I've been playing Lost Ark ever since August 2022 when friends introduced me to the game. I was initially wowed by the spectacle of Vykas's raid when they streamed it to me. It blew me away and to this day, the Inferno version: the hardest, optional, synced challenge version of her raid is my favorite Inferno raid to this day. I've went through many phases throughout playing, with a beginner phase, hardcore phase, burnout phase, and where I'm at now, a casual phase. I still really like this game, but now I play significantly less and only do rested, alternating dailies on only two characters.

Previously I used to play 3-4 classes - a 1620 Bard, a 1620 Gunslinger, a 1600 Aeromancer, and the newly released Breaker who I honed to 1620. Recently, I decided that playing 4 characters couldn't be sustainable. For me to enjoy the game more, and to lessen the future gold costs, I had to reduce that number down to 2. I chose my Bard and my Breaker for a few reasons: I want to play both a support and a DPS, Gunslinger had a bunch of gems that could be easily converted to gold, Breaker only really needs two gems, and Breaker is really strong and fun. I didn't really want to drop 2 characters, but because of how vertical the game is getting, and how exhausting weeklies and dailies can be, I had no choice but to.

Upon recent research, I'm now at a crossroads. No matter what I can never hone a character to 1630. Even with the upcoming advanced honing. In fact, advanced honing isn't all that more cheaper than regular honing to 1630, just more forgiving because you can't pity advanced honing, it'll always give some progression.

I don't think I'll have a future after Echidna's raid comes out. Because I can't hone to 1630, I can not do any future content. The latest raid in KR, Behemoth, requires an unimaginable item level 1640!!!! There isn't a single way I can reach there, without like, paying an unreasonable sum of money on the game, into the thousands if I had to guess. I'll admit, I am not "f2p", not like that phrase really means anything, and frankly praising the 'purity' of the title is really dumb, but I haven't spend anything all on this game recently. I've only bought some skins and battle passes in the past. If there was a gold cost for the amount of all the stuff I bought, I'd be shocked to see it be over 250,000 gold. For context, the amount of gold I would need to bring a single character to 1630 from 1620 would be around 1,500,000 gold. Bard would be this much, Breaker would be much, much more expensive due to having less honing materials.

Where do I stand now? I currently have 650,000 gold, which isn't increasing due to using it on the most recent progression system - Transcendence. Transcendence is a gold sink that this version of the game simply doesn't need, and is just another part of the problem outside of the main problem - Honing is way too expensive.

In conclusion, being in this situation just sucks! I really like playing this game, but knowing that one day, I'll never be able to do anything new after Echidna comes out, sucks a lot. After I clear Echidna on my Bard and my Breaker - I essentially 'beat' the game, an MMO that's supposed to be everlasting due to not being able to progress any further. I suppose it's good timing, since the Dawntrail expansion for ffxiv is coming out a week or two after Echidna comes out which will eat up all my time. It's also somewhat poetic, the Covetous Legion Commander - Vykas that made me install this game to begin with, which was the latest content at the time, will also be the last piece of content I'll clear in the form of another: the original Covetous Legion Commander - Echidna. It was nice while it lasted, but I'll have to say goodbye in a month from now.

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Nice boobs.