Lost Ark Online

How bad is the economy compared to KR? Is it harder or easier to prog on NA?

Ehrgeix said:

How bad is the economy compared to KR? Is it harder or easier to prog on NA?

Click to expand...

Progression time isn't really impacted by the economy - both are incredibly cheap and, with the events that go on, take a very short period of time and is highly enjoyable. Players coming back or starting off will be able to advance their characters almost daily for the first few weeks.

The issue with the economy relates to the fact that, when you finally do start wanting to make your character end game ready (via accessories, engraving books, and card sets) you're hit with three walls on NA:

1) Accessory prices are absurd and take weeks/months to farm for the 'best in slot'. This is offset by the fact that you obviously don't need BIS but really, who wants to use sub-par stuff?
2) Engraving books are absurd as well, requiring a similar time commitment to farm. Obviously you can get +9 books (rather than +12) but it doesn't feel very good.
3) Cards (and other Mari shop items) are not viable to purchase right now due to the currency conversion being absurd due to all the RMT gold.

None of those issues exist on KR and thus makes the game infinitely more enjoyable when you hit end game.

In spite of the above however, LA continues to provide significantly better content than almost all MMOs out on the market. You have weekly raids (x3) that are all pretty enjoyable to progress & farm (we have a group or two that has been raiding together for what's been 6-8 months now) and actual things to do to progress your characters every day. The daily grind can be off-putting towards a lot of people but, especially in a limited sample of a few months to play an MMO, it's a lot of fun.

My roster for example (I complete almost all the daily stuff for the first page of characters and use rested for the second page):




Feels pretty rewarding to play and there's a lot of things to do. The class design is exceptional. It's certainly frustrating however that when I want to gear up one of my alts, it's a significant cost to my gold.

Week 1 clown clear for our group was intese. Grats Kythik & E elidib !

Brelshaza in December

October:
another guardian raid - Mystic
vykas inferno
achates inferno basically

November:
tripod update
Reaper class

December:
Summoner class
Caliligos guardian raid
1490 chaos dungeon, cube, boss rush

Waiting until November for the tripod update hurts.

I think waiting till December for 1490 and Brel is fine. I do think they're making a mistake by not releasing class balance and tripod changes in October though. I'd also like to have seen Artist come out with Summoner (we know the work for Sunmoner is already done and Artist is a pretty big release that would draw people in for the holidays).

With that being said, I'm glad they're communicating the road map in advance. It's also impressive that we'll be up to Brel before 2023, which is quicker than I would have thought when launch happened.

The ease of reaching 1415 now makes quite a lot of the grind to have done so for the past 6-8 months seem not worth it. I could have just waited to start a month ago and zipped past a lot.

Merrith said:

The ease of reaching 1415 now makes quite a lot of the grind to have done so for the past 6-8 months seem not worth it. I could have just waited to start a month ago and zipped past a lot.

Click to expand...

That's always going to be the case. Grinding and pushing ahead provides you a bit of time where you're ahead of the curve however they absolutely always will provide periodic catch up / boosts to make getting to current tier raids possible with casual effort. A 1415 is still pretty reasonably far from clown ready though.

Voldeth said:

That's always going to be the case. Grinding and pushing ahead provides you a bit of time where you're ahead of the curve however they absolutely always will provide periodic catch up / boosts to make getting to current tier raids possible with casual effort. A 1415 is still pretty reasonably far from clown ready though.

Click to expand...

"always going to be the case" is a bit underselling it. A catch up patch at the end of a WoW expansion is usually 18-20 months worth of catch up being done, but none of the crazy currency/material costs that are being saved in LA with this push on the global bonuses up to 1415.

I can agree 1415 is far from clown ready, but it also sounds as if they're going to continue and expand it again after this current event, I would assume to either 1445 or 1460. The costs/time savings across multiple alts becomes pretty substantial overall.

Merrith said:

"always going to be the case" is a bit underselling it. A catch up patch at the end of a WoW expansion is usually 18-20 months worth of catch up being done, but none of the crazy currency/material costs that are being saved in LA with this push on the global bonuses up to 1415.

I can agree 1415 is far from clown ready, but it also sounds as if they're going to continue and expand it again after this current event, I would assume to either 1445 or 1460. The costs/time savings across multiple alts becomes pretty substantial overall.

Click to expand...

They will. When Brelshaza is released you can expect the catch up bonus to expand to 1445. When Elgacia is released you can also expect further enhancements to a least 1475. It's never going to be worth it to push honing beyond the minimum until the catch up mechanic is released. I say this as someone who is at 1515 on my main and will be 1500+ on my primary alt shortly. The philosophy of the game on this front is pretty straightforward and a lot more casual friendly than something like WoW. They allow the whales / hardcore gamers to get an advantage in content which places them well ahead of most people however within ~4 months of content cycles, that advantage is almost completely removed unless you continue to whale/hardcore game during that time, in which case you'll keep pushing ahead and likely spending some money to keep the cadence up.

1415 was easy months ago with the flood of books and other crap.

1445/1460+ is/was time and cost intensive and should really only be bothered with if you actually want to do that amount of raiding.

Personally wasn't worth it for me as I was spending the better part of 20+ hours a week just raiding on 6 chars once Vykas hit and was getting burnt out from dealing with "will my clear group actual clear" pugs.

So far this week I've deleted 3 of my 9 at 1415 and I will delete another 4 in the 1415-1445 range before I start playing with consistency again. I just want to tap out their bloodstone resources first to get more boss rush tickets since gems are stupidly high again.

My scrapper main is 1490, my glavier is 1460 and I'm using this new powerpass to get a second scrapper in the same area to share gems/books.

3 chars seems way more reasonable to manage now that the new game hype has worn off though I'll likely still skip doing dailies as that shit isn't worth my time and my bank is full of materials already and there value them is nearly gone.

Also what jabroni made that unas chest token change <_<

Chimney said:

1415 was easy months ago with the flood of books and other crap.

1445/1460+ is/was time and cost intensive and should really only be bothered with if you actually want to do that amount of raiding.

Personally wasn't worth it for me as I was spending the better part of 20+ hours a week just raiding on 6 chars once Vykas hit and was getting burnt out from dealing with "will my clear group actual clear" pugs.

So far this week I've deleted 3 of my 9 at 1415 and I will delete another 4 in the 1415-1445 range before I start playing with consistency again. I just want to tap out their bloodstone resources first to get more boss rush tickets since gems are stupidly high again.

My scrapper main is 1490, my glavier is 1460 and I'm using this new powerpass to get a second scrapper in the same area to share gems/books.

3 chars seems way more reasonable to manage now that the new game hype has worn off though I'll likely still skip doing dailies as that shit isn't worth my time and my bank is full of materials already and there value them is nearly gone.

Also what jabroni made that unas chest token change <_<

Click to expand...

Wasn't trying to say 1415 was hard, my gunslinger main was sitting on 1465 for a few months even prior to Vykas releasing, only pushed it slightly higher just recently with clown coming out. Although frankly I found post 1415 easier than 1370 to 1415...some of that is just having more alts to farm mats/gold necessary for honing, and more bonus events to keep it all flowing.

I wasn't expecting the reduction in material and gold cost to be so massive and just so much easier. The reduction in leapstones on average required alone, is insane.

Mat costs tanking was always going to be a thing once more people got to T3 and then parked. That's why it was so juicy getting 500-1k for GHLs early on from the RMT/Whale crowd.

It was always be "punished" for pushing too soon, but never for pushing late at the beginning but as we inch closer to Korean version we get all the quality of life that comes from a mature game. I wouldn't bother waiting if you like the game though or feel like you wasted effort. Once you get into that 1490+ mark where it's 1-6% chance you hemorrhage gold no matter how cheap the mat costs are unless you have the best RNG on the planet. Just going 1487.5->1490 cost like 50k since I almost pitied and it just gets worse and worse when you will have entire month(s) gold yield get flushed for a couple of ilvl. That's when I expect the more casual crowd to be really crying or ditch completely.

Merrith said:

Wasn't trying to say 1415 was hard, my gunslinger main was sitting on 1465 for a few months even prior to Vykas releasing, only pushed it slightly higher just recently with clown coming out. Although frankly I found post 1415 easier than 1370 to 1415...some of that is just having more alts to farm mats/gold necessary for honing, and more bonus events to keep it all flowing.

I wasn't expecting the reduction in material and gold cost to be so massive and just so much easier. The reduction in leapstones on average required alone, is insane.

Click to expand...

Chimney said:

Mat costs tanking was always going to be a thing once more people got to T3 and then parked. That's why it was so juicy getting 500-1k for GHLs early on from the RMT/Whale crowd.

It was always be "punished" for pushing too soon, but never for pushing late at the beginning but as we inch closer to Korean version we get all the quality of life that comes from a mature game. I wouldn't bother waiting if you like the game though or feel like you wasted effort. Once you get into that 1490+ mark where it's 1-6% chance you hemorrhage gold no matter how cheap the mat costs are unless you have the best RNG on the planet. Just going 1487.5->1490 cost like 50k since I almost pitied and it just gets worse and worse when you will have entire month(s) gold yield get flushed for a couple of ilvl. That's when I expect the more casual crowd to be really crying or ditch completely.

Click to expand...

there's actually going to be a soft reset coming on mats once we get to a certain point, where leapstones and destruction/guardian stones will have a higher level version, which you can trade in the old stuff at a 5:1 ratio (just like the original honor leapstones to greaters).

Chimney said:

3 chars seems way more reasonable to manage now that the new game hype has worn off though I'll likely still skip doing dailies as that shit isn't worth my time and my bank is full of materials already and there value them is nearly gone.

Also what jabroni made that unas chest token change <_<

Click to expand...

Glad to see you posting & back albeit still wish you would have rolled on NAE.

Totally agree and I've said it so many times. If you end up having too many alts, the time commitment becomes stupid and the fun stops. Playing with a roster of characters that you actually enjoy and limiting it there, while obviously 'slower' still allows you to keep your ilvl to being able to raid and having fun.

Curious to know whether you cleared clown week 1 though?

Merrith said:

there's actually going to be a soft reset coming on mats once we get to a certain point, where leapstones and destruction/guardian stones will have a higher level version, which you can trade in the old stuff at a 5:1 ratio (just like the original honor leapstones to greaters).

Click to expand...

December's update has the soft reset.

I havent touched this in some months - i may now that they added Megaman

<3 If they ever offer those roster transfers I'll likely pop over, but until then too much time vested to give up and restart fresh.

The alt squad was great at the start and I'd do it again, but with all scrappers and sorcs.

I did first gate and then did unsuccessful group roulette for gate 2 for a little bit. I'm really only playing on reset day so prioritizing easier gold than progression or else I'll be full timing again which I don't want.

While I took my break I kept making these when I would log in to keep my guild afloat and now I have like 500 to gamble with. With 10k and 40k craft box and high additional honing mat prices there is no way I'm not going to be a millionaire ;]

Voldeth said:

Glad to see you posting & back albeit still wish you would have rolled on NAE.

Totally agree and I've said it so many times. If you end up having too many alts, the time commitment becomes stupid and the fun stops. Playing with a roster of characters that you actually enjoy and limiting it there, while obviously 'slower' still allows you to keep your ilvl to being able to raid and having fun.

Curious to know whether you cleared clown week 1 though?

Click to expand...

Janx said:

This is great, Stoopzz roaming around with DatModz running into ATK/Kanon etc.. Apparently team Korea got drunk as shit.

Click to expand...

haha! I saw you pop'd back on the chat but you were off by the time I caught up. You started playing again?