Endgame in Last Epoch can feel overwhelming at first. After clearing the main story and the regular Monolith of Fate timelines, you unlock empowered monoliths-the true starting point of the late game. From here, the focus shifts to Last Epoch gold one of the game's most important systems: corruption.

New players often ask: What exactly is corruption? Why do people push it? How do I do it efficiently? This guide explains the basics, why corruption matters, and the best methods to raise it quickly while getting the most out of your time.

What Is Corruption?

Corruption is a scaling mechanic tied to empowered monoliths. Each point of corruption increases enemy health and damage, but also boosts item rarity and experience gain. In other words, corruption makes the game harder but also significantly more rewarding.

Key thresholds:

100–300 corruption → Required for Woven Echoes

300 corruption → Needed to fight Abberoth (plus Harbinger kills)

500 corruption → Required for Uber Abberoth

Most players aim for 300–500 corruption for farming efficiency, as this range unlocks most content and maximizes loot without being punishing. Beyond 1,000 corruption, rewards diminish sharply, and scaling enemies often outweigh the benefits.

How Corruption Is Raised

Progression begins by running echoes in a timeline until your stability bar is full. This unlocks the boss. Defeating the boss spawns a Shade of Orobyss (often nicknamed "Oreo"). Having a lot of Last Epoch gold can help you beat it very quickly. Killing this Shade increases corruption.

Two mechanics influence corruption growth:

Gazes of Orobyss – Each time you defeat bosses or Shades, you earn Gazes. The more Gazes you have when killing a Shade, the bigger the corruption boost.

Catch-Up Mechanics – If one timeline has far higher corruption than others, pushing its Shade will cause weaker timelines to "catch up," rapidly raising their corruption when you switch over.

Lowering Corruption

What if you push too far and can't handle the difficulty? At the start of every timeline, there's a special echo that allows you to cleanse corruption, lowering it back to manageable levels. This ensures you'll never be permanently stuck.

Tricks to Push Corruption Faster

While you can grind echoes normally, several tricks speed up the process dramatically.

1. The Crafting Stability Trick

Using Glyphs of Despair on junk items is one of the fastest ways to farm stability:

Grab any vendor items, bad exalteds, or unwanted gear.

Add low-tier affixes and use a glyph during crafting.

Each click grants stability for your most recent monolith.

This lets you unlock bosses without grinding dozens of echoes, chaining Shade fights quickly to raise corruption.

2. Banking Gazes of Orobyss

Corruption gain is tied to how many Gazes of Orobyss you hold. To maximize this:

Collect Harbinger Needle idols, which drop frequently.

Store them in your stash and equip them before boss fights.

Shades can consume up to four Gazes at once, significantly boosting corruption gains.

With this method, you can chain Shade fights back-to-back, raising corruption far faster than playing echoes normally.

3. Pushing One Timeline First

Because of the catch-up mechanic, it's best to push one timeline very high before switching.

Example:

Raise Spirits of Fire to 800 corruption.

Switch to Age of Winter at 300 corruption.

After one Shade kill, Age of Winter will jump close to 800 due to the bonus catch-up scaling.

This approach saves hours of grind across multiple timelines.

4. Target Farming Boss Drops

Each timeline boss has unique loot. If your build requires a rare drop like Flames of Midnight from Spirits of cheap Last Epoch gold Fire, prioritize pushing that timeline. This way, you're not just raising corruption-you're also farming key build-enabling items.