Lost Ark ~ Headstart has begun!

At last, the day I have long awaited has arrived and Lost Ark has been released in the West for those who have the good fortune of being considered 'Founders'.

This game has been out in other parts of the world for many years already and now it's time for Western players to legitimately play the game without need for VPN services! Well, for those in Europe and America at any rate... once again, my country has been looked at and ignored as a viable area for a data centre, despite the publisher being the all-powerful Amazon who quite literally have servers dangling out their rear ends.

Luckily, so far ping doesn't seem to be an issue but we'll see as I get into later content.

At the moment I'm just slowly taking the game in and learning it. I never played via VPN on the already existing releases in Korea, Japan, or Russia, and when I played the Closed Beta a few months back I only played enough to confirm that I would indeed like the game for at least a little while.

So I'm going into this practically brand new, and my slow and casual exploratory playstyle at the moment doesn't necessitate instant ping.

The game launched at the inconvenient time of 3am my time and I have aged long past the day I'll willingly lose sleep over the release of a mere game -- I cherish sleep far too much! -- so I didn't start until 6 hours after release.

I like to think that because of that, I missed out on possible launch issues. I didn't have to join a queue, haven't experienced any crashes, and of course I got my character's name.

Once again I was mesmerised by the character creator. While the faces are all a bunch of presets that you can only slightly adjust, it's decent enough that you don't mind the small limitations like being unable to choose eyebrow shape, nose shape, mouth shape, etc. There is enough customisation there.

In fact, the hardest thing I found for my person's customisation was her silly eye colour. I switched between light green to dark brown to bright orange so many times. A ridiculous amount of times. So many times that honestly, I'll probably buy a character customisation ticket on the store and redesign her at some point because I'm not perfectly happy.

But for the time being, I'll deal. xD

When I tried the Closed Beta, the Sorceress class wasn't available. If you chose a Mage, your final choice would be between a Summoner or a Bard. I didn't really like the Summoner, if I wanted to play a magic class what I really wanted was to play an elemental magic class, so I'm happy that they switched out the Summoner for the Sorceress.

In saying that though, when trying out the Sorceress in the Class Tester, I still preferred the playstyle of the Bard. So that's what I went with!

It was time to whip out my harp and start playing some tunes to kill my foes and assist my allies.

It soon became very evident however, in my very first dungeon no less, that there are a few people who haven't gotten the memo that there is no "Holy Trinity" in Lost Ark.

Heal yourself or perish.

My Bard is a support character in that she can help others do more damage or do one party-wide heal when I've serenaded my foes enough. It takes a while to build up my serenading skill. And the few support guides that I've read clearly state that the Bard is more useful when helping her party members increase their DPS rather than heal.

So. Heal yo'self, suckah.

When I played in the Beta, I got up to this Monastery and then stopped playing.

I'm one of those people who doesn't see the point in playing a tonne of things in beta, especially a beta of a game that's already been released in other regions for so long so there's really not much people can assist developers with. If I kept playing like some people do, I'd feel annoyed playing through the proper game because I've done this all before already.

So as of now, all content is an unknown to me. As such, I ran head-first into a world boss I didn't know was in the area. 🤣

It wasn't long before a group of fifty odd people descended upon the poor creature, and naturally I jumped in too. The battle was pretty smooth and I was able to dodge out of the bad red areas quick enough, so ping doesn't seem to be an issue just yet, AND I was rewarded with a whole lot of things. Some epic gear, some cards, and what looks like a treasure map. Woo.

After questing a bit in the area, I actually ended up with three treasure maps!

I'm excited to see what treasure I shall find. 😁

For me, that's one of the brilliant things about this MMO. I'm not an end-game raider. I can spend hours upon hours in these games, but I'm not hardcore and I'm quite the casual. If I'm 'hardcore' at anything, it's the auction house.

I can't use my "life skills" and begin gathering things until around level 25 or so, according to something I read when I was playing the beta, but I will.

Gathering, crafting, the stronghold I get to call my own, finding all the collectables, just taking my time to roam around, explore, do dungeons solo or with a group, and just enjoy myself... that is my style of game.

I know, I know. Enjoy myself? In an MMO? What is this madness!?