Using Trade Skills and Tools in Lost Ark

A core system in Lost Ark, Trade Skills provide a way to collect crafting material, repair your ship, and even come with a Collectible system in the form of World Tree Leaves, which reward you with with Luminous Gemstones, further boosting your trade skill levels and the amount of material you collect while gathering. There are six different Trade Skills in Lost Ark, each with their own specific items that can be obtained:

• Foraging
• Logging
• Mining
• Hunting
• Fishing
• Excavating

Each Trade Skill uses a resource called Work Energy, which has a maximum cap starting at 10,000. Every time you access the Trade Skills hotbar (B key), your Work Energy meter will pop up where your Identity Gauge normally sits at the bottom of your HUD. By gathering materials, this resource will slowly deplete. There are two ways to regain Work Energy; Either natural regeneration over time, which restores 30 Energy every 10 minutes, or through using a Basic Life Energy Potion, which will instantly replenish 3,000 Energy upon use. The only way to increase your maximum Work Energy is by using Max Life Energy Increase potions, which are limited rewards only gained through leveling your Roster Level.

The Trade Skill menu (L key) will show you multiple things, including what level each skill is at, the experience bar for each specific Trade SKill, as well as milestones a player needs to reach to unlock skills or passive boosts corresponding to each Trade Skill. These bonus skills have varying degrees of usefulness, from increased drop rate of higher quality materials to allowing the player to gather at locations that were previously unusable. On top of these bonus skills, each level gained will also increase a Mastery Skills, which will increase rare drop chances, lower durability chances, or increase gathering speeds. Level 30 is seen as the soft cap for every Trade Skill, but each Trade Skill can be brought up to level 60. Beyond level 30 the only gains will come from your Mastery Skills. Trade Skill levels are shared across an entire roster of characters, so it won't matter which character you're using.

Gathered Materials are placed into the Storage portion of your Inventory, under the Stronghold & Trade Skills tab. This means all materials are shared across your roster of characters and you'll have access to everything no matter which class you're currently playing.

Foraging is used to gather flowers and mushrooms, which can then be used in your Stronghold to craft a multitude of different Battle Items, such as Potions, Grenades, or Robes. While the game typically gives you a moderate amount of these things for free, you may find yourself running out if you decide to partake in end-game raiding. Crafting these items can save you a decent bit of Gold. On the flip side, you can turn these materials into items specifically for selling and make a tidy profit!

Foraging nodes can be located on the map by looking for the leaf icon. Similar to Mining and Woodcutting nodes, you will run into these gathering nodes everywhere; Take advantage of this! The short amount of time it takes to gather while walking around a continent or island is worth it. Especially new players, I can't stress this enough. Early on in Tier 3 you may run into issues with Gold, so having a stockpile of materials to sell may prove priceless to ensure you're not blocked from honing and increasing your gear score.

If you're looking to spam level Foraging, the best places are listed as follows:

• Lullaby Island: The best perk here is there is no enemies on the island. Gather to your hearts content without having to worry a mob interrupts your gathering cast bar.
• Slime Island is filled with Foraging nodes, with normally little to no competition over them.
• Liebeheim doesn't have Foraging nodes, but the trade merchant, Summers, will offer you Novice Foraging XP Potions in exchange for 250 Bright Wild Flowers. If you don't need the material, and would benefit more from the experience, you can buy five a week from her.

Logging is one of the more important Trade Skills, and is used to gather, as you may have guessed, wood. This material is used in a large amount of activities, ranging from Stronghold crafts, ship improvements, and housing decorations, just to name a few. Wood and Timber can all be sold on the marketboard for a tidy profit, just be wary not to sell all of what you've stockpiled, you will for sure need this material in the future.

Logging nodes can be found on maps by searching for the log-type icons. If a map has vegetation of any kind, chances are there will be trees to chop down. It may confuse you at first, but if you look at your Logging skills, you'll see Wild Growth which is gained at level 20. This skill is used to make sapling trees grow large enough to cut down. Saplings don't have a level requirement to chop down themselves, they're just gated by access to this skill. If you're chopping trees with another player who's Logging level is higher than yours, you can still chop these trees down as long as they grow into a tree within your own level range. Since Logging is the one Trade Skill you can co-op, this may come into play at some point!

If you're looking to spam level Logging, the best places are listed as follows:

• Lullaby Island: The best perk here is there is no enemies on the island. Gather to your hearts content without having to worry a mob interrupts your gathering cast bar.
• Panda Island is in a similar boat, no enemies and an abundant amount of trees to harvest.
• Vernese Forest is another great option. The map is huge, you won't have to deal with others stealing your trees, but you will have to deal with enemies.

One of the more important Trade Skills, Mining is used to gather ore. This material feels like it's used for just about everything in the Stronghold. Repairing Stronghold ships, upgrading your sailing ships, crafting Grenades, and even crafting furniture. This is just naming a few uses. Needless to say, you're going to need a lot of rocks. Just like Foraging, Mining can be just as profitable, even if all you do is sell the raw materials on the marketboard.

Mining nodes are on the map as small rock-type icons. These are located in most maps, similar to Foraging and Woodcutting nodes. If you come across them, don't hesitate to take a second to collect some materials and start leveling this Trade Skill up. While most Trade Skills don't have much function outside of just straight gathering, high levels of Mining will help with both the objective on Spida Island and getting the Mokoko Seeds on Promise Isle that can only be obtained by planting a Mining Bomb, the level 30 Mining Skill.

If you're looking to spam level Mining, the best places are listed as follows:

• There is one island in particular you should be using to help level Mining efficiently, and that's Meteora, a small island just South of Shushire that serves a single purpose; Mining. There is no other objective here. The island has enough Mining nodes to supply two players with an endless supply of materials. Any more than that and you will deplete the island of nodes faster than it can replenish them, so keep this in mind.
• On top of all these gathering nodes, Meteora has a trade merchant, Ritarre, will offer you Novice Mining XP Potions in exchange for 250 Strong Iron Ore. If you don't need the material, and would benefit more from the experience, you can buy five a week from him.
• Yorn is a good place with lots of Mining nodes, but may be annoying due to large amount of enemies.

Fishing connoisseurs can rejoice, Fishing in Lost Ark is actually quite relaxing. There's no movement needed, you can just sit in one spot and fish until your Work Energy has been depleted. After you cast your line, you will see a fish get close to your hook. When the fish grabs on, reel it in. It's that easy.

As you might have guessed, fishing is used to gather fish, but will also net you pearls. These materials will be used to craft something very important, that every player will require to level up; Fusion Material. There's only three ways to obtain these. Either craft it yourself through fishing, buy it off the marketboard from others who have crafted it at a slight increase in Gold, or, very rarely, Fusion Material can be obtained through daily login rewards or similar event.

Fishing spots are not as common as the previous gatherable materials, as you need an actual body of water to do the activity. There's no limit on how many people can fish at one spot, so don't fret if others are already gathered on the docks in Punika at Tideshelf Path. It does matter which fishing spot you go to, since differing locations will net you different fish. If you need Tier 2 materials, simply go to one of the Tier 2 continents (either Yorn or Feiton) and head to the designated fishing spot and look for the fishing hook icon on the map.

Fishing locations are listed below:

• Sub-Level 50 and Tier 1 Locations
  • Lakebar
  • Wavestrand Port
  • Seaswept Woods
  • Port City Changhun
  • Arid Path
  • Port Krona
  • Regens Village
  • Glass Lotus Lake
• Tier 2 Locations
  • Yorn's Cradle
  • Wailing Swamp
• Tier 3 Locations
  • Tideshelf Path
  • Candaria Territory

Hunting is a fairly active Trade Skill that involves a "skill-shot" type action to hit animals with. This will throw a dagger at the target location and kill/injure the animal if it makes contact, depending on the animal. Bunnies have a single health bar, while cats have two, and will gain a movement buff after taking the first instance of damage.

Hunting will provide you with meat and leather, with the former being used to craft food, while the latter is used to craft Fusion Material, something required by every player when honing. Due to this need, Hunting can be made fairly profitable, or at the very least save you some Gold when leveling up yourself as you won't be reliant on marketboard prices. Be mindful, if you decide to craft Fusion Material, you will want to hunt in locations specific to the tier at which you're crafting those items at.

Hunting doesn't necessarily have visible locations on the map to go towards. Instead, animals will either be running around the area visibly near you, or hidden within Mining and Foraging nodes. Gathering at those spots or throwing your hunting knife at them will scare them out of hiding.

If you're looking to spam level Hunting, the best places are listed as follows:

• Bilbrin Forest is a good spot for early on. I do not recommend using this spot if you have access to other, better locations, but this is perfect for a new player.
• Crescent Isle is an option, but if other players are already here you may want to opt for another location. The spawns just aren't good enough for more than one person.
• Eternity Isle is probably the best place in the game to hunt. Plenty of animal spawns, and good experience to boot. There's a decent bit of mobs here, but the experience gains make up for that.

Excavating, just like Hunting, is an active type of gathering in Lost Ark. Excavating works by activating Sonar, an Excavation skill given to you at level 1, which will work as a sort of "hot and cold" game. As you get closer to buried treasure, the icon above your head will start blinking faster. When the icon above your head starts flashing blue, it means you're close enough to the spot to activate Relic Search, revealing the exact location to dig up the materials. At level 30, you'll gain access to a Sniffer Dog, a friendly comrade who will follow you around and periodically dig up treasure on it's own. This is the perfect way to passively burn through Work Energy and gather useful materials at the same time.

Excavation provides a material called Relics, which can be used to craft Treasure Maps as well as Fusion Materials. Just like Fishing and Hunting, Excavation can be highly lucrative. Since Excavation can be done passively while doing other activities, it makes this Trade Skill the most useful for material gathering when compared to time spent doing it. To top it off, Excavation will also allow you a chance at getting crafting kits to make gathering tools. Higher tier gathering tools come with special perks, something we will cover later in this guide. If you have no need for these crafting kits yourself, you can opt to sell them on the marketboard for a large chunk of Gold.

If you want to know if you can Excavate in a specific area, just open your map and check to see if there's a relic icon on the gathering bar in the top right of the window. You can find Excavation nodes in any part of the map as long as it allows you to.

If you're looking to spam level Excavation, the best places are listed as follows:

• Arid Path is great for Tier 1 materials.
• Azure Wind Island is the spot to go to for Tier 2 materials.
• Secret Forest is where you'll want to head for Tier 3 materials.
• In all honesty, if you're just trying to level, find somewhere that's uncontested and just have at it.

Just like our combat gear, gathering tools come with differing quality. You can obtain tools with either Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, or Relic quality. Uncommon tools can be purchased using Silver in any major town from Trade Skill Tool Merchants. Rare and above will either need to be crafted in your Stronghold or be given to you through a special event. Crafting kits can be obtained either through the marketboard or through the Excavation Trade Skill.

With higher quaility, gathering tools will gain something called perks. Uncommon tools will come with a single perk, while Relic tools come with six. These perks can range from something like Super Armor, which will allow you to continue to gather uninterrupted while being attacked by mods, to simply collecting more materials from certain Trade Skill mini-games or even gathering speed. Some of these perks will also have a percentage based number on them. These are completely random, but will determine how good the tool actually is.

Similar to normal gear, gathering tools come with a durability. This durability can be topped off in a similar way, by spending silver either at a repair NPC or by using the Pet Function with Crystalline Aura.

The difference in the system is the max durability will slowly decrease over time, forcing you to repair your tools much more frequently. This is more an annoyance than anything, but it will eventually stop you from being able to use the tool at all if the durability bottoms out. To remedy this, you will need to use something called a Trade Skill Tool Restoration Kit. It requires a lot to fully increase the max durability back to full if you've gotten low, but it's the only way to do this. These kits can be crafted in your Stronghold or bought from Mari's Secret Shop. Keep in mind, these restoration kits are fairly expensive. Don't bother using them on low grade gathering tools, such as Rare or Epic grade.

Tickets for Platinum Field will drop randomly while gathering. This is essentially a mini-game of sorts that places you in an instanced area and allows you to gather as much as you can within the given time frame. There's an objective in here to bring back certain items that the NPC asks for, and once you do, grants access to a special area on the map where you can gather mats a bit faster than in the normal portion of the map.

Platinum Field is split into two maps:

• Nahun's Domain: Allows the player to gather with Foraging, Logging, and Mining.
• Old Yudian Canal: Allows the player to gather using Hunting, Fishing, and Excavation.

Take note, you will not gain experience from using Platinum Field. It is specifically meant to be used as a way to gather an excess amount of materials in a fast period of time. Feel free to hold onto these tickets until later on when your Trade Skills are a bit higher of a level, since early on the experience is way more important than the items gained. Alternatively, just use the tickets when you're out of Work Energy. Platinum Field also rewards you with Providence Stones.