Players have found ways to duplicate items and generate gold in Last Epoch. Now the developers are responding to the exploits and taking action to relieve the economy in the game.
Last Epoch was fully released in February with version 1.0 after years of early access. Since then, two incidents have occurred: players exploited the bugs, to generate gold and to duplicate items.
There is a way in Last Epoch to trade items for gold: You must be a member of the Merchant Guild. Then you can offer items at the bazaar and sell them to other players. Players found partially identical items in the Merchant Guild, raising suspicions of duping.
On April 2nd, the developers released a statement on Steam regarding the exploits and the consequences they intend to take. They also outlined their plans for the future to relieve the economy in Last Epoch.
Developers Take Action to Alleviate the Economy
What has strained the economy? According to the developers, there have been two known exploits that disrupt the economy in the game since the full release of Last Epoch:
- The duplication of items through the bazaar. They were alerted to this exploit three days after its initial discovery and provided a fix on the same day.
- A gold exploit for which they provided a fix in less than 24 hours after becoming aware of it.
What measures have they taken? The developers have reviewed and banned affected accounts. They hope this will reduce inflation and allow the economy in the game to recover. Specifically, they state:
In response to the gold exploit, we have reviewed gold activities at the account level and identified and banned accounts that were involved in illegal gold acquisition. […]
We have also banned accounts with duplicated items from the first exploit, and we will continue to process and ban all accounts associated with RMT services [Real Money Trading, selling items for real money] (both buying and selling).
Through these regular account bans due to involvement with RMT, significant amounts of gold are actively removed from the economy, which we believe will contribute to reducing inflation.
Developer Team on Steam
The developers cannot specify exactly what the methods look like, as they are still in the process. However, they assume that removing “a large amount of gold through banning those who exploited the gold bug, as well as the RMT accounts that were affected, will be a great help” in alleviating the economy.
Developers Plan Visual Marking and Gold Tax
What are their future plans? On one hand, the developers want to continue responding to exploits, but also “proactively work to prevent exploits from happening in the first place.” They see it as their responsibility to “do everything to prevent these exploits from the start.”
The impression of item dupes in Last Epoch has also arisen because players can legitimately duplicate items in a dungeon and with runes.
“These legitimate duplications can create some very suspicious offers at the bazaar,” the developers write. They want to prevent this system from causing confusion and visually clarify, “that an item is a legitimate duplicate (for duplicated items, the 2D graphics for the item will be mirrored/flipped).”
Regarding gold, methods for inflation control are under discussion, such as introducing a gold tax on transactions. However, this is planned to come with version 1.1 in Last Epoch, “as it would be a quite fundamental change to the bazaar and the Merchant Guild.”
In conclusion, the developers emphasize that they take the feedback from the community into account and take such incidents very seriously.
In mid-March, they reached out to the community for a different reason and gathered feedback. They conducted a survey focusing on bug fixes and balance changes. Their conclusion is: The bugs that allow for overpowered builds are to be addressed: Last Epoch will weaken OP builds because players want that.
