With Lost Ark, each character has a set of skills that you can upgrade with the use of Skill Points. This system may be a bit different than what you are familiar with, but with the Lost Ark Skill Points Guide, we will assist you in what you need to know about it. So, let’s take a look at how skill points work and what you can do with them.
What Are Lost Ark Skill Points
Simply put, Skill Points are points you can put into your abilities to make them different and stronger. Additionally, you can move these points at any time your abilities are off cooldown and while you are not in a restricted area, i.e Raids.
How Lost Ark Skill Points Work
Basically as you level up, you will earn Skill Points. Additionally, there are some chain quests you can complete for a Skill Point Potion. Also, check out our How to Unlock All Skill Points Guide to find them all. You can then apply your Skill Points directly towards you abilities on the Combat Skills UI (Hotkey “K” to access).
Lets take a look at the image below; the first column shows the requirements to upgrade the ability further. For this example, Blaze requires me to be combat level 55 before I can further upgrade it, while my Lightning Vortex requires 12 points to upgrade that. So, at the top right, you can see that I have a total of 291 Skill Points, but can only spend 3 as the others are already spent on other abilities.
To apply the Skill Points, simply click the [+] or [-] icon next to the Skill level. Before closing, make sure you press the yellow “Save” at the bottom to save your changes. So by leveling your abilities, you make them stronger and in turn, make you stronger!
Skill Upgrades
As you apply points to your skills, you will see that different skill upgrades become available to select. While selecting them; you can only select one Tier 1, one Tier 2, and one Tier 3 option. These upgrades will change the ability, so make sure you read the description of what it does by hovering over them. Occasionally they will make them more powerful on your situations. Likewise, they can completely change how the ability works.
So, to access these tiers, you need to spend a certain number of Skill Points. Firstly, Tier 1 options are accessible after using 4 points into your ability. Finally, Tier 2 with 20 points and Tier 3 with 48 points. Therefore, you will need a total of 384 Skill Points to fully access all Skill Upgrades for your active abilities. (It will take more to fully upgrade the abilities!)
Skill Tree Effects
All of your Skill Upgrades start at level 1. Despite that, Skill Upgrades can increase in level by the use of Skill Tree Effects. Likewise to Engravings, you can earn Skill Upgrade Levels through gear. Also, starting at Tier 3,you will see gear with Skill Tree Effects that correlate to your character.
Each Skill Upgrade has a different level cap with them. Sometimes they can only increase one level. While others, will increase by 5 levels. So, make sure to hover over the upgrades to see what they cap out at. More information and how to min-mix this can be found in our future Skill Tree Guide.
Hopefully, that makes things a bit less confusing. Remember, you can always play around with your Combat Skills to figure things out as you can freely change them anytime. You can even save a bunch of presets to easily switch between specific skills and upgrades depending on your current task.