A new contender in the action RPG space has it’s full release on Wednesday, February 21st, and PC gaming fans aren’t going to want to overlook it.
Last Epoch began as a Kickstarter project, and after a long early release period, patch 1.0 finally hit on Wednesday afternoon.
Fans of Diablo and Path of Exile will feel at home in Last Epoch, which has an interesting time-traveling storyline and some deep character building features that add plenty of replayability.
If you’re exploring around the lands of Eterra at launch, here’s a few tips to help get you started.
Spend a short while with each base class
Last Epoch launches with five base classes, each of which has three specialized sub-classes. The base classes are fairly straightforward and familiar – a Sentinel is a tanky damage dealer, a Primalist harnesses the power of nature, a Rogue is a more agile but slightly lower health assassin that can operate up close or at range, an Acolyte can raise the dead, and a Mage is… a mage.
But each of these classes has a distinct feel, especially after level 15 or so when you unlock your subclass. It’s a pretty quick journey to get to that point on a new playthrough, so if you haven’t yet decided on a class for your first main character, I’d give each of them a try. Some base class skills might gel with your playstyle, and some may not. You may not like managing minions – a mechanic used extensively in many classes, such as the Necromancer or Beastmaster classes – or you may find that sitting back and watching a pack of wolves tear apart your enemies is awesome.
Know that there are no “wrong” or “bad” classes here. You can clear the campaign in hardcore mode and have a good time in the endgame with any subclass. For absolute beginners, a Sentinel is a very popular choice, either as a Void Knight or a Paladin.
Start out in hardcore mode
This is a personal preference, but the game will feel a bit more rewarding in Hardcore mode – without the punishing consequences that some other ARPGs have.
The objective of hardcore mode, of course, is to clear the game without dying. You will probably die, at some point – the Last Epoch campaign isn’t necessarily a grueling challenge, but there’s plenty of tricky fights and areas – but even if you do die, your character isn’t lost forever.
A hardcore character, upon death, will simply become a “softcore” character. So you can pick up right where you left off and progress through the game with an endless supply of respawns available.
Be in a safe place before exploring through menus
That being said, it can be very easy to die in a silly way. Whenever you gain a level or have a skill gain a level, make sure you’re in a safe area before you venture into the skill menus. Open up a town portal and go back to a village if you want to be 100 percent secure.
You may think you cleared all the enemies off your screen, but they might revive themselves. A fresh pack may come sprinting toward you from off-screen. You don’t want to be debating where to place your next skill point and have no idea that your health is rapidly draining. I lost a level 29 Runemaster this way…. it didn’t feel great.
Go back to town and thank me later.
Spend some time looking around the skill trees
A huge part of the fun of Last Epoch, especially if you’re coming from Diablo IV, is discovering all the creative ways your skills can evolve and drastically change your character build.
In Last Epoch, you’re limited to using 5 skills at a time – but each of those skills has its own deep skill tree, with wildly varying paths. A mage’s fireball, for example, could become a homing missile, or an ice ball, or a machine-gun spray of fireballs depending on how you decide to invest points in the skill’s tree. You’ll start near the middle of each tree and branch out, but before you start spending points, take a look at the powerful endpoints near the edges and decide what direction you eventually want to go. Similarly, you’ll want to scope out the affect of later skills in your character passives tree, as those can make a big difference on your skills.
You can absolutely play Last Epoch with no prior knowledge and without any sort of meticulous planning and have a good time. Even if you have to re-spec, the cost for doing so is low, so there’s a lot of room for experimentation.
Alternatively, if you want to take the shortest route to having a powerful character, there are tons of build guides around the internet. YouTuber Boardman21 does great step-by-step guides for various builds, and you can find specific leveling and end-game focused guides for every base class and subclass over at Maxroll.gg.
Use the forge often
Throughout your journey, you’re going to come across dozens and dozens of affix shards. These will allow you to upgrade your gear considerably, so you always want to pick them up.
It may seem like they can quickly crowd your inventory, but there’s a separate stash specifically for crafting material. In your inventory, click the button on the right side to “transfer crafting items.” This will remove all of the shards from your current inventory and move them to a forge inventory, which is shared across your characters provided you’re playing the same game mode (hardcore or softcore).
Using the forge is easier than it may initially seem. You’ll be introduced to the anvil on the mini-map early into your campaign, but you don’t need to return to an anvil in order to upgrade items. Pressing the “F” key will bring up the forge menu.
From there, don’t be shy about upgrades. You’re going to amass a huge amount of shards to spend. If you find an item with a good stat that enhances your build (say, increased spell damage for casters), open up the forge, click the little up arrow and increase the tier of that bonus. It can make a noticeable difference to your stats.
All items will have a certain amount of “forging potential,” which limits the amount of times you can upgrade an item. For the early game, I wouldn’t worry about this too much because you’re likely to be swapping weapons fairly often, but you’ll have to be more deliberate about your forge decisions in the end game.
When working with a high-value item, you’re going to want to use a “Glyph of Hope” whenever you upgrade a stat. There’s a 25% chance that the glyph will prevent any forging potential from being lost when you upgrade a tier, which means you’re getting free added stats.
Finally, a note on gearing. As you’re leveling, it can sometimes be difficult to decide whether one weapon is better than another for your build. Is added +7 flat spell damage going to pop higher numbers than +20% spell damage?
Fortunately, there’s a simple way to check. With you inventory open, hover over your main damage skill and it’ll give you a DPS number. Then equip the other item you’re comparing and check again. This won’t account for the other bonuses a weapon or a piece of gear may give you, such as resistances or survivability bonuses – but if you’re killing enemies quickly enough, you shouldn’t really have to worry about it.
Stash every unique or interesting rare item
Last Epoch is fairly generous with its stash tabs – it doesn’t cost you very much gold to buy a new tab (or three), and after a few hours you’re going to have a lot of gold to spare – so if cool items drop for a class you aren’t currently playing, go back and stash it. That sweet Rogue unique item is going to come in handy when you want to play a Rogue down the line.
Keep in mind that there are separate stash inventories for hardcore and softcore. So if you start the game in softcore mode and build up a great collection of gear, your next hardcore character will not have access to it.
You can also color code and rename your tabs to separate different types of items. I like to keep a tab specifically for idols and one for uniques, which makes it easier to browse through them on a new character or whenever I unlock more idol slots.
