Finishing the story is just the first part of your journey in Lost Ark. The F2P Diablo-like MMO actually doesn’t take too long to complete if you focus — the story is about 12~ hours if you’re speeding through. Even less if you use these tips. With a little help from the community and a whole lot of hours under our belts, we’ve figured out the simplest solution to reaching Level 50 fast. It doesn’t take arcane grinding or specific builds. If you can play the game solo, you’ll be on your way to efficient leveling in no time. Here’s a few tips to keep in mind while mashing through the story campaign.
More Lost Ark guides:
10 Tips You Need To Know | Important Keybinds List | All Currencies
Unlocking The End-Game | How To Quickly Complete The Campaign
Before we begin, if you really want to speedrun through the game and get to Level 50 in 10~ hours, you’ll need to skip everything. That means skipping all the story cutscenes. Here’s a quick list of everything you’ll be skipping.
- Skip the Prologue section. This is a short tutorial area that just rewards you with a cosmetic. You can collect the cosmetic from your warehouse storage later in the game.
- Skip all story cutscenes. In the settings, you can set Gameplay to auto-skip all cutscenes for you. Or you can manually skip. If you’re playing with friends, they’ll probably be begging you to skip the cutscenes anyway.
Step #1: Choose A Class That Won’t Die
At the start of Lost Ark, you’re given so many options for character classes. All the classes are useful, but some are going to die easier than others. This is your first time through the campaign, so I recommend going for a character that is easy to play. Below, I’ll list great classes for beginners. The rest? They’re also awesome! But they might make progression a little trickier sometimes.
- Easiest Classes To Star With: Berserker, Scrapper, Sharpshooter, Shadowhunter, Sorceress
Every class is viable and useful until the end-game. But if you want to smoothly blast through the campaign — which is largely very easy — then choose these beginner friendly classes.
Step #2: Rushing Through The Story
The only way to progress in Lost Ark is through the story. You have to complete story missions. They start out as yellow / gold markers and become purple in the second half. Only complete story missions and ignore every other quest on your map. You can complete other quests at any time — and many of them unlock tutorials for features, important items, or permanent boosts for your character.
- NOTE: Don’t skip “Learning About Pets” — this becomes available after the Prideholme demonic invasion. Complete this mission ASAP to get a pet. The pet has an auto-loot feature and helps you fight enemies.
Basically, there’s a very good reason to complete the side-quests. But you also don’t need to. If you’re playing as a beginner friendly class, you’ll still be able to blast through the campaign without much trouble.
Progress through story until you unlock the ocean segment and gain your own boat. The boat allows you to travel to different islands. You’ll unlock this area around Level 36~.
- NOTE: While completing quests, stick with Normal Difficulty. Hard or higher difficulty dungeons are an end-game activity. There’s no reason to do higher difficulty content — stick with the easy stuff and you’ll rapidly level up.
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The main story changes once you reach the open seas. Instead of the previous story quests, you’ll now be completing purple World Quests. Once you leave the first continent and reach the continent of Arthentine, you can complete the main story and reach Level 50. You’re locked out of reaching Level 50 until you finish all those quests, so there’s no reason to waste too much time doing anything else — focus on the quests and you’ll be golden.
Step #3: Travelling Everywhere Faster
Fast-travel is your friend. There are multiple methods for fast-travelling, so let’s break it down.
- After finishing missions, you can use Triport to instantly return. This costs resources, but you’ll get enough to cover the cost.
- To leave an instance after finishing a mission, use the Song of Escape [F2] to exit instantly.
- Finally, you can just type /escape into the chat window. This has no cost and has a cooldown timer of 15 minutes. Absolutely the fastest way to exit an area.
Later on, you’ll also get access to a boat. While travelling with your ship, click the barrels in the water to increase your speed boost. And don’t worry about dying — if you die, your ship becomes a Ghost Ship and can still travel to your destination to repair.
Step #4: Beating Bad Guys Faster
Lost Ark is a Diablo-like, but we don’t have to play it like one. Instead of slowly plodding through levels and carefully taking out monsters, you’ll want to barrel ahead and blast groups of monsters with AOE attacks. Most monsters are pretty easy, so doing this adds an extra layer of fun to the campaign — just keep moving!
- NOTE: Whether you’re solo or with a team, watch out for other players taking your kills. In busy regions, there might be another player wiping out groups of enemies that you need to fight. Change instances or do a different quest if all the monsters you need to kill are getting sat on.
Run past enemies you encounter and bunch them up for your AOE attacks so you’re slaughtering groups instead of just a few at a time. You can move more efficiently by changing the Gameplay Settings, so your character always moves toward your cursor — that’s a lot less clicking. Just drag your cursor and your character will follow. Press [T] to auto-run. Now that’s efficiency.
Step #5: Go It Solo
Teams aren’t required. For maximum XP gains, you’ll want to play solo. On Normal Difficulty, you’ll be able to complete literally any content in the game — you’ll get an absurd amount of HP / Healing Potions, so use them freely and stock up while you’re in town between runs. If you’re with a team, generally, you’ll actually level up slightly slower than if you’re totally solo. It seems insane for an MMO, but teamplay is best saved for end-game content when you really need the extra help.
Step #6: When Things Get Difficult
Eventually, you will run into some challenges in Lost Ark. To stay powered-up and prepared for combat, you’ll want to pay attention to these combat enhancing features.
- Equip accessories when they unlock at Level 18. Accessories are rings or other jewels, and you can equip multiple just like in Diablo. Look for rings that boost your class specialization or critical percentage.
- Use combat items. Consumables like bombs are incredibly useful for dealing with tough enemies. Use them to apply status effects. You’ll get more. Save them for tough fights only.
- Max your skills. As you level up, you’ll earn enough skill points to maximize a skill. Focus on the biggest damage dealers — a maxed-out skill is a huge boost and increases the power of your skill significantly.
And that’s really all you need to know. Skip everything except for main story missions, blast through enemies, use your mount efficiently, and dismantle bosses with your powered-up character. Skip the team play, and you’ll be able to finish the main story in about 10-13~ hours. Then you’ll have an immense end-game to deal with. That’s going to require an entirely different guide to explain.
