How to Unlock and Use Life Skills in Lost Ark

Our Lost Ark guide will show you how to unlock and use life skills.

Jeremy Kanjanapangka

Published: Jul 1, 2022 05:22 pm

Lost Ark is a free-to-play MMORPG where players can venture out to save the land of Arkesia from demonic invaders. There’s a long battle ahead, so you’ll need to prepare accordingly. One way of doing so is to take advantage of the game’s six life skills, which are similar to your typical gathering professions in other MMORPGs. Today, we’ll show you how to unlock and use life skills in Lost Ark!

Unlocking and Using Life Skills in Lost Ark

Before you can use life skills, you must unlock them first. To do so, you’ll need to make your way to Lakebar, which is in West Luterra, the third continent of the game. You’ll adventure through this area naturally as you’re working your way through the main story of the game, so don’t worry about potentially missing it.

As you progress through the main quest line of Lakebar, you should also receive a purple guide quest that will teach you the basics of life skills, which will unlock them completely. You’ll be given a starting set of tools that match all six professions, which are:

Foraging: Collect plants, mushrooms, and flowers to craft Battle Items.
Logging: Chop down trees to gain lumber, essential for upgrading your Stronghold.
Mining: Mine precious minerals that are essential for upgrading your Stronghold.
Hunting: Hunt wild animals to gather cooking ingredients and special materials.
Fishing: Fishing nets you cooking ingredients and special materials.
Excavating: Dig for ancient relics that are used as special materials.

Press the L key to bring up your trade skills window. Here, you can see your equipped tools, the durability of them, and the levels of all six life skills. Equip a tool in all six slots, and you’re ready to start using life skills!

Before you start, confirm what’s available in your current area. If you open your map, you’ll see the locations of certain gathering spots. A small box in the top right corner will show you what spawns in the area.

This is Lakebar, as an example. The map says that you can find mining and fishing spots here.

Once you’re in the area for the kind of material you’re looking for, it’s time to start gathering. Press the B key on your keyboard to switch from your battle skills to your life skills. Each life skill has their own active abilities that can be used, but you only have eight slots, so make sure to switch out as needed. You can see all your abilities in the trade skills window.

Let’s try fishing, as an example. There’s a fishing point off the docks of Lakebar Village, so it’s conveniently close by. Press B to switch to your life skills, and you should see Float Fishing as one of your skills. Get near the water, then use Float Fishing to cast your line.

Some life skills are more straightforward, while others are more complex. For logging, mining, and foraging, all you have to do is press the G key while near the appropriate target. Hunting and excavating require multiple steps to complete.

To hunt, you must activate Search and look for rabbits with targets over their head. Toss an axe at them with Throw, but your accuracy has to be good. Try to aim your axe to land a little ahead of the rabbit.

To excavate, you must activate Relic Search. A blue dot will appear over your head, and when you get close to a buried relic, it’ll start pulsing. The closer you are to a relic, the faster it’ll pulse. When it turns dark blue and starts pulsing quickly, use Sonar to scan for nearby relics.

All life skills consume Life Energy, indicated by the green bar above your life skills. When you run out of Life Energy, you cannot use any more life skills. Life Energy regenerates on its own at 30 energy every 10 minutes. You can also use special potions to recover energy immediately.

That concludes our guide on how to unlock and use life skills in Lost Ark. If you have any other questions about life skills, let us know in the comments below!