Lost Ark roadmap reveals the next two classes

The next couple of months' worth of planned updates to Lost Ark have been revealed in a recent blog post. The most interesting additions are two new advanced classes. The first, coming in April, is the glaivier, a martial artist who fights with polearms (in the Korean version she's called the lance master). The glaivier switches between a flurry stance using a spear and a focus stance with the longer glaive, and can seemingly summon whirlwinds and teleport. In May, she'll be joined by the destroyer, a warrior with an unfeasibly large hammer capable of hitting the ground so hard it launches rock spikes that pierce enemies. Plus, his hammer shoots lightning.

The April update also adds a new continent for questing in called South Vern, which was a barren land until settlers used borrowed technology to turn it green. You'll need to be item level 1340 to travel to South Vern. More in-game events and skins are coming too, as well as another way to boost a new character to high level: "a Feiton powerpass that provides item level 960 gear to level your new Glaivier, or any other character you'd like!"

Further ahead, May should bring a bunch of quality-of-life updates and a weekly activity called Trial Guardian Raids, which seem to be three regular Guardian Raids back-to-back with your item level adjusted depending on who you're fighting. 

Under the heading of "tentative" updates comes another Guardian Raid against something called Deskaluda, which looks like an armored doom chicken, and the first Legion Raid. These team activities are the real endgame endgame of the Korean version of Lost Ark, increasingly wild dungeons with checkpoints between the phases as they ramp up into bizarre spectacles. 

The Legion Raid planned for May is called Valtan and you'll need to be at least item level 1415 to enter. If you want to see how nuts they'll get, have a look at the Brelshaza Legion Raid from the Korean version (where Brelshaza is called Abrelshud). A fight against the demon lord who rules dreams, it begins with a hallucinatory trip across twisting paths like the finale of Labyrinth and concludes in a fight on some kind of cube in space backed by a reactive opera that changes as players transition through each phase of the boss fight. So that's something to look forward to. 

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.