Last Epoch offers an incredibly deep progression system, rewarding experimentation, clever gearing, and efficient gameplay. Whether leveling a new character, pushing corruption, or optimizing endgame farming, understanding key mechanics can dramatically improve the overall experience. Here are ten essential tips that can help make leveling faster, gearing easier, and endgame progression smoother. Having enough Last Epoch gold will also help you make the process smoother.

1. Level Faster by Staying Below Area Level

To maximize experience gains while leveling, stay below the current zone level whenever possible. The game gives a significant XP bonus when the character is a few levels under the area—up to 10 levels lower grants the full bonus. Beyond that, there’s no additional benefit.

When under-leveled, stop to kill enemies; when over-leveled, ignore mobs and rush objectives to reach higher-level zones. Focus on magic and rare enemies when you do stop to fight—rares offer the highest XP per kill and contribute most to quick leveling.

2. Choose XP Echoes in Monoliths for Faster Progress

While leveling in the Monolith, prioritize echoes that reward XP tomes. Completing these gives far more experience than simply killing mobs. Pick routes that lead directly to additional XP echo nodes and complete only the main objective to maintain efficiency.

For characters running normal Monoliths, there’s also a shortcut: following the right side of the Monolith web reaches the level 90 Monolith faster. Completing that timeline unlocks Empowered Monoliths, dramatically improving drops and progression speed.

3. Use a Loot Filter to Passively Farm Gear for Future Characters

Players who enjoy creating multiple characters per season should expand their loot filters to automatically highlight powerful exalted gear. Adding rules to spotlight any item with a tier 7 affix ensures excellent pieces are saved for future builds.

This can be taken even further by adding a rule for items with two or more exalted affixes. These rare drops often end up becoming best-in-slot pieces once crafted or transformed into Legendaries. This simple filter trick helps build a strong stash of endgame bases for future characters without interrupting gameplay.

4. Salvage Affixes Properly: Use Removal Before Shattering

Many players waste valuable affix shards by shattering items too early. Rune of Shattering destroys an item and gives random shards, often missing the affix actually needed.

For better control, use Rune of Removal first. This pulls one random affix off the item and gives the exact number of shards based on its tier. For example, a tier 3 Hybrid Health affix will reliably give three Hybrid Health shards. Combine this with Glyph of Hope for a 25% chance to avoid losing Forging Potential entirely.

Once Forging Potential runs dry, Rune of Shattering can be used as a final attempt for salvaging leftover affixes.

5. Craft Set Bonuses onto Regular Gear

Set items are often overlooked because they cannot become Legendaries. However, many set bonuses are extremely powerful—and these bonuses can be gained without wearing the set itself.

By salvaging set items inside The Great Bridge woven echo, players obtain set shards. These shards can then be crafted onto regular gear. Once enough shards from a specific set are applied across multiple items, the full set bonus activates.

This is a massive boost for certain builds and makes set bonuses far more flexible than many players realize.

6. Use Farside Turtle to Increase Low LP Unique Items

Farming unique items with 2 or more Legendary Potential can be challenging, but the Farside Turtle woven echo provides a useful shortcut. At the end of this echo, unique items with LP can be rerolled to attempt to increase their LP.

Most rolls will drop the item to 0 LP—but collecting many low-LP versions increases the chances of hitting higher rolls. Even a 0-LP item can be restored to having LP again using the Nemesis system. Because of this, it’s wise to keep all uniques with any LP value; they may eventually become powerful crafting bases.

7. Teleport Faster With Right-Click Movement

Traveling between towns, Monoliths, and echoes involves many map clicks. Most players left-click the map and then press “Travel,” but there’s a quicker method: right-click the destination to teleport instantly.

Over hundreds of gameplay hours, this small time-saver removes thousands of clicks and speeds up navigation significantly.

8. Push Corruption Faster Using Gaze Mechanics

Corruption increases XP, item rarity, and difficulty—making it a critical part of the endgame. Normally, reaching Shade of Orobyss echoes requires traveling far across the echo web, but there’s a faster method.

If eight or more Gaze of Orobyss stacks are available, the Shade can appear after just one echo. To farm gazes quickly:

Increase stability using Glyphs of Envy or Temporal Keystones

Equip a Harbinger’s Needle to boost gaze drops

Repeat timeline boss kills until eight or more gazes are collected

Complete one echo to spawn the Shade immediately

This method can raise corruption by hundreds within minutes.

Players advancing the Forgotten Knights faction gain even better gaze rewards, making corruption climb even faster.

9. Sync Highest Corruption Across All Characters

Alternate characters don’t need to start corruption from zero. By running the Confluence of Oblivion woven echo, players can sync their current character’s corruption to match the highest corruption ever achieved on the account.

Defeat all versions of the Shade inside the echo, and the entire timeline instantly jumps to that maximum corruption value—a game-changing speed boost for alt progression.

10. Understand “Increased” vs. “More” Damage

Damage scaling becomes increasingly important at higher corruption. While flat damage is usually the greatest immediate boost, understanding the difference between increased and more damage is crucial.

Increased Damage: All “increased” modifiers add together, then apply to total damage.

More Damage: Multiplies the final damage total, offering much larger scaling.

Because of this, “more” multipliers are almost always the superior choice when gearing and crafting for endgame DPS.

These ten tips cover some of the most impactful ways to improve leveling speed, crafting efficiency, and endgame progression in Last Epoch. Whether playing one character or a dozen per cycle, applying these strategies makes the entire journey smoother and far more rewarding. Having enough cheap Last Epoch gold will also be a great help to you.