Lost Ark - ARPG releasing this Friday

[zinfamous]

been playing this for a few days now, and kinda getting into it. I usually burn out on these arpgs pretty quickly, in recent years anyway, and I generally like MMO aspect of them, but I think I might like this one because it feels a bit more actiony to me....not sure why. I never got into PoE for more than ~3 hours, so I can't compare to that.

Currently playing sorceress, around level 40ish I think. Want to try the demon assasssin thingy though. Figured I'd go through sorceress to the basic endgame and then rush through an assassin. See if I'm burned out, then decide if I want to continue with one of those as a main.

I haven't tried or even considered teaming up with anyone, much less join a guild yet.

 

[zinfamous]

I noticed that you can buy skins for characters -- one of them being included in the pack that's available on the Steam store -- and I believe they replace the cosmetic portion of your gear completely? I've been tempted to grab the one because I don't really care for the overly lewd outfits for the Assassin. Not that it's some sort of puritanical view or anything... it just looks kind of silly. I want to look like an assassin not a Victoria's Secret model.

well, then you wouldn't be playing a korean MMO, would you?

I honestly think half the point of these games is to go as slutty as possible with your cartoon people.

 

[Zenoth]

Yeah, as far as Korean MMOs go they went pretty ham with TERA on the levels of 'slutiness' they could get through.

I even recall one of the races, I think they were called the Amani (male and female), which originally had their specific sort of half-dragon'ish half-humanoid physiology. The female Amani had a very animal / almost herbivore / elephant style lower legs and feet, originally, and it was neat, it was unique to them and was fitting with their race. Then a few years into the game and the release of multiple costumes the devs went as far as actually changing the lower legs / feet physiology itself to turn it into humanoid feet to accommodate for costumes with High Heels; so we ended up with female Amani on high heels for the sake for 'looking' sexier (but it was creepy instead, looked very ugly in my book).

The female Elves, female Castanics and male Castanics were the main "attraction" for the cosmetics over the years. The female Castanics in particular had one of the stupidest, unapologetic "please look at my ass" booty-up, bent-over running animations I've ever seen in any video games, period. And don't even get me started on the Elins. Even though I've played TERA for about 3 years (because the combat system in that game - especially at the time - had simply no equals until maybe Black Desert came out) I can say that maybe outside of Blade and Soul (another Korean MMO) TERA really did top the list for how ridiculous the cosmetics made their characters look (and how they animated them as well).

I haven't seen all the costumes in Lost Ark, not even max level yet, but from what I've seen especially from other players running around - as far as Korean MMO "standards" go - it's actually a very conservative game compared to the stuff I've seen from them during the 2010s.

 

[quikah]

Maybe I did too many sidequests or something, but I got hard stuck at 50 when I reached Stern area. Had to slog through the entire area, very little character progression and stuck in lingerie armor on my deathblade (probably the most risque outfit so far) so I could advance the quest chain to Vern to unlock all the endgame stuff. That was kind of painful. Finally was able to do a chaos dungeon and get the Tier 1 gear (nice, normal looking outfit thankfully), pretty fun. Haven't tried a raid yet.

 

[Borealis7]

i'm just watching Asmongold big-dicking the game, i have no desire whatsoever to play it. i'll stick with PoE, thanks.

 

[Aikouka]

I think I'm around level 37 and still in East Luterra (no idea if that's good or bad). I do spend a decent amount of time just doing... well... whatever I want. The game has some systems that I know will promote burnout if I try to put too much effort into them. Things like overmanaging my Stronghold to get the most value out of it? Nah. Although, I do find that the Stronghold feels like a very boring version of the World of WarCraft Garrison system. The only real benefit so far is that I get to place doodads on the floor to personalize it. I've also been working on my gathering skills, which ended up being me focusing more on logging than anything. Fortunately, wood is used a lot in the Stronghold, so that worked out well for me.

I'll also sometimes just switch to an alt and play them for a bit too. I know that the game gives you level boosts once you hit 50, but even though the quests aren't terribly interesting, I'd rather get to play and enjoy the characters. If your leveling process is so boring that people would rather skip it, it sounds like you've got a problem! Although, I do skip all the dialog the second time, which does greatly increase the speed. I saw the same thing happen when I created a second character in Final Fantasy XIV. I was all, "Wow... this game is so much faster without cutscenes!"

I'm also currently staving off the thought of trying out Guild Wars 2 since I've owned it for a while, and for some reason, I've never played it. (I think it was in a Humble Monthly?)

 

[quikah]

The raids are pretty fun. The progression is ridiculous P2W garbage. You need to upgrade your gear with materials you collect from various sources to get to the required item level for each raid. The first ~10 lvls are easy, but then the success rate starts dropping. If you fail you lose all the materials you used to upgrade. At some point it gets down to ~30% success rate, you can buy items to increase the success rate. Of course you can just pay money to buy materials and get it all in 1 day. Some streamers are saying they spent ~$8k+ to get to the top gear level.

Think I will just finish the main storyline and then progress until I hit the wall, the gameplay is fun enough.

 

[Aikouka]

The raids are pretty fun.

I haven't gotten to that point yet, but I've been a bit disappointed with the dungeons. My problem is that most dungeons are pretty straightforward and don't present much new apart from "figure out what telegraphs this boss uses". So far, only two bosses have had anything outside of this, which was Thanatos (probably the most interesting fight so far) and that demon before the first Ark. I really hope that raids lean a bit more toward differing mechanics, or I don't think I'll be too interested.

Another problem is that I'm not a huge fan of the huge push for consumables. As a melee fighter, if I don't want to chug potions against any melee bosses, then I have to be a "pesky fly" rather than an actual fighter (i.e. run in, poke, and run out). It's not a very interesting way to fight, and I think it's why I've found my Sorceress to be a bit more fun sometimes since she's supposed to be ranged. Although, I might also just be able to shift more toward ranged abilities rather than melee-range abilities.

Think I will just finish the main storyline and then progress until I hit the wall, the gameplay is fun enough.

That's what I'm looking at doing as well. Frankly, I want to avoid getting burnt out like what happened with WoW. Not to get too into detail on that, but essentially, I just got tired of the game relying too much on the reward response to keep me interested rather than actually have interesting content. Not to say none of the content was interesting, but there's just too much giving to the players. It felt like a F2P game in how they tend to give people a lot of items (login bonuses, etc.) to keep them interested.

EDIT:

I saw something on IGN yesterday about how Amazon (and the game's creators) are working toward removing gender-locked classes (or rather, adding in the other gender) and also adding in more outfits that are a bit less lewd while also trying to focus less on the lewd outfits in advertising and other prominent imagery. They remarked that there would be a bit of effort to implement that since they'd have to implement new animations, outfits, etc.

 

[Aikouka]

So, I've been playing a lot more Lost Ark at this point. I've hit level 50 on my main character, but I'm still going through the quests. I've only just made it to Vern through quests, but I did actually go there earlier for fun. I've also got three alts: Sorceress, Paladin, Gunslinger that are mostly level 20 and below. I have a few thoughts...

1. So, I originally just made the Gunslinger because I liked the cowgirl-style outfit, but when I was testing out the advanced class (there's only one option), I actually really liked the mechanic of swapping weapons. To a degree, this made a lot of my other classes just feel a bit boring in their "limited capacity"... especially with how
2. This could be a problem with my own gaming reflexes, but it can often feel very clunky trying to both move and aim with the same mechanism (the mouse cursor). For example, I was over fighting S & J in Stern, and those two were a bit painful to fight on my Shadowhunter. I kept running into issues trying to move and also be able to aim ranged abilities like my demon laser or the cutter-wheel things. The one issue that seems to exacerbate that is that when you're firing a directional attack like that, it's obviously from the direction that you're facing. So, if you're running one direction, try to turn 180 degrees, and use the ability, you need to make sure that you're actually facing the intended direction.
3. I really do not think the game does a great job explaining its system. Given that the game has a number of guide quests and even some videos that are accessible from within the game, I'd argue that it's a very poor job. For example, I had to go through a couple YouTube videos on Engravings just to understand how the entire system works. (Some of the videos were not nearly as helpful as they likely wanted to be because they didn't encompass the entire concept of Engravings.) I've had to look up so many things because they just aren't explained and aren't intuitive. For example, I have ship blueprint... why can't I build the ship in my Stronghold? Oh, that's actually used for upgrading your ships that you use for sailing, and not the Stronghold ship. You need the sailing version of the ship before you can build one for use in your Stronghold. Why does the skill pane's recommended screen show me a level 50 ability that I do not have? (I had to look that one up.)

Ultimately, I think #3 encompasses the vast majority of my complaints. The game can genuinely be fun to play, but it feels like a mess at times. It makes me think that there was never this grand, cohesive plan on how to create well-formed systems for players to engage with, and they ended up tacking on various upgrade paths and types of content as they went along.

 

[quikah]

Ultimately, I think #3 encompasses the vast majority of my complaints. The game can genuinely be fun to play, but it feels like a mess at times. It makes me think that there was never this grand, cohesive plan on how to create well-formed systems for players to engage with, and they ended up tacking on various upgrade paths and types of content as they went along.

Yeah, the game is a mess of systems. I think part of the problem is that this is ~4 years worth of added content that has been dropped on us from the start. I am sure things were a bit more straight forward if you had started playing on release in Korea when there were fewer options.

I am into tier 2 now. Game started making much more sense to me about halfway through tier 1 raids. I used my powerpass (get it after finishing Vern) on 2 alts (sorceress and paladin). Haven't done much with them other than some chaos dungeons and guardian raids.

Guardian raids are generally pretty fun, lots of mechanics, but nothing super cheap yet. The Abyss raids (4man dungeon raids) are kind of hit or miss for me. The first couple are easy, but then they add these annoying mechanics that will wipe you if even 1 person gets it wrong. Can be painful for PUGs.

 

[Aikouka]

Any thoughts on the drop in the number of players? You can certainly see it when loading up the game as all servers went from being "Busy" in the evening to "Good" almost all the time. I've heard there was some frustration about the end game content, but I don't know how much that plays into it, or if this is just the normal attrition that you'd expect.

Yeah, the game is a mess of systems. I think part of the problem is that this is ~4 years worth of added content that has been dropped on us from the start. I am sure things were a bit more straight forward if you had started playing on release in Korea when there were fewer options.

I am into tier 2 now. Game started making much more sense to me about halfway through tier 1 raids. I used my powerpass (get it after finishing Vern) on 2 alts (sorceress and paladin). Haven't done much with them other than some chaos dungeons and guardian raids.

Guardian raids are generally pretty fun, lots of mechanics, but nothing super cheap yet. The Abyss raids (4man dungeon raids) are kind of hit or miss for me. The first couple are easy, but then they add these annoying mechanics that will wipe you if even 1 person gets it wrong. Can be painful for PUGs.

I finally got to the point where I can do the end game content. I've been pretty much doing every quest and been messing around on various islands, so I've been level 50 since... I can't recall the continent's name, but it's the one with the obvious Asian influence. Anyway, I tried the Chaos Dungeon, and I actually failed the first time, because I didn't realize that it had a timer! I had no idea what it was when I entered, and I just started killing all the enemies in front of me. I had no problem killing them in time, but I sat there equipping all the new gear after that initial attempt.

In regard to the Power Pass, I've debated about using them. I understand that alts are really more meant to feed the main in the game -- or at least that's what I've heard -- but I think if you have to implement something to skip content, then that implies that there's something wrong overall with the setup. I'd rather enjoy playing the game, and I've tried to choose classes that I actually enjoy playing. Although, after doing all of this content, I'm not entirely sure if I really want to do it again. I do want to use the alts to help look for Mokoko Seeds and try to find more collectibles to help get the Adventurer's Guide up to 100%.

I do need to look up more about the Guardian Raids. Those are available to me now, but I don't know much about them.

 

[quikah]

Any thoughts on the drop in the number of players? You can certainly see it when loading up the game as all servers went from being "Busy" in the evening to "Good" almost all the time. I've heard there was some frustration about the end game content, but I don't know how much that plays into it, or if this is just the normal attrition that you'd expect.

Usual attrition compounded by the P2W wall of gear honing that starts at ~lvl10+ for each tier. The success chance starts dropping precipitously at around the 10+ range. Tier 3 you start to get <10% chance of success. So you are burning mats and Gold to try to progress. Most people (including myself probably) are going to quit at this point.

In regard to the Power Pass, I've debated about using them. I understand that alts are really more meant to feed the main in the game -- or at least that's what I've heard -- but I think if you have to implement something to skip content, then that implies that there's something wrong overall with the setup. I'd rather enjoy playing the game, and I've tried to choose classes that I actually enjoy playing. Although, after doing all of this content, I'm not entirely sure if I really want to do it again. I do want to use the alts to help look for Mokoko Seeds and try to find more collectibles to help get the Adventurer's Guide up to 100%.

Powerpass is not something you should really worry about using. Just try a class you want. There is another method to lvl a character to 50 (Knowledge Transfer, it is in your stronghold), it just costs 600 Gold and take 8 hrs. Lost Ark: Knowledge Transfer Guide (thegamer.com) Once you get to Tier 2 (and tier 3), there is a research item in your stronghold to reduce costs and increase success of the previous tier gear honing for your alts. Don't hone any gear on your alts until you progress your main to Tier2 and do this research.

 

[Aikouka]

One aspect of the game that has been kind of bugging me a bit lately is mobs and mob respawn rates. Some of this may come from how much effort it takes for me to kill enemies, but by the time I kill the 4+ enemies near something that I want (Mokoko Seed, quest objective, etc.), at least one of them will respawn. Worst off, sometimes, my AoE ability may hit another unengaged enemy, and pull them into the fight too. I've had times where I'll have to kill 4-5 sets of enemies to finally pick up a Mokoko Seed. This might not be nearly so annoying if killing mobs wasn't so useless. The only useful thing from killing them is hoping to get Adventurer's Guide drops.

Usual attrition compounded by the P2W wall of gear honing that starts at ~lvl10+ for each tier. The success chance starts dropping precipitously at around the 10+ range. Tier 3 you start to get <10% chance of success. So you are burning mats and Gold to try to progress. Most people (including myself probably) are going to quit at this point.

I was listening to a video where Asmongold was talking to some Lost Ark whale, and I believe the whale suggested that things were pretty bad (luck-wise) up until you reached a threshold, and after that, it got better. I guess I can understand wanting the pinnacle of gear to be harder to attain, but the problem is likely how they just threw so many levels of content onto everyone.

For example, let's say that ilevel 1000 is the end of tier 2. (I don't know the actual values off the top of my head.) They could make it so tier 3 only requires ilevel 900, and going from 900 to 1000 simply makes harder content easier. This would be the equivalent of getting mythic-level gear in WoW to give you the edge. Unfortunately, when there isn't a gap in content, you can't have that ilevel overlap, because if I hit 900, I'd simply skip to tier 3 and start getting above ilevel 1000.

That overlap would allow for those that care about attaining the best still put in the time, effort, and/or money into getting the highest level of gear, and for those who just want to see and experience the content, they could just reach the next tier's breakpoint.

Powerpass is not something you should really worry about using. Just try a class you want. There is another method to lvl a character to 50 (Knowledge Transfer, it is in your stronghold), it just costs 600 Gold and take 8 hrs. Lost Ark: Knowledge Transfer Guide (thegamer.com) Once you get to Tier 2 (and tier 3), there is a research item in your stronghold to reduce costs and increase success of the previous tier gear honing for your alts. Don't hone any gear on your alts until you progress your main to Tier2 and do this research.

Hm, I'll have to look into that. Thanks!

I agree though... I've mostly been trying to focus on just having a good time, and I'm fine with leveling characters. That's why I don't mind messing around on islands and trying to get their seeds and soul (if possible). Although, I need to be more careful to check the recommended ilevel, as I tried to do one that was 400+ without realizing it. "Wow, these things really hurt!"

 

[JTsyo]

Just hit level 50 myself and I'm in the mech continent. I just can't play the game for long periods so progress is slow. All the quests boil down to go here and click that. I'll just keep grinding until I can do dungeons since I do enjoy the story versions on the maps.

 

[quikah]

Just hit level 50 myself and I'm in the mech continent. I just can't play the game for long periods so progress is slow. All the quests boil down to go here and click that. I'll just keep grinding until I can do dungeons since I do enjoy the story versions on the maps.

Yeah, that is the point that really dragged for me also. I didn't really like that zone much.

 

[Aikouka]

Just hit level 50 myself and I'm in the mech continent. I just can't play the game for long periods so progress is slow. All the quests boil down to go here and click that. I'll just keep grinding until I can do dungeons since I do enjoy the story versions on the maps.

Getting to the Chaos Dungeons doesn't take long once you get to Vern. You will have to do some opening quests in the harbor and a quest or two to push you toward the castle. Once you do that, you have to go through some story quests there to send you along your path, but once you get those done, I believe that's when you'll have the quest open up for Chaos Dungeons. Also, maybe more importantly, you'll also get the quest for your level 50 ability and your awakening skill. There was a short quest line for me to get that, but it really wasn't that hard to do. (You get them both on the same quest line.)

Oh, and Vern is right after the mech continent. So, if you want to prioritize getting those fun aspects, you can ignore the side quests -- they don't provide much EXP anyway -- and do the main story missions. (You can always go back and do the side quests later.)

 

[quikah]

BTW: There is a "hidden" quest chain for the guardian raids that give nice rewards, 50 gold per guardian + some battle items, each level increases the gold reward ~50G. The first quest you will probably get easily as it is what unlocks the raids, but if you don't read the quest text carefully you will not know you need to go to another place to continue the questline (the character tells you to meet them at the next location, but this isn't in the quest log).

This has all the quests listed at the bottom (Raid Level X Guardian Investigation Quest).
Foggy Ridge Island Guide for Lost Ark on Maxroll.gg - Island Guides

Basically after you defeat each guardian you need to go to one of the 4 locations to talk to the investigator to get the quest to kill the next level guardian.