Lost Ark – Guardian Raid Guide: How to Raid, Unlock, Wiki

Guardian Raids is the first end-game content where you get to fight powerful bosses in Lost Ark.

The loot that you get from Guardian Raids includes powerful accessories and honing material, which you need to make your character stronger, so you can move on to harder bosses and other end-game content.

Recommended Read: Lost Ark – World Bosses Guide

There are many Guardian Raids to challenge in the game, but each one is more difficult to complete than the previous one and has a higher entry requirement.

If you’ve played other MMORPGs, you’ll likely have a pretty good understanding of how raids work. But there are things that are unique to raids in Lost Ark.

In this guide, we cover everything that you need to know about Guardian Raids in Lost Ark, from how to unlock and do them to what raids there are and their requirements.

Table of contents

• What are Guardian Raids?
• How to unlock Guardian Raids in Lost Ark?
• How do Guardian Raids work and how to raid
• All Guardian Raid bosses and requirements
• What rewards and loot do Guardian Raids drop?
• How does Rest Bonus work?
• What is Harvest Guardian Soul?
• Why can’t I see the HP bar of Guardian Raid bosses?
• Can you solo Guardian Raids?
• How long does Guardian Raid leave penalty last?
• Guardian Raid entry and loot limit
• What potions can you use in Guardian Raids?

What are Guardian Raids?

Guardian Raids are challenges in Lost Ark where you face powerful bosses, the Guardians of those raids, and have to defeat them within the time limit.

Each Guardian Raid has its own Guardian to defeat with a unique set of skills and attacks.

There is a long list of Guardian Raids to challenge, and each one features a stronger Guardian boss, gives better loot, and has a higher entry requirement.

Guardian Raids are divided into levels based on their item level requirement and thereby their strength and difficulty.

• Raid Level 1: Tier 1, Item Levels 302 – 420
• Raid Level 2: Tier 1, Item Levels 460 – 580
• Raid Level 3: Tier 2, Item Levels 802 – 920
• Raid Level 4: Tier 2, Item Levels 960 – 1080
• Raid Level 5: Tier 3, Item Levels 1302 – 1385

Bosses you face in Guardian Raids are much more powerful than those you’ve been fighting in the campaign, so you need to be wary of their mechanics and attacks to survive.

There are two kinds of raids in Lost Ark – Guardian Raids and Abyss Raids. They are two different things, and Abyss Raids aren’t unlocked before much later in the game.

You cannot keep farming Guadian Raids over and over on the same day, as there is a daily limit to how much loot you can get from them.

How to unlock Guardian Raids in Lost Ark?

You unlock Guardian Raids in Lost Ark by completing the quest Guardian Raid Qualifications Certificate in Vern Castle, which you can do after reaching item level 302 and being level 50.

Here are some more specific steps on how to unlock Guardian Raids in the game, as they are not automatically unlocked through the main story like most other content is.

The first thing that you need to do to unlock Guardian Raids is to reach level 50 and follow the main questline till you’re in Vern Castle, which is located on the continent North Vern.

After that, you need to get your character to item level 302, which you can do by doing Chaos Dungeon until you have a full set of item level 302 gear.

Once you both have item level 302 and are level 50, you’ll get the quest [Guide] Guardian Raid Qualifications Certificate. You can accept the quest by clicking the orange exclamation mark at the bottom of the screen or through the Quest Journal.

To complete the quest, go meet Seifeltz, the Guardian Raid Manager, who is located at the top of Vern Castle.

Speak with Seifeltz, and he’ll give you the Guardian Raid Certificate. Press F5 to sign it.

That’s it! You’ve now unlocked Guardian Raids in Lost Ark!

When you unlock Guardian Raids, you can challenge any of the bosses in the first Raid Level if you meet the item level requirement.

Before you can challenge any Guardian Raids in the next Raid Levels, you need to have defeated all the Guardians Raids in the previous Raid Levels.

You, of course, also need to meet the item level requirements of the higher Raid Level raids to challenge them.

How do Guardian Raids work and how to raid

When you’ve reached the requirements to unlock Guardian Raid and unlocked them as described above, it’s time to start raiding.

To start a Guardian Raid in Lost Ark, go to the Guardian Raid Bulletin Board, which is located at the top of Vern Castle in the continent North Vern, select the Guardian Raid you wish to challenge, and click Enter.

You can do Guardian Raids alone or with up to three other players. The health scales to the number of players you challenge the Guardian Raid with, so it’s not necessarily easier being more people.

If you want to take on a Guardian Raid with other players, click either the Matchmaking or Find Party button in the Guardian Raid Bulletin Board.

Matchmaking automatically finds a party with three other players for you, and Find Party allows you to manually find a party.

After entering a Guardian Raid, you’ll spawn on the selected Guardian’s map.

On most Guardian Raid maps, you have to search for the boss, and it won’t be located at the same spot on the map every time. Some bosses also change location on the map mid-fight as they enter a new phase.

There’ll also be some regular monsters in Guardian Raids, but these aren’t required to defeat to complete the raid. For some bosses, it’ll help a lot to take out the monsters around the boss, though.

If you can’t find the boss or want to get to it as fast as possible, you can use the battle item Flare to display the boss’ location on the minimap. Remember to assign the Flare to your hotkey bar before entering the raid. You cannot change them inside.

Once you’ve found the Guardian boss, your job is to take it down before the time runs out and without dying after your three revives. If the time runs out or you or your entire party is defeated after using all your revives, you fail the raid.

After you’ve defeated the boss, you can claim its loot by harvesting its soul. You do this by pressing ‘G’ next to the glowing orb or orbs that appear next to the boss once it’s defeated.

If you don’t harvest the soul of the Guardian, you do not get the loot from it. So be sure to do it before you leave the raid.

To accomplish all of this for a successful raid, you need to play well and be careful of the boss’ mechanics to deal enough damage within the time limit and not be defeated too many times in the process.

All Guardian Raid bosses and requirements

There are currently 20 Guardian Raids for you to challenge and acquire powerful accessories and items from in the game.

Each Guardian Raid is a unique boss with its own set of powerful skills and attacks.

Here is a complete overview of all Guardian Raids in Lost Ark, their boss’ required item level, weakness, raid level, and what item tier they drop.

Skills of the type that a Guardian is weak to deal extra damage, which can help you defeat them easier.

Some bosses are very weak to a specific type of skill, which means that skills of that type deal even more extra damage to it. If a boss is very weak to a specific type, it’s put in parenthesis behind its weakness.

What rewards and loot do Guardian Raids drop?

The rewards and loot that you get from completing Guardian Raids is the reason why you want to challenge them.

Here are the different types of items and rewards that you can get from completing Guardian Raids in Lost Ark:

• Accessories
• Ability Stones
• Cards
• Skill Runes
• Honing Material
• Engraving Recipes

The higher the item level requirement of a Guardian Raid, the better loot it can drop.

Each Guardian Raid has a tier displayed in its information window, which determines the tier of accessories and the type of honing material dropped in that Guardian Raid.

You can also see the tier of each Guardian Raid in the previous paragraph.

How does Rest Bonus work?

Lost Ark has a Rest Bonus feature, which allows you to harvest two souls in one run when you’ve saved up one bar or 20 points of rest. In other words, when you have a rest bar filled up, you can claim double loot from one raid.

A total of 5 bars of rest can be stored in the Rest Bonus panel, which is located at the top of the Guardian Raid window.

The Rest Bonus system is there for you if you miss out on your daily runs. It gets filled up if you don’t use all your soul harvests in one day. Per soul harvest that you don’t use, you get half a bar or 10 points of rest when your soul harvests are reset.

If you don’t play a day and thereby don’t use any of your two daily soul harvests, you’ll get a bar of rest filled the next day and can claim loot twice during a run that day.

Soul harvest claimed with the Rest Bonus does not count toward your daily two soul harvests.

It is, of course, better to use your two runs daily and not get any rest bonus, as you only get one soul harvest per rest bonus bar, but it costs two soul harvests to get it, which could have been loot for you two times instead of one.

What is Harvest Guardian Soul?

To harvest guardian soul means to collect loot from the Guardian boss of the Guardian Raid.

When you defeat the boss inside a Guardian Raid, a glowing orb will appear next to it, which is its soul. You walk up to it and harvest its soul, which gives you the loot from the boss.

So, to answer the question Should I Harvest Guardian Soul?

Yes, you should harvest the Guardian’s soul so that you get the loot from the boss.

The only time you wouldn’t want to harvest the Guardian’s soul is if you don’t want to use one of your two daily soul harvests on that boss but another instead.

Why can’t I see the HP bar of Guardian Raid bosses?

It’s not an error that you cannot see the HP of bosses in Guardian Raids.

The developers of Lost Ark have purposely made it so that there is no HP bar on bosses in raids.

Inspiration from the Monster Hunter series where HP isn’t displayed for bosses either is the reason why developers decided not to show boss HP in Lost Ark either.

Even though many players prefer to see the HP of enemies, there is no way to turn on HP bars for bosses in Lost Ark.

Can you solo Guardian Raids?

Yes, you can solo all Guardian Raids in Lost Ark. The HP of the Guardian boss scales to the number of players in the raid.

You can be between 1 and 4 players in Guardian Raids, and since the HP of the boss scales to the number of players in the raid, it’s not necessarily easier being more people.

If one of the players in your raid is performing much worse than the rest, you would be better off without them.

The same applies if you perform much better than everyone in your party, then you would be better off soloing – for the most part.

In case everyone in the party performs at a similar level, then you’re usually better off being more players, as most bosses have attacks that target one player at a time or aim their attack toward the location of one player.

This means there’ll be times where you won’t have to move as the boss will use an attack in the complete opposite direction of where you’re standing.

How long does Guardian Raid leave penalty last?

If you leave a Guardian Raid by using the Song of Escape, quit the game, or through any other method than the Raid Stopped button, you’ll receive a leave penalty of 10 minutes, even if you’re in a solo raid.

While the Guardian Raid leave penalty is active, you cannot join any Guardian Raids.

The Raid Stopped button is located in the top-left corner of the screen when you’re in a raid.

Pressing the Raid Stopped button takes stops the raid. It can first be used 3 minutes after the raid has started.

Guardian Raid entry and loot limit

You can only get loot from Guardian Raids two times per day. It can be the same Guardian Raid twice or two different ones.

After you’ve collected the loot from two Guardian Raids in a day, you cannot collect the soul of bosses anymore on that day and thus cannot get any rewards.

You can still do Guardian Raids after you’ve used your daily soul harvests, but just not get any loot after the boss is defeated.

If you have extra soul harvests saved up from the Rest Bonus system, then you can harvest more than two souls in a day.

What potions can you use in Guardian Raids?

You can only use HP potions and battle items in Guardian Raids in Lost Ark.

Healing potions cannot be used in Guardian Raids.

HP potions are the potions that heal your character by a percentage amount instantly, and healing potions are the potions that heal your character by a flat amount over time.

Though you can use any HP potions and battle items in Guardian Raids, there is a limit to how many times you can use them.

You can see what the limit on a specific battle item is by hovering over it and looking at the bottom of its information box. It will say ‘Limited to X uses in certain areas’.

If you return to the spawn area of a Guardian Raid and walk into the area with three player icons over it, you’ll have your battle item limits reset.

That’s everything you need to know about Guardian Raids in Lost Ark!

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