Lost Ark Fortress Guide

Lost Ark also features a housing system: The Fortress. This is not a single building, but your own island with some infrastructure already in place. You can find an overview of exactly what you can do in your fortress here.

Unlock Stronghold

You unlock your stronghold (Estate) at about level 26 by following the main story. You will visit your stronghold for the first time as part of the quest A Song of Hearth, which follows the quest Stronghold Ceremony.

From now on you can travel to your fortress quickly and easily via the song of home and hearth.

Your Stronghold is server-wide, meaning all your characters on the same server share it. Once you’ve unlocked the Stronghold on the first character, your alt characters will be able to access it once they’ve unlocked access to the sheet music (this is just after the prologue in the first city).

If you are not in your stronghold, you can click on the house icon in the top left of the menu bar and see, for example, how long it takes for a mission to be completed, what is currently being researched, etc.

Laboratory: Research upgrades

In the laboratory, you research upgrades for your fortress. This includes, for example, upgrading existing buildings, increasing the available action energy, expanding your bank account, and numerous production methods.

You don’t have to research everything (because that’s a lot), just the upgrades that make sense for you and your playstyle.

However, research in the laboratory is not free. In addition to wood and iron ore, you also need gold and action energy. The exact amount depends on what you want to research.

Workshop: Craft items

In the workshop, you can craft various items from materials gathered with your crafting skills. This includes combat items such as potions, bombs, grenades, crafting tools, various items to customize your fortress, fusion materials, or secret cards.

As you research more workshop levels, crafting methods, etc. in the lab, you unlock more items to craft in the workshop. To see what you need to research to unlock an item, you can click on it and you will see the relevant requirements on the right.

Expedition Station: Start missions

In the station (headquarters) you can put together a crew and then send them on a mission by ship. However, there is nothing more to see than the menu and you don’t have to do anything other than wait after being sent away.

Regular Missions are where you’ll get most of your Stronghold XP, so be sure to do them regularly.

In the menu, you have a number of missions to choose from. In the end, it doesn’t matter which one you choose. Tip from Lost Ark Veteran Wilky: Look through the missions, click on “Choose a Team” for each one and choose the ones that have the highest success rate.

In the beginning, you will not have many sailors and ships. The percentage is then quite low. However, the missions cannot be failed, you just get fewer rewards for missions with a lower chance of success than for those with a higher chance of success. After the specified time (e.g. 8 hours or 12 hours) you can then collect your rewards, start new missions, etc.

The only other thing you have to do is repair your ships regularly. Wood and iron ore are required for this.

In the Special Missions tab, you can send out a crew to do Guardian Raids, Cubes, Chaos Dungeons, etc. According to Wilky, special missions are a waste of energy and are usually not very profitable. He personally has never used it.

Note: Normal missions can be done once per squad (= all your characters on the same server). The mission list is reset daily. Special missions can be performed once per character. Different missions are granted depending on the character level.

Estate: choose passive bonuses

In the mansion, you can set passive effects that affect your fortress. In the beginning, you have a building effect slot and an outfit effect slot available to you. You unlock more places by expanding the property.

You get effects for building slots from blue building objects that you first research in the laboratory and then craft in the workshop (e.g. some fountains). Outfit slot effects are obtained from outfits that you unlock as you reach Trusted level with the various relationship NPCs (read more on our Lost Ark Relationships guide ). In addition to these basic outfits, you can purchase additional outfits with blue crystals.

You can also unlock more lots in the Unlockables tab. A prerequisite for this is various researches, which you must first complete.

Training Ground: Passively earn XP with characters

The training ground is used to passively collect XP with alt characters. Characters that are at least two levels below the character with the highest level on the account can be trained here. For example, if your highest character is level 60, only characters that max level 58 can train.

Characters can be trained for a maximum of 7 days at a time. There are no costs for the training. In other words: Here you can get free XP for your old characters! Otherwise, you don’t have to pay attention to anything. You don’t have to do anything else and you can continue to use the respective character as normal.

NPC Merchant: Exchange of seals and materials

Near the spawn point where you land in your fortress, you will find four traders on a small, paved square where you can exchange seals, among other things.

• Technician Rondo [Squad Resource Exchange]: Materials can be exchanged for other materials here (e.g. Sturdy Wood for Wood).
• Monet [Special Exchange]: Raid, Victory, and Adventurer’s Seals can be exchanged for various Cooking Spices, Tool Crafting Kits, and Glittering Stones here. Seals can also be exchanged (at some loss) for other seals.
• Jeniff [Crafting Method Exchange]: Raid, Victory, and Adventurer’s Seals can be exchanged for various tool guides, cooking recipes, and more here.
• Visiting traders: Various traders are always visiting your fortress for a certain period of time and selling various items, for example in exchange for seals. These include sailors, secret cards or card packages.

Knowledge Transfer: Automatically level characters

As Community Manager Roxx has already confirmed, the knowledge transfer for the EU/NA launch will already be available.

Knowledge Transfer is a feature of your Stronghold that allows you to level up old characters quickly. This is done by having a character who has already completed the main quest line in a region pass knowledge about that region to another character.

This process costs gold and time. Once completed, the alt character will automatically land in the region in question, equipped with appropriate basic gear and accessories.

Further information on knowledge transfer will follow in an extra guide.

Cook: prepare festive menus

Once you’ve reached Stronghold level 10, you can hire a chef to cook entire feast menus for you. The difference to normal food: It cooks 10 portions, so you can invite other players to get a portion as well. The buffs last for 2 hours, don’t go away on death and stack with regular food.

design a fortress

There is a lot of free space in your fortress that you can also use. Via the menu item “Placement” (Ctrl L+2) you can select and set up various buildings, furniture, and props. You can also research these objects in the laboratory.

You also have the opportunity to place NPCs with whom you have raised the relationship to the highest level in your fortress. You can also select outfits for the characters in the “Wardrobe” menu item.

Stronghold crafting skills

You can also practice your crafting skills in your fortress. Here, however, you get other materials that are used to craft some items. However, you use up more work energy in your stronghold and you cannot find any world tree leaves.

Action energy

Actions in the fortress (e.g. sending missions or researching upgrades) consume action energy.

By default, you have 15,000 action energy, which recharges to the maximum overtime. Therefore, you should make sure to spend the energy regularly. The maximum can be increased or the required energy can be reduced through upgrades and the like.

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