After months of quiet, Last Epoch is back with a bang, and an exciting new face in charge

I'm really rooting for Last Epoch Season 5 to hit. Eleventh Hour Games got off to a great start with the 1.0 launch of its action RPG, delivering some of the best class identity in the genre. It boasted really satisfying boss battles, and pushed ARPGs forward with features such as its crafting, stash organization, and loot filters. Then it felt as though momentum gradually slipped away, season by season. It's been several months since the last major update, and now - amid the announcement of Diablo 5 and Path of Exile 2's upcoming full release - it's finally back.

Before we get to what the new Last Epoch update brings to the table, EHG has some team news to share. Founder and Studio Head Judd Cobler explains that as the team has grown, he's struggled to make time for both his CEO duties and the creative demands of being the ARPG's Game Director. He's therefore handing over that second role to someone else, who will be very familiar to players that tune in to the team's developer livestreams - former Technical Game Designer Mike Weicker, who has been the show's regular host for the past several years.

Weicker is another founding member of EHG, and is certainly in tune with the players. I'm reminded somewhat of Warframe's Community Director Rebecca Ford stepping up to the reins as Creative Director in 2022. In similar fashion, Weicker just feels like the right person for the job. He says his focus "is on building upon the things that already make Last Epoch special," and adds that his plan is to revamp the communication strategy to ensure even more regular conversations with the ARPG's community. Cobler notes the team is now over 100 people, as it builds towards the Orobyss expansion planned for 2027.

With that settled, it's time to talk about Season 5, Rage of the Frostborn, which is just two weeks away - slotting perfectly into the gap between the latest Diablo 4 season and PoE 2's 1.0 launch in December. It'll introduce new pinnacle boss Morditas, God of Bloodshed, and with him a mechanic called Rage of Morditas. This can occur during both the campaign and endgame Echoes, and pushes you to rack up as many kills as possible at speed. It's designed to fit neatly alongside the existing action, rather than distract from it.

Reaching certain thresholds of enemies destroyed will bestow you with buffs, and award you with Bloodrage Charges that raise the rewards you can get your hands on when the event concludes. When these prizes pop up, you're able to perform a 'bloody ritual' to purge a slot, reducing the number of future rewards but ensuring that particular type will no longer be offered, honing the pool. It also provides the newly generated items with 'bloodforging potential,' giving them a higher chance for a critical success while crafting with them.

The other option at your disposal is the 'frozen ritual,' which will lock in a particular item type to ensure the next set of rewards all match up, along with weighting their affixes to roll similarly. It doesn't take affix tiers into account - "We had to take that out, that was absurd," Cobbler remarks - but it does grant 'iceforging potential.' This will give a chance when crafting that item to not use up the limited forging potential count, which restricts how much you can alter a given piece before it becomes unmodifiable.

Completing Rage of Morditas events will rack up a tracker that will unlock a second series of events, and working through these will earn the potential to take on Morditas himself. Defeat him, and you'll gain access to a Woven Echo that contains a fixed-difficulty pinnacle version of his boss fight; it requires 400 Corruption to even access, but naturally will pay out some of the best rewards in the season if you're able to get there and overcome him in battle. Cobler puts the level of challenge "between Abberoth and Uber Abberoth."

Another big element of Season 5 is an overhaul to the two 'item factions,' the Circle of Fortune and Merchant's Guild. While these are both pretty well liked, the pair note that "there's a lot of friction that can happen inside them." For the Merchant's Guild, there's a new price suggestion tool, along with settings that will lower the price over time to your specifications to ensure you actually sell items without having to manually micromanage how much you're charging.

On the Circle of Fortune side, prophecy rerolling has been redesigned to allow you to pick the exact rewards you want, with more options unlocking as you rank up through the tiers. The telescopes and lenses still remain as ways to modify what you're getting your hands on, and Weicker says you can expect "lots of room for optimization in that system still," but comments, "once you have it set the way you want, you can walk away from it and just enjoy it."

There are new skills as well. Paladins get Radiant Lance, which takes the place of Symbols of Hope in the tree, allowing Void Knight and Forge Guard to use it (SoH, meanwhile, is moving further down the progression line to become a Paladin-exclusive ability). Use it to call down energy from the heavens and blast it forth from your shield, using base lightning damage and scaling based on your block chance. "It's uncapped," Cobler points out, "so you can scale this as far as you can possibly get block chance."

Dreamslash is a new dashing melee attack for Bladedancers, and Weicker describes it as "the skill of my dreams." It's simple, spammable, and effective, and shadows that copy it will effectively create a projectile version that pushes through all foes in its path. Dig into the nodes and you'll find options to make it refract, or to give it a chance with each use to deliver a more powerful variant. Dreamslash takes the place of Synchronized Strike, which again moves up into the top section of the Bladedancer tree to make space.

Last on the list for today is Summon Tide Elemental for the Shaman - this one comes in right at the high end of the tree, so doesn't displace an old skill. The minion it creates is a hard-hitting caster that can stand on its own, and of course you'll have plenty of options to modify it through the skill nodes. Whether you want to go all-in on just one minion, gather an army, echo it with totems, or even turn the Tide Elemental into a totem itself, you'll have the chance.

Naturally, you can expect plenty of powerful new pieces of gear to hunt for, including some 'extremely rare' chase items. The Death Dance boots, for example, remove your evade cooldown entirely, letting you dodge as much as you want, and using your leftmost skill each time you do. The Eternal Font amulet pops a potion every second, even if you don't have any (effectively making them unlimited), while the Gift of the Eidolon gloves are a beefy stat stick that grants you both haste and frenzy.

Last Epoch Season 5, Rage of the Frostborn, launches on Thursday October 1 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm GMT / 6pm CEST. Eleventh Hour Games promises a week full of deep-dives into all of the seasonal mechanics, new skills, and additional items, so be sure to stay tuned if you want to learn even more before it begins.