Like many MMOs, Lost Ark has Trade Skills that you can level up. Sometimes you will hear another name, Professions or Life Skills, but with Lost Ark all the gathering are Trade Skills. If you are seeking information in the crafting part of Lost Ark, check out the Stronghold Guide. Let’s jump right into this Lost Ark Trade Skills Guide!

What Are Lost Ark’s Trade Skills?

There are 6 different Lost Ark Trade Skills that you can level; Foraging, Logging, Mining, Hunting, Fishing and Excavating. As you might think, each one serves a different purpose for gathering different resources.

Foraging is ideal for crafting potions and survivability items. Logging and Mining for upgrading and maintaining your Stronghold. Hunting and Fishing for feasts. Excavating for upgrading your tools and creating maps.

How do Lost Ark Trade Skills Work?

Before you can start working on your Trade Skills, you must first have the appropriate tool equipped in the Trade Skills UI (‘L’ to access). Thankfully, the game will handle automatically switching between weapon and tool for you while out in the field. Additionally, you must have completed your Main Story Quests up to Lakebar.

Once you have access to Trade Skills, all you have to do is walk up to the node you wish to harvest and interact with it. After you finish harvesting, you will consume some Work Energy. If you don’t have enough Work Energy, then you will be unable to gather any materials. So make sure to keep an eye on how much Work Energy you have while gathering.

Each Trade Skill can reach level 30 through experience. While using the appropriate Trade Skill, you will earn experience towards leveling it up. At Levels 10, 20, and 30 of each Trade Skill, you will unlock a new Normal Skill. Then at every level, you will increase one of your Mastery Skills by one level. As for what the Mastery Skills are; they increase the chances of finding rarer materials, reduce chances of damage on tools while gathering, and increased gathering speeds.

Additionally, Trade Skills in Lost Ark are all connected to the Roster system. What this means is that you don’t have to level Mining on all your characters. So, don’t think you have to do it all on one character!

What Are Trade Skill Tools?

Trade Skill Tools are the tools you need in order to use the profession. These tools come with a bonus of some kind, so keep an eye on the stats of them!

Each tool has a rarity connected with them. Green tools are from vendors and come with 1 bonus stat with it. Additionally, the Blue tools are a craft (or from a Roster Quest) and will always come with 2 bonus stats. Finally, the Purple tools are a craft and will come with 3 bonus stats.

Bonuses range from increase rarity chances, chance to not reduce durability while harvesting, and faster gathering speeds.

What is a Trade Skill Charm?

Charms are a form of Special Equipment that works on all of your Roster and provides a special bonus. Unlike the Trade Skill tools, this appears on the character’s gear screen on the bottom left.

The charm provides a bonus to the rewards you obtain, gives a +1 activating level to your Trade Skills, and +1 level to all your Mastery Skills. To clarify the activating level, this means you can be level 19 to harvest a level 20 node as the game sees your activating level as 20.

There is only 1 Charm that you can obtain in-game and it can become a higher rarity. The stats on the charm as always the same, so don’t worry about rolling a ‘bad one’.

That’s all for our Lost Ark Trade Skills (or Professions) guide. Each Life Skill is quite deep, so we’ll cover them more in the near future. Until then, why not jump on our Discord and ask us some questions about them?