This past week, Amazon-Smilegate revealed their Lost Ark roadmap for June and July. A lot of it was expected, and some were surprising.
We’ll jump right into it.
Advanced Class Release Cadence
The gist of this is that one class will be released every two months, a bit more spread out than the one class per month they started with. Events pertaining to the class releases will also be more in line. This is a bittersweet change. While I would have loved to see a class released every month, I also understand the slight cadence change, especially if it means lining said change up with quality events that befit them. This is an implicit way of making communication better on their end as well especially since we now know that things like powerpasses will almost assuredly be within a month’s window of a class release. For example, the Punika Powerpass set to be released this summer, if not along with, then adjacent to the release of Arcanist in July.
June - Legion Raid - Vykas (Normal - 1430/Hard - 1460)
This was to be expected, and it’s just as much welcomed. Vykas is the second installment of the Legion Raid series, and will also be the raid that will finally complete our Relic gear sets, enabling all classes to have their full potential realized. This will be a massive power boost, and will fundamentally change how we play Lost Ark.
As for Vykas herself, this is a three gate raid, and is a pretty moderate step up from Valtan or (especially) Argos. This is the raid that will set the tone for the difficulty in the game, and you aren’t going to be able to just cruise through as easily. Expect to take a little bit more time in this one, especially in hard mode.
Kungelanium (1460)
Kungelanium is another Chromanium-type boss, and by far the most difficult. The name of the game in this guardian raid is destruction, so bring Destruction Bombs and your best weak point classes. This is a farmable boss, and isn’t that much more difficult than Deskaluda, but is certainly more punishing if you can’t break its shell quickly.
Thronespire (1325+)
Thronespire is a one time per roster, horde/survival mode style encounter with absurdly good rewards, including, but not limited to all kinds of honing materials, gems, and more exclusively, two selectable legendary battle engravings. If you’re looking to work on your Legendary Grudge books, this is the perfect time to do so.
Yoz’s Jar
In its current iteration, Yoz’s Jar is basically a lootbox system, rewarding Legendary skins. If this system is the same as the one in KR, then the pushback against this is going to be pretty big. I think I’ll go more in-depth on this another time, but let’s just say that many people will have opinions on these.
July- New class: Arcanist
The Arcanist is one of the original classes released in Lost Ark. Mechanically, she’s a Hit Master: a no positionals, resource-based class, and is pretty heavy on the RNG end of her payoffs. Her damage is very good, even with the RNG considered, and despite being a niche class, she was very enjoyable and pretty easy to build. I’ll make one as an alt for sure, and will probably take her to at least Argos.
Valtan (Inferno difficulty)
Valtan Inferno, known as Hell mode in other versions, is the equivalent of Ultimate difficulty in Final Fantasy XIV. If you enjoyed content like that, you’ll love Inferno raids. Valtan is considered the easiest one of the bunch, but you’ll still find yourself in for a time. Your gear and stats do not matter, as you will be able to set up your own gear and stats via the Scale of Balance. You can also go in an unlimited amount of times, even if you clear. The rewards do not contribute towards vertical progression, so this raid is for those who love hardcore raiding.
Challenge Abyssal Dungeons
Challenge Abyssals are in the same vein as Challenge Guardian Raids; weekly content that will reward a metric ton of materials that give a nice boon towards your progression. To my knowledge, you will also receive card packs, which is well needed for those falling behind on Lostwind Cliff.
Overall, I feel this is a solid roadmap with a good amount of content to look forward to playing. We’re actually much closer to having most of the content that KR has than we think, and we’ll catch up even more very soon. The gear pacing seems to be going comfortably for most players who are aspiring to raid, and with Vykas in particular being pushed out this month, and no further progression raids coming out next month, we’ll have plenty of time to get all of our characters in Relic gear. Hopefully, I’ll be 1460 in time for Vykas hard mode!
