Lost Ark World MMO/Action RPG

Can't you pay to prevent that?

 

Sure you can, that is how they encourage people to buy stuff. Make it super tedious so you feel compelled to pay to avoid the grind.

 

What specifically can you buy to prevent that? I havent explored the shop tooo much, but it seems the main P2W element in the Crystaline Aura thing?

EDIT: Upgrade materials apparently, you can buy those

 

This is where people get caught out thinking it is not that grindy because leveling is trivial but that is not the grind.

 

Been playing this and still quite enjoying it , dont think ill play it hardcore for more than a few months but considering its a F2P game its worth a try

the campaign is very easy takes a casual player probably 4-5 days though if you just knock out the main story you can be done in a day

at max level the game turns from basically a simple hack and slash into basically what id best describe as a dark souls boss simulator

the main 3 endgame contents are

queue smash mobs for about 5minuts for upgrade materials , pretty fun to just aoe everything and blow shit up
15min raids which start out hard and get pretty unpuggable around item level 460 (you finish the main story quest at 302) , raids are essentially unique bosses with unique mechanics that scale up in difficulty
then there are the dungeons that give gold which are gimmick mechanic boss encounters , essentially you go in and everyone needs to do a thing (simple at first) or everyone dies

For a casual you should get 100 hours of free entertainment out of it , if you really like dark souls type stuff and are willing to join a guild of people and do stuff on discord you can probably play the game for years.

the most sweaty players i believe are in the low to mid 1000 gear range so like 1100 - 1500 , im 100% free to play and im currently 580 gear score but ive been playing a lot tho it took me about a week to understand what you need to do at endgame. you do skip from 600 to 1000 so im not ridiculously behind , and honestly being way ahead means there are less people to play with and all the endgame content is group content anyway

for anyone playing, i highly suggest people at some point use this image and do all these islands , they give like a week or two worth of upgade materials , probably take 2 or 3 days to do all these islands quests but they each take about 10-40min

https://imgur.com/a/vNcXWvU
Id wait till you decide for 100% sure what your main will be before you do the islands they are a 1 time thing

there is also a tower instance where you fight your way up levels that is very easy but your first clear you get account wide stuff and you second clear on all toons you get upgrade materials so the sweat lords clear tower on alts first then mains for upgrade materials , worth doing but obviously upgrading an alt to high 400s takes materials and time , these 2 things and the free boosts is why who you pick for you first character does not really matter just try a few classes and see what you enjoy



I just saved a copy of this image and each time i do an island i cross one off so i know where im upto
https://docs.google.com/document/d/...gsL1LmYEj_spKZhApPM5yA#heading=h.ddjopnh08gll
this list also tells you exactly what the important islands will give you

every time a quest has confused me ive googled it and there is a good number of videos on most stuff

definitely worth a play depending on how much you like dark souls type combat probably dictates how many hours you will get at endgame out of it but everyone should enjoy the first 100 hours which for free is a pretty good deal

once you finish the first part of the main story quest to 50 you also get 2 free boosts for alts from 10 to 50 so who you do the campaign with does not really matter

basically you get sent a coupon you accept it level the alt to 10 then put the coupon in their inventory and you can instant boost them to 50, so essentially once you level once you have 3 max level toons for free , a good choice for alts is supports like bard \ paladin or ranged classes like sorcress which is one of the more forgiving raid classes due to being ranged and having 2 dashes

I was able to pug up to 560 but ive basically hit a wall now and yeah joining a guild so i can actually kill stuff and working on an alt because i think ill really enjoy paladin at endgame because i enjoy support roles

edit
also https://lost-ark.maxroll.gg/
is really good got created by people who were at actual endgame on korea just before launch so all the information is not actually 6months out of date

you can select builds and say how many skill points you have and it gives you a good idea of good skills to use and how to build characters, I use it as a reference , I normally swap out the skills i don't like for ones i do but its a great starting point

i found this too late but this should help anyone starting out too
https://lost-ark.maxroll.gg/resources/road-to-rohendel
its like a speed run upgrade guide so should help even casuals understand whats important
there is so bloody much to do as a fresh at 50 so dont feel bad if you do like 10% of it , i currently do my daily kill mobs dungeons, a daily quest and weekly if i feel like it , maybe a raid or two then work on alts or level one of my alts , there is way too much to do to get it all done

 

Also been enjoying this - combat is good & plenty of opportunity to try out new classes. Will it consume my every waking moment? doubtful, but i expect I'll get enough enjoyment out of it before i succumb to the cash shop.

 

yay hit tier 2
ill prob finish the islands then just have fun with it now , as long as i keep doing this every day ill keep the materials rolling in in. pretty fun

i believe the blue circle islands are tier 2 materials i had done some of them so as soon as i got to 600 and did the next zone quest i was able to get to 920 pretty easy without any raids or anything

 

If your at T2 gear, is there any point in doing dailies? The Daily rewards seem to give T1 upgrade mats only. Is there a way to get the dailies to give T2 upgrade mats?

 

yeah once you get to tier 2 everything is pretty much the same but you get tier 2 stuff

once i hit 600 and did the t2 zone quest , (pretty good cutscenes but i dont really know whats going on at this point) from the t2 islands and quests i had enough stuff to get to 1010 item level

when you hit t2 and do the daily kill mob dungeon the set you get in there , when you infuse your t1 +15 gear into the new t2 blue gear it goes from t1+15 to t2+1 which is like 900item level or something like that and then i had enough stuff to get to 1010, it does start costing 5g per upgrade rather than silver tho atm at least anything that drops in t2 for me i can sell on the auction house and everything seems to sell if i price it pretty cheap , i made 1k gold yesterday

oh the weekly gold instances in tier 2 are way easier than those cancer ones in tier1, i made like 300 of that gold off doing 3 of them and 1 shot them all in pugs

 

I am talking about una daily quests. They still seem to give T2 upgrade mats. Is there any point in doing those?

 

the dailies give whatever mats for the tier you are at , right now for me leapstones are the big bottleneck, not the armour or weapon shards the like you need 20 of these things + armour or weapon shards material

so i have my bifrosts set at 3 dailies that give those i pickup the daily quests teleport to each one , click click click then dailies are done in like 5min

ive been putting it off but you also get a heap for doing that as a weekly battleground , so ill probably start grinding bg's just to complete the weekly for some more think like 70 from doing that, you can do the same weekly 3 times if you wait for daily reset it lets you do the same one again , in tier 1 i just did the chaos dungeon weekly 3 times

 

I just got to 50, I’ll see how the grind goes. I’m used to Diablo 2 so I’m sure I’m mentally conditioned for this

 

FYI, you need to continue the main story to its conclusion in Shushire. I hit 50 on my Artillerist who hadn't skipped a single sidequest at Stern in Arthetine. My next is a Bard at 30 who hasn't done a single sidequest, and only the main story line. I'll report back where I end up 50 with that one. I'm very confident that sidequest only add value to your Roster with the virtues and rapport currency and aren't required at all for level 50 before you run out of main questline XP, and if you're in a hurry to 50, you can completely ignore them with the exception of the blue ones that unlock specific mechanics.

 

must be april fools somewhere