The ARPG MMO Lost Ark offers you plenty of compelling content such as dungeons, seafaring, PvP, and your own island on which you can build your Stronghold with workshops. In this article, we summarize everything you need to know about housing.
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How does housing work? Housing in Lost Ark differs from other housing systems like in Final Fantasy 14 or Guild Wars 2. Similar to the garrison in WoW: Warlords of Draenor, you build up an entire base.
In Lost Ark, you have an account-wide island at your disposal, with a pre-existing Stronghold. You can also unlock other parts of the island and new buildings through research in the laboratory.
You can then position new buildings in the spaces provided and improve them further. So upgrading your island is a long-term goal in Lost Ark and will require a lot of time and materials to fully upgrade everything.
Your Stronghold at a glance
How do you unlock the island? You unlock the island relatively early in Lost Ark. After successfully completing the story quests in West Luterra, you will be taken to East Luterra after winning the war. After a few more quests on the new continent, you will then receive the starting quest for your personal island.
Once unlocked, the Stronghold is available to every character on your account. The only requirement for your characters is unlocking the Sheet Music, which allows them to teleport. This allows the use of the song "Song of Home and Hearth" and teleports your character directly to your island.
You can always keep an eye on the ongoing research while you're out, but in order to be able to perform housing actions, you have to be directly on the island.
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We will now introduce you to the functions of the individual buildings on the island and the bonuses that await you and your characters:
The fortress is your main building on the island and doesn't offer many interaction options. By upgrading the fortress level via research in the laboratory, you increase your total energy, which you need for all actions on the island. You can also set possible bonuses in the fortress, such as reducing research costs. All you require is certain buildings or decorations on the island, which you can build over time.
Research of all kinds is commissioned in the laboratory. From upgrading your Stronghold to unlocking all sorts of crafting recipes. In order to be able to research, you require all possible resources. For example:
You must first collect or buy the materials in the game world. The research then takes time, which can range from a few minutes to almost a whole day. Depending on what you're researching. You can also complete the time immediately with the premium currency or shorten it with a ticket, which you can purchase in the shop and find in the game.
Because of the time involved, you should always keep your research running in the background while leveling. You can always follow the current progress via the house symbol at the top left of the screen. The higher the level, the more research options are available to you.
In the workshop, you can craft all sorts of items. You unlock the recipes for the workshop with research in the laboratory or through quests. The workshop is important for the endgame because it gives you the opportunity to craft useful equipment, potions, or other items such as furniture and decorations.
The amount of items received is determined randomly, meaning you can get lucky and craft a larger number of the items you want. Again, you'll need the resources you can find in the game world.
From the station on your island, you can send selected NPCs on daily missions with the ships. Successful completion of these missions will reward you with island experience, pirate gold, tradable tokens, and rare resources.
As with the "Warlords of Draenor" garrison, the individual NPCs have specializations that they can use to influence the outcome of an expedition. Although an expedition cannot fail, the yield depends on the chances of success of the selected group.
At level 50 you reach the so-called soft cap. After that, the number of required experience points increases significantly. So that you don't have to grind all the twinks (secondary characters) from 50 to 55 in addition to your main character, there is the island's training feature.
Through the training, your twinks will be "AFK" leveled up to a maximum of two levels below the level of your currently highest character. In other words: if your main character has reached the maximum level of 55, you can bring your twinks up to level 53.
In addition to the buildings already mentioned above, there are a number of traders where you can exchange tokens and materials. For example, you can exchange tokens for the standard currency.
In addition, it is possible to personalize the fortress with cosmetic items and structures. You can also place friendly NPCs on your island with whom you can interact.
