Being an MMORPG, Lost Ark is very heavily backloaded — the most worthwhile of the game’s content only becomes available to players after their characters have reached level 50.
Not only is this progression necessary to level a character’s skills enough to keep them viable in difficult fights, but players can’t even attempt the more difficult Chaos Dungeons until they become available at level 50.
As such, the largest and most time-consuming barrier of entry to the game’s interesting late-game content is the grind to level 50 on a given character.
Method 1: Questing
New players starting their first character have very few resources available to them when it comes to rapid progression.
Having yet to experiment with Lost Ark’s mechanics, let alone experience the game’s main storyline, it’s in the best interest of new players that they start by playing the game in the way Smilegate intended.
Thankfully, Lost Ark’s quests shower players in experience, no matter their complexity or difficulty. Anything from early dungeon raids to serving as messenger for short-range conversation is apt to make the blue bar at the bottom of the screen jump in sweeping bounds. Generally speaking, if players pursue every exclamation point and leave no stone unturned, they can expect to reach level 50 during their travels in Anikka.
Engaging in combat, however, is not recommended for the explicit purpose of grinding levels. Experience gained when defeating hordes of enemies is almost entirely negligible compared to the potential gains of a single sidequest.
Related: How to unlock sailing and how it works in Lost Ark
Method 2: The training camp
When a player’s first character reaches level 52, they will unlock a new stronghold location — the training camp.
Here, players can set up the alternative characters on their main’s roster to gradually and passively level up, climbing to two levels below that of the main character, all without needing to manually grind on any of them.
This allows mid-game players to try out different class setups without needing to replay the game’s core storyline or pay out in-game resources to make progress.
Related: The best locations to farm upgrade materials in Lost Ark
Method 3: Knowledge transfer
Late-game players can unlock a method of rapidly growing new characters to level 50, all over the course of an eight-hour stronghold timer. Knowledge transfer, while the fastest and easiest method of leveling in Lost Ark, costs 600 gold per character.
However, as gold can be a particularly difficult currency to come by, players with lesser-developed stations and fewer methods of earning gold might want to refrain, opting instead to train characters at the training camp at a slower rate for free.
Related: Lost Ark PvE Classes Tier List – The Best Characters for PvE
