Lost Ark’s 2025 roadmap is quickly moving into its third stage, which will include the Paradise progression system. A major collection event that will help even the odds for endgame players, there’s a lot for fans to look forward to with this update toLost Ark.
2025 marksLost Ark’s third anniversary, at least in terms of its western launch. While that launch came a good while afterLost Arkfirst premiered in the Korean market, the game’s international iteration is hot on the heels of its big brother—and that gap may just be closing when the Paradise update becomes available. Game Rant recently sat down with Amazon Games' franchise lead Matthew Huston who spoke about what Paradise will entail and what it’ll mean for the game at large.
Lost Ark’s Roadmap and Paradise System
The team atLost Arkrecently dropped the release notes for Paradise, which have turned out to be some of the longest in the game’s history. This is no surprising development, however, as Paradise will be split into three activities: Elysian, Crucible, and Hell. Each of these activities will bring unique challenges to the table, in addition to unique loot.
Lost Ark’s upcoming contentwill be no slouch. Elysian will allow players to quickly access Legacy of Paradise gear, which becomes the base for the other activities—a way to keep the Paradise system accessible to all players, with inter-system progression basing itself on the development of this gear, especially in later sections. Crucible will open fans up to a timed boss rush, with more boss variety and difficulty opening up as the season continues. Hell will include 100 dungeon floors—and players will have to clear as many levels as they can to earn more rewards.
The Goals Behind Paradise
This newLost Arkprogression content, aimed at fans from all across the game, has been specially balanced with the goals of improving the endgame and keeping international players in mind. Huston spoke more about this aspect, detailing the design goals behind Paradise and how they’ve been balanced beyond the inherent restraints of Legacy of Paradise gear:
“Anyone who plays the game knows that the end-game loop can get static. Whether you’re new, returning, or just have lower-level alts, we wanted to add more ways to improve progression beyond pushing players into solo mode or tweaking gold raid. Paradise has a lower entry requirement (gear level 1580) and offers plenty of opportunities for rewards and gold to help your character progress. You can still do solo mode, raids, and events alongside Paradise… this new system just adds more progression options while freshening up the end-game loop.”
Furthermore, Huston also elaborated onLost Ark’s international versionand the role Paradise plays in improving the experience for those players. He spoke on the distance between the game’s multiple versions, and how Paradise will “help” the iteration playable outside Korea:
“These kinds of updates are iterated on over time, and the goal for Paradise was to help the global regions as they are under a different kind of pressure to keep up with the Korean version of the game. Over the years, we’ve gotten closer and closer to the Korean version of Lost Ark, and at times, this puts pressure on Western players as we shorten windows. Players can sometimes experience the reverse of having too much of a gap between releases of content between Korea and the West. The intended design of Paradise is to serve as seasonal-based content, and it really finds its sweet spot by supporting adjustments in the roadmap.
