You can track missing rewards directly on the map screen, making cleanup easy if you miss something. While this path is great for Last Epoch gold new players learning the game, it's inefficient once you know what you're doing.

Acts 1–7: Kill the Tree Boss (Hardcore-Friendly)

A highly recommended option for Hardcore players and anyone who wants a no-thinking approach.

Play through Acts 1–7 and stop once you defeat the giant tree boss in the cold zone. By this point, you'll have completed enough key quests to fully unlock your passive points and idol slots-meaning you can head straight into the Monolith endgame.

This route has a huge advantage: you never have to fight Lagon, one of the most dangerous campaign bosses. If you want the +1 to all stats from the final boss later, you can return via the Temporal Sanctum, skip most of Act 9, and kill the boss quickly while overleveled.

Acts 1–5: Oracle's Abode Skip (Softcore Speedrun)

This is the fastest commonly recommended strategy for Softcore players.

Complete Acts 1–5, reach Oracle's Abode, and finish the Sapphire Tablet quest. This provides the bare minimum quest completion needed to eventually unlock all passives and idol slots.

You'll enter the Monolith around level 34–40, which can be rough early on, but your experience gain skyrockets. Later, when you obtain a Temporal Sanctum key, you'll return to Act 9 to finish required side quests and defeat the final boss.

This method skips nearly two full acts but is less forgiving, making it better suited for Softcore.

Dungeon Skipping (Fastest, Not Recommended)

By chaining Lightless Arbor → Soulfire Bastion → Temporal Sanctum, you can skip a massive portion of the campaign. While this is technically the fastest route, it's extremely easy to miss critical quests for passives and idols.

Unless you fully understand campaign quest requirements, this strategy often causes confusion and inefficiency later on.

Leveling Tips for Your First Character

On your first playthrough, there's no magic trick to instant speed. Instead:

Avoid fighting everything-only engage enemies once you're about five levels below the zone level.

Craft early and often. Even small upgrades dramatically increase clear speed.

Don't hoard crafting materials; you'll accumulate hundreds later.

Efficiency early on comes from momentum, not perfection.

The Most Important Trick: Twink Items

For alternate characters, twink items completely change the leveling experience.

When a unique item has Legendary Potential, its required level overrides the exalted item you merge into it. This allows you to create absurdly powerful low-level gear by slamming high-end stats onto low-level uniques.

Examples include:

Level 8 boots with nearly 50% movement speed

Weapons with massive flat damage and no level requirement

Minion or DoT items that instantly clear entire zones

Once you've created a small collection of cheap Last Epoch gold twink gear, leveling alts becomes trivial-and genuinely fun.