Guides:Beginner Guide

Here’s a few tips for starting out in Last Epoch and making your own build. This basic information is mostly intended for players discovering Last Epoch and perhaps also for those whom are having a tough time making their first character(s).

Starter Tips

 * Check out the Classes for an overview of available classes.
 * Check out this link for an details on a lot of mechanics.
 * The item DB is available here - contains all items and affixes.
 * Lots of build guides are available on the forums, in class specific sections.
 * Read the beginner's damage guide for ideas on how to scale your damage.
 * Be careful of the wording! There are differences between Added and Base damage, between %more and %increased damage. (for more info see Combat Calculations, last line and “unintuitive mechanics guide”)
 * Watch the ground ! Most of Last Epoch’s strong Enemies have ground-pointers Area of Effect indicating where they’ll do damage
 * In the skills panel, ALT+right-clicking a will give you a lot of information for the skill, including the damage scaling and attribute-scaling.
 * 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 developer and community members presence to help you out.
 * Craft often and from early on ! It’s rather easy (click F to open the panel and the “?” for more information) and will help you a lot with the leveling process, however… (see next line)
 * Glyph of the Guardians are your most important crafting commodities, 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 mentioned before). This is because every craft makes subsequent crafts harder (for more info, see the in-game explanations in the crafting panel, click F then the “Info” )
 * Gambling can be a great way to get new bases/items. While leveling, you can use it to find level-appropriate gear. Most important is upgrading your weapon regularly, for both casters and melee characters. Check the Item DB above to make sure you have a level appropriate weapon.
 * After spending 20 points in the base class, you can unlock skill trees. You can ascend to a specific mastery (e.g. Acolyte -> Lich) after completing the mastery quest, around level 25. Just continue thru the main quest line until you find it.

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 a character of the class you want to play, just starting a new character and looking at the passive trees give you a decent idea already.
 * Don’t neglect defenses! Plan wisely 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 dependent, very good defense early on as it doesn’t take much crafting to have a good chance to evade), Glancing Blows (probably the best defense mechanic, requires crafting 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 classes ).
 * If you’re an attacker, make sure to have a healthy balance of flat damage (sources = your ’s implicit and explicit modifiers, and sometimes from passive or skill tree), Attack Speed, and Increased Damage scaling (sources = passive tree and gear)
 * If you’re a caster, make sure you use a weapon with a high “+adaptive spell damage” implicit and get a decent increased damage scaling (sources = passive tree and gear)
 * Two-handed weapons have x2.7 stronger Affixes, amulets have 1.2x, 1h weapons have 1.5x, and Body Armors x1.5 (as of 0.7.7c). There is thus a heavy price to pay for using an unique body armor, and if you’re attacking and not using an (for blocking or getting some good stats), two handers are quite worth it.
 * Make sure you know how your intended main spell/skills scale, and plan ahead in passive tree/gear.

Sentinel

 * For melee builds, Counter Attack can provide a lot of free damage while you're getting hit.
 * Decide early on whether you’ll use shields or not. If you do, pick up heal on block it’ll be very useful.
 * Lunge is a good utility skill, and can be used to close the gap on enemies. As utility, almost always max the Void Protection/Elemental Protection increase.
 * All masteries have strong utility buffs, consider taking some from other masteries than your specialization. (Volatile Reversal is both a life-saving button and mana-refilling tool ; Holy Aura and Sigils of Hope provides powerful buffs, Ring of Shields negates a lot of incoming damage)

Mage

 * Pick up +hp/mana passives, they are both offense and defense (offense because more mana before kiting/regening/mana striking), unless you plan on stacking a lot of ward (which is very easy to do as of now)
 * Probably also pick up Intelligence/elem protect nodes (int is damage for all or nearly all mage skills, including spellblade attacks, but it is also ward retention).
 * Flame Ward is used on almost all sorcerer and spell blades for very high ward generation and damage reduction. Most people use all nodes that increase ward for flame ward.
 * Teleport is really good utility and defense, it can provide ward retention, some ward generation, global cooldown reduction and minions to draw aggro.
 * Mana Strike or Focus can be used to mana recovery, Mana Strike has no CD by default, but is dependent on your attack speed. Focus can have a long CD if you spec into instant mana recovery, but it can be used without any enemies nearby.
 * Snap Freeze is one of the best defensive skills in the game - picking up freeze duration and cooldown recovery rate can give the freeze ~40% up time on bosses, adding a huge safety layer for tough enemies.

Primalist

 * The +hp/minion hp% points are very useful at the start, 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.
 * Ice Thorns and Maelstrom are both excellent leveling skills for casters, Primal Wolf(ves) + other pets are excellent leveling for minion builds.
 * If you’re a summoner, be careful about attribute scaling and chose whether you want to scale strength or attunement yet (most pets are str-aligned, totems, spriggan, and Vale Spirit are attunement-aligned, wolves can be modified to attunement).
 * The Swipe skill tree affects the Swipe used by Druid's Werebear Form.

Acolyte

 * Pick up 8 points into intelligence. Whether 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 or 1h +, there’s very little reason to use a shield as an acolyte.

Respecing Skills/Tree

 * The Chronomancer (found in End of Time and Council Chambers) can be used to respec the passive skill tree.
 * Each point costs gold, the more points in a specific passive, or the further in the tree the passive is, the more gold it costs.
 * You always need to maintain enough points in prerequisite points when respecing. E.g. you always need 20 in your base class
 * If you want to move around prerequisite points, you need 1 free passive skill point. Put that point in the new prerequisite you'd like to take, and then respec a single point out of the prerequisite you want to de-level. Keep repeating this until you're happy with your tree.
 * Active Skills can be despecialized from the skill window ('S' by default)
 * Removing a single point reduces the level of the skill by one, you have to level the skill again to get the point back
 * Despecializing the skill resets the XP completely, allowing you to pick a new skill. You'll have to level the new skill from scratch.
 * Make sure not to despecialize all of your abilities at once, as you'll hamper your build greatly, making it hard to get XP for the skills again.
 * One way to despecialize and respecizialize skills for DPS skills is to despecialize a utility skill and use that slot on another damage skill. Once the new damage skill is at a decent level, you can despecialize an old DPS skill and respecialize the utility. This does mean you'll have to level more, but it's a safer way to learn a new skill without crippling your build.

Beginner's Mechanics Guide
Here’s a little mechanics guide for some of the less obvious systems in Last Epoch :

Protections
First up, Protections (resistances in other game) :
 * This includes armor, which actually means “protection against Physical Damage”, acting the same way as other protections do.
 * They are relative to your total effective Health pool. Each point of protection will act as one point of health when taking damage, meaning the mitigation percentage formula is damage resisted = protection_value / (HP pool+protection_value).
 * Example: if you have 1000 life and 500 armor, you will take (500/1000+500) = 33% reduced damage. Easy breakpoints : if your protection score is HALF your HP Pool’s, you’ll resist 33%. If it is EQUAL to your HP pool, you’ll resist 50%. If it is double your HP pool, you’ll resist 66%
 * The term “effective HP pool” means health + ward. Ward is comparable to energy shield in other games. So any build that stacks a lot of ward will have to deal with its protection percentages falling lower and lower (that’s the price of having a big HP pool in last epoch).

DoTs
DoTs (Damage Over Time) mechanics :
 * As of 0.7.7f, this link has up-to-date information on all ailments, including duration, base damage, scaling, etc.
 * Main dots (bleed, poison, and ignite) stack infintely, although each stack has a limited duration, Specific dots linked to skills (such as Time Rot, Plague or Spreading Flames) typically don’t stack infinitely, unless specified otherwise.
 * They have their own base damage : 20 over 3s for poison, 40 over 3s for ignite, 48 over 4s for bleed.
 * Over 100% chance to apply works for stacking ailments, e.g. 175% poison chance on hit would have a guaranteed 1 poison stack on hit, with a 75% chance to apply 2 poisons.
 * They benefit from Penetration and can leech (provided the leech source does not state “leech on hit”, as DoTs arent considered hits), but they cannot hit critically.
 * Poison seems weak but each poison stack increases poison damage taken by 8%
 * They scale off any skill node Increased Damage Over Time, their relative Damage Types (e.g. fire damage for ignite), and off the Attribute stat (strength, dexterity, intelligence, and attunement) linked to the skill used to apply the dot.
 * Example: Warpath scales with strength, +4% damage per point. Your strength will also scale (+4%/point) all DoTs caused by warpath. Bleeds inflicted by warpath will also scale off "Increased Physical Damage"
 * In the example above, Warpath DoTs applied won't scale with melee damage, or ignites applied by fireball won't scale with spell damage
 * Another example would be bleeds applied by a skeleton warrior - it would scale with intelligence (4% global damage per point), minion damage (global), minion physical damage, and minion damage over time %. It won't scale with minion melee damage or your stats (character physical damage, etc)

Block, Dodge and Ward

 * Block does not negate damage. When it procs, it adds your “Block Protection” to your protection score, thus lowering the damage recieved
 * Blocking a physical hit adds both your “block protection” and “Block Armor” to your physical protection score (= Armor)
 * Dodge negates damage. DoTs can’t be dodged (nor blocked). Dodge scales down with level (which in high levels means character ), meaning dodge chance% lowers quite a bit at higher levels. Here's a handy dodge calculator.
 * Ward is an extra hp pool that constantly degenerates at a rate of 40% of it’s current value per second. The “Ward Retention” stat will slow down this value. Example : 100% ward retention = 20%/sec lost and 300% ward retention = 10%/sec lost.

Damage calculations

 * Formula is: Damage = (base damage + added damage effectiveness * added damage )* (1 + sum of increases from skill nodes) * (1 + sum of increases from stats) * (1 + more modifier 1) * (1 + more modifier 2) * (1 + more modifier 3)…
 * “increases from tree” refer to the active skill tree used. “increases from stats” refers to the sum of inreases from the skill tree, Equipment and innate Character Stats (also called “global increases” in some cases)
 * If you’re familiar with Path of Exile’s formulae, treat it as the same except you take the sum of all %increases from inside a skill tree and treat it as a separate %more multiplier

Base and Added damage

 * Base damage refers to a skill’s innate damage
 * Adaptive Spell Damage is Added Damage that matches the damage type of the spell, e.g. adaptive spell damage would add Fire Damage to an unmodified Meteor, and Necrotic Damage to an unmodified Drain Life. It's split among multiple damage types if the skill has multiple tags (e.g. adaptive spell damage is 1/2 physical, 1/2 cold for an unmodified Avalanche. If a skill has 7 base fire damage and 3 base lightning damage, then 70% of the adaptive spell damage will be fire damage and 30% of it will be lightning damage. )
 * Added damage refers to all the rest, which is mostly damage received from items and the passive skill tree. All skills have an Added Damage Effectiveness multiplier, which specifies how this is added to the base damage. Any skills that don't explicitly list one have an effectiveness of 1.
 * Modifiers that add flat damage on the skill tree (e.g. +6 fire damage for Sacrifice) are considered base damage, and will affect the damage split of any adaptive spell damage.
 * Base and Added Damage are multiplied by skill damage nodes and passive/gear/stats increases to damage
 * This means for attackers, damage from your weapons, (from both implicit and explicit modifiers) is considered “added damage” (and that’s the unintuitive part: your weapon is NOT your “base damage”, although for many skills it’s 99% of your damage source)