This route has a huge advantage: you never have to Last Epoch gold 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 twink gear, leveling alts becomes trivial-and genuinely fun.
Fastest Way to Level in Monoliths
Once in the endgame, leveling speed comes down to targeting the right rewards.
Always Take Toms of Experience
Tomes of Experience are the single most valuable reward in Monoliths. They scale incredibly well at higher levels and can provide more XP than the echo itself-especially from levels 95–100.
Even players who don't plan to hit level 100 benefit massively, as more levels mean more passive points and stronger builds.
Efficient Echo Strategy
Rush objectives-don't clear entire maps.
Do not farm stability or corruption in normal Monoliths.
Push through the right side of timelines to unlock Empowered Monoliths ASAP.
Once empowered, settle into the timeline that drops your most important item and build corruption there.
Speed equals experience. The more echoes and tomes you complete per hour, the faster you level.
Final Thoughts
For your first character, play safe and learn the game. For every character after that, smart skipping, twink items, and targeted Monolith farming will let you level faster than you ever thought possible.
Whether your goal is efficiency, Hardcore survival, or simply enjoying powerful alts, these strategies will carry you smoothly from level 1 to endgame-and beyond. Having enough cheap Last Epoch gold can be very helpful.
How to Gain Corruption Fast in Last Epoch: Monolith Progression Guide
Pushing corruption efficiently is one of the most important skills to master in Last Epoch's endgame. Higher corruption means better loot, stronger blessings, more boss drops, and faster overall character progression. With recent updates adding new systems and optimization tools, there are now far more ways to accelerate your Monolith grind than many players realize.
This guide breaks down the fastest and most reliable method to
cheap Last Epoch gold gain corruption, farm timeline bosses repeatedly, and scale your character toward high-end content-without wasting time pushing unnecessary echoes.