Lost Ark Players Get Frustrated by the 1340-1370 Item Level Gap at End-Game
Video games are generally number crunchers. Many people who play MMOs, and most games in general, want numbers to go up. Your gear score is a measure of how much damage you do. This makes your brain feel good. Developers know how to make players’ numbers “go higher.” Clear a dungeon to get X Item Level. Next, move on to the next dungeon to get X+1 Item Level. However, North American Lost Ark players are having a difficult time with this.
Oreha Preveza is a dungeon in Lost Ark. It requires gear with a minimum 1325 Item Level (IL) from now on. This dungeon’s recommended Item Level (IL) is 1340. This is possible because it requires gear upgrading to +9 Honed on Tier 3 gear, which most players are able to do. The problem is that 1370 IL is required for the dungeon’s Hard Mode version. There’s no way to do it.
To get 1370, you must achieve +15 Honed level on Tier 3 gear. Let me explain how gear honing works. To level up from +9-10 on one piece of gear, you need 320 Destruction Stone Crystals and 74 Honor Shards. You also need 10 Honor Leapstones. 4 Simple Oreha Fusion Material, 20k silver, and 120 gold. It may seem like a lot, but you only have a 30% chance of succeeding.
You do get points if you fail but these resources are gone forever. Each level increases the amount of resources needed, but, most importantly, your chance of succeeding decreases. You only have a 10% chance of succeeding when you upgrade from 14-15 to 15, and this must be done for each piece of upgraded gear.
This is not a new feature for fans of Korean MMOs. Many mechanics have a lot of risk and grinding. Black Desert Online had an infamous system that took resources when you failed to upgrade an item. It also levelled that item down, which was a waste of time and resources. This is something that even old folks (like me) may be familiar with. If you fail to upgrade an item, it would destroy the entire item, even if it took literally months to make.
Lost Ark players will be happy to know that there is a system that does not degrade or destroy your item and gives you pity points towards an upgrade. It doesn’t change that upgrading from 1340 IL or 1370 IL to 1370 IL can be painful. This is made worse by the fact Oreha Preveza hard is not required in Lost Ark. That is 1355 IL. Tier 3 gear has a +12. The developers have not yet explained this change to players, making it difficult for them to move forward.
This could be seen as an attempt to convince players to spend real cash on in-game items that will increase their success rate when honing gear. Although it is not uncommon, it would be particularly cruel to force this on players who have already spent significant time to get to this stage. The future will show, but players who want to advance in the end-game must now put in a lot more time and money.
