Lost Ark: Skills and builds Lost Ark guide, walkthrough

On this page you will learn how skills, tripods and builds work in Lost Ark.

Last update: 01 March 2022

The following page of the Lost Ark game guide explains how to assign and manage skills and what Tripods are. You will also learn how skills influence character builds.

• Skills and Tripods - how do they work?
• Builds - what are they?

Skills and Tripods - how do they work?

Skills in Lost Ark have the following features:

1. From the beginning of the game, you have 8 skills that you use in battle.
2. Most heroes need Stamina/Mana (blue bar) to use their skills - but you can ignore it in the early stages of the game.
3. Each skill has a cooldown and different forms of attack activation (hold, press, etc.).
4. More skills will unlock as you progress through the main storyline/ character level, up to 50,
5. You can freely swap skills place and order.

Advancing in experience levels provides you with skill points that you can freely distribute. To do it:

1. You can strengthen each skill in the panel (K) by using the arrow to add points from the available pool.
2. You can use the points at any time as long as you are not in a closed location.
3. The player's default level is 50 - you receive about 240 points to assign. Their amount may vary, as some quests and missions allow you to increase the pool of points to spend. However, until you reach level 55, you will not be able to exceed skill level 10 (12 is max).
4. Each of the skills has so-called Tripod - that is three boosts you can unlock when the skill is at 4-7-10. They significantly affect how the skill works, damage, and additional effects like setting enemies on fire.
5. Each successive level strengthens the skill but costs more points than the previous level. It is often essential to develop the key skill to at least level 4 to unlock Tripod.
6. You can't develop all skills to their maximum level due to point limitations. For this reason, you should choose their level based on Tripods at each level and how often you use the skill and for what purpose (stopping enemies, dealing damage, dodging).
7. By default, users have two tabs to assign builds - they are generally used as PvE and PvP builds. You can unlock more using the currency Royal Crystals, 100 per slot.

Using Tripods is very important, as they improve or change the skill's effect and sometimes have features concerning fighting single bosses or groups of enemies. You can test the different effects of the upgrades while fighting monsters to learn how they work (you can also do this in the training arena, but in the world, you will additionally gain a drop from monsters).

You can assign a rune to each skill. These are rare items that have a class, so the same rune may offer a different level of improvement. Runes can, for example, increase the attack power of skill or shorten its preparation or cooldown time. You will learn more about runes on the next page of the guide.

Builds - what are they?

Build is a conventional name for a set of character features. This includes attributes - and therefore equipment (especially jewelry), skills and runes, engravings, cards, and gems. In Lost Ark builds are usually based on special engravings for specific hero classes. A detailed description of engravings can be found on a separate page of the guide.

You can find these special engravings in the Engraving Effect window (Alt I) in the Class Bonus tab. For some classes, they completely change the gameplay, for example, by removing the special skill gauge or limiting the maximum health. If you are comfortable playing a certain class, you do not have to build a character according to the guidelines and use class engravings. However, many players have shown that to build the most effective character for combat, using them is virtually required - and thus the proper selection of attributes and skills maximalizes the effect of class engravings.