A few words about me so you can better understand what I’m looking for in the game:
What I like about MMOs the most is raiding. I get alot of enjoyment out of progressing hard bosses. I want to spent little time doing other activitys besides raiding, because they aren’t fun to me. (Don’t get me wrong here. I respect all people that like collecting stuff. It’s just not for me). I get that in MMOs there are always activities that need to be done to access the lategame. I’m fine with doing daily quests or doing a quest series to unlock an awakening skill. As long as the ratio between fun activities (in my case raiding) and unfun activities doesn’t exeed 80/20 of the time invested im fine with that. Im new to the game and dont know how this ratio looks like in lost ark. Thats why im writing this post. I made it to end of t2 with ilvl 1080 and I’m slowly realizing alot of player power is locked behind collectibles. Let me name a few:
Skill points are mostly locked behind giant hearts (mostly rapport) or Ignea tokens (adventure tome). Skill points directly impact the power of spells. This means by completing adventure tomes and getting Ignea tokens you get an power advantage compared to someone who did not complete those.
I ignored cards for a long time because I thought they are insignificant but there are some very powerful set effects. The light of salvation set for example gives 8% dmg buff with 30-piece Awakening which is alot.
The power gains mentioned above seem alot but if the bosses are balanced with the assumption that not everybody has the right 30-piece Awakening or got all skill points do they really matter that much?
Can I ignore the collectible content and still clear all the bosses without having maximum skillpoints or card sets or is there no way around?
Please dont hate me for only beeing interested in small part of the game. I respect everyone no matter how he plays the game. At the end of the day all comes down to having fun. I have fun raiding.
I would probably say yes that you might be able to do the relevant content with what you have done (given you understand the game to the fullest amount). But you have to understand that the game is kinda built for the long-haul. All your characters hit differing power spikes as you collect all things you mentioned above. Some are small, some are quite noticeably large. And over time all this starts to add up. You meet stagger checks sooner; you start to clear content at a faster rate, you begin to make more gold from clearing more content even or items to improve the QoL features of the game etc. To be blunt, partial effort will only give you partial results. And if you ever need help you can refer to pages like this Giant Heart Collectibles Guide for Lost Ark on Maxroll.gg that might help you.
if you fail at raiding because you skipped the rest of the game then you cant complain tho
preperation is obviously necessary and building up a character in an mmo.
Short answer: Yes.
And you do not need 30-piece awakening or even 18-piece awakening to do content. You do not need to go collect all skill points from difficult collectibles.
Long answer, see below.
There are multiple avenues you can take in the game to strengthen your character. Skill points, Gems, Trifolds (skill lv), Cards, Runes, Honing gear, Engravings, etc.
All of these are different areas you want to work on if you plan on upgrading your character. There will come a point (i.e. Legion Raid) where people will not include you in raids if the only thing you have is the minimum iLv requirement. You simply won’t be able to join those raids, and even if you do, what you will provide for the team will be far less due to you not having these things.
Not having Gems? You do less dmg or your skill CD is longer.
Not having Engravings? You do less dmg, or are less tankier, or can’t use skills as often.
Not having Skill Trifolds? You will do less dmg or have longer CD.
Not having Skill Points? You will do less dmg, or you will be missing some key skills entirely.
I can tell you, Cards should be at the bottom of your priority. You shouldn’t even think about Light of Salvation 30-piece awakening as you will never get there. You will likely not even get 18-piece awakening for 6~12months, and that’s assuming you are doing all the right things to get the required cards. You can however work on getting Lostwind Cliff 12-piece awakening, which is relatively easier to get and has an excellent effect.
Giant’s Hearts are generally very easy to get. I have 7 already, and this does not include the 3-ish that you get from Rapport (slowly working on those but it takes time). Other Skill Point sources are not very difficult either. You should be able to get to a good skill point value without killing yourself through endless grinds. Teh game is designed that way.
The thing to note though is that you will always be weaker than people who did do these content. And these are not things you can just “buy with money”. You have to actually play the game, one of the things that makes Lost Ark great.
I have nothing against prepration. The problem starts if the preperation takes 90% of the time. Im fine with doing a few quests to get skillpoints (island tokens). Where the problem starts is with Ignea tokens. Its just way to much effort to get 100% completion. Player power shouldnt be locked behind this kind of collectible stuff in my opinion.
