What a wild ride it has been over the last couple of months. Initially announced to be coming out in April, Smilegate and Amazon Game Studios pushed up the release of the highly anticipated support class, Artist, to March 15. Unfortunately, the game and its community just can't catch a break. It was announced late last night that upon further testing, there were unresolved issues that prevented the patch to be available on its scheduled release. Then hours later, after the flood of emotions were still rushing through everyone, the developers announced they were able to resolve the issue and the patch will be available as expected, just with a few maintenance delays. A couple of hours longer is much better than a couple of weeks.

This is a huge patch, not only coming out with a brand new, flashy class, but a great deal of changes to what we've come to expect. There's the standard adjustments to classes and new outfits for characters, but the biggest change that has everyone talking is the reduction of gold that can be earned in some of the earlier to mid endgame raids. Because the cost of gold has been removed up to iLevel 1445, which is a huge jump in its own right, the amount of gold you can earn from Oreha Abyssal Dungeons, Argos, Valtan Normal and Hard and Vykas Normal have been reduced significantly. This is to help newer players ease into the game a bit better, but it all comes down to how the in-game markets fluctuate. This hopefully will reduce the price of gold required both in the marketplace and required to buy Blue Crystals, otherwise this is going to hurt the game more than it will help.

Outside of this, there are a ton of quality of life changes, the 96-player PVP mode "Tulubik Battlefield", a brand new event, season 3 of the Ark Pass, and so much more.

Lost Ark is available for free on PC via Steam, with The Art of War patch now accessible.

https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/3607085/type/dlg/sid/UUhgUeUpU7885/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUy5KAC6AZY