Last Epoch is going to shower you with choices early on. The most important one happens before you even create a character. Once you click the character creation button, Last Epoch will immediately bombard you with the Cycle vs. Legacy choice. And while it does explain both briefly, you’re missing out on quite a lot of information by picking one over the other. So before you hopefully commit and get far with a character, here’s an explanation for Cycle vs. Legacy and which to pick in Last Epoch.
Cycles are Temporary Seasons in Last Epoch
If you’ve played other loot-based ARPGs before, like Diablo 4 or Path of Exile, then Last Epoch‘s Cycle vs. Legacy server choice is basically just League/Season vs. Standard.
Leagues, Seasons, and Last Epoch‘s Cycles in loot-based ARPGs are temporary three-month stretches of new content. Here, you have to create a new character and level them up all over again. They usually come with a new seasonal mechanic or content that would spice up the gameplay.
Once the Cycle’s three-month period is up, the character you made for it will be transferred into the Legacy server (along with its gear and progress, of course). Meanwhile, you won’t be able to access the new gameplay mechanics/content that came with the Cycle anymore. It’s gone, after all.
Sometimes, however, a seasonal gameplay mechanic is so popular with players that the developers might add them as a permanent part of the game — in the Legacy servers.
Legacy is Permanent
Legacy, by comparison, is a bit more relaxed. Since it’s where all the Cycle characters will go once it’s over, it’s usually full of old characters. Once characters are in the Legacy servers, they won’t go anywhere else.
You can also create a character in Legacy and level them up there. However, picking Legacy means you might miss out on the new gameplay content (including new items or quests, sometimes) present in Cycles. Don’t worry much about new items, though; they tend to be automatically added to Legacy after the Cycle is up.
Keep in mind that since the game has just been released and the developers are busy, Cycle 1 or the current Last Epoch Cycle doesn’t have any huge seasonal content yet, apart from Leaderboards.
That’s the only thing you’ll be missing out if you play Legacy instead of Cycles — the Leaderboard for the Cycle. The game mentions this one, thankfully. If that’s important to you, then you should stick to Cycles, as some players consider it as an endgame activity.
