The MMORPG Lost Ark is distributed here by the publisher Amazon Games. They originally intended to combat the Pay2Win factor in the Asia game. However, with the new April patch, that takes a completely different turn.
How has Amazon done this so far? Overall, a large part of the western players has been satisfied with Amazon’s work on Lost Ark:
- In many places, the in-game shop has been toned down.
- The entire pet system has been made more player-friendly.
- Even the optional subscription, the crystalline aura, does not exist in this form in Korea. It costs more there and has nasty tricks related to randomness.
Only in March did a YouTuber show the terrible Pay2Win factors in the Korean Lost Ark and said we should be glad to have Amazon.
The last Pay2Win trap was averted: In the June update, the American publisher even turned out to be a kind of hero for the fans. After all, the controversial “Yoz’s Jar” was supposed to come into the game in that patch. In this system, players can recycle skins after they have been purchased with real money.
This can then be used to create new skins on a random basis, which will actually have better stats and strengthen your character. However, its announcement caused so much backlash from the western community, that Amazon ultimately cut the feature just before the patch release and was celebrated by players for it.
Lost Ark was also celebrated for the event with The Witcher:
New weapons make you much stronger
What is coming into the game now? The so-called Esther weapons have been a topic in the community for some time. That is what they are called in Korea. Here, they will be called Sidereal-Weapons and in German would be Sternenbotenwaffen. These are a new kind of weapons whose upgrade system works differently than what players are used to.
Instead of gathering materials and upgrading them with luck, you will need to gather much more and new materials for the Sternenbotenwaffen, but the upgrade will then work 100%. Additionally, the total of 8 levels of the new weapons are tied to the completion of various quests and raids.
Furthermore, these weapons score with a guaranteed quality of 100, which corresponds to a bonus damage of 30%. Additionally, you will receive two new, incredibly strong active abilities as soon as the Sternenbotenwaffe reaches level 6. So there is a big boost for your character – if it weren’t for the price.
More grind than you can imagine
How do you get the weapons? When you complete the raid Brelshaza Tor 6 for the first time after the April upgrade, you will receive a quest, at the end of which you will get the weapon. You can find the exact information on which quests you need to have completed beforehand on playlostark.com.
From now on, you need to obtain the new materials Sternenbotenenergie, Böses der Phantome, and Romantisches Kochzutaten-Set, because with them you can then upgrade the weapon. The first is a random drop with high rarity that you can only obtain in Brelshaza Tor 6 and Kakul-Saydon Tor 3. It is traded extremely highly in Korea and was worth about 2 million gold at the release of the Esther weapons.
To create the Romantischen Kochzutaten-Sets, you need rare T3 materials that you get from Life Skills, and quite a lot. For a Sternenbotenwaffe at maximum level, 8, you need a total of 98 Sternenbotenenergie, 15,310 romantic cooking ingredients, and 280 Böses der Phantome. However, before you can start with this, you need an ancient weapon at +25. That is a huge grind that can cost you years or a lot of real money.
How much does that cost now? The exact gold prices for the heaps of materials will not be exactly the same as in Korea. The in-game economies are simply too different. However, even if the Sternenbotenenergien only need half the gold in Korea, you can expect total costs of at least 100 million gold.
That corresponds to about 11,760 raid clears.
If you don’t want to put yourself through this grind, you can convert real money into in-game gold at any time in Lost Ark. If you want to seize one of the weapons in this way, you have to be quite a high earner.
There are various statements regarding the rough Euro costs. In reddit, Korean players label the upgrade costs as “at least $15,000” (via reddit). If you ask real Lost Ark experts, it quickly becomes even more expensive.
“The amount could even become 6 digits”
What do the experts say? The well-known Lost Ark guru, YouTuber and streamer Saintone sees the costs for one of the weapons as much higher. He personally estimates the costs at around 75,000 to even 95,000 euros (via Lost Ark Forums).
Also full of expertise and celebrated by thousands is the streamer ZealsAmbitions. He himself stands critically towards the weapons in the western version. Until the last moment, many players, including him, had hoped that Amazon would refrain from bringing them to the West. In a video about the current patch notes he says that he doesn’t like to talk about money in order not to scare people: “But if you buy the gold legally, it will probably even be 6 digits.”
In his community, the patch is received similarly poorly. Comments under the video include: “Thanks for the video, I can’t wait to play another game” and, somewhat sarcastically: “Great, it’s time to sell my car for the weapons.”
Whether Amazon will ultimately backtrack and how the weapons will be received by the community in the game will be revealed on April 12. That is when the patch arrives, along with the new weapons. What do you think about it? Feel free to write it in the comments here on MeinMMO.
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