Last Epoch Season 3 unleashes a deadly, evolving foe across the ARPG's world

ARPG fans are about to be spoiled for choice once more, as developer Eleventh Hour Games lifts the lid on Last Epoch Season 3. We're still a little over a month out from Diablo 4 Season 10, but Path of Exile 2's next update is coming in just a few weeks. For now, however, my attention is squarely turned towards the new Last Epoch update, 'Beneath Ancient Skies.' It'll take us on a 'Primal Hunt' to face down some of the toughest beasts ever seen in Eterra, along with the addition of the tenth chapter of the campaign, and some dramatic reworks for the Acolyte class and its Lich and Necromancer masteries.

If you're yet to play Last Epoch, I'll once again highly recommend it for its stunning environments, flavorful classes, highly customizable builds, and gear design that feels approachable but deep. It strikes a nice balance between Diablo 4's simplicity and Path of Exile's depth, creating one of the best games like Diablo in the middle. On top of that comes a best-in-class loot filter that can be easily personalized in-game, even as a relative beginner. It's also got more storage space to keep your excess collection than even the most committed hoarder could fill. In Season 3, EHG is expanding on the least-used part of its time-hopping story, the ancient era.

You get a brief taste of the land of the dinosaurs early in the Last Epoch story, but we're about to be spending a lot more time in the prehistoric realm through the new, tenth chapter, and it'll be more prominent in the endgame as well. From dense forests to snow-swept mountaintops, it looks absolutely stunning, courtesy of another graphics upgrade including more background creatures and updated water shaders. I was very impressed by the visual leap from early access to 1.0, so I'm eager to see this in action.

The main mechanic of Season 3 is the Primal Hunt. This works a little like the Nemesis system, but you'll need to track your prey and follow them through rifts to their breeding grounds. These areas will be filled with deadly foes that drop a new currency called Ancient Bones in place of the regular Gold, and after fighting through them you'll eventually encounter your main target, a Rift Beast. These will provide you with a particularly vicious challenge, and valuable rewards to match, but defeating them isn't the end.

When a Rift Beast falls, you are given the choice to evolve its lineage in one of three directions, affecting both the abilities it'll have in the future along with the potential payout. You can continue to stack up evolutions, but if things are getting too out of hand then there's always the option to reset the lineage and start fresh.

Take the various primordial materials and Ancient Bones you've gathered from the rifts and chapter ten's new region, The Garden, to Wengari Hunt Master Skarven Bloodhorn, and you'll be able to start cashing them in for powerful items. The new primordial gear comes in two varieties, unique and exalted, and these work similarly to their base-game equivalents, but with even more power at their disposal. The drawback is that you can only equip a single primordial item (of either type) at a time.

Alongside this comes a new crafting item, the Rune of Evolution, which allows you to modify a standard exalted item with at least one tier-seven affix into a tier-eight version. EHG says these are very powerful upgrades, "often granting 50% to 100% over existing tier-seven affixes." In even better news, the primordial sealed affix doesn't take up the standard sealed affix slot, so if you get really lucky you might end up with a six-affix exalted item.

Also arriving for Season 3 are reworks to one of my favorite Last Epoch classes, the Acolyte. Expect "a large number of changes across the base Acolyte, Necromancer, and Lich masteries," including changes to Harvest, Death Seal, Dread Shade, and more. EHG gives us an early teaser with a look at one skill for each. The core 'Rip Blood' skill, for example, now hits all enemies in a line in front of you, rather than targeting a specific enemy.

Necromancer's 'Assemble Abomination' ability, which fuses your various summons into a single, mighty beast, is being redesigned. It no longer decays health over time, remembers the minions it was assembled from, and will devour any more nearby creatures of those types to restore its health. Note that it won't affect other players' minions, although it can target those brought in by your enemies.

'Aura of Decay,' which was an early powerhouse that has since been forgotten, is being brought back "as a strong option in the Lich's toolkit." Its reduction to the poison damage you take is less effective, but you now take 50% less damage from your own Aura of Decay. All three of the abilities mentioned above are also getting some dramatic overhauls to their individual skill trees, which you can study in detail thanks to a developer blog.

Both the Lich and Necromancer are also getting some new passive nodes. Lich's 'Executioner' lets you equip a dagger or axe in your off-hand to become a dual-wielding menace, while 'Accursed Feast' makes your leech effects much stronger, but causes them to fall off faster. Necromancer's 'Forbidden Teachings' gives Intelligence and Vitality, and scales your minions with both stats, while the reworked 'Effigies' now causes a percentage of the damage you take to be redirected to your minions, and heals the remaining group if one of them dies.

Rounding out today's teasers is a brand-new Lich skill, 'Flay.' This hybrid between melee and spell causes you to Spirit Step a short distance towards your enemy, then deal a narrow, rending slash that causes any enemies killed to explode in a Blood Eruption, dealing physical damage around them. It'll of course have its own full passive tree that can empower it or change how it works; perhaps you want to transfer your Aura of Decay to the enemy you hit, or maybe you'd like it to instead inflict cold damage with a chance to freeze.

Last Epoch Season 3 launches Thursday August 21. Eleventh Hour Games promises even more teasers in the run-up to launch, and we'll be sure to bring you the biggest details.

For now, carve through all who stand in your way with the best hack-and-slash games in 2025. If you want to prepare for the new Last Epoch update, grabbing the best gaming mouse is a great place to start.

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