Last Epoch has loads of treasure chests, and none of them are particularly exciting. While I do open the chests if I happen to see one, I would never go out of my way to actually look for them. It just feels vastly more efficient to simply bee line for the quest marker, pick up whatever gold you happen to come across along the way, and then do a few gambling rolls in town whenever you feel like it.
One way to spice up the loot hunt and offer some actual incentives to explore the game world could be to implement a system of tiered treasure chests. For example, although Iām not a huge fan of Grim Dawn in general, I think they handled their treasure chests quite well. GD has three types of chests*. The ānormalā chests serve as your generic loot pinatas and can come in a variety of sizes. Then, they also have a set of sparse and often remote āone-shotā chests that offer a guaranteed random epic, but can only be opened once per difficulty (i.e. they donāt reset with the zone). Finally, they also have a set of ātreasure troveā chests that can spawn randomly at a few different points in certain zones, require expending a dropped key to open, and have a higher probability of awarding important progression items, such as crafting recipes.
Given that the zones are limited in size, it seems like quite a waste to me to implement a bunch game space that few will ever bother to visit. Adding a more interesting treasure chest system than the one currently in place could potentially serve as carrot for people to engage more productively with the zones that youāve no doubt spent a lot of time and effort on creating, instead of just blazing straight for the next exit.
*Theyāve also recently introduced ātotemsā as an additional source of loot, which are really just high quality treasure chests that also spawn rare mobs.
Loot in general still needs a whole lot of love. Spicing up treasure hunting in the game is certainly a big part of that. I think a lot of this stuff will continue to come with time; Eternity Caches sound like an idea they can use to create different types of events in pre-existing maps.
I would like to see other things added in relation to loot hunting as well since it is a big part of what aRPGs are about. Iād like to see more events in content that provide a reward chest that varies depending on the level content you are running, number of echo modifiers active, etc. I know the maps right now are pretty on rails, but I would like to see things like the roguelike content of GD and PoE have which offer large treasure rewards. Areas that have trap rooms that reward a āgloriousā type of chest for surviving an unexpected ambush and the such.
Loot chests definitely need to be spiced up, but so does loot in general and hopefully we will see that coming soon. We still have an entire class and a couple of archetypes to be finished and released before things go live, so one would hope there is time for all this polish and fleshing out work to be done.
I agree that GD does a great job at making loot hunting fun. The one off chests, the MIs and āwhat you see is what you getā loot tables are unique and add a bit of spice to things. The rogue dungeons in GD is one of the things I think they really got right and stands out as a great piece of content they have that not every aRPG does.
Having the chests be something more than just a big barrel that has slightly more loot in it is important. Locked chests that you might need to find a key or clear and event for are nice ways of spicing up treasure chests. I know these arenāt novel ideas but they work to make chests more fun occasionally and keeps players checking chests rather than just passing them by like background items.
I whined about the lack of proper dungeons elsewhere, so didnāt want to repeat myself. But yes, something in the spirit of e.g. Steps of Torment would be a great addition. I think LEās zone designs are generally good for what they are. But right now most of them also feel more like transit areas rather than points of interest in and of themselves. The treasure chests are just delivery mechanisms; you naturally need cool items, maps, and mobs, etc. to go with them.
While I wouldnāt mind spiced up chests and some variation, I think ultimately itās less about the chests and more about what you get inside them. As much I as I appreciate aspects of the loot system, the end result is that in its current form, you actually avoid the vast majority of it. Sets seem underpowered and donāt drop as much as uniques. Only a few uniques seem really exciting to me. But the bigger issue is rares and purples (at least at my stage in the lvl 70s) are kind of the worst drops. I only look for a few affixes to shatter, rarely to keep an item. I hunt more for a well rolled white or blue that I can craft than a rare. It seems kind of counter-intuitive but thatās kind of how the system seems to work. Most of the endgame builds Iāve looked at use almost all crafted items where you really need at least 3 of the 4 affixes to be Tier 4/5 and they have to be specific to your build. It feels/seems like youāll pretty much never get a drop that is more perfect than what you can craft.
I donāt dislike this system as it gives the control freak side of me more satisfaction, but it unfortunately makes the nature of getting an exciting random drop less plausible.
Iāve only made it to the mid 70s before RIPāing, but my experience is broadly similar so far. Most of the baller uniques Iāve found are not really stuff Iād consider for an endgame character, but more along the lines of āthis would be cool to level an altā.
I donāt think this is necessarily a very big problem for creating a functional incentive system though. If EHG wants to make crafting the core of the gearing game, then instead of structuring the chest rewards after the standard rarity tiers, they could simply focus on providing items that are useful for crafting instead.
Personally, Iām hoping they will still find some room for good gear drops too. But my point here was more just that opening a chest in LE is about as interesting as shattering a barrelāwhich is to say, not veryāand that this has implications for how people play the game.
