While the first roadmap of 2023 was a little lackluster, with the big two entries being Brelshaza Hard and the highly entertaining support class Artist, Amazon Game Studios and Smilegate are looking to shake things up over the next few months. The roadmap for May, June, July and August have been detailed, and they come with some very exciting surprises.
May
By far the biggest addition next month, something no one saw coming - although joked about, is the Slayer class. Why this comes as a surprise is because not only are we getting a new class at least one month earlier than expected, but if the western release was going to follow the Korean/Russian release progression, we would have instead gotten Aeromancer. Slayer is the latest class released in Korea, and it's incredibly popular due to its aesthetics and potential damage output. It's sad to see they swapped the placements of the two jobs, but Slayer has been a highly sought after class, and being we just got our first Specialist class, it's good to space their releases out a bit. With Slayer, we will also see a free powerpass and a progression event. In addition to this, we are getting the Ebony Cube (which combines Boss Rushes and The Cube), improvements to Knowledge Transfer, Battle Item improvements for earlier Guardian raids, Quality of Life improvements and so much more.
June
While not as impressive as the May update, June will keep the player going with more content. The main attraction is that the story will continue into the beautiful Elgacia continent. Along with it, a new Abyssal Dungeon will be unlocked (Kayangel), something we haven't seen since Punika in nearly a year. Finally, the Tier 3 Fortunespire tower will expand its floors from 25 to 50.
July
For the hardcore of the hardcore of hardcore players, AGS and Smilegate have a surprise for you. Kakul-Saydon Legion Raid (clown) will have its very own Inferno difficulty, challenging the most dedicated players and rewarding them with a title to flex. Outside of this, there will be a slight continuation of the Elgacia story in the form of an epilogue, along with some quality of life improvements.
August
Finally we have August, which is massively packed to finalize the summer release schedule. Firstly, the specialist class Aeromancer will be released alongside another powerpass and progression event. On top of that, we have the Akkan Legion Raid tier, another 8-player, three-set of floors that start at item level 1580 for Normal mode and 1600 for Hard. Finally, while we got a brand new guardian raid a couple of weeks ago in the form of Hanumatan, we will be getting Sonavel which starts at 1580.
The future of Lost Ark is looking a little brighter after some rough spots over the last year. The company has stated they are making efforts in making the new and returning player experience even better, with hopes of reducing the amount of time it takes to actually make progress. Lost Ark is available right now for free via Steam.