Lost Ark 1st Anniversary Update Kicks Off February 8

Smilegate and Amazon Games are kicking off Lost Ark‘s anniversary event next week, on February 8th. To celebrate, they released a special trailer that has some of the incoming goodies we’ll get, as well as featuring a few prominent Lost Ark content creators.

It’s a jolly good watch, and something to get the hype up for next week’s festivities!

Back in December, the earliest draft of 2023 Lost Ark Roadmap detailed that February would be getting an entirely new Continent. This time, the mysterious and war-torn island of Rowen has surfaced, just a bit to the west of Shushire. A forgotten civilization once thrives on the shores of Rowen, due to the abundance of a natural resource found only here called Sylmael.

The Grim-Looking Rowen

A recent resurgence of explorers on the island has caused the Sylmael to become coveted once more. This time, it has drawn different groups to the shores of Rowen and has even ignited a war despite the demonic threat looming over the citizens of Arkesia.

At the moment, there are two major factions that have stood above the rest: the mechanically adept Preigelli and the mage and pirate collective of the Libertane.

The fate of Rowen, the Sylmael, and all of creation once more lies in the hands of the heroes of Arkesia. Characters that have achieved at least item level 1445 (which should be quite easy now due to the number of Express Pass events lately) can set sail to Rowen.

Sylmael Bloodstones The Precious Resource

Players will need to complete the major quest called “Cataclysmic Eliyabeck”. Afterward, they will need to choose one faction to represent throughout their time in Rowen. Preigelli believe that “Order defeats Chaos every time” while the Libertane group lives by their code, “Take as much as you can”.

A New Hot Springs Event

Most of the areas in Rowen seem to be PVP-enabled, with one faction being completely hostile to the opposing one. It will be interesting to see how Smilegate and Amazon Games are able to balance the two warring entities so that it will always be fun for both sides.

Each faction will have 15 different tiered ranks that players can climb through. They can advance by gaining Faction XP by killing members of the opposing faction, or various daily quests and other tasks. The full-on war between the two groups won’t start until March, unfortunately.

Lost Ark’s Western release is almost 1 year old. Worldwide, the game has been able to get over 20 million players interested in the title. At one point, Lost Ark was even able to become the second-most-played game on Steam. This was achieved with an extremely staggering 1.3 million concurrent players. While this number may have dwindled down over the months, there is still a dedicated number of players still loving the game.

Lost Ark First Birthday Soon

As such, Lost Ark’s 1st anniversary will try to be quite special. Amazon Games is extremely secretive at the moment but they do confirm that we have a lot to look forward to, come February 8, 2023.

First up we will be getting an anniversary event wherein we will travel the world of Arkesia. Various cards will be scattered through the winds, and it will be up to players to collect these in exchange for various anniversary rewards.

An Anniversary Card Collecting Event

In terms of everyone’s favorite endgame system, the cosmetics, there looks to be a ton. Since we already got Korea’s 1st Anniversary Skins in the form of the Platinum Founder’s Pack skins, we will instead be getting those from Korea’s 2nd anniversary. These threads will be a healthy mix between various real-world outfits and fantasy garb.