Lost Ark is a great place to mine, fish, or hunt if you need a break from fighting. What are life skills? In Lost Ark, you can craft many items yourself, but you need materials to do so. This is where life skills, i.e., crafting skills, come into play. Ultimately, you can craft the new items on your island, which you can unlock only slightly later.
You can learn the following skills from level 24 through advisor quests. In this guide, we will discuss everything you need to know on how to craft in Lost Ark. Moreover, we will talk about how Life Skills are tied to crafting.
Lost Ark Crafting System Explained
Multiple NPCs in the game craft items that you need. All you need to do is make sure you have the right crafting materials, and you will be able to craft any available item at the NPC. In addition to crafting materials, you need to have some Gold on hand to pay for the crafting fees, which is usually very low.
Artisans aren’t the only way to craft items in the game, though. After you progress in the main story to get access to the Island Stronghold, you will craft your items. Island Stronghold has a workbench to craft items with crafting materials and blueprints. You need to research the recipe and blueprints at the Laboratory of the Island Stronghold to get the blueprints.
Life Skills are professions you can master during your time in Lost Ark game. Each Life Skills has its own set of skills and abilities. Different professions allow you to gather crafting materials, but you can always buy materials if you don’t want to invest too much time in your profession. However, professions do boost your ability to gather materials which is useful.
- Lumberjack: You chop down trees with an axe. If a second person comes along, the axe becomes a saw, which goes much faster. At first, you can only cut down thinner trees; thicker ones require a higher skill level. Wood is important for research and building ships.
- Mining: On some maps, you will find ores that you can mine with your pickaxe. Mining is important for research and building ships.
- Gathering: You gather herbs, flowers and mushrooms. To collect mushrooms, you need to gather level 10. Important for the production of consumables and healing potions.
- Fishing: Position yourself at a fishing spot, press B and select the Float Fishing ability from the Life Skills. Press the button again to reel in the rod when the fish is hooked. Fish are important for cooking.
- Hunt: Go to Life Skills and press the Search button to mark your hunted target. Then you press “Throw”. Now you can get meat and fur from the animal. The meat is important for cooking. Hunting is how you collect game meat in Lost Ark. While your Life Skill bar is equipped, you can activate the Search skill to more easily spot prey while in hunting areas, which are marked with a bear trap icon on your map. When you spot your prey, you can use the Throw skill to throw a hunting axe to slow or kill it. Then you can collect from its carcass. After levelling up your hunting skill, you can unlock more tracking methods and trap hunting.
- Excavation: Under Life Skills, activate the Sonar ability. Now you will automatically search for excavation points in your area. With “Relic Search”, you now dig up an item. Important for ability stones and transfer material.
Every time you perform one of the abilities, you consume work energy, of which you have a maximum of 10,000 available. Anyone who diligently collects and dismantles may have to wait until the working energy is recharged. Four thousand three hundred twenty points are automatically regenerated per day. You don’t have to be online to do this.
You can also buy potions in the shop that immediately refill your work energy by a certain value for particularly diligent collectors.
Collected items are not in your normal storage but are stored separately not to take up space. With the resources, you can then produce all sorts of items in your fortress. This resource cache is also account-wide. You also share the materials with all characters.
LOST ARK Life Skills: The Basics
How do I get tools? You can buy the first tools from a trader. This will probably be next to you when you accept the crafting guide quest.
Overall, there are tools ranging from Tier 1 to Tier 5. These are rarity levels that are represented by different colours in Lost Ark. There are Uncommon (Green), Rare (Blue), Epic (Purple), Legendary (Orange), and Relic (Red). From level 2/blue, you have to craft them yourself.
With each level, the chance of rare materials increases while durability decreases. However, you will receive the first blue tools as a gift as soon as you complete the guide quests for the respective profession.
How do I level up the ARK skills? For practising a craft, you automatically receive experience for the respective profession. For thicker trees, mushrooms and rarer plants, you need a higher level in the skill to bag them.
In addition, the same effect applies with better tools: the higher the level, the higher your chance of rare materials. Incidentally, the level is account-wide, so you don’t have to start at 0 with each of your characters.
Why is crafting important in LOST ARK?
What is crafting good for? By crafting in your fortress, you can, for example, produce healing potions that you would otherwise have to buy with gold on the market. In the guardian raid, you cannot use normal potions in the cube and the tower, only combat potions. From collected flowers, you can easily produce them in your fortress.
Wood is worthwhile to upgrade your fortress and to produce ship materials there. You also need wood to craft the ship Astray.
Cooking is unlocked at Stronghold level 10. Then you can produce so-called feasts that buff you when used in combat. You eat them on your fortress, and the effect lasts for two hours. You can also grill your food. Grilled items can be taken into battle and used on the spot. Of course, you also need ingredients for cooking. You can get these by fishing and hunting. In addition, when performing the crafting activities, you will randomly receive World Tree Leaves or a ticket for the Platinum Field.
This is how life skills really pay off
world tree leaves
When carrying out the crafting activities, you will randomly receive so-called world tree leaves repeatedly. You can exchange these with NPC Chapman; you will receive a reward every six leaves. These include a Crafting Skill EXP potion, a title, the ability to transform into a rabbit (Yes, really! You can choose blue or pink!), and other rewards.
The platinum field
The Platinum Field is a zone where you can find many ores, mushrooms and plants. You have 15 minutes to collect as much as possible. You don’t use any energy to do this. In addition, the platinum field offers unique resources. You have to pick them up and bring them to the starting area. The problem is that you can’t fight with the items in your hand, and the area is full of monsters. If you still manage to do it, you unlock bonuses or restore all resources on the field. Requirements for the platinum field are an item level of 250 and a ticket. You get tickets randomly when performing the life skills.
What are Trade Skills used for?
Trade Skills have plenty of use in Lost Ark. Mining and logging are especially valuable when it comes to collecting resources for your Stronghold. All the Skills are also important for collecting the resources needed to craft various items, which can be accomplished by talking to numerous crafting NPCs around the world.