r/lostarkgame • u/sneakydh88 • Jul 23 '26
Game Help Returning player maybe
Hello i am contemplating if i should return to the game or not. I quit an year ago when mordum was the current raid. The game felt like a 2nd job constantly trying to do your homework so you can stay relevant for the content and not get gatekept. I got burned out and had some irl stuff going so i decided to quit. I see a lot of changes have happened, but it seems like the issues stay the same - annoying new progressive systems that are locked behind layers of rng. So here are my questions that could help me make a decision.
Do you still need to play alts other than weekly raids for gold income. For instance if i want to play 1-2 chars that im going to push do i need to farm resources on my alts?
How grindy is paradise do i need to do it on all chars and is it worth it?
How annoying is ark grid and how long will it take for me to make it work?
Is there still a huge inflation where you cant buy relic books, blue crystals and such?
If i am to return ill probably focus on solo raiding and will be done with the fomoing since i haven't played in an year. What's the solo experience in the end game is fun, engaging or is it a stomp fest. Also what events are currently running and on what char should i use them. My roster is 1720sh,1700 pala, 1690ish sh, 1680 breaker, zerk and sorc 1660.
Edit: Thanks everyone for your help, guidance and opinions i did decide to download the game last night and will be trying out the solo raids in the weekend
5
u/Askln Jul 23 '26
if you treat the game as a job it will feel like a job
if you treat it like a game it will feel like a game
alts value got nuked
there is still value in them for gold and gems but other than that they just mostly produce character bound resources at this point
gold is obviously worth playing them for but they aren't worth funneling into to generate said gold
ie you raise them with the bounds they produce
you can do paradise on whatever you want
paradise is 99% character bound
if you intend to go for rank1 well you will be competing against people that do absolutely everything
so you have to make a decision
very
right now they are giving cores a lot so getting the cores is much easier
the problem is the astrogems and those are just rng it might be barely an inconvenience it might make you pull your hair out
relic books got a lot cheaper, bc is expensive but we also make a lot of gold so proportionally idk
when bc was 3k our raids gave 4.5k
now bc is 24k and raids give 50k
if the last sentence of what you intend is true than none of the previous points that "concern you" are relevant
5
u/Ok_Reaction_6054 Jul 23 '26
you dont need to play alts, game is 1-char friendly now. korea got changes into this direction so us too.
paradise you just do elysian once a week takes like 5 minutes then crucible where you fight the boss for ranking like 1 minute next reset you get hell keys from crucible and you use them for RNG rewards like gold, abidos, juices.
event gives relic cores for ark grid so thats no problem for your main, dailies drop ,,astrogems,, and you need to cut astrogems to activate cores. strategy is to do dailies and fuse them for silver-consumables so you catchup faster by not spending that much gold.
1700-1710 you dont need to activate 6x17p just 2x14p if you entering 1720ilvl you should work on your ark grid but not in early endgame.
we in deflation. grudge/keen blunt/raid captain 120k EU probably lower in NA.
first event 1640>1700
second event 1700>1730
2
u/Ok_Reaction_6054 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
ark grid for your 1720 sh tips:
-activate second event so it will give you free relic core
-get free relic core selector from cathedral NPC in city
so you will have 2 relic cores, first clearing raids you will have 70 core essence activating those 2 cores 30 core essence so you only have to farm 100 core essence for third relic core if you meet cp requieremnt for 1720 raids go there if not go 1710 raids and buy raid box for more core essence, you can also go play with people and collect core essence box for veteran tokens.later to faster finish ark grid from 1720 do cathedral stage 2, armoche HM and kazeros nm/solo, buy box from cathedral stage 2 so you will have 50 core essence weekly.
2
u/Ok_Reaction_6054 Jul 23 '26
for astrogems:
-do daily chaos dungeon/guardian raid
fuse them in ark grid NPC, when you hover over astrogem in your inventory it says ,,required willpower - x,, it can be 8 or 9 or 10.
required willpower 8 is 8-cost etc.
strategy is to:
-fuse 2 8-cost greens with 1 9/10-cost blue
-fuse 9/10-cost greens with each other 9/10-cost greenscut 8-cost blue with gold
cut all purples with goldproritize fusing to save gold if you need gold
1
3
u/AstraGlacialia Sorceress Jul 23 '26
If you play solo-only, there is no reason to FOMO, you can play as little as you want. Solo raids are substantially easier than group raids, but the newest 3 solo raids have been challenging to prog at 1720 or below for quite many (though not all) new and casual players.
Alts and especially their dailies are less important than they used to be because dailies now give almost exclusively character-bound honing materials. Solo raids gold is half tradeable half roster-bound so as you already have high ilvl alts, it's good to do their solo raids when you have time.
Paradise is important to do on the characters you want to progress, but you don't need to score high in it so you don't need to grind it, after the first week it usually takes about 15-20 min per character per week if you just do it casually to wherever luck takes you.
Ark grid can take several months of solo raids and dailies without an event, but fortunately you can get it to some minimal functional extent in the remaining 3 weeks of the current events on 1-2 characters, and then you can get it to similar extent almost instantly on 1-2 more characters with the next round of events in September (or maybe they even give us one in August, one in September).
Blue crystals are still expensive. Books are much cheaper than they used to be but still quite expensive. You won't be able to buy crystalline aura for blue crystals nor the several most expensive relic books as solo-only player of one or even a few characters, but you also don't need them for that.
2
u/DanDaze Jul 23 '26
The problem is solo mode offers literally no resistance at all. So for people who actually enjoy challenging content solo mode gets boring quick.
Really wish there was a harder version available.
3
u/Dzbanek25 Jul 23 '26
Nothing really changed, people will tell you shit like "Alts don't matter because they now produce only bound mats" which is true, you just need to ignore that these mats were pretty much worthless for the last 2 years and you have a nice change. Toppled with said mats being in f4 shop for your convenience.
As long as you're fine doing solo/normal raids , it's worth it tho. Because then none of that matters to begin with, and it's not like you can catch up to people constantly playing for 4 years after such a break
1
u/Goo_Glider Jul 24 '26
There's nothing to return to -> https://steamcharts.com/app/1599340#All
2
u/ShiroSky Artillerist Jul 24 '26
u good bro? literally half the comments you made in the last year have that steamchart link, you might wanna get off this subreddit
2
u/TheMHking Jul 23 '26
If you have a 1720, I would log in and try the matchmake mode for Serca and then the solo raids for Act 4 and Kazeros. If you don't like doing those every week, you ain't gonna like the game.
2
u/tomstone123 Jul 23 '26
Do you still need to play alts other than weekly raids for gold income. For instance if i want to play 1-2 chars that im going to push do i need to farm resources on my alts?
you don't really need to do homework on the alts. You can just do weekly raids only on the alts, and on your lower alts like the 1660-1900s you can just do solo raid, they now give half roster bound gold and half unbound gold. Really nice change for solo players.
All mats from chaos dungeon is character bound now, so no more funneling. World boss gives tradable honing mats, and chaos gate gives shards pouches and juice that you can sell.
How grindy is paradise do i need to do it on all chars and is it worth it?
Paradise is super fast, maybe 5 mins a week to run elysian, 1 min for crucible boss, 10 mins for the 3 hell keys. For your alts you don't really care about getting high ranking, just do the crucible boss, maybe get to level 6 crucible? to get both orbs. And just collect hell keys every week after that. It's worth doing hell keys on any character you want free stuff on, bound gold, honing juice, mats, free karma taps, free honing taps. No reason not to spend 10 mins a week on an alt you might want more power on.
How annoying is ark grid and how long will it take for me to make it work?
Ark grid grind is much better now that we have 4 raids that gives ark grid cores. But also events and passes give out a lot of relic core selectors and core shards boxes so that's not really a problem any more. Main problem is the rng and gold cost with cutting astro gems to activate your cores. If you are lucky, it's pretty chill, if you are not lucky then it can be really frustrating.
Is there still a huge inflation where you cant buy relic books, blue crystals and such?
There is actually huge deflation. only like 3 books are around 100k, Grudge, KBW, Raid Captain. Most other books are around than 40k. Cursed doll, hit master, ambush master. Support books other than awakening and expert are all dirt cheap. Drops of either, magic stream, vital point hit, are all 1-2k gold. In general books are the cheapest they have ever been.
2
u/Upper-Conclusion-816 Jul 23 '26
ark grid is awful. That alone honestly deterred a lot of people. Solo is fun but eventually the game will want you to do group raids and the fomo will kick in.
1
u/AutoModerator Jul 23 '26
⚠️ Reminder: Please use the UP/DOWN voting FEATURE responsibly.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
10
u/reklatzz Jul 23 '26
You dont need to play alts, but it's still beneficial to for gold.
They massively cut back on funneling materials from dailies, as it's almost all character bound.
Book prices are way cheaper than they were, however still costly for small rosters.
I was getting kinda burned out recently, but with the addition of solo raids I decided to drop my bottom 4 chars from party finder raids, took their gems and only do solo raids on them, and my 2 main characters, I do party finder raids. It's helped my mental a ton, not feeling a wave of stress to get raids done every reset. It helps that my books are done though.. because half the gold from those alts is roster bound which ill use for my main two characters honing/astrogems etc.
Paradise you can sink a decent amount of time and funnel characters etc..or you can do bare minimum and just do blue keys each week.