These 10 tips cover everything from Last Epoch gold faster leveling and loot management to advanced corruption farming and damage scaling. While Last Epoch can feel overwhelming at first, small optimizations like these will save time and make the game more rewarding.
Whether you're grinding out your first character or preparing a roster of alts, keep these strategies in mind to maximize your progression and enjoy the game's deep ARPG systems. Having enough cheap Last Epoch gold will also help you progress.
Last Epoch is a fast-growing ARPG that combines familiar hack-and-slash mechanics with deep character customization and an evolving endgame. If you're brand new to the genre or the game, this guide will walk you through the essentials-from character creation and skills to crafting, loot filters, and the endgame.
Getting Started: Classes and Masteries
When you begin Last Epoch, you'll choose from five base classes:
Sentinel – a sturdy melee fighter.
Rogue – fast and evasive, specializing in bows or daggers.
Mage – powerful ranged spellcaster.
Primalist – nature-driven, with access to beasts and elemental magic.
Acolyte – summoner and dark caster.
These base classes unlock into three masteries each, which completely change playstyle. For example, the Sentinel can evolve into a Void Knight, Forge Guard, or Paladin. Each mastery comes with unique passives and skills.
Tip: You can swap masteries later by spending Last Epoch gold, but the higher your level, the more it costs. If you're unsure, try out a class during the early levels before committing.
Skills and Specializations
Every class starts with base skills that you can use immediately. As you level, you unlock the ability to specialize in five skills at a time. Specialized skills gain access to their own skill tree, letting you reshape how they function.
For example:
Shadow Cascade (Rogue skill) normally deals damage in front of you. But if you invest in nodes that scale it with summoned Shadows, the damage multiplies dramatically.
Some abilities serve as utilities-like Smoke Bomb or Decoy-that don't require specialization but provide crowd control or survivability.
Not all specialized skills must be on your action bar. Some can trigger automatically through interactions with other abilities, giving you flexibility in what you equip.
Each skill also comes with scaling tags (such as Physical, Melee, Dexterity, and Minion). These determine how attributes and gear modifiers increase damage. Understanding tags is key to building around your character's strengths.
Attributes and Character Stats
Open your character sheet (default C) to view your attributes:
Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Attunement, Vitality – boost different stats depending on your class.
Resistances – vital for survival, reducing elemental and physical damage.
Defenses, Damage, Minions, and Dodge – all scale based on your build.
Example: Rogues rely heavily on Dexterity, which not only increases damage for many skills but also grants dodge rating, improving survivability.
During the campaign, you'll encounter side quests marked with gray diamonds. Don't skip these-many reward passive points or Idol slots, both of which significantly improve your character's power.
Factions
Midway through the campaign, you'll choose between two factions:
Merchants Guild – focuses on trading and the economy.
Circle of Fortune – emphasizes farming your own gear through bounties and favors.
You're not locked in forever. If you want to try the other faction later, you can switch. Many new players lean toward Circle of Fortune, since it rewards playing rather than trading.
Crafting Basics
Crafting is one of the most important systems in Last Epoch. To understand it, enable Always Show Mod Ranges in the Gameplay settings. This displays the possible roll values for each stat on an item.
Implicits – the fixed base stats an item always has (e.g., swords grant melee damage).
Affixes – randomized modifiers that come in two types:
Prefixes (damage, attack speed, etc.)
Suffixes (resistances, utility, on-hit effects).
Items also have Forging Potential (FP), which is the number of times they can be modified. Each craft consumes FP, and when it reaches zero, the item can no longer be upgraded.
Affixes range from Tier 1 to Tier 7, with T6–T7 considered Exalted. You can sometimes find sealed affixes, which act as an extra hidden modifier in addition to the four main affixes.
Glyphs and Runes
Crafting uses glyphs and runes:
Glyph of Hope – 25% chance crafting won't consume FP.
Glyph of Chaos – rerolls an affix into another from the same pool.
Glyph of Order – upgrades a stat without rerolling its value.
Rune of Shattering – destroys an item, giving you affix shards.
Rune of Removal – extracts one random affix from an item.
Shattering is your main way to collect affix shards, which you'll use to upgrade other gear.
Note: Some affixes are drop-only (shown in blue text). These cannot be obtained through Last Epoch gold for sale shattering.
