Last Epoch: Experimental Items, Explained (2024)

Last Epoch has multiple item rarities, affix types, and crafting materials for players to use. Creating the perfect character will require some excellent gear to enhance your skills and overall playstyle. Thankfully, there are experimental items you can uncover that feature some powerful affixes.

Experimental items are surprisingly easy to get your hands on, provided you can handle a somewhat tough boss fight. Defeat the Exiled Mage, and you can get your hands on some powerful experimental items, complete with unique affixes that can be manipulated onto higher-quality gear with the right materials. This guide will explain what experimental items are and how you can get your hands on them.

Updated March 17, 2024, by Charles Burgar: Creating powerful experimental items is surprisingly involved in Last Epoch. After the original publication of this article, we have learned that you can deterministically forge experimental items onto your gloves, boots, and belts under the right conditions. We've updated this guide to give an in-depth explanation as to how the Glyph of Insight works, how to craft experimental affixes onto your item, and showcase every experimental affix you can find in Last Epoch.

What Are Experimental Items?

An experimental item contains at least one experimental affix, a hybrid modifier that cannot be found anywhere else in Last Epoch. These affixes are quite powerful and can greatly enhance certain builds. Some affix examples include:

• A percentage of Armor mitigates incoming damage over time (DoT).
• Gain Ward on kill, increased Ward Decay Threshold.
• Gain Haste for a short duration upon using a traversal skill.

While these affixes might seem niche while leveling, experimental items become quite powerful in endgame content. Most of that is due to endgame crafting options you gain access to, notably the Rune of Research. Socket this rune into your item, and you can lock an experimental affix onto your item, freeing up an affix slot. Expert crafters can even get experimental affixes on Legendary gear with the right crafting methods.

How To Get Experimental Items

All experimental items in Last Epoch drop from Exiled Mages, a miniboss trapped in Rune Prisons scattered across Eterra. You can find these prisons randomly while completing the campaign and Monolith of Fate encounters. We cover this mechanic in more detail in our Rune Prison guide. Each mage you eliminate will always drop at least one experimental item, denoted by a blue-colored affix on the item.

When you get to Level 70+, Exiled Mages can drop Runes of Research. Socket this onto an item, and you can seal your experimental affix to its own slot, freeing up an affix slot for an additional modifier. This also has a low chance of dropping a Glyph of Insight, replacing a random prefix with an experimental affix. When paired with the right crafting techniques, you can craft some absurdly powerful Exalted and Legendary gear in Last Epoch with these crafting materials.

Exalted Experimental Items

If you are currently in the Circle of Fortune faction, it is possible for experimental items to be upgraded to Exalted rarity. This is thanks to the Rank 8 upgrade for CoF, giving all rare items a chance to become Exalted instead. The color of the item will not change, so be sure to check the item's affix values (Ctrl + Alt on PC) or update your loot filter.

If the item is upgraded to Exalted quality, the experimental affix can drop with Exalted stat rolls. This is currently the only way to get T6 and T7 experimental affixes in Last Epoch.

Crafting Experimental Affixes Onto Items

It's possible to forge experimental affixes onto items in Last Epoch. Using Runes of Research on experimental items has a small chance to give you a Glyph of Insight. Using the Glyph of Insight on a non-experimental item will forge an experimental prefix onto the item, provided it has an open prefix slot. Bear in mind that only gloves, boots, and belts can use a Glyph of Insight.

Unlike most crafting techniques in Last Epoch, the experimental affix you get is deterministic. When you use a Glyph of Insight on an item, the game will look at a certain condition based on the item to determine which affix to add. The conditions are the following:

Belts use their level requirement to determine which experimental affix gets added. You can check this by hovering over the belt and looking at the bottom right of its stat sheet. All four affixes give you an added benefit to drinking Health Potions found on the ground.

Boots use their Forging Potential (FP) to determine which affix gets added. This encourages you to craft on the item beforehand to get its Forging Potential to a specific value. The Glyph of Insight is used before the craft's Forging Potential is reduced. For example, if you have a Forging Potential of 17 and the craft drops it to 11, the Glyph of Insight will use FP17 to determine which experimental affix gets added.

Finally, gloves derive their experimental affixes from their total affix tiers. If you socket your gloves into the crafting forge, you'll be able to view the affix tiers on your item. The sum of these tiers is what the Glyph of Insight uses. Sealed affixes are also considered. Beware that critical crafts can actually be detrimental here. If your affix total is the right value, add the experimental affix immediately.

Increasing Your Experimental Affix Tier

In addition to deterministic affix types, certain conditions will determine your experimental affix tier. The more of these conditions you meet, the higher your affix tier will be, up to T5. Additionally, you must fulfill these conditions before you use a Glyph of Insight. The upgrades aren't retroactive.

The conditions are as follows:

• Is the item Exalted?
• Does the item have a T7 prefix?
• Does the item have a T2+ sealed affix?
• Are there at least two affixes of the same tier on this item?

If you fulfill all four conditions, you will create a T5 experimental affix on your item, the highest that's currently possible through crafting. Crafting above T5 is impossible; any higher tiers will require you to naturally find an Exalted experimental item. You can track these conditions easily through the trunklab experimental affix calculator.

All Experimental Affixes