Upgrading in Lost Ark is incredibly expensive. That is no secret. However, a reddit user shows a trick that can make your life easier. We at MeinMMO summarize.
What does the trick show? Normally, to reach the gear score of 1,415, you need to fully upgrade your current gear to +15. This is nerve-wracking, costs a lot of crystals, and especially a heap of gold. To at least save you some gold, a reddit user calculated how to make it easier (via reddit).
It is also important to mention that the post takes the upgrade rates of an endgame character. This means the exact numbers only apply if you already have a character at level 1,460 and have researched the honing buff in the stronghold.
The actual trick is as simple as it is: Don’t upgrade your entire gear to +15. That’s expensive and inefficient. Instead, improve some pieces to +17, so you can leave expensive parts like your weapon at +11. This saves you an average of several thousand gold.
And it helps you to reach Vykas, the latest Legion Raid in Lost Ark:
How does it work in detail? This depends on whether you play support or DPS, as you will have different priorities that affect your gear. As a DPS player, you prefer gear pieces that give you a bonus to attack power, while as a supporter you would rather have more health points.
For DPS players, this means:
- Gloves and shoulder pieces +17, as you get more attack power here
- Helmet +13
- Pants and top +12
- Weapon +11, as it is the most expensive, and you lose hardly any damage due to the additional attack power on gloves and shoulders
For supporters, it looks like this:
- Top and pants +17, as they provide you with the most bonus to vitality and allow you to distribute larger shields
- Helmet +13
- Gloves and shoulder pieces +12
- Weapon +11
This makes the support build a bit more expensive than the DPS build, as the top and pants require more gold for upgrades than gloves and shoulder pieces. However, this way is still much cheaper than pushing all gear to +15. In both variants, you end up with a gear score of 1,415.
If your support build, by the way, focuses on damage buffs, you can also go the DPS route. Damage buffs scale with attack power, while shields and heals scale with vitality.
How much gold you exactly save can be seen in the thread itself:
Works even if your character is not yet 1,460
Should I choose the method if I don’t have the honing buff yet? Yes, definitely. Although the reddit thread creator refers to the rates that you have with the large buff at 1,460, the method basically still works without any issues.
The buff that you can research at 1,460 improves your upgrade chances by 10% and simultaneously reduces the material consumption by the same amount. This means you still save a lot of money even without this buff; the calculated numbers just do not match your experience.
If you want to find out how to farm gold most effectively to afford this, we have prepared a separate article for that.
Even if you’re currently playing your first character and don’t have much gold yet, this little trick is worth it to save a bit of gold. You’ll need it anyway, as the path to 1,460 is long and, above all, expensive.
What do you think of the method? Have you used it yourself, or do you prefer to have everything evenly upgraded to +15? Feel free to let us know in the comments here on MeinMMO.
Lost Ark loses over 60% of its player base on Steam, and everyone is celebrating that
