7 days went by in a blink as the tech beta came to an end today. For the most part, I personally didn’t encounter much issues (the micro stutter that many were encountering, was also something that I began experiencing after the hotfix patch on November 6th).
Playing fairly semi-casually, I managed to hit level 50 a day-and-a-half ago on my Deathblade. I could’ve gotten there two days earlier if I had just stuck to the main story quest (early on, I was doing some of the side quests that awarded extra skill points, and then once I unlocked Luterra Castle, began doing the purple quests as well since they are normally important guide and class quests).
Lot of changes have been made since I last played this part of the game on the KR server (during the initial 3 months). The entire Vern (Bern) quest chain was shortened (previously, it took you through all 4 zones from Rania Village) before it sends you off to Shushire with the ice breaker ship. Sailing itself has a lot of QoL improvements including setting up to 4 auto routes (this also auto picks up any flotsam in its path, and automatically fast sails once the meter is filled). Like everything else, exploring the islands was a no go (due to lack of time); but that is where a lot of the content for the game is (that would’ve required rushing the entire leveling process to hit 50 in the first 20 hours; thanks but no thanks).
Because of that, I also didn’t spend a whole lot of time progressing my gear (I got only to 390 item level and didn’t have enough materials to get to 420 to finish the initial set of Chaos dungeons). That also meant I couldn’t get to Rohendel (that requires an item level of 460). Nor did I do any Guardian raids or Abyss Dungeons. I also couldn’t do Cube since I hadn’t completed the prerequisite quest, and Tower was floor limited once I hit the item level gate.
The Chaos dungeons themselves are also different from what I remember. Before, they were like the questing dungeons (where you went through a fairly linear map to take out minion objectives to get to the final boss). Now, they are like waves of mobs on maps taken from other parts of the game which you need to clear within the time limit to move on to the next area (and eventually fill the purification gauge to 100% to complete the dungeon). And these mobs immediately drop materials required to enhance your gear. It’s a nice change because it’s a lot more fun taking out hordes of monsters (which makes this setup feel more like an ARPG), and then hearing the dopamine filling sound of all the items being picked up (an auto looting pet is a must).
The low level gear enchanting materials has also been changed. I haven’t kept up with all of the iterations that have taken place on the KR servers so I’m not sure where acrasium is now (it seems to be utilized at higher item levels). There is still some gating involved with these lower level mats since you can only farm so much material from the Chaos dungeon, and various Epona’s dailies (renamed to Ana’s for the Amazon Games version). Even using the purchasable mats in Mari’s Secret Shop using crystals (on a beta shortened 6 hour rotation versus the normal 72 hours), you still burn through them once you get individual pieces up to level 4 and higher.
On release, I don’t intend to use the shop for those upgrade mats because they aren’t really worth it (for this test, Amazon Games gave us 40K Royal Crystals to play around with; the shop sells a bundle of 3600 regular blue crystals for 8700 Royal Crystals that can be used with Mari’s Secret Shop). If the cost of 100 Royal Crystals is around $1 (this is just a guestimate), that’s pretty expensive.
I also didn’t have time to farm up better ability stones or engraving recipes. This is literally where there is a lot to do (and learn) when it comes to gear progression. As noted often, the entire leveling process to 50, is a huge tutorial (and in many respects, the first of many time sinks that is used to extend the game play) to the real content in the game. The entire story based questing is going to be a hit or miss for many who have never played Lost Ark before. And end game is still the typical Korean style grind (in Lost Ark’s case, it’s mostly an item level grind of farming up materials and gold to improve your gear).
Getting back to this part of the game (in its revised iteration), reminded me of how much stuff I’ve forgotten; especially with the dailies system, and the multitude of different currencies. I know that by the time the game releases, some of this stuff will slip my mind again. As I wrote before, the game isn’t perfect. And since this version is a myriad of different patches from the already launched regions, there are some real issues that need to be ironed out (especially island instances that are putting characters into an unplayable state requiring manual intervention to fix them).
With no further planned betas until release (unless they change their mind), this is pretty much the final stretch of taking all of the in-game data and feedback, and polishing up the rough edges as much as possible. Overall, I’m sort of not exactly hyped for the actual release. Even Lost Ark does not fully scratch the itch that I have for Devilian (warts and all) because it was those quirks that gave it some unique charm. What it’s going to do is fill a spot in the games that I do play, but it won’t be a main game (since I no longer really have anything like that).
