Levelling Up Takes Way Too Long

Hi, I have not posted here in a very long time. I would like to say and this just me personally, so no one get offended okay. But I feel that going up per level takes too long. Yes one can collect EXP Tomes and they boost the EXP bar, but not really by much. I have my Acolyte at level 96 and it’s a bit of a long slog. I have been levevlling up now since sometime of last year and I am still nowhere closer to reaching level 100.

I feel that the experiencce gain goes up far too slow and I know that a lot of people here are going to hate me for saying that. But please hear me out on this. Let me make it perfectly clear, I am not wanting to reach level 100 too fast, but I do not want to get there too slow either. No I have not done any coruption yet, as there three last upper top most Monolliths that I can’t complete.

I do not know if EXP goes up faster when doing corruption. All of that said, I still feel that levelling up is a bit too slow and sooner or later I am not going to be the only one to notice this. Any New players to the game are going to notice it too and I fear that this problem may turn them away from playing the game. I’m only sticking it out, because I genuinely want to reach level 100, but it is taking far too damn long to get there. I ask please, please, for the devs to fix this issue. I’m not asking for too much. But I seriously doubt that my voice will be heard on this forum.

It does. By a lot. If you’re level 96 and still doing 100c, you’re kinda of wasting your time.

Although, to be fair, 99->100 is a slog as well. Even at higher corruption (500c+) it will take some time.
That being said, the difference between 99 and 100 (or 96 and 100) is barely noticeable. You get 4 passive points which won’t have much impact on your build at this point.

The reason why getting to level 100 is hard (and why there isn’t anything past level 100) is simply because the devs don’t want to make the players feel like getting to level 100 is mandatory.
If you only reach level 90 or 95, that’s fine, you’re not missing out on much.

So if you really want to get to level 100, you’ll need to grind corruption. The more corruption the more XPs you get and it’s very noticeable. As I said, 99-100 will still take a while, but the fact that you don’t lose XP when dying makes it so that getting there is inevitable as long as you keep playing.

PS: If you start doing 500c+, you’ll get to level 99 in a day or two. Even quicker if you farm 1000c+, if your build can handle it.

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Yep, corruption will cut down that time by magnitudes. In 250c you’re already getting double the experience. So if you need 100 hours in 100c… you need 50 hours in 250c.

At least that was how it was the last time I checked. The scaling could’ve changed.

Overall you get a reduction after 300c and one after 800c if I remember right, but you’ll level significantly faster.

Also as a general expectation level for different ARPGs and the time needed to reach Level 100 in hours to have a comparison:
Last Epoch: 40-80
Torchlight Infinite: 50-100
Path of Exile 1: top-tier players 50 hours. A normal player between 150-400 usually. For the vast majority ‘never’ despite trying.
Path of Exile 2: Same as PoE 1
Grim Dawn: 40-60 (it’s SP, not live-service, so it doesn’t need to keep players playing for so long.)
Diablo 4: 15-30.

We hence have Last Epoch quite in the middle of the line. It’s a ‘mid-tier’ investment game of the Hack’N’Slash looter ARPG genre.
I can only say that with a second character it becomes substantially less and with the end-game grind also irrelevant comparably to reaching the end-point. You’re nigh guaranteed to be Level 100 before even making a reasonable try to beat Uberroth for example.

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DJSamhein. I can’t even get to the part where I can even start to do corruption. I am stuck on trying to complete the last top three Monolith Side Quests. I can’t even last a fight with Heorot. I have included Screen shots of the three Monliths that I am stuck on with completing their Last Side Quests. I can’t last a fight agianst those three bosses and before you ask about gear and resistances, see: My Resistances image. You will see the cap level of each one and then below that the maximum % of each resistance is pretty high up and I do have specific gear and idols to help with my fights, but my character keeps on getting killed. I have some high end up resistance idols, ranging from 20% res and up, but with others, they are in the 15% or lower and I am trying real hard to replace those particular resistance idols with higher ones. Oh and talking about resistences, my fights with the Rift Beasts are always in the overkill, meaning their attacks are way too powerful, especially it’s ice breath and in a post on here about it’s attack being over powered and someone mentioned that got fixed. I hate to report that it has not been fixed, I wish I had a screenshot of that fight to prove that and not only that, when I try to go for all cold resistences, the rift beast switches attacks to either physical or fire, both of which are over powered in my personal opinion. You’re entitled to disagree with that, as so is everyone else on here.

Screenshots.zip (3.0 MB)

Kulz. Thank you for your feedback. As I have replied to DJSamhein, I can’t even get to doing the corruption part. I am levelling up the hardway. Even on normal levelling up, it feels a bit too slow for my liking. For me personally the EXP should go up a little quicker, not too fast though. Like I said, I do not want to reach level 100 too fast. But as of right now, trying to reach that level feels too slow even getting as far as level 96 was too slow and not everyone can spend the kind of hours of game play that you are talking about.

Yes, I am sure that there are a lot of players out there that have the time to play several hours a day, but there is a good numbre of people, I being one of them who do not have the time to be able to play so many hours of game play in a day and I am not even a working person. I do other things than play games and those things also take up my valuable time doing each one.

Not all in one go. One day, I will spend time composing music, not for the whole day mind you, but several hours are spent in doing that. Then I have making 3D models that I like to make and those certainly can take up to a day to make, even weeks, depending on the type of model that I am makng at any given time and then I write stories which I post on my favourite website. I can spend almost a whole day writting a story.

So I play Last Epoch when I have or get the free time to do so and at best I can only play for about 4 hours at best, 5 at a bear maximum. There are other people out there that I know for a fact, that do not have the time to spend the kind of hours of game play that you have mentioned. And in today’s society, there is a growing number of fewer people playing games, simply because these days, people do not have the time to spend grinding in any game, never mind Last Epoch.

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Just be glad there is no XP penalty on death like a certain other popular ARPG!

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lol as beardus mentioned, its a godsend theres no xp penalty. i’ve ragequited certain other games because of that penalty. funnily i used to be a hardline xp penatly defender. 10 years ago, reaching 100 was a huge big deal. now? all you need is 100 divines and spam carries or buy some item that reduces xp penalties. getting to 100 is entirely possible with zero skill as long as you have carries.

anyway thats just a side note.

as for op’s concern its taking too long. it feels like its taking long but if you push corruption it can be faster. if you CANT push corruption then you have to accept that its going to take you a longer time.

seeing that you’re struggling to push corruption i m guessing you’re running an inefficient build or perhaps something self made.

there are 2 strategies to adopt from this

  1. you’re going to die anyway so might as well make a build that has fast clear/speed. do not push corruption and stay at what ever corruption you’re comfortable at. Important note: staying at a comfortable corruption is better in the long run as you will be clearing maps and getting map rewards. theres no point of getting a high xp bonus but killing mobs take forever and you keep dying.

  2. build more defence. you’re already slow, but if you have more defence at least you die less. less death = more uptime. more uptime means more kills and thus more xp.

and yeah leveling can feel like a slog but you’re 90+. its normal to feel like the game is slogging at such high levels.

all you need to do is just self motivate and persevere.

Yeah, and that’s fine. People will not be happy to see this used as a reasoning premise though, and I’ll give you a thought example to go through as to why. It’s just a relativization test to see if it’s ‘reasonable’ to base it on that argument.

So here goes:

We have a lot of different hobbies of different kinds. And sub-groups in them. Variety is nice and good after all if they don’t interfere with each other negatively.

So, in Last Epoch your statement is ‘The time is too long since I personally have not the time to do it’.
We’ll now apply it to other hobbies and I’ll specifically take one with a massive mandatory time investment:
Warhammer 40k tabletop. To explain what it is if not known: It’s a game where you buy - often individual - models to make a army out of it. Those models come unpainted.
If we want to take part in a tournament then the mandatory minimum requirement to be allowed to use your models is if they’re painted, with 3 colors at least. And if they’re an eyesore of just splotching colors on rather then actually painting them properly you’ll still be excempted.
The amount of models in tournament size is median 45.
The timeframe needed to paint a simple model is minimum 1 hour of you’re quite quick. (It goes up to weeks for high-detail models) So your barrier for entry is 45 hours minimum. Usually it takes more then 100 hours for the first tournament viable army to simply paint.

Not everyone has the time to do that. Is it now rightful to state ‘I don’t have the time so the requirements need to be reduced.’?

So ask yourself: ‘Is it fair for those which want to input the effort to lower the standard in general below that?’
And ‘Which group of people is expected to be more for this product, the ones which don’t have the time and hence it should be reduced, or those which are using it specifically because it allows to sink a lot of time into?’
Two questions behind it as a starting point, there’s more. That’s the thought example.

But since this alone would simply devaluate the position you have I’ll ask something simple:
‘Do you have fun in the time you play the game?’ The answer to that is quite important, and don’t simply go ‘yes’ because there’s a follow-up to this question: ‘Do you enjoy the process or are you solely playing to reach the end-goal?’.
It needs to be the first for long-lived games.

If you’ve fun in the process then keep playing.
If you don’t… come back when you’re in the mood for the process.

Because the goal is far away for you and hence you don’t have the needed motivation to reach it.

As for a few options to allow that goal to come closer, @ExSea wrote some decent ones, allowing me to go on a foundational tangent instead :stuck_out_tongue:

Resistances are but a single layer of your defences. There’s also armor, life/ward, block/dodge, etc.
Just because you’re close to cap doesn’t mean your character isn’t a glass cannon. Or, given that you can’t get past normal monos, just glass.

In 1.3, no build should have any issue whatsoever getting to empowered monos. If you’re struggling, and even worst struggling at level 96, then you need to fix your build. I would advise you to post your build on the acolyte forum and ask for advice there.

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@She-Hawk from what you’ve described it sounds like you might be best off checking someone like actionRPG on YouTube - find one of his guides and follow it, I think he’s (imo) the most user friendly/beginner type build dude of the ones I’ve seen, explains how skills work, synergies and doesn’t use impossible to get items. If you follow one of those at least you know you will be capable to getting to monos, finishing the quests, empowering and getting to XYZ level. Once you feel confident in your understanding of the game then start messing with your own builds.

As mentioned this is my personal opinion and not an open invite for a discussion lol

I don’t know some builds definitely need those last 10 points and are very impactful. So being 100 is ideal. With that said any build that is your main and farming should easily reach 100 by default pretty early in the season.

Bingo and by default you should be doing 700-1,000 corruption anyways to farm. So by default you will get to 100 very fast just by having your build in the sweet spot to farm.

If your build is a meme build and can’t do 700-1,000C the probably don’t want to pursue level 100 if you don’t want too. However many good builds are doing 1,000-2,000 corruption and with those builds you can deck out your meme build.

You can reach level 100 in a week comfortably. Grinders will hit it in a couple days. I don’t think it needs to be faster. There are also many ways to improve speed.

Taking experience blessing. Taking double rewards from echoes, exp tomes have a chance to drop completing an objective, basically in your weaver skill tree take all exp. It moves fast then when level 100 you spec out of it.

Also keep in mind with the above doing exp echo, cemetaries will also drop exp tome rewards then the final reward could have 8-10 exp tomes. It’s so much exp it’s falling from everywhere and when you are doing 700-1,000 corruption it’s extremely fast.

Really? Does it allow them to get a few extra threshold bonuses? Genuinely curious for some examples.

Such as? You have access to all nodes by level 50-60ish. At that point you take the most impactful nodes first. So the last 5-10 points aren’t as impactful because they’re not as strong as the ones you got before them.

You might get a 10% damage boost, or survivability boost, but that doesn’t make or break a build. It’s nice to have, but if it was really very impactful, you’d have taken them before already, no?

Sadly paladin builds like my Auradin needs 100 level since the bulk of skill points you need come in the second half of the tree. I would love if they shaved down the amount of some important nodes and increase the value per point.

As mentioned above paladin builds all their impactful nodes are at the end of the tree. At level 100 every point is in the paladin tree except for 5 in void and the base 20 in Sentinel and I have no point to spare to even go into other trees at level 100.

In my current play through at level 74 for my Auradin and every point till 100 is very impactful to the build. It’s significant. I’ll exponentially increase my power from 74 onward.

I really hope EHG gets rid of all 6+ passive nodes, reduces some travel or amounts in for thresholds. So you can have more options to go into other trees to really create some cool builds. I feel like 115 passive points isn’t enough points for how trees are currently structured.

So it’s a design issue I’d love fixed that would open up more builds. Also wouldn’t mind us getting more passive quest or even an item that rewards additional passive points.

Sure, I get that. But as I said, you have access to all the nodes by level 50-60ish. At that point you have 10 juicy nodes you want. So it’s logical that you’ll first take the one that’s most impactful. Then you take the second most impactful, etc.
When you reach the last 5-10 points, you’re taking the node that is the 9th or 10th most impactful. Which shouldn’t be that impactful overall after taking the 8 most impactful ones already.

No not at all. I don’t even have access to all the nodes yet at 74. There are nodes I will go into latter. That is an issue with Paladin and some builds. I still have 3 nodes I need for the build that have no points in them yet.

At level 90 I’ll have access to all the nodes and then the last 10 points will still have a great impact to the build and it’s function to hit thresholds. I wish I had more points to go into other trees.

I still believe this is a problem and hope the Devs examine it

This is also a problem for certain skills as well that don’t come online till you have +10 skills or more. Which is one of the reasons why Shield throw isn’t used. You need level 30+ shield throw before it starts to function well and still has issues. Again design issues and hope some reworks fix some of them.

Yeah, but apart from threshold bonuses, they’re all increased/additive modifiers so the incremental benefit of a few passive points woild br tiny. Though you are a min-maxxer so that’s fair from that point of view.

I think this is what I don’t understand. Which character are you thinking of (so we can have a look at it in LETools)?

They probably heavily invest into other masteries first to unlock skills before building the Paladin tree.

No, he said he had minimal points in other masteries & only 20 in Sentinel:

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Oops, must have overlooked that part. Thanks for pointing it out.

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