[2019] Last Epoch Starter Guide and Character-building Guide :

Hello there :) Here's a quick starter guide to LE. Please comment and discuss about what should be added to it and/or is too much/superflous. I'm sure there are very important things I haven't thought off, and even if I won't be able to include everything as I want to keep it from being too daunting, I'd like to make it as useful as possible. Once that's done, i'll post it in the LE forums

(Please just don't throw too much class-specific advice, I've tried to limit it to very basic tips rather then write an essay for each class ^^' )

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Here's a few tips for starting out in Last Epoch and making your own build. I'll divide this into starter/useful information and building advice.

Starter tips :

• Be careful of the wording! There are differences between Added and Base damage, between %more and %increased damage. (for more info see last line and "unintuitive mechanics guide")
• Watch the ground ! Most of Last Epoch's strong ennemies have ground-pointers indicating where they'll do damage
• In the skills panel, ALT+right-clicking a skill will give you a lot of information for the skill, including the damage scaling and attribute-scaling.
• If you're an attacker, make sure to have a healthy balance of flat damage (sources = your weapon's implicit and explicit modifiers, and sometimes from passive or skill tree) and increased damage scaling (sources = passive tree and gear)
• If you're a caster, make sure you use a wand with a high "+%base spell damage" implicit (they start out at 5%, then quickly grow up to +260%ish on "prophecy wands") and get a decent increased damage scaling (sources = passive tree and gear)
• The increased scaling found inside active skill trees is multiplicative with the sum of other increases (from gear or passive trees)
• Ask for help on Discord. If there are things you don't understand or if something seems to be going wrong, come ask on discord. You'll find quite the active develloper and community members presence to help you out.
• Craft often and from early on ! It will help you a lot, however... (see next line)
• Glyph of the Guardian is your most important crafting commodity, so keep them until you're crafting good decent gear (don't use any before levels 30-40+)
• Crafting good gear (past early level stuff) is best done on decent item bases which are further improved. Crafting from a white item is ill-advised (unless it's for making early/quick filler items such as mentionned before)
• Two-handed weapons have x1.8 affixes stronger affixes, and body armors x1.5. There is thus a heavy price to pay for using an unique body armor, and if you're attacking and not using your shield (for blocking or getting some good stats), two handers are quite worth it.

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Building tips :

• Plan your build. This is best done on an already leveled character which can look at the active skill trees AND at the passive trees. If you don't have one of the class you want to play, just start a new character and look at the passive trees
• Get defenses and plan which ones you'll use. Even more so if melee.
• Defenses include protections (requires a mix of gear and passives, depending on class and available skills), dodge (mostly gear dependant, very good defense early on as it doesnt require much gear), glancing blows (probably the best defense mechanic, requires gear and starts appearing past level 25/30+), block (mostly for sentinel and mage/spellblade classes), and ward (mostly for mage, acolyte and maybe sentinel/paladin).
• On most classes, its a good idea to take the initial +hp passives (each class but acolyte has +hit points on the first passive line)
• Make sure you know how your intended main spell/skills scale, and plan ahead in passive tree/gear.

CLASS-SPECIFIC starting advice :

• Sentinel :

- Pick up the +10hp/+1 vit passives, 8/8, they're very good value and help with leveling a lot (there are a lot of void monsters and quite some necrotic monsters in the main story)

- Decide early on wether you'll use shields or not. If you do, pick up heal on block it'll be very useful.

- Both Void Knight and Paladin have very strong utility spells (devouring orb is a strong defensive buff, reversal is both a life-saving button and mana-refilling tool ; Holy Aura provides powerful buffs)

• Mage :

- Pick up +INT/elem protect nodes (int is damage for all or nearly all mage skills, including spellblade attacks, but it is also ward retention).

- Teleport is both really good utility and amazing defense as it can generate a lot of ward, especially with the INT-scaling passives, and also taunt ennemies with clones. [A nerf is expected but even at 1/10th of it's current strength it would be worth it.]

- If Spellblade, Iceward is really good for blocking. Mana strike can generate a lot of ward in melee

- If Sorceror, Black Hole is very good crowd control.

• Primalist :

- Pick up the +hp/minion hp% points, they're double defense as your pets can tank quite a bit for you.

- Fury leap is very powerful, providing both damage and utility for all kinds of builds (+105% damage for you and minions, +30% attack speed, % chance to reset being the go-to utility nodes)

- If melee, use a two-handed weapon, there's very little reason to use a shield as a primalist.

- If you're not a summoner yet want a tanky pet, sabertooth cat is the tankiest (thanks to it's dodge and other defensive passives).

- If you're a summoner, be careful about attribute scaling and chose wether you want to scale strength or attunement yet (most pets are str-aligned, totems spriggan and vale spirit are attunement-aligned).

• Acolyte :

- Pick up 8 points into intelligence. Wether you're a summoner, attacker or spellcaster it'll increase both your damage and defense.

- On the right in acolyte tree pick up "Mania of Immortality", at least 5 points too, it's really good ward generation and will compensate for your low health pool.

- Hungering Souls and Harvest are very strong leveling skills (also viable later on).

- If melee, use a two-handed weapon, there's very little reason to use a shield as an acolyte.

- If you're not a summoner, Bone Golem can still tank for you as it has some good defensive nodes.

Lastly, if you want to delve in a bit further, I'd humbly suggest reading my "unintuitive mechanics guide" which can be found here : https://forum.lastepochgame.com/t/unintuitive-mechanics-guide-for-le/12457

Edit : whoa thanks for the gold :O Hoping this was of some use :)

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