Acolytes are the main summoner class of Last Epoch, acting alongside the druid to provide more allies on the battlefield. Acolytes can branch into either the necromancer or the lich subclass, granting them additional powers and abilities. However, in terms of summoning few outpace the acolyte or its necromancer subset. Having access to several unique variants of summons, Last Epoch allows its players to create a truly customized experience. On top of this, you can take skills from any of the subclasses or base classes to make a hybrid character that works well for your play style.
Acolytes mainly play with the undead and monsters crafted from corpses as a whole like golems and spirits. From here they can launch these summons either as an area companion or as a temporary use like exploding zombies or spirit crowds. These summons are meant to both mitigate the amount of damage dealt to you as well as break the numbers game enemies have. Acolytes to this end have access to four major kinds of summons, skeletal forces, golems, zombies, and spirits. Each interacts with the battlefield in a different and unique function.
The Acolyte is a great summoning class that uses dark magic as a means of dispatching their foes!
Function and Use
Summons for Last Epoch is both an offensive and a defensive strategy that lures opponents away from you. By crowding the battlefield with rapid action and destruction, these summons allow you to focus on mobility and critical damage. Keep in mind that while some are tankier than others, your ability to upgrade their skills and passives defines their uniqueness.
For instance, skeletal archers can be improved with fire arrows, and golems made faster. To this end the more you use these skills the more they can be upgraded and made more specialized to the individual.
Using these summons in combination with spell attacks or even the lich form can turn you into an unstoppable force. Really when choosing which summons you want on your side you’ll need to answer two important questions.
Acolytes specialize in making various forms of summons that they can diversify, and specify depending on the situation!
What do you use these summons for, and how do you want them to benefit you in the long run? If you want to crowd the battlefield then the necromancer subclass will help you through it. However, if you want to use these summons as a means of building up spell damage, the lich is probably the best choice.
Summoning Types
As previously mentioned the major types of summons available to the acolyte are the skeletal forces, golems, zombies, and spiritual forces. Each of these interests is different on the battlefield but can further be specialized via different abilities.
For instance, skeletal forces break up into four different forces and the golem. As you summon and use these abilities they will become more potent, leveling up individually. By diversifying what summons become available, you can spread out your mana costs and damage output. Remember that quantity is key when using a summoner build, so the more friends the merrier.
Ganging up on your targets with a summon can lead to some exceptional damage when playing as a summoner class like the Acolyte!
Summoning Type Quick Faq
- Skeletal Forces are effective for melee and ranged combat and include the most diversity in the summonable creature groups
- Golems are the tanks of the summoning groups, and require the most mana; however often deal impressive damage given their health pool
- Zombies are exceptionally fast and explosive summons that act more like honed-in offensive spells working under the summons buff pool
- Spectral Forces are exceptionally good for dealing with crowding scenarios or when a boss isn’t taking enough damage during the fight
- Auxiliary summons are temporary but can give you powerful additions to your army in order to round them out on the battlefield
Skeletal Forces
The main essence of an acolyte army at first will be their skeletal soldiers whether they be swordsmen, archers, rogues, or mages. Each of these forces has its own attack patterns but they are generally what you would think of when considering the name.
Skeletal swordsmen or warriors will rush an opponent and create a wall between you and them. Archers will use ranged attacks and are great for dealing critical damage, or elemental attacks. Rogues can teleport and throw poisoned attacks that can deal damage over time. Finally, the mages deal with large explosive attacks but are extremely limited in number.
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- Summonable Mages in Last Epoch pt 1
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- Summonable Mages in Last Epoch pt 2
Each of these variants can be unlocked by focusing on the skill tree associated with the skill. With this, you’ll have access to strengthening the attack and defense of these minions, as well as their numbers. Unlike most games that would force you into focusing on one skill or another, Last Epoch allows you to level up your skills individually.
Skeletal Forces are Great For:
- Skeletal Swordsman is the most basic form of skeleton you’ll have access to, acting as a pure melee combatant
- Skeletal Archers are great for ranged combat, and have access to a slew of specialized arrows like fire, ice, and acid
- Skeletal Rogues are incredibly good at dealing critical ranged damage and deal a mixture of melee, and short-ranged attacks
- Skeletal Mages are capable of using a large area of effect spells that can be great for dispatching large threats!
So with this in mind don’t worry about building up your skeletal army and not focusing on your golems or zombies. Just remember the more damage a variety does, the more mana costs and less of them you will have.
Design of the summonable Bone Golem in Last Epoch!
Golems
The tank of your army is undoubtedly going to be the golems you’ll get access to. Varying from bone, and pyre and then armored, the golem is a terrifying threat for any boss. Fortunately, they are slow-moving and focus on tanking hits rather than dishing them out. However, this won’t stop the golem from aggressively charging down strong opponents and keeping them preoccupied.
Early on, these golems are excessively potent for spell casters, especially the lich. Because they take the main focus of enemies off of you and other summons, they act as a perfect means of artificially stunning an opponent.
Beyond this, the skill tree for the golem allows you to upgrade them for more speed, and attack, as well as creating twin golems. This implies that once achieved, you can double the amount of tanks on your side from the traditional one.
Necromancer abilities work well with summoning playthroughs, and are one of the three subclasses of the acolyte!
Additionally, any subvariant of the golem can be accompanied by the standard bone golem through some of these potent strategies. Overall, no matter how you choose to use them, golems are a powerful summon to have on your side. Just be prepared for their very expensive mana cost when making your way into battle.
Zombie Allies
Another major summoning point for the acolyte is the use of explosive zombies. These don’t really change in their purpose, more so in the type of damage they deal. In this regard, they can be quite an effective tool for dealing with bosses and other high-health pool opponents.
Some of the best features of the zombie Allies are the use of things like the leap ability and increased movement speed. Be wary of the fact that many of these abilities can increase the overall mana cost of these zombies. Since they’re really fun to throw around in large packs, this means you’ll want to either increase your mana pools or reduce their costs.
Luckily, with a few careful adjustments, you can have up to seven of these zombies on your team at once. In a lot of ways, these allies work like homing fireballs as they can follow an opponent at impressive speeds until it reaches its mark.
Adding abilities like increased speed, and blast radius can make them ideal for dealing with large crowds in a pinch. Overall though these summons are temporary, and constantly require you to summon more of them for a fight. However for starting off a conflict, and dealing rapid damage nothing hits harder than your zombie forces!
Spiritual Forces
Available as more of a very quick-fix option to summoners are the spiritual forces that are offered. This can summon a small crowd of spirits into a location that not only can attack enemies in an area of effect but also debuffs them.
Reaper Form/ Lich Form
You can add abilities to these forces that slow, stun, or sap the strength of enemies, making them less aggressive in a fight. Even though they make a great offensive option, these spirits are unable to take damage, and enemies can not target them. So never rely on these forces solely, as you’ll want other summons to act as a buffer force between you and the monsters.
Spiritual summons usually have a long cool down to stop you from spamming these high-damage attacks too often. However, another very important aspect of using these attacks is that they require a lot of mana in order to be effective. Directly taking away from your ability to cast new summonable skeletons, golems, and zombies.
Some of the best uses for Spiritual forces on the battlefield include:
- Dealing with opponents who overcrowd you on the battlefield, especially when you first teleport back into an area from town
- Are dealing with a boss fight where your normal spells aren’t reducing their health pool fast enough
- You already have a maximum number of summons, and thus have mana to burn on large damage spells
For this reason, the best way to actually utilize these attacks is to use them when your normal summons aren’t putting out enough damage. In this way, you have a quick burst of major damage to try and widdle down tough bosses! Just remember if you want to make the most of these abilities, make sure to invest in good mana regeneration!
Auxiliary Summons
You can find an additional type of summon depending on your playstyle that allows you to summon undead spearmen. These vanguard forces can only come about when fulfilling a prerequisite and usually have a small percent chance of occurring. However, when they do, you can have access to some fairly powerful front-line attackers to supplement your archers and swordsmen.
Remember that these aren’t the only auxiliary units as things like the elemental insects, and other tower bonuses. Summons like these may not be able to be accessible at every waking moment, but can make for a great add-on to any strategy.
Spells from the acolyte resemble things like skulls, trails of blood; and other dark arts-themed animations. These are great for if your summons run out, or aren’t dealing enough damage!
The main purpose of these added summons is to give the caster more bang for their buck. It allows for someone to also get free charges without depending on your innate mana source. This is extremely important early on when summons can be incredibly costly and hard to manage.
Additionally, it can be a great way to switch up or supplement a strategy, like getting spearmen to protect your bowmen. Overall though, they make for an excellent way to deal additional damage and level your characters up quicker!
Strategies for Summoning Builds
Summoning Builds work best when you mix three different tactics into your toolbox of tricks, that being crowd summoning, hoarding attackers, and buffering. These are the three main uses of summoning and when taken advantage of, allows players to make the most of their spells.
| Group combat strategy | Crowd Summoning | High mana costs |
|---|---|---|
| Boss fight strategy | Hoarding Attackers | Requires focus on summoning over offensive spells |
| Defensive Strategy | Buffering Forces | focuses on spell casting over summoning |
All you need to keep in mind when building these summoners is that you’ll want a fast-recovering pool of magic, space, and proper armor. Dealing direct damage from spells may not be your only method of overwhelming the enemy. Instead, consider maximizing what your creatures are capable of, and how you go about putting them into the battle.
Crowd Summoning
Crowd summoning refers to the act of putting a large amount of creatures down on the battlefield as quickly as possible. For this, you’ll want to maximize on low mana cost creatures that are able to deal a massive amount of damage per second. You’ll be focusing on overwhelming the opponent by having too many targets to actively target yourself.
Reaper form abilities are great for having a secondary health bar, as well as decent life-stealing abilities!
The downside to crowd summoning is that you willingly give up better summoning abilities like your golems for faster options like the zombies and skeletal archers. However, to make the most of crowd summoning, try to find abilities that allow you to summon undead vanguard and other interesting auxiliary summons.
Hoarding Attackers
For the best results when it comes to dealing with damage, it’s important to hoard your attackers so you have the maximum amount of summons possible. This means you’ll be able to not only act as an aggressive army that can smack others but also lower the chances of the caster taking damage. In this way, you can easily accomplish hoarding your attackers by summoning them in preparation for a fight.
This is best done when you first enter a location or get out of a safe zone, and must be done before enemies appear on the screen. if your character perceives a threat your forces will immediately engage it, making hoarding attackers hard. To add to this strategy make sure to lower your casting cool-downs so you have access to your summons even faster!
Buffering Forces
Another completely valid strategy for your summons is to use them simply as a buffer zone between you and the enemies. With this play style you might be more interested in the actual spells and attacks of the acolyte class, and using creatures like a shield. These builds require less work on the summons themselves and more on the use of offensive magic like life steal or exploding skulls.
| Crowd Summoning | Good for dealing with large groups of enemies | Unfortunately costs a lot of mana to perform |
|---|---|---|
| Hoarding Attackers | Amazing for boss fights and imprisoned mages | Requires you focus on casting over casting spells |
| Buffering Forces | Great defensive bonuses for casting offensive spells | Requires a lot of mana and awareness of surroundings |
All of these have a decent mana consumption however as a caster you usually don’t have the best armor to help you. To circumvent this, you can easily buff the defense stats of your creatures so they stay in the fight for longer! Overall this play style is more like a wizard that has a few friends to back them up, and in Last Epoch it can make a great addition to any group!
Summoners Equipment/ Augmentation
When you are building your summoner’s Equipment up, you can focus on a few major aspects from defense and mana Regen to movement speed and attack. All of it depends on what you’re most comfortable with, however, these will be your main motivations.
As a spell caster, intelligence is an important stat to consider along with your constitution for living in a fight. Unlike most casters, you aren’t expected to deal all the damage in a game, so make sure you go for survivability over explosive output!
For augmentations, nothing beats mana regeneration and health points received on a kill. These two combined can create a nearly unstoppable occultist that not only crushes the playing field but keeps you in the game longer.
The Warlock is the most recent update to the acolyte mixing soul-based attacks for your spirit forces along with your summons!
Due to limited potions and mana, both of these stats can make sure you depend on them less, while maximizing the use of both things when you need them. Finally, make sure to keep your cooldowns as low as possible as these can cripple an occultist caster if they aren’t paying attention to it.
