Last Epoch is an intricate action RPG currently in Early Access on Steam. Developed by the passionate indie team at Eleventh Hour Games, Last Epoch invites players into a dark fantasy world.
With intricate dungeons to explore, hordes of enemies to defeat, and valuable loot to uncover, Last Epoch offers an exciting RPG experience, reminiscent of Path of Exile, Diablo 2 and Lords of Wolcen.
Last Epoch is very good at giving you control over your playstyle. With 15 mastery classes and over 100 customizable skill trees, you have total freedom to create your ideal character build.
With any ARPG, finding an efficient and enjoyable way to build your character and get through the story campaign can be challenging. In this guide we’ve provided 9 helpful tips for beginners, as well as a list of things we wished we knew when we first started on the Last Epoch grind.
1. Use the Last Epoch Crafting System Early
Don’t be afraid of using the crafting system early. The whole system is self-contained and doesn’t cost gold, if you get a piece of gear that you like, even if it’s early on in your journey – feel free to upgrade its affixes to speed up your levelling experience.
You might find yourself using that piece up until the later stages of the game. A great example of this is the Bronze Ring, a ring that boosts crit. Bronze rings are added to the loot pool VERY early on, and are the BIS ring for crit-builds.
2. Experiment with Builds as Much as You Want – Respeccing is Easy
When you first pick a class, try what sounds fun or interesting. There is very little penalty to trying new things, be that passive points or skill specialisation.
It may sound intimidating to respec skill specialisation, having to grind out new levels for the upgrade points, but these points scale extremely well with your xp rates, even from level 20 – respeccing a skill only took me about 15 minutes to fully max out again.
3. Don’t Forget About Side Quests
Do the side quests as you receive them. Last Epoch doesn’t have that many side quests throughout the levelling/campaign process, but most of them have very nice rewards.
Check out our comprehensive guide to all of the Last Epoch Quests that give passive points.
Ranging from Uniques to the all important Passive Points, you’ll need to finish your side quests in order to set yourself up for success. They also appear in the same areas that you’re going to anyways, it’s usually a very simple detour from the main objective.
4. Make Multiple Characters
Don’t be afraid to start multiple characters. If you’ve chosen a mastery, or a class that you don’t enjoy, restart as a new one! The campaign overall is pretty quick – for example it took us around 25 hours to beat the campaign, including all side quests.
Don’t forget that your stashes are shared between characters, which means that you can easily keep gear that drops for a different class. If you’re not having as much fun as you want, try something new.
5. You Can Put Passive Points Into Other Mastery Classes
Being able to add passive points to another mastery class is not really something that is explained within the game at the moment, but it is possible and it adds a completely amazing layer of customization to your main character. Here’s how it works:
- As an example, you choose the Primalist base class.
- As you play the game, you will get enough Passive Points (20) to be able to unlock one of its unique Mastery classes (Shaman, Beastmaster or Druid). You’ll also have to have completed the Mastery quest (around level 25).
- As you get more Passive points through playing, you’ll be able to add points to the base tree of another specialty class to unlock passives and skills. Note that you will not be able to unlock that specialty’s class skill.
7. Don’t Pick Up Everything That Drops
So you’re absolutely destroying everything that moves and swamped with loot – our advice is do not pick it all up. Just don’t. I know it’s super tempting to have your inventory full, especially in the beginning of the game when you’re really just getting used to the type of loot drops and the gear that you might want to keep.
However – especially in the earlier levels – much of the loot you will get will not be that useful and of little gold value, and it’s certainly not worth filling up your inventory and teleporting back to town regularly to sell it all. If you want to check each piece quickly before moving on, turn on the auto compare feature for loot that will allow you to quickly check if it’s something you need.
8. Loot Filters Are Your Friend
Take a look at the community-created Loot Filters on LastEpochTools. If you’re following a build guide they might even have one for you to copy + paste in!
The loot filter system is absolutely amazing, allowing you to re-colour drops that contain specific affixes, or specific pieces of gear or even affix tier ranges. Because they’ve made it just so easy, I suspect you could actually spend a lot of time of creating a beautifully organized Last Epoch stash.
9. Learn To Love Your Last Epoch Stash
Yes we’re still talking about the stash but it really will make a difference to your grinding if you can set yourself up for success at the beginning of the game.
Once you have ~100k gold we recommend buying at least 7 stash tabs and naming them. Having pages dedicated to uniques, sets, idols and keys will 100% make it easier for you in the future and in the end game.
If you find yourself filling all of those pages, you can create stash categories to easily sort between even more specific stash pages.
Quick Tips For Easy Last Epoch Gameplay
- Fast inventory management – You can sell and buy items at the Shop using Shift>Right Click. Use it to also move items from your Inventory and into your Stash (and vice versa) quickly.
- The Game Guide – If you need help or just want to research something in the game, don’t overlook the Game Guide (default key is G to bring it up on screen). It really is one of the best ARPG game guides we’ve seen, with everything you need to know, from skills and combat mechanics to ailments and crafting.
- Crafting Items – You’ll get a lot of crafting items in the course of levelling up, and they can certainly clog up your inventory quickly. Don’t move them to your stash. Instead click on the button in your inventory called ‘Transfer Crafting Items’ (see screenshot below)
- Gifting – Gifting is possible, but you need to be adventuring together in the same zone. Players can gift eligible items from their inventory to any party member through right-clicking the recipient’s portrait and select “Gift Item.” This opens your inventory alongside a gifting window, highlighting giftable items. Place the chosen item in the window, confirm the gift, and the item transfers to the recipient’s gift inventory. They receive a notification of the gifted item and can access their gift inventory via an icon in the corner of the screen.
After progressing through the campaign, exploring side content, and tailoring your character via Last Epoch’s intricate skill customization, you’ll have a firm grasp on the core mechanics underpinning this ARPG. Soon you’ll be ready to take on greater challenges in the endgame, with even more impressive loot awaiting you.
