Things I really like about Lost Ark

I’ve been playing a whole lot of Lost Ark recently – according to Steam 77 hours in the last two weeks alone – and I’m still fascinated by the whole situation. To quickly recap, I had high hopes for the game before it launched last year, but was disappointed greatly once I’d actually played it for a while. Almost a month ago I picked it back up, and now it’s everything I’d hoped for and more, although it’s basically still the same game.

So what do I like about it so much? Well, when played the way I do now it’s almost exactly what I want from an MMORPG – a nice, well-rounded package of exploration, progression, combat, life skills and story. That it looks, sounds and feels absolutely awesome (in my opinion, obviously) puts the icing on the cake. It’s not a sandbox by any stretch of the imagination, but one can’t have everything.

It also does a lot of things quite differently than other MMORPGs I’ve played, some of which I enjoy very much.

• • The Adventurer’s Tome
    

This is Lost Ark’s version of “map completion”, a concept I was first introduced to by Guild Wars 2. I didn’t care much for it back then (I only played GW2 for a couple of weeks though), but I quite like this iteration.

The usual suspects are all there of course: unlocking all waypoints, discovering every vista, stuff like that. There’s a lot more to it though. You also need to clear every dungeon in normal as well as hard mode (which are all easily soloable, especially once you outgear them a bit), get to trusted rank with various NPCs, collect a bunch of mob drops and kill some nameds and field bosses.

Lastly, you need to find a couple of story snippets scattered all over the maps, and, believe it or not, you have to acquire the ingredients for a range of local specialties, which is at times quite a bit more complex than just picking them up or buying them at a vendor, have a local chef cook them for you and then, well, eat them.

One might argue that, at the end of the day, all of this is still just busywork, and one would be correct. I’m having fun with it however, mostly because there’s more to it than just running around and clicking things on autopilot.

What I also like is that there isn’t a tome for each individual zone, but one for every continent, and that there’s not just a reward for 100% completion, instead you’re getting something nice every 10%. This means that even if you don’t like some of the things you’re asked to do, or can’t stand a specific area, you can probably still get to the reward you’d like the most and then just stop – as long as you don’t want the 100% one of course.

• • Una’s Tasks (aka dailies)

Yes, seriously. I can’t quite believe that I’m putting these here myself, considering my strong dislike of repeatable quests in almost every other game I’ve played, but in my opinion they’ve done an outstanding job with them this time around.

First of all, the game keeps track of how often you’ve finished each of these tasks, and every five times or so you receive an additional reward. We’re not just talking more silver or XP, but substantial boosts to your overall progression – skill points, virtue stats, song sheets and emotes (you actually need those, they’re not just fluff here), even stuff like a blueprint used to build the game’s fastest ship is to be acquired this way.

In some cases the tasks even change after reaching the next “level” (of which there are usually three or four), progressing the little stories they tell further.

But Mail, I hear you ask, if they’re that important, won’t I have to busy myself doing nothing but dailies all the fricking time? No, because you can do only up to three per day. Yep, you read that right! You can use one-time tickets to raise that limit, but the game dispenses those sparingly, so most of the time you’ll actually do no more than three. Which of course means that you need to prioritize. Folks who always want to progress as fast as humanly possible might hate this, but I’m thankful for it because it lets me work towards meaningful goals without stressing me out.

That they’re spread out over the entire game world and thus let me travel a lot and explore in the process makes them even more enjoyable. Which leads me nicely to…

• • Islands

The game’s main continents are separated by the sea, and on your travels you’ll come across many islands – over one hundred to be a bit more precise. Most have at least one quest chain associated with them, Mokoko Seeds to find and an Island Soul to unlock (I’ll probably talk about the game’s various collectibles in a post of its own), as well as co-op events and other stuff happening on or around them. Quite a few also have their own Una’s Task.

What I like the most about them is the sheer variety in aesthetics and subjects. Every time you might think you’ve seen it all along comes something new and unexpected yet again.

Oh, so you’d like some examples?

[Spoiler warning in case you’d like to discover these for yourself]

Here I’ve just uncovered and put a stop to environmental pollution commited by an evil corporation (who else?), and a concert is played to celebrate. I love how the penguins are in attendance too.

Speaking of cute animals, how about an island full of talking and singing pandas, foxes, rabbits and whathaveyou? Unfortunately their singing is…well…bad, so I have to show them how it’s done. Naturally.

Not really an island, more like an offshore platform, anyone should think twice about attacking this ramshackle but fully armed and operational pirate hideout, as the approaching fleet is to find out the hard way very soon.

As part of the second awakening questline (which rewarded me with a very powerful, long-cooldown skill) I had to uncover and smash a conspiracy by some religious fanatics (who else?). Here I’m sitting at the far end of the bar to eavesdrop on four baddies pretending to play poker or whatever. Fortunately they were too busy to notice the glowing…ball…thingies…I use to beat up evildoers like them all the time.

After that much work nothing beats raving it up on an island where no one ever sleeps.

Blaugust 2023 post count: 1