With Lost Ark’s May update on the horizon, AGS and Smile gat have given us an opportunity to see what new content is coming this month!
While that patch hasn’t been released yet, AGS and Smilegate have given us a deeper look at what’s to come in this month’s major patch for Lost Ark’s Western Release. This has a number of big-ticket content that players have been waiting on since the launch of Lost Ark in the West. So naturally, we’re going to talk about everything to come in the near future.
Legion Raid – Valtan (Normal and Hard)
Valtan will introduce the first Legion Raid into the western version of Lost Ark. Legion Raids are difficult team-based activities that require teamwork to understand and execute the strategy necessary to counter each Legion Commander’s unique characteristics, abilities, and mechanics. As Legion Raids are challenging and take time, there are gates (or checkpoints) that will save player’s progress as they advance through the Raid.
Valtan is an eight-player Legion raid, has 2 gates, and introduces a swathe of new mechanics. Players will need to be item level 1415 to attempt normal difficulty, and 1445 for hard. The Valtan Legion Raid will also introduce a new rarity for gear – “Relic”. Relic gear can be crafted from materials earned in the raid. It provides more impactful armor and weapon bonuses, alongside bigger stat bonuses and more engraving nodes on accessories.
Our Thoughts
This is the content that many players have been looking forward to. Not only does it bring a new tier of gear, being the star of the Relic-tier Gearing Process in Tier 3, but it’ll also be a new major source of gold. This will make it highly rewarding to run each week.
With both difficulties being accessible for Valtan’s release, If you’re looking to quickly progress your characters, Hard difficulty is the target for you to go for. While the rewards don’t differ too much, you do get far greater rewards. However, if you can’t quite make it to 1445 by the time it launches, Normal isn’t too far behind in rewards, mostly offering less gold.
Deskaluda Guardian Raid
Guardians are powerful entities that can tip the scales toward good or evil. A new Guardian will arise and must be vanquished before they usher in an age of darkness. Deskaluda will require an item level of 1415 to attempt.
As with the other Guardian Raids, you can attempt to vanquish Deskaluda alone, with a party, or matchmake with up to three other heroes. Similar to the rewards in the Valtan Legion Raid, players will also have a chance to earn Relic quality accessories from defeating Deskaluda.
Our Thoughts
If you’re one of the many that found fighting Velganos a pain to do, you’re in for a nice break with this Guardian. While being a higher item level requirement, Deskaluda has much easier-to-follow mechanics which makes it much easier to farm for those precious Greater Honor Leapstones.
Destroyer Advanced Class
We’ve talked about the cataclysmic impact that Warriors have on the battlefield, but nothing embodies this better than the hammer-wielding Destroyer. Armed with a variety of skills centered around charging into the heart of the fray, their hammer attacks are so catastrophically crushing that Destroyers can bend gravity to their will.
Slowing, launching, pushing, and pulling enemies— whatever it takes to utterly, beyond a shadow of a doubt, destroy them. Dealing massive stagger damage, the Destroyer is a welcome addition to any party attempting to vanquish powerful foes. The Destroyer will join the Berserker, Paladin, and Gunlancer as the fourth Warrior Advanced Class.
Our Thoughts
Similar to the Gunlancer, the Destroyer is a front-based attacker, with most of its skills possessing the frontal attack property. Since the Destroyer is confirmed to be releasing its post-rework state, this means it will be the second Warrior class to have a Taunt ability. This along with other changes will make it a class capable of outputting significant damage, as well as boasting the highest Stagger potential in the game.
Challenge Guardian Raids
Challenge Guardian Raids will add a new weekly activity for players looking for a challenge. Each week, players can attempt to defeat three Challenge Guardians. Every Guardian has its own required item level to enter, and each week one Guardian will rotate out, replaced by a different foe.
Differing from a normal Guardian Raid, Challenge Guardian Raids will apply ‘Scale of Balance’ so that your characters’ item level will be adjusted appropriately to that of their enemy. Additionally, players cannot use the Battle Workshop in the raid region. However, with increased challenge comes increased rewards. Rewards for each Challenge Guardian can be obtained once per roster, per week, and offer more diverse rewards than normal Guardian Raids.
Our Thoughts
Challenge Guardian Raids will be a good additional source of honing materials. It’s actually a source we’ve been missing for a while, so finally having it will start to help out overall progression quite a bit. It’s hard to say how much help it will be at the current stage of the game, but for those that are having a hard time getting to the Item Level for Valtan it’ll surely help them along.
New Quests and Open World Activities
South Vern Activities – Chaos Line Hard Mode, Thunderwings Field Boss, the South Vern Chaos Gate, South Vern Ghost Ship, and South Vern Chaos Dungeons will all be arriving in Arkesia.
Wild Wings Island – Arkesia is a vast land, filled with a myriad of menacing and sometimes, well, less-menacing threats. Seeking revenge for eating their friends and family, Crispy Golden Chickings are planning to raid the island. Players turn into a chicken or beer to battle the Chicking boss to earn event coins. The quicker you defeat waves of enemies, the quicker more Chickings appear and the more coins you can earn! Wild Wings Island is a new event island where players can participate in co-op quests or join solo to help suppress this unique uprising.
Our Thoughts
With the additional activities being added, this helps to shore up some other missing sources of materials as well as allow for quicker progression. All of the South Vern Activities in particular will be important, especially the Thunderwings Field Boss, which drops a material needed to fix the quality of Relic Gear as well as possibly dropping Relic Accessories.
Wing Wings Island is likely to be our big summer event. Most larger events will often have their own island which can make it a bit of a pain to particpate in them, but they often offer great rewards, which often include event cosmetics.
New Guild Activities
While being in a guild has been a helpful source of finding raid groups and providing benefits like the guild shop, new PvE and PvP guild activities will be arriving in May. Issue challenges across Arkesia to control guild bases to prove your guild is the best around.
Island Siege – A PvP guild activity that allows you to battle other guilds in PvP combat. Your ranking is determined by how many points you earn from capturing objectives and defeating enemy players. Earn rewards and perks like gems, accessories, ability stones and more.
Raid Match – Enter a base with your guild and challenge the powerful Sylmael Devourer. Once summoned, you’ll have limited time to cooperate with your guild and quickly destroy the Sylmael Devourer. The faster you kill, the more you move up in the guild rankings.
If you’re not in a guild yet, time to start searching! You can use the [Alt-U] hotkey or find the guild menu on the list of menus by pressing escape. Once there, if you’re not in a guild, you can browse through and apply!
Our Thoughts
It’s great to see Guilds having more purpose and rewards now. Guilds currently felt pretty barebones, which this addresses. There’s still more to come for Guilds, but it may be a while before we see more of the Guild content Korea has.
Neria’s Wardrobe
We heard players wanted more skins, so we’re adding a month of Neria’s Wardrobe alongside the normal store updates that will happen in May. Neria’s Wardrobe is a limited-time skin shop that sells individual skins (head, chest, pants, etc.), and will be around for roughly a month.
Players can buy individual items for their character, such as snapback hats, t-shirts, jeans, fit and flare dresses, and more. Your character will be modeling modern fashion while fighting epic bosses.
Our Thoughts
More skins are always welcome, as there’s no fun in playing a character if you can’t at least make them look good. Depending on how many options they give us, this will be a nice addition of skins. In particular, these skins fit a more casual or modern look, as opposed to more of a fantasy look of the previously released skins.
Quality of Life & Balance
May will also introduce a bunch of quality of life changes, including front and back attack indicators, the ability to check daily & weekly content participation in a new menu, UI updates, improved party finder & party invites, updated loot dismantling, convenience features for Market/Auction House, and a few fun features, like being able to randomly summon favorited mounts and new hairstyles for customization!
Including a recent rework of the Destroyer Advanced Class to increase his impact on the battlefield, Smilegate RPG recently released a balance patch on many of the Advanced Classes to tune, update, and further define these classes’ roles on the battlefield. We’ll provide more specifics for players unfamiliar with these changes in the release notes, but you can look forward to these changes coming to Arkesia alongside the Destroyer.
Our Thoughts
The Frontal and Back Attack Indicators are something we’ve wanted to see in the game for a while now. It’ll make it a lot easier to tell who a boss i facing in a group, as well as help position for both attack positions. The other quality of life stuff is also quite good, hopefully lessening the need to use an outside tracker as well as make it easier to enjoy the game.
I hope in addition to these class balance changes, we also get some of the other minor class quality of life things as well. There are a few of those that are missing, and it does help the classes function a lot better, or make them easier to play in PvE and PvP.
UPDATE: The Lost Ark May 2022 Update is now live. You can read the overview of the changes we have prepared for you and check out the new Destroyer Class Guide, suitable for beginner players who want to learn how to play and gear up as Destroyer.
Check out the Lost Ark Guides available on VULKK.com and stay up-to-date with the latest news about the game.
