Lost Ark – Complete Stronghold Guide: How It Works, Wiki

The Stronghold in Lost Ark is your private island where you can conduct various activities, including crafting and passively completing missions for rewards.

When you unlock the Stronghold, there are a lot of things to learn and understand, which can make the system confusing at first.

Recommended Read: How the Cards System Works in Lost Ark

Even though the Stronghold is an isolated part of the game, there are amazing things to be earned from it.

Some of the activities that you can conduct in the Stronghold directly impact the strength and progress of your characters.

In this guide, we give you all the information that you need on the Stronghold in Lost Ark, from what it is to how all of the various buildings work.

Table of contents

• What is the Stronghold in Lost Ark?
• How to unlock the Stronghold
• How does the Stronghold work?
• Lab
• Crafting Workshop
• Station
• Manor
• Training Camp
• Knowledge Transfer
• Trade Merchants
• How to level up Stronghold fast
• How to access Stronghold
• How to leave Stronghold
• How to visit other Strongholds
• How to do dispatch missions
• How to get more ships for dispatch missions
• How to get more Stronghold crew members
• Where to get materials for research and crafting
• How to place structures and characters
• What are Facility Points and Character Points
• Where to get seals and what they are for
• Is the Stronghold account-wide?
• Where to find and complete Nothing is Impossible for Cykins quest

What is the Stronghold in Lost Ark?

The Stronghold in Lost Ark is the game’s strategy or housing system, where you can conduct different activities in your own private area.

It works similarly overall to other MMORPG’s RTS systems like World of Warcraft’s Garrison.

Your Stronghold is your own island with various buildings and NPCs to interact with, as well as a couple of smaller islands surrounding it, some of which are first unlockable later.

The activities that you can do in your Stronghold range from sending your crew on missions to obtain rewards to crafting items and consumables.

Most of the activities that you can do in your Stronghold have a direct impact on the strength and progress rate of your character.

So is the Stronghold important to focus on and something you should do in Lost Ark? Yes, we definitely believe so, as it’ll help your character grow stronger without requiring much time.

Some of the activities, though, are purely for design and community and thus do not affect your character’s strength.

While there are quite a few things to learn about the Stronghold, it’s relatively simple once you get the hang of it.

How to unlock the Stronghold

You unlock the Stronghold in Lost Ark by completing the main story quest ‘Stronghold Ceremony’ in Luterra Castle in East Luterra.

Once you’ve unlocked the Stronghold on one character, you can access it from all other characters on the same server as it is roster-bound, even if they haven’t completed the main questline in Luterra Castle themselves.

As it is roster-bound, your Stronghold isn’t shared across different servers or regions, which means you would have to unlock it again if you were to start playing on a new server or region.

We were level 28 when we completed the Luterra Castle main story and unlocked the Stronghold.

You receive the Stronghold as a gift from King Thirain for your efforts in Luterra Castle and your title as the King’s Knight.

How does the Stronghold work?

The Stronghold is your private area in the game that only you, your friends, and guildmates can access.

Everyone has their own Stronghold where they can conduct Stronghold activities.

In your Stronghold, you can interact with the various NPCs and buildings to craft, exchange goods, start missions, and more.

Not everything is unlocked in your Stronghold right when you get access to it, and almost everything can be further upgraded through research, so they yield greater rewards.

When in your Stronghold, the primary activities are conducted in the Management menu, which can be accessed by pressing ‘CTRL+1’ on your keyboard or by clicking the board icon at the bottom to the left above your energy.

At the top of the Management menu, you can select one of the six different overall buildings:

• Lab – research
• Crafting Workshop – crafting
• Station – missions
• Manor – effects
• Training Camp – character xp
• Knowledge – character boost

You can see in the list above what their purpose is for, but you can also find a detailed description of what each building does as well as how to use them below in this guide.

Being a strategy/housing system, the activities in your Stronghold are based on time. They are quick to start but can take many hours to complete.

As there isn’t much reason to stay in your Stronghold all day, you can see the progress of activities and missions you’ve started in your Stronghold by clicking the house icon at the top of the screen to the left.

When an activity is finished, it’s time to visit your Stronghold to complete that activity and start a new one.

If you want to maximize the rewards that you get from the Stronghold, you should always have activities and missions active.

Starting activities and missions in your Stronghold costs Action Energy and usually also both Silver and various materials.

Action Energy is passively regained, and you can increase both your maximum capacity and regen rate through research in the Lab. Roster rewards and the Crystalline Aura also increase your Action Energy capacity and recovery rate.

Your Stronghold has its own level, which you can see in the top-left corner next to your Stronghold’s name. You can see the current XP and requirement to reach the next one in the Stronghold XP bar at the bottom when in your Stronghold.

Leveling up your Stronghold gives you access to more research in the Lab, which can be everything from new crafting recipes to higher levels of the different buildings.

You obtain XP for your Stronghold by doing tasks in your Stronghold, like completing research and dispatch missions.

While most of the activities you’ll do in your Stronghold are done through the Management menu, there are also some things you have to do by moving your character to the NPCs locations in your Stronghold.

Trade Merchants and the different exchange NPCs, for example, have to be visited in person to trade with. You can see their location on the map.

Other areas of the Stronghold that you unlock later on, like the Farm, which is unlocked when your Stronghold reaches level 15, also have to be visited in person, as it features Trade Skills sources for you to farm.

Lastly, you can decorate your Stronghold by placing structures that you obtain through crafting, exchange, and quests.

Decorating your Stronghold only affects the cosmetic look of your Stronghold. It doesn’t affect your character’s strength.

You can access the decoration menu by pressing ‘CTRL+2’ on your keyboard or by clicking the four arrows icon above your Action Energy at the bottom of the screen to the left.

Lab

The Lab is where you conduct research to upgrade everything in your Stronghold, from the level of buildings to more crew slots for dispatch missions.

Lab is the first of the six buildings in the Management menu and is located through Pucci on the smaller island all the way to the left of your Stronghold. But you can, like any other main building, access it directly in the Management menu.

When you open the Lab, you can see all research that you can currently conduct.

You can see what each research increases or upgrades by selecting it from the list of research and looking under its name on the right side.

Like most things in the Stronghold, conducting research takes time. You can see how long it takes to complete specific research under Time Taken on the right side when it’s selected.

Besides time to complete, it costs both Action Energy, materials, and either Pirate Coins, Silver, or Gold to start research.

When you unlock your Stronghold, you can only research one thing at a time. But later on, you can research up to three things at a time.

Here is an overview of when you unlock more research slots in the Lab in your Stronghold:

To upgrade the level of your Lab and other buildings in your Stronghold, you need to research them in the Lab.

You do not have all research available in your Lab to begin with. More available research is unlocked when you increase the level of your Stronghold, complete other specific research, reach specific item levels, complete a specific quest, or build a specific level of relationship with a Rapport NPC.

To see what the requirements to unlock specific research in the Lab are, click the dropdown menu at the top of the Lab, select Unavailable Research, and find the research that you wish to unlock in the list. Then click it and see its requirements on the right side.

As the Lab is where you improve your Stronghold and its capabilities, it is arguably the most important building.

It’s a great idea always to be researching something in your Lab.

Crafting Workshop

The Workshop, or Crafting Workshop, is where you can craft various items, tools, and consumables, like potions and food.

Crafting Workshop is the second building accessible through the Management menu or from Dorothy, who is standing in front of the Crafting Workshop building on the left side of the main island.

In the Workshop, there are six different categories of items and consumables that you can craft:

• Battle Item
• Cooking
• Structure
• Tools
• Special
• Farm

You can see what items and consumables you can craft by selecting a category and looking at the list of craftables.

Crafting an item or consumable both takes time and costs both materials, Action Energy, and Gold or Silver.

To see the required resources and materials to craft a specific item or consumable, click it in the list of craftables and look on the right side.

Most of the materials needed to craft an item or consumable can be obtained from Trade Skills around the world of Lost Ark, while others can only be obtained from the Farm in your Stronghold or from exchanging with the NPC Monet also located in your Stronghold.

Materials that can only be obtained from within your Stronghold have a small house in the bottom-right corner of their icon.

Like in the Lab, you can only craft one item or consumable at a time in the Crafting Workshop to start with.

As you level up the Crafting Workshop in the Lab, you get more crafting slots so you can craft multiple items and consumables at a time.

Here is an overview of when you unlock more crafting slots in the Crafting Workshop:

You cannot craft any item or consumable from the beginning. You need to unlock the recipes for the specific items and upgrade your Crafting Workshop to a higher level through research. Some require just a recipe to be unlocked, some require just a higher Crafting Workshop level, and others require both.

Like with the required ingredients, you can see the requirements needed to unlock a specific item or consumable for crafting by unticking the ‘View Craftables’ box, which will show you all items and consumables that are craftable, including those you haven’t unlocked. Click a specific item or consumable to see its crafting requirements on the right side.

There are different ways to obtain the recipes needed to unlock more items and consumables to craft.

Crafting recipes are obtained through research in the Lab, and others are obtained through exchange with the NPC Jeniff in your Stronghold or visiting Trade Merchants.

Station

The Station is where you can send crew members on dispatch missions to earn various rewards.

Station is the third building in the Stronghold, accessible through both the Management menu and the Dispatch Status Board in front of the Station building on the small island to the left of the Manor.

In the Station window, there are two tabs of missions – Normal Missions and Special Missions. Normal Missions are available from the time you unlock the Stronghold, and Special Missions become available when you reach level 50 and unlock end-game content.

Normal Missions are regular missions that only cost Action Energy and Pirate Coins to start. They give Stronghold XP, Pirate Coins, Seals, Providence Stones, and other materials as rewards.

Special Missions are related to end-game content and therefore share daily entrance limits to start on top of the Action Energy and Pirate Coins cost. In other words, if you were to start a [Guardian Raid] special mission, it would cost one of your daily Guardian Soul Harvests.

All missions take time to complete – between 4 and 24 hours. You can see the time a specific mission takes to complete in the list of available missions.

While you do get the same items from special missions as the content they relate to, as well as Stronghold XP, you get far fewer drops. You would get way more rewards by doing your Guardian Raid runs yourself instead of doing them through special missions.

Therefore, it’s not recommended to do any special missions unless you know you won’t be using your daily runs. If you don’t use your daily runs on an alt character, for example, you could start special missions on that one.

You can start Normal Missions and Special Missions as long as you have available mission slots and enough boats and meet the requirements for Special Missions in terms of daily limits.

Here are the number of both Normal Mission and Special Mission slots that you unlock at different Station levels:

A boat is required to start a mission, so if you only have one boat but two mission slots, you can still only start one mission. You can get more boats by researching in the Lab.

When you start a dispatch mission, you can select crew members to send on the mission on the right side under the selected ship.

Depending on what crew members you choose and the conditions on the selected mission, you get a higher Adaptation rate.

The higher the Adaptation rate you have on a mission, the higher chance you have to get higher-tier rewards. You will, however, get rewards from completing any mission no matter what, even if you didn’t select any crew members for the mission.

The rate of completing a mission is always 100%, so the Adaption rate only determines your chance to get additional rewards. New missions are added to your Station every day.

Manor

The Manor is where you can activate effects that boost your activities in the Stronghold and manage unlockable locations.

Manor is the fourth building in the Stronghold, accessible through the Management menu or through Nahun’s Tome, which is located in front of the Manor, the main building in the middle of the main island in your Stronghold.

There are two tabs in the Manor – Effects and Unlockables.

Effects are passive effects that boost your activities in the Stronghold for as long as you keep the effects activated.

In the Effects tab, there are two sub-tabs – Structure and Outfit. They both work in the same way. You can equip special structures and outfits to give your Stronghold boosts.

Boosts that you get from effects can be everything from increasing Great Success chance when crafting to decreased Action Energy required for different actions.

You can get structures that give effects when put into the Manor by crafting them in the Crafting Workshop and you can get Outfits that give effects by achieving higher levels of trust with specific Rapport NPCs or by purchasing them with Blue Crystals in the Wardrobe, which can be accessed by pressing ‘CTRL+3’.

To unlock additional effect slots in your Manor, you have to research them in the Lab.

Unlockables in the Manor is a selection of areas in your Stronghold that cannot be accessed before their unlocked.

These unlockable areas do not add any new functions to your Stronghold, like the Farm does, for example. They are purely for cosmetic and design purposes.

The Unlockable areas are unlocked through research at the Lab.

Training Camp

The Training Camp is where you can assign alt characters on the same server – your roster, to train them by giving them XP passively.

Training Camp is the fifth building in the Stronghold, accessible through the Management menu or through Senior Magick Scholar Ascilia, who is located in front of the Training Camp, which is located to the left of the Lab.

Unlike the first four buildings in the Stronghold, the Training Camp is not unlocked when you unlock the Stronghold.

To unlock the Training Camp in your Stronghold, you need to reach level 52 on a character and complete the quest ‘Magick Society’s Amazing Technology’.

Characters put into the Training Camp can only gain XP till they reach max XP two levels below the highest level character on the same server – your roster.

If you, for example, have a character that is level 54, alt characters that you put into the Training Camp can gain XP passively from it till they reach level 52 with maximum XP.

When your level 54 character reaches level 55, the alt characters in the Training Camp can gain XP till they reach level 53.

There are two types of training in the Training Camp – General Training and Special Training.

In the General Training tab, you can assign characters to the Scarecrow of Concentration, which passively gives them 4,000 XP per minute for up to 7 days, at which point you have to reassign them.

In the Special Training tab, you can assign characters to the Ultimate Stress Buster, which passively gives them 7,000 XP per minute for up to 7 days, at which point you have to reassign them.

The Ultimate Stress Buster is only available if you have an active Crystalline Aura.

It costs nothing to assign alt characters to either of the two types of training nor does it cost anything to keep them in there. It’s an amazing way to level up alt characters for free without having to do anything.

You can even play on a character while it is being trained in the Training Camp.

To begin with, you have only one training slot, which means you can only assign one alt character to be trained at a time, but you can unlock one more later.

Knowledge Transfer

Knowledge, or Knowledge Transfer, is where you can bring alt characters on the same server – your roster, to level 50 and past specific parts of the main questline.

Knowledge is the sixth building in the Stronghold, which is accessible both through the Management menu or through the Knowledge Transfer Machine that is located on the beach on the far left of your Stronghold.

The Knowledge Transfer machine isn’t unlocked when you unlock your Stronghold. It first becomes available after you complete the quest ‘Nothing is Impossible for Cykins’, which you can start after you’ve reached level 50, completed the main questline in North Vern, and your Stronghold is at least level 5.

Using the Knowledge Transfer machine is the fastest way to get alt characters to level 50.

In the Knowledge Transfer Machine, you can bring alt characters on the server to level 50 and past specific points in the main questline. Transferring knowledge to an alt character costs Gold and takes 8 hours.

Before you can bring an alt character past a specific part of the main questline, you need to have completed it yourself on at least one of the characters on the same server and have reached a specific item level. It’s usually done on your main character.

Here are the different points you can bring alt characters to through the Knowledge Transfer Machine, all of which bring the character to level 50, and the cost of doing so.

To perform knowledge transfer to an alt character, you need to log in to the character that you wish to bring to level 50 and past a specific point in the main questline.

You just need to complete a few of the beginning quests in Prideholme to gain access to Sheet Music and thus access to the Stronghold.

When you can access the Stronghold on your alt character, open the Knowledge Transfer Machine, select the part you wish to skip past on the left side, click Knowledge Transfer at the bottom, and click OK.

After 8 hours have passed, that alt character will then be level 50 and will have completed all main storyline quests until and including the continent you chose in the Knowledge Transfer Machine. Sidequests have not been completed automatically.

While the Knowledge Transfer is processing, you can play on the character that you are performing the knowledge transfer on if you wish to.

Trade Merchants

Trade Merchants are special merchants that visit your Stronghold for a limited time with various items and materials for sale.

The items and materials that Trade Merchants sell cost Seals obtained from dispatch missions or from exchanging in your Stronghold.

No matter what Trade Merchant is visiting your Stronghold at the moment, they always reside in the same location. To the right of the exchange plaza in your Stronghold, which is located in the bottom-left of the main island. You can also see the location on the minimap.

All Trade Merchants have a pool of potential items that they can sell, but they only sell a smaller selection of that pool when they visit your Stronghold. What items they sell from their pool of items on a specific visit is random.

In the beginning, Trade Merchants sell very few items, but as you level up and increase the level of your Stronghold, they will have a lot more for sale.

Trade Merchants go on rotation, which means that the same Trade Merchant won’t visit your Stronghold twice in a row, and you can expect all the Trade Merchants you’ve unlocked to visit once in a while.

To unlock more Trade Merchants, so they have a chance to visit your Stronghold, you need to acquire the contract for them, which you can research in the Lab or obtain from specific questlines around the world.

How to level up Stronghold fast

You need to level up your Stronghold to unlock access to better research, recipes, and more.

Therefore, many players want to level up their Stronghold as fast as possible to get the most out of the Stronghold as quickly as they can.

The fastest way to level up your Stronghold in Lost Ark is to always be researching in the Lab, crafting structures in the Crafting Workshop, and starting dispatch missions in the Station whenever you can.

We still recommend not doing Special Missions on your main character, though, even though they do give Stronghold XP as well. If you really want to do them to level up your Stronghold faster, start them on an alt character.

Make sure to always research higher building levels in the Lab so you can unlock more slots in them, as it allows you to research and craft more things at the same time and start more dispatch missions at the same time, all of which will give you XP.

If you run out of things to research or missions to complete, you can always just keep making structures in the Crafting Workshop, which gives the most Stronghold XP per hour it takes to craft them.

We recommend crafting uncommon structures, as they don’t cost many materials to craft, and those materials are easy to obtain.

All the different structures you can craft give the same Stronghold XP per time and per Action Energy – 1280 XP per hour and 2 XP per Action Energy. The only difference is material cost, so go with the ones with the lowest cost.

Some of the uncommon structures with the lowest material cost compared to the Stronghold XP they give are NACT-1 Counter, Neria’s Tavern Menu Board, Awning, Urr’s Tree Bench, and Dyorika Waterwheel. These are all obtained from the Trade Merchant Tago.

If you can exhaust all of your daily Action Energy, then you’ll get the most Stronghold XP per time from crafting any structure in the Crafting Workshop exclusively. It provides almost twice as much Stronghold XP per hour than any other source.

For most players, it will be better to also focus on research and dispatch missions, though.

How to access Stronghold

Once you have unlocked the Stronghold and gone through the initial tutorial on it, you might wonder how to access it again.

To go to your Stronghold in Lost Ark, open the Sheet Music menu and use the Song of Hearth and Home.

You can open the Sheet Music menu by pressing F2 on your keyboard or by clicking Adventure and then Sheet Music in the bottom-right menu.

The Song of Hearth and Home can be used from anywhere, which means that you can access your Stronghold from everywhere.

Any character in your roster can also use the Song of Hearth and Home to access your Stronghold, which is roster-wide.

How to leave Stronghold

When you’re in your Stronghold the first or second time, you might wonder how to leave it again to go back to the main world.

To leave your Stronghold in Lost Ark, use either the Song of Escape or Song of Return in the Sheet Music menu or teleport to a Bifrost location.

The Song of Escape teleports you back to the location where you used the Song of Hearth and Home to access your Stronghold, while the Song of Return teleports you to the area you’ve set as your return point.

You can open the Sheet Music menu by pressing F2 on your keyboard or by clicking Adventure and then Sheet Music in the bottom-right menu.

Bifrost allows you to teleport to a location that you saved in the Bifrost menu. It can be accessed by pressing ‘Alt+W’ or by clicking Adventure and then Bifrost in the bottom-right menu.

How to visit other Strongholds

While your Stronghold is your private area, your friends and guildmates can visit and check out your Stronghold.

To visit another Stronghold, open either your Friends List or Guildmates List in the Guild menu, then right-click the player whose Stronghold you wish to visit, and click Visit Stronghold.

In your friend or guildmate’s Stronghold, you can check out their design, exchange with the Trade Merchant currently visiting their Stronghold, and enjoy their feast if they have any.

You can like a friend or guildmate’s stronghold while you’re visiting them by clicking the heart icon in the top-left corner.

If they visit your Stronghold and like your Stronghold, too, you two become Stronghold allies.

When you’re allied with another Stronghold, you can see information about their Stronghold in the Stronghold information tab at the top of the screen, including what Trade Merchant is visiting their Stronghold.

Up to 50 players can visit the same Stronghold at a time.

How to do dispatch missions

Dispatch missions are one of the most important aspects of the Stronghold, as it yields great rewards and seals for little effort.

To start a dispatch mission, open up the Station in your Stronghold by clicking ‘CTRL+1’ to open the Management menu and selecting Station or by visiting the Dispatch Status Board on the small island to the left of the Manor. You’ll see a list of all the different dispatch missions you can currently do. Click the one you wish to do, select your crew, and click Mission Start.

Selecting a crew is not required, and the success rate of missions is always 100%. Using crew members on a mission does, however, increase Adaptation, which is the chance that you’ll get more high-quality rewards.

You can either manually select the crew for a mission through the ‘Crew List’ button or use the ‘Auto Formation’ button, which automatically selects the combination of crew members that gives the highest Adaptation rate.

Starting a mission costs Action Energy and Pirate Coins, and if it’s a Special Mission, it also costs a daily entrance to the content type of that mission. Special Missions are not recommended to do.

A mission takes time to complete, and once a mission has been completed, you need to come back and click ‘Mission Results’ to get the rewards from it. You can then start another mission.

You can get more information about the Station building and dispatch missions in the Station paragraph above in this guide.

How to get more ships for dispatch missions

Once you level up your Station, you start getting more mission slots, which means you can do multiple dispatch missions at a time.

Before you can do multiple missions at a time, though, you need to have multiple ships, as each mission requires its own ship.

To get more ships for dispatch missions in your Stronghold, you have to research them in the Lab. All ship research is located under the Dispatch Ship Addition category.

As soon as you complete the research for a new ship in the Lab, you can use that ship for dispatch missions.

Ships you research in the Lab for dispatch missions in the Stronghold are not the same ships that you use for sailing in the world of Lost Ark.

How to get more Stronghold crew members

As you start doing multiple dispatch missions at a time, it’s a good idea to acquire more crew members, so you can get higher Adaptation rates on all the missions you do.

You can get more crew members, also known as sailors, for dispatch missions by purchasing them from visiting Trade Merchants in your Stronghold, by building relationships with Rapport NPCs, and from the Mokoko Seeds collection.

Most of the Trade Merchants that visit your Stronghold sell Stronghold crew members, so be sure to check the Trade Merchants that visit you.

Some of the Rapport NPCs in the game give themselves as a Stronghold crew member as a reward when you reach Trusted or Affection reputation with them.

Lastly, you can obtain Stronghold crew members by reaching milestones in the Mokoko Seeds collection.

Pets also have a crew member slot in the dispatch mission crew list, which means you need to obtain more pets to fill it out if you don’t have as many pets as you have dispatch mission slots.

Again, just like with ships, the Stronghold crew members that you get for dispatch missions are not the same as the sailing crew members that you use for sailing.

Where to get materials for research and crafting

To craft items and consumables in the Crafting Workshop and to research in the Lab, you need materials.

Almost all materials that you need for crafting can be acquired through Trade Skills around the world of Lost Ark.

There are some recipes in the Crafting Workshop that require items that you need to acquire through exchanging in your Stronghold. A few recipes also require a lower-grade version of themselves to be crafted.

All the recipes in the Farm tab require Stronghold-specific materials, which can only be acquired in the Farm area of your Stronghold.

Research in the Lab only costs Iron Ore and Timber to conduct, which you obtain through Mining and Logging.

On top of the material cost, research and crafting also cost Gold, Silver, or Pirate Coins, all of which can be obtained through various means.

To help you get the materials that you need for research faster, you can exchange higher rarity resources to lower rarity ones at the NPC Technician Rondo in your Stronghold. There you can also exchange powders for resources and vice versa.

How to place structures and characters

If you’re looking to redesign the look of your Stronghold, you can do so by placing structures and characters.

To place a structure in your Stronghold, open the Placement menu, click a structure in the Facilities tab, move it to the desired location in your Stronghold, and click ‘Apply’ in the bottom-right corner.

To place a character in your Stronghold, open the Placement menu, click a character in the Character tab, move it to the desired location in your Stronghold, and click ‘Apply’ in the bottom-right corner.

When placing a structure or character, you can move your view by using W, A, S, and D on your keyboard.

The Placement menu can be opened by pressing ‘CTRL+2’ on your keyboard or by clicking the four arrows icon above the Action Energy bar at the bottom to the left.

You can rotate a structure or a character by clicking it and clicking either of the rotate buttons or by pressing ‘Q’ or ‘E’ on your keyboard. To enable slight rotation, click the ‘Slight Rotate’ button or click ‘Tab’ on your keyboard.

To retrieve a structure or a character, click them, and click ‘Retrieve’ or press ‘Delete’ on your keyboard.

What are Facility Points and Character Points

Facility Points and Character Points are the points that determine how many structures and characters you can place in your Stronghold.

Placing a structure in your Stronghold costs Facility Points, and once you don’t have any more Facility Points available, you cannot place any more structures.

Different structures cost different amounts of Facility Points to place. You can see the Facility Point cost of a structure by hovering over it in the Placement menu.

Placing a character from your roster in your Stronghold costs 5 Character Points, and placing rapport NPCs cost different amounts of Character Points.

The different areas of your Stronghold have separate Facility Points and Character Points.

If you retrieve a structure or a character, you immediately get back the Facility Points and Character Points that they cost.

In other words, Facility Points and Character Points are simply a mechanic that stops you from placing an infinite number of structures and characters in your Stronghold at the same time.

Where to get seals and what they are for

The currency of the Stronghold is seals. There are three types of seals related to the Stronghold in Lost Ark:

• Raid Seal
• Adventurer’s Seal
• Victory Seal

You can obtain seals by completing dispatch missions and by exchanging high-quality items from dispatch missions at Trade Merchants.

You can also exchange one type of seal for one of the other two types at the NPC Monet. She sells them at the rate of 65 seals per 100 seals, so it’s only recommended to do if you really need a specific type of seal now for a limited deal at a Trade Merchant or something similar.

Seals can be used to purchase Stronghold-specific materials needed for crafting from the NPC Monet and items and materials from Trade Merchants.

As you don’t know when a Trade Merchant that sells the items that you need comes by your Stronghold, it’s a great idea to have some seals saved up.

Is the Stronghold account-wide?

Yes, the Stronghold is roster-wide, which means that it is shared with all characters on the same server – your roster.

When you access the Stronghold on any character on the same server, you’re taken to the same Stronghold, your roster’s Stronghold.

Because the Stronghold is shared across the roster, your alt characters benefit from the progress you make on your main, making them stronger and able to progress faster.

Like with everything else in Lost Ark, the Stronghold isn’t shared across different servers or regions, only within the same server.

Where to find and complete Nothing is Impossible for Cykins quest

To unlock Knowledge transfer in your Stronghold, you need to complete the quest ‘Nothing is Impossible for Cykins’.

You can start the quest by talking to Adeline, who is located in front of the Manor on the main island in your Stronghold.

Before you can start the quest, you must have reached character level 50, Stronghold level 5, and have completed the quest ‘Ealyn’s Gift’, which is the last quest in the main questline in North Vern.

The quest ‘Nothing is Impossible for Cykins’ is quick to complete. It just requires you to go to the beach on the far left of your Stronghold and talk to Engineer Gothielf and the Knowledge Transfer Machine.

After you’ve talked to them, you’ve unlocked the Knowledge part of your Stronghold and thereby Knowledge Transfer.

That’s everything you need to know about the Stronghold in Lost Ark!

Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.