Beginner's Tips and Strategies - Lost Ark Guide - IGN (2024)

Lost Ark can be a little overwhelming when jumping headfirst into its ‘Diablo meets MMO’ style. Here are our beginner’s tips for making a good first impression on Prideholme and beyond. But first, this guide features a special section featuring tips and suggestions from the Lost Ark developers.

Tips and Strategies from Lost Ark Developers

Members of the Lost Ark team at Smilegate have shared insights into what they consider to be some of the most approach and challenging aspects of Lost Ark along with suggestions on builds.

The Easiest and Most Difficult Classes to Play

• Deadeye is one of the most challenging classes due to needing to balance swapping between three weapons, and balancing the skill points properly. Deadeye has to put in a lot more work than any other Classes to get similar results.
• Scrapper is a good class if you don’t want to worry about class skill, but there is a balancing act with the energy types of skills. However, it is fairly intuitive visually to pick up on where you need energy.
• Sorceress is one of the most approachable classes with a wide variety of crowd control skills and focused damage skills. Even the basic attack of the Sorceress does a considerable amount of damage. Sorceress can be really good for PVE, and using the Reverse Gravity skill to tee up for your crowd control abilities like Inferno or Seraphic Hail is a great strategy. For some focused damage or crowd control, you can spec the Lightning Bolt skill in a number of different ways.
• Berserker is fairly approachable as well, with a good set of combos and abilities that tee you up for an excellent amount of damage.

Things to Do Early On

• Side Quests generally grant you more XP and some useful consumables, so they are well worth your time.
• When you unlock sailing, start exploring Islands as soon as you can. Island Questlines are very worthwhile to traverse through, they grant you honing materials that allow for less downtime in the upgrading process.
• Grabbing collectibles gives you great rewards like stat increase potions, which are very important for progression and the tuning of your character.
• Go through Lullaby Island and go to Dreamgull Island for a fun Questline involving Seagulls. It’s a favorite among the QA team.
• Saving battle items, like the grenade item types, is very useful for Raids like Chromanium where utilizing a grenade can make the fight much easier.
• If you don’t understand what an item is used for in battle, consider saving all of the battle items for the late game.
• If you don’t know what you want for Selection Chests hold onto them, there is an Item Storage NPC at most hub areas like Prideholme or Luterra.
• Utilizing the training area to figure out what you like in a class is important.
• PVP and PVE skill are different. Be sure to learn what changes between the modes.

See more tips from the Lost Ark developers on the PVP Guide and Tips page. The following tips and strategies are from IGN's guide team.

Good Crowd Control is a Must

Lost Ark can sometimes throw more than a dozen enemies at you at once, so you should try to hit as many of them as you can. Abilities that knock multiple enemies down, draw them close to you, or stun them are the best for this. Once your enemies are grouped, use skills that strike in a wide area to quickly finish any enemies remaining. In dungeons, this is especially helpful, because you can combine your crowd control abilities with your allies as well, decimating even the largest groups of enemies.

Each class has some variety of crowd control or can strike multiple enemies, but if you're looking for good starter abilities, here are some to keep in mind when you're considering good skills. Be sure to try out newer abilities as well once you level up!

• Berserker - Crime Hazard
• Paladin - Light Shock
• Gunlancer - Rising Gunlance
• Bard - Dissonance
• Sorceress - Lightning Vortex
• Shadowhunter - Spinning Dive
• Deathblade - Wind Cut
• Striker/Wardancer - Sky Shattering Blow
• Scrapper - Dragon Advent
• Soulfist - Venemous Fist
• Sharpshooter - Atomic Arrow
• Deadeye/Gunslinger - Spiral Flame
• Artillerist - Freeze Shell

Save Your Good Potions!

There are two types of potions you’ll receive as you play through the game; they’ll either restore a flat amount of health, or a percentage of your max health. Potions that restore a percentage of your health should be saved for the endgame. Because the flat health potions gradually lose their value as you level up, those should be your preferred healing option, and you’ll constantly get stronger versions the further you get into the story.

Don’t worry about running low, either; the game will give you several dozen potions at a time, and most enemies will quickly melt once you start combining skills and their special abilities. Any leftover potions can be sold to a merchant for a little extra silver, and to clear out inventory space if you’re running out. If you'd like to store your good potions, each town and settlement has a storage container you can use to put away any unneeded items.

Pay Attention to Skill Effects

Though you can usually get away with using your skills whenever they’re off cooldown for most of Lost Ark’s opening hours, you can use your knowledge of the five Skill Effects to further turn the battle in your favor.

Some are straightforward, depending on the positioning; use Front Attacks in front of enemies, and Back Attacks from behind. Both of these skills do more damage if used from the correct position, so quickly re-position before you fire them off for maximum damage.

Stagger and Counter skills are more involved, but also have a better payoff. Stagger skills will deplete the Stagger Gauge, the purple bar below a boss’ health. When emptied, the boss will be stunned and vulnerable to your most damaging skills, a great time to use your Back or Front attacks.

Counter skills, when used as boss turns blue and charges at you, will both stop the attack and deal massive damage. All of the skill effects listed are helpfully labeled as such when you view your Combat Skills, so be sure to read up on your skills to get the most out of them.

Play the Hard Mode Dungeons

Despite the name, Hard Mode dungeons can quickly be blitzed through if you use the matchmaking feature to enter with other players. You’ll get higher quality gear for your efforts, which you can hold onto for longer before needing to upgrade. If you have friends that are at a higher level, remember the game does not sync their level down to yours; if they join you, they can kill most dungeon mobs in seconds while you come along for the ride.

Remember to Hit the Triports!

As you enter new zones, make a mental note of the Triport locations; once active, you can teleport to these for a few silver, enabling you to fast travel from place to place. It’s very easy to miss them if you’re focused on getting through the story as quickly as possible, but thankfully many of them can be found either on the main path or slightly off of it. If you do miss one, don’t leave it behind! It’s better to backtrack a bit and activate than have to teleport back and do it anyway several hours later.

Don’t Be Afraid to Try a New Class

Lost Ark is very friendly when it comes to playing alternate jobs. If you start as a Martial Artist but want to be a Mage down the line, don’t let the idea of leveling again dissuade you. You can skip the long tutorial prologue(at the cost of the one-time Steampunk goggles you get as a reward for sticking through it), and because most of the opening quests are simple ‘arrive and slay x monsters’ affairs, you can skip the dialogue and focus on experimenting with your new class.

If your main job is at max level, you can use Knowledge Transfer- separate missions for your lower-level characters- to send your alts on missions in exchange for gold, though you can still play them during your mission. Lastly, once you’ve finished the main story, you’ll receive a Powerpass- a single-use item that will allow you to play a shortened version of Lost Ark’s main story on a new character. At the end of it, you’ll be rewarded with a geared level 50 character. The game will give you two Powerpasses for free, so if you finish the main quest and want something different, you can choose two other classes for free if you’d like some variety.

General Tips

• You can only collect your daily Bloodstones, a rare resource exclusive to interacting with your guild by actually opening the Guild menu; if you have any spare Silver, you can also donate to both support your Guild and get a few extra bloodstones in return!
• Gold is the only currency you can use to trade with other players. If given the choice between spending your Silver or your Gold, always spend the silver! Save gold for the auction house, instead.
• Your pets give you passive stat boosts, and if you have the Crystalline Aura membership, they can also store your items, retrieve your mail, and even repair your weapons and armor!
• Many of the systems outside of your Combat Level carry over between jobs. Silver, your Roster Level, and even your Stronghold are account-wide to help make playing alternate characters more convenient.