Lost Ark: ULTIMATE Starter Guide With EVERYTHING You Need To Know For Launch!

what's going on guys vulcan here and with a lost art coming out soon i figured now would be a great time to put together a massive guide to help anyone who hasn't played or heard of lost ark so lost ark is one of the biggest games coming out this year and because of that it deserves one of the biggest guides and this is one of the largest ones i've ever put together it's packed full of guidance tips and tricks and everything you need to know to get started and i hope you guys really enjoy it so before we jump in i did want to clarify a few things so this video is only for the western version of the game there will be some differing information between this video and other videos for the eastern version now also i have used some footage from the russian server with the english patch so you might see some really weird translations and stuff like that so just know that kind of going into this one so let's go ahead and get things kicked off with some general information so one lost ark is an mmo arpg with an isometric view and because of this a lot of people often assume the game is like diablo or path of exile but that's not really correct so it doesn't really share any of the same traits as those games this game really does truly perform like an mmo so don't expect these massive loot fountains or like hordes of enemies you have to slice through if you're doing like maps and path of exile and stuff like that now lost ark will be launching on steam as a free to play title but you will see some founders packs offered with a bunch of cosmetics and consumables ahead of launch now these packs do stack so you can buy all of the available founders packs and get everything offered across all of them now in game you do have a cash shop where you can buy different costumes pets mounts and all kinds of different things now they will offer a premium subscription as well called the crystalline aura i'll be talking about that a little more in depth later in the video but because i know someone will ask this game is not launching on consoles as far as i know but that could change in the future so with that out of the way let's talk about the nuts and bolts of lost ark starting with the classes now the western version of the game is going to come with 15 total different play styles and these are broken into base classes and advanced classes so starting with your base classes you have the mage the warrior the martial artist the gunner and the assassin now for the advanced classes you have the mage who can specialize in being a sorceress or a bard the warrior can become a berserker paladin or gun lancer the martial artist can become a war dancer scrapper sole fist or striker the gunner can become a gun slinger deadeye sharpshooter or artillerist and the assassin can become a shadow hunter or a death blade now there are some things to keep in mind here some of these are still gender locked amazon and smilegate have mentioned that they plan on creating more options in the future but for now just know that some of these only offer one gender to choose from right now and you also get to test out all of the advanced classes before you have to choose which is great so you don't have to feel like you need to make a huge decision right at the character selection screen instead you just need to confirm what base class you want to play as and then you're immediately thrust into a training arena where you can then choose your advanced class so let's go ahead and break down all the different classes and who they might best fit starting with the warrior so the warrior offers a diverse set of advanced classes each one fits into the part into a part of the trinity so you have like a dps and the berserker a support and a healer in the paladin and then a tank and the gun lancer so talking a little bit about each one of them now the berserker is all about causing as much devastation and chaos as possible you have high damaging skills with all the classics like cleaves leap smashes if you love to swing a two-hander and absolutely pulverize enemies the berserker is right up your alley then we have the paladin which is a support and healer role imagine like a holy paladin from world of warcraft you're gonna be summoning a lot of glowing tomes healing allies and purging demons with fire if you're someone who loves to be up close in the action but also likes to heal up the party then this might be a great fit for you and lastly we have the gun lancer now despite its name this is actually a tank class that uses a shield and a lance except that lance has a giant cannon in it so the gun lancer is all about soaking damage and taking one for the team you do have some cool skills that'll hook and pull enemies some that provide protections and some that are pure damage if you like to be the tank the gun lancer is your only choice next up let's talk about the mage right so the mage has only two advanced classes but they're both really fun to play so the first of the two is the bard this is your classic harp loot wielding support class that can either tear up enemies or buff up your party with music now most of these abilities have some form of debuff for enemies or increase uh a buff for yourself and allies so if you like the notion of being like kind of a buffing machine also dishing out a little damage and a sick tune then go with the bard now the second of the mage's advanced classes is the sorceress now this one was recently changed from the summoner which is going to be coming at a later date so if you did play the beta this is a completely new class for you well for everybody the sorceress is your classic mage right you're gonna dish out elemental damage be able to clear battlefields pretty easily so if you enjoy the traditional mage look and play style this is the one i'd go with okay so we covered the mage and the warrior let's move on to something a little bit more unique and that's the martial artist so in other games these are similar to monks but in lost ark the martial artist kind of brings a new look and feel to the class with three advanced classes the first one is the war dancer now this class is one that offers lightning fast attacks that build up over time and allow you to unleash huge damage to enemies and this class harnesses the power of the elements and channels them into their attacks basically imagine a mage but with huge gauntlets that they use to pound enemies into the ground if this sounds like fun consider picking up the word answer next is the striker this one is the most pure martial artist class in my opinion it's the one that offers the most simple yet effective skill set featuring straight punches kicks leaps and smashes there really isn't anything crazy about this one it's very to the point effective and extremely fun to play so if you prefer like a shaolin monk style experience the striker is your best bet then we have the solfist who is going to weave together melee and ranged attacks for insane combos and these are going to completely shut down enemies they channel something called adamants which will improve skills to make them more effective now this is my favorite of all the martial art classes because it's just incredibly fun to zip close ranged enemies for like a flurry of attacks then leap out and unleash a big ranged attack and just clean up who's ever left like this one i really enjoyed had a lot of a lot of fun with but lastly we have the scrapper this is the straight up brawler class they deal a lot of cleave damage they can summon twin fire dragons that smash on your opponent and they move extremely quickly to set up some very strong combos now i do have the least experience with this class but it's always super fun to watch someone who's skilled play this one and just destroy everything so i think this one has a ton of upside i just don't have a ton of experience with it so let's talk about the gunner next this was actually the first class that i played in lost ark back when it launched in korea now i love the mobility this class brought it was just such a fun time to play but there are four different advance classes for the gunner and each has their own identity so we're gonna start things off with a bang literally because we're talking about the artillerist so this class wields a giant cannon that can do multiple things it's like a swiss army knife of cannons you just swap these things out it can shoot flames buckshot launch missiles drop napalm even flip into a gatling gun but this does come with a cost because this massive weapon does make this class one of the slowest in the game but with a gun that does all of the talking i mean who needs speed you can just blow things away you don't really need to move quickly but if you like scorched earth and air strikes the artillerist is definitely the class for you now opposite of the artillerist which is a class that you don't really need accuracy right it's just scorched earth we have the sharpshooter now this class can load different arrows that have special effects and this was the class i played in the last beta test in the western version and it was a pretty awesome time there's a lot of really cool things that i really liked but i personally love the aerowave skill it sends out this projectile that deals damage to anything it passes through but this class thrives at long range and being able to deal damage without being interrupted so if you love to fight on the back lines then consider picking up a sharpshooter now like the sharpshooter we also have the deadeye now the deadeye is a gunner class that flexes between three different weapons depending on the situation you can whip out a shotgun to take care of anyone dumb enough to get close you have a pistol that can tear up enemies at medium range and then you have a rifle to light up enemies at any range now the rifle has some seriously cool skills that deal some huge damage and this class is one that has a good skill cap as well because if you like classes where you need to put some effort in to really cash in on its potential then take the dead eye you have to understand what weapon is going to be best for each situation and be able to flip between those pretty seamlessly and then be able to use all those different skills and weave them together to really cash in on its potential so if that sounds like you take the dead eye lastly we have the old western right the gunslinger this class is all about shredding enemies at close range you have skills that deal cleave damage stagger enemies even ones that dish out plasma damage over time now this was the first class i played in lost ark and i gotta say it is one of the most fun classes that i've played it's just incredibly mobile it can pump out massive damage at any phase it's like a rogue but with guns so if that sounds like you then i would take the gunslinger so that wraps up the gunner let's talk about the last class which is the assassin so this is the one that comes with only two advanced classes but they're perfect for people who love stealthy rogues quick strikes and channeling your inner demon so to kick this show off let's talk about the shadowhunter this class gives you some crazy powers you get to channel the power of demons through all of your skills you get like a death beam you can summon a large demon to swipe at enemies you can throw glaives to blend up enemies into puree it's just one of those classes that melds magic and melee together extremely well and our last advanced class is the deathblade so just like the striker is the most pure martial artist this class is the most pure assassin you have straightforward and simple attacks that utilize heavy physical damage quick attacks and being able to dissect enemies with a series of fast slashes now again each of these classes has its own identity feel and play style so please just make sure to choose the one that best fits you because once you do you are whisked off into the world of arkeesia all right folks so those are all of the classes in advance classes coming with lost ark's western release now i want to know which one for you guys was love at first sight and which one were you like that one's gross pass i don't i have zero interest in playing that one because i love to hear what you guys want to play as but we're just getting this video started so let's go ahead and move into the next section which is questing and the world so questing in lost ark is going to take you through all kinds of different areas environments and even across the ocean as you travel to find the missing arcs so at first you're going to see a lot of cut scenes a lot of dialogue and the game might seem very very slow however it does start to speed up after you reach pride home which is your first town and this is where you're going to see all kinds of different quests so we need to break each icon down that way you understand what you're looking at and what you're getting into so first up are your main quests these are the ones that are going to progress the story through each zone and ultimately pause once you reach a quest called finding the arks at that point you're going to move over to a new icon called world quests now these will become available after you've unlocked your ship and begin sailing now world quests will splinter the main quest into multiple quest lines on different continents so while you might not be able to progress your quote main storyline these world quests will build up and eventually be able to progress your main quest so there's a lot of kind of splintering that happens at a certain point and it gets a little confusing especially because they don't do a great job of showing you okay don't pay attention to this one anymore these are the ones you need to pay attention now so you're also going to see general quests chain quests and sudden quests while you're adventuring through each area and these are completely optional right you don't have to do them if you don't want to and in the case of sudden quests these are also timed so these would be classified kind of like as side quests and they aren't an amazing source of experience compared to main quests and world quests but they are necessary in order to reach level cap now typically in hubs you're also going to see something called adventure requests which will give you some important account unlocks like the housing system called strongholds or discovering crafting and trade skills now key npcs that you meet will also offer something known as rapport quests and these are going to tie into the infinity system which is basically like relationships with characters so as you build affinity you're going to unlock more and more report quests which will then unlock more and more kind of unique rewards and different things to help out your character so don't sleep on rapport quests don't sleep on adventure quests because you're gonna need those later on now once you reach pride home you're also going to need to make a decision do you want to level as fast as possible or do you want to fully experience the zones the story and complete each area because these will have different requirements so if you want to level as fast as humanly possible then you need to do all of the main quests and side quests up until about level 25 to 27 then at that point skip all of the side quests and only focus on the main quests the reason you need to do this is because if you only follow main quests all the way to the very end you're going to be short on experience and will need to backtrack to make that up but by doing all of the quests up until you reach 25 to 27 you will not run into this issue you'll have enough experience to hit level 50. and it might seem a little slow and tedious at first but it definitely pays off in the end especially if you don't want to backtrack now if you're a completionist and you want to complete and finish every single area do literally every quest you see just if there's a quest pick it up run with it enjoy it and i know a lot of people really love to do this and ultimately it's going to help your adventure tome as well which we'll talk about here shortly so if you're completionist you're not just going slower in taking time out of your leveling instead you're going to get a lot of rewards for completing each area and as you're out running about in the world you need to keep an eye out for something called macoco seeds so these are hidden items you can pick up and they're not going to be extremely useful early right i mean at all but you will be able to use them later on and these things are scattered everywhere dungeons over world nooks and crannies i mean you name it they're going to be there and they don't have a very obvious like aura they don't highlight they don't yell at you that hey click on me they're very much hidden tucked away and very indiscreet so you need to make sure that you keep an eye out for these and you'll also loot something called secret maps in different areas these are basically drawings where you can find a hidden dungeon with a boss to defeat if you manage to beat them you also get some pretty nice loot and these are just kind of little bonuses tucked away in each area that i highly recommend doing even if you're trying to level as fast as possible because you can get some pretty great item drops which will allow you to kill things faster which in turn will allow you to level up faster now i want to take a second and talk about the world right because this will no doubt be a big negative or at least a question that some folks are going to ask the world of lost ark is massive it is a huge world there are tons of places to explore tons of places to travel to however these areas are not expansive you will be snaking your way through trails through each zone so what i'm trying to say is this game is on rails right it isn't like other mmos where you can run through the trees and up and over hills that's not possible you're going to have to go down paths through each zone and go from point a to point b so that's something that really before you dive into this you need to understand you know this is going to be like the barons where you know you run out of orgrimmar into durotar and you just go whatever direction you want to you can run through the river you can go up on cliffs you can drop down into ravines that is not something that you will see in lost ark it is very much on rails now that being said i didn't have any issue or feel confined when i was playing the game it was something i noticed at the beginning and then i shrugged and i moved on and i was able to really kind of enjoy my time so i just want to get get that kind of out of the way and let you guys know about it because i can already kind of read some of the comments and hear it oh man this game's on rails it sucks okay so with that out of the way i want to talk about mounts really quick so in lost ark you will be able to unlock mounts through the game or purchase higher quality mounts from the store so yes there is a slight speed difference between paid mount and the free starter mount that doesn't mean the starter mount is bad it's just noticeable that the paid mounts are faster now there isn't anything else to mount other than increasing your speed so don't expect like a gearing or a perk system for your horse so now that we've talked about the world and how you're going to quest through it i want to shift gears a little bit and talk about combat and all of the skill points and the items that you get for finishing those quests so in terms of combat it's very simple it's very to the point killing stuff in this game extremely satisfying you get a strong sense of hit feedback your attacks feel meaty the animations are very tight and crisp and this is what originally sold me on the game when it was revealed back in 2017 i just love the way that they went about designing the combat in this game and the cool thing is no matter what class you choose you feel powerful and you feel like your attacks are actually doing something even as a healer and as a tank and it's just it's just it's just good it's just one of those things that's designed extremely well now there are different ways to interact with certain skills so for instance there are some skills that are combo skills that require you to hit the skill button multiple times to chain together attacks and then some require you to hold your skill button down to channel while others require you to hold it down to charge it up now it's nothing new to the genre right but it's something that makes combat a little bit more interactive than just spam clicking a skill over and over and over so in terms of progression the most obvious and direct result of doing things in the world comes in the form of experience and leveling up and as you go through and complete your quests you're going to earn combat experience which represents your level and legacy experience which is like an account wide level that you can go through and unlock things now these legacy levels will give you some attributes that'll make you more effective in combat like increase the strength increase to vitality while your combat level will allow you to progress through the levels and the story and then eventually meet into endgame so combat level is your actual character level like if i hit combat level 50 my character is level 50 and i'm now able to do things my legacy level is my account wide level that just kind of sits there statically across multiple characters so there's just a little bit of a difference there and understating these is very important and each level up for your combat level is going to give you four skill points these can be used to upgrade your skills and unlock new passive effects for them so for instance on my deathblade i have a skill called dark haze and this skill started off as a channeled skill that dealt a little damage in a small area but after investing points into it it deals much more damage the center of it gains a huge damage buff and then once the skill ends it actually drops an aoe that continues to deal damage to anything stuck inside of it so as you can see it's pretty intense how different these skills can change when you continue investing more and more and more points into them so this is something that you definitely need to understand and be able to kind of plan out a little bit now the cool thing is you can respect these so it's not like you're stuck with what you chose but still you don't want to go through and kind of tinker with it every five seconds planning these things out is going to be important and as you work through your game you're going to unlock new items from your adventure tone we talked about this a little bit when we're talking about being a completionist so your adventure tome is a list of rewards that will unlock as you complete quests and challenges in an area they start off super small and insignificant to be honest but then they ramp up pretty quickly to reward you with cards powerful consumables and a lot more so these are something that aren't really overly obvious so you need to make sure to check these often to see if anything new has opened up so next thing i want to talk about is gear so to accompany those specialization points we just talked about your gear will also provide stat bonuses that increase your overall combat effectiveness and just like any other mmo each class will scale better with certain stats so making sure to prioritize those will keep you on the cutting edge of every single encounter now another key thing to understand is that your armor and your weapon will give primary stats like strength and vitality however you will not get secondary stats from these those are specifically sourced from accessories and your accessories are things like rings and earrings so they will give things like critical hit chance and your weapon and armor will give things like strength and vitality now one thing i will say though is that each class can only wield a certain type of weapon and won't ever be able to deviate from that so if you're somebody who likes to have a mace sometimes then maybe a sword other times that won't happen here they do do a good job with the artwork of keeping things somewhat fresh so you don't feel like you're always using or seeing the same exact looking weapon but just know you're always gonna have a sword if you have a sword you're always gonna have a staff if you have a staff that's just something that they decided on for a design perspective so what are all the different slots you can equip for your character so you have helmet shoulders chest legs hands necklace two earrings two rings and a skill stone so there are quite a few slots to fill in but also top end pieces to chase after for each slot i mean you shouldn't feel a lack of customization when it comes to finding new items to equip like this is something that you will be able to chase after and you will be able to grind on for quite a while and all of these slots are going to average out to an item level for your character which will be your progression meter for end game so that is something to keep in mind as well as we move into endgame you're going to need to increase your gear score as your gear score raises for your character new end game things will open up for your character just like every other mmo so if that's something that you don't like then you probably need to really look into this game and say you know is this something that i'm going to want to invest my time into so when it comes to gear that's just the tip of the iceberg but i do want to talk about some other ways you can improve your gear to make it even more effective and that's the upgrade system so once you reach a certain point in the game you'll be able to access a vendor and be able to spend various materials to polish your gear now this allows you to invest into certain pieces and basically upgrade them once you hit a certain threshold you're going to be able to harden it or upgrade it which is going to increase its base stats and its overall item level now this whole process is extremely expensive uh it's expensive so as you get higher rarity gear you need more and more rare materials and these materials can be found from things like guardian raids and chaos dungeons but they're also crafted in your stronghold which we'll talk about here in a second we'll talk about strongholds but the interesting thing is this creates a supply and demand situation where you either need to farm materials in order to craft those crystals needed for upgrades or go purchase them from the auction house at a pretty significant price so that's where you're really going to need to have some decisions being made do you want to go grind these things out and craft them yourself or do you want to kind of skip that process drop a little extra coin to get those crystals that you can then use to invest into your gear and upgrade it and because of how much this whole process costs it's really wise to save up all of your materials that you earn and then just spin them on max level gear or close to max level gear that way you can have a larger impact to unlock new end game activities which we'll talk about here in a second so i mentioned strongholds i want to touch on these really quickly what are these this is basically your housing system you're going to unlock a full island estate that you can then customize with all kinds of different structures but thing is that's not all guys you can also craft items visit vendors that are on a rotating schedule you can recruit helpers for your island you can recruit other people for your ship there are just all kinds of things you'll be able to tinker with here and i think if you're a housing person you're really gonna like what you find now with strongholds out of the way i did want to talk really quickly about trade skills as well because we've been talking about crafting quite a bit so how do you find all of the materials you need to actually make stuff well lost arc has a slew of trade skills to learn and use you have foraging which is used to gather like mushrooms herbs plants you have logging which is used to cut down trees for wood you have mining for stones and gems you have hunting to trap and harvest game animals you have fishing to obviously catch fish and then you have excavating for archaeology and being able to find these hidden relics out in the world that have various uses and all of these are used to find certain materials that are crucial for crafting so it's really important that you actually take some time to learn each one of these trade skills and how they work and you also need to invest a little bit in them to get them leveled up because if you don't level them you're going to start seeing things you can't harvest because your level's too low and then you're going to fall behind the curve and then you're not going to be able to craft certain things that you need for your character levels you have to backtrack and get your crafting up it's just going to be one of those things that you don't really want to neglect because just like in other games just take a few moments do your trade skills and you won't have to worry about it very much now outside of these you need to make sure you upgrade your tools as you go along speed up harvesting as well don't stick with your regular you know gray tools or your green tools go through upgrade them as you go so now that we've talked about pretty much everything else in the game we have one last thing to cover and that's end game now this is where the bulk of the game takes place and just like any other mmo this is a grind to increase your gear score and take on harder content up to the cap now you have a ton of different activities you can do to get new gear and to really kind of participate in end game you have arena pvp which is a crowd favorite so it is populated you can put your skills to the test against other players which you know i've heard this is super fun i haven't done any myself but a lot of people really talk about arena pvp in this game you have guardian raids which are like monster hunter style chases where you chase down a mythical creature you kill it you harvest it then you have abyss dungeons and abyss raids these like your standard dungeons but they do have multiple difficulties to play through you have legion raids which are like your actual raids so lots of mechanics lots of things happening they're incredibly challenging a lot of people really look at these and think of them as the pinnacle of the difficult content within lost art and the thing is these are just the big items right you have other things you can do like world bosses chaos gates building rapport working on crafting working on your trade skills playing the auction house to try to get as much currency as you possibly can there's all kinds of different things you can do at level cap these are just the big ticket items so the last thing i want to talk about is the monthly subscription to the game we've covered literally everything the game has to offer there are obviously tons of little kind of small things that are tucked away in the game but from a holistic standpoint this is a lot of the stuff you're going to be able to see and experience so the monthly subscription is completely optional you can pay for additional benefits and get additional benefits by subscribing to the crystalline aura now these are things like decreased vendor and service costs as well as free fast travel among other things now from my experience this isn't necessary at all it can be completely avoided you don't have to have it however if you're someone who plans on sinking hundreds of hours into this game then you'll probably get a little bit more benefit out of it than other people since you also get things like additional action energy for your stronghold allowing you to build and do more things there you have reduced cooldowns on your song of return so you can travel back to an area you know in half the time so these are all things you need to weigh out but like i said me and a few of my friends who have talked about it we don't really see a crystalline aura being as something necessary in the game but more of something that if you want to spend hundreds of hours in the game if you're a big housing person if you're a big crafting person you'll probably get a lot more benefit out of this than if you just want to play and experience what lost ark has so folks that is lost ark in a nutshell like i said we covered all of the big ticket items that you can get started on day one but just know there are so many more things for you to discover and unlock this is a game that truly does have something for everyone so if you find something you enjoy keep at it and i think you'll have a really good time all right everybody let me know what you think of lost ark in the comments section below thank you so much for watching this was a long video and this was something that was in the making for quite a while so i appreciate any likes any subscribes any comments because that helps this video as well so thank you everyone so much for all of your support over these past few years i appreciate it this has been vulcan and i'll talk to you on the next [Music] reach one grab the world by the hand and watch what comes along with it

Channel: Vulkan

Views: 1,395,588

Keywords: vulkan, diablo 4, path of exile, lost ark gameplay, lost ark classes, lost ark pvp, lost ark review, lost ark raid, lost ark release date, lost ark ultimate starter guide, lost ark beginner guide, lost ark starter guide, lost ark things I wish I knew before playing, lost ark don't make these mistakes, lost ark class guide, lost ark what class should I play, lost ark tips and tricks, lost ark new player guide, how to play lost ark, lost ark 2022, lost ark, lost ark guide

Id: cowsWp9_VnU

Length: 32min 11sec (1931 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022