Lost Ark Tripods System Explained

Tripods are an important part of Lost Ark’s combat, letting you finely tune your abilities. This guide explains the basics, allowing for more effective skill tuning!

In Lost Ark, you have a limited amount of Skill Points to spend on your Skills which allows them to level up and grant access to Tripods. Tripods are bonus skill effects that can greatly boost their damage or alter their performance in helpful ways. This guide explains the basics of the Tripod system and allows you to use the system effectively in your own builds.

What is the Tripod System in Lost Ark?

Simply put, Tripods are Lost Ark’s Skill upgrade system. These allow you to alter your skills as you see fit, enhancing how they perform in many ways. They can add Damage, affect Critical Chance, Increase Attack or Cast Speed, Reduce Mana costs, add Debuffs, and many more options.

An example of a Skill with full set of active Tripods

It’s referred to as the Tripod system, as there are three tiers of upgrades, and you’re only able to choose one upgrade from each tier. It’s also a reference to the co-developers of Lost Ark, Tripod Studios, whose logo is used in-game as part of this system.

How to Unlock and Use Tripods in Lost Ark

Tripods can be a complex and overwhelming system for players that aren’t quite used to it. It’s often the most intimidating part of Lost Ark’s Skill system. That being said, there’s a quick and easy way to figure out what works and what doesn’t for your class to set up really good Tripod Combos.

Your Remaining / Total Skill points as shown above your Tripods

Each tier of Tripod is unlocked when a respective number of skill points are put into a skill.

Once a Skill is Level 4, they get access to their Tier 1 Tripod. These are typically minor effects like Attack Speed, Meter Gain or MP Cost Reduction; like the above example.

at level 7, they get access to their Tier 2 Tripod. These typically include stronger Damage effects, Debuffs, or AoE Increases; like the above example.

Finally, at level 10, they get access to their Tier 3 Tripod. These typically alter a skill pretty heavily. In the above example the left option increases the cooldown, but makes a stationary AoE into a moving AoE; The option on the right is just a huge damage boost, with no additional penalty.

The key to simplifying things lies in paying attention to Skill Effects. We covered these in our Guide to Advanced Combat in Lost Ark, give that guide a look if you’re looking for more information on those. Certain Skill Effects pair really well with certain Tripods. As an example, Back Attack Skills work really well with Tripods that further increase Critical Chance or Critical Damage.

For a few quick key combos to look out for, here’s a short list that will get you started:

Back Attack – Critical Chance, Critical Damage
Front Attack/Counter – Damage Reduction, Super Armor
Multi-hit Attacks – Identity Meter Gain, Attack Speed
Casted Attacks – Cast Speed, Super Armor
Movement Skills – Movement Distance
Support Skills – Buff/Shield/Heal effects, Cooldown Reduction, Mana Reduction

While this list is by no means perfect in terms of endgame, it gives you an idea of the flexibility you have with Tripods. Damage effects were excluded because they’re typically good regardless of the skill if they’re strong enough.

How to Enhance and Upgrade Tripods

Beyond just picking them, you’ll eventually be able to upgrade the levels of certain Tripods in the endgame. These upgrades come in the form of bonuses applied by your gear, similar to your bonus stats. When you hover over any given Tripod in the skill menu, you’ll be able to identify which Tripods can be affected by this system.

These upgrades are however chosen at random, so it can take a while to min-max your gear to get the skills you want on the gear you want. Thankfully, you can only roll Tripods for the class you are currently playing. So it’s limited to just rolling the right Tripods for your build.

These do not add additional Tripods and will only affect Tripod in use. So you’ll have to plan carefully what you want and look out for them.

However, you don’t have access to this early on, we’re only mentioning it as part of the system. It definitely will play a role in picking which Tripods to use, but not always. Always good to keep in mind though.

Here at VULKK.com we’re building a collection of useful Lost Ark Guides, with more and more are being published regularly. If you are new, I suggest you start with the Lost Ark Beginner Guides section. The DOs and DONTs Tips for Beginners is a great one to check out, we suggest! We also have all of the news and updates covered to keep you up-to-date with all things Lost Ark.

Read through the very detailed Progression Guide for Lost Ark. It has detailed step-by-step instructions to take you from level 10 all the way to the EndGame.

Lost Ark Beginner Guides Collection

A collection of must-read Beginner Friendly guides for the MMOARPG Lost Ark. Learn the basics of the game, how to level up quicker and easier, how combat works, which perks to get first, what to do and not do as a new player in Arkesia!