Wanted to see what it was like to start fresh for a new player

[IAmGlaives]

Around July 22nd I wanted to see what it was like for a new player to start with nothing and see how much easier it is with the event pass and global honing buff.

18ish hours
Is about what it took for me to reach level 50, which I hit on the quest to talk to Sasha. I skipped the rest of Arthetine (Mistake later on, since I forgot the 2nd awakening quest takes you back here).

Note I made no gold during this. I was going to sell the adventure tome items, so I could at least buy the chaos dungeon skins, but I didn’t even have a single gold to post on the AH

20-22 hours
Is what it took to complete North Vern and Shushire, to get me into T1 content.

Worth noting that I never came across another player, it was just bots. They really need to be squashed before hitting these continents.

30ish hours
To finish reach 1302 ilvl.

T1 was easy to do with event mats, pirate coin mats and Tower. I went to Rohendel around 560 ilvl.

After finishing Rohendel I started the 2nd awakening quest (Had to finish up Arthetine to continue). Hitting up the Island that rewarded Leapstones along the way. I was able to reach ilvl 600. Used 6 pheons to get t2 armor and had more than enough materials with the awakening quest, islands and tower to completely skip Yorn and Feiton. I literally never stepped foot on those continents and went right to Punika.

40ish hours
To got back and do Yorn so I could equip gems. Pick up the easier skill point potions that could be done within the day.

After all that I manage to reach ilvl 1370 thanks to some of the daily login chest I still had left over the course of a month. I used rapport chest to get about 5k worth of gold, which all of it went into honing gear. 1350-1370 i had some unlucky RNG and had to buy some additional Fusion materials.

Completing the event quest rewards 2k gold, which I still had most of the pheons you earn from leveling up. I used the 2k gold to get 33311 (1 more point on the stone would of got me 2 on Spirit Absoption) on my Energy Overflow Soulfist.

130 hours
Is where I am at now. 1400 ilvl on my Soulfist. Took 2 resets to hit. I had the crystals/stones/shards it was a bottleneck on Gold/Silver. The cost to fail honing is extremely high now that so many sources of gold have been removed from early game. Legendary accessories and materials are pretty cheap too, so you really don’t make much there. Just enough for 2-3 hone attempts.

Refaucting gems really hurt as it drained the 2m silver I had and did about half level 4 and half level 5 gems.

This is when I knew I needed to get some alts going. This is where I’m at with the roster now.

It wasn’t too rough getting a 2nd character to 1370, but I’ve ran into the same issue getting passed that. I have the materials, I just don’t have the gold to hone.

And not to be a scrub at 1370 since Yoho is bad enough as it is, i did get my striker some okay engravings, the pheons is pretty much most of the cost.

Overall getting to t3 and 1370 is no where near as bad as it use to be, its fairly easy. But passed 1370 because a real struggle as you don’t really generate much gold. Maxroll’s calculator estimates that you need about 16.5k gold and 800 GHL. Both of which are gonna take some time to gather on such a mokoko account.

I think one issue that really needs to be looked into is side content. In the 130 hours of game time, a massive amount of it was spent doing side content to get those important runes and skill potions. Raids are what I would assume most people find enjoyable but it takes so long to get to them and get the needed runes/points to perform well.

Collectables so far

I have 333 skill points on my lvl 53 combat lvl Soulfist.

All the Galewind runes up to Raid 4. I’ve been Avoiding T3 raids as they can be a headache and it just hasn’t dropped yet.
Rage rune, I have yet to get a single one.
I did manage to collect enough adventure seals to purchase legendary Judgment and I’m 6 masterpieces away from Epic Conviction. 4 of which i’m close to on the daily task.
Wealth Runes, the only one I’ve manage to get is from Lagoon Island on the first try.

Omnium Stars really could use a drop rate increase. It would be nice to at least get the Wealth rune before hitting 1415.

New players also really could use some Crystalline Aura time. It is such a high cost with current crystal prices.

Skins other than the providence stone and chaos dungeon ones, have been out of the question. Unless you want spend real money on them.

Even though I’m 1500 hours into my main roster and really do enjoy the Legion raids. I don’t think I would recommend this game for someone starting fresh. The amount of time it is going to take them to even get to Valtan is pretty crazy. This isn’t even mention cards either.

If I continue playing this alt roster its because I actually really enjoy Striker, but we’ll see.

[Arxos]

Great post!

I hope they read this and take your experience into consideration. I too have lost a couple of friends that were just starting last month. They got to 1370 and stopped playing after awhile because they got bored with the yoho trap.

[November]

Well if i remember correctly, the jurney was long, you was stuck few weeks just to hit T2 or T3. With new honing buffs the journey must be super easy, if you do the islands you should be able to hit T2 and T1 without doing other daily stuff. Also you mention less gold income, but honing now dont cost gold, so you spend less. Most time will always take the quest line.

[romconstruct]

Great Post.

But I also have to say, this kinda shows one of the biggest problems with the game.
You rushed through everything as many guides, streamers…a bigger part of the community suggests.

There is nothing wrong if you enjoy different parts of the content and yes the story is in several parts just medicore and many quests are not designed that well. We all know that.

But just looking at the times to reach/complete something, was kinda transported through many guides. Like “the game startes after lvl 50 and you can reach that pint in 15-20h” was something I read/heard/saw many many times. It took me and some friends I play with far far longer. because we simply did every quests and also had fun with collectible, adventure tome completion, Islands, …

So it depends how you play the game.

The problem is, that almost each and everyone is telling you, that you are playing the game wrong and inefficient, if you don’t rush through everything, don’t have 33311 a iLvl 1370 (forcing you to buy stuff from the AH because even after almost 800h I’m not at 33311 with my main, which is 1370 btw.). But I didn’t spend gold on items/stones in the AH. Just bought some green engravings or adventure tome stuff it the price was not higher than 20g.

And yes this is also a huge problem for new players. Because the whole world is kinda telling you, that you are playing the game wrong if you don’t skip every cutscene, if you don’t reach this or that after X hours and no matter if you could’ve fun with other aspects of the game, you start to feel like it is this way.

Some of my friends quit because of this, because they read some guides, rushed through everything and then felt the game to be pretty boring. Because you had to do the same stuff of grind on every day and everything else was way below their iLvl that it was also boring. Could’ve been interesting to to lets say an island for ilvl 460 with ilvl 460…but they got there with 1370…well.

Again: I’m not saying everyone needs to have fun with searching for Mokokos or with the story and I totally get it if you are more into the competitive and more skill based content. But this kind of peer pressure and FOMO like in LA I’ve never experienced in any other MMO over the last 20+ years. For all the other games there always seemed to be people for everything. But LA is more like “rush or die”.

And this is, what this post also illustrates to me, apart from the bad situation with the bots.

[IAmGlaives]

Getting new players into a raid that came out 4 months ago, I wouldn’t exactly call FOMO.

If you enjoy lore, collecting and exploring, that’s great as there is plenty of that to do.

But if you enjoy the combat (Which shines in Legion raids). Its pretty time gated for a new player to reach. Not saying they should be able to jump right into a Legion raid, but they should be able to get there without playing hundreds of hours.

[Saphy]

Wanted to like your post but as soon as you said you do not recommend the game to fresh players I disliked it again. Overall good post but not liking your final decision at all.

[romconstruct]

@IAmGlaives

Getting new players into a raid that came out 4 months ago, I wouldn’t exactly call FOMO.

Raids start in Vern, which would be not even 24h according to this post.
If you only count Argos+ and according to this post, we seem to be looking at 60+h I’d assume (40ish hours till 1302 and yes, then it depends on the mats and honing luck of course, and yes you had the mats already from your other chars).
And after 130h GS 1400…thus I’d say running Argos…

Depending on how long you can play per day, this could be 2 weeks, a month, or yes 4 month.
There are posts in this forum claiming, that everyone that didn’t reached 1415+ after 200h is playing the game wrong.

Just compare this to some other MMOs “back in the good old days”. It also took several months and grind of content to just be ready for some raids.
The usual saying “MMO is not a sprint…”

Yes FOMO might not be applicable to everything.
My argument is more about how most people seem are kinda forced into thinking there is only one way to play the game. Even the ones enjoying the other content.

@IAmGlaives

If you enjoy lore, collecting and exploring, that’s great as there is plenty of that to do.

But if you enjoy the combat (Which shines in Legion raids). Its pretty time gated for a new player to reach. Not saying they should be able to jump right into a Legion raid, but they should be able to get there without playing hundreds of hours.

This is a difficult point I’d say.

Just for arguments sake, let’s assume you can play Argos after 25h, Valtan at 35h and Vykas at 45h. Which would be pretty great, because the first 25h is like the time you have to invest for most AAA titles and you reached endgame.

The problem I see there is, what is also represented in a pretty good way in this forum:

• new raid is announced
• players “how are we ever going to be ready for this in 2 weeks”
• other players “if been ready for weeks with GS++++ can’t wait”
• raid comes out…3 days later “AGS when is next update, we need a new raid, current raid is no more challenge and each and everyone!!! finished the raid already” (btw exactly the spreading of FOMO I’m talking about…no one is forcing you to play the content when it get’s released. AGS even addressed this in one of the roadmaps, I think it was Valtan. The reaction of the players was …oh no we’ll never be ready…like you have to play the content 1h after release or it is gone)
• …repeat
  (numbers slightly exaggerated, but you get my point)

So if everyone really would reach the point faster, the downtime between raids would become even worse. And remember, that there is not so much more content left. According what others postet about KR, people had to wait like 7 month for a new legion raid.
People here can’t even wait a single month and demand new content. Guess what would happen, if it was even easier/quicker to reach end game/legions?

Yes the game might be a bit more interesting to new players that are mostly/only interested in legion raids (again, nothing wrong about that). But you’d have a huge playerbase fluctuation I’d say, because there is nothing left to do for several month. Apart from grind and expressing your frustration in the forum. Because no developer can keep up with such a pace, if you rush through everything.

Therefore some content needs to be gated. And the gate is the boring grind. Thus waiting for the next legion raid can get as boring as trying to collect all Mokokos after a short while.

edit:
Not to get this confused. I’m totally on board with you, that the new player experience isn’t that great. Because of the bots or even more so because of the RMTers supporting the bots. This can’t get addressed enough and always is forgotten: people that RMT create the market for the people running the bots. And thus they basically destroy the game experience for everyone else.
Back to the topic:
The bots are only one factor. Honing luck should be improved, yes. But what about the market itself and groups refusing players that are not geared in a perfect meta build way? Look at al the rising threads about toxic groups. You are forced to “play the AH” and try to get perfect gear, which is way to expensive and you might not have any gold because 1) yo are getting less gold (because of the bot counter measures) and 2) because you might even have to pay a lot for bussing.
So the community itself is also taking part in this gate keeping process.
The prices in the AH for several necessary thing are ridiculous. Now there are again the people saying “you can easily make 150k gold per week…with 6 chars and bussing…”. Yeah well we are talking about new players that can’t afford all that stuff and might not be able to invest 6+h per day.

It always has been like that: if you can invest more time (and maybe money, legally), you have a (huge) advantage.

You are playing a f2p (p2w) game. If you want to level up, gear up faster: well invest some money legally in the shop, buy gold, by pheons and so on.
Or grind your way through the game and hope for a nicer community of people to play with

[ferminthanatos]

There’s no point in this, the post talk about the gold problem for new players to pass out 1370, i understand what you say but that’s problem of the people who use the guide, no one force you to see guides or LA streamers, and trust me I know how is like having people repeating over and over about efficiency and play properly when you only want to enjoy the adventure but it’s so easy like ignoring them. Let’s be honest, MMO historys in general aren’t good, in my case I skipped everything since the first quest, i don’t have a fuckin clue of who is vykas or why do what I do or who the fuck is nineveh because I don’t fuckin care at all, and i rush them because I wanted, not for being more efficient, If someone get overwhelmed by others.people he needs to change something in his life and stop watching streams of people farming chaos 8 hs at day

[thaller.thomass]

And you have to add you are a experienced Player, Imagine Bering blind to alle the Options you have and how to use or generate Ressourcen…

[staryimoze]

Game is pretty much leading you to every single thing you need to do in order to more or less achieve what OP did.
The only thing that game does not encourage enough is doing certain islands for honing materials, but maybe that new Welcome Challenge replacement does lead people to those islands, dunno.
I suppose they could give new players a bit of gold, like 50g just so they can list their chaos dungeon T1/T2 gear pieces, as those sell for good money (15-40g each). It probably wouldn’t matter to bots.

[WatchThe8008s]

So every new player that never heard lost ark before knows everything about the game and can rush to 1400 in 130hr??? yeah seems true i feel like i wasted my time with this game as my main is 1404 with 490hr playtime… i guess i try another game and forget abut this.

[staryimoze]

You probably got to 1370 when there were no honing buffs in T1, T2 and T3.
You also probably did it when prices of mats were so high you couldn’t buy any.
You probably didn’t have Hyper Express to get you nearly instantly from 1302 to 1370 + pretty good mats for honing past 1370 (like +20% books).
You might have no alts to help you out, tho I admit newbie might not decide to make any, also, tho they do get 3x powerpasses to tempt them into doing it, so maybe they will.
I don’t remember how much we got from events, but we certainly didn’t get much T3 stuff.

So yes, you probably can get to 1400 really fast as a new player, since most of the things required to do so are flashing in front of players either on loading screen (event) or with red markers in their UI pointing at things to click, then showing marker on the map indicating where to go and what content to do.
Also, when I was a new player I did read some guides, builds and so on. I didn’t follow much in there except for mats islands, but even without those you should still be able to get to T3 fast. Other new players could do some reading as well or have friends giving them tips; not everyone goes in blind.

[Kurasari]

This guy sound like rmter,whole post smell like rmt justification

U r impatient and not the right guy for such a game,if u still want to play it do it silently

[Skillo]

@romconstruct

The problem is, that almost each and everyone is telling you, that you are playing the game wrong and inefficient, if you don’t rush through everything, don’t have 33311 a iLvl 1370 (forcing you to buy stuff from the AH because even after almost 800h I’m not at 33311 with my main, which is 1370 btw.)

Those guides are for solo players and pushers. Fucking around for 1k hours in a game where the main appeal is the combat and raids makes you the outlier, not whoever makes or follows these guides.

also the horizontal is pretty shallow, don’t think you are any special for trying to get low drop % chance shit on most islands or pressing G on mokokos a thousand times lol

[Toru]

@IAmGlaives

Refaucting gems really hurt as it drained the 2m silver I had and did about half level 4 and half level 5 gems.

Why? Don’t do that…

[FwopDwop]

I can confirm that I as a genuine new player to the game, I am had the same gold problem. The event helped a lot (and in a way, kind of ruined the story for me because well, I was ALWAYS over leveled for any content but that’s my fault, not the event’s) and when I got to 1340, I had the big gold problem hit. I hadn’t been able to really save up much gold and what I did have was good for maybe 4 good gear hones. Now that I’m at 1370, I’m stuck waiting for Argo’s raid reset so I can go any farther, and it just feels bad.

[IAmGlaives]

@FwopDwop

, I had the big gold problem hit. I hadn’t been able to really save up much gold and what I did have was good for maybe 4 good gear hones. Now that I’m at 1370, I’m stuck waiting for Argo’s raid reset so I can go any farther, and it just feels bad.

Sell your tradable crystals and leapstones. I seem have a good amount of bound crystals on 2 characters.

The other thing you can do to get a few more hone attempts is go fishing and sell the mats.

You can also collect masterpieces from daily una quest and adventure tomes. Which makes getting to 20 for the 3000 gold fairly easy.

[Loxxnoxx]

@November

Well if i remember correctly, the jurney was long, you was stuck few weeks just to hit T2 or T3. With new honing buffs the journey must be super easy,

It was A LOT slower back then.

Also, we should take into consideration that a new player will play the game differently than someone who knows what he is doing and hence WILL take a lot longer for the journey, be it because they actually do enjoy the quests, take their time, toy around with stuff, experiment with builds or simply need to learn the game.

…so OPs 30hrs for 1302 ilvl feels a bit…misleading.

We also should take into consideration that no new player gonna put up with all this, maybe “grinding” for weeks depending on their available time while never meeting a single other player.

My main just did hit 1370 after returning from a very long break and even on him I already have problems finding group outside of the usual rush hours, on my alt, that sits at around 1000ish I have massive trouble to find groups for anything really. On a new toon/ class I wanted to try out I was not finding a single other player through matchmaking during the 1-40 grind,…,

For those left behind, no matter if actually new players, casuals or people playing on and off etc it almost feels like it’s barely worth to invest any more time/ energy into this since you waste so much time with just waiting for stuff to happen.

…and without e.g. finding groups for dungeon runs, your gold intake is rigged as well…

I remember the insane prices for T3 stones back then…nowaways I cannot even sell stuff for more than 5-10 gold per stone.

…and when you actually find dungeon groups, people then will get impatient and just quit over you not being able to run said mission blindfold.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the game, but geez, it’s super frustrating at the same time…even more so that I now -after not having played for 6 months, have to actually wait 31 days before I’ll be able to join an actual guild to have people to play together with…

[Loxxnoxx]

@romconstruct

Just compare this to some other MMOs “back in the good old days”. It also took several months and grind of content to just be ready for some raids.
The usual saying “MMO is not a sprint…”

might be rose tinted glasses of nostalgia, but honestly, I miss those days, when the fun was coming from playing the game together with other people.

I’m not sure if it’s a general problem of mmo(rpg)s nowadays but in this game, people not even bother to say “hi”, “bye”, “tks” or “gg” anymore.

Pretty much the only time I’ve seen people use the chatbox is when they want to complain about someone…and oh boy, they do love to complain real quick the very moment something doesn’t go their way…

Back then, the fun even was coming from stupid wipes sometimes, as long as you don’t wipe over and over and over again it should not even be a problem.

But in this game, everyone is so “perfect” and has those super efficient routines that they rather call it quits after a wipe or two than just laughing it off, having some chitchat and keep playing.

[AscendedOne]

You really don’t need to rush, I took my time lvling because i actually like story in games including this one, did collectibles, never skipped anything. Main is ilvl 1487.5 after 1500 hours and I never really played any alts until a month ago which now I have a 1408, a 1389, a 1385 and a 1375, and these alts i’m just using to generate gold and mats for my Scouter which i’m swapping to my main, had that planned since launch.