Also coming this month are the brutal Inferno difficulty for the Vykas Legion Raid, and the Achates Trial Guardian. These are both intended to be rock solid challenges. Both the Interno raid and Achates Trial Guardian reward you with titles and achievements instead of the usual rewards of gear and materials – if you best them successfully, of course. The Achates Trial Guardian is a winged lion with some kind of crown made of lightning bolts, so I can believe it’s not easy to tackle. December sees the debut of one of Lost Ark’s most challenging raids, the Brelshaza Legion Raid. That pits you and seven other players against Brelshaza, Commander of the Phantom Legion. She’ll try to charm you, and cause some nasty hallucinations to trick you. There’ll be two difficulty levels for this raid because it’s pretty dang tricky. You’ll have to traverse six gates to tackle the raid, and the item level rises every two gates. Also coming in December is the Caliligos Guardian Raid against a big lightning dragon, grr. The next few months also bring two new advanced classes to Lost Ark: the Reaper and the Summoner. Reapers are stealthy assassins who can backstab and confuse opponents with clones of themselves. Summoners aren’t the most resilient class to play as, but these mages can call on elemental spirits to aid them in fights, which is handy. Each one of these spirits has their own set of skills, and they can draw on water, lightning, and earth attacks. Ed compared Lost Ark to grey carpet when it launched earlier this year. “Lost Ark is swimming with characters who exist to give you things to do, but it is so much grey loop pile,” he said. “Androids that deliver their lines and enter standby. Less Westworld, more Carpetland. Grey carpets in the saloons. Greyer mats in the horse drawn carriages. Grey saddles. You’re not here for an adventure, you’re here to switch off your brain and mince things.” Lost Ark is a free to play download from Steam. You can read the game’s end of year roadmap in full here.
