Simlegate RPG and Amazon Games published a January team update blog post with tons of crucial information about next month’s Lost Ark launch, and there’s a lot more than expected. There will be way more content than Korea and Russia received when the MMORPG launched in their regions. The most surprising revelation is that EU and NA Lost Ark players will have access to some Tier 3 content from day one.
Along with the content and feature reveals, the team also provided answers to some of the community’s burning questions. The most notable of those is how to reserve names for characters, and how the skins from the Founder’s Packs will work.
Lost Ark content available at launch
There will be three additional regions available to EU and NA players when Lost Ark launches in the West. You’ll head underground to the home of a dwarven race known as the Umar. Next up, you’ll be able to venture to Feiton, a continent still poisoned from the Chain War. Feiton is home to the half-human half-demon Delains. The final additional region you will be able to explore is Punika. Here, you’ll be able to enjoy lush landscapes and the lively festivals hosted by the locals. All of these new regions mean that new quests, bosses, dungeons, T3 gear, and more will be available in-game.
To get this T3 gear, you will be able to venture into a few core T3 pieces of Lost Ark content. These are the Oreha’s Well Abyssal Dungeon, Chaos Dungeon Stage 3, and the Velganos Guardian Raid. The January team update revealed that additional T3 content will be added to Lost Ark post-launch in a way that sets a comfortable pace for player progression.
Another major addition to the Western Lost Ark release is that the Combat level cap will be 60. In the closed beta, it was just 50. Speaking of the beta, I found the pacing in parts to be a little off. It was all too easy. The team has rebalanced this to make endgame content more challenging.
The answers you are looking for
A massive part of any MMORPG is creating your character. You want to design the perfect-looking specimen, and then give them an appropriate name. Players often create a placeholder character as soon as they can log into a game once it launches and use it to reserve a name for their perfect character, which they will create at a later date. In Lost Ark, a name is not immediately released when a character is deleted. This is a manual process that happens occasionally. In short, design the character you want to play the first time.
Each character now has three to four voice options for you to choose from. There is also an option to download the Korean voices to use in-game. This will be a free Steam DLC download available at launch.
For those who just want to throw cash at Amazon and Smilegate by purchasing multiple Founder’s Packs, you will be pleased to know that you can stack different packs. So, two Gold Founder’s Packs will not stack. However, a Gold and a Silver will. Just make sure you open the Northern Lawmaker and Platinum skin chests on the character you want to use them on. The two skins will also only be available for the classes available in-game at launch. So, there’s no point in saving them.
Platinum Founder’s Pack skins.
Maintaining momentum
Every team update creates more excitement for the launch, but they also leave the community with more questions — in a good way. Following on from the January team update, more Lost Ark launch details will be revealed next week. Among the information will be launch day instructions for players, a list of servers, pre-download times, and the exact time servers will go live.
Sometime before launch (not next week), the team will also release more details about Lost Ark’s monetization, full patch notes, and some insights into what makes the Western version of the game different. Once Lost Ark launches, players will also receive a roadmap for future content.
