Struggling after 2,300 hours into this game and no level 100 =(

General
1

Hello everyone,

I’m making this post because I’m honestly struggling and don’t know what to do anymore.

I’ve put over 2,300 hours into Last Epoch. I love the game and keep coming back because I genuinely enjoy it, but I still feel like I’m a bad player. Over the years, many people have tried to help me. They’ve given me advice on builds, gearing, crafting, defenses, damage scaling, and character progression. I appreciate all the help I’ve received, but the truth is that I often have trouble understanding or retaining the information people give me.

One of my biggest struggles is character building. When I start feeling like my build is failing or that I’ve made too many mistakes, I become frustrated and end up deleting the character. Then I start over, hoping the next character will be better. Unfortunately, I end up repeating the same cycle over and over again.

Sometimes I compare myself to other players who seem to understand the game much more easily. They can look at gear, passives, and skill trees and immediately know what improvements to make. Meanwhile, I often feel overwhelmed and confused, even after spending thousands of hours in the game.

I know the easy answer is “just follow a guide,” but even then I struggle with understanding why certain choices are made. I want to learn and improve, but I often feel stuck.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? How do you deal with feeling like you’re not improving despite putting in a lot of time? Should I stop deleting characters and try to push through mistakes? How do you learn the game when information doesn’t always click right away?

I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m honestly looking for advice from players who may have gone through something similar. I enjoy Last Epoch and want to keep playing, but sometimes it feels discouraging when I keep making the same mistakes.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Should I quit? Should I uninstall? Nobody live streams anymore. No current updated videos of the game.. IDK What to do or how to play builds.

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I am a noob myself; so take this reply with a grain of salt.

First and foremost, you need to be clear which kind of target you are setting for your experience. The range of characters that are viable for “reaching empowered monoliths” is very different to the range of characters that can “kill Uber Abby”.

There will be certain builds that, because DPS, lack of recovery/defenses or other more particular reasons WILL fail at some point or another of the journey to the highest levels of corruption.

This is all about maths and available game mechanism; it has little to do with personal skills. So don’t get frustrated when you reach the natural wall for some of these builds.

Now, from DPS POV, I recommend this hidden gem from Lizard IRL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zazb1OybXI

He is the lead of Maxroll LE Team. Video itself is about POE2 but he stops at arandom point to compare the damage buckets between POE2 and LE.

Please start to watch the video around 1:52:30. and once you see that, come back a bit earlier for the see the thought pattern that lead to that moment.

It is the best explanation I have ever watched about this topic anywhere. Reason being, he didn’t meddle with words, he just said what made the more sense for him at the time.

About defenses and such, I don’t know. I am still on it… :smiley: For now, I feel confident with regular Abby. Next target is the Omen Boss. Maybe in one or two seasons I am able to do something to beat it :smiley:

Remember that at the end, the most important thing is to have fun. This is not a race; just take the things one at a time.

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No. The easy answer is “stop deleting your characters”, which we’ve already suggested to you before.

If you delete everytime you hit a bump, you’ll never learn how to get over that bump. You make a new character and then you’ll hit the exact same bump with that one, which you then delete as well. You’ll never actually learn anything that way.

When you hit a bump with a character, start trying to modify it to get over it. If you get too tired or frustrated, then make a new one but don’t delete the old one. Return to it later. You can even use your current character to advance others that way.

Constantly deleting characters is your main problem. You never actually solve the problems you’re having and you’re always starting from scratch. If you stop deleting them, you can advance more than one character at once by keeping an eye out for the good drops.

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A few points that might make you feel better…

For a start, Last Epoch has become an extremely complex game. The second most complex on the market, getting with each patch closer to the first and further away from all the rest. There is absolutely no shame in not understanding every detail: hardly anybody does anymore.

That links nicely with my second point. When you say

you compare yourself to the people on the official forum or to the streamers. That means, the 50 or 100 people with the deepest understanding of the game, out of over 3 millions players. The top 0.001%. Give yourself a break, you don’t have to match the absolute best to do just fine.

Final point, about level 100. Reaching level 100 is just a choice, not at all an achievement. You don’t have to push corruption or do any hard fight to do it, and you can die as much as you like without penalty. Whenever you decide you want a level 100, don’t delete a character and you will be done. You can even do it in normal monos if you wish.

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I played the game for over 3k hours and never felt the need to level a char to 100. It’s a fools errand and only a few percent here and there that do little in the big picture.

On top of it I teested everything by trial and error because math and me is an ongoing story of misunderstandings. I played only one or two toon each season and call it a day after it started to become a slog instead of fun.

So as long as you have fun why question anything? You have the game and as long as it is fun go for it. If it isn’t fun anymore do something else until it is fun again. You question to much stuff OP just flow with it There is 0 reason to stressyou out about a game you have fun with.
Just reduce your exposure to informations and stop comparing your progress to others and everything will be fine because you have fun and no stress to compete on any level. Just enjoy your time and stop questioning what you do every step of the way and simply be happy about the fun you have.

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honestly make you own build, you will really learn mechanics that way, most builds you will be able to get to empowered mono, then maybe look at guides.

do: look at what stats do what, the in game guide covers much of this “shift g”

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Only a few percent? Lol

https://www.lastepochtools.com/ladders/shattered-omens/latest/softcore-1p/level/all

Theres 10000 players listed with chars at level 100, the season started with 43k - Thats about 24% and keep in mind it only shows 10000 the percent is probably WAY higher, lol. To get to 100 in this game is crazy easy even as a casual player.

“Only a few percent” if that’s what you need to tell yourself thats fine. I literally levelled a random in chat the other day from 20 to 80 in about 45 minutes before he had to go, the next 20 would take an hour or 2 max. Longer from scratch sure but this is the least “sloggy” game I’ve played in the last 29 years of gaming. Yes I’m old.

LE - no slog, great mechanics, loot to help you level drops all over the place as do runes to level gear you have. No lock on jumping to end game to be power levelled. Corruption is easy to understand. Less complex builds than other games. Amazing videos on YT from guys like ActionRPG that hold your hand and explain how everything works and why.

POE2 - Currently playing - slog. Even with twinked alts it’s still many many hours more just to maps and then days to level 100. Exp penalty on death. Complex mechanics. Tons more learning. Bait videos all over the show with tons of currency needed. Most players unaware of how to make currency. More deaths. Horrible people in global chat(s).

to the OP - as mentioned stop deleting and changing your characters. Watch one of the dozens of videos myself and others have linked to try help you. Stop blaming your you know what for your lack of patience. Don’t delete the game, just be patient and try harder. Once you figure it out everything will click.

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That’s a very common misconception. The season did NOT have 43k players. It had a peak of 43k CONCURRENT players. Meaning players at the same time. The overall total of different players is much higher than that due to time zones.

Also, the ladder shows characters, not players. There are several players with multiple characters at level 100.

That being said, getting to level 100 in LE is very easy. The fact that there’s no XP penalty means you’ll inevitably get there as long as you keep playing, so I’d say that the percentage of level 100 in LE is much higher than in PoE. Not sure about D4, since I haven’t checked it in some time.

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I woke up at 3am to play on launch as I would say a lot of us different time zone players do. I would love to know the total number then since the season launch for all games has the peak number thrown around as bragging rights.

You stating some players have multiple level 100 characters just further emphasises my statement of how easy it is. I also mentioned the ladder only goes to 10k, there could be 35k on there for all either of us know.

Point I was making is there are literally tons of players who get to 100 in LE and that getting to 100 in LE is very easy despite you nit picking over 43k peak on day one and total players who have logged in over the season. The fact the peak count was down from 43k to 5.6k within a month or so I would say that number isn’t really that much higher at all.

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Just for the record, Macknum was saying getting to level 100 only adds a few % of power to your character…

Nothing at all about how many people get to 100.

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That’s not how that reads to me.

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It isn’t to me as well but @Houlala is right. I was talking about the power gain not about the time needed.

On the other hand coming back to self expectations… I had a lot of fun with Dark Souls but I’m terrible at the game an needed many more hours to complete the game. My friends who drawn me into the game call it easy because they breeze through. I think a lot of Marty’s issues come from looking at what is possible for other people and what is possible for him. This is ruining his day for whatever reason. That’s just my view about so if he steps back and don’t look at other people or leaderbords and just have fun with the game he most likely have a better time and less issues because what you don’t know isn’t bothering you.

Coming back to the level 100 thing. The difference between a lvl 90 and a level 100 toon isn’t that much depending how you skill. Sure if you need the last points to get some thresholds that are vital to your build and you instead skilled for 2% more dmg that’s you do you. Outside of that I most of the time got to a point where my dislike for what EHG is offering, doing, patching or their way to communicate things and the basic gameplayloop bores me out of my mind. Heck for my taste I’d rather do PoE2 maps instead of this even Helltides in D4 have more appeal to me then LE endgame. That#s on me and tastes are different but for me LE went from AWESOME before .8 to… meh not going to touch it untill a lot of things change.

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As a native English speaker, it does to me. The “key” is the “that do little in the big picture”, that’s a reference to the minimal amount of power the last few passives give.

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You just have to look at the current numbers to see that’s how it works.

At 15h yesterday there was a total of 1516 players at the same time.

At 04h today there were 1074.

Do you think those 1074 are a part of the 1516 players or are they new players from a different timezone.

And even the 1516 may be more than actually 1516. You get players logging out and other logging in, keeping the same number of total players but they’re different ones.

I don’t know if the total number of actual players are available publicly. Steamdb says you can look at the whole data if you login, but I’m not gonna do that. It doesn’t really matter though, because the metric is the same for all games, so you can compare them with that. Just be aware that peak concurrent players is not the same as total different players.

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As someone who stays logged in for 10 hours plus I would say a lot of players who do the same cross over into multiple data points of times as you mentioned above I am online well, was from 6am Aus so I could play more with Invan who lives in Sweden and I would stay online until about 2pm then go to the gym for an hour or two then log back in and stay on until 10pm or so. I see and speak to people on there who are online just as much as me so yeah, I think they’re part of the same group. Unless you’re saying that those 1516 people all logged out and then 1074 completely different players logged in.

If the most people logged in at once this season was say 44000 and then it consistently dropped down by 1000s per day, 10000 per week you’re saying there was a wholeeeeee lot of other players who were not part of the 44k logging in, you made it sound like a huge substantial number (otherwise you wouldn’t have so graciously pointed it out when I was just making a simple point of saying a shit load of people have max level characters out of the people who played season 4) yet such a big number of other players were just part of a daily, weekly and sadly monthly massive decline in numbers. Outgoing was in the 10’s of thousands, the only time over the last 3 months when they had tiny wee spikes were going into the weekends.

You think what you want as usual we have different opinions and without EHG offering us up the login server logs for launch week to see the different accounts we wont ever know the complete number of players.

My point as mentioned once already - LE is not a slog. Level 100 is easy even for casuals. A LARGE percentage of people get to 100 and some even have multiple level 100s as you were so nice to point out further emphasizing just how easy it is.

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You are entitled to your own oppinion. Comparing LE to a more casual centric game like Diablo 4 makes LE a complete slog. :man_shrugging:

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Yeah fair - own opinion for sure. I did chat to AI which is known to NEVER be wrong, ever. 100% right all the time according to AI lol

Diablo 4 takes significantly longer to reach level 100 than Last Epoch. For Diablo 4, the average player spends around 150+ hours to hit the level cap. In contrast, reaching level 100 in Last Epoch typically takes around 30 to 50 hours of efficient

I think depending on how much you enjoy a game and how good you’ve become at it that game then becomes quicker and less of a slog~

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I can only speak for myself. Maxlevel in D4 is done in the first or second day after Season start. LE is a slog not even done in 3-4 days but tbf I lost motivation to play effectively ~2h in LE.

In D4 after 150 hours most players are for sure over lvl 100. Did it say max paragon?