Runemaster Leveling Guide

Last Updated: October 2nd 2023

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This Runemaster leveling build summons devastating turrets called Hydrahedron to annihilate foes. It utilizes two Skills in order to summon the turrets: Runebolt and Runic Invocation. Runebolt is also used for generating Runes while Runic Invocation consumes them to summon more turrets.

The Runemaster plays at range to maintain distance from enemies while in combat, but has plenty of defensive options just in case. Flame Ward is an incredible Defensive Skill with tons of Damage Reduction that can mitigate even the most dangerous attacks. The build also has decent mobility thanks to Teleport. This Movement Skill grants great defensive buffs on use and can even be specced into damage nodes while moving, showing its versatility.

Overall, the Hydrahedron Runemaster is an amazing leveling build, as it provides enough damage to crush the campaign. It also scales well into the end-game. With its 2 charges of Flame Ward, the build is also quite tanky. This combination makes Runemaster leveling look easy.

Early Campaign Gear Planner
Runebolt
Runic Invocation
Flame Ward
Frost Wall
Teleport

Check out the Campaign Guide for an in depth breakdown of the campaign.

Easy Gearing ✔
Turret Playstyle ✔
Very Good Clear Damage ✔
Multiple Layers of Defense ✔

❌ Has to Respec Skills
❌ Tedious Mana Management
❌ Defensive Skills Require Timing
❌ Damage Dependent on Skill Rotation

Runemaster Passives

Passives provide powerful effects that dictate the playstyle of a Class and its Masteries. Remember that you can allocate Passives in the first half of any Mastery regardless of the one you chose. Powerful skills and nodes are usually found in the masteries tree.

Click the Nodes at the bottom to see Passive Tree Progression

Skills

Fireball

Spec Fireball as your main damage skill until you unlock Glacier.

Click the Nodes at the bottom to see Skill Tree Progression

Gameplay

As we level the power of skills shift, with some becoming stronger while others get weaker. To account for this, we transition from a setup that is optimized for early game to one that is more suited to tackling endgame content.

Early Setup

  • At level 4 spec Fireball and use it until you unlock Glacier.
  • When you unlock Glacier respec Fireball for it and use it as your main damage skill.
  • At level 8 spec Mana Strike and use it to regain mana.
  • Use Flame Ward to protect yourself from danger.
  • Spam Teleport to move quickly through the chapters.

Final Setup

  • Once you unlock Runemaster, respec Glacier for Runic Invocation. First use Mana Strike once and Fireball twice to generate One Lightning Rune and Two Fire Runes, then use Runic Invocation to consume your Runes and cast Hydrahedron. Do this combo until you spec into Runebolt, as it will always do the right Rune sequence.
  • At level 20 spec Flame Ward. Use it to protect yourself from danger.
  • At level 35 spec Frost Wall. Don't use it until you've spec the Aspirant's Arrival node. Cast it a few seconds before using Runic Invocation then walk through it to gain a massive damage buff for your Hydrahedron.
  • Once you unlock Runebolt, respec Mana Strike for it. Use it to generate Runes and regain mana.
  • At level 50 spec Teleport and use it before casting Runic Invocation to get a damage boost.

Runemaster Gear Progression

While we make recommendations for all items make sure you pay special attention to your weapon. Weapons are a core part of your character's power and getting a higher level base weapon increases your damage significantly. A good way to get better weapon bases is to buy them at the Gambler NPC in the Council Chamber town and in the End of Time town. Upgrade or buy your next weapon each time you reach the appropriate level.

If you are lucky you might get a Rune of Ascendance while leveling. Use this first on a body armor to get a unique body armor such as Unstable Core, Fundamental Criterion or Prism Wraps.

You might also drop useful uniques for this build such as Unstable Core, Fundamental Criterion, Prism Wraps, Prismatic Gaze and Arboreal Circuit.

Gear Stats Priorities

Prefixes

  • Health to bump your health up. Getting your health pool as high as possible is very important.
  • Increased Cooldown Recovery Speed makes your experience smoother as it makes Teleport and Flame Ward available more often.
  • Elemental Damage, Fire Damage and Spell Damage are substantial boost to your damage as you have few sources of it outside of your gear.
  • Cast Speed, Fire Penetration, Critical Strike Multiplier and Chance To Shred Armor on Hit are also an incredible to improve your damage.
  • Level of Glacier, Level of Mana Strike, Level of Frostwall, Level of Runebolt, Level of Runic Invocation, Level of Flame Ward and Level of Teleport are very important as skill tree nodes provides a substantial boost to your character power.

Suffixes

  • Vitality, Health, Health and Hybrid Health to bump your health up. Getting your health pool as high as possible is very important.
  • Fire Resistance, Lightning Resistance, Cold Resistance, Physical Resistance, Necrotic Resistance and Void Resistance to get your resistances to 75%. This is your second layer of defense, getting it capped to 75% is not vital.
  • Dodge Rating and Armour are less important than health and resistances. This is your third layer of defense, getting some is useful, as you get 15% Dodge and Armour with little amount.
  • Health Regen Per Second is a very effective way to regen health early, but it quickly falls off once you get other ways to regen such as leech.
  • Chance to Chill on Hit, Chance to Slow on Hit and Chance to Apply Frailty on Hit are great secondary defensive stats.

Idols

  • Health, Health, Vitality, Chance to gain Lightning Aegis when hit, Seconds of Stun Immunity after using Teleport and resistances for extra defences.
  • Chance To Ignite With Fire Skills, Increased Fire Damage (Doubled If You Have Over 300 Max Mana), Shared Fire Damage, Spell Fire Damage and Critical Strike Chance for big damage boosts.

Gearing Step by Step

Early Campaign
Mid to Late Campaign
Early Monolith
  • Level 30: Brigandine Boots.
  • Level 40: Opulent Robes.
  • Level 42: Gilded Crown.
  • Level 44: Bronze Belt and Stolen Tithe.
  • Level 45: Engraved Gauntlets and Heoborean Boots with the +(10-40)% Cold Resistance implicit as high as possible.
Items at level 55

Campaign Leveling

Key Leveling Notes

  • Keep your character at the area level by killing monsters. You need to maintain at most a 5 level difference with the area. Press C to open the character sheet to find your level and TAB to find the area level.
  • If your inventory is full, stick extra gear in your stash. Don't sell your extra gear that have affixes to a vendor. Instead, keep it to use later or destroy it with a Rune of Shattering or Rune of Removal.
  • Crafting is powerful and important for enhancing your gear. Press F and place your item in the crafting interface to level up the affixes and craft new ones! Adding health or vitality on a few empty affix slots can increase your HP by a significant amount!
  • Always get the best weapon you can. Weapons are a core part of your character's power and getting a higher level base weapon increases your damage significantly. You can buy them at the Gambler NPC in the Council Chamber town and in the End of Time town.
  • Wait until the end (or near the end) of the campaign to dive into the Monolith of Fate.

If you need help with crafting, check the Beginner Crafting Guide.

Campaign Step by Step

Chapter 8 - Divine Era

Chapter 8 (level 49 to 53)

Skills

Use Runebolt to generate runes in the correct sequence, then use Runic Invocation to consume them and cast Hydrahedron.

In dangerous situations use Flame Ward to boost your defense.

Spam Teleport to move quickly through the chapters. Use it before casting Runic Invocation to get a damage boost.

Cast Frost Wall a few seconds before using Runic Invocation then walk through it to gain a massive damage buff for your Hydrahedron.

  • At level 50 spec into Teleport.
Gearing
  • Change weapon at level 50 for a Moon Staff.
  • In this chapter you want as much Physical Resistance, Cold Resistance and Lightning Resistance as possible. Check vendors or craft, as necessary.
Step 1
  • Go east to The Scorched Grove, talk to Heorot, Grael and portal back to Heoborea.
  • Go south to The Northern Stream, then the Deep Harbor and finally east to The Burning Pier.
  • In The Burning Pier, don't talk to any NPCs, just kill the 2 quest objectives at the top (Commander cinderous) and bottom (Vatran the saboteur) of the area.
  • Portal back to Deep Harbor and talk to Harbard The Ferryman.
Step 2
  • This takes you to Lake Liath. Go north-west until you reach Thetima.
  • In Thetima talk to Yulia in front of you, then Captain Harton north-west of the area and go into the next area.
  • In Lagon's Isle go north to reach the Moonlight Shrine.
  • Then go west to The Strand of Storms and pick up the moon fragment on the coast located at the westernmost point of the area.
  • Go back to Moonlight Shrine and go east this time. You need to pick up another moon fragment located southeast of the area.
  • Once done, go back again to Moonlight Shrine and place the moon fragments on both pedestals. Then interact with the Pearl Altar to unlock the way forward.
Step 3
  • Continue up to the Sanctum of the Architect and kill Architect Liath.
    • Kill all the monsters before Architect Liath.
    • Avoid the lightning abilities on the ground and focus the summoned monster first.
  • Continue to the Seafloor Colosseum and defeat Lagon.
  • Talk to Lagon and take the portal on the right to Thetima.
  • Go north of Thetima, talk to Yulia and take the path on her right.

If you want to learn more about the Lagon Chapter 8 Boss Fight, check out the Lagon Chapter 8 Boss Guide.

Monolith of Fate

You are now done with the campaign and are ready to conquer the endgame, the Monolith of Fate. It has 2 difficulties, Normal and Empowered. In the Empowered Monolith all Timelines are at level 100 and have 100 base corruption, which scales item rarity making farming end game items much easier.

Although this article guides you up to your 3rd Timeline called the Ending the Storm Timeline, your longer term goal is to unlock Empowered Monoliths. This is achieved by completing the Spirits of Fire, The Age of Winter and The Last Ruin Timelines and then activating the beacon in the center.

Timelines are represented as big islands on the world map in the End of Time era.

Check the Monolith Beginner Guide for more details.

Early Monolith Strategies

As you want to gain stability fast, you need to rush the echo objective while killing monsters on your way. Until you unlock Empowered Monoliths, prioritize Exalted items and Uniques as completion reward when choosing echoes. If you die in an echo, you lose the completion bonus of that echo, so try not to. Also in your first Timeline prioritize the experience as it gives you a big boost in character power.

In the Fall of the Outcasts Timeline after killing Abomination, choose the level 66 Timeline. As a general rule when selecting Timelines, always choose the highest leveled one. This keeps you on the right-hand-side of the Monolith progression and provides more immediately relevant blessings as you progress through.

Echo Modifiers

If you feel like you are taking too much damage, avoid the following echo modifiers:

  • Increased damage of all types
  • Enemies have increased critical strike chance

Remember that you can farm items in the previous Timeline, if the current one is too hard.

Monolith's Gearing

In the Monolith of Fate you have more opportunities to acquire better gear. Max your resistances quickly and have as much health as possible before investing into damage on your gear (except for your weapon, which is exclusively for damage). At the very least, max your physical, necrotic and void resistances for the first Timeline.

Here are the recommended items and affixes for each slot:

  • Weapon: Temple Staff
  • Helmet: Gilded Crown, Celestial Helm and
  • Body Armour: Opulent Robes and Celestial Raiment.
  • Belt: Bronze Belt
  • Boots: Heoborean Boots and Solarum Greaves
  • Gloves: Engraved Gauntlets
  • Amulet: Bone Amulet
  • Rings: Gold Ring
  • Relic: Scrying Eye and Warding Scroll

Best Prefixes

  1. Flame Ward Charge and Added Ward
  2. Increased Cooldown Recovery Speed
  3. Vitality
  4. Level of Frostwall, Level of Runebolt, Level of Runic Invocation, Level of Flame Ward and Level of Teleport
  5. Fire Penetration
  6. Spell Damage, Elemental Damage and Fire Damage
  7. Cast Speed
  8. Critical Strike Multiplier

Best Suffixes

  1. Health
  2. Hybrid Health
  3. Health
  4. Fire Resistance, Lightning Resistance, Cold Resistance, Elemental Resistance, Physical Resistance, Necrotic Resistance and Void Resistance
  5. Chance to Apply Frailty on Hit and Chance to Shred Armour on Hit
  6. Chance to Chill on Hit
  7. Chance to Slow on Hit

Loot Filter

Loot Filters are critical in Last Epoch. Highlighting all the related valuable Item Bases, Affixes, Uniques and Idols is crucial to your character's progression. As your gear gets better, remember to hide the rules that are no longer useful to avoid screen clutter.

Link :

Learn how to load and make Filters with our Loot Filter Guide.

Summary

This Runemaster leveling build shines with great offensive and defensive capabilities. It kills bosses in seconds, makes you straight up immortal and can clear monsters as you move, making it one of the smoothest masteries to play during the campaign.

  • Use Glacier before switching to Runic Invocation for damage.
  • Use Mana Strike and Fireball to generate 1 Lightning Rune and 2 Fire Runes. Use Runic Invocation to consume the Runes and proc Hydrahedron.
  • Once you unlock Runebolt, use it to generate Runes instead.
  • Wait for the Aspirant's Arrival node to use Frost Wall. Cast it a few seconds before using Runic Invocation then walk through it to gain a massive damage buff for your Hydrahedron.
  • Use Flame Ward to escape lethal damage.
  • Use Teleport to move quickly through the chapters and before casting Runic Invocation to get a damage boost.
  • Starting at chapter 8, keep Teleport boost active at all time, it last 8s.
  • Always change your Staff to the best base possible for your level.
  • Cap your Physical Resistance early to make the campaign look easy.

What's Next?

Congratulations, you completed the campaign and your first 3 Monoliths Timelines! What awaits you is unlocking Empowered Monolith after pushing through The Reign of Dragons, Spirits of Fire, The Age of Winter and The Last Ruin Timelines and activating the beacon in the middle of them. Then you can dive into dungeons, empower your character further and test your limits at the Arena leaderboard.

Check out our Runemaster Guides and find the perfect Runemaster Endgame build for you.

Please visit our Monolith Beginner Guide for more information on how the Monolith of Fate system works.

Find out more about dungeons in our Dungeon Guide.

Credits

Written by Terek.
Reviewed by Dredscythe and Lizard_IRL.

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