A week ago, the game director of Last Epoch, whose name is Judd Cobler, brought us the highlights of our long-awaited multiplayer update patch 0.9 - Convergence. Next, let’s take a closer look at what he said.

Convergence drops on March 9th. For the first time in Last Epoch you’ll be able to adventure through time with up to four players in your party. Adding friends and grouping up is easy, and you can start playing together right from the start of the campaign.

Developers have upgraded all in-game content, including the Arena, Dungeons and the Monolith of Fate to ensure that group play feels great. *For example, in the Monolith, they’ve introduced a new Echo completion system that ensures fair rewards for the full party.

*And in the arena, they’ve introduced a group ready check to allow parties to strategically proceed to the next Arena wave set when the entire party is ready.

*In multiplayer, the loot you find drops per player. So, you’re not having to compete for the same items (which you can get by using Last Epoch Gold) on the ground.

Related: Outstanding Build Guides for Beginners in Last Epoch

*Additionally, if you find an item that would help your allies, you’ll be able to gift items to your party members, who are fighting alongside you.

“With multiplayer dropping on March 9th, we are looking forward to seeing what powerful team compositions you put together with your party. We hope you enjoy slaying the enemies of a Eterra with your allies,” Cobler said.

While you’re crushing enemies alongside other Travelers, you will notice a whole host of upgrades developers have made to increase the impact and polish the feel of combat in Last Epoch. They’ve added a new win hid visuals to enemies.

Visual impacts now have directionality carrying the weight through from your swing or spell cast. Death effects have been updated to correspond with the elements that are used on the killing blow. Elements applied to enemies displayed nicer on enemy models and many enemies have had death and stun animations significantly improved. All of these updates combined make slaying enemies in a Eterra feel much more satisfying.

“If you are returning to a terror from our last update, prepare to see the world come to life like never before. Our team has been hard at work and there is an overwhelming amount of new visual upgrades coming to Convergence.”, the director said.

For example, the dialog system has been updated across the game to include better ux and beautiful new NPC portraits, allowing you to get to know the iconic cast of characters a little better. Many environments across satara have received new tech that makes their visuals come to life and this new tech will continue to be extrapolated in future patches.

In addition to the many new environments and visual updates, they’re introducing 15 updated or newly added enemies, tons of skill VFX improvements and 14 entire new gear set visuals across all classes.

There are also new player summon models and animations in addition to completely updated animation kits for both the prime list and acolyte.

“All of this together results in the Last Epoch gameplay feel that you’ve never seen before and one that we’re all very excited for our players to experience,” he said.

Convergence will also be bringing a number of new powerful build shaping uniques for you to hunt down, including the Harbinger of Stars. This new unique belt enables any class to have the chance to cast Meteor when landing a Critical Strike. We’ve already seen some very interesting builds created with this belt in early testing, like Meteor.

The new Hand of Judgment gloves can bring holy Justice into the palm of your hand, giving your unarmed Paladin Divine strength, allowing you to slam your fist into the ground to cast Judgment, which will scale area and damage by stacking Attunement.

Finally, Jelkhor’s Blast Knife captures the power of the Rogue’s Detonating Arrow ability and infuses it into a melee strike, transforming your Marksman into a bomb slinging assassin.

Ailments have undergone significant changes that will make them more easily understood and bring their effectiveness against bosses and packs of low-held enemies more in line. Namely, by reducing the duration that the full effect would take place over and will now display the full amount of stacks applied to enemies.

The balance of all elements has been updated in a number of ways. “Since our last release Depths of Eterra, we’ve put a significant amount of work into improving performance across the game,” he said.

Baseline frame rates in zones and performance when using abilities have been greatly improved, especially among stabilities that were noted as poor performing in earlier patches. While this update does bring significant improvements to performance will continue to make improvements to performance in future patches, as well.

They’ll also be shipping an early version of the MTX system with this update. While you won’t be able to purchase anything new or access the shop just yet, you’ll finally be able to equip cosmetics that you own through previous supporter pack purchases.

“I’ll also take this opportunity to reinforce our commitment that Last Epoch will never sell items that grant player power. We’ve taken a hard stance against this and will continue to champion that stance into the future with that said if you have fun ideas for how certain skills pets or armor could be re-skinned we’d love to hear them”, he emphasized.