Lost Ark devs Smilegate RPG took more actions against bots this weekend to make some quests less enticing for bots to farm. This was done by removing gold from certain early World and Stronghold Quests which sounds like an effective solution but unfortunately makes it so that legitimate players will no longer have gold to look forward to when completing those quests. It was not specified in the game’s latest set of patch notes which quests exactly were adjusted to meet this goal.
This isn’t the first time that Lost Ark’s gotten an update like this to adjust quest rewards, and it likely won’t be the last. You can find the patch notes in full here, but the relevant section containing the details about the quest rewards changes can be seen below.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Additional Fixes
- Replaced gold rewards from various early World and Stronghold quests with a variety of new rewards to prevent farming by bots.
- Updated Xereon’s dialogue during the Temporary Alliance quest in South Vern.
- Fixed an issue that caused debug text to be shown while placing an object in the Stronghold.
- Updated the expiration date on claimed Feiton Powerpasses to reflect the correct date of June 30th.
- Please note that ALL Feiton Powerpasses will expire on June 30th, regardless of when they were claimed.
Bots have been a recurring problem in Lost Ark since the game’s inception with these automated accounts farming gold from these sorts of early quests. Doing so negatively impacts the in-game economy, so it makes sense then that gold would be removed from these sorts of early quests. Smilegate was sure to specify the “early” part of those patch notes to suggest that gold-giving World and Stronghold quests later on will still pay out gold rewards, presumably because there’s less incentive for bots to target those as opposed to the easier early quests.
That doesn’t mean the change has gone over well across the board, however. Some community members lamented the fact that gold’s been removed from yet another set of quests all in an effort to combat bots. While the bots may be a larger problem overall, this change affects everyday players, too. Some of the arguments made are certainly slippery slopes that don’t actually indicate what’ll happen, but they at least highlight the issue some players have with this anti-bot tactic.
