Last Epoch Basic guide with end game tips

After reaching rank 75 (at the time) wave 81 i found There are so many players asking about how things in the game work so i thought i would explain what ive learned, or believe i have anyways.

Starting out in Last Epoch

Last Epoch is a great game so far that just went into beta. They modified the story and rewards to suite the goal of a fun rewarding experience.
Starting out you will have garbage, this is a great time to use unique's if you found any. Don;t bother crafting much as later in the game 40-50's you will want all them useful free mats you found while leveling. Use the items found and ALWAYS check the store. If the store has a unique it will cost 5000 gold so save some before blowing it all gambling, which has worse odds of a unique but you can roll whenever you want for cash instead of checking every 5-10 minutes for the store to refresh.
The whole story should take you to 45 ish. That's when the Monolith and Arena end game modes kick in. Real gear does not drop until 60's with any regularity. I would suggest in crafting only what you need to make as many monolith runs as possible without dieing, if your over wave 25 or so your geared too much ;p and if cant do 5 you suck atm. All is not lost. You will have idols to buff you (like relics in other games) and your skills will now level up fast as t he xp is going to be better.

At 55-60 you should have found some better tier stuff and should experiment with crafting what you like.

After the story

As mentioned you will be doing monolith runs and arena waves for xp and gear. The best xp is arguably the high arena waves but people can take monolith pretty high and it can get some HIGH xp buffs. The monolith however is definitely the early late game starting place. It drops more gear, more shards (crafting pieces), and more glyphs (crafting) but not so much cash. Loot the chest every run.
The arena pays really well on the other hand so if you lack cash you should be able to do half your monolith waves in arena waves without much threat so you know when to quite or when your risking loot to progress.

For most loot possible in the monolith, spped run a few first to get some good loot mods going. Then when you got a decent RIF full clear the zone BEFORE you complete the objective. Then clean out the objective so no mobs are left and loot box at End of Time. BOTH loots, end of time and objective completion will have max possible loot for the run.

Gearing

Most uniques are garbage compared to crafted gear. Some hold weight. Most late game players do not use more than 1-2 uniques if any at all. You cant tailor the unique to your build. This is a major problem people are having in the game. They are asking for META builds when there are none. No 2 people will likely have the same gear exactly, and then they would have to be doing it with the goal to match to have a real chance. If you dont like crafting, in this game its mostly easy and simple, then so far this game may disappoint. If you like easy crafting systems that add difficulty as you get into crafting, then you will like this system at the least.

Crafting

Crafting starts out real simple. You pick up "shards" that provide a stat bouns, and then you add them to non unique gear as you want. Every stat buffable in the game seems to have a shard for it.
The likelyhood of all shards being useless is nul. You would have to go out of your way to make an item uselss.

Uniques can not be crafted in any way so far.

Shards = Stat bonus that may be put on a piece of gear

Runes help provide changes to gear as well as shattering gear for a chance at the shards it held.

Glyphs help reduce the penalties that get applied to a piece of gear per craft. This is called instability.

Instability is the items "willingness" to accept new effects. The more instability, the more likely an item will either fracture, damage, or be destroyed. In all cases a failed craft will lock the item.

Fracture this mean that the item is no longer willing to accept new effects. The item is called fractured and is now locked. It may however, be used as normal and be equipted.

Damaged means the item is now locked and will suffer random stat loss. The item may still be used.

Destroyed the item is forfeit completely.

Glyphs of stability help reduce the amount of instability the item gets. The ess it has, the easier to mod it is.

Glyphs of guardian are used once see the item has too high a risk of being fractured or damaged. They lower the risk of fractures,damage, and destruction. Save these.

Rune of shattering shatters the item in the window, giving you a chance at the chards the item has.

For basic terms i gamble at 20% or less chance to fracture by using stability glyphs for less instability. If you want the item to not fracture or worse, then use a guardian glyph. The odds will be reduced.

Loot all loot that has affixes on it that you like and shatter them until you have enough to craft with. While you can shatter an item you crafted, it does not mean that you will get them back. craft carefully, there is no fixing a mistake. It hurts when your rare shards dont come back to you on a piece your just messing around with. Plan it out.

I put on as many affixes as i wish with only using stability glyphs until i dont like how much of a gamble it becomes (20% usually for me).

The tier of the stat to be buffed also adds to the difficulty. So applying a level one shard is easy and level 5 shard (max amount of shards that can be appied in a given stat) is very hard. That is why i take as many low instabilty crafts at first, then i buff the main stat to full with guardians. If i don't fail, i move on to the second stat priority. If i want all stats the same tiers, then i apply each one at a time across the board until it fractures. Depends on how you prioritize that piece of gear.

Note 3/16 Now i use stability for as many shards as i can to 20%+ failure chance on all 3-4 stats. Then i guardian up the mainstat as high as needed, then pick the next stat by weight, and etc.

Stat Weights

The stats in the game are very easy to follow, they provide full descriptions on all stats on the character sheet. Most characters have preffered stats like sentinel and str. Str ties into alot of their skills and scales them as well as adds armor. This would be a front runner.

Vit buffs negative energy resistances (VOID,NECROTIC,POISON) so it should not be ignored if possible. Attunement buffs elemental resistances (fire,lightning,cold) so if your lacking on all three across the board, It will help alot, and most spells ties into attunement for non int players.

Basic damage bonus's are in the game making multiple damage character types pretty easy, and specialty characters can pick and choose what specific types of damage need to be buffed. For example crit chance is global, and then there is spell and melee crit chance. The more specific, the better the bonus usually. You will obviously need to decide what stats you want for you.

Glancing Blow is a stat that must be 100% or you will die alot. More is useless, less is failure in high end game. Glancing blow can easily be capped by "set glancing blow on hit" shards. Rank 4 on 5 pieces is all you need. It will be 20% per piece x 5 pieces.

Health Kinda of a funny thing here, it is not as important as you think. In lost epoch Effective Health pool is utilized by adding the resistance type amount to your health pool making EHP the norm. Not the % they list, those are misleading. So if at 100 hp and 100 fire resist and you get hit for 102 points fire, the the first 100 get wiped by resistance and 2 points get through. A 200 point fire hit would kill you instantly. The % reflected in the tool tip is the approximate % they feel you get with this method. With this method 200 hp and 200 fire resist would be 50% resistance. 300 health and 100 resistance would be 25%. If you hit a buff adding health, your resistance % will go down, but you still aborb the same amount, 100 (or whatever your value is). The % is useless, the number value is everything. So when i spin and my armor goes up to 84% its 4027 pts. No matter what it will take 4028 damage for the hit to hurt me physically. Sounds op when you run around with 750hp, but you can, and will, die. More hp is possible, and easier to gear. So if you ignored resistances and got to 5k health you would have a little more ehp as i am with 740hp and 87% armor resist at 4028. If the resistance bonus for character are horrible you may want to pass them and just go health.
Ward is the deteriating health pool you get from an energy shield. Skills add ward on cast, items add ward/sec or ward/hit or ward when hit. Ward also has Ward Retention. This gets really confusing because ward is like health regen and healing in one. It goes up, and ward retention slows it from falling down on its own to 0. This used almost exclusively by int characters as int adds ward retention. You need to add to both equally, or you may have disparriging results. You will hit a sweet spot were ward regen is defeated by ward retention. So if you have 50% ward retention you will run out in a hurry, 900% and you will sit in town with well over half of your ward up and available. People say it easier to do ward, but they simply dont understand whats going on. Its all the same and you should gear to your character and not someone elses even in the same class.

Damage Types

There are base damage types, fire, void. Then there are specific types, melee fire or spell void. Potential if off the roof here. All damage types says specifically what they are.

Bleeds are physical damage.

Poison is its own damage

Damage overTime buffs all DoTS, and Spell DoT damage is a specific. Dots can not be blocked or dodged and do not crit.

Everything else is as described in their tool tips for the most part.

If you have 230% chance to poison you will automatically add 2 stacks and have a 30% chance for a third. This is the easiest way to stack damage with ailment type dots. Do not bother buffing the effect, until you get 100% chance to apply it.

Basic Defenses First

It is highly recommended that all characters get 100% Glancing Blow.
After that, 100% crit avoidance is a solid idea.
Stack Main Stat.

For strength users, resistances are usually easy to get, but you need all resistances not just armor.
Block is a nice added defense layer
Channeling nets even more resistances with shards.
Stack HP where available.

For Dex users dodge comes easy, go for atleast 50% and its not that hard to get. You will need Crit Avoidance as well.
Stack HP

For Int users, ward is easy so go for that instead of health and Exsanguinous Unique is a recomended try.
Crit Avoidance is needed here or high dodge.
Ward per second and ward retention are equally important. Flame ward is almost a must skill.
If using exsanguinous, hp is nice too.
You should aim for 10% of max ward as ward retention.
For instance, i get 6500 ward out of combat buffed. And i have 589% ward retention. Before adding more Hard Ward, i need to get some more retention so i will end up with more available ward decay slow down and actually increase my maintained ward more than hard ward.

[我不在乎灬]

[Psykrom]

Why use the mark of the beast?

[Void]

Thanks for putting this together

[Avalanche]

So basically, play the exact same way regardless of class........sounds boring....or will get boring fast.

I have noticed that the only way to do well in this game is to do the most burst damage as possible as fast as possible....cause i have had as much HP as possible and die quickly, but on my Sentinel, i was able to do ALOT of damage once specced into Void Cleave...and use that do do ALOT of damage to groups of enemies or tough ones.

I have yet to see a similar ability in the other classes.

[Karatas]

good

[GmY]

Crafting.... if you use well... build a very STRONG PIECES....

[Nakatomi Plaza]

Yo, I remember your Marvel Heroes videos! Man I miss that game sometimes.

[Thealas]

I think this guide needs to be updated. One, the spelling and grammar could be edited to make statements more clear. Also there is some content that is flat incorrect. I expect that the incorrect statements are a result of changes to the game since this guide was last updated.

[NaVv666]

amount of uniques are build dependant because they mostly do something that normal items cant for example some low life builds will require 4-5 uniques

[destroyermaker]

Hey I'm working on a Last Epoch wiki. Would you mind if I added this guide to it? Will give you credit of course.