Important Advice Before Playing Last Epoch

[@bird4958]

Can you break more things so I can watch you fix them while I listen to advice? its such a vibe lmao I love it

[@stephennetu]

Very much this. I like you just chatting at us.

[@OlivierCombe]

visual ASMR 😅

[@devinvisible]

couldn't second this enough, honestly.

[@skuamato7886]

100% agree. Literally when I started playing LE for the first time, I went rogue, saw the locked falconer and thought "Alright, when that thing comes out, I'll NOT look at the abilities and try to figure something out for myself" And that's still the plan, I have not looked at the Falconer yet

[@Palsteron]

Loving the vid idea

[@BartoszBielecki]

100%. LE (which I first played about a year ago) was one of the first ARPGs which really allowed me to enjoy the game without 8 web pages opened (wiki, craft of exile, poe lab, maxroll, poe planner, exile leveling, poe db) and just farming mobs and getting better loot.

[@ghostridah]

I love to going into a Fromsoft game blind and discovering things with the community the first week. Nothing like it. Doing the same for this game, can't wait!

[@Trev0413]

Discovery is the best part of gaming and we do rob ourselves in the age of the internet; discovering doom/quake secrets, finishing OoT, finding that last SM64 star, and honestly just playing your own way and having fun in games like C&C or Street Fighter 2 and not worrying about meta or efficiency were truly special times. LE gives you the tools in game, nothing is opaque, embrace the fun!

[@JoseOrtiz-bx3vl]

I'm with you on that. Recently, I've found myself enjoying games more when I don't look anything up. I've become less and less of a "power gamer" as I've gotten older and it's been a more enjoyable experience.

[@Barewell]

My first experience and hearing others experiences in the community at the same time and sharing info all of it is my favorite thing. Love these kinds of things and am super stoked to go in tomorrow

[@jameysotelo540]

Honestly i know for the time ive spent on last epoch the past week after picking it up was i spent a lot of time just playing and not actually looking up anything aside from like build recommendations and even those i changed to suit myself. i didnt look up how to play the mapping system, what corruption was, what items i should ideally be chasing and basically everything in between i just went in blind and had a blast only when i basically experienced everything i wanted to see was the point where i started looking into all this min max stuff and seeing what you could do and even that stuff i just dont care for because im just enjoying my way of playing. sadly now we are all on withdrawal for maintenance but soon we can play

[@Wayleran]

Love the message and the vibe of the video. Thanks. 🙂

[@honordevs]

You need a guitar pick--techie's best friend for taking things apart.

[@Kaebren]

please make more videos like this, I don't know if this will do well views wise but i would love to hear about whatever you have to talk about while you do things like this

[@dumbgames4933]

100%. As a fellow Old, I'm approaching the 1.0 release with as little info as possible, despite having played before. LE does an amazing job of providing in-game info, and explaining mechanics within the game. Just discovered there's a Spellblade, which looks fun, so I'm gonna facemash through with this :)

[@bentubean]

I never knew that looking at a mouse repair video would be so entertaining and cathartic!

[@Crude0wl]

Really liked this video, something about you fixing the mouse while just talking off the cuff and the overall chill vibe was great. I have a similar story as your Elden Ring one: When I picked up the first Dark Souls I had already watched a bunch of speed runs and trivialized the game using the Black Knight Halberd and when I beat the game it felt kinda empty. I could I was planning on looking up guides and treating LE like I would a new PoE League but you might have just changed my mind. I've played the game for about 60 hours already, but it was so long ago I barely remember anything, so I'll pick a class and see what I can come up with! Thanks, Sub.

[@BuzzaB77]

YES! I was thinking about this recently. Pre internet, I would hoard every Megadrive, Saturn and Dreamcast magazine and just gorp at those screenshots, the anticipation was huge, we could only afford to buy one every month or so, and i would rinse those manuals and get every penny out of them , it was a joy to discover what each game had to offer each time, every new game was its own adventure. Panzer Dragoon Saga still has one of my favourite worlds for that reason. I witnessed the birth of online gaming through Phantasy Star Online before or family even had a computer for internet access! Also the tech advances in that generation were so massive I think that was a contributing factor. These says with all the previews, reviews and guides on YT I can count the number of games that have subverted my expectations on 1 or 2 hands, and my library is over 600 at this point.

[@panda93247]

That was a neat little video! I also can't stand when something gets spoiled for me. I told a friend that I was reading the wheel of time series and he mentioned something that happens in one of the later books that completely ruined one of the characters for me. Now, as I'm reading I continuously wonder when that thing happens to that character, rather than enjoying the story for what it is. 🤬🤬🤬

[@subtractem]

I hate that so much!

[@joepbailey]

I was gonna do an actual build I looked up. But I've decided to build my own Healing Hands build now.

[@strawwmann3131]

I've had such fun in this game NOT looking at build guides while leveling a cold Sorcerer (black holes into frost walls) and discovering and figuring it out myself (that will be my starter build, mainly to avoid the more popular Runemaster route). I'm sure it will partly converge with other people's builds, but once I've got my own version of each Mastery late into the end game, I'll be more interested in seeing what others have done differently. Fully agree that this game is designed to be best enjoyed without a build guide and without looking up boss fights online, and its such a magical game I also don't want to repeat the mistake of ruining the wonder of that first time experience for each build. Having an optimised max-minned build is certainly NOT the only way to enjoy this game (and the respeccing is forgiving enough to ENCOURAGE experimentation and problem solving without ever being in any danger of 'bricking' your build). One HINT: the training dummies outside the Arena (at the Champion's Gate) are useful for testing how tooltip damage number translate into combat.

[@Rook0r3]

Had a very similar experience with hoarfrost stomp in Elden RIng. I did find it myself organically, but it still cheapened the experience a bit as it was just so damn strong. Also have the same problem where when I know something is super strong (even more so if I've already experienced it) it's very difficult for me to then not use it. Looking forward to the DLC though!

[@WDUSNBMHHU]

Even really good games can't capture the MAGIC of games when I was a child. I'm about the same age as you (I think) and would spend ages just looking at screen shots in magazines of graphics when the 16 bit consoles came out because they seemed so amazing. I've never hated a day of school as much as when I got Street Fighter 2 on the SNES for my birthday but then had to go to school before I could play it. Then later when I first played Ocarina of Time and saw an open world, in 3D, or played an MMO (LOTRO, not WoW, funnily enough) and was online with so many other people all playing the same game. My nephew is so blase about the incredible stuff games do as standard now, games have always been at that level for him. Our generation lived through the most incredible journey from 8-bit to the sophistication of games today. I kind of think we saw the golden era because when you go up tech levels like that it was mind blowing.

[@lostsemplex]

What an odd and wonderful video! Love it!

[@stu.chainz]

I agree man. I always play a game blind first, it’s so much more enjoyable.

[@lonewulf0328]

Mouse surgery is fun. I have a Corsair Scimitar from 2015 still, only because I have desoldered and replaced all the switches twice now

[@Gildorify]

I both understand and try out games for myself without looking up things first, and go full sweat-lord. I played PoE blind when I first started and it was a blast, until it wasn't. When that happens in ARPGs (and other games), I start to look up what good builds are. However, if I feel intimidated by a game, I will look up stuff beforehand just so I am not completely floundering the start. I do this a lot for Persona games or other games with time limits, since replaying them doesn't feel as good since the story is so massive in those types of games. For me it really depends what type of game I am going into, basically.

[@Totschlagen1799]

LOL, I just replaced both micro switches in an old Cyborg Rat7 mouse for my wife. Helpful to have learned some soldering skills as a teenager. The left microswitch was completely shot from playing so much Diablo 3 when it came out. I started to play LE but didn't want to get too far in as I want to play the Warlock, but it isn't available. Sometimes I get sick of redoing parts of a game.

[@Reliquarium]

I watched one guide (ZiggyD's sponsored one), and that's all I'm going to do. Didn't watch anything else, or play at all during beta, as that has utterly spoiled games for me in the past. LE looks phenomenally done, so we're going full blown fresh on this one.

[@santa0704]

Agree completely. I have been trying my hardest not to watch too much content. I want to re capture that time first playing Diablo 2 blindly making a werewolf and trying to kill Diablo and baal.

[@SchwingyGaming]

Yeah this is the kind of game I wanna just figure out for myself, we don't get fun new exciting games like LE very often. I just wanna sit down and enjoy it at my own pace. Fun discussion. :)

[@xxpiweexx2614]

Transition to a repair channel + commentary on ARPG games + life advice = Winning

[@stu.chainz]

Also, the more people doing things on their own, the more chances people discover new things. If everyone is following the same maxroll guide that’s just less and less people discovering new and interesting builds

[@Sepa0306]

I've already looked up some guides for LE but after watching your video, I will change my approach. Coming from PoE I thought it would be best to use a guide (for PoE a guide helped a lot though) but the way you described the ingame system and descriptions, I'll give it a shot without guide. You can't ungame a game :)

[@williamschubert4819]

Any mechanics you don't understand should be explained by the in game guide as well.

[@Sepa0306]

This sounds awesome, I haven't played that much in early access so I'll definitely check it out when the game is officially released@@williamschubert4819

[@proceduraldad2578]

The mouse is a pretty good illustration actually for how different a person you are from (some) of your audience. I'm never taking apart my mouse to mod it, if I don't like it I'm just replacing it. I don't want to tinker. I don't want to figure it out. I want to utilyze someone else's expertise. Anyhow, not saying you are wrong, and I'm certainly not going in nose to the grindstone- I will stop and smell the roses- there will be plenty of cycles to be a powergamer. I'll be using guides from level 1 tho :) Ultimately I don't find experimenting with skills fun. I like seeing whats on offer from youtube, picking one, and then not trying to figure out for myself what the good talents/passives/etc are

[@LikeACrouton]

I agree. I felt this way when I played Remnant 2, I avoided looking stuff up to giga minmax as much as possible, and my experience was much richer for it. LE isn't nearly as opaque as PoE, it's very approachable blind

[@Knetterkoekje]

Going in blind myself :) I share these ideas, gotta say that I was really itching for some LE footage whilst watching this video :P

[@zeryphex]

1:55 Yep ... my mom would drive us to Blockbuster Video ... and she would rent movies on VHS ... and I would rent a Nintendo or Super Nintendo game. My mom had two VCRs in the house, so she would play the VHS movies she rented, and record them on a blank VHS tape, so ... I guess ... in a way ... my mom taught me how to pirate software ... because she pirated movies. 🤣 haha I could not pirate Nintendo or Super Nintendo games in the 20th century, but I know how to pirate software in the 21st century. My favorite games to rent were RPGs, but it was also a bad move because you could not start again where you last left off. You had to start at the beginning, but we didn't have the money to buy any RPG I wanted so that I could own a given game and continue where I left-off. The one RPG where I really begged my mom to buy was Secret Of Mana for the SNES. It was $80 at Toys R Us in the early 1990s, so I'm sure that's way over $100 in today's inflation-adjusted dollars ... but from reading Nintendo Power magazine, I knew that game would last me a long while, so it was worth the price. The gameplay and soundtrack were amazing ... no regrets ... and I now make enough money to pay my mom back. Back to my mom and movies ... she also showed me how to buy one movie ticket at the movie theater, and watch three movies back-to-back before 5 p.m. when more security showed-up. Our movie theaters, back then, had fewer security guards in the mornings ... and my mom was able to bring a large purse bag which she hid soda and candy so that we wouldn't have to pay the high prices inside the movie theater. My mom was such a thug, back then. I learned from the best.

[@QUU1108]

Pulsar should sponsor you!! Absolutely agree, will go with a raptor primalist, completely blind, raptors are HUUUGE

[@joshuahensley9395]

One of my best experiences was playing fallout 3 blind, I had only played like 20 minutes of morrwind so that was my first Bethesda game. While the game obviously has its faults it is one of my favorite gaming experiences ever.

[@chrislastname1994]

The reality is both come out to about the same. My first epoch character I did entirely on my own and the expirementing was very fun. The next character I created a guide and still had just as much fun. The key is playing something that aligns with your interests and don't follow the guide like it's a job.

[@Razzku]

I was avoiding all LE content youtube was throwing at me. You can have fun being newbie once. Then you can get Mageblood and have fun being OP every league.

[@pilot7350]

I only look at guides for advise and skills i like. dont really care bout damage and other stuff. that being said im playing explosive falconer cause i really enjoyed your poe fire traps, i alted that to have totems and golems with free aura and cursed ground. maybe a wacky build but who cares i had fun. didnt know falcon can drop acid flask hmmi di see the acid flask on explosive trap though. i wonder if i can have both.

[@neogramps]

I've definitely burnt out on games before I've even given them a fair shot due to overwhelming myself with guides and min-max info from the get go (like Grim Dawn, which i've started and stopped so many times). Have resolved to wing a Warlock with chaos bolts, take it slow and figure stuff out with LE and focus on the fun, not the endgame

[@Dan1loBC]

As Josh Strife Hayes, world famous MMO youtuber and streamer says, don't optimize the fun out of your game :) See you guys in Eterra!

[@JKeydara]

Sometimes you wish you could experience PoE for the first time again (well parts of it anyways, the new player experience is kinda meh but the sense of wonder when it "clicks" is what gets you hooked). Last Epoch right now has a palpable feeling of "this could be the next PoE", the devs have been moving mountains these last few big updates and if they keep up the pace Last Epoch will be an all time classic in just a few years. Also it needs to be said more often: Last Epoch will have an offline mode, that makes it more accessible to casual gamers (ESC pauses the game) and it opens the door for mods.

[@CCSplinters]

I think it's fine to look at skills online and see what you can do when the game launches. I like tinkering what build can I do or what interests me. BUT i hate min/maxing when game isn't even out yet in terms of inventory. Passives skills planning i underatand because regardless where you are in game, you'll always get the passives and skills. But the equipments, that's something to do in game.

[@seikojin]

was there a storm or something? Every now and again when you were showing the mouse workings, I would hear what sounded like wind/rattling windows. LOL

[@subtractem]

That's actually the last epoch title screen, had it on in the bg when I was recording haha

[@seikojin]

@@subtractem Good way to keep on topic, have the title screen staring at you in the face :D

[@PaulMcDonough1337]

i love this ! MORE ASMR videos plzzz

[@MrTbone1975]

even before 50sec mark I am already agreeing :)

[@gochubattamugga]

I feel bad for children now a days. There is almost no anticipation for anything as too many products, too quick of an access and/or faulty, unfinished products at launch. Path of Exile keeps the 'child' like-ness in me alive. I still anticipate all new leagues and GGG does a great job of 'hyping' each new one. I look forward to PoE 2 and I hope LE can do something similar. I will also not go 'sweaty nerd' and just play the game just to play. Small Rant: I just started playing Bayonetta since it was on sale on Steam last week and the game bugged out on the continue and save screen. Like, how is this possible for a game that launched on Steam 7 years ago? This is why I stick to 'outsourcing' games onto the PC instead of outright buying them. Maybe one day I will restart a session to beat the game.

[@Jmoar35]

Blind is best, I remember i used to ridicule my friends as kids for using guides LOL. I've always been about the experience even from that age.

[@PhatTrumpet2]

I had a similar experience with Megaman 2. Still one of my favorite games of all time. EDIT: You might've just convinced me to give LE a try. How's the performance compared to POE? Because I can barely run POE on this potato.

[@stephenswinehart]

I played that game through so many times...

[@subtractem]

performance is amazing compared to poe, i never go below 144fps which is my framerate cap.

[@dreadheaddavy]

Where can i send you more broken things? Just so we can have more videos like this.

[@ZeepZerp]

When even the people who make a living making guides are telling you not to use a guide for once you might consider doing just that.

[@lovos5150]

Asmr LE content streamer

[@julianolotero6600]

Where is the mouse PoB?

[@munqq]

agree.

[@PirateZ1]

100% agree. I was so confused when Ziz was coming out with his classic "Smooth league starter" guides. No hate to him, but like.... every build in LE is kinda smooth IMO. Even if its not, isnt a bit of friction part of the fun of a new game launch? Especially one as streamlined as LE?

[@HuyNguyen-ev7mp]

Yes, going in blind this game is 100% the play. Unlike d4 which is also new player friendly, this game has tons of class, skills, customizations for you to test out. So figuring out things by youself is the best thing this game can offer. 100% recommend to play this way.

[@stephenswinehart]

Funny, I always fought Magnet Man first...

[@jasepellerin3350]

Is this ASMR? I think I like ASMR

[@slouch186]

LE is remarkably easy to play without guides. It's not like PoE

[@mezmerya5130]

Yes, going blind is the only option for last epoch because it's a shallow one time experience with dead endgame having zero variation and dungeons being godawful trash. No need to make path to disappointment shorter via minmaxing, since midgame is fabulous.

[@Ashtarte3D]

Personally I'd say don't try to dictate how players have their fun. If they want to go "sweaty turbonerd" because they find that the most fun, let them. You can say "hey maybe try X game blind" like commonly said for Outer Wilds. But if someone wants to just ruin that game for themselves that is their prerogative.

[@Ben-gm9lo]

Er, Subtractem, why are we watching you fix your mouth while you talk? I would much rather watch old footage of you owning the game, rather than my pathetic attempts. Then I might learn something!

[@Wolfyflow]

I've played Diablo 2-4, PoE, Grim Dawn, Torchlight and Last Epoch. Organically discovering the game with no guides or builds in Last Epoch and Grim Dawn have been the most enjoyable I've ever had playing any ARPG, and I've had nearly 10x the hours in PoE and Diablo combined. I'm really excited to see how Eleventh Hour Games continues to develop LE and see how intricate the game becomes. Also, thanks for all the content Subtractem. Love your stuff. 👍

[@pridefulworm]

im actualy working on a video about what you are talking about at kzbin.info/www/bejne/gZ6yaZKQr9l_a9ksi=GGGUPfB81PwN5se9&t=280 I've always found it interesting how sometimes we make the game less fun by playing it "better"