During your leveling adventure in Lost Ark, you have surely picked up different engraving books with many possible choices.
You hear here and there that you have to optimize your engravings, that it’s important, but despite the explanations in game, you can’t understand the mechanics and you’re lost. No problem, take a large glass of water, we will try to explain to you as simply as possible the principle of engravings in Lost Ark, to help you understand what is undoubtedly the most complex mechanics of the game.
Update : This guide is current as of Friday, February 18.
What are engravings?
To put it simply, in Lost Ark, engravings are more or less powerful passives that will define the way you play. And to activate them, it will be necessary to accumulate “points” which are called knots power (which are symbolized by small diamonds that you will see later), in your equipment to fill up to 3 levels of these passives.
For example here is the “Total Attack” engraving.
Like all engravings “Total Attack” has three levels.
– You must reach 5 nodes of power in your equipment (we will come back to this in the equipment part) to validate the first level of this engraving and activate the passive “Speed of channeling spells and skills +5%. Damage +4%. »
– With 10 nodes activated, you unlock the second level “Speed of spells and channeling skills +10%. Damage +10%. »
– And at 15 knots the third: “Speed of spells and channeling skills +20%. Damage +20%. »
The Engravings interface (which unlocks at level 27) looks like this:
You can distinguish the different levels of engraving every 5 knots, the small diamonds.
In this example above, you can see that the first “Backfire” burn has activated level 2 with 14 nodes and 1 node is missing to activate level 3. For the second “Reflux” burn, there is has 6 nodes, so the first level is activated and 4 nodes are missing to activate the second level. “Expert” has 5 nodes, the effect is also activated at level 1 (we will come back to the red effect of power reduction later).
If you have more or less than 5 nodes (diamonds) per level, it won’t change anything. For example, having 6 nodes or 9 nodes in an engraving will not activate level 2 for you. It is only at 5 nodes that the first level activates, at 10 nodes to activate the second level and at 15 nodes to activate the third level.
Conversely, having less than 5 nodes will not activate any bonus. For example, in the image below, “Balance” and “Propulsion” only have 2 nodes, so no effects will be activated on your character.
The different types of engravings on Lost Ark
In Lost Ark the engravings are grouped into two main categories.
Class engravings
They are dedicated to classes and are only two per class.
The choice between one engraving or the other will greatly impact your way of playing and the statistics that you will have to get from your equipment in endgame.
For example here are the two engravings of the class Witch :
As you can see, both engravings drastically change the gameplay, going so far as to lock out part of the Witch’s identity skill. If we take another example with the Fusilière, one of the two engravings literally removes the hunting rifles from the gameplay.
General engravings
The second category concerns the general engravings which are common to all classes. You can activate them on any class in the game depending on what you need. There are many, choose the ones you want to mount (we will come back to this in the part of the volumes)
For example for a DPS class these engravings can be interesting:
Be careful though, some engravings have powerful negative effects in return depending on the level.
For example if you read the descriptions of “Backfire” above (which is one of the most sought after DPS burns), you can quickly see that the first two levels of the burn are not interesting. +4% damage inflicted for +20% damage received, it’s expensive to pay to increase your damage so little.
On the other hand the 3rd level is very strong. Deal +20% damage to the target to receive +20% damage. The bonus is large enough to offset the negative effect.
The Engraving Tomes
When you go to your engraving bonus interface (ALT + i by default) each engraving has several levels (do not confuse with levels 1 to 3). There is the Unusual (green) tier, the Rare (blue) tier, the Epic (purple) and finally the Legendary (orange) tier.
Each tier puts you 3 nodes into your Engravings when you equip them and it takes 20 Engraving Tomes of a rarity to level up.
The engraving recipes are books that you must have received in different quests and rewards during your leveling and that you will find later in the game as well. It takes 20 tomes of one rarity to level up to the next rarity. Each activated rarity grants you 3 nodes.
Engravings are linked to the expedition (so to all characters on the server).
For example, you will need 20 green tomes of the “Backfire” engraving to unlock the first level of the engraving which validates 3 nodes. Then you will need 20 blue volumes to validate the second stage which activates 6 knots. 20 purple tomes to validate the stage which activates 9 knots. And finally 20 legendary volumes to validate the last level which activates 12 knots.
Yes, it is very long.
How to activate his engravings?
Now that we have gone through the principle of engravings, we will see how to equip all of this. Because yes, it is not because you have mounted your engravings with your tomes that you have immediately activated your engravings on your character. And to activate the engravings on your characters, you will therefore have to accumulate nodes in your equipment.
And for that, there are three ways to do it.
Equip Engravings
If you open your character sheet (P key by default) you will see two empty boxes at the bottom left. This is where you will equip your two main engravings. You can put two identical to cumulate an engraving. This is where your engraving level will be important.
For example, if you have your “Backfire” engraving on the landing rareis that you have already used 20 green tomes then 20 blue volumes of “Blowback”. So if you equip this engraving in one of the two dedicated slots and you can go to your engraving sheet (default X key) and you will have 6 “Blowback” nodes and therefore activate the first level of engraving ( GG!)
So by logic, if you put the “Backfire” engraving twice in both slots, you will have activated 12 nodes of the engraving and therefore activated the second level.
In general, this is where you want to put your main engravings, because this is what will earn you the most points (12 nodes maximum per slot if you have leveled the engraving to the legendary level)
Equip Jewels
You may have already noticed, but your jewelry does not increase your iLvl. Your jewels will grant you different statistics, but also and mainly power nodes for your engravings.
For example, in the ring below, if you equip it, it will activate 2 “Reflux” etching nodes and 1 “Attack Speed Reduction” negative etching node (discussed just below) at your character.
The optimization part of the stuff is mainly played on top. You’re going to have to find the right jewels that give you the right main stat for your character and activate levels for the engravings you want.
Equip a Stone
Finally, the third method to increase your engraving nodes are stones. These small stones that you can carve increase an engraving’s stats and number of nodes. For example, on this cut gem below, it yields 7 nodes of the “Return of the Flame” engraving and 5 nodes of the “Expert” engraving. But in return, it activates 3 negative “attack power reduction” nodes. This score will depend on the luck you had when cutting your gem.
Be careful when you engrave your gems, if you increase the negative engraving too much, you will get a penalty. Here an attack power reduction that works exactly like normal engravings, so in 5 knot increments to complete a level.
To summarize in brief
- You have two types of engravings: Class engravings and general engravings.
- Class engravings will greatly affect your gameplay.
- You can level up your engravings with engraving recipes.
- It takes 20 recipes from one rarity to level up to the next rarity.
- There are rarities unusual, rare, epic and legendary.
- It takes 5 nodes of an engraving to activate the first level on your character.
- It takes 10 nodes of an engraving to activate the second level on your character.
- It takes 15 nodes of an engraving to activate the third level on your character.
- You can equip two engravings at the bottom left of your character sheet.
- You can equip the same engraving twice to add nodes.
- Your jewelry will give you knots.
- Your gem will give you nodes depending on the quality of the cut.
- Be careful not to activate the penalties when cutting your gem at the risk of raising the level of negative engravings.
Finally, know that engravings are part of the endgame optimization of Lost Ark. As much as your class engravings are important in defining how your character plays, general engravings are a bonus. During your level up in iLvl, your equipment will move a lot. So don’t make engravings a priority in your jewelry and gems, it will quickly become obsolete.
Get used to the engraving system though, try leveling up your engravings to practice. Have a goal of at least three main engravings to build for your character, this will allow you to focus on three engravings to build with your recipes without spreading yourself too thin.
So much for our complete guide to engraving in MMORPG Lost Ark. We have tried to cover all aspects of the game’s most complex mechanics in the hope that it can be useful to you. You can find all our guides to get started in Lost Ark as well as all the news of the game on Gamosaurus.
