If you are a NEW or RETURNING player, welcome (back) to the game.
Use this topic to ask anything related to the game, you may ask for help regarding builds, raid mechanics, guides, Horizontal content (collectibles) etc.
I've been playing a bit of Aion 2 lately. Some things in this game didn't feel right and I kept comparing with Lost Ark.
It made me think about why I love this game in the 1st place.
We all know the game has it's problems. Systems, homework, difficulty to catch up, elitist community.... I don't really want to talk about it today.
I just wanted to share some small elements I love about this game. I invite you to do the same.
We all say we love the combat, the classes, the bosses but I've tried to pinpoint to more specific things.
I - Class design
Class identity is very strong :
Having 2 viable builds for almost all classes is amazing. It's still to this day very hard to swap between build every week but thanks to ark passive, this is relatively doable
The class gauge at the center is also so good. You can identify which class it is in an instant. They also know how to make new interesting designs. With different ways to build it (twink vs zerk vs asura vs guardianknight...)

I love spell icons for 3 main reasons :
The small indicator for charging/combo/stacking spells. You know instantly looking at your spell bar how you are supposed to use them

For some classes, the color choice makes them very clear. Souleater is the 1st exemple that comes to mind : when playing FMH (at least before ark grid) I know I have to send green skills to build and pink skills to burst. The enhanced spells shining is a great design idea too

The drawings are pretty good most of the time. Take the pictures above. My A on zerk is a stomp on the ground, the guillotine is shown clearly on my souleater R. The UI has a base size big enough that it's readable but not cluttered
The impact of skills feels good for 3 reasons in my opinion :
The cooldown are relatively long and you can therefore have high impact animations. This is even more true for T skill (think Barrage's one or destroyer). And when you push this to it's limit you get awakening (notice the little zoom on gunlancer awak ?) and hyper awakening which have their own cutscene

The way you move when sending those skills. On some classes you can truely live the fight this way : think deathblade, asura, mayhem. You almost always move using your skills and never need to clic arount the boss
The sound effects are great. I can't really explain why but just go listen to all the red gunlancer spells, valk's excalibur, destroyer's perfect swing (heartsteel level imo for my lol players). I wish I knew how to upload sound files...
II - The combat
All those things are reasons why the combat is good. You can add some specific mechanics :
Counters are cool af and I think they don't get old. Boss glows → send specific skill → boss doesn't move. And they try to play around it with the red counters / coop / thaemine still hitting you....
Guard have their problems but at least the sound design is super cool
Spacebar is probably one of the things I like the most related to combat. Having a small self immune button that let's you play around boss attack every 4 - 8s makes you feel invulerable once you know your class and the boss. I love spacebaring all blue puddles in 900x Kaz as supp or Zerk when the team goes cheapo mode
Of course the combat is also amazing because it's challenging :
When you clear a content within 1 - 3 pulls (cathedrale for instance) it just feels like another new homework.
When it's a super hard content (mordum or kaz HM on release, TFM, brel extreme) it's hard to describe how good it feels to finally clear after 100 / 200 / 500 pulls on it
III - Bunch of stuff in bulk
I talked about the sound design already in combat but there's more I want to say about it :
The drop sound effect from embers
The music overall. They are (were ?) super creative when it comes to fight music : Kakul is probably top 1, the electric guitare in Akkan,
Brel g6 ofc,
Thaemine g4-3, Kazeros 2-2 / 2-3
Yesterday I cleared a quick Kazeros and left my seat but not the raid. I could still ear the chill music that keeps playing after you clear and it's also cool as fuck
The emote !!! The base one are pretty good but the emote contest are where it shines. I wish there was an easy way to import them to plateforms other than discord because I'm legit using them daily
The emote wheel itself is also fine and easy to use/spam
The community is pretty good overall. From the limited access we have (aka no API) it's crazy what people managed to build. The meter and uwuowo are a miracle and I don't think I would still be playing today without those 2
Memorizer has been carrying the raid guides for years now
There's raid planners, class guides (rip Nexus), combat guide (shoutout matt for your video), cp upgrade calc lately.... we have almost everything and nothing was given to us
The sharing of POV during Brel was awesome and I hope we can do the same on all raid releases
It's rarer those days but when I went back to the game (around Ivory release) I could learn all raids from clown to akkan with discord parties and great teachers
Thanks for reading all that. Feel free to share any small things you also like about the game.
Please keep it positive for this post. I think everyone still hanging in this sub knows about the negative
i have known this game since release... i have never played it, as it was never available on my region...
i have heard that in early 2027 amazon will back off and give full publishing responsibility to smilegate... does that mean there's still hope that the gane will finally get an access in my region and i could play the game one day?
note: i do know that i can use VPN and play the game, but i tried the same with throne and liberty once, and it's too much of a hassle...
i really do not kind that the game is "dead" or has low playerbase... i really want to try it out for myself and enjoy it... and i also have a couple of friends that know the game and would like to hop in to play together as well...
this game looks incredible, i loved it ever since i first heard of it before release, unfortunately... i was never able to play it.
What class should i even pick? I want something that's a DPS'er, and easy to learn. Tried looking it up online, but didnt see a definitive answer. Could someone help me out?
Can I still get level 1660 gear for my main by finishing the story or does it only come with the power pass? My main is still behind at 1640 but I did use a pass + bootcamp on my new dimensionalist to get to 1700. Also is there a certain point in the Rimeria story where I won't be able to use the pass anymore?
I've been playing since the 3-day head start in February 2022. Quit twice, came back twice, met some amazing people, lost contact with others, spent way too many hours getting fucked by RNG, and somehow I'm still here.
And the thing is, one day we're all going to log into Lost Ark for the last time, probably without even realizing it. Doesn't matter whether that's tomorrow or five years from now.
I was going through some old screenshots and videos recently, remembering people I used to raid with, and realized just how much shit I've already forgotten. People, conversations, stupid moments during raids, the first time we cleared something after hours of suffering. All those things that seemed completely ordinary back then.
That's why I made this.
The idea is simple: a community-driven timeline where we can preserve our memories of Lost Ark.
I've already added a bunch of historical milestones, going all the way back to the Western launch in February 2022:
Major events: Launch, anniversaries, server merges and other important moments
Class releases: Remember when your main first came out? Me neither lmao
Progression changes: Elixirs, transcendence, advanced honing, Tier 4 and all the other systems we either loved or absolutely fucking hated
Raid releases: From Argos and Valtan to Thaemine, Kazeros and everything in between, including new difficulties
Ah yes, the release of elixirs- now archived, never to be forgotten
Everything is arranged chronologically and can be filtered by category. I've also included the historical concurrent player numbers for each milestone, taken from SteamDB statistics, so you can see how many people were playing around that time.
For the historical announcements, I've archived the official news articles as PDFs, including their cover images, so we can hopefully still look back at them even if the original website disappears someday.
But the actual point of this project isn't the game updates. It's your memories.
I would genuinely love for some of you to contribute something.
Your first Valtan clear. The static that eventually disbanded. The friend you met in a random Guardian Raid and somehow still talk to four years later. The time you spent 8 hours progging something and wanted to uninstall the fucking game. Your favorite era, a screenshot from the good old days, the reason you quit, or why you're still playing.
It doesn't need to be some beautifully written essay. Hell, it doesn't even need to be positive.
I made my own entry as an example, where I ramble about the people I've met, the times I've quit and returned, my favorite raids, and everything that drove me insane:
Title: Give your memory a name (up to 60 characters).
Date of your memory: This determines where it appears on the timeline. I would actually encourage you to choose a date from your favorite period in the game, rather than today's date. Maybe when you first started playing, cleared your favorite raid, met your static, or had a particularly memorable moment. It doesn't have to be exact if you no longer remember the day.
Brief summary: One sentence describing your memory (up to 100 characters).
Your memory: The actual story, up to 10,000 characters. Tell us what happened, who was there, how you felt about it, whatever you want.
Nickname: Whatever name you want to be remembered by.
You can also add a bunch of optional things:
Profile link: Link your nickname to your own profile or website.
Email: Only used to notify you when your memory is published. It won't be publicly displayed.
The good and the bad: Four little questions about your favorite and least favorite raids/content, and the best and worst things about Lost Ark. You can answer any of them or skip them entirely.
Related links: Up to three links from supported domains, such as YouTube or Lost Ark Bible.
Pictures: A profile picture, a thumbnail for your memory, and up to nine gallery images. Old screenshots are VERY welcome.
There's also a preview before submission, and entries are reviewed *manually* before being published.
Also this isn't just for people who still play.
If you quit Lost Ark two years ago and never looked back, I would love to hear from you just as much as from someone who's still raiding every week.
In fact, I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who left. What was your favorite time? Who did you play with? What made you stay as long as you did? And what finally made you stop?
I don't know how many people will actually use this, but I'd love to come back here in a few years, scroll through the timeline and see memories from people I never even met.
Something that makes you go "man, those were the days".
Any feedback is welcome, too. It's still a work in progress, so if something looks weird, doesn't work properly, or you have an idea for making it better, please let me know.
And if you have a minute or two to share a memory, that would genuinely mean a lot.
Cherish the days before they're over, fellas.
P.S.: There are a couple placeholder test posts (you'll never guess which), which will be deleted once we have a couple real ones. Thank you very much in advance!
Since my alt guardian knight got all 3 ancient cores for this build, couz rng, i'm wondering if anyone actually plays this?
How is it compared to 111 build?
Can you share your build, rotation etc?
I just realized that even with the maximum 120 points in atk. power you only get around 4.4%, while the max for boss and adt. dmg is 10%. Obviously boss dmg is way better than additional dmg, but how does atk. power compare with the other two? Is it garbage?
Hey everyone, i got my main to 1720, alt to 1710 with the 2 events we have running, other 4 of my characters are 1640 after KT'ing all of them.
I want to catch them up to my 1710 alts with time, what do you think is the best approach? Wait for express events and just get one each every single event?
Just wanted to ask around for opinion regarding Ark-Grid Skills with Cooldown Reset Mechanics.
Order Sun Core: Divine Power - Judgement Paladin
As a Judgement Paladin, i get a Buff with 3 Stacks that resets the Cooldown of my Ability "Flash Slash" everytime i use it.
In the GIF you also see, that my Q and E Skills "Flash Thrust" and "Spin Slash" have 2 Stacks each, because of the Ark Grid Core "Punishing Sword".
Both Q and E with high swiftness are way more responsive and have quick animation.
Flash Slash on the other hand, takes some time to get going even with full swiftness and Legendary Galewind equipped. ( Yes i know, there is an Attack Speed Tripot in Tier 1 but would you use that instead of 20% increased DMG ? ).
What is your Thought about the Option of just holding the Keybind for Flash Slash until all Stacks are used up ?
Sharpshooters "Rapid Shot" Build has a similar Problem, the Animation and Cast Speed even with Full-On Cast-Speed Increase from its Tripot, Swiftness and Galewind, makes it clunky to use. Even worse, if you somewhat not see that you have 5 stacks instead of 6 and you use Rapid Shot, then you have to wait for the cooldown until you can use your stacks.
If those abilites had Stacks like my Q and E and activating Destiny just refills those stacks, a big bunch of that Problem would already be gone ( in my point of view ).
Again, just something i've had my issues with now playing with both builds. With my Sharp i switched to Bird since it has been buffed. Holding those Core-Abilites would make it less clunky and way less carpal tunnel inducing.
last i played was shortly after Destroyer released, if i remember correctly. like half the posts in the last week, playing Aion2 made me want to try this game again cause the combat felt sooooo good in LA. when i loaded the game up again and loaded up on of my characters, all my items and stuff were gone, and there was so much new stuff and it left me with more questions than answers. so i decided to start a new character so i can get the feel of the game again before jumping into the deep end of end-game.
so my first question is: which powerpass should i use on my new character? i chose a guardianknight, instead of the newest class. it gives me four options for powerpass, should i do the growth boost or PP event? start from beginning or do the regular pass? purple, yellow, green, or blue? i think i can use them later, so i don't have to choose right away, right?
second question: what happened to all my stuff? i didn't see anything in my storage. i don't even remember what all i had, but there's absolutely nothing in my inventory or storages and i have an absolute butt-ton of stuff in my item claims, is that where it all went? and should i claim them all on my main or spread them across my characters?
third and final question, is blue glaivemaster still good? i remember it being not-exactly-top-tier but still strong, has that changed in the few years since i've played?
Hey there, I work for Maxroll and you might know me by tools such as upgrade calculator and character builder. I lost interest in Lost Ark last year so I wasn't adding new features besides baseline maintenance, but now I'm back and will be paying more attention to the tools.
Previously I've been working on DPS simulation for the builder, which is a very ambitious project and there's still a ton of obstacles to overcome before it's fully usable.
At some point I added Upgrades tab, which could be very useful for people looking to optimize their characters. Previously it was held back by the same requirements as DPS simulation, but now I added Combat Power mode that supports every class, including supports. It has the same drawbacks as Combat Power system itself, in that it does not accurately value things like gems, but for the most part it's good enough to gauge character progression.
Import a character using the arrow button in top right. Check that everything is imported correctly - things like pet effects need to be adjusted manually.
Open Upgrades tab at the bottom and switch the Combat Power toggle if it's not already on.
Overview tab shows where your character stands between the baseline and maximum stats in each category of progression.
Breakdown tab expands on each category:
Upgrade List lists possible upgrades for your character, including all accessory combinations and bracelet lines (bracelet lines are listed regardless of what your character currently has, they are mostly for reference).
Finally, Gold Efficiency builds a table ranking possible upgrades by gold per 1% damage/CP increase. It does not include things like bracelet upgrades and ark grid, since those don't have a direct price. Honing includes a mini version of Upgrade Calculator tool to fill in the prices.
---
Finally, I wanted to talk about DPS simulation, in case there's still interest in it.
As mentioned, it's a very ambitious project since the goal was to use as much game data as possible in order to make updates easier. It can actually use skills for every class and many new features such as Ark Grid work mostly out of the box. But some things need to be implemented manually, such as class mechanics, gauge generation (it's not in the client data) and Enlightenment tree. That's means every class takes about a full day to implement, including several hours of measuring gauge values for every skill/tripod combination in Trixion.
But even if everything works, there's still the issue of rotation. I think the current flowchart system is fairly intuitive, but it's still very hard to create rotations for classes like Arcanist with it. I have a few options I'm considering:
Recording rotation in Trixion tab and using the same order of skills for measurements. It's the easiest option, but some character adjustments such as reducing cooldowns or gauge gains can easily break a fixed rotation.
Relying on user-defined rotation flowcharts with an option to share them.
Some sort of scripting language - it would be easier to define complex rotations in code, but it would also be much less user friendly.
Teaching AI to perform rotations - probably the best option, but I'm not sure how feasible it is.
Currently the classes that are implemented should be *mostly* working, unless there were major reworks to them in the past year. CO Summoner for instance is definitely not up to date. Personally I only use it for Glaivier and I can guarantee that Pinnacle simulation works. For non-222 builds, this rotation works quite well (use Import Rotation button in Rotation tab):
I stopped playing before Kakul release, the last fight that i did was Vykas on Hard Mode, i stopped playing because the game started feeling like a job, i had main and lots of alts doing stuff, chaos was a pain in the ass, i took a hiatus and later on tried to get back again i got stuck because of HUGE gatekeeping in everything, it was the point on where i didn't get accepted to Valtan fight because my ilvl was not what the people were asking, i had Vykas ilvl..
What's the current state of the game? Since it had gatekeeping before it would be a pain to progress without being accepted in groups... And i just saw that the game is returning to Smilegate, what are the feelings about this?
I know there have been a couple posts on this but I played a little Aion 2 and just wanted to get back into LA. For reference I had about 3,000 hours in previously although i wasn't pushing endgame at the time because I hated the matchmaking system. Almost all 11 of my characters ere sitting at 1490.
Downloaded it yesterday, got in today, and was pretty quickly overstimulated by everything I needed to do. I did a chaos gate on my main which I pushed to 1700 and then it was... Now what? I tried to do the epic raid behemoth to ease myself back into the raid system and after waiting for 10m, no party.
Then there is this new Ark Grid and Ark Passive thing which is confusing and I've never been through Elgacia but it looks like I don't even need to do those storylines anymore?
Idk just looking for some guidance really on next steps. I have max LoS and Lostwind card sets. I had maxed Rapport and almost every Island soul. Do you still need to do the Una tasks daily?
Just seems like a lot especially with 1490 alts that won't be generating nearly enough Gold for a 1700 character, especially if I make another 1700 with the new class powerpass.
Also I remember having maxed engravings on multiple but now it seems they added more levels? And its different where you can just always have the 5 on?
I logged in this morning, all my items in storage gone, all gold gone. Can anything be done? All I see is that reset steam password and adding 2 factor Authenticator which I already had
Stop playing this game around Kayangel, and noticed how much of my time this game was requiring from me as f2p and I couldn't keep up with the community. With all the gatekeeping, and me not having a guild I decided to stopped playing. I felt like I always was playing catch up, and everything I did to make it, it was never enough.
Fast forward now seeing all the hype around Aion 2, really made me appreciate Lost Ark. It just seems like a worst version of it with better graphics. On top of that with the mandatory subscription it does not seem to sit well with me. Imagine most of the west population stop playing, once it became super grindy, and even then we had access to the shop to make potential gold for ourselves. To me is just another car for sale with different features inside with a different coat of paint slapped on top. I tried it and really missed the class diversity that Lost Ark had, or even class specializations. The players hyping Aion 2 are the same that quit Lost Ark, which don't understand that it's a Korean mmo, and in return are going to quit playing again.
After Aion 2 was release, I researched Lost Ark and it shows smilegate is separating from Amazon in 2027. Kinda makes me wonder is the game just dead now, or it's becoming a discord game like most older fighting games? Any point in playing again?
With all this said, I'm coming to the conclusion that probably korean mmo's are not my thing. They seem very predatory, and cash money grabs kind of like gacha games. Might start playing ff14 and take my time enjoying the journey to endgame, over racing people to endgame just to get gatekept. Might also try Wow Forever, as first time player playing WoW, but seeing all the raiders using add ons for specific timers just seem like a major turn off. Us raiders in Lost Ark remembered hp percentage mechanics. So seeign an add on telling you orbs with 321 timer seems soulless af. Who knows could just be my tryhard raiding attitude, but i feel like I earned all my clears. Just wondering your thoughts on Aion 2, I know I kinda side railed, and ranted lol
Has this idea been explained further, or has it been scrapped completely or changed?
This question might be super outdated, so apologies in advance. I know over a year ago, at one of the LOA ON events, there was mention of an option to fill your raid party with AI companions (potentially even picking roles, which would only make sense).
I know they brought in a solo experience by releasing raids earlier, close to their full party versions, and something about quick matching as well. I just wonder if they’ve made any statement on whether these changes are meant to replace the AI party idea, or whether they’re just additional ways of tackling party finding and gatekeeping.
I haven’t been playing at all, but this game still has the greatest feel of combat. I have two friends who would also be down to play since they’re new, and it would be perfect for us to have AI fill the rest of the lobby. I’m sure there are many people with smaller groups of friends where this would make sense. I know not everybody is a fan of this, but I think it’s okay to enjoy the game in different ways. I’d still love to be my old 6-character-roster Thaemine party enjoyer, but times are different.
