At its heart, Last Epoch is about building your own hero and growing it over a long run. You start by choosing one of five base classes, and partway through the story you unlock one of that class's three masteries to take your build further. In a session, you follow the campaign, grow your skills and passives, and collect loot that you can improve at the Forge. You can play solo or team up with others online in co-op.
The campaign leads through Eterra's different eras, and the End of Time hub is where the endgame begins. The main endgame system is the Monolith of Fate, which you can enter from the End of Time and where you work through Timelines. Inside a Timeline, completing Echoes builds up Stability, and enough Stability opens its Quest Echoes. The third Quest Echo holds the Timeline boss, and defeating it drops loot and lets you choose a permanent Blessing.
Characters are created either in a Season, also called a Cycle, or in Legacy. Season characters start fresh, and some content only runs while its season is active. When a season ends, its characters and progress move to Legacy instead of being deleted, and Legacy is permanent, though it has no competitive leaderboards. Along the way, the big goal is reaching Empowered Timelines, since they make the loop harder and deeper.
- Developer
- Eleventh Hour Games
- Publisher
- Eleventh Hour Games, KRAFTON, Inc.
- Release
- Early Access: 2019-04-30 · Full release: 2024-02-21
- Platforms
- Windows PC
Game data
Masteries
Masteries turn a starting class into a specific build in Last Epoch. Each character picks one mastery from their base class during the main story, at the end of Chapter 2. A mastery brings its own skill and passive tree, and players can switch to another mastery in the same base class for gold.
Idols
Idols are statue-like items that go into a grid called the Idol Inventory and add bonuses to a character. Players unlock slots through main and side quests, then fill the grid with basic, Weaver, Heretical, Omen, and unique idols. Each idol's shape and class limit decide where it fits, and the Woven Enchanter lets players turn class idols into Heretical versions.
Blessings
Blessings are permanent bonuses that apply everywhere in Last Epoch, earned by conquering timelines in the Monolith of Fate. Each timeline offers its own choices, and you keep one blessing from every timeline you conquer. Empowered timelines offer stronger Grand versions, and you can swap any blessing by running its timeline again. Blessings cover resistances, damage, sustain, and loot, so the best picks depend on your build.
Last Epoch gameplay tips
- Finish the campaign before running dungeons on your first character. Some dungeons skip part of the campaign, so an early detour can cut out rewards you would have earned in the story.
- Check quest rewards on the World Map before picking side quests. Clicking a quest shows its reward, and the counter in the lower-left corner shows how many of the maximum passive points and idol slots you have earned. There are more reward quests than you need, so you can skip side quests that don't add rewards you still need.
- Start your first character in Normal mode. Hardcore is harder and can be frustrating, so it suits players who already know the game. Normal and Hardcore have separate stashes, so your gear stays with the mode you chose.
- Use the right Forge material for the job. Shards add an affix to an item or raise an existing affix's tier, runes remove an affix or reroll affix values, and glyphs change how a craft behaves. Start using them while you level, because runes and glyphs drop often and you don't need to wait for endgame to improve your gear.
- Think twice before trading through Merchant's Guild. Merchant's Guild items can be traded only once, and after that trade the item is bound to the guild and can't be traded again. Circle of Fortune characters can't equip it, even if you switch factions later, so hold onto anything you might want on those characters.
- Run Empowered Timelines when you want the rarest boss drop. Each Timeline boss has a pool of four unique or set items. Only one of them is very rare, and it appears only in Empowered Timelines, so those are the runs to make if you're chasing it.