Lost Ark’s Engraving system plays a huge part in how your character performs. This guide breaks the system down, teaching you what you need to know.
This Guide has been updated for the release of the Glaivier Class.
The Engraving system in Lost Ark is broken down into a few different parts: Learned Engravings, Ability Stones, and Accessories. These all contribute to the same overall system, but some are easier and provide benefits at a much higher rate. We’re going to break down what you need to know to be able to make the best use of this system and set up your own set of engravings.
Table of Contents:
- What are Engravings
- Using and Upgrading Engravings
- Leveling Engravings
- Ability Stones
- Accessories
- Learned Engravings
- Engraving List and uses
- Battle Engravings
- Class Engravings
- Malus Engravings
What are Engravings
The Engraving System in Lost Ark enables the use of powerful passives called Engravings. These passives can drastically alter the playstyle and power of your character. These are shared between your roster or rather, the characters on a single server. This allows you to use multiple characters to build up Engravings for a single character.
Every Engraving falls into one of three categories: Battle Engraving, Class Engravings, or Malus Engravings. Battle Engraving are universal Engravings that any class can use. Not all of these are worth using, but the majority of them can be useful to many classes.
Class Engravings are powerful Class-Restricted Engravings that can fundamentally change the playstyle of your classes. Each Class has two Class Engravings they can use. For an example of how some of these function, we go over the Class Engravings very briefly for each class in our Lost Ark Class and Subclass Guide.
Malus Engravings are negative Engraving effects found only on Ability Stones and Accessories. These aren’t typically too harmful and are very easy to avoid. They can be detrimental if you get the wrong ones, like Defense Reduction though. Though one level of any of the others won’t set you back
Using and Upgrading Engravings
Activating or Leveling Up an Engraving requires you to have a certain amount of Node Points. Node Points are gained through Ability Stones, Accessories, and Learned Engravings. Each of these gives varying values, and accessories will not start having them until Item Level 302, once you get into the endgame content.
Leveling Engravings
All Engravings in Lost Ark have 3 levels to them. These are acquired by gaining Node Points, which come from Ability Stones, Accessories, as well as Learned Engravings. Once you reach a threshold for Node Points across all sources, it will gain a Level.
At five total Node Points, The Engraving becomes active at Level 1. Most Engravings will do better at higher levels, but not all Engravings will use the highest level. It’s more common to see certain Class Engravings at Level 1 Rather than any higher, it depends on the effects gained at level 1.
At ten total Node Points, the Engraving reaches Level 2. This increases the potency of the effect it provides. This middling level is rarely if ever, used beyond the leveling process.
At fifteen total Node Points, the Engraving reaches level 3. This is the maximum strength of Engravings can get. Any further points past fifteen are wasted points.
Ability Stones
Starting once you reach Luterra Castle (roughly level 30), you can start finding Ability Stones. Ability Stones come in all rarities from Rare upwards. Each offers a different amount of available Node Points. The Engravings are all chosen at random.
Rare Ability Stones grant a max of 6 Node points to up to 2 Engravings and 1 Malus. These begin dropping around Level 35.
Epic Ability Stones grant a max of 8 Node points to up to 2 Engravings and 1 Malus. These begin dropping and are tradeable at Item Level 340, with Chaos Dungeons being a good daily source for them. Abyssal Dungeons are also a good weekly source as well.
Legendary Ability Stones grant a max of 9 Node points to up to 2 Engravings and 1 Malus. These begin dropping at Item Level 460, with Chaos Dungeons still being a good daily source. Abyssal Dungeons are also a good weekly source as well.
Relic Ability Stones grant a max of 10 Node points to up to 2 Engravings and 1 Malus. These begin dropping at Item Level 460, with Chaos Dungeons still being a good daily source. Abyssal Dungeons are also a good weekly source as well.
To use an Ability Stone, you need to first Facet it by visiting an Ability Stone Cutter, which can be found in every major city starting from Luterra Castle.
It takes a bit of luck to get a good ability stone crafted. For the most part, you should be aiming for 5+ Node Points on at least one of the Engravings where possible, and at least +2 for another if it’s good and you have it as a Learned Engraving. Otherwise, getting +3 – +5 for each of the positive engravings is often ideal in most cases, depending on rarity. Getting more Node Points is always better, as long as you’re not over-capping any Engravings.
With Faceting the Ability Stones, always put the first two rolls into a positive one you want the most. Each success lowers the success rate from 75% by 10% for each success, to a minimum of 25% chance. However, each failed attempt will increase the chance by 10%, which can go back up to the maximum of 75%.
Accessories
Accessories; or rather your Earrings, Necklace, and Rings can come with Engraving Node Points on them as well. While they give the least amount of points individually, they add up and a set of accessories can potentially ass one or more Levels to an Engraving if you’re lucky enough.
Rare Items will have just a single point, Epic will have two Engravings with a max of +1 Node, Legendary will have two with a max of +2 Nodes and a Malus, Relics will have two with a max of +3 and a Malus which also goes to three at max. This also increases with later stages of gearing as well, where these values will go up slightly.
Accessories dropped or crafted from Chaos Dungeons will always have Battle Engravings, while those from Abyssal Dungeons will carry Class Engravings instead. This makes Abyssal Dungeons Accessories really strong early game, where some cases can be weaker without Class Engravings. While later game, Chaos Dungeon equips can be better once you’ve built up a ton of Learned Engravings.
Learned Engravings
Unlike the other forms of Engravings, getting these are slightly less RNG. These only require you to learn the Engravings from Recipes. Getting the Recipes is less RNG than the others as while the selection chests drop randomly, they allow you to choose what engraving you’d like. You get a hefty amount of these chests by doing Islands, as well as some main story quests. It, unfortunately, takes a lot of them to learn the engraving.
Above is an example of a Learned Engraving with Progress to being +6 instead of +3
Learning each Engraving has four tiers, each of which requires collecting 20 Engraving Recipes of the respective level. The biggest sources of these are Islands and Abyssal Dungeons, however, there are other more RNG heavy sources like World Bosses.
You still have a limited number of Learned Engravings you can have active at a time, which are equipped like most other gear, albeit from the Engraving UI. The game allows you to equip up to two Learned Engravings at a time. Yes, you can manually equip the same Learned Engraving twice by dragging it into the second slot.
This allows one +3 Learned Engraving to occupy both slots and provide level 1 of that Engraving. Once it upgrades, it’ll automatically be two +6 Node Points, for a total of +12 Node Points, making it Level 2 and only need another 3 Node Points to be Level 3. However, after you get it to the third tier, it’s better to use two different Engravings since 18 total Node Points is over what you need for Level 3.
Engraving List and uses
Below is a full list of the currently available Engravings, separated by categories
Battle Engravings
Battle Engravings are generally useful and universal. There are a few that work for many classes, while some are less than practical for one reason or another. In total, there are 38 Battle Engravings.
Adrenaline
Adrenaline provides a buff on skill use that stacks up to 6 times, with each stack providing 0.3% / 0.6% / 1% Attack Power per stack for 6 seconds. Once fully stacked, it provides an additional 5% / 10% / 15% Critical Chance.
Adrenaline is great for classes that specifically are looking to use skills often and rapidly. This makes it great for classes like Taijutsu Scrapper or Pistoleer Deadeye that have low cooldown skills that they use off cooldown.
All-Out Attack
All-Out Attack increases the cast speed of Cast or Hold Skills by 5% / 10% / 15%. It also increases the damage of these attacks by 4% / 10% / 20%.
All-Out Attack is great for cast or hold skill heavy classes like Ignition Sorceress. It lets them get their damage out faster while also increasing it.
Awakening
Awakening heavily cuts the cooldown of your Awakening Skills. It also increases the number of times it can be cast in certain content, like Raids.
Awakening is incredibly powerful on supports like Bard and Paladin that have strong supportive Awakening Skills. There are a couple of other classes that can also make great use of this, but it’s typically not the best option for those classes.
Barricade
Barricade increases your Outgoing Damage by 3% / 8% / 16% while you have an active shield.
Barricade isn’t typically a best-in-slot option for most classes. However, the Gunlancer can make great use of it in most situations. Otherwise, most classes rely on a Bard or Paladin to provide shields to them for this effect.
Broken Bone
Broken Bone increase the damage against Staggered enemies by 7.5% / 20% / 40%. While this appears strong, most bosses don’t super long stagger phases, so don’t let this fool you.
Broken Bone has some limited uses on classes with high stagger like the Gunlancer, but it’s still very situational at best. Considering this only applies for actual staggers, and not even the brief stagger moments after a counter-attack it’s very niche and you benefit way less than you’d think.
Contender
Contender increases your Attack Power by 1% / 1.5% / 2.5% per enemy defeated for 15 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. At max stacks, this can provide a maximum of 5% / 7.5% / 12.5% Attack power.
This has some situational use for classes that may be lacking strong burst skills, but have the AoE to clear Chaos Dungeons. Though with the effects being limited to primarily Chaos Dungeons to be reliable, it often gets overshadowed by other effects that are more consistent.
Crisis Evasion
Crisis Evasion restores you to 50% health and makes you invulnerable for 3 seconds when taking Fatal Damage. This effect has a cooldown of 15 / 12 / 9 Minutes.
While this can be useful early on while learning the game or an encounter, the long cooldown sets it back too much to be practical. If you get it as a +5 as a secondary skill on an Ability Stone, it can be nice to have. It’s not worth picking up as a Learned Engraving though.
Crushing Fist
Crushing Fist boosts your Attack power after successful Counter Attack by 4% / 10% / 20%. It also applies a debuff to the enemy hit by the counterattack, increasing the damage it takes by 2% / 4% / 8% for 3 seconds.
This can be a niche pickup for bosses with a Counterattack available, specifically for Paladin who has two Counters, and Gunlancer who is typically Front Attack Heavy and in position to Counterattack. Other classes like Wardancer or Deathblade can also make use of this as well with their shorter cooldown counter skills, but it’ll still be limited based on the attack patterns of a boss. In the best case scenario, it has a 10% uptime due to the time between counter-able attacks.
Cursed Doll
Cursed Doll Increases your Attack Power by 3% / 8% / 16%, but reduces your incoming healing from skills and potions by 25%.
This can be a really strong pick-up on pretty much any DPS, so long as you’re not relying on potions or Support heals to stay alive in the content. It’s considered one of the best damage increases, next to Grudge for Raids. For Mayhem Berserker specifically, they will not feel this penalty at all.
Disrespect
Disrespect increases your damage against foes with 30% or less heath remaining by 9% / 22% / 36%.
Disrespect is another one of those effects like Broken Bone, where it sounds really strong, but is really niche in practice. It’ll only ever be noticeable against bosses, and there are better and more consistent damage bonuses. However, it does typically suit burst classes a bit better if you wanted to try to use it. It can also pair decently well with Gunslinger, as contributes nicely to their strong damage near the end of a raid encounter.
Divine Protection
Divine Protection grants a 20% Chance to reduce incoming damage from an attack by 60%. This effect has a 60 / 20 / 10 Second cooldown.
Divine Protection sounds like it has potential, but there’s one big issue with it… The Damage Reduction is not a timed effect. This means it will reduce the damage of the hit that randomly activates it and you have no control over it. This RNG factor makes it incredibly weak. It’ll also never save you from wipe mechanics, which will be what takes you out most often in certain encounters.
Drops of Ether
Drops of Ether allows your attacks to spawn Ethers within a small area while attacking. These provide small buffs which are useful or very niche. This effect can only trigger once every 60 / 30 / 10 Seconds.
The game pretty much hands you this as your first Learned Engraving. It’s decently useful through the initial leveling process. Afterwards, it can be a good 4th or 5th engraving for support, as your allies will also be able to pick up these ethers. This adds an additional bit of support
Emergency Rescue
Emergency Rescue creates a shield that protects you when you fall below 30% Health. This shield is equal to 20% / 30% / 50% of your Max Health and lasts 6 seconds. If the Shield is not broken after 6 seconds, you heal for 50% of the remaining shield. This effect has a 5 / 4 / 3 minute cooldown.
Emergency Rescue is similar to Crisis Evasion, just not as powerful as an effect, but with a shorter cooldown. Similarly, it can be good while learning raids but is often better substituted for a damage engraving because of the cooldown.
Enhanced Shield
Enhanced Shield reduces the strength of shields by 90% / 75% / 50%, but makes you immune to Status effects while shielded.
Status effects are typically best avoided, rather than situationally blocked as most shields are pretty temporary effects. It could be useful on Gunlancer if it didn’t have the added exception for one of their main shielding skills.
Ether Predator
Ether Predator works similarly to Drops of Ether, but provides a single buff that can stack up to 30 times. Each stack provides 0.2% / 0.3% / 0.5% Attack Power and 0.3% / 0.6% / 1% All Defense, up to a max of 6% / 9% / 15% Attack Power and 9% / 18% /30% All Defense. Ethers can only be spawned every 10 seconds, and each ether has a chance to provides 3 stacks instead of 1.
Thankfully the Ether Predator Buff doesn’t indicate that it falls off. It’s a stacking buff, which can be decent for some Raids. It’s a strong effect if it has the time to build up. However, if it doesn’t have time to build up its stacks it won’t be as impactful. It’s a nice budget option for Raids, if you’re having difficulty getting a better option.
Expert
Expert increases the strength of shields and healing for the party by 6% / 14% / 24%. If the target of the shield or heal is below 50% Health, the strength is further increased by 3% / 7% / 12%.
This is an incredibly good Engraving for Supports, as they are the ones that provide the most shields and healing. It’s very often a preferable 2nd or 3rd Engraving pickup behind their Class Engraving and Awakening for them.
Explosive Expert
Explosive Expert allows you to carry and use 1 / 2 / 3 extra grenades in Raids.
Explosive Expert is generally useless, outside of being a niche support engraving for hard content. You’re able to restock in Guardian Raids by returning to a designated area at the start, and Legion raids will typically involve more communication with your party as to what items to use and when for the best results. This does have some limited use on supports for harder content, where you’d want to keep an effect like the Dark Grenade up as much as possible.
Fortitude
Fortitude reduces incoming damage based on the amount of damage taken, to a max of 5% / 15% / 30%. This means if you take damage equal to or greater than those percentages, the total damage is reduced by that percentage and scales based on the incoming damage.
This can be a fairly decent defense bonus if you’re terrible at avoiding damage. Usually better to avoid damage than mitigate it when you’re used to boss patterns. This Engraving can also be particularly useful PvP, specifically Faction v Faction.
Grudge
Grudge increases your damage to Boss or Higher monsters by 4% / 10% / 20%, but also increases the damage you take by 20%.
This is considered one of the best Engravings for Raids but requires high knowledge of the fights to not be a death sentence. Once you learn fights though, it’s an incredibly strong engraving.
Heavy Armor
Heavy Armor increases All Defense by 20% / 50% / 100%. This bonus defense is immune to reduction effects.
This Engraving has two solid uses cases. It can be a decent 4th or 5th engraving for supports, as they’re a bit more fragile than other classes. This helps them survive a lot better in most encounters. The other use it has is to counteract the Defense Reduction Malus effect.
Increases Mass
Increases Mass boosts your Attack Power by 4%/10%/18%, but reduces your Attack Speed by 10%.
This Engraving is particularly good on classes that have built-in Attack Speed boosts like Berserker. This helps to counteract the penalty, resulting in the bonus just simply being a bonus.
Magick Stream
Magick Stream grants a stacking buff that increases your MP Recovery, which gains a stack every 3 seconds. This effect stacks up to 5% / 10% / 15% MP Recovery. While at max stacks, Skill Cooldowns are reduced by 3% / 6% / 10%. Getting hit removes one stack, and disables the stacking effect for 10 seconds.
If you’re really good at avoiding damage, this can be potentially useful for High Swiftness builds that may run themselves out of mana. However, Max MP Increase is a more stable option.
Master Brawler
Master Brawler increases the damage bonus of Front Attacks by an additional 5% / 12% / 25%. This stacks with the base effect of 10% damage granted to Front Attacks.
This can be useful for Gunlancers and other classes that have a ton of Front Attack abilities. If a class doesn’t have enough of these skills, this Engraving loses value very quickly.
Master of Ambush
Master of Ambush increases your Back Attack Damage by 5% / 12% / 25%. This stacks with the additional 5% Damage from regular Back Attacks.
This is good on most Melee DPS characters and Deadeye, as they’re heavily Back Attack reliant to do the most damage. This is often taken as a 3rd or 4th Engraving for the mentioned classes, as it’s both a strong but safe damage boost if you can get it to level 3 alongside a class Engraving and Adrenaline or another strong engraving.
Master of Escape
Master of Escape reduces the cooldown of the Stand Up action by 4% / 12% / 20%. The Stand up Action occurs when you’re knocked down and you dodge to recover instantly. With the Stand Up Action normally being a 20 second cooldown, this reduces it by roughly 1 / 2 / 5 seconds at each level.
This is typically worthless, as the Stand Up action is already a 20 second cooldown which is pretty short, so you really don’t get a noticeable effect until Level 2. It’s rarely, if ever, going to save you. This makes it not worth going for or investing in.
Master’s Tenacity
Master’s Tenacity increases your damage by 3% / 8% / 16% while under 50% Health.
Master’s Tenacity creates a bit of risk-reward for health management, but most characters will want to be at full health to survive most hits in end game content. It’s a really strong Engraving on Mayhem Berserkers if you can max it out early as they will always have it active.
Max MP Increase
Max MP Increase increases your Maximum MP by 5% / 15% / 30% for your class.
This is often used to help with mana issues on high Swiftness Builds, as Swiftness reduces skill cooldowns which can make you run out of mana very quickly. Typically Reflux Sorceress, Bard, and Paladin will end up using it the most.
Necromancy
Attacks summon temporary minions that will attack enemies. This effect has a 75 / 30 /15 Second cooldown.
This is another one of those Engravings that can be useful early on if you get it through cheap accessories that have it as a second engraving. It’s not worth maxing out at any point, but it can contribute a bit of damage.
Precise Dagger
Precise Dagger increases your Critical Rate by 4% / 10% / 20%, but reduces your Critical Damage by 12%.
Precise Dagger is really good on burst classes that don’t already have Tripods that grant a lot of Critical rate or have key skills that need to crit like the Surge Deathblade. It can be decent for classes that also have Crit Damage bonuses to offset the penalty of this engraving.
Preemptive Strike
Preemptive Strike makes your first hit against a full health target labeled as Challenge or lower guarantee a critical hit with 30% / 80% / 160% extra damage.
This is a really good early Engraving to get, as it will help you clear out weak enemies, out very quickly. It’s especially useful to have on AoE builds used for content like Chaos Dungeons, which are focused on mobbing. If your build doesn’t have high damage AoE skills, Contender can be a good substitute.
Propulsion
Propulsion increases skill damage by 3% / 8% / 16% for 5 second after using a Movement ability.
There are very few classes that can use this reliably, as most need their movement skills to follow boss patterns or dodge attacks. The timing window for it doesn’t make it reliable enough to maintain with most classes.
Raid Captain
Raid Captain increases your damage by 10% / 22% / 45% of your bonus movement speed.
This can synergize with certain skill tripod effects but doesn’t do that well beyond that as there are very limited sources of movement speed bonuses. At the absolute most this provides an 18% increase in damage while maxed, as bonus Movement speed is capped to 40%.
Shield Piercing
Shield Piercing increases your damage to Shields by 16% / 50% / 100%.
If anything this is a niche PvP engraving, specifically for Faction vs Faction. Most PvE shields are Weak Point check encounters don’t have many shields and damage increases just work better overall.
Sight Focus
Sight Focus provides an 8% / 16% / 28% damage increase that lasts 6 seconds for sending a message in chat that has five exclamation marks in it. This effect has a 20 second cooldown.
This is a super gimmicky damage boost for some burst classes. It actually works surprisingly well with Surge Deathblade, if you set up a macro to use alongside your Identity Skill. There’s a few other classes that could use it, but not always worth relying on in the later stages. Surge Deathblade is one of the only classes that can make use of it farther into progression.
Spirit Absorption
Spirit Absorption increases your Attack and Move Speed by 3% / 8% / 15%.
Spirit Absorption can help classes that have slower animations on some skills, but isn’t going to provide the same level of DPS increases as a damage boost will. Because even though the animation goes out faster and you can reposition, the cooldown stays the same. It can be helpful to reach the needed Move Speed for Raid Captain’s maximum bonus, but in that case, you’re better off finding a stronger single engraving for damage.
Stabilized Status
Stabilized Status increases your damage by 3% / 8% / 16% while you have 80% or higher health.
This is pretty niche, as it’s a very high threshold for it to be active. Gunlancer can typically use it decently well, where their shield can eat a lot of the damage and keep them above this threshold. If you’re able to reliably avoid damage, this will also work just as well for any class, but most attacks will end up dropping you below 80%.
Strong Will
Strong Will reduces your incoming damage by 5% / 15% / 30% while affected by a Knock up, Knockdown, and during a Knockback.
This is a pretty nice defensive Engraving, it can keep you from getting combo’d to death by certain attack patterns while learning. It’s also a great option for PvP, specifically Faction v Faction where it can also prevent you from being combo’d to death.
Super Charge
Super Charge increases the Speed you can charge your Charge Skills by 8% / 20% / 40%. This also increases the damage of these skill by 4% / 10% / 20%.
Super Charge is a very niche Engraving, but will often be used by Shadowhunters and Deathblades, as they have a few charge skills that deal heavy damage. There are other classes that have skills that can also benefit from this, but typically only have 1-2 skills that benefit which aren’t frequently used.
Vital Point Hit
Vital Point Hit increases the strength of your Stagger skills, letting them deal extra damage to stagger checks.
This can have some niche use with builds that aren’t heavy on stagger. Typically it’s never truly needed but, can help if you’re soloing and need to clear a Stagger Check.
Class Engravings
Class Engravings are powerful Engravings that can affect the playstyle of your Subclass. We’ve covered these a bit previously in our Class and Subclass Guide, so we won’t be fully detailing them again here. Each Subclass currently has two of these, which means as subclasses get added, there will be additions here.
Artillerist – Barrage Enhancement
Barrage Enhancement boosts the damage of Artillerist’s Barrage Skills or the skills they get access to when they fill their meter. It also increases your Meter Gain after depleting it and the buff expires, while also removing the cooling effect.
Barrage Enhancement often leads to a more consistent DPS play style. As the Fire Power Meter will fill quicker and its benefits will be active more often.
Artillerist – Firepower Enhancement
Firepower Enhancement reduces incoming damage by 20% and also increases your Critical Chance based on how far your Firepower Meter is charged.
This Class Engraving generally leads to a safer, more consistent DPS build. The reduced incoming damage makes it easier for you to survive additional hits, while the other bonuses makes your damage more consistent.
Bard – Desparate Salvation
Desperate Salvation adds and addition heal equal to 8% / 16% / 24% of your Max Health when Serenade of Salvation expires.
As a Support Bard, this will always be your Engraving of Choice. The healing effect is very strong, making it possible to pump out constant and consistent heals.
Bard – True Courage
True Courage boosts your alternative Meter Skill, adding additional Damage and Critical Rate to its effects.
Typically, this isn’t used as often as the other Class Engraving but can be a helpful buff while solo. Typically, most other classes have a fair amount of Critical Chance and will only benefit from the damage, but it can still be useful if you don’t need the healing nearly as much.
Berserker – Berserker’s Technique
Berserker’s Technique boosts your crit damage while using your Identity Meter. It also removes the cooldown period for using the Identity Meter, allowing it to be used frequently.
This Engraving ends up making the Berserker a burst heavy class, as you’re focused charging the Meter, activating it, and getting out as much damage as possible during its activation.
Berserker – Mayhem
Mayhem reduces your maximum Health to 25% of your total health when activating your Fury Meter. This also keeps you in this state permanently, while trading a bit of Crit Chance and Crit Damage from the default Fury Mode for Attack Speed, Move Speed, and 65% Damage Reduction.
This Engraving makes the Berserker more of a consistent DPS class. The additional damage reduction and huge damage boosts you can get from being at low health make this a really stable way to play Berserker.
Deadeye – Enhanced Weapon
Enhanced Weapon encourages you to cycle your skills from all three class stances to maintain the huge Crit Rate boost.
This Class Engraving leads to a very burst-heavy setup, typically focused around the shotgun skills and their high damage output with proper positioning.
Deadeye – Pistoleer
Pistoleer limits the Deadeye to just their Pistol Stance, but boosts the damage of their pistol skill by a high amount.
Since most of the Pistol Skills are low cooldowns, this ends up making the Pistoleer a consistent DPS Class. They are still a bit reliant on getting back Attacks, but don’t have to play as close as the Enhance Weapon variation as they can output more damage over time and don’t rely on the extra crit from Back Attacks.
Deathblade – Remaining Energy
Remaining Energy grants you additional power based on the number of orbs you have when reactivating your Identity Skill.
This Class Engraving has you focused on charging your meter and using it as often as you can. This means both charging it quickly and maintaining the uptime of it as much as possible. You’ll be looking to charge up 2-3 orbs, going into Death Stance and immediately using your Surge skill to end it for buff.
Deathblade – Surge
Surge adds a stacking buff that greatly boosts the damage of your identity skill when you reactive it after stacking it up. This boost also restores 5% of your meter for each stack you have when using the skill, allowing you to continuously use it.
This ends up being a heavy burst damage-focused engraving, as you’re encouraged to stack the buff as quickly as possible to the max, recast for the huge burst of damage, then repeat the process. The higher you stack up, the more damage you do with Surge and the more Death Trance you regain after using Surge.
Glaivier – Control
The Control Engraving locks away Spear and its Focus Stance, while empowering the Glaive and its Flurry Stance. This increases the damage of Flurry Skills by 18%/27%/36%, depending on level.
This Engraving leads to a DPS style of play that uses only the Glaiver. While simpler to play, it’s arguably harder since you lose access to the Focus Stance which has powerful skills as well as a parry skill that offers a bit of extra safety. By forgoing that, you becomes a Back Attack reliant melee class that can deal incredibly high damage with good play.
Glaivier – Pinnacle
The Pinnacle Engraving empowers the Glaivier’s buff they gain when swapping stances, but requires their Dual Meter to be maxed out for full benefits. These benefits are listed below
Swapping from Focus to Flurry Stance:
- 12.5%/13.8%/15% Attack Speed
- 12.5%/13.8%/15% Damage
- 20%/22.5%/25% Critical Rate
Swapping from Flurry to Focus Stance:
- 15% Movement Speed
- 15%/17.5%/20% Damage
- 37.5%/43.8%/50% Critical Damage
This leads to a DPS style that uses both weapons. The buffs you gain by swapping stances also make this playstyle much more flexible with additional engraving options while building. However, it’s much more reliant on the use of Wealth Runes, which can make it a bit less accessible for newer players.
Gunlancer – Combat Readiness
Combat Readiness allows for more consistent damage from the Gunlancer, by providing a damage buff, along with another stacking buff for damage that increases as you get hit.
This typically tends to be a consistent DPS build and a durable one at that. Boosting both the damage output and the shielding power makes it a really consistent choice. This makes this a good choice for new Gunlancers
Gunlancer – Lone Knight
Lone Knight gives a huge boost to Crit Rate and Crit Damage but disables the use of Battlefield Shield.
With the focus on Crit Rate and Crit Damage, this becomes a very bursty build. It sacrifices some defensive utility to gain massive damage boosts. This can be a worthwhile trade-off but requires more encounter knowledge to properly pull off.
Gunslinger – Peacemaker
Peacemaker is similar to Deadeye’s Enhanced Weapon, giving you buffs to encourage swapping weapons for maximum damage.
The increased damage to low health targets in Rifle Stance tends to make this build lean more into the Rifle skills. This does provide a good boost to your shotgun and pistol skills as well, but most of your focus will be on rifle skills despite that. It’s a very high damage output build when played well.
Gunslinger – Time to Hunt
Time to Hunt locks your Shotgun, putting more focus on Pistol and Rifle. Your Rifle skills will end up being the main focus still, as this Engraving is also typically supplemented by Peacemaker.
Time to Hunt is fairly similar to Pistoleer, as many skills you use will be pretty short cooldowns and make for a more consistent DPS style.
Paladin – Blessed Aura
Blessed Aura grants addition affects your Holy Aura Identity Skill, adding healing over time and damage reduction.
This is the go-to for support players, as the benefits it offers are great party utility. It’s a really strong general option as well. The combination of damage reduction and healing over time makes this already strong aura, even better.
Paladin – Judgement
Judgment increases the damage of your DPS skills, while also doubling the amount they charge the meter and how long the Damage Aura lasts when activated.
This is typically used for solo content, as you won’t really need the healing and damage reduction nearly as much. While this aura has its uses, it’s never the one you want to focus on as a support. It can still be used at Level 1 so your Punishment skills will build your meter faster.
Scrapper – Shock Training
Shock Training increases the damage of your Shock (Green) Skills, while also boosting the passive resource generation for them, allowing more frequent use.
This Engraving typically leads to a more Burst-heavy build, using multiple Shock skills then quickly rebuilding the meter. It’s not quite as easy to play as Taijutsu as it’s much less mobile.
Scrapper – Ultimate Skill: Taijutsu
Taijutsu focuses on your Stamina (Yellow) Skills, giving you incredibly high Stamina regeneration in exchange for less damage on your Shock Skills.
This Engraving makes the Scrapper a highly mobile and consistent DPS class. You’ll still use a couple of Shock Skills, just to spend the resources and get utility out of them.
Shadowhunter – Demonic Impulse
Demonic impulse focuses on the Shadowhunter’s Demonic Form, increasing your Crit Rate in the form while removing the cooldown period.
This ends up being a really consistent DPS Engraving, which makes the Shadowhunter quite strong early on. Though the slightly more limited range of the Demonic Form can make it hard to position in some encounters. This becomes even stronger once you;re able to pickup Wealth Runes to be able to quickly charge your demon form again.
Shadowhunter – Perfect Suppression
Perfect Suppression removes the ability to use Demon Form, allowing you to instead quick charge the Shadow Burst meter to empower skills instead.
This ends up being an Engraving for Burst DPS, as you’ll end up building your meter and spending it on heavy-hitting skills that have extra Tripods to support this.
Sharpshooter – Death Strike
Death Strike applies a debuff to your target when you reactive your Identity skill, while also refunding half of your meter. This is quite a powerful debuff and is often used for burst windows.
This is a very burst-oriented Engraving, giving a small window to deal as much damage as possible after recasting your Identity Skill. It can also be supplemented by Loyal Companion to assist with regenerating your Hawk Meter.
Sharpshooter – Loyal Companion
Loyal Companion focuses on keeping your hawk out as long as possible while buffing its attacks and skills. It can also be used alongside Death Strike for primarily increasing the Meter regen during combat.
This leads to being a more consistent DPS build when used alone. When used with Death Strike it adds additional burst and reduces the downtime between bursts.
Sorceress – Igniter
Igniter focuses on using the Sorceress’ Magick Amplification, by increasing its power. It also Encourages having some skills on cooldown as you begin your rotation with this build, as it will reduce your active cooldowns when activating Magick Amplification.
This leans into a very burst-heavy style that can be difficult to play, but very rewarding when properly geared and set up. You won’t have the mobility of Reflux though, so you’ll have to be more careful with your positioning.
Sorceress – Reflux
Reflux Disable the use of Arcane Rupture. In exchange, it increases the damage of all of your skills while also reducing their cooldowns.
With Magick Amplification disabled, it allows you to use your Meter to evade attacks by teleporting. This leads to a highly mobile and consistent DPS build. It also has a casting variation that plays similar to the Igniter build, just without Arcane Rupture for extra damage or crit chance.
Soulfist – Energy Overflow
Energy Overflow prevents you from running out of energy but removes the energy regeneration from Hype Mode. However, if your Energy stays below 30%, you get increased dmage.
This makes the Soulfist a consistent DPS class, as never running out of energy means you’re always able to cast skills. You’ll be using skills pretty much off cooldown to maintain high and consistent DPS.
Soulfist – Robust Spirit
Robust Spirit removes the need to go through Hype Level 1 and Level 2, which has you going back and forth between your strongest and weakest states.
Initially, this will play as a burst class as it will take a while to recharge your Hype meter. Later on, this becomes a really Strong burst build but it can become so often that you’re much closer to a DPS build.
Striker – Deathblow
Deathblow grants you an extra Esoteric Orb but makes your skills that spend Esoteric Orbs consume all of them. It increases the damage of the Esoteric skill used based on Engraving level and the number of orbs consumed.
This engraving makes the Striker a burst-heavy class. It can be harder to play though, as the lower mobility makes it hard to position in fight while consuming all your orbs makes it really punishing to miss your Esoteric Skills.
Early on it can be worth just running it at Level 1, as it provides good damage that way, while letting you get more supplemental damage engravings. Later on you will want to max this Engraving out as it will double the effectiveness.
Striker – Esoteric Flurry
Esoteric Flurry reduces the cost of all Esoteric Skills to one Esoteric orb, while increasing their damage.
This engraving allows the Striker to deal more consistent DPS, while also being fairly mobile as well due to the stat alignment. If you able to quickly charge your Esoteric meter, you’ll be able to use multiple Esoteric skills for quick bursts of damage.
Wardancer – Esoteric Skill Enhancement
This is functionally similar to Striker’s Deathblow, but slightly different. Instead of consuming all of your Orbs, it instead boosts your damage based on how many you have. This means you want to keep your Esoteric Orb meter filled or as close to filled as possible when using Esoteric Skills.
Due to how it functions, this handles like a burst build, but can also be a fairly strong DPS build too in later stages of gearing. As you get further in your gearing, you are able to quickly build meter letting you use more Esoteric Skills which makes this a potent DPS class.
Wardancer -First Intention
First Intention disables your Esoteric Skills, but boosts the damage of your other skills.
With no meter to focus on this leads to a very consistent DPS build. While Esoteric Skills are powerful, this style is also consistent and much less reliant on gearing to do as well.
Malus Engravings
Malus Engravings are negative Engraving that you want to avoid as much as possible, though their Level 1 effects aren’t too much of a setback. There are very few, so they can stack up quickly across your gear. However, most have a Battle Engraving that can counter their effects, if desired. Currently, there are only 4 Malus Engravings.
Attack Power Reduction
This Malus reduces your Attack Power, reducing your damage output.
Typically one point of this won’t hurt you, it will lower your damage and some supportive capabilities, but not by enough to feel it. Levels 2 and 3 can be felt more, but still often aren’t too punishing if you’re not a DPS.
Attack Speed Reduction
This Attack Speed reduction can hurt DPS classes quite a bit, as it will slow their animations.
Higher levels of this can potentially force some classes to burn their dodge to escape some animations if the attack is poorly timed. Outside of this, it’s really not too bad.
Defense Reduction
Defense Reduction can be really painful to deal with, as it will increase the damage you take.
This is one of the Malus effects you want to avoid. One stage is fine, but the later stages will make you take a lot of extra damage.
Movement Speed Reduction
Movement Speed Reduction, making you less mobile in general.
This can be harmful to classes that don’t have many movement options in their kit. If you do have mobility options, it won’t be felt nearly as much. Still, one you want to avoid in general though.
Be sure to check out the Progression Guide for Lost Ark. It will take you from the very beginning at level 10 all the way up to the EndGame.