Wreck the Halls, a new seasonal update for Lost Ark, is a little different from your average Christmas patch.
Yes, this Lost Ark update is packed to the brim with general changes. It also adds the new Summoner Advanced sub-class, capable of summoning elemental spirits. As for Brelshaza, she’s got her own raid which is an 8 player event.
On top of that, there’s plenty of seasonal activities happening on Festivity Island. You can get quests from a polar bear, which might seem odd, even for Christmas, but bear in mind that The Witcher 3’s Geralt somehow found his way into this MMORPG’s waterlogged realm.
The progression system also receives a major overhaul, which you can read about here, in the update’s patch notes. But that’s not what grabs us about the Wreck the Halls update. No, what’s got our attention is developer Smilegate’s efforts to reduce the use of bots that automate some of Lost Ark’s activities.
Will this update put paid to in-game bots? We doubt it’ll eliminate them entirely but getting them down to negligible levels would definitely be a win. The bot-killing changes include:
- Converting some quests from gold to silver, making them less profitable.
- Adding a daily 20 item per day limit to the auction house and market (limiting how many items players can sell).
- Blocking untrusted accounts from accessing the auction house, market and player-to-player trading.
So how do you become a trusted player? It’s not a case of giving Smilegate eight dollars but, amongst other things (check out this useful forum post) you need to have spent at least five dollars on Steam, or have $5 in your wallet.
We don’t want to know how much money we’ve spent – damn you, Steam sales – but it’s a smart move. It means that creating a trusted account is going to cost people at least $5 so gaming Lost Ark with multiple Steam accounts is going to get more expensive.
You can check out all the changes here and, since Lost Ark is free to play, download it from Steam right now.
