I stopped playing Lost Ark about 2 weeks ago - not because I was getting bored of the game, but because I was all alone at end-game activities after powering ahead and was waiting for my partner and friends to catch up so we could start doing stuff together.
I could've been working on collections and whatnot during this time, but I decided to do other things like checking out Elden Ring (only to be disappointed by sub-par performance) and getting my farm started in Pumpkin Days (a very cute farm-sim; it's ugly but I recommend it if you like that genre).
A couple of days ago, my partner finally hit 50 and reached the continent of Vern and I logged back into the game to reacquaint myself with the controls and the game itself. I'm terrible when it comes to getting back into games like this with a lot of abilities - I forget which buttons do what and how to play. 🤣
I logged back in on Revelry Island. Turns out when I logged off last, I was island-hopping on my little boat. Revelry Island had some sort of dance party going on so I stood there with a couple of random people and reacquainted myself with the game by /dance-ing for five minutes to successfully win this group event. Woo.
With him on Vern at last, we started doing a few Chaos Dungeons and things together and getting his ilvl up a bit.
His ilvl is now 380ish and mine is 416! Next on our list -- some guardian raids! 😁 Unfortunately we won't be able to jump into those until next week due to him being on night shift this week/weekend, but hooray! We can do stuff!
Now that I feel a reason to open this game again, and now that I re-understood all of my abilities and controls -- for my dps preset anyway, I need to reacquaint myself with my support preset -- I jumped back into where I had left off last time.
My current quest location is on the frosty continent of Shushire and I have no idea what I was doing here. I was one of the few people actually reading dialogue and getting to know the quests I was doing, and now... now I have no idea what's happening.
Apparently I was rescuing someone from an arena, though I don't really remember why. 😆
And turns out this quest is pretty difficult. You need to avoid the guards and dogs patrolling, and that sounds simple enough -- hell, they have a red circle around them so you know where not to stand! But with my ping I have to think one step ahead in this type of mission, and I got caught a couple of times before I succeeded.
The first time was pretty funny actually. I'm just waltzing along in between the red circles when... I rubberband! straight into a guard. That was fun. xD
Whilst I was questing, I noticed a few people riding around on wolfie mounts. So, naturally, I investigated how to get a wolf to call my own.
Apparently when you finish the Shushire main story quest, you shall be rewarded with a wolf. Apparently a red coloured one is a random drop in chaos dungeons too -- more reason to do them! 😁 I am a mount and pet collector. I need them all.
And it turned out that I was pretty close to the end of the Shushire story, and... voila!
That's when I discovered, also, that a quest reward I picked up last time I played after helping some kid who wanted to become a turtle was actually the means to acquiring a turtle mount.
So I zoomed to Stern, went to the Luxury Goods Merchant, and relinquished the reward for a well-earned mount. Woo!
The turtle is my chosen mount now! 😁
The March Update just hit last night and with it came a Grand Prix event. Curious about this race, and because I can't continue on with any story until reaching ilvl 460, I went back to the city of Vern and investigated the event.
The Grand Prix was on a clock to begin every 2 hours, which was perfect timing as I got there just before midnight game-time.
In this event, it's a race of 7 vs 7 players who have been transformed into strange creatures. The team to reach 600 points first, wins!
I soon discovered though that this race is a nightmare for those with imperfect ping. There were obstacles all over the place, and it's a lot like other racing games where you can shoot other opponents and leave bombs for them to run into... not really manageable with 200+ ping.
I came dead last. 😂🤣 But I still got a bit of a reward at least.
After completing the event, I was awarded with some currency so I could buy some stuff from the Grand Prix vendor!
Most of the things were engravings that were too high ilvl for me to purchase, but at least I could buy an ugly hat.
A hat which I very quickly unequipped. 🤣 Oh well. It's nice to have things in my bank for if one day I might actually want to wear it. I won't be bothering with that Grand Prix now, it's too frustrating for someone with my ping and I can't actually buy the other rewards yet anyway.
Now to work on getting our ilvls up to 460 so the main story can be continued! And also working on some of those collections that were waving to me last time I played.
I think that I might start backtracking through old zones and getting that Adventurer's Tome up to speed. That's going to require a lot of mindless slaughtering in hopes that certain things drop. 😅 Or making an alt to do those zones. I'm pretty sure the Adventurer's Time is account wide. I did want to make a Sorceress at some point... hmm! 😁
Until next time! 😊✨
All screenshots in this post are courtesy of me, 