Lost Ark: The complete guide to upgrade items

How You're looking for a guide to item upgrades in Lost Ark games, then here's the one for you. 

Item upgrades in Lost Ark are an important part of MMORPGs, and many players are very obsessed with this. Here, we will share a detailed guide to item upgrades in Lost Ark. By learning how to upgrade weapons, equipment, etc. in the game, you can learn about various upgrade knowledge in the game.

• Lost Ark: Upgrade Items Steps
• Lost Ark: Upgrade Items Content
• Tier 1 Upgrading Chart
• Tier 2 Upgrading Chart
• Tier 3 Lower/Mid Upgrading Chart
• Tier 3 Upper Upgrading Chart
• What happens when an upgrade fails?
• Lost Ark Upgrade Items Tips

Lost Ark: Upgrade Items Steps

To upgrade your project, you must perform the following steps.

Step 1: Visit any item to upgrade the NPC. They appear in all major cities in the game. The hammer symbol on the map represents them.

Step 2: Fill the item's XP with Shards of Harmony (T1), Life (T2), or Honor (T3). These materials come from Una's quests, daily content, treasure maps of the Chaos Gate, dismantling, and other content. Some islands also reward this material as a quest reward. This step only needs to be done once per level-up stage, which means that once you've filled your gear's EXP, you won't need to refill it again until you're successful and progress to the next boost level. Silver is required for this step.

Step 3: Each upgrade requires resources and currency to be paid according to item level and level. This screenshot uses 228 T3 Guardian Stones, 8 Low T3 Jumping Stones, 4 Low T3 Fusion Materials, 60 Honor Fragments (what you use to fill up your item experience), 15,600 Silver, and 220 Gold. This is a +14 hero shoulder trying to go to +15. This amount is paid for each attempt until successful.

• For T1 items, no silver is used for upgrading. Gold and Fusion Stones are not used for upgrading until starting from +12 and onwards.
• For T2 items, no silver is used for upgrading. Gold and Fusion Stones are not used for upgrading until starting from +7 and onwards.

Step 4: After you have enough material to try the upgrade, you will be taken to a screen that summarizes what you will be trying to do and whether you would like to use training aids or refine unique materials that increase your odds of success. There are the Refining Special Material books on the right, which can improve your chance of success by 100% or, in the case of gear starting from T3, 10%, up until +15.

Please note that for T1 and T2 items, there is only one type of Training Auxiliary Material.

Step 5: Confirm your attempt. Pray.

Step 6: When you fail, your item will have a higher chance of succeeding (up to the maximum limit) on subsequent upgrade attempts. This project in the screenshot has a 10% base success rate +15, I've failed three times, so it's now 13%. In addition to failing, you also gain Artisan Power, which is +5.58%, as you see in the screenshot. If this amount accumulates to 100%, your next upgrade attempt is guaranteed to succeed. If you succeed before your Artisan power reaches 100%, it will reset to 0%. It's a sorry timer. Also, the amount of Artisan Power you get increases with each failure (+5.58% in this screenshot, but there could be 7 or 8 failures after that, and you'll get +10 for each failure during this upgrade phase -12%).

The game will show you how much artisan power you will gain if you fail.

Lost Ark: Upgrade Items Content

Upgrade NPCs

Go to items located in any major city in the Lost Ark to upgrade NPCs. Visit products of any significant town in the Misplaced Ark to upgrade NPCs. You will discover them on the map by locating the steel hammer icon.

Upgrade Items and Materials

After talking to the upgrade NPC, select your item on the left side of the UI screen. Now you can choose any shard in your inventory or bank vault to populate the EXP meter. You may select from Harmony, Existence, or Honor Fragments, representing Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier three of the Fragment item type. Fragment materials can be obtained from Yuna's quests, daily quests, Chaos dungeons, islands, treasure maps, dismantling, and many other Lost Ark daily and weekly quests.

Validate Required Materials

The UI will let you know everything you require based mainly on the task you're upgrading. Every improvement will even have the needed components. For example, you might need Guardian or Destruction Stones, Jump Stones, and Fusion Materials. Sometimes you also need to pay in Lost Ark silver and gold, depending on the level, and upgrade the level of the item you want to upgrade.

You don't need Silver for Tier 1 items launched during Season 1 of the North American/EU version. After leveling up by Item Level +11, you will only need Gold and Fusion Stones.

Each improvement has only a specific percentage chance to improve towards the upcoming amount of the item efficiently. If you fail the upgrade, it doesn't spoil, it simply takes the materials you used, and you need to try again with more materials.

Add Training Aids

On the next page of the UI, you will be offered training aids to increase your chances of a successful upgrade. Based on the cost of refining products in your server, you could save these materials for weapon upgrades because they would be the most important upgrades first.

You can use these training aids to increase your success rate to 100%, all the way up to item level +15.

Upgrade Items

You may now proceed to upgrade the venture. If you don't add auxiliary resources, which means you don't have a 100% good results price, chances are you'll fail the improve. 

In the screenshot above, this means that I currently have 15.34% Artisan Power on the item, and if it fails, it will gain another 6.04%. Artisan energy cannot be used up before 100% and does not affect the success rate before 100%. Using training aids to increase your chances of success will also increase your craftsman power when you fail.

Lastly, starting from the Legion Raid items, there is a special refinement material that you can obtain from the Legion Raids. This material can be used instead of normal upgrading materials to attempt upgrades on certain gear (mid T3 specifically). The amount needed depends on the current stage of the enhancement.

Using the special training item to attempt an upgrade does not increase Craftsmen's Energy nor increase the base chance of upgrading success. It also uses the base success chance and does not benefit from extra success chances from previous failures. You should see it as additional attempts to upgrade your gear in a given week since you're expected to go beyond +15 on those items. You cannot use Training Auxiliary Materials when upgrading with these special training materials.

Related: The complete guide to legion commander gear progression!

You will lose several item enhancement levels as you successfully progress to higher sub-levels or item levels. This is because the item has a higher base item level, and by stepping down to a lower enhancement level, you again have a higher chance of successfully enhancing.

Before referencing the charts below, please remember that Weapon Attack is not 1:1 with Attack Power gain:

• At 20,403 Weapon Attack, I'm at 20,975 Attack Power
• At 16,294 Weapon Attack, I'm at 18,744 Attack Power
• At 708 Weapon Attack, I'm at 3,907 Attack Power

Also, there is no penalty for failing to upgrade. Projects are not degraded or interrupted by failure.

As an aside, via the Expedition Territory, you can unlock research that discounts the number of materials needed to fill an item's EXP and provide a flat +10% bonus to success chance on all upgrades up to +15.

As the server ages, automatic boosts to upgrading rates are universally applied to characters, such as guaranteed upgrades to +15 once a tier has become old enough.

Tier 1 Upgrading Chart

Besides +0 to +1, all upgrades give 216 additional Weapon Attack. +16 to +20 each gives 270 additional Weapon Attack.

Tier 2 Upgrading Chart

*Unlike T1, the amount of Weapon Attack gained is slightly higher at each stage.

Tier 3 Lower/Mid Upgrading Chart

Tier 3 Upper Upgrading Chart

There is no need to upgrade beyond +15 until you get to South Vern in T3. Starting in South Vern, to access content to continue your character progression, it is necessary to reach +20 median. That means the moment you receive Argos raid gear. You can feel free to blow all your materials on upgrading to at least +20 median if you wish to access all future content.

What happens when an upgrade fails?

As mentioned before, you will lose the materials you put in to upgrade the item. Thankfully, the project will never be downgraded. You will also have an additional chance to successfully upgrade this item in the future when your upgrade fails. Each time you fail, your chances of success increase, but not by much. For example, if a project has a 10% chance of succeeding and fails, it may have an 11% chance of succeeding the next time. Each time in the case of this project, it only increases the probability of success by 1%.

You will also gain Artisan Power when you fail to level up in Lost Ark. It's an energy meter that gets more and more every time it fails. Each time you fail in a row, you'll gain more Artisan Power than the last failure. The moment it falls to 100%, your upcoming upgrade attempt is assured of getting thriving. Note that if the bar is partially filled and you also upgrade efficiently, it can reset back to 0%. This energy bar relieves RNG bad luck, so in the end, you know you'll level up successfully.

Lost Ark Upgrade Items Tips

With your stronghold territory, you can finally unlock research, which will give you discounts on the materials you need to fill your EXP from step 2 onwards. This research will also give you a +10% success rate on all upgrades to item level +15. This is a nice bonus as you continue to upgrade your items.

You should also take advantage of upgraded recycling items, especially in the same tier range. Recycling your things will let you transfer improved levels from one particular item to a further, lowering your value a great deal in the long run.

If you know, new tiers are coming soon. As the seasons and levels progress, patches will increase the chance of success for older level upgrades to +15. You might decide to hold off on upgrading items if they introduce this additional catch-up mechanic.