Lost Ark Store Prices Guide 2022: Is Lost Ark Pay to Win?
Feb. 10, 2022Be sure to check out our other Lost Ark Class Guides including:Shadowhunter,Sorceress,Gunslinger,Paladin,Gunlancer,Deathblade&Wardancer!
Lost Arkis a free-to-playMMORPGwhere you can absolutely make insane amounts of progress for your characters without having to spend a single dime, making items in the shop optional. However, the most important products offer quality of life benefits that we’ll discuss later on. Let’s first take a look at theCurrenciesavailable in the Lost Ark Shop and identify the items you can buy with them.
Next are Crystals that you can earn in-game as achievements. Examples include leveling up your Roster Level to 10, rewarding you with a chest containing 50 Crystals, or logging in daily for 10 days to obtain 100 Crystals. This premium currency lets you purchase reagents to change your skin’s colors, battle item chests, materials to upgrade gear, and card bundles to gain various bonuses, to name a few. Outside the shop, you can purchase additional storage and preset skill and skin slots with the same currency. Note that some skins grant very basic effects like improving your Intelligence by 1%.
To obtain more Crystals by playing, you can exchange Gold for them. Gold is earned by finishing certainQuests,Raids, and weeklies, as well as completing repeatable tasks such as Una’s daily and weekly quests. You can also get them as one-off rewards by establishing good relationships with NPCs. For instance, you receive 100 Gold when your Rapport with Prince Thirain is Amicable.
Gold is essential because it’s the main currency to purchase other consumables and to hone your gear for endgame content. You also use this to buy items from other players in the Auction House. The good thing about currencies is they are account-bound so all your characters will be able to benefit from them.
Next is Currency Exchange, which is accessed via the Lost Ark Shop at the lower right-hand corner of the page. Here, you’ll be able to purchase more Gold with Royal Crystals without any transaction fees in case you don’t have the time to farm as heavily as the other players. You can then spend Gold to buy Crystals and purchase items in the shop. Note that there’s a transaction fee when you purchase Crystals with Gold.
Currency Exchange is very similar to Warframe’s trading system in that those who farm a lot can exchange their items to gain more Crystals. The listing you make will only be valid for 36 hours. Afterward, the currency you’re offering will be returned to you if no one decides to make the purchase.
Crystalline Aura allows you to use the Triport for free and the Ocean Liner at 50% off. These are important to travel from one location to the next without having to spend more in-game currency. Additionally, you get 2 extra Bifrost slots, which lets you go back to two of your most visited locations especially when you’re completing dailies in the same areas. This saves you a ton of time given that you’re able to directly teleport to said locations.
Other features such as the faster cooldown period of the Song of Return are also included together with a reduction in theStronghold’sResearch, Crafting, and Dispatch times. Furthermore, the regeneration rate of your Life Energy and Action Energy increases, allowing you to gather more resources and perform tasks to upgrade your Stronghold, respectively. But the most useful service offered by the Crystalline Aura is the Pet Function.
This gives you access to the Pet Inventory to store additional stuff in case you’ve already filled up your inventory. It also lets you immediately access your storage chest without needing to go to specific NPCs to do so. Similarly, your pet is able to repairEquipmentandTrade Skill Toolswhile adventuring with you. Talk about convenience!
On top of the general items we’ve talked about, there’s also Mari’s Secret Shop in the Lost Ark Shop. This features special materials like Fragments, Destruction Stones, and Leap Stones to upgrade gear, which isn’t straightforward to do in the game since you have to actively farm for these ingredients. The reason is that when you hone yourWeaponsandArmor, they have a chance to break especially if you don’t add auxiliary materials to boost your success rate.
If the upgrade fails, all of the materials you’ve included will be lost. As such, you’re going to farm for them again by participating inDungeonsand raids. If you’ve tried many times yet you’d rather engage in other activities, you can spend a couple of Crystals to obtain these materials.
From time to time, you should check the Wartorn/Trade Skill Recommendation Tab to come across Una’s Tasks [Daily], which costs 50 Crystals and raises the number of dailies you can accept. This is valuable if you haven’t created alternate characters yet or if you simply want to farm more materials for your gear.
Although all of the products in Mari’s Secret Shop rotate every 6 hours, you’ll continue to have access to those that go as far as the last 72 hours so you don’t miss out on them.
By default, you’re going to have 1 pet and learn more about what they can do when you complete theGuide QuestsBetter Together and Learning About Pets. While you can swap Pet Skills via the Working Achatemeow [Pet Management] NPC without any issue or cost, it’s going to be efficient in the long run to have at least 2-3 additional pets so you can easily switch among them depending on what your character’sBuildneeds.
TheSkillsavailable to them include boosts to your Combat Stats such as Crit, Specialization, Domination, Swiftness, Endurance, and Expertise. For instance, if you’re aShadowhunterwho utilizes your demon form to deal massive damage, then you’ll certainly want to prioritize your Specialization Stat over the others. The second type of Pet Skills is related to your survivability, namely improvements made to your HP, Physical Defense, Magical Defense, and Physical and Magical Damage Reduction.
The next item you should consider purchasing in the Lost Ark Shop is the Character Level Achievement Chest for 1,100 Royal Crystals. This is an excellent bargain as it yields you a total of 2,600 Crystals compared to the standard [Weekly] Crystal 5% Bonus Pack, which costs a whopping 4,500 Royal Crystals for only 2,000 Crystals. The only caveat to buying this chest is you won’t instantly receive 2,600 Crystals.
Instead, you’ll be getting them in bundles, that is, every time you level up in increments of 10 so by the time you reach Level 50, you should be able to acquire all of them. Still, this product continues to be useful since you don’t need that many Crystals for early game content anyway.
In terms of the other items being offered, you may want to consider purchasing a Character Slot Extension for 800 Royal Crystals if you’re playing constantly and you want to increase your roster of characters. Lost Ark puts value into alternate characters, which will help to improve your main character in terms of being able to complete more dailies and weeklies. These grant extra materials to once again upgrade your gear.
To be able to trade with other players for the items you need, you have to consider spending Crystals to purchase Pheons. These are taxes paid when transacting in the Auction House. Currently, the only way you can gain Pheons for free is by logging in every day or by spending Gold, which is scarce if you’ve just started playing Lost Ark, to exchange for Crystals.
In case these methods are insufficient if you intend to be heavily involved in trading, you should purchase the Pheon x 100 Pack at 850 Crystals, costing 8.5 Crystals for every 1 Pheon. This is cheaper due to the 15% discount as opposed to the Pheon x 30 Pack at 270 Crystals.
Since we’ve discussed the essential items in the shop, let’s now go through the other offerings you shouldn’t worry about. First on our list is Una’s Tasks [Daily] Instant Completion Pass since dailies can only be accessed at endgame when you reach Level 50. Even then, this activity won’t consume a lot of time so you can definitely go and complete it everyday. It’s pretty pricey as well at 25 Crystals per Completion Pass if you purchase the x10 pack.
Second is Phoenix Plumes or Resurrection Feathers, which cost 90 or 800 Crystals at a discount depending on the bundle you choose. This item lets you resurrect in place especially if you die in the middle of a dungeon alone so you don’t need to travel by foot from the entrance. You can acquire these via the Login Event by logging in daily and completing portions of continents in the Adventurer’s Tome. So there are certainly in-game sources to consider first before purchasing these with Crystals.
Third is Mounts, which cost 1,700 Royal Crystals each. Since you immediately get one inPrideholmeupon completing theMain QuestVarut’s Gift, it won’t be important to buy another one in the shop. You can get another mount via the Adventurer’s Tome again and besides, there’s no distinguishable movement speed increase between different horses anyway.
Last is the [Weekly] Card Bundle I, which costs 120 Crystals. Although cards provide stat bonuses, this bundle is entirely RNG so you can’t pick out the ones you’re missing.
This is the question that most players have been asking since Closed Beta. As I’ve said time and again, this isn’t a yes or no. Lost Ark is on a scale of Pay 2 Win, probably being somewhere in the middle to lower end because everything you can purchase is also obtainable in-game, and Rather than spending real-world money, you can play for hours to farm for the items you need.
In recent years Elder Scrolls Online has added many of the same things you’d find here to their store, including Instant Research Time, Skill Lines you can buy, XP boosts, Respecs, etc. Almost no one I know considers that game Pay 2 Win, but again it’s not a yes or no, and it falls somewhere on the Pay 2 Win scale, likely near the bottom.
What’s more is that the Power Pass has been altered specifically for the West. Rather than outright purchasing them to power level your alternate characters, you have to reach Level 50 and complete certain quests to gain 2 passes for free. This isn’t to say that Lost Ark doesn’t have Pay-to-Skip and Pay-for-Convenience features as we’ve seen in the guise of Una’s Tasks Instant Completion Pass and the Crystalline Aura. However, both of them are not necessary to progress so you can certainly play Lost Ark without spending real-world money.
Stay tuned for moreLost Ark Class Guidesand be sure to check out ourLost Ark Wikior drop by ourTwitch Channelif you have questions about the game. How are you enjoying Lost Ask so far? What are your thoughts on the Lost Ark Shop? Is it P2W or not? Let us know in the comments below!
Reiku
Writer at Fextralife. I enjoy playing RPGs, narrative-driven games, and platformers. Outside of gaming, I like watching meaningful movies and reading sci-fi and dystopian books.
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