Welcome to the guide!

In this guide I'll teach you about the ways to obtain gear from the beginning up to the endgame.

Before we dive into the "how?"s and "why?"s, let's talk about Cycles.

Prominent ARPGs with online mode often feature a limited period of time when the players get to engage with a certain version of the game, then introduce a new period of time, usually marking a big change in some of the game mechanics or featuring new ones. These periods of time are called by various names - "seasons" or "leagues" in other games, and "cycles" in Last Epoch - and they are repeated on a regular basis. They are often used to bring fresh air to otherwise repetitive gameplay of ARPGs.

We don't have more specific info about Last Epoch's Cycles other than knowing that they will happen at some point.

Cycle 1.0 introduced with game version 1.0 started on February 21, 2024.
Cycle 1.1 introduced with game version 1.1 started on July 9, 2024. Cycle 1.1's new mechanics are being added to Legacy one week after the release date.

The reason I mention this is that when a new Cycle starts, all previously made player characters are "moved" to a different category, in our case named "Legacy". You can still play them as normal, but their stash and crafting materials are separated from the Cycle characters. You can move any item from Cycle storage into Legacy storage, but not from Legacy to Cycle. Therefore, starting a new character in a new Cycle means you always start with nothing.

For the purpose of our guide, we do account for characters starting with nothing. Now, lets get to the guide.

New character should pick gear depending on your chosen leveling build. If you aren't following a build, simply mouseover the skills you're using and look at the Tags on the skill.

For example, this is Fireball:



As you can see, Fireball has the tags FIRE, SPELL and INTELLIGENCE. This means that you should look for items that give you bonuses to these things and that will cover your DPS.

Remember that your skills can change depending on the passive points you spend in them. For example, the Fireball skill can be modified to apply a LOT of Ignite and Spreading Flames - two Damage over Time effects - so in this case you would be looking for DAMAGE OVER TIME bonuses instead.

For defenses, look for items with +HP, +HP regen, +Armor or +Dodge and +Resistances, mainly Physical Resistance.

Finally, you should obtain a Traversal skill as soon as possible, that's a skill that helps you with moving around the map faster. You can mouseover the skills in your class and find out which ones have the MOVEMENT tag.
Some skills that normally don't have the MOVEMENT tag can be modified to gain the MOVEMENT tag via skill passives.

As you progress through the Campaign, you will regularly find upgrades as loot, so be sure to pick everything up. If you are using a Loot Filter, make sure it doesn't hide low level items from you, as late game focused filters normally hide them.


Loot is categorized by its rarity, the amount of bonuses (= affixes) it offers and the rank of those affixes. There are 7 item rarities:
- Common (white item)
- Magic (blue item)
- Rare (yellow item)
- Exalted (purple item)
- Set (green item)
- Unique (brown item)
- Legendary (red item)

Common items have no affixes, they only provide a bonus that comes from item itself (also called "implicit affixes").
Magic items have one affix.
Rare items have 2-5 affixes.
Exalted items have 1-5 affixes where at least one of them is rank 6 or higher.
Set and Unique items always come with a specific set of unique affixes, and these affixes don't have ranks, so they cannot be upgraded with crafting. What you drop is what you get.
Legendary items are created when a Unique item is combined with an Exalted item.


As you level up, new item types will drop. Weapons with higher melee or spell damage, Armor with more Armor and other bonuses. Make sure to always use the best item base available.

For example
Ivory Wand has +(20 to 26) Spell Damage
Spriggan Branch has +(36 to 44) Spell Damage

That's a whopping extra +(10 to 24) Spell Damage just from a white item. A reason to upgrade right there.


Once you find the better base item, check how much Forging Potential it has. White items usually have low Forging Potential, so the best course of action is usually to start with Rune of Discovery, as it will turn the item into a yellow item for free, giving it random affixes, then you can upgrade whichever good affix your item has as much as you can.

Blue, Yellow and later Purple items have more Forging Potential, so it's possible to try to pick which affixes you want and add them directly to the item.


Try to spend some gold on buying Runes of Shattering from the Vendors. They will refresh their stock regularly, so you can buy a lot. Use Runes of Shattering on items you pick up but end up not using. At the beginning, you won't have many affix shards to choose from, and this is the quickest way to build up your affix shard supply.

Once you have enough shards (lets say 50+), adjust your Item Filter so it no longer shows everything, but only show the affixes you want and the rare affixes for your class (like +X to skills).

You should have a decent pool of affix shards for crafting and ideally be wearing all yellow gear. In preparation for the endgame, the last two campaign chapters raise the difficulty (mainly on bosses), so now is the time to start improving your yellow gear to the max.


You should focus on the defenses first. Having close to 1000 HP (or Ward) with some Armor and other sources of Damage Reduction, and most importantly, a form of sustain (healing) other than potions - Health Regen, Ward per Second, Damage Leech, or a combination of multiple sources.

I have another guide that lists all the defensive options and their sources:

https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3172283743


All affixes come in Tiers, and the highest you can craft an affix is Tier 5. A yellow item can have 4 affixes, and our goal is to get as close to four T5 affixes as we can. Tier 5 affixes times four = Tier 20, this is why the term "T20 item" is used.

Note that sometimes unique items may be better than a T20 item, so it is also okay to use uniques if they provide better bonuses.

Usually when you find a rare item, you will be able to upgrade it several times, but getting all affixes to T5 will require the use of Glyphs of Hope and some RNG luck. T20 items also require level 74, so if you DO get lucky, the Forge will tell you that you need to reach higher level before you can do the next upgrade. But the results will be worth it.

For example, a T16 ring for a Mage could look like this:



Late campaign and early monolith is also where your first Exalted items start to appear. Exalted items are just yellow items that happen to roll one or more affixes at Tier 6 or Tier 7. These tiers cannot be crafted, so you can only obtain them from drops, and they usually give a substantial bonus compared to a Tier 5 affix.

But don't let the purple color fool you.
The exalted item will very often come with affixes that aren't useful for your build. This essentially means that a T20 item is always better than an exalted item that has 1-2 useless affixes.

Of course, if you happen to find an exalted item with the right affixes, you can try to craft it and create a T20+ item.

For example, here's my current T22 catalyst:


In game version 1.1, the Nemesis mechanic can also spawn random Exalted items. Choosing to "Empower" the Nemesis will upgrade that Exalted item to higher Tier of affixes, or higher Forging Potential, adding another way to create T20+ items. Unfortunately, the player cannot insert his own Exalted items to upgrade them.

In the last chapter, you will unlock the ability to choose a Faction. You should choose one as soon as you can, because from that moment on, all monsters kills will also generate you Favor with your selected faction.

Factions will greatly affect the way you will obtain new gear for your character.

There are two factions to choose from:




Circle of Fortune is the recommended faction for anyone who plays in offline mode, any of the solo challenge modes, and for people who don't want to trade with other players online. After you reach Rank 10, it's awesome to see 10+ unique items drop from a single boss kill.

Benefits:

• Players aligned with CoF will see A LOT MORE exalted item drops.
  
• Players aligned with CoF can buy exalted items from Vendors.
  
• Allows the player to target-farm specific item types MUCH more effectively with Prophecies.
  
• If you want to see explosions of loot, this is the faction for you.

Negatives:

• CoF faction requires a lot more time investment before you start to see the results.
  
• You won't be making millions of gold.
  
• Most items you drop CANNOT BE TRADED in online. You can only use them on your alts.

Merchant's Guild is only recommended if you play online, as all of its perks involve trading with other players. In Solo and Offline modes, MG is virtually useless.

Benefits:

• Unwanted loot can be sold for money. Players aligned with MG can make Gold easily.
  
• Finding gear upgrades can be as easy as clicking a button on the Bazaar.
  
• You'll be dropping less loot, which means less time spent on organizing loot.
  
• Let's say there are 10 000 players online aligned with MG. That basically means you're farming loot in a party of 10 000 people. The more players there are, the higher chances you have to find loot you want on the Bazaar.

Negatives:

• You won't be able to buy Exalted and Unique items until you reach the higher ranks.
  
• Item prices can change drastically, as it all depends on the players.
  
• Once you buy an item, you cannot sell it on the Bazaar ever again.
  
• Bazaar interface is clunky and could use some improvements.

Game version 1.1 introduces a third Forgotten Knights faction. However, this faction doesn't factor into the choice between CoF and MG factions described above. Instead, this Forgotten Knights faction is mandatory for all players, and only serves as a way to track your progress with Harbingers.

The player must clear all three Level 90 non-Empowered Monoliths, and after the last boss is defeated, the first Harbinger mini-boss will ambush the player. Defeating the first Harbinger will unlock this faction. You can then find the NPC for this faction in The End of Times, next to the entrance into Monoliths.

When you finish the campaign and enter monoliths, you should try to unlock Empowered Monoliths as soon as possible. Empowered monoliths are basically the same as normal monolith, but they automatically start at 100 corruption. The higher corruption is, the higher Experience and more Loot you will get from clearing them.

The other reason why you want to enter Empowered Monoliths is that clearing a monolith also rewards you with Blessings, another type of passive bonus that you can "equip" on your character. You can find a list of blessings here:

https://lastepoch.tunklab.com/items/blessings

Normal monoliths give you a smaller version of the blessing, but the Empowered Monolith gives you a Grand version with higher bonuses.


While certain builds perform better than others in terms of clear speed or survivability, if you follow the recommendations about Defenses from the previous sections, you should have no trouble clearing the monoliths with any build.

Keep upgrading your gear closer to T20 and focusing on Defenses before Damage. When you reach the monolith bosses, take your time to learn the boss mechanics so that you can also clear them later when you reach the Empowered versions.

Once you reach Empowered Monolith, it's time to start farming for Legendary gear.


Once you are in the Empowered Monoliths, pick the Monolith that drops the item types you want. You can see the item icons when selecting the monolith difficulty, but if you prefer an online list, here's one:

https://lastepoch.tunklab.com/timelines

For example if I wanted to farm for unique boots, I would run the Spirits of Fire timeline, search for echoes that reward a unique or set boots and complete as many of them as I can, until my item drops.


Another reason to pick a Monolith is when the Monolith boss drops a unique item that only drops from this boss. These items cannot be dropped as loot anywhere else. In this case, you want to clear echoes and raise the Timeline stability bar as fast as you can, so that you can fight the final boss very often.

Eventually you'll fight the Shade and raise the Corruption of the monolith you're farming. This increases the experience and loot, but also the health and damage of monsters, so only raise the Corruption if you can clear echoes with no trouble.

If you're dying and/or it takes you a long time to clear an echo, it's better to wait until you upgrade your gear a bit more.

Focusing on corruption in a single monolith is better, because there is a catch-up mechanic. The higher your maximum corruption, the faster you can raise corruption in the other monoliths.

Some boss-specific gear can also be found in Dungeons and in the Arena. Entering Dungeons and Arena requires the use of a Key. Keys can be found randomly as loot.

Each Dungeon and Arena has Tiers of difficulty, ranging from Tier 1 to Tier 4.
Pay attention to the description, as each Tier also has different recommended level and comes with different loot modifiers which change on a daily basis.


In dungeons, you have to traverse through two floors of dungeon before entering the boss chamber. Each dungeon has a certain mechanic that you have to use in order to advance through the Dungeon, and the mechanic is normally also required to defeat the Dungeon boss.

• Lightless Arbor - A light source (Burning Amber) is attached to your character and you can send and recall the light to illuminate dark areas. Enemies in the darkness take less damage and deal much more damage.
  
• Soulfire Bastion - Dungeon is filled with traps and monsters that use either Fire or Necrotic damage types. Monsters drop Soul Embers on death, and you can toggle between Fire and Necrotic damage immunity at the cost of Soul Embers.
  
• Temporal Sanctum - You gain a time travel ability, and have to switch between Ruined and Divine Era in order to progress through the Dungeon and avoid boss abilities.

Each time you reach the next floor, you select another modifier that's randomly selected from a list of possible options.

If you die, your run ends, the key you used is lost and you have to use another key and start over. Therefore, it is recommended that you practice the Dungeons on lower Tier (lower difficulty) and learn the boss mechanics before advancing to a higher tier. On Tier 4 difficulty, the bosses are similar to endgame bosses from other ARPGs and they are quite deadly.


In the Arena, you have to defeat waves of monsters, similar to the arena-type echoes in the monolith. The Arena gives you an option to stop after every 5 waves, and the map changes every 10 waves, also offering a selection of modifiers.

After you defeat 40 waves, one of the three Arena bosses spawns at random.

Similar to the Dungeons, if you die in the Arena, your key is lost and you have to use another key and start over.

The final step of upgrading your gear is crafting Legendary items. Legendary items are a composite of Unique and Exalted items.

Crafting a Legendary item is a three step process and usually a lot of RNG is involved, so brace yourself for the long ride.

Legendary items are NOT required to clear the current game content, instead they are something for you to chase after you've geared yourself in T20+ rare/exalted gear.


The first step is obtaining the Unique items with Legendary Potential. Items can drop with 1-4 Legendary Potential, but the higher LP numbers are much more rare. You'll be farming for them using all the methods for farming Unique items described in the sections above.

Uniques with LP are the same as your standard Unique items, so using them right away is usually not recommended. Store them in your stash instead.

Since many Unique items have affixes with big value ranges, you might want to farm for multiple Uniques until you find a good roll, so that's where the RNG comes in.


The second step is obtaining T20+ Exalted items that have the correct affixes for your build, but you are not using them. Basically, finding and crafting spare T20+ Exalted gear.

This exalted gear needs to be of the same type as the Unique item you are trying to craft into a Legendary. For example:

Unique Boots require Exalted Boots (of any base type)
Unique Wand requires Exalted Wand (of any base type)
and so on...

Your exalted item also needs to have all 4 standard affix slots filled.
An exalted item with only 3 affixes will not work.
An exalted item with 3 affixes and 1 sealed affix will also not work.
An exalted item with 4 affixes and 1 sealed affix will work.

You can try to use Exalted gear that doesn't have all its affixes useful for your build, but you risk that one of the unwanted affixes will end up on your Legendary item.


The final step is crafting the Legendary item using the Eternity Cache.

Eternity Cache is an object found behind the Temporal Sanctum boss room, so you have to run this Dungeon each time you want to craft a Legendary item. Only one Legendary item can be crafted per run, so this also means each Legendary will cost you one key.

When you have gathered the Unique item with LP and the spare Exalted item, pay attention to the Required level on the Unique item you want to upgrade. Select the appropriate Tier of the dungeon, where the Level Restriction is higher than the Required level of your Unique item.

For example:
My Unique item has Required level 70, so I have to run T3 Temporal Sanctum, where the Unique item restriction level is 75. (I could also run T4 Temporal Sanctum which has no level restriction)

After you defeat the boss, use the time travel skill to reach the Eternity Cache in the past, insert your Unique and your Exalted item, and confirm with the button.
Then use the time travel skill again to reach Eternity Cache in the future and take the crafted Legendary item.

The affixes from the Exalted item will be randomly chosen and added to the Unique item, making it a Legendary item.

Hopefully this guide will help you with gearing your character. Last Epoch is a great game for creating your own builds from scratch, and if you wanted to make your own build but just needed to look up bits and pieces of advice like me, I hope this guide will help you with that.

If you find a mistake, or if you have ideas for improvements to the guide, tell me in the comments. If you liked the guide, don't forget to:



That's it for the guide for now.

Changelog:
July 2024 - added bits of information about new Faction, about game version 1.1 and about Item rarities. No major changes.

Enjoy the game!