Heroes of Arkesia,
The Spells in Spades Update brings a new Advanced Class— the Arcanist— along with a variety of new progression events for new and existing players alike. With new alternate characters available to level-up easily with tools like the Punika Powerpass, Hyper Express Event, and more, we thought it would be the perfect time to sit down with the Lost Ark legend ATK and share some tips and tricks with players interested in expanding their roster. With his own stacked roster of over 20 characters, not to mention the skill needed to play them, few know more about managing a roster and making efficient alternate characters than ATK.
If you’re interested in learning about the new progression events, you can find specific details in The Spells in Spades Release Notes. Find ATK’s advice on making alternate characters and managing a growing roster below!
Benefits of Alts
Before getting into how to pick an alternate character or when he recommended progressing an alt, we started off by asking ATK for his thoughts on some of the benefits of creating alternate characters.
Trying New Playstyles
Trying out different classes can help you get better at Lost Ark in general. By experiencing different playstyles, you can better learn about back-attack classes, the different DPS positions and rotations of classes, and better understand how support plays. Knowing how the support/team-buff operates for various classes is also crucial to generally improve performance.
More Gold & Resources
ATK dives further into some specifics in the Progression section below, but simply put, having multiple characters ready for Legion Raids yields you more Gold. With the recent additions of Legion Commanders Valtan and Vykas, having a Item Level (ilvl) 1430 or 1445 character will get you a significant Gold boost— as a Normal Legion Raid clear grants 2,500, and Hard Mode clear grants 4,500. Up to 6 characters on your roster can earn Gold from weekly activities, called “raw Gold generation”.
Apart from Gold, alt characters can generate a variety of materials by doing daily Chaos Dungeons, Guardian Raids, and Silver through Una’s Tasks. Una’s Task rewards are character bound, but Silver isn’t! You can also sell many of the materials from Chaos Dungeon and Guardian Raids your alt characters generate, or transfer them to another character on your roster. For example, having a 1370 character can yield you materials from the 1370 Chaos Dungeon, Nightfox Yoho for Great Honor Leapstones and Tier 3 Guardian and Destruction stones. Characters stay in Tier 3 for a long time, so simply having another character in Tier 3 will help you gather various materials to bolster all of your roster’s characters. Unlike gold generation, you can have more than 6 characters that can generate materials, but I always want to advise don’t make too many characters or you will be overwhelmed with dailies!
Versatility, Exploration, and Una’s Tasks
Bifrost teleports are character specific, meaning more characters will give you more total Bifrost teleports for your roster. With more points, you can strategically set your Bifrosts to different locations you need to travel to, like special event islands, traveling merchants, or for different Una’s Tasks.
You can work on multiple Una’s Tasks with alts, as each character can do 3 Daily Una’s Tasks. If you find yourself wanting to do a specific Una’s Task to earn Leapstones for your main, you can utilize your alt characters to earn progress on other Una’s Tasks that grant important reputation rewards, like Giant Hearts, Omnium Stars, Skill Point Potions, and more.
Sometimes during an event where you earn various tokens to trade for rewards, tokens can be obtained by completing Chaos Dungeons, Guardian Raids or even Una’s Tasks. If you happen to have enough characters, you can generate enough tokens for doing dailies, if you don’t enjoy the event’s activities.
Picking An Alternate Character
Are there any tips you have for players when picking a new character?
I think people should try all the classes for fun! I would never pick a class based on the meta or a “best performing” class, I get asked this all the time and I believe people should play the class they enjoy playing. There is nothing more stressful investing into characters you do not want to play simply because they’re in the meta.
Have at least one support in your roster. You don’t need to if you dislike the playstyle, but I can guarantee your knowledge of Lost Ark will double if you play a support. DPS players can perform better if they have a support in their roster, because they know how a support thinks and how they rotate their team-buff skills. Also, it’s easier to learn mechanics in a raid with support because you have more time to observe the boss’s patterns.
Leverage your existing resources. Legendary Engraving recipe books are expensive, so people tend to make alts based on what Legendary Engravings they’ve read, for example:
Hit Master is used by Artillerist, Sorceress, Sharpshooter, Gunslinger, Arcanist, and Shadowhunter.
Ambush Master is used by most back attack classes like Deathblade, Striker, Deadeye, Reaper, Scrapper, and Control Glaivier.
Supports use Engravings like Expert and Awakening.
Grudge, Cursed Doll, and Keen Blunt are expensive, but are used by all DPS classes, so you can make a variety of DPS alts if you’ve read them.
Duplicate Characters
Are there pros/cons to making an alt that's the same class as your main, or a duplicate of another class you enjoy playing?
Pros
You can share Class Engravings and Gems.
If you’ve read Legendary Class Engravings, your alts can benefit from it.
Gems do a significant role in damage, and if you have characters of the same class, they can benefit from the high level gems.
Your mastery of the class will be great.
I have seen one-trick players in
Lost Ark
that were significantly better than players who play multiple classes simply due to their mastery and understanding of the class.
If there are users who are planning to be the best player of a certain class, I’d suggest they should make multiple alts of the same class.
Cons
Unless you love the class, it can become repetitive.
As mentioned above in the benefits section, having different alts can help you learn how different classes work and how your teammates think about, or position themselves, in different situations. While you can master a class this way, you might not have as much insight into your teammates’ thinking.
Progressing Your Alts
When advancing/honing your roster, do you have any tips for players? When’s the right time to push a character?
I get this question all the time— and I want to stress that it should always be specific to the player— because fun and goals are subjective topics. Here’s a good foundation that could potentially help.
If you think it’s fun, do it! I have so many people trying to justify pushing a character’s ilvl. The truth is, you cannot justify pushing a character by means other than your desire to make the character stronger. You get more resources, but the payback usually does not cover the initial investment. Unless you think it’s fun, you should never buy materials to push. The game provides you enough bound items if you do your dailies. Gold is valuable, and I wouldn’t spend it to push your alts.
Play at your own pace! I would never over-push your characters with Gold unless you desire to play them, due to it being fun. Think of it as a marathon, not a sprint.
Making Alts More Efficient
Prioritizing Versatility, Silver, and same-tier materials make an efficient alt. More Bifrost and Lopang Una’s Tasks for Silver gains are good enough for a low investment alt. For example;
Item level 960 - 1301 yields you 52,560 Silver per day.
Item level 1302 - 1414 yields you 79,200 Silver per day.
Item level 1415 - 1490 yields you 93,600 Silver per day.
If you keep doing your dailies, you’ll gain enough bound materials to keep pushing the alt’s ilvl, and then your alts will be able to generate gold. Here are some of the major thresholds for reference:
1325 - 1340 - Abyssal Dungeon Normal Gold, 1340 Chaos Dungeon, 79,200 Silver
1370 - Argos + Abyssal Dungeon Hard Gold. 1370 Chaos Dungeon, 79,200 Silver
1415 - Argos + Valtan Normal Gold. 1415 Chaos Dungeon, Deskaluda, 93,600 Silver
However this requires you to build decent Engravings.
1430 - Argos + Valtan Normal + Vykas Normal. 93,600 Silver.
This is where I had my 16 alts parked for 6+ months.
Deskaluda - a 3-4 minute fight.
1445 - Argos + Valtan Hard + Vykas Normal. 93,600 silver
This is the ilvl you can experience the character’s “true late game” with full Relic gear and accessory sets. This is the ilvl you should experience before deciding pushing further as main, because it becomes significantly more expensive to push further to experience newer content.
This is where most of my characters are parked, and this is when Deskaluda becomes a 2-3 minute fight with full Relics.
Any ilvl above 1445 is considered a main investment. This category is for under 6 characters because only 6 characters can make weekly Gold. Any more characters above this level are not recommended by me, as you could be overwhelmed by dailies and content.
Swapping Mains
Is there ever a good time or way to swap your main?
A good time to swap your main is simply anytime you enjoy and desire to make that class stronger. Sometimes you will find yourself really enjoy playing a certain class, even if that class is low level. Mains should always be based on how much fun you have, not the ilvl. Item level always comes as you spend time on the character. I have so many friends who switch mains all the time, since there are enough resources for everyone to utilize to try new characters, like Trixion in-game and watching streamers who play the class.
Learn More From ATK
If you need additional help picking a new alt, make sure to checkout ATK’s character interviews and content on YouTube— a great way to see what an Advanced Class is all about! You’ll find more insights, guides, live high-level Lost Ark gameplay, and more original content on ATK’s Twitch and YouTube channels:
Thanks for joining us for this special edition of Lost Ark Academy, and we wish you luck as your roster grows with the new progression events and Advanced Class in this month’s update!
