The curse of the online action RPG strikes again: real-money trading and gold exploits. Lost Ark was plagued by it and now Last Epoch is too.
Last Epoch developer Eleventh Hour has posted a on the subject, saying, "We take exploits within Last Epoch very seriously and ensure that any time an exploit comes up, we give it our full and immediate attention. We strictly enforce our Terms of Use when it comes to exploits and RMT (Real-Money Trading), and as such, one can expect that abusing such exploits or engaging in RMT, both buying and selling, will result in a permanent account ban."
The developer called out two specific exploits. One is item duplication, made possible via the in-game bazaar, and the other is a gold exploit. Fixes for both have since been deployed, and players found to have been "participating in illegitimate gold generation" have been banned.
Players who have taken part in real-money trading, whether buying or selling, have also been banned, as has anyone with duplicated items. Eleventh Hour noted that there was some confusion, however, due to players believing they had seen illegitimate duplicate items listed for sale on the bazaar, when there are in-game methods for producing duplicates that are actually legit: "It may be surprising to [[link]] know that Lightless Arbor's Vaults of Uncertain Fates can actually produce up to 12 duplicates of the exact same item." Eleventh Hour plans to add new item cards with mirrored art to highlight items that have been cloned via these methods.
The influx of gold created by players abusing exploits has contributed to inflation, though apparently it's not the only reason the currency's being devalued. "We've also found, in general, the Merchant's Guild centralizing of gold leads to a fair amount of inflation all by itself," Eleventh Hour says, "and as such, are looking into [[link]] and discussing inflation control methods such as implementing a Gold Tax on transactions in 1.1."
Eleventh Hour will have more to say on that topic as the 1.1 update gets closer to completion. The developer finished by saying, "We don't think it's a very controversial statement to say that abusing an exploit, ruining the game for all players is not acceptable, and that doing so should result in a ban. We also acknowledge this isn't just on bad actors, but it's also our responsibility to do everything we can to prevent these exploits from being possible in the first place."