In-Depth LOST ARK Content Guide

Hey guys, my name is Nolph! As more and more of you guys are voting on the poll I posted last week, it's  making it clear to me that most of you are very new to Lost Ark and to the world of Arkesia. Because of that, I decided I'm going to make a series of videos, that will make everything  clear for all of you, in terms of game mechanics, terminologies and end game activites. Of course I already made a video called "the only guide you will need to watch before  release", but this video and the f

ew following this one are going to be more in-detail, and you can look at them as a source for whatever content you might be confused about. We will start everything with this video, and hopefully by the end of it  you will know WHAT each topic is, WHY you should do it, and HOW you can do it. All the information I gathered by either playing Lost Ark myself, or by looking it up on  papunika.com or in Sainton's written guide. HUUUUUGE credit to them and you can find the link for the both of them a

t the top of the description. As always, the video is seperated into segments so you can find the part  that interests you by hovering over the timeline, or by looking at the describtion. If you find the video helpful please give it a like, I've put tons of effort  in it, and also don't forget to subscribe for more Lost Ark content. Our very first topic is going to be: Upgrade Materials and Currencies All of the currencies in Lost Ark are account-wide. The first currency you're introduced to in

Lost Ark is Silver. You get some silver as a quest  reward while you're going through the story. Later on you will be showerd with silver from all  sorts of sources, but certain activities, like skill gem rerolling and gear honing will get rid  of all your silver without you even noticing it. If you find yourself in a situation  where you're lacking in silver, the most reliable sources to obtain some are: -Una's Daily and Weekly Tasks that reward silver -Chaos Dungeons -and Cube Dungeons The nex

t currency you'll get introduced to  is non other than... *drumroll* ... GOLD!! Gold is the king of currencies in Lost  Ark. You can spend gold to buy almost anything in the game, even most Cash Shop items. Gold is also used for Crafting and Honing Gear, for Stronghold upgrades, crafting items and you  can also convert your Gold into Blue Crystals, that you can use to buy certain items directly from the Cash Shop, expand your Warehouse storage and for some other things. You can obtain gold from

a fair few sources, which include one-time gold rewards. Those are  from Masterpieces, which is a collectible item, from certain NPCs at specific Rapport levels and from quests. Your weekly Gold sources are: -Abyssal Dungeons -Abyssal Raids -Legion Raids (only in Tier 3) -and Una's Token Exchange And finally your Daily sources are: -Adventure Islands -Chaos Gates -Chaos Dungeon Portal RNG -Selling Life Skill resources -and selling tradable items from Daily Activities We also have Royal Crystals.

These crystals are the currency in Lost Ark that you can buy for  real money. They can be spent in the cash shop on various in-game items, ranging from Avatars, Mounts, Pets, to character expansion slots, character remake tickets and even Blue Crystals.  The Blue Crystals can be sold to players for Gold. On the Russian Server, this is limited to 10 exchanges a day. Apart from these, another very important  currency is Pirate Coins. There are also region specific coins, those I will  cover in th

e Voyage Missions section. The main source for Pirate Coins are the  Cooperative Voyage missions. You also get some from other content here and there, like Quests,  Adventure Islands, World Bosses and so on. Pirate Coins you can spend on Gear Upgrading  Mats, EXP pots, a fair amount of collectibles, cards and ship related things, like crew  members for specific shpis and also mats used to upgrade your ship. You also have PvP tokens, which you get for doing... PVP obviously. The easiest way to fa

rm them is by spamming 3v3 Arena PVP. You don't get too many as soon as  you finish your games, but I believe you are sent a decent amount at the end of each PvP season. I also believe your overall rank, not your Ranked rank but your general PVP rank also comes into  play on how many Tokens you are awarded with. If you know more about this please  fill us in in the comment section and I'll include it in the pinned comment. These tokens can be spent on Upgrade Mats, XP Potions, Auxiliary Items an

d some special  items locked behind a rank requirement. There's also a Guild Currency which is  called Silmael Bloodstones. You recieve them from donating Silver or Gold to  your guild daily, it's recommended to only do silver, and also get them from participating in GvG and in Guild vs Boss activities, as well as helping in research. You can spend these Bloodstones at the Guild Currency exchange NPC for Upgrade  mats and some other stuff. The guild you are in can level up and research new  purc

hase options, like Cube Dungeon and Boss Rush tickets and other special things  that are hard to obtain from other sources. There's a Rapport related Currency,  which I don't know the official name of, but we currently call it Carnelians. You mainly get these from quests and Una's tasks. They can be spent to purchase different Rapport  Items at specific NPCs in towns, and these items can be gifted to rapport related NPCs to level up your relationship with them. The Final Currency we will discuss

is Peons. Peons are used when buying certain items from the Auction House as an extra currency you need  to pay besides Gold. Not all items require you to pay peons for them, the ones that do are Avatars, Equipment and Jewelry. Pretty much everything else you don't need to pay Peons for. (Please  don't make a pee on these joke.. wait a sencod.. I just did it myself.. goddamnit) You can only buy Peons from the Cash Shop with Blue Crystals, that you  can convert your Gold into. Peons are also som

etimes  given away as event rewards. Also please keep in mind that anything I say  about the Cash Shop and Events can be different for our version of the game. Nothing is set  in stone, until we can see for ourselves. That's all about all the different currencies,  now let's look at the Upgrading Materials. All of these items have their own  Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 variant. Let's start with Fragments. Fragments have pretty  much one purpose, and it's to full up a bar on your equipment that you

want to start  Honing/Enhancing, but you also need to pay some for each attempt, as you're progressing. You can get them as a drop that's directly  added to your Character's storage, or you can get them in bags from certain content. These  bags are usually tradable, but not in all cases. The most reliable sources for Fragments are: Chaos  Dungeons, the weekly resetting exchange merchants (which are Guild-, pvp-, purification fragment-  and pirate coin exchange merchants), Una's tasks and the Au

ction House. However the Auction  House fragments are very expensive, because they come in bags that are hard to come by. You can also get them from other sources like the Tower Dungeon, Ghost Ships,  Adventure Islands, World bosses and so on. Next up we have the Destruction-  and Guardian Stones. These stones are only used when  upgrading your Weapon and Armor. They can be obtained from pretty much the same  sources as Fragments with a few exceptions. The most reliable sources are exactly the s

ame. Next up we have Leap Stones. Leap Stones are used to upgrade all of your gear.  They have 3 tiers that are required for honing Low-, Mid- and High rarity gear respectively. The  tier you can recieve depends on your itemlevel and on the content you are doing. You can get leap stones from: Chaos Dungeons, Guardian Raids, Boss Rush, Tower  Dungeon, the Purification Fragment Merchant, Adventure Islands, World Bosses, and  from the Guild Currency Exchange. And our last Upgrading Material is Fusi

on Stones. These only appear at a certain level of Gear Honing, in the beginning of each tier you  are not required to have any of them. However later on you will need a lot of  them to be able to Upgrade your Gear. They can only be crafted in your Stronghold's  Workshop or purchased from the Auction House. I could also swear I got them in Tier  1 while doing Lumbering on the Russian server, but that could have been some  sort of out dated-, or catch-up mechanic. There's also another item that I

think falls  into this category, which is Auxiliary Items. They are used to improve your success chance while  Honging your Gear, and they have a limited amount of use for each attempt, so you can't just  use hundreds of them to ensure succeeding. It is advised to only use  them on Weapon Enhancing, because Weapon Enhancing attemps are a lot more  expensive in comparison to Armor Enhancing. Their main sources are: Cube Dungeons and Treasure  Maps from Chaos Gates. They can also be obtained from

: the Tower Dungeon, World Bosses, Adventure  Islands, Ghost Ships and Guild Currency- and Purification Fragment Exchange Merchants. Now let me briefly cover Gear Honing in Lost Ark. In a few weeks I'll cover  this topic more thoroughly, and perhaps by then AGS will share a bit more  info about what kind of patch our game will be running on exactly and what  updates they will include for us. The first set of gear you  can actually start honing, you only get from your first few Chaos Dungeons or 

by completing the story of Shushire. That gear is a blue/rare rarity item level 302 gear set with no set bonuses, since it's Chaos Dungeon gear. You can upgrade your gear at the Gear Honing NPCs,  on the minimap they have this little hammer Icon. In order to attempt an upgrade on a piece of  Gear, you first need to fill it with Fragments, and this costs some silver as well. If you were to fail an attempt, you don't need to fill the item with fragments again, until  you actually succeed. However

all the mats, gold, silver and success rate improving items are lost for each attempt. With lower itemlevel gear, relative to the Tier you are currently  in, you start with 100% success chance when honing and it gets progressively lower as the itemlevel increases, and the amount of resources you need for honing also  increases. Early on you only need Fragments, Silver and Destruction- or Guardian Stones, but later on it will start requiring Leap Stones, Gold and Fusion Stones. This process pret

ty much resets when you advance to the next tier. When you start having a lower success rate than 100%, the game introduces a pity system and  completely regardless of that pity, your success chance is also increased with each attempt. With each attempt you start building a "pity meter", and the amount it increases by grows with  each failed attempt. Once this meter hits 100%, your next attempt is guaranteed to succeed, but until that point, the pity meter in itself doesn't affect your odds at a

ll. Next up is Equipment. You have 6 Equipment slots for your  Weapon and Armor, 5 Accessory slots for a Necklace, 2 Earrings and 2 Rings and  a single slot for an Ability Stone. Later in "late T3" a 6th Accessory slot is introduced which is for Bracelets and they have no engravings on them, only some  Combat Stats and a few unique Combat bonuses. You also have Jewels or Skill  Gems starting from Tier 2 and I will also cover Runes in this section. All of your Weapons, Armors and Accessories have

quality on them in the end-game. Higher  quality evidently increases certain properties on each item. What percentage an item has is determined upon being dropped or crafted and can not be changed, unless you  recycle the item into another one with a different quality percentage. That  has 100% chance to succeed, only costs silver, and is only possible with your weapon and  armor. In Tier 3 it is possible to increase the quality of an item, and it's involved with  RNG. Unless you get SUPER SUPE

R lucky, it will cost you tons of gold to get an item to  a high quality percentage, like 90 or above. Quality is by far most  important on your Weapon and also Accessories. The damage difference between a low quality percentage Weapon and a high quality percentage one can be up to 15%, which is a lot. Starting from Tier 3, all Weapon and Armor items increase the levels of random Tripods  of random Skills. These Tripod levels can be transfered to different gear for silver. The higher level the e

ffect increases the Tripods level by, the lower the chance is to succeed  with the transfer. You can double the odds of transfering with the use of Tripod Powders. After the transfer attempt, the item you were transfering from is destroyed. Crafted Gear Sets also have Set Bonuses. To craft a Gear Set, you need to obtain untradable  items, that are rewards for completing Abyssal Dungeons, Abyssal Raids and Legion Raids. The quality on Jewelry is also important. Each Jewelry item has Base Stats an

d Additional  Stats. Base stats differ from Tier and Rarity, and quality only affects Additional stats. The Additional stats are random on each piece of Jewelry, Necklaces have 2 Additional  stats, Rings and Earrings have only one, and these stats are not rerollable. Jewelry are the only source to directly increase a Combat Stat of your liking, but they also  increase with certain permanent upgrades. So if you're looking to increase a specific stat, like swiftness or crit, the only way is by swa

pping your Jewelry. Jewelry also have random Engravings on them, higher rarities can have higher amounts of  Engraving points. Class Engravings can also roll on Jewelry, but only of that class that got the jewelry as a drop. One important thing to remember when picking  your Rings and Earrings, is that they each need to have different names. You can not equip  two Rings or Earrings that have the same name. Ability Stones increase your max HP and have  3 Engravings on them. 2 are positive and 1 i

s negative. Before you can equip an ability  stone, you need to completely finish cutting it, and that will determine the points of the  Engravings on the stone. Higher Rarity Stones have more Engraving point slots on them, up  to 10 on artifact rarity, for each engraving. Ability stones are only  tradable before being cut. The most reliable sources for them are:  Chaos Dungeons and Guardian raids, but they drop from a number of sources. When you salvage  Ability Stones, you get fragments from t

hem, and certain amounts of fragments can be turned  back into a Stone with new random Engravings. Jewels are not to be confused with Jewelry,  and I'll be refering to them as Gems. Gems are introduced in Tier 2 and you will swap  your Tier 2 gems once you advance Tier 3. There are two types of gems, Cooldown Gems  and Damage Gems. Each Cooldown Gem decreases the cooldown time on a certain ability, and each  Damage Gem increases the damage of an ability. What ability a Gem supports is randomized

on drop  and when upgrading, but they can be rerolled for silver. If you have a Gem that supports the  ability of a different class from yours, you can reroll it, and it will  support one of your abilities. These gems range from level 1 to level 10.  You will start upgrading them from level 1, and to upgrade them, you need to combine 3 of the  same level. So 3 level 1 gems make 1 level 2 gem, 3 level 2 gems make 1 level 3 gem and this  goes on, it's a pretty long process. You can also buy them

from the auction  house, from other players, for gold. When you combine 3 gems, they can be either damage or cooldown gems, it doesn't matter, the outcome will be completely random in that  regard. You can have both a cooldown and a damage gem support the same skill, but 2 cooldown or 2 damage gems for the same skill do not stack. You can also automate the combining up  to whatever level you set the system to. You can also equpip your skills with runes.  They each have unique effects, like apply

ing a bleed with the skill, giving you a haste effect,  increasing certain properties of your skills, getting a shield on using the skill and so on.  These only really come into play in Tier 3, and at that point they become actually pretty important  to get. They also exist in Tier 1 and Tier 2, but the best ones only  become available in Tier 3. You can obtain them from all sorts of  content, like World Bosses, Collectibles, Guardian Raids, Rapport, Stronghold  Merchants, and from other sources

. I will cover these in detail, when we're  closer to the realease of Tier 3. These 2 were by far the most complicated topics  of the video, from here on, the rest is going to be pretty simple, and as I said in the beginning,  each topic that's important, and has more to it, I will cover in a seperate  video before the release. Next up is Character Stats. Your Character has three different types of stats. Basic Stats, Combat Stats and Virtues. Your Basic Stats are a combination of Strength, Dext

erity, Intellect and Vitalty. What determines  your Basic Stats is your Gear including Jewelry, your Expedition (or Account) Level, and the Permanent Stat increasing Potions you have obtained throughout your jurney. The combination  of all that decides your Attack Power and Max HP. Your Combat Stats are: Crit, Specialization,  Domination, Swiftness, Endurance and Expertise. Knowing what these stats do and what your  class benefits form the most is crucial. Some classes with certain builds benefi

t  so much from Specialization for example, that almost any other stat on them is pretty much wasted. The only thing that determines your Combat Stats are your Jewelry, and  some minor permanent upgrades from, for example, collecting card sets. This is what each Combat Stat does: -Crit: increases your crit chance -Specialization: Enhances your class's identity properties, like dmg, transformation  time and also your awakening damage -Domination: increases your  damage dealt to cc-ed enemies -Swi

ftness: increases your  attack speed and movement speed, and also decreases your cooldown times -Endurance: increases your physical and magical defense and your shields and  heals ( but noone really uses this, supports go for spec. and swiftness ) -and lastly Experties: increases the duration of your crowd controll effects, decreases the  duration of crowd controll effects inflicted on you, and increases your stagger damage ( noone really uses this either, not even Destroyers, Crit and Spec  are

just overall better stats ) And finally Virtues are technically your Rapport  stats. Some NPCs require you to have certain amounts of Virtue stats to be able to do their  rapport quests or to keep advancing with their rapport levels. You can increase your Virtues  by doing quests, filling up your Adventure book, obtaining titles, equipping titels, through  collectibles, as Una's task reputaion rewards, completing achivements and also by  equipping Avatars. Some of these, you get in the form of

potions, that are  automatically consumed upon acquisition. Next up is Cards. This is also a topic that deserves a seperate video from me in the near  future, so I will keep it short in this one. Cards are an important part of the game, but  they only really come into play in Tier 3, so by then it's smart to have already gathered  a good amount and a good variety of them. Each card is part of a Set, and each set  has unique effects. For the effect to be active you need to have equipped the cards

.  You can equip up to 6 cards at once. Each card set's effect has up to 30 levels. You need to reach certain levels to get certain effets. By default each card gives you  one level for the set, but they can be upgraded, if you have multiple copys of the same card. They can be upgraded 5 times, and each level increases the effect by 1 level.  Upgrading from level 0 to level 1 needs you to have 1 extra card, upgrading  from level 1 to level 2 needs 2 extra cards, level 3 needs 3, level 4 needs 4

and level  5 needs 5 copies of the same card. So to upgrade a card to the max level, you  need 16 copies of that card in total. One thing to keep in mind, is that  each effect is locked behind a certain number of cards that you must equip. Let's look at the probably most sought after card set, the crit chance card set as an example.  You need to reach 12 points for the extra 7% crit chance from the set, as well as 6 equipped cards from the set. This means, that even though technically 2 level 5

cards give you 12 points,  that won't give you the crit chance effect, because you also need to equip  all 6 of the cards from that set. Upgrading cards costs silver, and  also requires Card XP. There are cards dropped from certain content, that give  you Card XP, and when you use them, their XP gets stored inside your Cards Interface. If you don't know what cards to upgrade, it is a smart thing to do, to  hold onto your stored Card XP. You can obtain some important cards  through Rapport, Achie

vements, Adventure Book and Collectibles like  Masterpieces. Some other cards you can also buy from travelling merchant in specific regions. (You can also target farm Guardian cards from Guardian Raids.) Other than this, you can only rely on RNG from opening Random  Card Books, but selection books also exist, where you can pick what card you want out of the  book. Again, if you don't know what to pick, the smartest thing to do is to  put it in your storage for now. You can obtain Books that give

Cards from all  of the Abyssal Dungeons, from Abyssal Raids, Challange Abyssal Dungeons, Legion Raids,  Tower Dungeons, Adventure Islands, Events, and from some other sources. Collecting different Card Sets also permanently increases some of your Base- and  Combat Stats without having to equip them, and all of your Cards and Card Sets are server-wide. Now let's talk about Engravings. Engravings are passive effects applied  to your Character through Jewelry, Ability Stones and Engraving Books. A

bility Stones are part of your equipment and they each have 2 positive  and 1 negative Engravings on them. When you equip an Ability Stone, the Engraving  points on it are applied to your Character. Jewelry are also part of your equipment  and they each have random amounts of random Engravings on them. The possible amount  changes with different rarities of the Jewelry. Jewelry can also have class specific Engravings  on them, however Ability Stones can not. By reading Engraving Books, you can l

earn  any positive Engraving in the game. There are 4 Rarities of Each engraving book:  Common (Level 1/Green), Rare (Level 2/Blue), Epic (Level 3/Purple) and Legendary (Level 4/Orange) To learn an Engraving, you first need to read 20 Level 1 Engraving books of that specific  Engraving. For Level 2, you need to have read the 20 Level 1 varient books, and 20 Level 2 books. Same goes for Level 3 and Level 4. Each level is equal to 3 points of the  Engraving of the books you read. That means Level

1 is equal to 3 points, level 2 is 6  points, level 3 is 9 and level 4 is 12 points. Just by reading the books, you don't get the  Engraving effect, you also need to apply it to your Character in order for it to work. Combining these 3 things (Ability Stones, Jewelry and Engraving Books) you can have  multiple Engraving Effects on your Character, raising it's power drastically. Every Engraving in Lost Ark has 3 Levels to them. The level increases with every  5th point on the Engraving from any s

ource up to 15 points, which gives you the level 3 effect. Each class has it's own Class Engravings, and by using one or the other, the feel and the playstyle  of the class can be significantly different. You can obtain Engraving Books from: Chaos  Dungeons, Challenge and normal Guardian Raids, Abyssal Dungeons, Abyssal Raids,  Legion Raids, Tower Dungeon First Clear, Cube Dungeons, Ghost Ships, from the Auction House and some other one-time completion stuff, like Island quests and  maybe frome

the Purification Fragment Merchant, but I'm not sure if it will be  in our version at the start. Next up is Battle Items and Potions. I'm not going to be listing every single one of them, because there are a lot,  and pretty much all of them have their own uses. Bombs also fall in this category. Battle items include items like Signale Flares, that are used inside Guardian Raids, to locate  where the guardian currently is, and also items like an Hourglass that works pretty much the same as Zhonya

's Hourglass from League of Legends. It makes you go invincible for a brief  moment, allowing you to avoid incoming damage or some mechanics. Most of these items have very specific situations in which they should be used, so saving any battle items you have  in your posession is a good idea, until you think you could make some use of them. Bombs are very similar in this regard. There are 12 different bombs in total. Elemental bombs  can help you deal damage or debuff targets, Whirlwind Bombs can

help with  Impairment boss Phases, and so on. Again, these should be saved, for when you know  how to utilize them properly, otherwise you're literally throwing away gold. And finally Potions. In Lost Ark we have two types of healing  Potions, and a few buff potions. One of the healing Potions restores a fixed amount  of HP over time, and as you progress towards later parts of the game, new ones that restore more HP  will keep appearing all the time, so these you can pretty much drink all you w

ant, you can always  buy more for Silver in Cities, and you also get a lot of them dropped in the open world. These  can only be used while doing casual content. The other HP restoring Potions instantly restore a  set percentage of your HP. The green Potion is the lowest tier, it restores 30% of your max HP, the  blue is the middle tier, it restores 45% max HP, and the highest tier is the purple one,  it restores 60% max HP. In harder content, like Abyssal Dungeons, these are the only  healing P

otions you can actually use. And finally we have Buff Potions. These include Potions like the Adropin Potion that gives an immense damage and attackspeed boost for  a short period, Cleansing Potions (which i don't know the official name for) that removes certain negative effects from your character, and Awakening Potions that instantly  refill your Identity Gauge. Every single one of these Items, all Battle Items,  Bombs and Potions, you can craft inside your Stronghold after Researching their r

ecipe, and you  craft them using Lifeskill resources and gold. You can also make them in the form of selection  boxes later on by doing your Lifeskills on your Stronghold Island, but those boxes and the  items that they contain will be untradable. And you may also buy them from other  players through the Auction House. Now we can finally start talking about some  PVE stuff. Our next topic is Chaos Dungeons. Chaos Dungeons are your casual mobbing dungeons,  that give great rewards for how long it

takes to complete them. You can run 2 Chaos Dungeons  each day for full loot, and you can keep running them for extra rewards, like  Purification Fragments, that can be spent at the Purification Fragment Merchant for even  more Upgrade Mats, Jewelry and Auxiliary items. These purchases at the merchant are  limited, so you can't infinitely grind them, but they reset each week on reset day. You have different level Chaos Dungeons that give more and better rewards, the higher  their Item Level req

uirement is for them. You also get your first set of Gear in  Chaos Dungeons for each Rarity and Tier. Any extra Gear you get, you can  just salvage for more Upgrade Mats. This only ever changes from  Tier 3 Legendary equipment, from that point you only get shattered items  that only exist for Tripod Level Transportation or to be Salvaged into Upgrade Mats. In order to advance from that point, you need to craft one of the Tier  3 Legendary Abyssal Raid sets. Each Chaos Dungeon consists of  3 sta

ges. In the first stage you only need to kill trashmobs. In the second  stage, you also need to kill some minibosses and then a big boss. And in the third stage you need to kill trashmobs until a crystal appears, which you need to destroy.  Upon doing so, a miniboss appears, that you kill and keep repeating this  process, until you finish the dungeon. The most efficient way of doing a Chaos  Dungeon is only killing as many mobs, as it takes for a portal to appear. This  way you can kill more min

iboss enemies, which are guaranteed to drop you an item. Sometimes you can get lucky on the second stage, and instead of the usual blue/purpleish portal a  golden or a red portal might appear. These portals take you to a seperate stage and you will be sent to the third stage after completing them. Inside the golden portal you need to kill a  non-agressive enemy, that will drop silver and gold. And inside the red portal,  you will need to fight a boss enemy, that will give you a reasonable amount

of rewards,  including even more gold than the golden portals. There are small blue orbs placed around  each stage inside Chaos Dungeons, that increase your movementspeed when you  run through them. When a miniboss enemy dies, they decrease your currently ongoing cooldowns. When you destroy a crystal in stage three, they drop a strength eather, that increases  your combat attributes drastically for a short period. The combination of these mechanics make completing Chaos Dungeons a smooth and ac

tually fun experience. You usually want to have  a different skillset for Chaos Dungeons, with abilities that make grouping  up mobs and killing them easier. If you don't complete your daily Chaos  Dungeons, than they will be stored as Rest bonus. One missed run equals to 10  points of Rest, and if you have at least 20 points stored, those 20 points will be consumed to give you more rewards when you complete a Chaos Dungeon the next time. This makes  it so even if you can't play for a day or two

, you don't need to worry too much about missing out on potential loot. Chaos Dungeons can be ran solo or  in groups of, up to, 4 players. Most people do them solo. You can run them for full  loot twice a day on every character you have, and most of the loot you  get here is tradable. Next up is Guardian Raids. If you've every played any Monster Hunter games, you might see some similarities between  those games and Guardian Raids. Just like Chaos Dungeons, you can run two  Guardian runs each day

for full loot, on all your characters, but you can also do  more, if you want to farm card or rune drops. Also same as Chaos Dungeons, if you don't  do your daily Guardian Raids for a few days, you will accumulate some Rest bonus. Upon defeating a Guardian, you can harvest it's soul for loot, and if you  have at least 20 Rest bonus stored, you can harvest two souls instead of only one. So what you need to do inside of a Guardian Raid, is you need to locate the Guardian you are  huting and then

defeat them. Some have more complicated mechanics, others not really. They start getting harder towards the end of each Tier. Almost all of them are  soloable on Item Level, but usually they are a lot easier to do in groups of 4,  hence why most players do them in groups. Each and every one of the Guardians  have cool and unique desings and mechanics. We have Guardians that look  like animals, wyverns, magical creatures, and we even have Harambe. Rest in peace.. Guardian Raid rewards include: Je

welry, Ability Stones, Engraving Books, specific Runes  and some Upgrade Mats but mainly Leap Stones. It's a good idea to have Signal Flares on you when  doing Guardian Raids, they will help locate the Guardian quickly when they move locations. Let me now explain the Counter and other Combat Mechanics. Here we'll discuss how the Counter Mechanic works, and also Back Attack,  Head Attack, Stagger and Weakpoint damage types. I will start with Countering. Each and every class  has at least one or t

wo abilities that are able to land a Counter Attack. For that to happen, you  need an enemy that can actually be countered, like certain boss enemies and Guardians. To check which of your abilities are able to land a counter atack, check  their tooltips in the skills menu. Whenever an enemy starts  glowing with this blue color, it means they are about to launch an attack that  can be countered with your counter skills. You can only land the counter from in front of the enemy, making this a high

risk high reward mechanic. Upon a successful counter, the enemy will not move  for a few seconds, giving you an opening to use your burst or your awakening. There are some raid mechanics that require you to know how to counter, so getting used to this mechanic and your counter  skills will be essential in the long run. Next up is Back Attack. Some skills and basic attacks can deal Back Attack damage, but not all  of them. You can check a skill's tooltip, to see if it can deal Back Attack damage.

Back attacks deal 5% extra damage and have 10% increased crit chance. The bonus damage  can be increased up to +25% damage with the use of a specific Engraving. Head attack works similarly, but evidently you need to attack the enemy  from the front. To see what skills can deal Head Attack damage, check your skill's tooltip. Head attacks deal 20% extra damage and have 10% increased neutralization Damage. The  onus damage can be increased by up to +25% extra damage, making it a total  of 45% extr

a damage on Head Attacks. Next we have Stagger. Skills have different levels of Stagger ranging from level 1 to level 5. Some classes have more  Stagger damage on their abilities than others. Stagger level determines how much exhaustion your  skill causes to the tartget. There are a lot of Stagger/impairment mechanis in raids, with a small  window to deal enough Stagger damage, so it's essential to understand which of your  abilities deal good Stagger damage. And lastly we have Weak Point Damage

. Some of the boss enemys in Lost Ark, mostly Guardians, have a bodypart which  can be dealt Weak Point damage to. To be able to deal Weak Point damage to the  targets bodypart, you need to first knock the enemy down, and a Crosshair will  appear on their destroyable bodypart. You need to deal a set amount of Weak Point  damage to it before it's destroyed and not all classes are able to do that. By succesfully destroying a bodypart, you will make the encounter easier to  complete. Though not all

classes can deal a lot of Weak Point damage, they can  still bring a Destruction Bomb, that will help to destroy the bodypart, if it's  thrown when the crosshair appears. Also Whirlwind Bombs will help to knock  the enemy down at the right time. Next up we have Party Buffs, also  refered to as Party Synergies. Each and every class has at least one ability,  that has a Tripod for it that will help the entire party in some way. When doing group content, you  are pretty much expected to be using t

his skill with that particular tripod on it. Some of them  have long cooldown times, so they should be timed more precisely, others have lower cooldown  times, so you can spam it to your likings. These Party Buffs work like debuffing your  target so they take more damage from all sources, but they can also debuff the target so they have  an increased chance to recieve a critical strike. They can also make the target take more  Head- or Back attack Damage. There are also a few that just directly

increas the Attack  Power or Attack Speed of Party Memebers. Utilizing these buffs in a smart way can  make completing content significantly easier. This is a screenshot from Saintone's written Lost  Ark guide of a list of each class's Party buff, so you can pause and look at your class's  Synergies. You can find a link to his guide at the top of the describtion. I also recommend checking  out his twitch stream at twitch.tv/saintone, he's a very knowledgeable and helpful person,  and his streams

are also mega cozy. Our next topic is Una's Daily and Weekly Tasks. You can open this interface by pressing Alt+J on your keyboard. Here you can see a list of  your availabe Daily Tasks, and also how many Mission Points you have accumulated this week. At the top you can switch between the tabs allowing you to look at your Weekly Tasks as well  as your Reputation Status and Guild Requests. You can complete 3 Daily Tasks each day, on each  of your characters, for their specific rewards, 2 Mission

Points for each Daily Task  and to increase your Reputation. You're able to unlock new Daily Tasks by  completing certain side- and Island quests, and some will have more unique rewards,  especially if you max out their Reputation. Unless you are looking to increase a specific  Task's reputation, I'd advise you to do the Tasks that give Leap Stones as a reward. You can do 3 Weekly Tasks each week, on each of your characters as well. Some  of them take a few days to complete, others can be done

in a few minutes. Doing a Weekly Task gives you 7 Mission Points. If you have enough Mission Points, you can  withdraw your Una's Tokens that can be exchanged for Gold Pouches and Caskets at an NPC. I'd advise  to only buy the highest tier of them, because you can get lucky and recieve a nice  extra amount of gold as an item drop that you can right click to consume it as Gold. Every Daily Task has it's own Reputation meter. For each completion of the Task, your reputation  on that Task will incr

ease by 10. However, this can only happen once a day, which means you can't spam the same Task on all of your Characters to rush certain Reputation  rewards. These rewards include Island Tokens, tons of Silver, Pirate Coins, Rapport items, Permanent Stat increase potions, and later, in Tier 2 and Tier 3, even Skillpoint Potions. Next up we have Daily Adventure Islands. Every day there are three Adventure Islands  that give special rewards. These emerge from the depths of the Seas at specific  ti

mes, which you can check out at your Procyon's Eye Compass just under your minimap. Here you will also see what rewards each Island gives, and sometimes they can even give gold, so  these are very nice to do. They require you to do various activities and some are actually pretty fun or chill to do. If the Adventure Island gives gold, the amount depends on your Item  Level, and it ranges between 80-1000. You can also get other rewards, like:  upgarde mats, collectibles, pirate coins, Island Token

s and so on. Our next topic is Raiding. For me, this is the most fun part of this  game, and it's the main reason I will be playing it for most likely a very long time. If you include Abyssal Dungeons, then there are 3 different types of Raids in Lost Ark.  Abyssal Dungeon, Abyssal Raids and Legion Raids. Currently, all Raids are either  4 or 8 man Raids, because Kaishur has been removed, along with Mystic, a few  months ago for rebalancing, and Kaishur's Raid was the only 16 man Raid in the gam

e. Every single one of these raids include super cool and unique mechanics that you can learn by trial  and error or by looking up guides. I'm not going to spoil any mechanics for you in this video, but in the future I will do a walkthrough for each and every Raid in the game. There are 2 ways to get into a Raid. You either walk up to their specific  structure, and queue up for a group, or you can use the Party Finder that you can  also open from the same menu, or by clicking on the Party Finder

Icon under your minimap. Here  you can select what Raid you'd like to partake in and see if there's a group looking for a Player.  You can also create your own group and pick your ideal Party members from the Players  who applied for your Party. The Party Finder lets you do raids with players from  different servers inside your region. In this case region being  EU or NA East or NA West. Inside these Raids there are Workshop Stations,  where you can change your current Skill Setup, refill your

Potions and Battle Items  as well as your Awakening Charges. If you have the Pet Functions avaliable, you can  also Repair your gear here, if you forgot to do it beforehand. That only costs Silver. Starting off only the Players who have played before, and the Players who looked up  guides will understand certain Raid mechanics, but in my opinion you shouldn't be  expected to be looking up anything, and you should be allowed to  partake in pub Raids blindly, but maybe disclose that it's your firs

t time, or  look for Party members with the same experience in the game as you. Some Raids will take a fair few attempts even if you know every single mechanic, and that's just how it is, no need to  sweat about it, just make sure you have fun. Abyssal Dungeons are small scale Raids that  can be completed in a pretty short time, Abyssal Raids are a bit harder to complete,  and Legion Raids require you to utilize everything you can in oreder to complete them successfuly. In Tier 1 currently only

Abyssal Dungeons  exist, because the Tier 1 Abyssal Raid, along with the Tier 2 one has recently been  removed from the game for rebalancing. And Legion Raids only exist in Tier 3. All of these Raids give you Gold, Jewelry, Engraving Books and Gear Set crafting Mats.  Some of them also include phases with different Item Level requirements and different rewards. You can run each Raid once a week for full loot, on all of your characters. Next up is Challenge Abyssal Dungeons and Challenge Guardian

Raids. These require a specific Item Level to be accessible. They are pretty much  the exact same as their normal counterparts, except that they are equalized content. That means your Gear Enhancements, Cards, Skill Gems and Tripod Levels don't  work here, but your Engravings do. This Challenge content gives very special rewards,  ranging from Upgrade Mats and Accessories, to Class Engraving Book Selection  Boxes and Legendary Card Packs. You can do every Challange Guardian  once a week on all

Characters, and every Challange Abyssal Dungeon once a week,  and only on one Character on your account. Some Legion Raids also have a Challenge mode, and  they are ridiculously difficult, but you get an awsome reward for completing them in the form of  a title that you can equip next to your name, which showcases that you were able to  do that content. This title even has a unique little icon next to it, and I just  love stuff like this in video games, when you can actually show off your achiev

ements. Let me now briefly cover Life Skills in Lost Ark. This is also a topic that I will  cover more deeply in a few weeks, so if you're watching this after the release,  I most likely already have that video out. Life Skills are exactly what  you might think they are. There are 6 different Life Skills in Lost Ark. Each Life Skill requires you to have their specific tool equipped to be able to do the  activity. These Tools have different rarities and bonuses on them. One nice trick  you can do

is to buy a lot of green tools, until you get one of each  that has knock back immunity on it. That will help you do your stuff without  mobs being able to cancel your actions. As you're using a tool, it will lose it's  durability and eventually you will need to repair it, lowering it's max durability every  time. Green tools are easy to replace, but later on you might create or invest into higher tier  tools, and they also lose max durability. However an item exists that lets you re-sharpen yo

ur tools  increasing it's max durability back up to 100%. These items you can craft in your Stronghold  from Lumbering and Archeology resources. Herbalism is your main Life Skill for crafting  Potions and Battle Items. Lumbering and Mining are most used for Stronghold upgrades and the crafting  of Stronghold Structures that you can place on your Island. Hunting and Fishing are used to  create temporary stat increasing foods. And lastly Archeology is used to create Life Skill  tools, Archeology m

aps and Fusion Stones. Note that there is a specific recipe  for Fusion Stones for each Life Skill. Also all Life Skills have more useses  to them than what I just told you, and I will cover everything in a seperate video. All the resources you get from doing open world Life Skills are tradable, and by doing  them whenever you have Life Skill energy, you can make a decent amount of Gold. In order to be able to do Life Skills, you need Life Skill energy, which  you spend with each action you do.

This energy accumulates back to full over time  and takes about 2 days to completely replenish. Some Cash Shop items exist, that refill  some of your Life Skill energy and boost how many resources you get, and they are also  sometimes given away as Event Rewards. Again, anything I talk about related to the Cash Shop is not set in stone at the moment, a lot can be different  in our version from Eastern versions. You can also level up your Life Skills, and  at certain levels you unlock new mechani

cs, abilities, resources and passive bonuses. Our next topic is Voyage Missions. This is the main activity you can do to obtain  Pirate Coins, and also apart from Chests, you can only obtain region specific Coins from  doing the Voyage Mission of each specific region. These region specific coins are the only currency  you can pay with for a few things, like very specific Ship Upgrade Mats, so it is wise to save  up some of each. You can also use these Coins to get more Pirate Coins. Most major p

orts have a scheduled Cooperative Voyage Mission near them, that  players can complete together for the rewards. These activities are very simple  and easy to do, and can be done however many times you can be bothered  to do them, BUT they are scheduled, so you need to pay attention to your  callendar to see when they are available. If you are using a Ship skin, make sure  it has the base ship functions available, because some skins disable those, and  you need them for these activities. You can

also upgrade your ship, for a smoother  experience, and later Missions will require you to have an upgraded ship in the first place. Upgrading your first ship, the Estoc, to level 5 is pretty easy and cheap, and it gives you more  Durability, Resistances and Speed while Sailing. You can also get Keys from doing Voyage Missions,  which can be used up inside of Harmony Gates which is an activity very similar to Voyage Missions.  They are also only available at certain times and you need a key to

get any rewards. This can  reward you with decent amounts of gold. The next topic is Ghost Ships. Ghost Ships are only available at specific days, at specific times and at specific locations.  You can see when they will appear inside your Procyon's Eye Compass under your minimap. You can only recieve rewards from Ghost Ships once a week. When you aboard a Ghost Ship, you will be heavily slowed down, unless you used a Ghost Ship yourself  to sail to it, and in that case you actually get a big sta

t boost while you're onboard. To get the Ghost Ship, I believe you need get max reputation on the Ghost Ship  Daily Task, and if you know this for sure, please confirm this in the comments, and  I'll include it in the pinned comment. To be able to use the Ghost Ship  you also need at least one crew member that can board the Ship as well. On the actual Ghost Ship, you need to defeat the captain of the ship to get the rewards. The rewards you get, are: Upgrade Fragments, Destruction- and Guardian

Stones,  Auxiliary items and Engraving Books. Next up we have Cube Dungeons. To be able to enter a Cube Dungeon, you need to first obtain a ticket from Chaos  Dungeons. Normal and Hard mode require different tickets, and there's also a different  ticket for Each Tier's Cube Dungeons. You can also get tickets from the Guild  Currency Exchange Merchant, if your Guild has already done the required research on it. Inside the Cube Dungeons you are faced with different challanges each time, and you  a

lso get a random effect in each stage. These effects can either be positive or negative.  A few challanges can be rather difficult on Item Level, but if you're overgeared, nothing  should be able to make you have any problems. Only maybe if you are bad at dodging  explosions, or if you have a high ping. These can be done both solo or in a group of up to  4 players. If you have a lot of tickets saved up, you can use 3 at a time, for triple the loot, but  also triple the risk of losing all your ti

ckets by failing early. As you're completing stages, you get points, and at certain amounts of  Points, your rewards are increased. This caps at 5000 points, when you get the Diamond box. Your cube dungeon run ends as soon as you die. The rewards you get for completing Cube  Dungeons are: a reasonable amount of Silver, Auxiliary items, Masterpieces,  Engraving books and XP Cards. Next up is the Tower Dungeon. The Tower Dungeon has a wide range of rewards, including one-time rewards, like Engravi

ng  Books, Skillpoint Potions, Collectibles, Card Packs and also Upgrade Mats. There's a Tower Dungeon for Tier 1 and Tier 2 and they are replaced in Tier 3 by  this Bridge Dungeon called the Igharama ridge. Tower Dungeons make you complete each floor, all  50 of them, one by one, and every 5th floor is locked behind a higher and higher Item Level  requirement. However with the Igharama ridge you can choose a level you'd like to attempt,  and if you complete it succesfully, you get all the rewar

ds up to that level. That dungeons  is pretty much a DPS check at the moment. The Tower Dungeon faces you with different  challanges on every floor and the rewards make it really worth it to complete each floor. One smart thing you can do, is to do each floor on one of your alts  first, to unlock all the one-time rewards, because your next Character that completes  the same floors recieves more Upgrade Mats instead of those one-time rewards. This is  something I would have never thought about wi

thout reading Saintone's guide. You can find the  link to that on the top of the describtion. Let's talk a bit about Boss Rush in Lost Ark. You also need to obtain a ticket before entering Boss Rush, just like Cube Dungeons, and  you can only get tickets reliably as drops inside Chaos Dungeons, or by buying  them at the Guild Currency Exchange, if your Guild has done the research on it. Boss  Rush is exactly what you might expect it is. You need to defeat waves of bosses, and with each  wave com

pleted, you get increased rewards. Currently Boss Rush only exists in Tier 2 and  Tier 3, but it used to also exist in Tier 1. The main rewards you are looking at  from doing Boss Rush are: Leap Stones, Skill Gems and XP Cards. The next topic is Chaos Gates. Chaos Gates only open on specific days,  and they can only be completed once a day. They also appear in specific locations, and  you can check it out inside your Procyon's Eye Compass under your minimap. These Gates are done in masses, and i

t's easy content, you just need to  deal damage and make sure not to die. The main reward you're looking at is the Treasure  maps you get from completing Chaos Gates, as well as the Frenzy Rune, which is an RNG drop. Legendary and Artifact Treasure maps give gold when completed. People usually do them in  groups of 4, with each person having a map, so you all can get 4x the rewards. You can right click on a Treasure map in your inventory, to locate the portal  that leads to a Dungeon which gives

Gold on completion. You also get some Upgrade  Mats, Skill Gems and some other stuff from Treasure Maps. When doing Chaos Gates, since they are done in a mass group of players, it's a good idea  to turn off skill effects for other players. Next I will cover World Bosses. World Bosses are similar to Chaos Gates in the sense of only being available  at specific days and specific times. To see what World Bosses are available when, take a look at your Procyon's Eye Compass under your minimap. You c

an also only  recieve loot from World Bosses once a day. Most of them are pretty easy to kill, and  usually at lest a few people show up for them, if they have good rewards. They each have  specific Item Level requirements for you to be able to deal damage to them, and if you can't deal any damage, you don't get any rewards. Each World  boss also appears in a specific location. Since overgeared players would just oneshot these  bosses as soon as they spawn, Smile Gate made it so they have a big

damage reduction on them when  they spawn, that gradually decreases with time. Even with this, usually it only  takes a minute or two to kill these, but early on with everyone being on Item  Level it might be a different scenario. World Bosses give Upgrade Mats as rewards  like Destruction- and Guardian Stones, XP Cards, Collectibles and in some cases some  very specific rewards. Most of these you want to kill for Adventure Book completion and the special rewards and collectibles they can drop.

The next topic is your personal Stronghold. Your Stronghold is basically your own  little Island, that you can customize to your likings by buying and crafting  different structures. Later down the line you will be able to create minigames inside your Stronghold and customize it even more deeply, which even though doesn't excite me too much,  I still find it amazing, and I can't wait to see what themes people come up with. Apart from customizing, your Stonghold has lots of practical uses, includ

ing crafting  Battle Items, Potions and all kinds of stuff, being able to dispatch Stronghold  specific crew members and your pets on expeditions for a bunch of rewards,  having different merchants that can visit your Stronghold and sell you some very  special stuff, being able to AFK train your level 50+ characters up to the level of your highest level character minus 1 and even more great features that I will go  over in a seperate video in the coming weeks. Most of the content for your Strong

hold  is locked behing research that can take a lot of time, I believe even up  to 20 Hours on specific researches, but of course not all of them take that long. Researching costs you basic Logging and Mining resources and of course gold. In order to visit your Stronhold, you need to play the Song of Heart and Home, which  you can obtain by completing the quest in Luterra Castle, that unlock the Stronghold. The next topic is Rapport Actions. Some NPCs you can make friends with. You may do so  by

performing specific Emotes and Songs they like, doing Rapport quests they give you at  certain points, and by giving them gifts. You can unlock a number of Emotes and  Songs from all sorts of content. You can find a guide for them on papunika.com. Every single day you can perform a total of 5 emotes and 5 songs for NPCs, and  the Crystalline Aura subscribtion gives you +1 use for both of the actions. The gifts you can give to NPCs have different rarities, and if you don't have  someone specific

you want to get to a high level of friendship, it's smart  to not use these gifts at all, until you do have someone you really want to  start working on, because these gifts give a significant boost to your progression. NPCs can have up to five levels of friendship, each level giving specific rewards  differing from NPC to NPC. You can get lots of Silver, Gold,  Engraving Books, Collectibles, Permanent Stat increasing Potions, Cards and  some other cool stuff from NPCs with Rapport. You can che

ck out all the rewards  and befriendable NPCs ingame, by pressing Alt+N on your keyboard. Our second to last topic is Collectibles. There are 8 different types of  Collectibles in Lost Ark currently: -Island Tokens -Mokoko Seeds -Giant's Hearts -Masterpieces -Ignia Tokens -Sea Bounty -World Tree Leaves -Omnium Stars I will only talk about the important ones for  now, later on I will probably cover all of them in one seperate video. If you want  to look each of them up right now, check them out o

n papunika.com. Island Tokens you get from completing the Quests of certain Islands, getting  their Daily Task's reputation to max, getting a certain level of friendship with  an NPC on the Island and from combat- and non-combat related RNG. This might not make  too much sense at the moment, but trust me, once you visit these Islands you will see they all have  different little activities and themes for them. You want to get 20 Island Tokens for a  Strong Skill Point Potion, that will give you 6

extra skillpoints. These Skill Point  Potions are essetnial to obtain eventually, so it's smart to start working on them early. When you obtain 4, 6, 10 and 12 Giant's Hearts,  you also get one regular Skill Point Potions each time, giving you 4x3 Skill Points. Giant's Hearts you can obtain from Rapport, Tower Dungeon, Quests, World Boss RNG and  from certain merchants on certain Islands. Ignia Tokens are a very important  collectible to work on, but they also take a very long time. You get an

Ignia  Token when you fully complete any page of your Adventure Book. At 2 Ignia Tokens, you get an item you need to obtain for a particular Island Token for the Island called  Argon, where you need to do some ice sculpturing. At 8 Ignia Tokens you get a  Strong Skill Point Potion and at 9 you unlock an extra Bifrost Slot, that lets  you save an extra location where you can instantly tp to every two hours. And finally the probably most useful Collectible are the Omnium Stars. These only exist in

side of  Tier 3, so you won't need to bother with these for a while. You get a decent reward for pretty much every single Omnium Star, but most of them are also a pain to obtain. Again, for an exact list on every single collectible in Lost Ark and a short guide on  how to obtain them, check out papunika.com. And our final topic of the  guide is the Adventure Book. You can open your Adventure Book by pressing  the N key. Every single continent and region has it's own page in the Adventure Book. I

n  order to fully complete a page in the book, you need to have done the story of the region, collected all of the Collectable Adventure Book  items dropped from specific enemies inside the region, you also need to have learnt all  the specific recipies of the region, you need to have interacted with each and  every Viewpoint, have all dungeons in the region completed on normal and hard difficulty,  have killed every unique monster in the region, killed all World Bosses that can spawn in the reg

ion, have done both of the substories, have found  all the hidden stories, have befriended all the NPCs you're able to in the region, and  have unlocked all Triports in the region. And of course by regions I don't mean a  single area, I mean the entire region that is the collection of different areas. As you might have guessed by now, completing even a single page of the  Adventure Book entirely, will take a lot of time and effort. However by doing so, you  not only get Ignia Tokens, but also al

l the rewards at every 10th percentage of  the completion, that are different for each page of the Adventure Book. By doing this, you will unlock a number of Skill Point Potions, Emotes,  Songs, Cards, Rapport items, Runes, some Masterpieces and even a few Mounts. In the future I'd love to cover every single page of the Adventure Book  hopefully in one single video. And that wraps up the guide. This took  soooo much time and effort for me to make, I really hope you guys will find it  useful, esp

ecially after the launch. There's still a lot more to talk about  but I think it will be for the better to make a seperate video for each topic  that has more to it than what I covered in this one. And to be completely clear with you, I'm also still learning more about Lost Ark every single day, so this process also helps me  become more knowledgeable, which might have not happened if you guys didn't show so much interest in Lost Ark as well, so here's a huuge thank you from me to all of you for

being here  and motivating me to do things that I've never done before, thank you very much!! Still, if you think I missed something important, do let me know in the comments, and I  will include it in the pinned comment. And once more, huge credit to the  makers of papunika.com, and to Saintone's written guide for being such reliable  sources for information. You can find a link to both of these at the top of the describtion. If you found the video helpful, please give it a like, it really me

ans so much, and also don't  forget to subscribe for more Lost Ark content. Thank you guys very much for watching,  and I... will see you all next time.:)