, it’s important to note that once you have joined a faction, items will start being tagged with the faction you are a part of when they dropped. 

This means, that while questing if you are a member of the Merchants Guild, and an item drops for you that item will still be shareable with anyone who was in the party like always, and be available to be sold provided that you meet the rank requirements in the Merchants Guild bazaar. 

Just be sure that the person you are trading it to also meets the same faction requirements. 

Resonance

The last use case developers wanted to solve for, are friends who choose to play together and just want their own little trade group. 

To solve this problem, developers introduced Resonance, which is a new type of item that can be found when you are questing with your friends or party members. This item can be used to enable an item to be gifted specifically to the player you have a Resonance with, even if they weren't there when the item dropped. 

A lot of times, players will play with their friends and then later, you'll be soloing a piece of content and the perfect item drops for your buddy. Thanks to the new Resonance system, you will be able to give them that perfect item, the next time you see them. 

As those of you who love loot-based ARPGs know, trade and economy is a very complex and divisive issue to solve for when catering to a large player base and different play styles, while keeping the item acquisition hunt feeling great. 

There is so much more to explore with the item faction system. Let's wait for February 21st. All the mysteries about the item faction system will be revealed during the search!