A Guide to Rapport and Traveling Merchants in Lost Ark

This is a finite activity in Lost Ark, with a limited number of NPCs and rewards, and it is useful for several reasons, such as increasing your roster level or finishing your Adventure Tome progress.

All characters on your roster share the Rapport progress and the rewards. Rewards are generally great to have, and they range from gold to Island Souls and everything in between.

On top of that, a lot of Roster level experience is gained when redeeming the rewards, alongside an abundant amount of Virtue stats due to the special Rapport dialogue and quests. Rapport NPCs are also needed in your quest to complete the Adventure Tome which is another side activity in Lost Ark.

The Rapport menu contains all the NPCs available, sorted by their location.

The “Open Seas” location contains all the NPCs located on islands across both Genah and Procyon seas. Each NPC profile shows several things, such as the exact location and rapport level. The date of birth is simply a lore feature and has no impact on the system.

The three icons above the Rapport level, called Rapport Quest, Rapport Reward, and Rapport Dialogue, serve as indicators to the availability of the features. The icon will have a blue tint if a quest is available for example.

You can increase your Rapport level using various methods, but the most common is using songs, emotes and gifts.

Every roster can play five instruments, and can express five emotes on a daily basis. You can also deliver 99 gifts per day per roster.

The one extra song and emote per day is gained once you activate the Crystalline Aura (the paid premium membership for the game.)

Various NPCs require various songs and emotes. In case you are missing the song or emote, you can easily use the “Codex” feature in game to find out where you can acquire it from.

Each song and emote counts as one use from the five (or six) you have daily. So if an NPC has two songs available, that will deduct two actions from your Play Instrument total.

Giving gifts is the fastest way to max out your Rapport, and is also used to skip certain Virtue requirements assuming you have gathered enough gifts and deliver them at once.

Rapport gifts can be either Relic, Legendary, or Epic quality, which can be acquired in a variety of ways:

Every major zone in Arkesia has a traveling merchant that always appears at the same server times, but in a random map within that zone.

Jeffrey from Shushire:

Amongst other items used for Adventure Tome cooking or simple consumables, each traveling merchant also sells one Rapport gift:

You can purchase this gift once per spawn, so with the above example, Jeffrey, you can buy it 12 times per day as that is how often he spawns. Many of the gifts that these merchants sell can not be delivered as is, so you need to exchange them into real gifts at a Rapport NPC. The rate is 1:1.

For example, the gift I just purchased from Jeffrey, can be changed into a Rapport gift at the Rapport Exchange NPC in Shueshire > Rigens Village.

If you buy gifts from traveling merchants in other regions, please visit the Rapport Exchange NPC in that region to exchange them.

Some traveling merchants sell gifts that can be delivered as is, and because of that, some zones such as Punika for example, do not have the “Region Speciality” tab at their Rapport Exchange merchants.

Sometimes, these merchants sell a Legendary grade gift, which can be gifted to Rapport NPCs as is.

Each traveling merchant is available for 25 minutes from the time of spawn:

It is very common practice to have one character on your Roster camping these NPCs, by using the Bifrost slots available and the recall location too. For example, you can set up a Bifrost point in Rethramis, which allows you not only to camp the traveling merchant there, but also Yudia, West Luterra and East Luterra because of the free Triport available between all of these four zones. This opens up access to four possible NPCs with one Bifrost slot. Another Bifrost location can be in Tortoyk, another in Annika and so on, depending on which zones you prefer or which spawn times you are generally available at.

I highly recommend a Bifrost location to Annika, preferably in Prisma Valley spawn point:

Annika is fantastic because the traveling merchant here also has the chance to sell the Wei Card, which is part of the best set of cards.

Prisma Valley is a personal choice because it’s the most annoying place to get to in Annika.

Another recommendation is a Bifrost location to any of the Luterra maps, from Rethramis to East Luterra. As you are always covering at least two NPCs with the same Bifrost.

Rohendel is a good Bifrost as well, since getting to Elzowin’s Shade's spawn point takes a longer time as you do not have any Triport nearby. When you only have 25 minutes to get as many as possible, speed is of the essence:

Yorn is a zone I generally avoid because the spawn points here are mostly in inconvenient places.

Feiton is a great place to have your Recall point to, because one of the several spawn points is right next to the recall statue in Kalaja.

Creating a proper route for any given spawn time depends on the zones you want to camp. There are always merchants in different regions which spawn at the same server time, so make your own route based on the times you are free.

Here you can find the list of all traveling merchants and their spawn location in each zone:

We talked about this NPC in the Traveling Merchant section, but there is another tab where you can spend Providence Stone to receive Rapport gift boxes.

Every zone has one of these NPCs, marked with a pink icon on the map, and every NPC offers two types of chests. One is a local gift chest based on the zone you are buying from:

And the second is based on the sea region you are buying from:

In the example above, I am in Punika, which is on the left side of the world, in the Procyon Sea.

Providence Stones are acquired from gathering inside the Platinum Field dungeons, killing Leader mobs around the world and some event islands.

Leader mobs:

Event islands:

Important to note is that if you are currently working on your Rapport with NPCs in Punika, you should buy the Punika Rapport Chest as it contains gifts that give you more rapport points with NPCs in Punika. If you are working towards befriending NPCs on islands in the Procyon Sea, then the Procyons Rapport Chest is the way to go. These gift chests give you a random gift, so you never know which NPC will like it more.

I personally never purchase the sea-specific boxes, because I find it more valuable to have a higher chance at getting a Legendary gift, rather then an Epic that’s worth 450 points if I get lucky.

And the sea-specific boxes have a larger selection of gifts, which makes the chance of getting a legendary relatively low compared to a zone-specific chest.

You can buy seven boxes of random Epic grade gifts per week, from each of the two merchant types of sea merchants, Plumpcrab and Tea and Libra.

Tea and Libra merchant in Rohendel port:

Travelling Plumpcrab merchant in Rohendel port:

Every Tea and Libra merchant across both seas shares this purchase. The same goes for the Plumpcrab merchants.

I recommend that you occasionally visit Rohendel port, because you have both merchants in one place.

There are five weekly Rapport selection boxes available in the cash shop:

Each of the five, provide you with one Legendary Rapport Selection Chest and five Epic Rapport Selection Chests.

Mari’s Secret Shop, also occasionally has Rapport chests for sale:

These can be either a selection chest or a random chest. The value of these chests is strictly personal, based on how much gold and blue crystals cost, but generally speaking you have many better ways of getting your gifts.

The weekly Rapport chests are a smarter purchase than the ones in Mari’s Secret Shop, not only because they cost 19 less blue crystals, but also because the legendary chest is a selection one.

Depending on the NPC, some gifts have more value than others, it is important to check which gifts you should buy or select from a selection box, based on the NPC you are working on.

Some Relic gifts are worth only 5000 points to some NPCs:

The same goes for Epic grade gifts:

All Legendary gifts are worth 2000 rapport points for all NPCs.

Acquiring the right gifts makes a big difference when it comes to maxing out your rapport fast. Acquiring many of the same gift is an asset because you can give up to 30 gifts at once. At certain Rapport stages with some NPCs, you will not be able to progress further unless you finish a Rapport Quest.

Rapport quests also sometimes have a minimum Virtues requirement in order to take the quest.

So because of this, you can choose to stop right before the stage where virtues would come into play, gather up to 30 of the same gift, and deliver them in one go, basically jumping over one or several stages at once.

Special dialogue is also a very cool part of doing your Rapport, and with higher virtue stats, you can get access to a few interesting lines of dialogue. Most extra dialogue also rewards you with Virtue points.

One of the best parts of the Rapport system is the story you get to experience.

These are the best story quests in Lost Ark, and I highly recommend that you play through them watching the cutscenes and reading the dialogue, as you get to learn so much about the world and the NPCs you get acquainted with.

I personally loved the Rapport story of Avelle from North Vern. Azena from Rohendel, Ealyn from North Vern and Beatrice from Trixion, but other NPCs such as Thirain, Cals, Lutia, Jederico, Blackfang, and Nineveh were also very cool to read.

The best NPCs to begin with are debatable and based on your interests in the game. For some quick gold you can consider working with some of the Punika NPC such as Sapiano the Fox or Nagi.

If you are working towards your Adventure Tome completion, you’ll have to max out NPCs in that area.

If you are willing to start a longer term commitment and some Island Souls, working with Nineveh, Zinnervale or Mari should be the priority.

If I were new, I would start by maxing out the following five NPCs: Nagi, Yom the Squirrel and Hariya, all three from Punika, because they do not require a lot of Rapport points, they have low Virtue requirements and they give gold amongst other nice rewards.

I would also choose Blue-Eyed Calvasus because of the great value you get with the Giant’s Heart, Island Soul and Masterpiece.

My fifth would have to be Artisan Urr in West Luterra, because he is easy to max out and the only NPC you need to complete your Adventure Tome there, which in turn gives you a Relic grade Rapport item to use as a gift with another NPC.

I wish you a lot of fun befriending Arkesia’s NPCS!