Hello Travelers, and welcome to day one of our Hype Week Posts for Season 3: Beneath Ancient Skies!

For those joining us for the first time for a new Season, Hype week is a week-long series of blog posts covering some of the biggest features to look forward to in the coming Season. That means over the next 5 days, you will get your first look at the new Ancient Era zones, the new Lich skill: Flay, Updates to Necromancer, Minion AI, QoL features, and more! The hype week culminates in the Patch notes, coming this Friday, August 15th.

The team has been hard at work, and it’s finally time to reveal it to you. Before eventually getting to the full nitty-gritty with the patch notes, let’s start with taking a look at the new gameplay system coming with Season 3: The Primal Hunt.

Primal Hunt

Primal Hunt is a new random encounter similar to the Nemesis mechanic, being introduced to Last Epoch on August 21st. You will be able to encounter the Primal Hunt during normal gameplay in both Campaign and in the Monolith of Fate.

But what are we hunting, and what trophies are we seeking? The Primal Hunt introduces a new way for players to discover powerful new items for their characters to equip in the form of Primal Uniques and tier 8 affixes that transform any item into a Primordial Exalted. These items are some of the most powerful and exciting ever introduced in Last Epoch! Let’s take get into how you will go about interacting with this new system.

As one might expect with a name such as The Primal Hunt, everything starts with tracking your prey. Along your journey, you will encounter a Mysterious rift that one of the Rift Beasts has left open to their breeding grounds.

Upon traveling through this rift, you will find yourself at the entrance of an ancient cave, meeting with Skarven Bloodhorn, the Wengari Hunt Master to begin tracking your quarry. The beast you’re tracking is not the only one to be found in these caverns though, so do be prepared for a fight. Enemies within this cave system will drop Ancient Bones instead of gold (how do normal dinosaurs get it in their pockets?), which you will eventually use to acquire Primordial Items. We’ll talk about Primordial Materials in just a bit here.

The Rift Beast

Making your way through these ancient caves, you will eventually find a nest belonging to the Rift Beast. Rift Beasts are dangerous, invasive predators that have the ability to tear through reality to hunt down their prey. How dangerous? Let’s hear it from the Hunt Master himself:

“Tell me, how far have you seen a predator travel in search of prey? What if I told you of a predator that tears rifts into other times to sate its hunger?”

“It should run out of prey, compete with other predators for resources, but no. It lunges from its rifts fat and strong, too strong to be slowed by its rivals and too ravenous to not wipe out its prey.”

“It’s only a matter of time before the wilds of my home falter and become a wasteland, picked clean by the Rift Beasts. Your time will be next, and it won’t be alone. If left unchecked, the Rift Beasts would make all of reality their prey.”

Of course, the Rift Beast is not going to be happy to see you approaching their nest, and will fight with all they have.

After defeating a Rift Beast, you can choose to spare one of three hatchlings which will evolve your Rift Beast’s lineage based off of the specific chosen trait. This, however, is only the first step of the evolutionary path for the Rift Beast, and the rewards it can offer. What is a Rift Beast’s Lineage and traits? Let’s get into it.

Evolution

Now that your Rift Beast’s chosen Lineage has begun, you will continue to hunt down the Rift Beasts throughout Eterra. Continue adventuring throughout the world and Echoes, and you’ll find yourself encountering both Torn Rifts, and Mysterious Rifts.

Activating a Torn Rift will summon the descendants of the Rift Beast which you will be able to fight, and defeat for your chosen rewards. After slaying enough Rift Beasts from Torn Rifts, you’ll encounter another Mysterious Rift. The Mysterious Rift however, will send you back to the Ancient Era again, where you will be presented with an opportunity to further guide the evolution of their Lineage. Starting with a maximum of four Evolutions, you may find additional ways to expand your build-a-beast configuration, forcing even further evolution.



Evolution isn’t just a visual change. With each Evolution, the Rift Beast will gain new abilities and powers, as well as provide additional loot, including one guaranteed type of Primordial Material, which you will need in order to obtain Primordial Items. While within the Evolution panel, you also have the option to end the Rift Beast’s current Lineage and restart. Build a new, stronger, more rewarding Rift Beast, or perhaps one that’s a little easier to defeat.

The Hunt Master

The first question after acquiring your Bones, Feathers, and Fangs is “Why am I holding all these animal parts?” The next question is “How do I turn these into Primordial Items?”

This is where Skarven Bloodhorn, the Wengari Hunt Master, comes in. While these Feathers, Fangs, and other parts may not have an inherent value to you, they certainly are treasure for the Hunt Master. Skarven can be found at the start of each Mysterious Rift, as well as The Garden in Chapter 10, where, upon speaking with him, he will present you with the option to trade your Primordial Materials with him in exchange for powerful items.

Skarven holds many items crafted from Rift Beast materials, allowing you to trade Primordial Materials for Primordial Unique items, the new Rune of Evolution, exchange one type of Primordial Material for another, and even grab-bags of goodies, including bags of random Unique Items, Gold, Shards, or even Memory Amber.

Primordial Items

Primordial Items can be found in two flavors: Unique and Exalted. Each offers its own strengths, but they share one drawback. Much like a certain stoic sword-wielding warrior, there can only be one. You may only have one Primordial Item equipped at a time. This limitation is shared between both Primordial Exalted, and Primordial Unique Items. This means once you equip a Primordial Exalted or Unique item, you can not equip any other Primordial Exalted or Unique Items on that character. However you can swap them out whenever you desire and collect as many Primordial Items as you’d like!

Rune of Evolution

The new Rune of Evolution allows you to modify an Exalted Item which has at least one Tier 7 Affix, and no Tier 8 Affixes. Wait… T8 Affixes? That’s correct! This rune packs quite the punch by introducing the ability to randomly upgrade a T7 affix on the item into a T8 affix. This Primordial Sealed Affix does not consume the normal Sealed Affix slot, meaning under optimal circumstances, Exalted Items can now potentially have up to 6 affixes.

These new T8 affixes don’t offer just a small advantage. Going from T7 to T8 will greatly increase the potency of the Affix, often granting 50% to 100% additional effect over existing T7 affixes.

Primordial Exalted

As mentioned within the above Rune of Evolution section, Primordial Exalted items are items which have had an Exalted T7 affix sealed onto the item as a T8 Primordial Affix. Almost all standard equipment affix (aside from idols) is available to be made a Primordial T8; be it a Skill affix, or a hybrid health affix.

Do be aware: Just like other sealed affixes, Primordial Affixes are also unable to be selected as Legendary Affixes within the Eternity Cache.

Primordial Uniques

Primordial Unique items are very similar to the existing Unique items we’re all familiar with. Each of these items offers a powerful effect unique to that item slot. What makes Primordial Uniques different in effect is in offering a considerable amount of power for a single item. With the right build, much more than you may get out of a standard unique.

When purchasing Primordial Unique items from Skarven, the items will roll for Legendary Potential as well. So, on top of their increased power level, you can also further evolve them into Legendary Items, as with standard Unique items.

Remember, You can only have one Primordial Item equipped, so choose wisely. Not all Primordial Unique items are purchased from Skarven however, so do keep your eyes open when fighting powerful Rift Beasts.

Twitch Drops Campaign

To celebrate the Launch of Season 3 - Beneath Ancient Skies, we will be running a Twitch Drop campaign, with a Support-A-Creator cosmetic as well. This is our biggest Twitch Drop Campaign yet, so make sure you head over to our announcement post and get all of the details.

Closing

In Season 3, The Primal Hunt will arrive within Last Epoch, allowing you to guide evolution with your own hand, and reap your chosen rewards. With the new powerful Primordial Items, you’ll have even greater build opportunities and better blades against the coming Void.

We look forward to everyone getting their hands on Season 3: Beneath Ancient Skies on August 21st, and hope we’ll see you in tomorrow’s second Hype Week Blog Post as we talk about the Ancient Era, and the newly added Chapter 10 of the Campaign.