f13.net

Finally coming to NA and Europe this year courtesy of, uh, Amazon Games.

https://www.amazongames.com/en-us/news/articles/amazon-games-to-launch-smilegate-rpgs-lost-ark-in-north-america-and-europe-2021

https://www.playlostark.com/en-us

Closed Alpha has begun. You can also buy your way into the Beta:

https://www.playlostark.com/en-us/shop

Fair warning, turns out we shouldn't have been waiting for it.

*sees free to play and Korean in the same paragraph* Hard pass. All the good stuff will be paywalled and you'll need to spend about 10,000 hours to gain a single level.

Got into the closed Alpha. Hard pass. Way too many buttons to press for an ARPG. I don't mind a complex rotation in an MMO where I am moving with WASD, but clicking to move (and attack) while trying to juggle 8 skills plus an ultimate is just too much.

This is actually great. Turns out the wait was more than worth it.

You are not wrong about this. In fact, you are 100% right. Endgame will be terrible, and when I'll put the game down.

Until that point though, and especially being free, it's a joy.

Game is pretty good imo for an ARPG/MMO. ARPG in the control scheme, MMO in the quest to end game then raid/dungeon/dailies type of thing.

No trinity. Basically DPS and two classes that are classified as support.

A typically class will have 8 Attacks with cooldowns that range from 8-20 seconds. Very little rotation involved. Mostly a 3 button combo and another 3 button combo to go with it. I hate a lot of button presses, I hate rotations, but this game does not have them at all. Plenty of pauses in action, at least in the start, where you're not spamming attacks non stop.

I think Rendakor may have picked Deadeye or Sharpshooter which is basically aids to play unless you like stance swap game play. Basically these two classes are similar, in that you have your normal 8 attacks with pistols, then you have a shot gun and a rifle stance with each stance having 4 attacks each with 10-20 second cooldowns.  No thanks.

Leveling is via questing. Questing gives you a majority of your XP so, as far as I know, you're not grinding mobs AT ALL to gain levels. I.e. a quest is 650xp and a mob is 4. Supposedly only doing the main questline will get you to max level. No real need to do side quests? But they're all in the same spot as you go through the game.

Combat/combos feel very weighty and visceral. On par with D3 I think, probably just a bit below it.

IMO well worth the wait. Supposedly leveling takes 12-24 hours to hit 50? I though I read that, though I really didn't dive deep.

Lots of systems in this game to build up your character.

I enjoyed the weekend of testing.
 

Actually it's wrong. The leveling isn't super gated by time at all. I just googled after my last post to make sure, most people are saying 16-20 hours of questing which isn't horrible at all.

From what I understand, the PVP is pretty equal across the board. Gear/stats don't carry over.

I think some cash shop stuff allows for buying near top level gear to catch up? Or something like that. Paying essentially allows you to farm gear faster if you really want to be at the top 1% of gearscore in the game.

I hope you are right Draegan because I liked everything so far about Lost Ark and I am very hyped about it after the alpha. Knowing it will suck at endgame is the only thing that is keeping my excitement in check and while I did not do real research, I have read a lot of comments from people who played extensively in Korean and Russian servers confirming my biggest fears. Once again, I really hope you are right.

Which fears?

I haven't gone deep in looking up the end game. I mean it's all running dungeons and grind tiers of gear.

I saw this linked somewhere, seems like a total extensive guide on everything in the game:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oci4R6IkwiQoVhGH8IHwFIS33dVS7hQv2Z-sljRrmcE/edit#

I think the biggest grind, is grinding currency from dailies and all the nolifers just have a ton of alts that they do them on every day since the currency is account based. Not sure I really care about being top of the pack with PVE shit. I used to enjoy WOW plenty without being a hardcore raider.


Edit:
Did some actual reading. Looks like the end game is grinding mats/coin to upgrade gear that has a chance to fail. I don't see any reference to losing tiers though. Eh. I will probably never make it to that point anyway to care about it. Looks like cashshop gives you mats to use?

Those fears: endgame being RNG enhancements with a chance to fail rather than loot drops or harder challenges. Or harder challenges that can only be faced by grinding for weeks or paying money. In a way it's fine for me, that's when I drop a game and it has been fun anyway, but I can't pretend it's OK or a nice system just because it works with my gaming habits.

Closed Beta November 4 - 11: https://www.playlostark.com/en-us/news/articles/closed-beta-details

Everyone can get a free key easily (30min of watch time) from twitch for Lost Ark*, I highly recommend everyone give it a little bit of a spin, if nothing else just mess about with the training dummy area for various classes to see how it plays.

The story/VA is dog water, but this is a raidboss pve + very well balanced arena pvp game so who gives a shit.

Thanks! Got a key via Twitch watching and it's downloading now. As an aside it took a while for the email with the key to show up -- at first I thought it had been eaten by a spam filter -- so give it some time if you don't see it immediately as well.

This game feels like a cross between TERA and Black Desert Online with a zoomed out view (though TERA you could play zoomed out pretty far). The graphics, to my surprise, are not as good as I was expecting them to be. TERA has/had better graphics and animations and that game came out 10 years ago. And BDO is of course the current benchmark in terms of its graphics and animations. Combat has a "choppy" feel to it more akin to TERA but stylistically is more like BDO's over-the-top abilities and effects. Lost Ark is also more like BDO where you are mostly fighting lots of weaker mobs at once vs TERA where you are fighting fewer stronger mobs more akin to EQ-style MMOs.

I've played through the first main story questline (just past the first "dungeon") on two classes so far -- Martial Artist/Soulfist and Gunner/Gunsligher -- and so far the game is kind of meh for me. I'm struggling with the controls a bit, I'm not used to the double row of hotkeys for skills, and there's something weird about input buffering (or lack thereof) that I can't figure out where sometimes I can activate a skill ahead of time while another attack is being performed and it will trigger and sometimes it will not. Even though I'm kind of lukewarm on the gameplay at the moment because Diablo IV has been delayed to 2023 (at least) I may still get this as something to mess around with occasionally for next year. I could just play BDO again but I find that one hard to play casually whereas I see Lost Ark being potentially more casual friendly.

Tried two more classes -- Assassin/Deathblade and Mage/Bard.

Deathblade is the one I like the most out of the 4 I've tried. Straightforward to play and control and lots of DPS.

Bard is so-so, definitely the lowest DPS of the 4 as expected from a support class but her "Identity" support skills (your ultimates, effectively, in this game) also take a long time to charge up, at least at low levels, so she's not all that useful as a support class either. At endgame, though, apparently a Bard is near-mandatory to do that content efficiently. It seems like it would be rough to level her up to max mostly solo.

I didn't play much during the beta, mostly to try to mechanics of the classes on the training dummy.

Thinking of eventually playing a Paladin or Gunblade or something completely out there as a Gunslinger/Deadeye. The combo swaps for the two gunners are kind fun, but I don't know if my fingers can handle it.

Also artierlist looks cool.

 :why_so_serious: that I took the time to do this tells you very sad things about my evening.

(https://i.imgur.com/VIHc8HF.png)

Early Access begins Tuesday, February 8th 9AM Pacific (5PM UTC). Preloading for everybody starts tomorrow, Monday, February 7th, same times.

https://www.playlostark.com/en-us/news/articles/launch-details

Can't download Day -3 update from Steam. No Early Access for you!

So, the eternal question (while you have some time), why play this?

It was an ARPG to play while I waited for Diablo 4. Now I don't know if I'm ever going to play Diablo 4 (maybe if it comes to Game Pass I will) but it's still something to fill that ARPG void in between other games that are more interesting at the time.

I've played other Korean MMOs "casually" like TERA and BDO so I'm very familiar with that style of game and loot crafting RNG and am fine with stopping before the pay to progress gets bad and you have to spend 10s of thousands of $ to progress your characters.

Finally unpacking.

Why not play it? Gameplay is satisfying and there's tons of content. Also if you like it that way, it's free.

I plan to check this out, but I am going to do something I rarely do, which is wait a month or so for the hub-bub to die down, and give the jutting metal edges a chance to be sanded down.

So, meaty question here: how much clicking?

Granted I wouldn't probably check this out until the new PoE league hits peak boredom for me.

The servers themselves seem pretty stable right now though I am on the least populated NA West server right now and it’s early access so not peak populations yet. And the game itself is 3 years old so that aspect is solid, unlike, say, New World.

The normal amount? You can hold the buttons down to continuously move and / or attack so you don’t need to constantly click.

Edit: also mouse button is just for basic attacks. Your real attacks are bound to keys and depending on your (sub)class and skill cooldowns you may rarely need to do a basic mouse button attack.

ok if i may

hard to call it an arpg since it has no actual loot

but more importantly, we can all see what you bought on steam

 :awesome_for_real:

The game is F2P so things will likely get pretty crazy over the weekend. We'll see how bad the queues / server crashes / etc. get. You still might want to download and setup a few characters so you get some names locked in sooner rather than later, though.

oh no

it has loot

So what's the monetisation hidden away in the background? I see founders packs, but surely that's not where the money is rolling in from.

"Royal Crystal" is bought with real world money. Some of the founders packs also come with some. Royal Crystals are used to buy most things in the in-game store. The store has all the standard (Asian) MMO items, cosmetics, pay to progress items, loot boxes, extra character slots, character (re)customization vouchers, etc.

Confusingly there's a separate premium currency called "Crystal" which many people call "Blue Crystal" to distinguish it from Royal Crystal since they have a blue crystal icon (vs the rainbow colored Royal Crystal icon). Blue Crystal is used to buy some of the limited items in the shop. Royal Crystal can be exchanged directly for (Blue) Crystal.

You can also exchange Gold, yet another premium currency you earn in-game, for both Royal and Blue Crystal, through the AH currency exchange, so in theory you don't have to spend any real-world money to buy things in the store if you can figure out how to earn Gold.

The nominal exchange rate, using the 30-day "Crystalline Aura" benefit, which is their "x days subscriber" benefits equivalent as the benchmark has the following 3 costs:

$9.99
1000 Royal Crystals, which cost $9.99
420 (Blue) Crystals

Here's a summary: https://us.millenium.gg/guide/26255.html

Note that blurb about Royal Crystals being the only currency in the store is false for the Amazon published version of the game (it may be true for the other regions).

Thanks - sounds like Guild Wars but with a few more options. I don't mind that, far better than a game like WoW or EvE with a sub

Thanks for the currency guide link.   I got a Pally to lvl 20 last night.  I paid for the $25 dollars thingy cause I am sure I can at least get 25 bucks O fun out of this.   To say the amount of information, currencies, items, character only, account only,  information flowing at me was overwhelming is an understatement.  I guess the bar for this type of stuff has seriously moved since I last paid attention?  

I have yet to take my founders box because most of the stuff is only attached to one character and I haven't decided between Pally and Sorc.

It looks nice enough, skills feel good, but I can't help that sinking feeling that I am a sucker and in about a month I will be uninstalling.

*edit* 15 different in game currencies  :awesome_for_real:

A month would be a lot of fun with one game. What's wrong with that? $25 for 1 month of fun is amazing value.

Yeah but it's also free to play if you are willing to wait 2 more days.

Yes this game and other recent games like it are crazy complex with a seemingly endless number of systems to learn.

"25 bucks is a great deal for this free game."

Free to play games aren't really free usually. You pay with time instead of money. With the $25 you get a month of Premium sub which is about $15 plus some extra crap that you may or may not care for. For the most part by not paying the monthly premium subscription you are being hit with a time tax, hindering progress and taking some quality-of-life features away.

But regardless, I was mostly addressing Fraeg's issues with longevity.

Gave it a try and yes, this might be the best (or smoothest) F2P MMO I ever played (not counting those which became F2P after starting as subscription based or something else).

Apparently there’s a Founders Pack duping bug. I was wondering why there were some crazy offers on the currency exchange.

You may say I have an open feud with FF XIV (a game I have invested probably 200+ hours on and bought three copies of for various reasons), but the production quality of this game puts that one to shame. They clearly have a lot in common, being built on a very traditional MMORPG threadmill, and both have a hilarious amount of content, but in this one every single activity seems more fun and fleshed out and overall just of a much higher quality. Especially after they watered down some aspects of FF like gathering.

Also, I am really happy that they chose to go with the Guild Wars model for PvP. It's only arenas of different kinds, and you don't bring your gear and skills. Instead you build your ideal character from ALL the existing powers and invest points as you see fit. Truly even grounds PvP.

PvP is apparently very neglected in this game. A streamer who speaks both Korean and English and was playing on the KR servers was saying the top discussions on KR forums are all about when will PvP be looked at. It's probably not a great idea to be playing Lost Ark just for the PvP.

Edit: just

I prefer arena base PVP over any attempts to try and fail at open world, or mass pvp. So I guess I'll be trying Lost Ark.

Of course not.

But considering that in ALL the other Korean games I've played PvP is always based on how much real money have been invested in powering up your character, this one managed to rise at the top of my personal chart in about 4 minutes. I am not playing Lost Ark for the PvP, but if the arena stands as a side activity that follows the Guild Wars model, then it's great news.

Glad to hear it is Guild wars style arena where you just bring your build to the table.   Between my 17 sorc and 23 pally I am having a lot of fun.  The limit to 4 person groups is hurting our 5 man crew.... will probably roll with a duo and a trio so nobody gets left out.... was some Discord drama last night.   Well mid 40s polite Canadian drama  :why_so_serious:

Servers still down. Literally unplayable.

Edit: apparently this is the tweet (Twitter isn’t working for me) announcing pre-launch maintenance issue so things will still be down for a while:

https://twitter.com/playlostark/status/1492178267138244609

This game is dope. Already 50 and starting the gearing process.

Lots of system in this game. And it has some loot.

Best part is that once you hit 50, you get two free level 50 boosts so you can get alts up and running and doing dailies if thats your thing.

The Free to Play launch was today. 15 minutes before release they announced a delay due to "deployment issues". More than 5 hours later, the game is still offline, and no news.

EDIT: Online now. 5 hours and 15 minutes delay.

I'm impressed Steam's patching service didn't explode again.

I have a theory that the free to play system will certainly bring in a looot of players, but when it comes to day 1, the large majority paid to be there so today it's not gonna be bigger than the 8th.

It won't let me in my server. Oh well. More accurately it thinks I haven't created characters on any server and my server is locked to new character creation.

Edit: at least I'm not the only one: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1599340/discussions/0/5034464604296998957/

Same. Hahaha.

Servers going back down to fix issue:

https://twitter.com/playlostark/status/1492267186185900033

I can feel everyone having fun around me lol, but I shall still stay strong.

That might be true, if they could, I dunno, even log in.

It's really odd considering it's 2022 and the servers are supposed to be handled by Amazon, but this could be the absolute worst launch of any MMORPG ever. I may be forgetting something, but almost 7 hours in and no game yet.

Didn't you just play New World and it's 900 year queues?

I prefer this to server crashes, character wipes / rollbacks, etc.

Queues suck only if you have to endure it. This is a black void of nothingness that cannot be avoided.

They are up with characters restored! Go go go!

Every single early access server is locked, so all our friends who just got in cannot join our servers. We were on the least populated EU. Feels bad, because it happened in New World too. Basically the lesson here is: stop participating in headstarts if you have friends who join later.

It's even worse than that. KR Lost Ark doesn't have server transfers and NA/EU will not either.

Edit: also founder packs are bound effectively to servers and not accounts so people with opened Founder Packs don't want to switch either. Amazon is giving a few of the exclusive items to people who opened packs who move but it's not a complete replacement for the original stuff.

2022
1998

literally no difference

Luckily the lock has been removed this morning. It looks like they have been reasonable and it was there just to force people to scatter at the very early opening of the flood gates.

8800 in queue at 2pm today. OK.

yeah this is far from the worst but it still seems like nobody ever has learned anything in 2-3 decades of the same mistakes being made every time.

if it were me i would have been throwing out ideas like: heavily cap how many people could create on each server each day of the 3 days of early access to try to force people to spread out over regions instead of creating single super servers. either that or plan for and designate the super server and set it up to handle that designation if the tech can do that, since that shit always happens in the twitch streamer era. if you make a character on a server and get them to level X (25 lets say in lost ark) you are given 3 invites to the server you can give out that will dodge server locks.

then you make it clear that 10-14 days after launch you are going to allow 1 free server xfer within a region per account started on/before launch week for an entire weekend to let people re-sort themselves onto less populated servers and when that window opens start imposing really heavy queue times to the bigger servers for that weekend to incentivize people to fuck off to smaller ones.

idk. but instead i see zero evidence at all that devs ever try to do anything to head off these issues. its nbd to me, i made on USwest (Mari), the server was locked from new creation a little bit on Friday but i think its ok now probably.

It's a design problem too, though. Meaning anybody who has played a MMO knows that there's frequently a major premium to being the first to powerlevel up in terms of access to resources, loot, knowledge about mobs or bosses, etc., and even if there isn't, starting a month later than everybody else often means that there's fewer people to group with or do content with. We all know what it means to be on the forward wave of content progression, however the game handles that in terms of grouping--whether there are public areas where folks have to work together when an event triggers or instanced content that requires a group, if you're out of synch with everyone else you're fucked.

You guys win. The FOMO got to me.

Lost Ark has gone mixed review score on steam and its not at all because of gameplay. Gamers just have zero tolerance for launch bullshit in 2022. Good on them.

This game is very good.

I'm enjoying it far more than I should. Path of Exile could learn a lot about early game leveling from Lost Ark.

The storyline is average at best, but it's just fun

Yes people may be completely fed up with the genre or just not appreciate the isometric view or the kind of combat, but this MMORPG is objectively great. Within the boundaries of its genre, clearly one of the best.

the ease of access when it comes to dungeons and other activities with PUGs (pick up groups), reminds me SO much of Guild Wars 1 (and that's a compliment. Oh, and the general bitching about skipping the cutscenes by some :D).  Dunno if the P2W becomes unbearable after lv 50, but the "get in - do something - log out" it's actually old and refreshing at the same time. No need to stress too much over your role in the "holy trinity" or whatever. Just get in a group or solo, bash those damn keys (well, in some coherent manner :P) and have fun.

Been seriously considering something to scratch the MMO itch.  How "casual friendly" is this thing?  100% no longer at the stage where I would do hardcore gaming or the like, so if this is fairly casual accessible for someone who no longer has the twitch reflexes I used to have, I might seriously consider giving it a whirl.

It's too casual friendly. It exists to make you feel like a gaming god (even though you totally suck). No seriously, it offers no resistance whatsoever. Both the combat and the progression pacing are meant to stimulate pleasure glands, dopamines, or whatever. Not a single thing ever threatens to punch your dick (except maybe too many currencies), it's just an OP fest. For example, dungeons come in Normal and Hard, but you can solo them all in Hard almost by pressing random buttons.

The "real" game starts later, when you hit the soft cap, and by then you can decide what to do with it. But it's extremely casual friendly, and I say "almost too much" because if you want a challenge of any kind you have to wait until you hit level 50.

Yup. I am level 20 right now. Not much, but then I haven't been going ham or anything. So far it feels like in WoW (or any other MMO), when you go back to solo content from 2 expansions ago, and power creep has just made them not even remotely a threat.

Neat.  Sounds like it may be right up my alley as a good place to scratch the MMO itch.

Any idea about recommended classes or the like?  Or just grab whatever and faceroll away?

Pick something that sounds or looks cool and smash. If you google Lost Ark classes, their main site has a bunch of videos of the classes main move sets. My only word of warning is, don't just see a move that looks badass without trying to find any info on it. Some of the cooldowns are pretty meaty, both in effect but also in terms of CD time. One more thing, some classes are gender locked. It's not a deal breaker for me, but it's not something I give points for either.

Oh one more thing. Absolutely listen to what Falconeer said and do the early dungeons on hard.

I haven't gotten to the start of the end game yet so this is all based on what I've read and watched so far. The leveling process to level 50, as others have said, is extremely casual friendly but that's just a small portion of the game. It's basically just there to give you the background story and give you time to learn the skills for your class. The end game itself in our release is divided into three tiers with the last tier, Tier 3, being just the start of it, missing content currently available in KR (and maybe RU) and will be coming later to NA/EU.

Somebody on Reddit helpfully made some infographics that show the end game progression flow and the activities you'll be doing as part of the end game:

https://old.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/sif5oi/visual_flowchart_for_game_progression/

If you look at the "What to do at 50" infographic, from what I understand so far, pretty much all of the daily stuff is casual friendly but much of the weekly stuff is not. In particular the Abyss Dungeons are much more difficult than the casual friendly end game dungeons like the Chaos dungeon and the Guardian raid both of which can be done solo (despite "raid" being attached to Guardian) or in PUGs with not much concern about party composition or skill levels. Some of the Abyss Dungeons have, for example, boss party wipe mechanics that players need to know about and can handle. I don't know if any of the Tier 1 Abyss Dungeons have that mechanic but that's the sort of thing that may frustrate more casual players. The other thing I don't know is if it's possible progress to the Tier 2 content without doing the Tier 1 Abyss Dungeons. If not and the Tier 1 Abyss Dungeons are more than you are willing to put with up then then you will "stuck" on the Tier 1 content. Though as you can see from the "What to do" list there's still a lot of stuff to do.

If you prefer to watch some videos on this subject you can check out these videos by Legacy Gaming.

Lost Ark - Complete End Game Breakdown | Everything NA/EU Players Can Do At Level 50 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj8Z9PvC9Dk) (watch this one first, the 2nd one will make more sense)
Lost Ark - Is It A Casual-Friendly MMO? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh8ouJQtqVw)

Note that while Codiak sounds like he knows what he's talking about, since he's reading from a script with an authoritative tone of voice, he's not an expert (his Lost Ark experience comes from playing the NA/EU beta not KR or RU) and he makes some incorrect statements in the videos. Much of that is due to the content in the videos being based on his time (only) playing the beta but it's also a bad idea to claim you know what release is going to be like (like the level cap being 50) that's still a month or so away.

Edit: some not many

Yes do them in a group on Hard. And then do them solo on Normal if you want to progress your Adventurer's Tome some more (there's a "check mark" for both Normal and Hard for each dungeon) and find any Seeds you missed while rushing through on Hard or watching any cutscenes you skipped.

Whee.  nearly 20+ hours to download the 70+ gigs for the install.

Is there an unofficial Bat Country server?

Not that I'm aware of.

 :ye_gods:

BTW if you are curious how “non-casual” this game gets check out these raid mechanics from a KR raid (not available in NA / EU yet): https://youtu.be/YKm6XnULaHU

I went Mari on US West for server, its one of the two larger pop US West servers at this time but I've never seen a 500+ queue so its been a complete non issue so far for me.

Everyone else has answered everything except I will say, the pvp is not casual at all and you will suck ass at it if you aren't working hard at not doing so.

The difference was in us the whole time!

Any currencies or stuff worth leaving unclaimed in the roster rewards for now? or does none of the the stuff picked up while leveling really matter?

Your "Roster" is all your characters on a single server. So it's fine to claim those on any character.

Tried about 10 minutes of the game, realized from the intro that its pretty button mashie. Did some research and found that the build variety comes in the form of leveling skills, so I guess I'll pop in to give it another go but for now~~

you dont auto attack much, so its got no clicking compared to traditional rpgs. build diversity is def on the low side and something that comes much later with engravings and having loads of points.

but you  have 8 skills and all have 4-30sec cd's, im not sure how that's button mashy unless there are particular classes that play differently for mine i have brief windows in my rotation where everything is down and im repositioning or using autos rarely for a second or three.

Rendakor was right in his assessment from many months ago: it's way more of a traditional MMORPG combat with rotations of skills than an ARPG with basic attack and some skill thrown in for massive burst damage.
In that sense, not really that button mashy although some classes are more needy of button presses than others. For example, stay away from the Gunslinger and her damned stance dance.

I think I am starting to bounce off this one. I have put in 10 hours and all I have killed is bandits essentially, I have only dies once because my Pizza arrived, this low level gear is criminally boring, and these quests fucking suck wank. Why will it routinely have me talk to someone in town, then they tell me to go talk to a person 8 feet away, then back to the first person, then to a different person 8 feet in another direction, then back to the first, just to kill 10 bandits?

Given how popular this game is, I've concluded this is a "It's not you it's me" type deal.

Edit: I'm gonna try a different class before I go though.

It's entirely possible because people still VERY BADLY want MMOs and they also recognize that the only MMO worth playing is one where you get in on Day 1 and nobody is making MMOs anymore so they have the gamer's equivalent of beer goggles.

I remember an ancient Web comic about MMORPG questing where the protagonist is asked to fetch something and his reply is of the form "But it's right there!". I thought it was Penny Arcade but I can't find in their archives. In any event Lost Ark is the epitome of that, much more than any of the other MMORPG I've played. On the flip side it makes completing quests extremely quick with virtually no backtracking as almost all the quest completion NPCs are either right there or appear along the path the story is taking you.

you can't find it because there's infinite comics like that

the one you're talking about had them walk like 10 feet around a hill that looks like a mountain yeah? I think it was about Guild Wars, or possibly SWG.

New World was popular at launch also. Don't hear too many people talking about it now.

Skip all the yellow ! quests, only do the yellow chain looking symbol quests. Just progress the orange/blue stuff as fast as you can.
Its not a gear game.
You are complaining about the newbie (1-50 in lost ark) quest quality, I'm having a hard time taking this seriously. Either the combat loop is good for you or it isn't. Who fucking cares about the quest dialogue, we've been doing this long enough to know what bits of these games matter.
Feel free to drop it. You are either aware of the endgame(s) (arena pvp and/or boss fight raid progression) and racing to get to it or playing with/because of friends playing. If none of that is true and you are playing it because you heard its "popular"...  :oh_i_see: can't believe its not working for you

Ya the combat loop is okay, but I still wouldnt want to play it in an empty arena. Which is pretty close to what the context for killing shit in this game is. There is a fuck ton of space between the Witcher 3's side quests, and walking 10 feet to kill a beehive in one hit, then walking ten feet back to the quest giver and pressing G four hundred times just to get to the part where you run to another town, avoiding all monsters because they provide 2xp out of a leveling bar of tens of thousands, only to bounce around the fucking town to get to kill 10 bandits. It's not just that I don't give a fuck about the plot, it's that these quests are literally just pointless.


If the end game is so fucking good, then just fucking start us there. Or condense the process of getting there way, way down. Or, at fucking least, since as you said we don't care at all about this quest dialogue, at least let us just click on the NPC once to hand in the quest like in, oh, every other MMO, instead of bringing us in to chat with them and force us to jam the skip button.


Yeah, no shit. That is true of every single game we've ever discussed around here.

The quests are still not as bad as the FF XIV ones. At least here the pacing is much faster, and you can breeze through them instead of having to endure that pain at a sluggish rate.

Also as Hoax said, skip them if they bore you. They are there mostly for flavor and are closer to "collections" than to quests meant to progress your character (they mostly progress your roster so worry about them later eventually).

No, see, I'm not just talking about the side quests. The main missions quests are literally this way. There is no skipping them.

I'm at level 47 as a Gunlancer and I have been doing the side quests, just to get a feel for it. It will be a case of once only I think. Gunlancer is ok but feels a bit clunky, admittedly I have been playing the blue skills not the red. I do think the run to 50 could be quicker, but it's still a better experience than PoE. I'm on the fence about the game but not hating it.

Definitely try some other classes before you go if you haven’t already. As I talked about earlier I tried 4 classes in beta — Gunslinger, Soulfist, Deathblade, and Bard — and the Deathblade was the one I liked the most and is the one I’m playing now and still enjoying.  With 15 classes currently there’s a good variety of styles of play to choose from — melee or ranged or both, mobile or not so mobile, positional dependent attacks (back or front) or not, more or less complicated class mechanics, “bursty” or more steady damage, squishy not squishy, etc.

Weirdly enough, the one I'm sticking to the most, is the most basic bitch been there done that one: the paladin.

Pally doesn't fuck around at all in pvp, actually quite mobile with good openers and some poke.

This game continues to draw me in. Sitting T2 at just over 1000 gear score.

https://lost-ark.maxroll.gg/resources/post-50-guide

For anyone on the fence still, use this, do the 4hr version. The Guardian Raids are when you reach something like the real content of the game and they are still babyfood I'm told compared to how taxing the true lategame gets. I've found them plenty challenging as nothing prior really asked you to learn how to play so much as rub your face on your kb.

I'd say if you purely speedrun the orange quests you can get to Vern (where that guide starts) in ~~~20hrs /played even on your first time picking up the game.

Man I got ten minutes into the tutorial and I just could not take it any more. I am sure the game is great, it just isn't for me any more.

Supposedly (though I am not sure if an effort won't be made to stomp on it) it is possible to score yourself about 4 months worth of free Crystalline Aura by swapping to the EUWest region, making a character on every server, and just logging them all in for 5 days to collect the login rewards since they are doing a "new region" login promotion. The CA reward is apparently account wide, and not region locked to the roster like most stuff, so you should be able to carry it over to other regions after collecting.

Sure, it's a pain in the ass cause it takes about 10 minutes per character, but there are currently 8 servers available, and each one offers 14 days of CA as the login reward after a few days.  

Seems like a lot of work for $50 or whatever the cost is.

Man they haven't even bothered with the slightest bit of effort to keep the state of your questline in sync with the world.

Had to roll my eyes at the zones in the level 15-17 range.  You show up, are there for maybe 10-15 minutes and then being hailed as the great hero that everyone's heard of.  Despite my doing the bare minimum, solving no actual problems, and racing around as fast as I can on a horse to get through yet another set of "move 10 feet with my laundry" to advance a quest.  Shades of that penny arcade comic where I smash open two cages holding a person, and then ride past a third.

I actually leveled from "cross a bridge while on a horse."  That's... not a joke.  That actually happened.

 :oh_i_see:

I'll keep pressing on, I guess, for now, because I would like to play an MMO, but given that the group I'm playing with spans a bunch of levels, I doubt we'll sync up until we're mid 30s or something.

Playing a Pally.  Hit 50. Gear score of 245.  Friends who I came to play with are all 500 and up.  Game has been out 11 days? and already I am too under geared to group with my friends despite the fact that we are all the same level. I am guessing that these gear score brackets are intended to make you open your wallet in order to "catch up" in order to play with your friends etc.  :awesome_for_real:
The dungeons are cool, I like them, the combat is fun, and that is about it.   :geezer:

hmm I think this:   :geezer:  pretty much sums up my entire experience with New World and Lost Ark.

I am bitter

Or to put it another way:

To be fair you got XP from that and therefore dinged because it was a sidequest for using your newly acquired* mount which you may not have noticed showing up on your quest list. In WoW you can ding just wandering around as well since that game gives exploration XP for discovering new (to your) areas. In Lost Ark exploring will net you Mokoko seeds instead.

* In the KR release, in NA/EU they actually give it to you earlier but the quest is still in the same place

Questing is dogshit. who cares. They get massive kudos from me for admitting that by making it so that you get 2 free lvl 50 alts (Power Pass) and then you spend not much gold and you can get 3 more alts to 50 (umm some thing you do in stronghold I forget the name) if you desire. So unlike poe/diablo they aren't forcing me to do the utterly boring stupid part over and over to try new shit.

That said... a larger concern is how dogshit most of the dailies seem to be. I do hate fucking heavy time req daily task shit designed to FOMO you the fuck out, tends to kill my fun. But we'll see how annoying that is medium term. There's not a huge reason to race race race to run yourself out of content other than stupidity and epeen that I can see.

As for sync'ing up, you'll be sync'd up for pvp or you will sync up with them for the raids. If not their main then the alts of the people who are ahead. It works decently I've found. The real issue is if play ability doesn't sync up Lost Ark doesn't give people a lot of places to hide. More on playing with friends below.


I mean you should be score 302 at 50 and then you can easily juice yourself to 320-340 or whatever that next step is quickly. I posted a hand holding guide a bit back. Once you clear 320-340 you can for sure tag along with them doing Islands, doing the special timed stuff tho I haven't been impressed with the fun in the chaos portal things, stupid train of 30 players just massacring bosses, felt like D3. if they are nice they'll do Una Task dailies with you as I don't think you'll cost them much, you should be high enough to do raids and loot pinata mode (chaos dungeon) with their alts every day.

If they are having zero time to play with you and acting like its impossible that's not on the game honestly.

To get your gear score up quickly hit some of these islands:
Starlight Isle
Toto Silver Isle
Panda Island
Serenity Isle

Try to get yourself into the highest tier chaos dungeon you can as early as you can to keep working on it. Im not sure what to tell you about tower, it doesn't really help your first character progress just unlocks big progression for every other char you have when they clear it.

The gear tiers are really wide for Cube, so if they are actually friends they should take you along once you have some Cube tickets I'd think.

My Q:
How's cross server grouping anyways? The insanely short queue times for everything makes me feel like I must be in a region wide queue not just my server??? If that's true which of you fucks is on US-West?

Yes, matchmaking and the auction house are region-wide:

https://forums.playlostark.com/t/need-an-official-answer-about-regions-and-servers/37390/7

I'm on US-West too (Enviska) but I didn't make the start of Tier 1 before Forbidden West released so Lost Ark is on hold until like the end of March after I finish Forbidden West and goof around with Elden Ring for a bit.

I wouldn't, except they are forcing me to do it for, what? 30-35 hours? Am I missing something? I tried to grind grind dungeons for XP for a bit, because yes the combat is fun, but they don't even give a pittance. They give dick all. If the game wants me to quest for a relaxed full time work week, to get to max level where the fun begins, and the ability to get this powerpass, then I'm going to have to judge it on that. I'm forced to care about questing by the game itself, and yes, its pure dogshit.

If you do some research on the fastest path Hoax’s estimate of 20 hours to hit 50 and the start of Tier 1 is probably about right for people new to Lost Ark but experienced with the genre in general. The people who played KR / RU at a high level and who speedran through NA / RU to the start of Tier 1 did that in about 10 hours, plus or minus depending on subclass. And unlike KR, the XP in NA / EU is setup so that you can just do the story quests and hit 50 at the start of Tier 1. I.e, no grinding should be necessary, just do the story quests as quickly as possible if you want to get to the start of the “end game” as soon as possible.

No the fun does NOT start at 50. I am having a great time with the game and I think it's great in the genre. To me the fun was already there at level 1 and it's still holding strong at iLevel 500. But mileage varies as usual and I don't see the game getting drastically better or different at the soft cap. Lost Ark is all about enjoying the combat for its own sake and enjoying collecting and absorbing more of its world, its environment and lore or numbers and percentiles, depending on what kind of person you are.

So in short, chaos gates and guardian raids or anything like that won't probably change your appreciation of the game if you are not in a good disposition already. Either it clicks for you from the start and you want "more" of it, or I don't see it changing later.

To me, the most welcome aspect of higher item level content is that you can finally die and have a challenge, and that did increase my fun (and I was already having plenty). But I wouldn't count that as enough for most players to change their reviews because as the challenge grows, the diversity of things you do or discover or unlock narrows until it grinds to a halt by a lot, so I'd be hard pressed to think that just getting into a harder grind in stead of a flowing steamrolling would necessarily boost anyone's enjoyment.

See that's the thing: I do like the combat. But I've timed it out, I spend more time out of combat than in it  even just spamming main quests. By a long shot. Between the bouncing me around town just to tell me to kill bandits, to jamming the G button to skip dialogue, to running past irrelevant mobs on my mount to the desired location, only to eradicate all the needed mobs in the press of two buttons of the skills I have leveled up. Then fast travel back and do it all again, but this time it has a go to the next town step in the middle.

That's why I said I wish I could just do dungeons or something. They actual have me be in combat, and threaten to actually kill me if I don't at least humor thier bosses abilities. That is fun. That I can try out my very generous amount of skill presets to make the most of the fucking amazing skill system. Being ping ponged around only asking how fast I can press G to skip is not. I can see how when the game involves mostly the former it will be awesome. But for right now, it is mostly the latter and is crushingly boring.

Falc is built different.

I don't think the game even starts until you hit guardian raids.

I think the fun totally starts when you are finally honing gear, getting engraving drops, using soul stones/engravings/runes so you actually have some interesting build choices and the content becomes quite difficult quite fast unless you hella good at this (I it turns out am not).
I spend a good chunk of last night getting my shit pushed in by the 4th Guardian Raid (Ice dragon dude) and tbh I looked up a yt video of my class "solo'ing" it and twice it was just someone way overgeared with double my hp getting hit left and right lol. I also ran some MM's into him and everyone was getting hit. We took him to under 1% on one very good run with an amazing Bard who seemed to be buffing everything at all the right times. He was literally changing the damage windows for a whole group single handedly. There is a /ton/ of player skill input into raiding I've seen almost every class vastly outperform and underperform their gear score and this is just the training wheel raids that really don't ask that much of people. Except Icy Dragon fuck  :oh_i_see: those two tail attacks and lack of pattern really do fuck with me.

Can we please cry about gear diversity and how sorc's dont get pants and can't be made to be fat hagbeasts next, I really want to hear people's thoughts

I mean, really, bards only get hot shorts.

What the hell.

Is there any way to turn off friendly spell effects entirely?  Like, holy fuck is it almost impossible to see any of the action cues you need to avoid on the ground when in a group with basically anything.   Just gets drown out under an absolute riot of visual effects.   I can't even imagine how crazy raids must be if 5 man dungeon content is this bad.

Yes you can. You can even set it so you only see friendly beneficial effects like buff circles.

Edit: checked the game, the full list of Battle Effects Display settings is:

* For all targets
* Include raid members
* Include party members
* Include Buff Effects of Party Members [sic]
* Display foes only

And they hotfixed the "4 months of free Crystaline Aura" thing with the EUW server.   Logged in on one of the characters I had made there right now, and the login rewards have been changed (today would have been the day I could collect the free aura too).  Kind of a dick move.

The biggest let down for me so far is that it's impossible to do chaos dungeons and guardian raids with friends in the evenings on my server. Matchamking fails every team during peak times which is also when most of us can play. 2 weeks after launch and still being unable to do pretty much the only content that makes sense to play together is quite disappointing.

Finally got around to attempting to fire this up, after having to download it twice due to steam fucking up decoding it.
Won't launch, stuck with the LosTark splash. Only solution from the helpdesk? Reinstall from scratch.  :heartbreak:

Maybe I'll try Elden Ring instead.

It takes a fairly long time (couple minutes?  i have not timed it) for it to go from splash screen to letting me pick a server.

Also here is the full experience, in a minute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF7_svEraMU

First time I loaded it up, it took several minutes. I've only logged in a few times, but every time it's a somewhat long process for a modern game.

It's the Easy Anti-Cheat.

Ya my process is click play, about 3 minutes go by, then Lost Ark logo pops up and it freezes my current screen (but not my second screen) for about 2 minutes, then the into ident plays and server select.

People hit level 50 at different points in the story line. I like the design of the game the way it's set up.

Ding 50 now your gearscore is your level. You can increase your gearscore by honing equipment. Honing mats are gotten by dailies, raids, dungeons exploring islands, doing side quests etc.

All this stuff is divided into tears. up to 600 is T1, up to 1100 is T2. T3 is barely released in the West.

Having alt is a design element of the game. Get your main into T2, get as many alts as you like feeding your "main alt" materials to level up. Get your main alt in to T2 so it can start feeding mats to your main to get into T3. The west is basically accelerating 2ish years of content.

How I tell anyone to do it now:
-pick the dps that most satisfies the rule of cool for you
-do literally nothing but the orange quests to 50 just burn through this shit if you dont like it (I didn't), you'll be going back and filling in the adventure book later and collecting collectables and whatnot so dont worry about missing out on stuff in these areas
-the second you can you make sure if nothing else you do chaos dungeon x2 each day, the rest is optional
-use your first power pass immediately on another class, its ok to use both power passes at this step if you feel comfortable
-now you are running chaos dungeon x4/day, everything not bound to alt#1 gets put in roster storage so you can feed your main mats to speed up ilevel gain, if you are doing this right Harmony Shards (the small bright green currency/crystal) will be the thing holding you back on honing, you can get loads of it from 1-time sources npnp and if you are sure on your pick of main and have the time do so feel free
-once you are to 460 ilevel and the final (4th) guardian raid is unlocked before the next major city/continent/content chunk unlock and you've run it a few times paying some attention to group members, use your second power pass on whatever interests you & start running chaos dungeon x6/day, figure out which of those 3 (hopefully one is a big hit with you) classes you want to main, pump that with the others, you'll be able to create another three alt's using memory xfer in your stronghold with gold soon so don't hold back trying classes, there's very little risk of FOMO on the class front, if you have found a main you are sure of you can make tactical choices on alt classes to save yourself time and effort and resources advancing them
-you can basically pick btwn six classes using gold and power passes in a short time to figure out your main, getting a fresh 50 to 460 is cake when you have alts up and running, so try things in pvp, raid content, abyss, tower, whatever. Ideally though you want to hit on a class that clicks early and then just giga boost him with alts and plow through the first 600 ilevels as fast as playtime allows imo so you can get a sense of all the shit going on in the game and decide if you wanna play it or not, then chill and do the content you like at whatever pace, start fucking around with all the collection or exploration or bizzare branch content etc.

Dinged 50 just as I got to althetine, but my Ilevel is only 230ish.  Do I just follow the story for 300+ gear? or is there something faster.

As soon as you unlock Chaos Dungeons (it happens with the story) do those at least twice a day. If you know what you are doing (which you don't the first time) you'll grow to 300 the first day, 400 the second day, 500 the third day. Then things slow down and the game forces you to pick up the story again, which is nice, while unlocking more stuff for you. Guardian Raids, Abyssal Dungeon, Tower, Cube and so on. All worth doing, but don't forget to keep following main story and also side story and islands, they provide A TON of materials to keep raising your iLevel.

Short version: do Chaos Dungeons
Longer version: do everything you can.

You have to complete the story for things to unlock. Just follow all the quests you see. Yellow quests reward you with stuff, Blue/Purple quests unlock game elements for the most part.

Progression flow chart:

https://www.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/sif5oi/visual_flowchart_for_game_progression/

Gunlancer is so tanky it tends to negate some Abyssal Dungeons... but then I jump on another class and watch the damage fly. I'm at 500 on the lancer with 4 L50 alts (burned some gold plus the 2 power passes.

I really wish the screen clutter would piss off - pickups in particular is offensive when you are seeing drops rain from heaven.

Pally is fun, scrapper is an acquired taste, Sorceress is awesome when you get the hits off. Deathblade is paper thin. I'm going to take the Gunlancer to 600 and then see if I prefer the pally role or the Sorc - although I see some gunners running around with heavy ranged weapons... this game has kept me from playing the Destiny 2 expansion I paid for - but carpel tunnel is real

debating between Lancer / Bard with maybe gunner as a distant 3rd for my second toon.   Wardancer is decent, but still not sold on mele combat in boss fights.  Figure Bard would be in stupid high demand down the road for difficult content.

Anyone got any kind of list on the unreleased classes that Korean has?  I know it's really easy to make alts in this game due to Power Pass/Knowledge transfer, but I hear there are some pretty neat new classes in KR that might be worth saving the quick access pass for.

Not a list, but a good video at that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijmMnOiYbko

is there any point in buying / crafting the Tier 1 Epic / Legendary sets and honing them up? Or just take your initial blue shit right through to T2 stuff?

Honing the legendary gear is optional. You can hone the blue stuff that starts 302 to +15 (should be at 600 at that point) to get to the start Tier 2.

I have only recently noticed the AByssal Crafter witth the Epic sets. It is worth it to transfer your Blue weapons honing to the Epic sets because they provide an insane +10% Damage and +8 Attack Speed. You pay with coins from two AByssal dungeons which are not used for anything else, so yes do it.

Think I have most of the basics figured out now.

Almost at 460 with 2 pieces of the Epic crafted set, most processes seem fairly straight forward.   Still trying to figure out a good build for my Wardancer, but I think I have a fair handle on the Honing / Dungeons / World Events / Sailing stuff now.

You know what I like about this game? I can't work out the currencies, can't work out how to get the blue gems for the skins in the shop... and therefore have no idea how to spend money on this game :D

I am telling you, it's demented. And eventually what will mark the end of my time with the game, which is getting nearer and nearer. To keep progressing you need "gold", which can be farmed in minor quantities capped daily, or bought for real money. Since you need gold to keep progressing in the game (item level) and your progress can literally fail and burn gold when you try to increase your item level through the only way, which is enhancing, you could work for a day, do your dailies, earn a little bit of gold, try your enhancing, fail it, and poof your gold is gone and you literally "worked" for a day for nothing.  Fuck them.

I don't see how this is more bullshit than stone faceting.  In fact it might be less bullshit.

You asked about this before and I replied back then. So if you do want to know how this works you can read it here:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=26279.msg1564405#msg1564405

don't spend money. Buy the one-time chest thing, that's super good value. Besides that just don't spend real $$$ on honing mats as you'll feel entitled to get good results but it'll still be a dice roll.

Have to agree with you there. Every now and then, frustration, or the excitement of a new build, or some cool shit held hostage behind a cash donation, causes me to spend something on a game. But I opened up this shop, couldn't decypher a thing, and closed it knowing they aren't getting a penny out of me. Not even out of pique. Out of pure confusion as to what the fuck I was looking at.

I saw that post thanks - my post was a tad tongue in cheek. If I could pay $$ for skins, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But it just feels counter intuitive to do the conversion etc. It's just easier not to buy things. I keep looking for ways to repay a games dev for a game I enjoy, Warframe is a perfect example of this.

Warframe works basically the same way, if you ignore Tennogen on Steam for PC. You buy the premium in-game currency Platinum with real-world money and use Platinum to buy certain things in the game and in-game store items including skins.

I either sell items to get plat in game or buy a prime package. Then I make the plat from that tide me over. I could grind for the frames, but don't hate the donations to the devs to keep the game going. Plat is the universal currency (excluding tennogen)

In LA, its buy convert, convert to something else etc. It's convoluted. Having said that, I did buy the founders pack. Financially, that was straightforward.

Destroyer class coming in April. Arcanist class coming in May.

Amazon shared a roadmap for the next few months, which shows a lot of new stuff coming, but they had to remove it a few hours later for unknown reasons.

https://techraptor.net/gaming/news/lost-ark-roadmap-leaks-early-pulled-for-adjustments

Destroyer is a retarded pos class so shame they opted to put him first of all the mia ones. Arcane is stylish and cool though completely overshadowed by Sorc I fear.

The only one I am looking forward to actually play is the Painter (Artist?). I really like the look of those paint brush attacks.

You get 302 gear from Chaos Dungeon/Quest once you ding 50.
You hone every piece up to +15 and then you unlock Tier 2.
Do whatever zone needed to unlock new tier.
Transfer the +15 item to the new blues you get for a free +1.

Don't hone over +15.

Also doing Abyssal Dungeons gets you currency for Blue>Purple>Legendary gear. It's just more stats. You don't need it, but it's pretty cheap. Once you buy them, transfer over your previous state to keep the honing level.

I'm 2ish upgrades from 1340 and I haven't spent anything on the game outside of a founders pack. It just takes time. Best way to do it is just level up an army of alts to the same tier as your main so you can feed them mats from Chaos Dungeons and GRs. Sell the leapstones from the GRs on the market for a ton of gold if you want.

Do Rifts and sell the mats
Do Treasure Maps in groups of 4 (everyone has one) and you get a shit ton of mats that you can either use or sell.

The game is also missing quite a few systems that are in KR/RU that help with additional mats with weekly resets.

You can't fail down levels. Items don't break on a random chance. Much less bullshit which I'm happy with. Plenty of collections and shit to do in this game.

Yeah.  Which you need a 3rd party website to locate.  That's also "fun".

Just bothered to do the first adventurer tome for skill point zone, easiest (50%) one in Shushire. I got there at the start of the 3rd zone, did not take long, had to be there anyways for the Shushire MSQ on an alt.

https://lost-ark.maxroll.gg/resources/shushire-adventure-tome

Use this, its not that bad. I don't even have dual monitor setup.  :heartbreak:

***

How are people enjoying pvp on the classes they have tried? What seems strong/bad? So far I just can't handle how Sorc gets to cast so fast, its completely bullshit oh and let's give them the best dash seemingly? The fuck? Everything else seems fine. The tornado skill of one of the MA classes is annoying but its all down to player skill. Except sorc players they are fucking drooling morons.

Trying to enjoy it before Destroyer comes out, the most retarded unga bunga class design in Lost Ark.

I really don't play MMOs for PvP. Destint 2 when the fuckjng game forces me to ... and that's it.

I have a Gunslinger and a Scrapper for PvP and I play it a lot. But I am terrible, no actually I am TERRIBLE at mouse movement and so I have never been this bad at any PvP game ever. So in short, I can't comment on any class as the only sure thing here is that I am the worst player in every match. I'll keep trying though.

So?

An integral part of the game requires you to have a third party website up to locate items that would be, at best, very difficult to find.  We're talking having to walk the entire perimeter of every zone, testing for walk through walls/rocks, destructible rocks, and hoverable clickables.

I don't see how that is fun or immersive at all.

You never used a strategy guide for a game?

My general approach to games is to play them as unspoiled as possible, and look at guides for things I am stuck on.

Which is a far cry from "I had been through Proudholme 3x and found almost none of the adventure tome items in it."

Wait till you get to the T2 zones and half the Moko seeds are locked behind Song and Virtue gates.

Is there much functional difference between the Deadeye and Gunsligner (male and female versions)?

Thinking of giving one of them a spin as an alt, but not sure which to pick.

I believe the male one has the Class Inscription that basically locks you to just the pistol, while the Female one is more stance dancey, but are they roughly similar in overall performance?

That's actually a thing in the first zone/continent.  There's at least 2-3 seeds locked behind songs.  One of vines, one of discovery, IIRC.

Deadeye the best non-pistol weapon is the shotgun. For Gunslinger it’s the rifle, For positional DPS engraving Deadeye is back attack while Gunslinger is “side” attack (not front or back). Basically Deadeye is harder to play cause they need to be closer if going for shotgun build and require more positioning (back is harder than side). In Korea Deadeye is basically the least popular class while Gunslinger is 2nd behind Bard.

This could be a spoiler but it deserves to be seen.

At some point in the story, you are presented with a bit of a Dwarf Musical, and your character takes part (unfortunately it's hard to tell in this Youtube video which one is the player character).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1nXKgBb1CA

I have actually watched it in Korean during my play time, and it was even better.

After this dwarf musical, before/during/after which the smith is talking about the awesome weapon he's creating for you... there is no weapon.  You didn't do something wrong.  The game didn't bug out.  Maybe at some point you got a weapon, but not any more.

Also, once you complete Yorn (where the musical takes place) and if you've gotten your stronghold to lvl 22ish, you can research two things which make honing on alts WAY easier (+20% chance of success, -20% honing cost).  Try to wait on ginding up your alts till then

Do you think they deliberately made the engraving system (specifically the part where you are faceting the rocks) to enrage the user, or are they just not very good at game design?

My stronghold is level 23 but I did not notice that. Could you be more specific so I can find it? Also, how does it only affect alts?

It should show up as an option after you hit 802 gear level (the baseline for Yorn Chaos dungeons).   It basically only affects alts because in order to unlock it you effectively have to have to be done with the T1 grind on the first character you hit the milestone with, which is assumed to be your "main" at the time.   Unless you have been running multiple characters through T1 content trying to keep them all honed to the same level, in which case you basically wasted a lot of mats the discounts otherwise would have saved you.

I am iLevel 1000 on my main so I don't know how I haven't noticed this yet. Thanks though.

Don't level alts without it.

News from today: https://www.playlostark.com/en-us/news/articles/amazongames-smilegate-rpg-message-from-the-team

Skip down to "ECONOMY: BOTS & HONING MATERIALS" for the interesting stuff, plus gifts at the bottom:

Interesting changes, but really not enough.

Thing is, we basically JUST got the Argos raid.  One month after "launch".  From what I have been told, they have effectively compressed 3 years worth of content from the game into an ~1 month release window for the US / EU Amazon release.  But they have included NONE of the "catch up" mechanics that exist and were present in the Korean version of the game to compensate.  They literally expect us to do the full T1 and T2 grind ONTOP of the T3 grind, when the T1 and T2 shouldn't even exist, but should instead be a pointless formality you simply breeze through on the way to the actual end game content of T3.

Someone who was a longtime KR player commented on the LA forums that at around the time that about 9 months after Argos released, KR had what is referred to as the 7/7 patch. Basically after they added T3 Raid content, they had a massive drop in player count because the Ilevel requirement to get in to that content (you need to be 1370) + the crazy rate of honeing fails at that Ilevel  + the absolutely punishing grind to advance through T1/2 with alts to feed mains was just too much for people.

For reference, this was a slide from a LA dev conference on the state of the game a month or two before the 7/7 patch hit:
(https://preview.redd.it/wopmullpspn81.jpg?width=1275&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d00c1033800eb90de7853f175fe79e58e1989c27)

The 7/7 patch was basically a "quality of life" relief patch to allow people to get into T3 content easier.  Among the changes was a MASSIVE nerf to T1 and T2 honing bullshit:
(https://dskbmzw3v9vmq.cloudfront.net/optimized/3X/1/6/16d3812ddf11279ac692b706322e8db20b16c4c1_2_411x499.png)

This was apparently suppose to be in the Amazon Release.  It got pulled a bare few weeks before launch.  Pulling that patch basically exists purely to punch people in the dick and to allow Amazon to squeeze as much profit as they can from the whales who will pay anything to get past the artificially enforced T1/2 grind so they can rush T3.

Like, look at that shit.  100% reduced t1 / 2 exp costs + 2 level increases on a successful hone probably effectively cuts your resource requirement to 1/4th of what it currently is.  With zero chance to fail.   I would have been futzing around in T3 content a week ago instead of stuck grinding the last few I levels to unlock the second half of t2 right now.....

It's freaking infuriating knowing that I am being forced to spend multiple days grinding to unlock access to content that basically should be a footnote on an easy path to endgame because Amazon is intentionally attempting to artificially gate access to T3 to milk money out of the people they know will pay to get to it faster.   if you are going to release your game and cram 3 years worth of content into a 1 month release period, the least thing you could do is not force us to grind through the meaningless shit like it was all still "current" content.

Edited to clarify the timeline on the 7/7 patch.

Interesting, didn't know that. Thanks for sharing.

T1 and T2 were barely a grind. If that list had gone in, you'd be done with the game's content outside collectibles in a few weeks.

The bullshit is between 1340 and 1370 and lack of material sources. Everything until 1340 was fine.

Note:
I got to 1340 without alts feeding my main character. It wasn't much grinding, just casual play every day.  Doing all the islands for all those mats made it super easy.

I enjoy the game, but honing can go fuck itself. Between that and no Oceanic servers, I can't see myself getting much further than ilevel 1100. Playing 200 ping on a US server sucks, and the "unofficial" Aussie server gets hit with maintenance in our play time.

I'm hitting the point where I'd rather buy a new game, or spend money on Warframe or Destiny 2 than put money into Lost Ark. Buy skins? Absolutely. I like to contribute if I am enjoying the game. P2W? Nah.