Hey everyone. Welcome to another guide, and welcome to Lost Ark. If you happen to start this game, you might be overwhelmed and have a couple of questions concerning how everything works. So to ease your first steps in the world of Artesia, I hope I have answers for you.
Let’s start with the prologue. Should you click that big skip button on the top left? I would say it depends… The prologue will introduce a little of the game’s mechanics, but it’s not very hard to figure it out yourself if you skip it. It mainly teaches you to press G all the time. I would say do it if you are interested in the story of Lost Ark. It is an excellent introduction to the main storyline, finishing with a fight against a giant plated spider, which is not bad at all! Ok, let’s move to the actual game.
Mount
The first big town is called Prideholme, and it’s filled with quests and players on mounts. So how do we get one? It’s pretty easy. You can get your first horse from Brother Alpha, and he’s the nice guy you’ll see when you exit the cathedral. Then you can drag and drop your mount to the top utility bar for quick access.
- To equip it, add it to your mount inventory with a right-click, and then you either go to the guide menu on the bottom right or press Alt-V to open the mounting tab.
Utility Bar
Speaking of potions, there are two main types of life potions in Lost Ark. The first one is the healing potion, which is common and recovers a fixed amount of life per second, and the second type is the HP potion, which recovers a % of life on use.
- Note here that the bottom utility bar, keybinding 1 to 4 by default, can only be used for particular items or special potions, bombs, and things like that, also called battle items.
- Those items are primarily helpful for late-game stuff like Chaos dungeons or guardian raids, so you might not want to waste them too much just for questing.
Try using the healing potion over the HP for leveling, as the HP potions will be more beneficial for late-game stuff and are also way more expensive.
Pets
Next, how do I get myself a lovely little pet, and what is it used for? Your pet will collect loot drops for you, so no more clicking on items or silver on the ground. It also serves as a loot filter that you can play around with within the pet inventory by clicking this little gear icon.
- To get your pet, you need to complete the Guide quest given by this white-winged mini-lion in the center of Prideholme. Don’t worry if you don’t see this quest at first, as you’ll need to progress on other quests before it becomes available.
- I got mine around level 14, just typically following quests.
Ways to Travel
Let’s continue with the map system; what’s the most efficient way to travel around in this game?
- You need to know that the game map works in loaded areas every time you cross a border. To switch areas, head to a blue whirlpool like this one.
- Those areas are grouped by continent, like Rethramis, Yulia, and so on, and at some point, you’ll be able to leave a continent using your boat to explore new ones.
Using your mount helps to go faster, but the best way to travel is by using the triport system. Each report needs to be unlocked independently. Note that the triport system works only on the continent, you’re in and cannot cross the sea with this system. To use a triport, open your map with M and left-click on the one you want.
Mokoko Seeds
Another way to travel is by using an “interesting” song system. You will learn those songs as you do quests, and the first one will be the song of escape, which allows you to exit dungeons or your stronghold whenever you want.
Another one will be used to access your stronghold, one to access Trixion, and even one to cheer up soldiers because, you know, what’s better than a friendly warhorn cheer-up song?
Song of Return
Anyway, one of the most useful later will be the Return song. To use this one, head to a blue triport icon, and you will be able to set it as a return point, a bit like the hearthstone in WoW.
This song can be used to change continents, which is very useful, and you can access all those songs with F2 anytime.
Traveling in Lost Ark
A more “hidden” way to quickly travel between continents is by using the Bifrost. You can access your Bifrost from the adventure menu or press Alt-W. Then, you can click on the save location to save the exact spot where you stand as a returning place.
- Note that the song Return and the Bifrost has a cooldown of 2 hours.
- Next, I want to draw your attention to the top right of the area map and even some dungeon maps.
- You’ll see a little plant symbol there, showing the number of Mokoko seeds hidden in this area. These collectibles reward you with 180 roster experience points per seed found, and they also can be traded later in the game for rewards once you reach the Mokoro island, Tortoyk.
So keep your eyes open for those. They are not easy to find and are often in hidden areas. There are already a lot of guides out there if you want to find them all.
Minimap
Final tips for maps, you can toggle your minimap on and off with TAB, and you can move it around while pressing the middle mouse button. To play with its transparency, just come here on the top right of your minimap and adjust it as you like.
Combat and Roster Level
Next question: What’s the difference between the combat level and the roster level on the bottom left of the screen?
- Your combat level is your actual character level, and yes, you start at level 10. That’s just how the Western version of Lost Ark works.
- The Roster, which can be accessed by pressing O on your keyboard, is an account-wide experience system that will give small bonuses to all your characters.
Paragon system
A little bit like the paragon system in Diablo 3. So leveling this up is a good idea. Again, Mokoko seeds give experience for this, and some quests are specific to the Roster.
- Every combat level will give you six skill points to spend, which you can see by pressing the K button.
- Reaching levels 4, 7, and 10 will unlock the skill’s tiers 1, 2, and 3. This is called the Tripods system.
It will allow you to choose different upgrades that will apply to your skill and change how it works. Many combinations are possible, and feel free to play with this as you can respect them anytime for free. You can also set presets for your different builds.
Adventurer’s Tome
If we continue to look at the UI, there is something called the adventurer’s tome. This is an overall progression table that will show your progression through collectibles, vistas, world bosses killed, which dungeons you made, and you’ll unlock some goodies as you fill it up. Every time you see this little book symbol on an item that means you can add it to your adventurer’s tome, and most of those items need to be obtained several times to complete the tome.
- Take the time to read it, as some of them are filled with silvers, but there are also battle items chests, engraving recipes, honing system chests, and many more.
- Most of them concern a specific aspect of the late-game progression system, and it will all make sense once you get to level 50 and start the grind.
- So for the moment, I suggest you keep all of those safe in your storage.
Killing mini-bosses in maps and monsters with these winged symbols on their head will help fill the adventurer’s tome. Some of the rewards here are pretty nice. Throughout your playthrough, you will be filled with rewards from daily, adventurer’s tome, roster level, and many other progression systems. What do we do with all those chests?
Cards System
What about cards, then? Should you wait to use them? Well, I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but generally speaking, cards are shared through all your characters, and I think it’s safe to say that you can unlock them as soon as you get them.
- To use them, you can access your catalogs by pressing alt-C. In the Equip subtab, you will be able to make a card deck that will give you little bonuses depending on which set you pick.
- Most of the sets will give you bonuses if you have at least 2, 4, or 6 cards of the same set. Just make sure to save your deck before you exit.
Dismantling System
As for all other items, you can either sell them for silver or dismantle them. Dismantling will give you Useful Equipment Pieces and Broken Equipment Powder, which are junk and can be sold for silver. Once you get to a higher level, dismantling will give you excellent materials like destruction stone fragments and guardian stone fragments, so I prefer to sell them. It’s also an efficient way to make inventory space when you’re far away from a merchant.
Quick tips for equipment for jewelry: You can press the Alt button to compare your rings or earrings. For this guide, folks, this game is enormous, and I could have continued for a while, but I think I covered most of what’s practical, at least for the leveling part of this game. Thank you for reading. Stay tuned for new guides. Please check out Lost Ark Guides. Learn with us! It was Librarian Husky! Ciao!
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