Latest dev blog of Last Epoch is an insider insight on "Bug Hunting"

Last Epoch's developers have shared a new blog on “Bug Hunting” in the game. Led by Anna Lyon, Senior Technical Quality Assurance Tester for Last Epoch, the team shared a detailed report on how bugs are fixed in the game, including steps like taking reports from players, identifying the issue, reproducing the bug to develop a fix, and finally issuing it in the latest patch.

In this article, we have shared the whole process and how you can help the developers of Last Epoch with their “Bug Hunting”.

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Last Epoch shared with their players the process of “Bug Hunting”

The reports are used to find and fix bugs in Last Epoch (Image via Eleventh Hour Games)

In the blog, the team shared the whole process starts with player reports:

"Bugs are collected through our In-Game Bug Reporting tool which players use to tell us when they’ve found something that isn’t as it should be."

These reports are analyzed by the QA team, and internal bugs are tracked through studio communication channels. Once identified, automated tickets are created in the task tracking system to organize the severity of the issues.

In the next step, the team ensures the error is a bug and not a local issue. The distinction between the two is very important. The latter is rare and may be difficult to reproduce. If an issue that is difficult to replicate internally arises, the team will investigate by testing the bug with the help of player reports.

Bug reports from the community are invaluable for troubleshooting. The more detailed the report, the better. Reports contain automatic data such as game graphics settings, server and player logs, and even screenshots, all of which provide context for the QA team.

Once a bug is identified the reproduces it and then fixes it (Image via Eleventh Hour Games)

These reports help direct the investigation and narrow down the potential causes, whether visual, mechanical, or server-related. Once a bug is confirmed and reproduced, it is assigned to the relevant development team, categorized with appropriate labels like “skills,” “error,” or “UI,” and tasked to a developer for resolution.

The complexity of each issue dictates the time it takes to fix, and once a solution is implemented, it enters the QA testing phase. This process may require multiple iterations before the bug fix is confirmed.

Once tested and approved, the fix is included in a patch release and prepared for deployment, either as a hotfix or as part of a larger update. This whole process is baseless without player reports, so always send a report whenever you encounter a bug in the game.