Guide to Endgame
What is the endgame progression loop?
Endgame involves a never-ending chase towards certain item level thresholds to advance to the next content and gear. You’ll do daily and weekly content to earn materials used to RNG upgrade your items which will increase your item level as well as the number of activities you can do over time.
The game is designed for the better majority of time for you to aim to achieve +15 on any given set of items at any time. The game goes up to +20 enhancements, but +15 is all you ever usually need to proceed to the next tier of content. The exception occurs later on when you need to go beyond +15 in T3.
Lost Ark is split into tiers. Please think of a tier as an expansion from another MMO. Currently, in Korea there are three tiers of content. Within every tier, there’s a micro-ecosystem of content and every tier has its own endgame raid content within it. That means, even if you’re in T1 (Tier 1) content, there is an endgame, and that endgame will constantly shift as new contents are released.
Lost Ark frequently has you changing out your gear for new gear. Some of the effort you put into your existing gear will carry over (for example, some enhancement levels) each time. This is why it is generally recommended against whaling for enhancements because a lot of that effort will always be wasted with the inevitable tier up.
Coupled alongside this is the effort of playing alts to get more daily and weekly rewards, earning collectibles, and striving for vanity encounters (equalized content) if that’s what you enjoy.
What is more important, item level, character level, or roster level?
Item level is the most important and the driving factor behind everything you can do. Character level is pretty moot, once you reach 50 you’re technically eligible for all content in the game. Roster level is only a sign of how long you’ve been playing the game and doesn’t signify anything else.
What is enchanting like? Can my items break or downgrade? Is there a pity system?
You gather materials (all can be obtained from the auction house), gold, fragments, and shillings and then you attempt to upgrade. Should you fail, there’s no chance of item break and there’s no downgrade. You just lose the materials and currencies spent to attempt the upgrade.
When you fail, you accrue Craftsman’s Energy on the item, which should it reach 100%, the next upgrade is guaranteed. The amount of failures required for a guaranteed upgrade increases the higher you go.
Pictured: Upgrading UI. Item list on left, materials required to upgrade in the center, and gain for each success on the right.
The lowest upgrade percentage chance you have to deal with while on the path to +15 is 40% odds in T1/T2 (Tier 1/Tier 2). With adequate material and gold income in any given week, you can expect to attempt several upgrade tries every day or week.
What carries over from each gear set to the next?
Answering this because of potential fear that people may have in regards to frequent gear ups in Lost Ark.
Part of your enhancements will carry over depending on if it’s an up to a new tier. The amount depends on what enhancement you reached; the higher you go the more is preserved.
What is there to do other than dungeons or raids?
Other than dungeons and raids, there’s PVP, island mini-games, island story quests, a slew of collectibles with valuable rewards, achievements, and sailing activities.
Dungeons and raids are a major part of Lost Ark and one of the main appeals.
What dailies or weeklies do I have to do?
The most important dailies are 2 boss fights, 2 mobbing dungeons, and 3 simple quests. There’s a few other notable things to do on a given day such as affinity actions. There’s also daily timed events on islands that can reward you useful things including gold on some days.
As far as weeklies, you usually have a lot of raids you need to accomplish. Initially, there may not be a lot in NA/EU assuming they start in T1. As time goes on, you gain access to more permanent weekly raids that will add on to the amount of playtime on any given character. Every character/alt has its own lockout for dailies and raids, which is why alts tend to be so effective. As new content comes out, older contents no longer give useful rewards to you, so you typically stop doing them (the content changes, but the amount that you should do does not).
Usually, one character will take about 40 minutes to an hour per day to complete the normal dailies. Weeklies will typically add a couple of hours per character per week (this amount starts off less and increases as new permanent weekly contents are added). This is linear because of individual lockouts. For example, I play 7 characters, they take me 4-5 hours each day to do all of their dailies, and weeklies add anywhere from 3-4 hours per week per character.
When new raids come out, prog can take several hours depending on what raid it is (there’s guides for everything already).
Between alts vs. a main, you’ll often spend more time on alts than you will on your main, unless there’s content that was released that you need to prog on your main.
When do I unlock life skilling? Is it important to life skill or can I skip it entirely?
You unlock it around level 20 very early on. Life skills are not vital, but they are valuable. You only get a limited amount of energy to do life skill related gathering each day, and the components you gather can be used to create battle items that you can use yourself or sell. It is almost always economically advantageous to craft your own battle items.
You do not craft gear in this game with a profession. Set items are produced using raid mats at an NPC.
Is there private housing? How customizable is it?
There is private housing. You unlock it right after finishing the first continent around level 30. House customization offers a lot of different furnishings to decorate your home with, and by reaching max affinity with romanceable NPCs they will also inhabit your island to help it feel a little less lonely.
Furnishing your home will take gold though, so most people won’t bother unless they’re already satisfied with their current character progression.
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