@Redrowen also as a grinder, seeing someone drop a 50 dollar bill on third party gold seller, and cover your entire weekly earnings, is quite disheartening to say the least.
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New friends come in, last about a week or 2, as they QUICKLY Feel overwhelmed by catching up. All the boosts and passes don’t come with gold for them to hone with.
I’ve felt that way for a long time.
AGS/SG gold costs are outrageous and I haven’t spent anything on vertical progression. I never bought RCs for Gold.
But to look at a GVG website and see that they are selling gold for pennies on the dollar it makes those of us who are legit feel a fool for not just buying gold and skipping the thousands of hours of grinding.
What you can grind in a weekly reset is like $300 AGS or $25 GVG lol
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Ya it’s pretty rough. I started a character on a different server to see the experience, and thankfully I’m playing GS so I just need Peacemaker 1 for now.
It took weeks of selling GHL, Life Skill Mats, and riding Argos/Oreha Busses until I could hoard enough to just get situated. That’s bad RNG, missing out on a single Crit/Swift or Crit/Spec Neck from Argos, so I had to sacrifice some Pheon there. Thankfully the 1415 Honing Buff dropped around the time I was 1400 (+16 Armor cheese) so I was able to reach Relic Gear level without it being too brutal.
From there, I had to keep riding busses because I failed like 7-8 Stones before I could get a viable one. I think it took another 3 weeks of farming/Login Rewards on one char to afford the Relic Accessories + 125 Pheons. The latter was the brutal part. I’m now 4x3+1 and coming together nicely.
At 1452 now, I’ve finished Thronespire + Anguished Isle for a neat 60K injection so I can afford to start Stronghold Fusion Mats. At this point, it should just be a process over time as I get the basic Skill Points and Collectibles for my character.
Personally, the experience was pretty shitty, I can’t really imagine how a new player would know to do what I did and how to completely minimize costs at the beginning.
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Could you imagine explaining that to a brand new player excited to try Lost Ark?
Well first, you skip T1/2. It’s gone now, don’t worry about it. All the stuff you might need from there for your horizontal content? Yeah, just don’t worry about it anymore.
Next, you express pass yourself to 1370. You’ll have no idea what your buttons do, how to actually play the game, but that’s ok queue into Yoho. Oh you’re getting screamed at and kicked from the party because you have no Engravings? That’s unfortunate.
See if you can pay someone 300g to run you through Oreha and then 900-1500g to run you through Argos. You want to do it yourself? Sorry not likely. Don’t worry though paying the bus you’ll still make gold in the end, just a little less.
Now build a skuffed set of legendary gear. Yes it matters if your stats are perfect. Why? Because the gatekeepers of the game will deny you entry into every single thing in PartyFinder if not. Oh, your first Oreha/Argos was all Endurance and Domination with nothing that works with your Class Engraving? That’s unfortuate.
Any Pheon you might have dump into RNG cutting a 6/6 stone. No not any stone, a specific one thats for your class. Oh you failed 10 stones and ran out of Pheon? That’s unfortunate.
Yes I know you still don’t really understand how to play, since you never had any kind of foundation at all. Here, go read MaxRoll and watch YouTube for a few days, that should help.
Ok great, now burn every mat you come across from chaos/guardian into trying to get to 1415.
I PROMISE BRO THE GAME STARTS AT LEGION RAIDS
Oh sweet you finally got to 1415 and Legion Raids? Ok now buy a bus for the next 3 months since there is no shot your skuffed 2x3 +2 with double malice character will get accepted into a Party to try the fight out normally. Hopefully you’ll get a decent drop to sell so you can start bettering your character…
Yes I know you’ve been trying to at least 3x3 but haven’t had any luck with accessories and cannot afford more Pheon to cut stones. That’s unfortunate.
While you’re at it repeat the steps above on as many alts as you can mentally withstand repeating the exact same content on every day. They’ll help you earn gold once they’re done costing you gold.
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ROFL ya dude, it’s pretty awful. We’ve gained a couple of friends back who were interested once again, and their Inventory is just like 8471084710834 chests of random Engraving Boxes, Battle Items, Cards, whatever you name it. There’s too much stuff to keep track of, one TOP of learning how to just pilot your character at a basic level.
It also just makes me wanna dismiss the whole “we’ve gotten so many free Pheon” argument for new players. I felt like a fkin surgeon trying to ration out how many Stones I could actually cut before I gave up on the new character. Settled for a 5/5 Stone, 3 Class Engrave, and double-equip Epic Engrave on my way up to 1415. Imagine trying to apply to a party with that garbage and a ~30 Roster Level.
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Pretty much said the same thing about the mental gymnastics players are doing right now to justify the game. Game legit sounds like someone sat you down at Denny’s and tried to get you into their MLM gig.
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It’s the definition of insanity, I swear.
Bruh. lets at class eng to every acc that drops and make 5x3 impossible. thats a good one. wihtout legendary books you cant go 5x3.
they are extremely possible to buy and use, its an MMO so a marathon not a sprint youre not meant to have 6x 5x3 max gear classes right out the gate. ive done it slow roll and just finished my 2nd alt.
everything you have recommended is in place to ensure an economy exists. if all the acc no longer have bad stats and books no longer exist, then their is a massive over population of good items that dont need to be bought, gold price goes down, gold earning with it. you now cant hone your class and gem prices go through the roof (as the gold has to go somewhere) so you fix one issue and make the other exponentially harder to achieve.
after your main they are your alts, not equals, take your time play it slow enjoy life and the game. take breaks.
if its gonna take you over a year to get the striker build then idk your doing something wrong. but yeah, dont be so doomer in your approach and take it slower, try an off build, dont go hyper meta classes, etc etc. meta in an MMO will always be hard to attain by the f2p if joined late. had you build your striker when vykas was coming out books would have been much cheaper. its a time gated process not a one and done situation. just have fun with it
or just focus on yourself since no one else matters and has zero impact on your own growth? if its not someone rmting, its someone buying royals. if its not someone buying royals, its someone getting lucky hones. none of this slows or speeds your own progression
See that would be true in a traditional MMO.
In LA, that 50 dollars is the difference in being able to join a PF or being gatekept because you don’t have the resources to catch up and actually do the content.
Your progression is directly hampered when you cannot get a party to clear your weekly content because you don’t have the resources to spend on getting to 4x3 or better for a Valtan Normal 
The Gatekeeping is nutty these days
my 1415 alts used to be 2x3 and 3x3 getting into valtans just fine. getting declined by 1-2 parties is not the end of the world
When was the last time you tried.
Go check out the state of a 1415 PF for Valtan these days.
on valtan release and literally last week on a 2x3 db. both were fine on NA east
Ok so you got by in one run, likely because you had a decent roster level, maybe some decent gems and the Party Leader wasn’t being picky.
All I am saying is the difference of your alt having 200k gold for $50 to spend on upgrades vs. trying to just get by on what Oreha/Argos might drop for them is two totally different experiences.
Oh no doubt. Terrible gameplay mechanics become normalized for the sake of bots, security features, or just bad design. Easily 50%-65% of the current player base is bots. It’s been an issue for so long that its now just accepted. As you mentioned, every start is rocky (even for veteran players) for new characters/alts. And due to that, carrying is now an accepted practice. I’ve never seen an MMORPG stroke its “grind” ego so hard yet so quickly throw out currency to skip content. And then the game has been so acceptedly negative for so long that even top players are upset with new players getting any sort of leg up. “We waded through shit so you gotta do it too”. How about no? Such an ass backwards mentality for a game that is struggling so hard. The game is supposed to evolve. It’s supposed to implement new welcoming features, not deterrents. As if running weeks/months of same horizontal content makes them more deserving. End rant, was bored.
you say this like l care about my alts that are outside of main 6. those dollar store rejects use what they find and even for my main 6 l only bought 1-3 pieces on each of them. theres plenty of parties that aren’t expecting gear compensators just like theres a ton of parties filled with shitters that think gear is their limiting factor when they’re just garbage players
You are treating this like it’s about you. Trying broading your opinion to include how everyone else playing the game might be dealing with.
Yeah sure I also don’t care about my 1415 DB who’s just a placeholder for AYAYA. That’s because you and I have omega rosters that farm us lots of gold every week.
Lots of players aren’t where we are. Especially newer players trying to get an alt roster like ours nowadays.
The point of this is yes, it does make a difference when you are trying to find a party still skuffed and building that alt up vs someone who just GVG’d 50 bucks and now has 200k to invest into the alt.
yes obviously but the new players as well as yourself are acting like its doomed and impossible to play the content normally just because they didn’t start in february or buy gold when theres a ton of parties that simply don’t give a shit if you’re a mega whale or started yesterday