Happy Saturday, Travelers! For today’s pre-patch blog post, we’re taking a look at information regarding the three headlining features coming on February 21st: Trade Factions, the Warlock, and Falconer! There have been a lot of new Travelers recently joining us in the final stretch to release, so for today’s post, we’re going to be covering all of the information regarding these three big features. [h1]Item Factions[/h1] On January 11th, we released our deep dive into the Item Faction system. Item Factions is our answer to the eternal trade debate. Offering an option to players who want trade as part of their itemization experience, and those who don’t, without splitting the player base, and without being left behind the other. To read the full deep dive, you can do so here: [url=https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/trade-item-factions/61722]Trade & Item Factions[/url]. Our Game Director, Judd, also made a video overview of the Item Faction system, which you can watch it below. [previewyoutube=SOo0Ule6dNY;full][/previewyoutube] With Item Factions, you can either join the Merchant’s Guild, which grants access to the Bazaar to trade items with other players, or join the Circle of Fortune, which grants significant item drop bonuses. We do want to mention one fairly large change to Merchant’s Guild we’ve made since the deep dive. From both the CT Program, and public discussions, there were concerns about item supply within the Bazaar. This concern stemmed from the ability to sell certain items being locked behind Reputation levels. This meant players would not be able to sell many items for some length of time, reducing selling participation. To ensure a strong item supply within the Bazaar, there is no longer a Reputation level requirement to sell any class of item. Also to promote healthy item supply within the Bazaar, Favor costs for selling items are much lower than buying favor costs, so Merchant’s Guild members can be a bit more free with selling items. [h1]Warlock[/h1] [img]https://forum.lastepoch.com/uploads/default/original/2X/e/e165eebf8db8bbda3780d8f29b29be14d116dc70.jpeg[/img] The Warlock makes its long awaited arrival on February 21st. With both existing Curse abilities and five new curses, the Warlock is a master of forbidden arts, twisting enemy minds and bodies. With the Warlock, we wanted the class to focus around manipulation of souls and curses. This theming can be found across the mastery’s abilities: from the Mastery Skill - Chthonic Fissure cracking open the ground to spew out souls, to Profane Veil, converting yourself into soul-like ephemeral fog. The Warlock is not concerned with distance or close range; they have many options at their disposal to choose the amount of risk they desire in their combat style. The Warlock focuses on debilitating their foes to enhance their own damage and combining curses, debilitations, and damage synergies to eradicate their enemies. Abilities such as Chaos Bolts and Cthonic Fissure enable the Warlock to fight from range. Profane Form may be used as an escape skill or an aggressive skill by granting it synergies for passing through enemies, either applying or reacting to applied debuffs. Soul Feast functions well at mid-range. Abilities such as Ghostflame and Profane Form enable the Warlock to enter close combat range, to apply debuffs and high-risk, high-reward levels of damage. The Warlock is focused foremost on debilitating curses and debuffs, and while direct damage does exist in the class, it’s slightly more niche compared to their foil, the Sorcerer. For the Warlock reveal, we partnered with the amazing people over at [url=http://icy-veins.com/]Icy-Veins.com[/url] , who released a number of articles detailing the various Warlock abilities and passives. We’ve compiled all of these information releases below: [b]Passive Tree Reveal:[/b] [url=https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/77223-last-epoch-warlock-reveal-passive-tree/]Last Epoch - Warlock Reveal: Passive Tree - News - Icy Veins[/url] [b]Ghostflame:[/b] [url=https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/77229-last-epoch-warlock-mastery-skill-reveal-ghostflame/]Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Ghostflame - News - Icy Veins[/url] [b]Soul Feast:[/b] [url=https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/77239-last-epoch-warlock-mastery-skill-reveal-soul-feast/]Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Soul Feast - News - Icy Veins[/url] [b]Profane Veil:[/b] [url=https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/77242-last-epoch-warlock-mastery-skill-reveal-profane-veil/]Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Profane Veil - News - Icy Veins[/url] [b]Chaos Bolts:[/b] [url=https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/77247-last-epoch-warlock-mastery-skill-reveal-chaos-bolts/]Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Chaos Bolts - News - Icy Veins[/url] [b]Chthonic Fissure:[/b] [url=https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/77250-last-epoch-warlock-mastery-skill-reveal-chthonic-fissure/]Last Epoch Warlock Mastery - Skill Reveal: Chthonic Fissure - News - Icy Veins[/url] [h1]Falconer[/h1] [img]https://forum.lastepoch.com/uploads/default/original/2X/c/c4fd6b167d4ac5f0178e717a7d42533719e40bce.jpeg[/img] In the case of the Falconer, we wanted the mastery to offer an atypical minion playstyle. One where the Falcon is much more than a minion or companion but an extension of your own play. The Falconer is designed to synergize with several playstyles: melee, bow, or throwing, creating a tie between the existing Bladedancer and Marksman masteries. As Throwing is a common focus for Rogues, we also offered extra synergy towards Throwing skills in passives and synergies, and even introduced the first Trap Skill to Last Epoch: Explosive Trap. With Falconry & Falcon Strikes, the Mastery ability you gain upon becoming a Falconer, we created the very core of the mastery, the atypical minion: The Falcon. The Falcon is un-targetable, meaning it cannot take damage, scales strongly with many of your stats, and offers options to join in with your build style, be it ranged or melee. This means that, unlike many minion-type setups, the Falconer can build strongly for their own stats, with the Falcon growing in strength alongside you. The Falconry & Falcon Strikes skill offers within its tree methods to build the Falcon, many of which will apply across all actions the Falcon takes. With Explosive Trap and Net, the Falconer can ensure an unfair fight by leading enemies to their end. Or perhaps, use Arial Assault to fly into the fray with the Falcon to cut down enemies alongside your avian ally. Alternatively, you can order the Falcon forth to Dive Bomb the enemy, plummeting into a group of enemies like a feathery meteorite. The Falconer focuses on its unwavering bond with the Falcon. By sharing stats with the Falcons, the Falcon and Falconer granting buffs to each other, and coordinating their attacks together - the Falcon is far more than a minion. For the Falconer Reveal, we worked closely with all the fantastic members over at [url=http://maxroll.gg/]Maxroll.gg[/url], who created created a technical deep dive into the mastery with all the passives and skill trees, as well as skill overviews. [b]Check out the Falconer Reveal here:[/b] Falconer Reveal - [url=https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/news/falconer-reveal]Last Epoch Maxroll.gg[/url] [b]You can also find the Falconer available in their build planner here:[/b] [url=https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/news/falconer-reveal]Falconer Reveal - Last Epoch Maxroll.gg[/url] [h1]Closing[/h1] Thank you again to both [url=http://maxroll.gg/]Maxroll.gg[/url] and [url=http://icy-veins.com/]Icy-Veins.com[/url] for working with us on these new Mastery Reveals! We’ve already started seeing a ton of great theorycrafting in the community for these masteries, and can’t wait for everyone to get their hands on them. Join us for tomorrow’s pre-patch blog post when we’ll be going over New Items and Affixes you’ll be able to find on February 21st, including both new Implicits and Uniques!