Greetings Travelers!
Welcome to the first day of Hype Week for Season 5: Rage of the Frostborn. If you missed the latest exciting announcement from Mike and Judd, be sure to catch up here.
For you Hype Week first-timers, it’s a week filled with reveals and details in the form of dev blogs that drop once a day, leading up to Patch Notes on Friday. Along with the Patch Notes, we'll also release the Season 5 Overview Video which features patch highlights from our Game Director, Mike Weicker!
This week will shine a light on Season 5's new seasonal mechanic, changes to Merchant's Guild and Circle of Fortune, new Skills, new Uniques, and more! October 1st is coming up fast, so let’s dive into the new seasonal mechanic, Rage of Morditas, and Morditas as a new endgame boss.
Seasonal Mechanic: Rage of Morditas
Morditas is a fierce demigod who was once imprisoned after rebelling against his father, Heorot. Now freed and fueled by rage, he sets his sights on wreaking havoc once more. During your travels throughout Eterra, you’ll encounter Blood Crystals. You’ll be notified upon entering an area with a Blood Crystal, prompting that “Anger is building up in the air”. It will also be indicated on your mini-map as a blood ice shard.
Touch the crystal if you dare…but be warned, this will invoke the rage fueled shade of Morditas and will begin your descent into all-consuming anger. Entreat the demigod to smile upon you by slaying as many enemies as you can. This risk is not without reward, though. Deliver enough blood, and you will earn Bloodrage Charges. Each of these are used to empower and extract items from the Blood Crystal.
The encounter progression will be displayed on screen with the rage bar, including visual indicators of each threshold.
During the first phase, you must kill enemies as Morditas’ patience counts down, and blood souls will litter the battlefield for the demigod to collect. While you can’t interact with these, take pride in the number of souls that lie waiting for Morditas, as the more Bloodrage you gain, the more satisfied he becomes.
It is unclear if it is a blessing or a curse, but Morditas has seen fit to bestow upon you the ability to see the shortest path to fresh blood. You may follow your new instincts to your next kill with all haste.
There are also a multitude of Bloodrage buffs that Morditas may bestow upon you as you fight in his name. Today, we’ll share four of these buffs and allow you to discover the rest!
Revitalizing Rage, a buff that gives a chance to find a blood potion in combat that empowers your movement speed boost briefly upon pick-up.
Secondly, the Freezing Rage buff creates projectiles with a high freeze rate.
The Coalescing Rage buff spawns blood orbs around you that detonate when touched by an enemy.
Lastly, Reptilian Bloodrage will give Lizards a chance to appear nearby every few seconds. They don’t fear the cold, they thrive in it!
Once the timer runs out, you have only a brief second to catch your breath before you enter a second phase of the encounter, signified by a fusion of Blood and Ice magic in both of Morditas’ hands. This means the next phase is coming, and the gauntlet continues.
When the arena forms, you will be surrounded by a formation of blood ice. While inside the area, the enemies you defeated in the first phase will revive in a final attempt to enact revenge upon you.
Stand your ground and defeat the enemies within the Gauntlet of Blood and Ice, then spend your Bloodrage Charges to claim your rewards.
Rage of Morditas Rewards
Upon completing the Gauntlet, the Blood-Filled Crystal will fully materialize, allowing you to interact with it to select your rewards.
You will be presented with five possible rewards; four slots will contain equipment, and the final can have keys, crafting materials, bags of resources, and more. You can spend a Bloodrage Charge to select one of the rewards and roll new ones, or perform a Bloody Ritual or Frozen Ritual. Both Rituals will re-roll new rewards and affect the quality, quantity, and types of subsequent rewards.
The Bloody Ritual will purge the selected slot and reduce the number of future rewards by one. However, it will also prevent any new rewards from being of the same type of item as the one originally in that slot. For example, using the Bloody Ritual on a 2-handed axe will mean that none of the newly rolled rewards will be 2-handed axes.
Similarly, using the Frozen Ritual on an item will lock out that reward slot, but the next set of rolled rewards will all be of the same type as the reward in that slot. If the reward was equipment, it will try to have similar affixes as the original item.
You can obtain as many rewards or conduct as many Rituals as you have Bloodrage Charges and items to select from. Since there are five slots and choosing a ritual eliminates a slot, you have a limited number of attempts before being required to select an item. The more Rituals you use before picking an item, the better the rewards are likely to be. So the more sacrifices, the fewer options become available, but the better the presented items become.
The number of Bloodrage Charges will not carry over to your next Rage of Morditas encounter, but your rewards will stay the same between encounters. Your rewards will only ever change or reset when you use a ritual or select a reward.
There are also two new variant Unique Items that are available from the Rage of Morditas rewards and also have a chance to drop from Morditas and Pinnacle Morditas. These may appear when the rewards are fully refreshed with five new items. These two Uniques have special affixes which are selected from a pool. Using the Frozen Ritual on another item in the panel will re-roll which variant affix the Unique has, while using a Bloody Ritual on another item in the rewards has a chance to add either Legendary Potential or corrupt the item. Stay tuned for day four of Hype Week to see these new Unique Items!
New Forging Potential
Rewards from the Rage of Morditas will also be empowered in a unique way! On reward items, you will notice two new kinds of Forging Potential: Ice Forging Potential or Blood Forging Potential.
Ice Forging Potential has a chance to be preserved whenever it is used in crafting, and Blood Forging Potential raises the critical success chance when crafting.
All items created using an Frozen Ritual have Ice Forging Potential, and all items created using a Bloody Ritual have Blood Forging Potential. These new types of Forging Potential will add another layer to your crafting and slamming journey.
Every affix is an opportunity, and a little potential can go a very long way. May the goddess bless the luck of your Forge.
New Boss: Morditas
Now that you’ve proven your worth, Morditas awaits you for a new challenge.
As you complete Rage of Morditas encounters, each monster slain will progress you further towards unlocking the activity’s Echoes, which can be viewed in the new Nexus progression window (see day 4 of this week for more information on that).
These Echoes will be your gateway to fight Morditas. This special 3-part chain will have you encounter familiar foes in the first two stages, ending with a chance to fight Morditas.
You’ll also notice that the Morditas activity window shows an Anger gauge. As you kill monsters during Rage of Morditas encounters, the demigod’s rage will build up over time. Anger will affect the difficulty of all three echoes of the chain and grant you more rewards at the end. If these Echoes become too difficult, you can also appease Morditas, which will bring down the Anger gauge.
Pinnacle Encounter: Demigod's Ascendance
Upon defeating Morditas, you will obtain Demigod’s Ascendance, the Woven Echo that will enable you to step into the ring with the newest Pinnacle encounter, the God of Bloodshed. A word of advice, Travelers: in this Pinnacle encounter Morditas has embraced his identity as a god and wants to turn the entire world into a bloodstained battlefield. It’s up to you to shatter his dreams.
The God of Bloodshed is a more difficult version of the Morditas you encounter via the Season’s mechanic. It requires 400 Corruption to place in your Echo Web, and it does not scale difficulty with Corruption.
This challenge will test your wits, skill, and creativity, as this encounter helps bridge the difficulty curve towards Uber Aberroth. Prepare yourself for blood, frost, and rage!
First Blood: The Season 5 Pinnacle Race
Season 5: Rage of the Frostborn is nearly upon us. For the season start, we are throwing open the gates with something for the fastest and fiercest amongst all Travelers.
Say hello to First Blood.
View game pageThis is our season start race, and the premise is simple: Be the first to bring down the God of Bloodshed (aka Pinnacle Morditas) with your class, and etch your name into Season 5 history. Everyone who steps into the arena walks away with something. The quickest will earn a little bit more.
The Challenge
You have two ways to participate in the event:
Online Normal Solo Challenge
Online Hardcore Solo Challenge
Play on Normal or Hardcore. Whichever you pick, you go at it alone. Solo Account Found or Solo Character Found, the choice is yours. Just remember, you can only win once, so make it count.
The Rewards
Every single player who logs into Season 5 during the first two weeks to answer the call earns the in-game title Blood Seeker. It marks you as someone who showed up during the First Blood event. The very first player to defeat Pinnacle Morditas in each class takes home an Enraged Legend Supporter Pack.
Five classes. Two options to play. Ten packs waiting for the ten players fast enough to seize them.
Normal: A winner crowned for Acolyte, Mage, Primalist, Rogue, and Sentinel.
Hardcore: A winner crowned for Acolyte, Mage, Primalist, Rogue, and Sentinel.
And in the very rare case of two of you defeating him at the same time, we are not splitting hairs: You both win!
Reaching the God of Bloodshed
Morditas will not come to you. You have to carve your way to the throne. Here is the road:
Defeat Morditas through the Season's new mechanic and claim the Woven Echo that drops.
Step into the Woven Echo, Demigod's Ascendance.
Come face to face with the Pinnacle version of Morditas, the God of Bloodshed.
The Rules
A few things to keep in mind before you participate:
You must use Seasonal Online Characters.
You must play Solo Account Found or Solo Character Found.
You cannot win more than one Enraged Legend Supporter Pack from this event.
Your account must be in good standing. Active bans or Code of Conduct violations take you out of the running.
Eleventh Hour Games employees and Community Testers are welcome to join the hunt, but they aren’t eligible to win an Enraged Legend Supporter Pack.
We are tracking the kills, so you do not need to record your fight against the Pinnacle Morditas.
Timing
The race begins on October 1 at 11 AM CDT, the very moment Season 5 goes live. From there, the event runs for two weeks. Any player who logs into Season 5 in the first two weeks will earn the Blood Seeker title.
Once the God of Bloodshed falls once to every class across both Normal and Hardcore, the race is done, and the winners are crowned. Don’t wait around; someone out there is already planning their run.
The Clock Starts at Launch
You know the boss. You know the road. You know the rules. Now the only question left is how quick will you be to defeat the God of Bloodshed.
The gates open at launch, and First Blood belongs to the bold.
Good luck to all and we will see you in Eterra!
Full terms and conditions apply. See the First Blood Terms of Service for complete eligibility, reward, and conduct details.
Supporter Packs & Twitch Drops
For Season 5, our new Supporter packs will hit the store alongside the season’s launch on October 1. We’ll be revealing Season 5’s Supporter packs on September 27. Following this, Twitch Drop Rewards will also be revealed on September 29.
With the addition of new supporter packs, the Beneath Ancient Skies Supporter Packs will be leaving the store on October 19, so be sure to pick them up if you don’t want to miss out.
Outro
With that, we come to a close for day one of Hype Week! We hope you've enjoyed a taste of Morditas’s Rage, coming to Last Epoch on October 1. Give in to the rage and make the blood of your enemies flow. Don’t forget to join us tomorrow when we finally uncover some of the changes to the Circle of Fortune and the Merchant’s Guild. See you then, Travelers!