Lost Ark – Gear Traits Guide

Gear Traits

There are 3 item tiers of equipment and content.

Pro-tip: The stat cap of combat stats on accessories does not increase with the item tier. A T1 Relic necklace with Crit/Swiftness for example can roll as many combat stats as a T3 Relic necklace with Crit/Swiftness, pending the same quality. What changes is the amount of main stat and vitality that the item provides in its Basic Effects. You can use this to your advantage by creating a mobility set before moving on to the next item tier using Relic accessories of the previous item tier. For example, my Scouter is in T3 gearing, but for traveling around I still use T2 accessories with high Swiftness and sometimes T2 armors that have additional tripods on them for movement skills so that they travel further or faster.

Item Quality

For weapons, quality is very important on any weapon that you use that can get 15% or higher Additional Damage. This depends on rarity and where the item is within the subtier. If the weapon can only cap out at 5%, don’t worry too much about quality. Quality on armors isn’t important, it’s just an added bonus. For accessories, quality is important in the following order:

1. Necklace
2. Earrings
3. Rings

These items are influenced by quality in varying degrees in that order (huge stat disparity between high quality necklace and low quality necklace, low stat disparity between high quality ring and low quality ring).

Starting from Legion Raid gear in T3, it is possible to increase the quality of your weapons and armor. By using Chaos Stones, there is a new option which has a chance to increase the quality of your item. Upon success, the quality increases by a completely random amount, and upon failure nothing happens but you still consume the materials. Chaos Stones can be obtained from the following activities:

• Legion Raid
• Legion General Raid Exchange (can use Gold as well)
• Purification Fragment Exchange
• Thunderwing Field Boss

The amount of quality gained on success can make the item jump from 1 quality all the way to 100, or go up by 1. It is completely random. The odds of succeeding depend on the current quality of the item and the odds get exponentially worse the higher you go. It is estimated to take 1,000,000+ raw Gold on average to reach a high 90 quality Legion Raid weapon if you don’t jump to it immediately and decide to buy non-discounted Chaos Stones.

The chart above shows the chances of crafting a Legion Raid item at that quality. As such, unlike all item crafts prior to this point, you have a very high chance to craft at below 50 quality, and frequently under 30 quality.

Be mindful that for DPS, weapon quality at this stage is extremely important, but that this is arguably one of the most extreme gold sinks in the game that is static and unchanging. Most players settle for around 60-80 quality, with more hardcore and heavy spenders pushing towards 90+.

Additionally, when succeeding from one item into another, if the items are the same color grade (e.g. Relic to Relic) then the quality and existing Craftsman’s Energy will also transfer to the new item. The exception is if the item you’re succeeding into has a higher quality already.

Finally, when succeeding from Mid T3 Legion Raid equipment to Upper T3 Legion Raid equipment, quality is preserved.

The system of upgrading quality is not relevant to NA/EU until they reach T3 mid Legion Raid equipment. Any gear you receive before this point cannot have the quality adjusted in any way.

Weapons & Armor Tripods (T3 Only)

Weapons and armors will additionally have lines of tripods on them starting from T3 equipment. This system is not relevant in T1 and T2 gear. These will boost the power of tripods on skills that are able to be leveled beyond 1. This is the only way to increase the level of these tripods. Note that duplicate tripods on armors and weapons do not stack, and only the highest will apply. You may freely transfer tripods from any type of item slot, for example if a helmet has a tripod that you really want you can move it to your weapon.

The chance to succeed in tripod transfer depends on the level of the tripod trait you’re trying to transfer.

• +1 Tripod: 100% Success Chance
• +2 Tripod: 30% Success Chance
• +3 Tripod: 15% Success Chance
• +4 Tripod: 5% Success Chance

These odds can be doubled by using a Tripod Powder which is crafted, purchased with Silmael Bloodstone, or obtained from the weekly Challenge Guardian Raid (one per raid). You can only use one powder to double the success chance, and cannot improve the odds further than that. You are expected to fail many times for the higher level tripods because you obtain several daily attempts due to the quantity of gear dropped from Chaos Dungeons. Regardless if you fail or succeed, the item that you are trying to take the tripod from (on the right of the UI) will be destroyed.

In addition to this system, due to the fact that you may switch your main item for a new one (for example in the case of succeeding into a higher quality item or set item), it is possible to preserve all of your item’s tripods when changing to the new item.

From the same NPC, the Locker menu is able to memorize a set of tripods from an item of your choice. Each tab of the Tripod Storage Box can memorize tripods from each slot on the left side equipment.

You can click Save to Library and your Tripod Storage Box will now memorize this combination of tripods, regardless if the item that you memorized them from is destroyed, succeeded, dismantled, etc. From there, you can freely use the Apply to Optional Equipment button on the right to apply the memorized tripods to the new item free of charge, as long as the item is the same item slot type and within the same tier. The game will give you an error if you try to apply tripods from gear of different item tiers to the one you have selected.

You can utilize the Tripod Locker in order to store high tripod combinations and apply them to your existing gear at a 100% chance, which may be a more effective means of transferring tripods, especially +4 ones that have a very low chance, and then filling out the holes in your tripod set up after moving tripods this way.

Each page of the Tripod Storage Box can memorize a combination of tripods for each left side slot once (you can’t have it memorize 6 different weapon combinations). By default, you have two pages of the Tripod Storage Box. It costs 100 Blue Crystals to unlock more pages, up to five.

Note that all armors and weapons can hold up to three tripod bonuses on the gear, regardless of whether the item was found with one or two tripod bonuses initially. Before you swap tripods, consider filling out all slots of the item you intend to use first.

It is also possible for lower rarity items to have higher additive tripod bonuses on them, for example it’s plausible to transfer a +4 tripod onto a Rare item, though there’s little practical reason to ever do this. However, note that rarity impacts the max level that you can find tripod bonuses natively on items when you drop or craft them.

• Rare: +1 Tripods
• Heroic: +1-2 Tripods
• Legendary: +1-3 Tripods
• Relic: +3-4 Tripods

Due to the potential annoyance of this system with the high quantity of loot you can drop and having to check each and every one for ideal tripods, there is a system built in to notify you when an item drops with ideal tripods that you are seeking. You can find it from your skill menu (default button K).

From this new menu, you can select up to 48 individual tripods that can be leveled beyond 1 to notify you when you obtain any gear that has this tripod on it.

Once you save this, any time you have an item or receive an item that has the tripods you’re looking for, you will see the special tripod symbol on the item.

Broken gear are unique items that are dropped from Chaos Dungeon that cannot be equipped. The sole purpose of these items is so that you can get fodder items to transfer tripods. Broken gear is placed in Chaos Dungeons that are on the same tier as current high-end raids. For example, if your region’s highest available content is the 1370 Abyssal Raid Argos, then the equivalent 1370 Chaos Dungeon will drop broken gear instead of normal equippable gear. When a new subtier becomes available, Smilegate replaces the broken gear with equippable gear so that new or returning players do not need to raid in order to get higher item base equipment.

Remember that storing tripods in the Tripod Locker does not break the item, so it’s possible to obtain the item, store the tripods in the locker, transfer them to your gear (which will overwrite all tripod slots), and then dismantle or sell the broken item. Broken gear can be sold on the auction house like normal gear. Once you use the Tripod Locker on an item, however, it can no longer be sold.

Accessory Engravings

In addition to Basic Effects and combat stats, your accessories can also provide engraving levels to provide additional passive effects to your character.

First and foremost, there are two types of engravings. Normal engravings and malus engravings. Malus engravings incur a passive penalty to your character. Malus engravings include Attack Power Decrease, Attack Speed Decrease, Movement Speed Decrease, and Defense Decrease. All but defense reduces by 2%/4%/6% at each level. Defense reduces 5/10/15%. This is not the same as a 5/10/15% increase in damage taken.

Your accessories will provide engravings that will add up to the gauge found in the Seal tab of your Character Info.

In order to activate the bonuses of either normal or malus engravings, you must accumulate enough points of them to activate the Lv. 1, Lv. 2, or Lv. 3 effect. These are activated at 5, 10, and 15 points respectively. See the Heavy Armor engraving in the picture above. Those 6th and 7th diamonds do nothing, and it’s only a Lv. 1 Heavy Armor until I get to 10 of the diamonds.

The amount of normal and malus engraving points found on each accessory largely depends on the slot and the rarity.

For T1 accessories, the malus only goes to +1. For T2 accessories, the malus can go to 1-2.

You can get your class engraving on the Necklace, Earrings, and Ring slots of your accessories. You cannot roll your class engraving on the Ability Stone. Also note that when dropping accessories in content such as Chaos Dungeon or Guardian Raid, you cannot get the class engravings of other classes, only your own.

Carefully balance out your accessories in order to maximize as many normal engravings as possible while avoiding malus engravings. Even if the penalty for a malus engraving seems insignificant, the equivalent amount of work needed to negate that penalty can be surprisingly high, especially if it’s Attack Power Decrease.

Note that the game UI will warn you if you have too many points on a given engraving. There is no penalty for going over 15, it’s only to let you know that you can probably trim a few points in some places and perhaps optimize for another engraving.

In addition to the engravings found innately on your accessories, you are also able to equip imprints. By equipping imprints, you can gain 3, 6, 9, or 12 points towards a specific engraving, for a max of 24 points from equipping two legendary imprints in T3.

You can earn each level of imprint by using Seal Books that come from a variety of contents. You must use 20 Seal Books in order to unlock the imprint associated with it.

Some notable sources include:

• Several islands reward engraving book selection pouches for completing their story questline.
• Several island merchants now have a weekly stock of selection engraving books for their respective island currency.
• 3x Uncommon Class Engraving Selection Box from Challenge Guardian Raid (weekly).
• 20x Uncommon Class/Normal Engraving from Infinite Chaos Dungeon (once per expedition).
• 3x Rare Class Engraving Selection Box from Challenge Guardian Raid (weekly).
• 20x Rare Class/Normal Engraving from Infinite Chaos Dungeon (once per expedition).
• 2x Legendary Class Engraving Selection Box from Island of Grief (once per expedition).
• 2x Legendary Normal Engraving Selection Box from Way of Power Stage 22 (once per expedition).

All engravings require 20 books for each imprint stage.

Typically, content will reward Seal Books in the form of either a selection or a random pouch, or randomly give you a book in general. They will either give a selection or a random pouch for all normal engravings, or a selection or a random pouch for all Class engravings. Therefore, specific engravings no longer come from specific contents.

Once you learn an imprint, you can use it as many times as you want, and the learned imprints are shared on all characters that you have on a server.

In total, you can accrue a maximum of 74 (84 if T3 Relic, 89 if T3 Ancient) engraving Points.

• 30 (40 if T3 Relic, 45 if T3 Ancient) from Necklace, Earrings, and Rings
• 24 from equipped imprints
• 20 from Ability Stone (extremely unlikely though, usually 12-16 tops)

Gems (T2 / T3)

Gems can be obtained and equipped starting with T2 gear and contents.

You can equip gems from the fourth tab of your character information window.

Gems primarily come from Chaos Dungeon, but there are some other sources of them as well. Gems are divided into types and tiers. You must equip a gem whose tier either matches or exceeds the item tier of your accessory in order to yield its full bonuses. You do not get additional bonuses for equipping a higher tier gem into a lower tier accessory. However, you will incur a high penalty when using lower tier gems in higher level content.

Gems can be leveled up to 10. They require three gems of the previous level to combine, and will always succeed 100% of the time to upgrade to the next level. You will always combine gems into a gem for your class. You can use gems from other classes to combine into a gem of your class, and also re-roll other classes’ gems into your own class. Because of this, it is possible to send gems from daily content on alts to your main character so that they can improve their gems quicker, since gems are always unbound. When combined, it is random if you get a damage gem or a cooldown gem regardless of the combination of gems that you use. You cannot change a gem into the other type. You are able to change the skill the gem benefits with Silver at the appropriate NPC or from your pet’s remote functions. The cost will go up pending the level and the gem tier.

You can freely equip and unequip gems at no cost. You cannot have two gems of the same type influence one skill. Only the higher level gem will apply. You may have one cooldown gem and one damage gem affect the same skill. There are always a maximum of 11 gem slots available.

As you can see, despite having a higher tier, tier 3 gems don’t provide higher bonuses. Instead, they’re able to be slotted into tier 3 accessories without incurring the penalty. This system forcefully encourages you to change to a new set of gems with each new tier, so you’re unable to be complacent with your existing gems. However, do note that even with the penalty, you may still be able to utilize lower tier gems for a few levels until you get mid-leveled gems of the next tier. For example you’d be able to use a level 8 T2 gem until you got a level 4 or 5 replacement T3 gem.

Starting from all content in South Vern, T2 gems are 50% less effective in Legion Raids, T6 Guardian Raids and up, and 1415 Chaos Dungeons and up, regardless if they’re slotted in lower tier accessories or not. Additionally, T1 and T2 accessories have a 70% basic and additional effect penalty in these contents. This penalty can be seen clearly on your stat window designated by red arrows going down next to your accessory.

Due to how expensive it can be to re-roll gems at the NPC, I strongly recommend that you buy the exact gem with the exact bonus you want for a given skill directly from other players. Re-rolling even a level 7 T3 gem can eat up millions of Silver to get the desired outcome. You can always sell off your excess gems.