Lost Ark Anniversary update celebrates with hot spring showdown

The Lost Ark Anniversary update is here, celebrating a full year since the massively multiplayer fantasy RPG game got its worldwide release. While the game’s been out longer for Korean players, the Amazon Games release has seen consistent success over its first year, attracting a wide audience with its blend of Diablo style gameplay and the community-driven multiplayer experiences of games like World of Warcraft and FFXIV.

First and foremost among the announcements is the arrival of new Lost Ark continent, Rowen. Found to the west of Shushire, it’s a war-torn land that’s home to precious crimson jewels called Sylmael. You’ll need to be item level 1445 to head there, at which point you can side with the order-loving Preigelli faction or the chaos-embracing Liebertane forces and compete in a variety of PvP quests and activities as you fight for control of the region.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a celebration without a party, so there’s an Anniversary event that involves collecting birthday cards during various endgame events and a new hot spring-based minigame. This Hot Spring event takes place every two hours, and sees teams of players duelling it out with ducky hammers as they compete to collect the most rubber ducks and deposit them in their basket.

There’s double log-in rewards and two log-in reward tracks for the month, including a variety of cool ‘birthday gifts’ including a stylish Mirror Ball Bubble mount that puts your characters inside a giant disco ball. There’s also a Fever-Time event running February 8-21, offering additional bonus rewards, and you can earn a free ‘Yearling’ title to celebrate if you log in before March 10, 2023.

Ultra-dedicated Lost Ark players who have logged into the game every single day in the past year earn themselves an extra-special prize: they’ll receive a ‘Trophy’ stronghold structure that commemorates their achievement. Developer Smilegate notes that three days are exempt from the count due to maintenance downtime. Don’t get too jealous if you don’t qualify, though – you too can earn the trophy in future by ‘simply’ logging in for 365 consecutive days.

There’s also some balance tweaks, with a number of changes made to the Caliligos Guardian Raid to decrease its overall difficulty. As you’d expect, there’s also an absolute stack of cosmetic items available for sale in the Lost Ark store to help celebrate, so you won’t be short on colourful and stylish ways to deck your characters out for the party!

In addition to this, Lost Ark Twitch Drops are available until February 27, allowing you to earn two separate bundles for watching four and eight cumulative hours of registered Lost Ark streamers. Amazon Games says it will also be offering sub gifts to 50 Lost Ark streamers during the period of February 8-18.

The Lost Ark Witcher event is ongoing, too, so if you haven’t yet met up with Geralt, Triss, Yenn, Ciri, and Dandelion from the CD Projekt Red series then you still have until February 22 to do so. It’s certainly set to be a festive period in Arkesia, so if you’ve been meaning to check back in with Lost Ark like I have then there’s no better time than now.

Be sure to check our Lost Ark tier list to find out the best classes, along with our handy guide to where you can find all the Lost Ark Mokoko Seeds. We’ve also picked out more of the best MMORPGs on PC in 2023, for all you fans of shared world experiences, and we’ll keep you up to speed on the Diablo 4 release date if loot hunting is more your game.

Lost Ark Anniversary update celebrates with hot spring showdown
Source: Maharot News