Last Epoch Campaign Guide: Optimizing Your Gear, Resistances, and Progression

During your Last Epoch campaign playthrough, there may be times when you feel underpowered. While this is a common experience for new players, it can still be frustrating and hinder your enjoyment. This guide explores effective strategies to boost your character’s power, ensuring a smoother and more enjoyable journey through the Campaign.

Shop and Gambler

One of the main ways to gear up during the campaign is by utilizing the vendor NPCs. The shop offers straightforward upgrades, while the Gambler adds an element of chance to each purchase. Mastering both of these systems is crucial for ensuring smooth progress through the Campaign. This section will dive into how to make the most of both NPCs to enhance your character’s power.

Shop

The Shop NPC is an essential part of your early gearing in Last Epoch. Be sure to visit the shopkeeper every time you portal back to town, as it’s a key component of your itemization during Chapter 1. In the following chapters, stop by only when you’re missing specific gear pieces. The best part? Acquiring essential gear is affordable, as the prices are quite reasonable. This makes it an efficient way to gear up your character without draining your gold reserves.

 

The Shop refreshes every 15 minutes and after completing main quests.

During the first chapter, keep an eye out for the following:

• Boots with Movement Speed and Increased Cooldown Recovery Speed.
• Belts with Increased Cooldown Recovery Speed.
• Any two-handed weapon with Chance to Ignite on Hit or Chance to Bleed on Hit.
• Any Silver Ring.
• Any piece of equipment with affixes that match your damage type, such as Spell Damage, Damage Over Time, or Melee Damage.
• Any piece of equipment with Health or Physical Resistance.

After the first chapter, you can expand this list to include weapons with better base stats and/or superior affixes, as well as items offering any type of resistance, but focus primarily on Void Resistance for chapters 2 and 3. Weapons with Chance to Ignite on Hit or Chance to Bleed on Hit start losing their effectiveness after chapter 3 for most builds.

Gambler

The Gambler becomes an essential part of your gearing strategy in the mid-to-late stages of the Last Epoch campaign. As you progress, this NPC becomes your go-to resource for acquiring weapon upgrades. Investing a reasonable amount of Gold in this process can provide you with a solid weapon to significantly boost your character’s power.

Additionally, the Gambler offers a smart way to acquire rare affixes. By gambling on low-cost item bases, you can target specific affixes, making it a great strategy for obtaining class-specific affixes on gear pieces like helmets, body armor, and relics.

If you’re unable to find the item bases you need, you can refresh the Gambler’s inventory at a minimal Gold cost.

Item Upgrades

Enhance your character's power in Last Epoch by selecting the right weapon for your build, using crafting to improve your equipment with the desired affixes, and making the most of guaranteed uniques obtained from quest rewards.

Weapon

Choosing the right weapon for your build is crucial to maximizing your character's power. As a general rule, you should prioritize two-handed weapons over one-handed ones during the campaign. Two-handed weapons provide higher damage from their implicit affixes, and their affixes generally scale better, meaning you’ll spend fewer resources crafting your weapon.

However, there are exceptions to this rule:

• Spell Paladin: If you’re playing as a Spell Paladin, you should use a wand and shield, as most of your flat damage comes from passives that require a shield.
• Rogue (Shadow Daggers): If you're playing as a Rogue using Shadow Daggers, dual wielding is recommended to take advantage of the critical multiplier from Kris. This also applies to the Spellblade if you're using Shatter Strike, as dual wielding swords is ideal for Cold Steel.
• Minion Builds: For any Minion-based build, look for weapon bases that provide minion-related stats, such as Oak Sceptre, Skeletal Sceptre, Sickle, Soul Harvester, Dragonbone Axe, Bearded Axe, Obsidian Axe, Bone Scythe, and Horned Staff.
• Totem Builds: While any minion-related weapon works, Shamanic Staff is an excellent choice for Totem builds.
• Marksman Builds: Marksman builds should use bows, with the Salvaged Bow being a good option until you can equip an Obsidian Bow, especially for bleed builds.

Crafting

Crafting is essential to enhancing your gear power and progressing in Last Epoch. To craft effectively, gather Affix Shards, which are crucial for crafting. You can acquire them by defeating monsters and from the Shrine of Shards. Additionally, you can extract Affix Shards from items you find along your journey, so be sure to keep those items in your inventory for later use.

To craft items, simply press F anywhere in the game.

To extract Affix Shards from items, use a Rune of Shattering. These runes allow you to extract a random amount of Affix Shards, with the quantity capped at the tier of the affixes. You can acquire these runes from drops or purchase them for 2000 Gold from Shop NPCs.

For high-value affixes, use a Rune of Removal. These runes guarantee the extraction of an affix, with the number of shards matching its tier. Note that this method extracts a random affix and consumes Forging Potential. Rune of Removal can only be obtained through drops, so use them sparingly.

To fill items with Tier 1 affixes in the first few chapters, use a Rune of Discovery. As you level up, you’ll unlock higher tiers of affixes, so obtaining more Tier 1 affixes early on is very valuable.

Unique Quest Reward

In Chapter 2, you have the option to choose between two quests: Erza's Ledger, which rewards Avarice, and Artem's Offer, which rewards Gambler's Fallacy. For most builds, I recommend Avarice, as elemental resistance is a solid, all-around defensive stat, and the Increased Leech Rate is especially valuable for any build that utilizes Leech.

Resistances

Each chapter of the Last Epoch campaign focuses on specific types of resistance. While it’s not necessary to cap every resistance, prioritizing them strategically can greatly improve your survivability. This section will guide you through which resistances to focus on in each chapter to ensure your character is strong enough to face the challenges ahead.

As a general rule, always prioritize Physical Resistance, as it’s the most common damage type, and most melee attacks deal Physical Damage.

• Chapter 2 and 3: Focus on Void Resistance.
• Chapter 4: Prioritize Necrotic Resistance.
• Chapter 5 and 6: Focus on Physical Resistance.
• Chapter 7: Prioritize Cold Resistance.
• Chapter 8: Focus on both Cold Resistance and Lightning Resistance.
• Chapter 9: Focus on Poison Resistance.

In the endgame, prioritize Physical Resistance and Necrotic Resistance for the first timeline, then begin building up other resistances as you progress through subsequent timelines.

Summary

• Use the Shop whenever possible during Chapter 1 and when you need extra loot throughout the campaign.
• Use the Gambler in the later stages of the campaign for weapon upgrades.
• Favor two-handed weapons, unless you're playing a Spell Paladin, Minion, Totem, or Marksman build.
• Complete Erza's Ledger quest to acquire Avarice.
• Prioritize Physical Resistance first, as it’s the most common damage type.
• Focus on Void Resistance during Chapters 2 and 3, Necrotic Resistance in Chapter 4, Physical Resistance in Chapters 5 and 6, Cold Resistance in Chapter 7, both Cold Resistance and Lightning Resistance in Chapter 8, and Poison Resistance in Chapter 9.