Lost Ark: Untangling the Roster – What’s Shared and What’s Not Between Your Characters

The world of Lost Ark is vast and rewarding, but navigating its intricate systems can be daunting, especially when it comes to understanding what progress is shared between your characters, known as alts. The short answer is: no, not everything is shared between characters in Lost Ark. While the Roster system provides significant benefits and account-wide perks, many aspects remain character-specific, influencing your overall gameplay strategy. Let’s delve into the specifics.

Understanding the Roster System

The Roster is your account’s collection of characters on a single server. This is where the concept of shared progress comes into play. Think of your Roster as a container holding shared resources and accomplishments. The Roster system is designed to encourage playing multiple characters, making it easier to progress your main character. However, the critical thing to remember is that “shared” doesn’t mean “universal.”

What Is Shared? The Account-Wide Perks

Several crucial elements are indeed shared across your Roster, making alts invaluable assets:

• Roster Level: Your Roster Level increases as you complete various in-game activities, unlocking benefits like increased stats and additional character slots. This is a true account-wide perk, rewarding your overall dedication.
• Collectibles: Collecting items like Mokoko Seeds, Island Souls, and Giant’s Hearts unlocks powerful permanent buffs for your entire Roster. These collectibles, often found through exploration, significantly enhance your characters’ capabilities.
• Engravings: Once you learn an Engraving, it’s available to all characters on your Roster. This simplifies alt gearing, allowing you to equip desired Engravings without starting from scratch.
• Cards: Your card collection and card bonuses are shared across the Roster. Building powerful card sets can dramatically improve your characters’ stats and resistances.
• Currencies: Certain currencies are shared Roster-wide, including Gold, Silver, Rift Pieces, Pirate Coins, Sailing Coins, and Pheons. This allows you to pool resources and strategically allocate them among your characters.
• Mounts, Pets, and Crystalline Aura: These quality-of-life improvements are Roster-bound. Once unlocked or purchased, they can be used by any character on your server.
• Skill Point Potions: Skill Point Potions are account-wide, so the work you are doing to unlock them on one character will benefit every character in your roster.
• Stronghold: Your Stronghold, including its upgrades, research, and crafting recipes, is shared. This means alts can benefit from your Stronghold’s advancements, like reduced honing costs and improved crafting efficiency.
• Achievements (some): Many achievements contribute to your overall account progression and may unlock titles or rewards that are usable across your Roster.
• Knowledge Transfer: The Knowledge Transfer system helps you boost an alternate character to level 50, and clears story quests through the various continents in Arkesia. This is an essential tool for quickly getting alts into endgame content.
• Una’s Tasks Reputation: Alts can aid your main’s progression by allowing for multiple Una’s Tasks reputation progression.

What’s Not Shared? The Character-Specific Grind

Despite the Roster’s benefits, many aspects of Lost Ark remain character-specific, requiring individual attention:

• Character Level and Gear: Your character’s level, equipped gear, and item level are unique to that character. You’ll need to progress each character individually to reach endgame content.
• Story Progression: While Knowledge Transfer can help skip early-game content, each character needs to complete certain key story quests to unlock specific features and access endgame zones.
• Character-Bound Items: If the Aura, Mount, Pet, or special crate/pack is unpacked and applied on the character, consider it character-bound. You will be unable to move these items to any other character after that point. Unpacked crates, including skins and silver, are restricted to the character once it’s in your Inventory.
• Class-Specific Currencies: Some classes might have unique currencies that don’t transfer.
• Island Completion Rewards: One-time completion rewards for islands are often character-bound, meaning you can only claim them once per character.
• Most Currencies: There are SOME currency that is saved on a “PER CHARACTER” Basis.

The Strategic Use of Alts

The balance between shared and character-specific progress in Lost Ark encourages a strategic approach to alt management. By focusing on the account-wide benefits provided by the Roster system, you can efficiently gear up and progress your alts, ultimately boosting your main character’s power and unlocking more content.

Consider the following strategies:

• Focus on Roster Level: Prioritize activities that increase your Roster Level, unlocking valuable account-wide bonuses.
• Collectibles First: Dedicate time to collecting Mokoko Seeds, Island Souls, and other collectibles to permanently buff your entire Roster.
• Una’s Tasks: Utilize alts to complete multiple Una’s Tasks and accelerate reputation gains, unlocking valuable rewards like skill point potions and engravings.
• Material Generation: Alts can be used to farm daily Chaos Dungeons, Guardian Raids, and other content to generate honing materials for your main character.
• Gold Generation: While it’s important not to get overwhelmed by too many alts, generating gold using alts can significantly boost your economy.

Ultimately, the number of alts you play depends on your personal playstyle and available time. Some players find 1-3 alts manageable, while others enjoy managing a full roster of 6. Just remember not to get burnt out from doing dailies.

Navigating the Server Landscape

It’s crucial to choose your server wisely, as your Roster is tied to a specific server. If you want to play with friends, ensure you’re all on the same server. Moving between servers means starting a new Roster from scratch.

The Ever-Evolving Game

Lost Ark is a constantly evolving game, with new content and features being added regularly. It’s essential to stay informed about the latest changes to the Roster system and how they affect your characters. Be sure to consult official sources and community guides for the most up-to-date information. You might even find inspiration at websites like the Games Learning Society, found at https://www.gameslearningsociety.org/, where discussions about game mechanics and strategies often thrive.

FAQs: Delving Deeper into Shared Progress

Here are some frequently asked questions to further clarify what is and isn’t shared in Lost Ark:

1. Are skins shared between characters in Lost Ark?

No, skins are generally character-bound once unpacked and applied. If you unpack a skin on one character, it cannot be transferred to another.

2. Can I transfer gear between characters in Lost Ark?

Gear of the same Tier will Transfer at a 1:1 Ratio. This means you can carry over any honing level to a new piece of gear in the same tier, regardless of rarity, and make progress on your character that way.

3. Does changing my main character reset anything?

No, you can change who your main character is once a day. This has no cost nor penalization for the time being, which makes for a great opportunity for experimentation.

4. Is gold shared between characters?

Yes, Gold is one of the key currencies shared across your Roster, making it easier to fund upgrades for all your characters.

5. Can alts help level up my main character?

Yes! Alts can provide honing materials and gold, which you can use to upgrade your main character’s gear and progress through the game.

6. Are character names server-wide?

Yes, character names are unique on each server. Choose wisely!

7. Do I need to redo quests on every character?

While some quests are character-specific, Knowledge Transfer and shared Roster benefits can help you skip certain early-game content on your alts.

8. How many alts should I create?

The ideal number of alts depends on your time commitment and playstyle. 1-3 alts is a good starting point, but some players manage a full roster of 6.

9. Are all achievements account-wide?

Not all, but many achievements contribute to your Roster progress and unlock rewards usable by all characters.

10. Do skill points transfer between characters?

Yes! Once you unlock Skill Point Potions, all of them will be available on the whole roster.

11. Is my Stronghold shared?

Yes, your Stronghold and its upgrades benefit all characters on your Roster.

12. Are collectible rewards shared?

Yes, rewards from collecting Mokoko Seeds, Island Souls, and other collectibles are shared Roster-wide, granting permanent stat buffs to all your characters.

13. Are classes gender-locked in Lost Ark?

Classes are currently locked to specific genders, but franchise lead Soomin Park told Eurogamer that this will change over time.

14. Does selling or dismantling gear matter?

At every point of the game you should Dismantle your excess equipment.

15. What is the maximum Skill Level in Lost Ark?

At level 60, you can level your skills to 12 for another 5% damage boost.

Conclusion

The shared and character-specific elements of Lost Ark’s Roster system create a compelling dynamic that rewards strategic alt management. By understanding which aspects are shared and which require individual attention, you can optimize your gameplay and unlock the full potential of your roster. Now go forth and conquer Arkesia, one Roster-bound adventure at a time!