How do Engravings work in Lost Ark?

Lost Ark is a brand new MMORPG from Smilegate RPG and Amazon Games, and it comes with its own complicated progression system in the form of Engravings. These are special abilities that grant buffs, but you need to know how Engravings work to fully take advantage of them.

First, click Roster on the bottom-right of your screen, or hit Alt+I on your keyboard. This will bring you to the Engravings menu. You’ll see a list of Engravings here. For example, there’s the “Grudge” Engraving. When you mouse over an Engraving, you’ll notice that it gives an effect based on how high level the Engraving is.

You’ll need to do two things to equip these Engravings. First, you can see on the bottom of the Engraving menu that there’s a bar that says “4/20.” You’ll notice it says “Use Uncommon Grudge Engraving Recipe.” These are consumable items you need to use to make an item equipable.

From Level 0 to 1, you need Uncommon recipes. From level 1 to 2, you need Rare recipes, and so on and so forth. You’ll need the specific recipe to make progress towards that Engraving. For example, to equip the Grudge engraving, you need 20 Uncommon Grudge recipes to make it equipable.

Once an Engraving is equipable, open the Equipment menu and Engraving menu. Drag the Engraving you want on the Engraving slots of your Equipment. Now, there’s another step to actually activate the buff the Engraving gives.

In the Equipment (Character Profile) menu, go to the Engraving tab. You’ll notice a list of Engravings, and underneath them, an array of blue or greyed-out diamonds.

Look at the Grudge engraving above. You’ll notice it has 5 blue, glowing crystals (or nodes.) You need 5 of them to light up to use the Level 1 buff, 10 to use the Level 2 buff, and 15 to use the Level 3 buff. How do you get more of these nodes to light up? There are a couple of ways.

The most impactful way is to facet ability stones. These are items you can level up, and they will grant you a large number of nodes to level up your Engraving Effect. The second way is to equip certain gear. Your gear will have a “Random Engraving Effect” that grants a certain amount of nodes for your Engravings. For example, in the option below, this necklace gives one node towards the “Cursed Doll” engraving. (I have two different equipment pieces that give me a Cursed Doll node.)

To recap, to use the Grudge engraving or the Cursed Doll engraving, I need to first use enough recipes to make them equipable. Unfortunately, in this particular example, I didn’t have enough Engraving Recipes to use, so I can’t take advantage of these Engravings. But once you do, you can equip them, and enjoy the benefits they provide.

That’s all you need to know about Engravings in Lost Ark. Play around with combinations once you get enough recipes, and enjoy the buffs they provide.