by Hald Twinpack

March 2, 2024

Last Epoch Beginner Guide: Tips and Tricks

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Are you new to the game? In this Last Epoch beginner guide, you will find all the basics, tips, and tricks you need to know for an enjoyable gaming experience!

Getting Started

This section contains general information about Game Mods, key character creation tips, and essential tools to use in the game.

Online/Offline

You can play Online and Offline. Offline mode can be played without an internet connection. It doesn’t limit most of the game’s basic features. You can still create up to 20 characters, leveling, crafting, soloing the dungeons with low difficulty, and enjoying the repeatable endgame activity Monolith of Time. However, remember that Trade is a significant part of the game. And to Trade with other players, you need to play Online.

Solo Challenge

You can turn on Solo Challenge mode in the game. It has two types: Solo Account Found and Solo Character Found. In both cases, you won’t be able to interact with other players even when playing Online. Solo Character Found also prevents you from using your other characters’ stash. In this case, your Solo Character won’t profit from their Item Factions progress as well. 

You can turn off Solo Challenge Mod whenever you want in the Challenges Settings tab. In the first days after the Last Epoch release date, the function was disabled due to a bug. We hope it’s already fixed when you read this guide.

Realm

Similar to the Season mechanic in Diablo 3 and other ARPG games, while creating a character, you can choose between Cycle and Legacy Realms. In Cycle Realms, characters are seasonal and last only in this Cycle. Each Cycle spans from three to four months. At the start of each new Cycle, characters transition to Legacy. Only then the Legacy characters’ stash is accessible.

Leaderboards are exclusive to Cycle Realms, allowing players to compare progress with one another. Each new Cycle beginning means a refresh of the Realm’s economy. 

Opting for Cycle characters is recommended for a fresh experience and competitive play, especially since Legacy characters lack significance, given the game’s recent release.

Game Modes

You can play Normal and Hardcore Game Modes. The latter grants access to a special Hardcore Ladder. Hardcore means that your character’s death will be permanent. However, rest assured, you won’t lose your character forever as it’ll be turned into a Normal one. 

Essential Tools and Loot Filter

Be sure to press G Hotkey for the Game Guide if you missed any in-game tips. You may also want to save Last Epoch Tools to your browser bookmarks. This website is the largest database of the game’s items, skill descriptions, and dungeon contents. It provides you with a Build Planner too. With it, you can plan your skills layout, each skill’s Tree development, Equipment outfit, calculate its influence on key stats, and more. Last Epoch Tools also contains a plethora of Build Guides created by the community.

Use Loot-Filter. Yes, Last Epoch allows players to automatically filter loot without using third-party resources. Press Shift+F. In the opened tab, you may Import or Create a Filter. 

Many ready-made filters can be found on Last Epoch Tools and imported into the game. Filters can be class-specialized or dedicated to a specific activity. For example, Leveling or Endgame.

When you create a filter, keep in mind that it’s based on a hierarchical system. The Rules you created located at the top of the filter list are superimposed on the Rules below. For instance, you may want most of the Rare items dropped by enemies not to be displayed. But you need one Rare item with certain affixes to be visible. Place the Rule that’ll exclude Rare items at the bottom of the list. Above, create a Rule dedicated to a specific item, its stats, and the affixes you need. Give it a memorable Color. Now, nameplates of Rare items won’t be displayed on the ground. But the Rare item you seek will be displayed with the specified color.

Last Epoch Classes: All You Need to Know

There are 5 base Classes in Last Epoch. They’re Sentinel, Acolyte, Rogue, Mage, and Primalist. Each class has 3 Masteries to choose from. Mastery is a kind of Sub-Class with unique spells and passive bonuses. Mastery may transform Acolyte into a Necromancer and Sentinel into a Paladin. However, Mastery’s choice is permanent. There’s no way to re-pick it with the same character after the choice was made. 

Thus, the choice of Mastery must be approached with caution and knowledge. Let’s talk about when and how it can be done and briefly look through the Masteries.

How to Choose a Mastery

Mastery is chosen at the end of Chapter 2. Saving Last Refuge quest given by Elder Gaspar requires you to defeat The Husk of Elder Pannion boss. That’ll open a portal letting you enter the End of Time town zone for the first time. That’s a location serving as a place to start most of the game’s endgame activities. Once you get here, The Power of Mastery quest is given. Beware: by this time, you should already have 20 points invested in a base class Mastery passives.

Don’t search for the Last Epoch best class guidelines. The best advice is to choose Mastery according to your taste. Pick the one with the gameplay you like and appreciate aesthetically. All of the offered Masteries are said to be capable of overcoming most game’s challenges solo. However, some may have a little more support mechanics useful for teamplay.

Sentinel

Sentinel is a Warrior-like class. Its Masteries are Void Knight, Forge Guard, and Paladin. The Void Knight is a shadow-magic-based melee damage-dealer. Forge Guard is an unusual summoner who calls on various weapon-like companions to support it in a fight. And Paladin is just… Paladin. Tons of holy-based damage, healing, support, and buffs for your teammates.

Acolyte

Acolyte can become a Necromancer, Warlock, and Lich. As usual, Necromancer summons tons of undead creatures to break through the hordes of enemies. Warlock specializes in damaging with chaos magic and lots of curses. Lich is focused on damaging enemies with Acolyte’s own HP and can transform into death itself.

Rogue

Marksman, Bladedancer, and Falconer are Rogue’s Masteries. Marksman is a damage-dealer archer whose most skills make you equip a bow. Bladedancer is a ninja-like melee damage-dealer stabbing enemies from the shadows with knives. Falconer’s spells are pet-focused: equip the weapon you like and synchronize attacks with Falcon pet.

Mage

Mage’s Masteries are Spellblade, Runemaster, and Sorcerer. Spellblade is a caster dealing most of its magic damage with a melee weapon. Dota players would immediately see Invoker in the Runemaster. Its Runic Invocation mechanic allows creating a unique spell out of various Runes combinations. Sorcerer is just an improved Mage able to cast destructive Meteor and Black Hole spells.

Primalist

Primalist players can choose from Shaman, Druid, and Beastmaster Masteries. Shaman is a kind of Warrior with mighty elemental-based spells and totems. Transformation-focused Druid can turn into a terrifying werebear or damaging swarm of insects. Beastmaster is companion-based: call for wolves, bears, scorpions, and even squirrels to destroy your enemies or tank them while you deal damage.

Skills

The Last Epoch Skills & Specializations window appears when you press the S hotkey. At the top of the window, there are 5 spell slots. They get unlocked on certain Levels. There you may place skills that you’d like to Specialize in. You can assign them to the corresponding slots by clicking your spells bar at the bottom of the screen.

Below, on the left side of the window, are the skills that you automatically receive during leveling. In the lower left part of the window, there are spells that you open in the base class Mastery Passives. The right half contains Mastery spells. They are unlocked as you level up Mastery Passives.

Last Epoch’s grand feature is that each spell has its own vast Specialization tree. Click on any spell placed in one of the slots at the top of the Skills&Specializations window. That’ll take you to the Skill Specialization tree. There you can learn traits empowering the chosen spell. 

Hover the mouse over the icon of the required spell to see a window displaying its key characteristics. Its Damage, amount of Resource spent on the cast, and Scaling Tags will be shown there. Among the Tags are attributes that influence this spell’s effectiveness. For example, Tags may include Area and Damage over Time.

Once you’ve chosen Mastery, you can learn all of its passives. This way, you’ll get all the spells of this Mastery. However, you can still put Mastery Passive points in other Mastery trees. But in them, you may learn only the left half of the Passives and receive the corresponding spells below them. Another half is blocked by a chain and a lock in the middle of the tree.

Respeccing Skill Points and Mastery Passives

How can a Last Epoch player respec skill points and Mastery passives? In the case of skills, you can respec them by pressing the eponymous button in the upper right corner of the skill tree. You’ll be able to choose whether you want to Remove only a few Skill Points or completely Despecialize the spell. This type of respec is free and can be done anywhere.

Mastery Points — or just Passives — can be respecialized only in big friendly towns. For example, in The End of Time. In such cities, you may notice a purple brain icon on the map. It marks a local Chronomancer. Ask it to Respecialize Mastery Point allocations. 

It’ll trigger the Passives Tree window to open. In it, you can select which Passive nodes you want to unlearn. Gold should be paid for each such a respec. The price increases depending on the number of points removed. Besides, the more to the right chosen Passives are, the more expensive they’ll be. It’d be wise to always plan your build using the Last Epoch character builder. This way, you won’t waste extra Gold and time.

Leveling Up

Maximum character’s Level is 100. The whole leveling process usually takes about 60-70 hours. As usual, you receive Experience for completing various activities, from questing to mob farming and endgame activities. Skills also gain Experience when they’re Specialized. The maximum skill level is 20. You can invest the same number of skill points in its Specialization tree. However, some items can increase it.

Starting from Level 3, a character receives 1 passive point per Level. You should put these points in Mastery Passive nodes. This way, you get Mastery skills and enhance them with the traits you take. You receive a total of 15 additional Passive Points for completing the Campaign. Campaign Passive Point Rewards progress can be checked in the lower left corner of the map. There you’ll also see the progress of your Idol Slot Rewards.

A basic recommendation in any Last Epoch leveling guide is to focus on Campaign quests. It’s also recommended to do all the optional quests along the way. That’s because most endgame activities normally become available after Level 50. For example, the lowest level of enemies in Monolith of Fate is 58. For Arena proper farm, it’s advised to be Level 50. It’s better to start farming Arena and Monolith once you have the corresponding level. When you’re roughly Level 50-60, you’ll also be able to farm Dungeon Keys. They’re used to power up enemies in Dungeons and gain more exp there on your way to Level 100.

For alt characters, the basic leveling route isn’t much different. However, the crafting resources of your other characters will be available to alts. That’ll speed up leveling. Many guides on speedrunning a Campaign are spread throughout the web right now. But it’s worth waiting until they stand the test of time.

Campaign

Campaign is a key element of any Last Epoch leveling strategy guide. It consists of 9 Chapters dedicated to a few different Eras, or Timelines, telling the spectacular story of the World of Eterra. 

The main in-game guideline for the Campaign is the Map. Main story quests are marked in yellow, and additional ones are marked in blue. The map is also used to track Passive Points and Idol Slots Rewards progress. Apart from them, Campaign Quests will reward you with attributes. 

Catch the useful map navigation advice: when you click on the point you need to teleport to, don’t click the Travel button below. Just click the right mouse button after the left one, and you’ll be teleported immediately.

Crafting

Crafting unlocks the true potential of items in the Last Epoch. It’s the main source of gear improvement. Crafting can be done anywhere in the game. Press F to open the Forge menu. In the center of the window, you can place a piece of equipment that you’d like to Forge.

Each item, by default, has 4 affixes. On the left side of the Forge menu, you see Prefixes. On the right side are Suffixes. These are two groups responsible for strengthening different sets of item stats. Above the item, you can see its Forging Potential number. It reflects the number of Forging actions you can perform with this item.

Different actions cost different amounts of Forge Potential. Glyph of Hope reagent allows you to have some chance of not spending Potential at all. With the help of certain Runes, you can extract the affixes you need from certain items and save them for the others. Or, for example, destroy an item using Rune of Shattering and turn its affixes into Shards.

Shards are the base materials used to craft affixes of the corresponding type. For example, Health Shards are used to add the Health’s Suffix to the item. You can check the materials you have by clicking the View Materials button in the Inventory.

Gearing and Blessings

Last Epoch beginners are highly recommended not to neglect crafting with Forge as an important part of the gearing-up guide. At the endgame, you’ll move to another level of Crafting: creating Legendaries using Eternity Cache forges. But until then, you may also upgrade yourself with Idols and Blessings.

Idols are located to the right of the Gear in your Inventory. Their menu is like a puzzle in which you need to arrange Idols of different sizes. Basically, they serve as additional attribute buffs. All Idol slots are unlocked when the Campaign is completed. Many of them are class-based. They require players to be of a certain class because they buff that class’ mechanics.

Blessings are obtained for the Monolith of Fate farm. They buff… anything. Some increase particular Idols and Runes drop chance. Some increase the drop chance of particular types of equipment. And some boost health regeneration, critical strike chance, void damage, and all sorts of other character stats. You can equip up to 3 Blessings at a time. Thus, Blessings can be used for overall stat boost and to improve farm run quality.

Conclusion

This was the end of our Last Epoch beginner guide. Happy gaming!