Combat in Lost Ark revolves around the use of skills, which range from massive magical spells to swift slicing attacks.
All advanced classes in the game have their own set of unique skills, and the nature of their skills depends on their class.
Recommended Read: Lost Ark – In-Depth Guild Guide
You do also have a regular attack, which can be used without any limitations, but it is usually only used when all your skills are on cooldown, you’re out of MP or energy, or you need to stall till the enemy is in a position to be attacked properly.
As you progress through the game, you unlock more skills and more features around the skill system to make your character stronger.
In this guide, we cover everything that you need to know about the skill system in Lost Ark, from how each skill system works to how to get more skill points after level 50.
Table of contents
- How do skills work in Lost Ark?
- Ways to upgrade your skills
- Skill Tree system
- How to get more skill points
- What to do with leftover skill points
- Are skill point potions account-wide?
- What is the maximum number of skill points you can get?
- Are skill preset page expansions roster-wide?
How do skills work in Lost Ark?
All classes’ combat in Lost Ark revolves around their skills.
You can open the Combat Skills menu by pressing ‘K’ on your keyboards or by clicking Character and then Combat Skills in the bottom-right menu, which is where you’ll find the list of all your class’ skills.
At the bottom of the screen, you’ll find all your hotkeys or active slots, and all of the ones to the left of the middle gauge are your skill slots.
You have 8 regular skill slots and 1 awakening skill slot, which means that you can bind a total of 9 skills at a time from the Combat Skills menu.
To bind a skill to a skill slot, drag it from the Combat Skills menu into the desired skill slot. You can then use the skill by clicking the hotkey associated with the skill slot.
All skills have both a cooldown and an MP cost. Your current MP is displayed in the blue bar to the right of the middle gauge.
A lot of the skills that your class can use will already be available from level 10, but some of them first become available as you reach specific levels.
Skills can be leveled up in the Combat Skills menu by spending skill points. Leveling up a skill increases its damage and sometimes other effects. To level up a skill, click the ‘+’ icon next to it in the Combat Skills menu.
Upon leveling a skill to levels 4, 7, and 10, you get access to skill tree upgrades, which can change the nature of the skill and greatly increase its power.
To start with, skills can be leveled up to the maximum level of 10, but when you reach combat level 55, skills can be upgraded further – called level expansion.
There are many types of skills in the game that describe the way that they are used:
- Skills that instantly activate towards your cursor’s location
- Combo-skills that require you to click the key multiple times in a row
- Charge-up skills that require you to hold down the key before execution
- Holding skills that require you to hold down the key to keep using
- Point area skills that require you to select the area of impact by right-clicking or clicking the same key again after use
- Casting skills that take time to execute after use
- Toggle skills that remain active till you de-toggle it
Skills also have different types of damage that they deal besides the regular damage that decreases the HP of enemies.
These extra types of damage include Stagger, Super Armor, and Weak Point, which are relevant against boss monsters. Depending on the defenses of a boss, these types of attacks will help you in combat against it.
Besides all their regular skills and awakening skills, all advanced classes also have identity skills, which revolve around the gauge at the bottom of the screen.
Identity skills range from large, powerful abilities to strong buffs or changing of weapons. It all depends on the class.
Experimenting and building new skill builds is a large part of learning the class you play in Lost Ark.
The game offers complete customization when it comes to skills, as you can reset your skill points as often as you want for free. Just click the ‘-‘ button on a skill to instantly get back the skill points you spent to increase its level.
You can also use the preset option at the top to save a specific skill build, including the skill slots you’ve bound skills to.
Ways to upgrade your skills
Leveling up your skills using skill points isn’t the only way to upgrade your skills.
Here are the different ways that you can upgrade your skills in Lost Ark:
- Skill points
- Skill Tree
- Skill Runes
- Skill Gems
- Skill Tripods
Both Skill Runes, Skill Gems, and Skill Tripods are first unlocked later in the game. They are not available to you right when you reach level 50.
Every time you upgrade the level of a skill using skill points, its damage and sometimes other effects are increased.
In relation to skill points, when you upgrade skills to levels 4, 7, and 10 using skill points, you unlock skill tree upgrades.
Skill Runes are runes that you can apply to any of your skills on the right side of the Combat Skills menu.
You can first obtain Skill Runes when you start doing end-game content. One rune can only be applied to one skill at a time, and a skill can only be boosted by one rune at a time, too. Runes can increase anything from casting speed to stagger damage.
Skill Gems are gems that you can wear to increase the damage or decrease the cooldown of skills.
You cannot wear two of the same kind of gem – but you can wear both a cooldown-decreasing and a damage-boosting gem for the same skill at the same time. You can wear a total of 11 gems at a time. Gems are unlocked after completing the main storyline in Yorn.
Skill Tripods are special effects that tier 3 gear gives, which increases the level of a specific upgrade in the skill tree of a skill.
What tripods a piece of gear has is rolled randomly upon it being obtained, and tripods only increase the level of a specific skill tree upgrade, which means that it can take a while to find gear with the exact tripod combination that you need.
Skill Tree system
All skills have a skill tree full of upgrades, which can change both the nature and look of skills, as well as give them powerful boosts and other effects.
To see the skill tree of a skill, open the Combat Skills menu, click a skill on the left side, and look at the center of the menu.
There are three parts to the skill tree. The first two have three upgrades, and the third part has two upgrades to choose from.
Each part of the skill tree is unlocked at the following skill levels:
- 1st skill tree branch = skill level 4
- 2nd skill tree branch = skill level 7
- 3rd skill tree branch = skill level 10
To reach these skill levels, you have to level them up with skill points by clicking the ‘+’ button next to them.
At each skill tree branch, you can select one of the two or three upgrades.
Like with skill levels, you can change the skill tree upgrade you’ve chosen for a skill as much as you want for free.
The level of each skill tree upgrade can be increased by obtaining gear with skill tripods on it. Only tier 3 gear can have skill tripods.
How to get more skill points
Getting more skill points greatly increases your character’s damage output, as you can level up your skills further to make them stronger.
Here are all the different ways to get more skill points in Lost Ark:
- Leveling up your character
- Adventurer Tome rewards
- Collectibles rewards
- Roster quests
- Serenity Isle
- Tower
- Una’s Tasks
To obtain all the skill point potions available from these sources, you’re looking at quite a long time investment. Therefore, we recommend starting with the sources where skill point potions can be obtained relatively quickly, like early collectible rewards, roster quests, Island quests, and Tower.
Every time you level up your character till level 50, you gain 5 skill points. You’ll have 252 base skill points at level 50.
Each level up from level 50 to 60 gives you an additional 6 skill points for a total of 312 base skill points at level 60.
In the Adventurer’s Tome, the rewards for completing 70% of the continents East Luterra and Rohendel, 60% of North Vern, and 50% of Shushire, are Skill Point Potions. The reward for completing 80% of Punika is a Greater Skill Point Potion, which gives 6 extra skill points instead of 3.
The Collectibles Island Souls, Giant’s Hearts, Omnium Stars, and Ignea Tokens give Skill Point Potions as a reward at some of their collection milestones, some of which are Greater Skill Point Potions.
After you unlock the end-game of Lost Ark in North Vern, you can start obtaining Skill Point Potions from certain quests. Here are the different questlines that give Skill Point Potions at the end:
- Memories of Luterra (From Thirain in Luterra Castle, East Luterra)
- The Wayward Son (From item Old Pendant, obtained Port Sawtooth Rat mob in Frozen Sea, Shushire,)
- Wondrous Find (From Cadri in Port City Changhun, Anikka)
- Return Trip (From Gherdia in Lake Shiverwave, Rohendel)
- Strange Mail (From Mail Carrier Sentos in Rothun, Rohendel. This questline consists of multiple separate questlines)
- The Last Melody of a Requiem (From Kaldor in Kalaja, Feiton)
- Those Buried in the Dark Ground (From Kaldor in Kalaja, Feiton)
- Eternal Love (From Mail Carrier Alice in Nia Village, Punika)
Some quests, including ‘Return Trip’ and ‘The Last Melody of a Requiem’, have prerequisites that you need to complete before the NPC shows the quest for you to accept.
The questline ‘The Stone of Power’ located on Serenity Isle also gives a Skill Point Potion as a reward in the end.
Tower, which is part of the end-game content in Lost Ark, gives Skill Point Potions upon reaching floors 20 and 50 in Shadespire and Fatespire. Shadespire can be accessed from tier 1 and Shadespire from tier 2.
The quest ‘Whispering Harmony’, which you can get from Una’s Tasks, give you a Skill Point Potion as a reward.
What to do with leftover skill points
When you’re choosing what skills to use and leveling them up using skill points, you’ll often find that you have skill points left over.
As you can only assign 8 regular skills at a time, and leveling up starts costing more and more skill points per level, chances are that you will have a number of skill points left that aren’t enough to level up any of the chosen skills further.
There are two things you can do with leftover skill points – you can either try to reallocate your skill points by changing the levels of your chosen skills or simply ignore them and wait till you get more and can level up a skill again.
Skills require different numbers of skill points to be leveled up at each level, so there might be a different combination of levels that result in you having fewer or no skill points leftover.
The problem with trying to minimize the number of skill points you have leftover is that you might have to sacrifice key levels for certain skills – 4, 7, and 10.
It’s far better to get the primary skills in your build to level 10, then focus on getting the second-most important skills to 7, and the least important to 4. It’s not worth it to sacrifice a level 10 skill just so you can end up with fewer leftover skill points.
Leveling up skills that you do not currently have assigned as one of your 8 skills in the skill slots makes no difference.
Are skill point potions account-wide?
Yes, skill points potions are shared within the roster on your account, which means the characters that are on the same server.
You do not have to worry about what character you obtain skill point potions on, as they’ll be shared with your roster.
When you obtain and use a skill point potion on your main character, all of the other characters on that same server will also receive the extra skill points.
Characters on other servers or in other regions do not receive the extra skill points, as they have their own separate roster.
What is the maximum number of skill points you can get?
The maximum number of skill points that you can obtain in Lost Ark is 408.
You receive 252 of those from leveling up to level 50 and an additional 60 by leveling from 50 to 60, bringing the total number of skill points obtained from leveling to 312.
The 96 extra skills points are obtained from various content in the game, which gives Skill Point Potions.
You can see all the different ways to get the additional 96 skill points in the paragraph on how to get skill points earlier in this guide.
Are skill preset page expansions roster-wide?
Yes, skill preset page expansions are roster-wide, which means that if you purchase an additional skill preset page on one character, all the other characters on the same server also receive it.
You can purchase up to 8 additional skill preset pages for a total of 10 skill presets.
To expand your number of skill preset pages, open the Combat Skills menu, click the next preset page at the top that you’ve yet to unlock, and click OK.
Expanding your number of skill preset pages costs 100 Blue Crystals per additional page.
Like Skill Point Potions and other roster-wide content and items, skill preset page expansions are not applied to other servers or regions on your account, as they are separate rosters.
That’s everything you need to know about the skills system in Lost Ark!
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