A beginner's guide to Lost Ark: Leveling, class synergies, and Knowledge Transfer

Feb 7, 2022

The Lost Ark MMORPG by Smilegate launches in just a few days — Feb. 8 for Founder's Pack owners and Feb. 11 for everyone else — and here at Inven Global, we're working actively to guide new players through the wonderful world of Arkesia.

This guide covers some of the basic knowledge all new players should know: class roles, leveling a character, and boosting alts with Knowledge Transfer.

How to unlock your advanced class in Lost Ark

You’ll be transported to Trixion to select your advanced class as soon as you create your character after a short cutscene. There’s no tutorial to slog through (Anymore), you can get right to playing the class you desire!

Knowing your class roles: DPS and Supports in Lost Ark

Classes in Lost Ark have one of two roles, DPS or Support. It’s important to know your class's role before you decide on what class you plan on playing.

DPS classes, as the name would suggest, are intended to primarily deal damage as their form of party contribution. While DPS classes can provide other utility such as Stagger Damage, Weak Point, or Part Break, their main purpose is to deal damage in order to kill whatever the party needs dead. DPS classes usually want Specialization, Critical, and Agility as their secondary stat choices, as these stats directly increase damage in some way.

Support classes, as the name would also suggest, are intended to support their party members as their form of party contribution. They primarily do this in the form of damage buffs, damage reduction buffs, shielding, and very occasionally healing. Support classes usually want Specialization and Agility as their secondary stat choices, as these stats increase the uptime and/or potency of their buffs, shields, and heals. Support classes will not do nearly as much as a normal DPS class in terms of damage, even when built for damage. Currently, on release, the two available support classes are only Bard and Paladin.

However, every DPS class in Lost Ark has at least 1 supportive ability in their kit. This is referred to as their DPS Synergy ability, and won’t stack with each other if applied from the same class. This means that everyone is contributing to party damage in some way, even if you are not truly a “support” class. Subsequently, this makes support classes that much more valuable as they are specialized classes that provide mostly utility to the party. You typically will want 1 Support for every 3 DPS classes in a party in difficult content. Since every class will have support for each other regardless, this is not mandatory if you are able to play well mechanically and use your health potions effectively. Support classes solely exist to alleviate some of the pressure off the DPS players, there are no mandatory “heal checks” like in other MMORPG’s.

The list of Synergy abilities for each of the released DPS classes can be found below:

Flat Damage Synergy

Berserker (Red Dust) and Shadowhunter (Howling) increase the damage taken from the party by 12% for 6 seconds with the Amplified Damage tripod equipped.

Scrapper (Fierce Tiger Strike and Crushing Smite), Sorceress (Blaze and Lightning Vortex), and Sharpshooter (Rapid Shot and Atomic Arrow) increase the damage taken from the party by 6% for 8 seconds with the Amplified Damage tripod equipped.

Soulfist (Energy Release and Pulverizing Palm) increases the party attack power by 6% for 8 seconds with the Fighting Spirit Enhancement tripod equipped.

Deathblade (Spincutter) increases the damage taken from party Head Attacks and Back Attacks by 9% for 10 seconds, and all damage from the party by 3% with the Open Weakness tripod equipped.

Crit Chance Synergy

Wardancer (Wind’s Whisper) grants up to 8% attack speed and 16% movement speed to all party members for 6 seconds innately, while also granting 10% crit chance buff to the party with the Oath of the Wind tripod equipped. Wardancer (Roar of Courage) reduces enemy crit resistance by 3% innately, while reducing an additional 10% crit resistance with the Fatal Wave tripod equipped. (This will also effectively give a 13% crit chance buff to the party, it’s just a different wording because it’s a debuff.)

Striker (Lightning Whisper) reduces enemy crit resistance by 3% innately, while also granting 8% attack speed to all party members with the Lightnings Blessing tripod equipped. It also reduces an additional 10% crit resistance with the Fatal Lightning tripod equipped.

Deadeye and Gunslinger (Spiral Tracker and AT02 Grenade) reduce enemy crit resistance by 10% for 6 seconds with the Weakness Exposure tripod equipped.

Defense Reduction Synergy

Gunlancer (Bash and Shield Push) and Artillerist (Summon Turret) reduce enemy defense by 12% for 6 seconds with the Armor Destruction tripod equipped.

Leveling your classes in Lost Ark

Leveling your first character

Every class can level alone to level 50 in Lost Ark by completing the Main Story quests (orange and blue quests), regardless of what role they are. You won’t have any difficulties killing any bosses or completing every quest. Lost Ark is a game that rewards you for playing multiple characters. As you may go through the leveling process multiple times, it's crucial that you know the basics to save some time.

For your first character, I would suggest doing any Guide Quests (purple quests) when they first appear. These guide quests will teach you about important mechanics in the game, so they provide essential information on your first journey through Arkesia. Side quests are optional, but you should go back and do every side quest eventually after you hit level 50 on at least one character. This is because side quests can give valuable rewards such as skill potions, engraving books, consumable boxes, and permanent stat potions. Side quests may also help in the completion of your Adventure Book, which is necessary to obtain certain collectibles.

After leaving the first continent, your Main Questline will switch from the orange Main Story quests to the blue Region quests. Your Main Story quest tracker will start to track the overarching main story ”Finding the Ark” from this point forward.

For a brand new player, the leveling process should take somewhere between 12-15 hours of gameplay.

Knowledge Transfer in Lost Ark: What it is and how does it work

Additionally, there is a feature in the Stronghold known as Knowledge Transfer. Knowledge Transfer allows you to automatically level or “boost” a class of your choosing to a certain story progression point at the cost of gold. In the western version of Lost Ark, you’ll need to level at least 1 character manually to level 50 before you are able to access the Knowledge Transfer feature. Leveling another character to Vern costs 600 gold and takes 8 hours. This is faster than the average player, so it is extremely worth the gold cost if you can afford it. You can level a character with Knowledge Transfer immediately after your first character hits level 50, with another Knowledge Transfer being unlocked for every two characters at level 50 thereafter. So you’ll need three total characters to unlock your second Knowledge Transfer for another character.

As you progress through the next couple of continents with an existing character (up to Punika), you will unlock the ability to use Knowledge Transfer to skip those continents on future characters.You can continue to use Knowledge Transfer once they have reached sufficient item level to start the next continent, but each continent will need to be done consecutively. This means an additional gold cost and an additional 8 hours of waiting time per continent you wish to progress through. Considering the following continents after Vern only take 1-3 hours each, this is not worth it in my opinion.