Whoever uses five exclamation marks in text chat in Lost Ark must be really angry. By no means!!!!! Because an engraving demands exactly that.
Nervous, aggressive or crazy fellow players are unfortunately occasionally to be found, that’s nothing new. In Lost Ark, however, it’s difficult to distinguish them from gamblers who are simply showing ambition. This is due to a crazy function that turns mildly stupid behaviour in the chat into a genuine gameplay mechanic.
We are talking about the legendary Sight Focus engraving. It gives action role-players a buff that increases the damage of offensive skills. And here it comes: This buff is activated by yelling at your fellow players – in text chat! We’ll explain what this curious effect is all about here.
How the funny effect works
What are engravings? If you follow the main story of Lost Ark, you will unlock the engravings around level 28. You can manage your collected engravings, which are passive bonuses for your character, via a separate menu.
How do I unlock Sight Focus? You can find the engraving as loot in chaos and dice dungeons. It is therefore an end-game item.
How does Sight Focus work? Once you have found and activated the engraving, you need to let your inner Hulk out. If you now enter any text in normal chat and put five exclamation marks (!!!!!) behind it, the buff will be activated for six seconds. Now you can deal 8 percent extra damage with your skills at level 1 of the engraving. The effect has a cooldown of 20 seconds.
Chaos Chat in the Chaos Dungeon
While the youth books with the three ? stand for often thoughtful detective work, five exclamation marks in the chat are more likely to set off alarm bells among readers. This is also true for Lost Ark! Is someone angry? Why on earth? Not everyone is familiar with the engraving and its effect.
You can certainly imagine the funny effects this can lead to. On Reddit, one user describes how the text chat is sometimes literally flooded with anime references. This fits quite well with the Korean MMO action role-playing game, which also draws on a lot of Japanese pop culture.
Lost Ark player Tlim feels intense foreign shame, but also finds the feature hilarious and writes:
It works with text macros built into the game. It can be any sentence – “Believe it!!!!!”, “KAMEHAMEHAAAAAA!!!!!”, “I have the power of God AND anime on my side!!!!!”. Whatever you think will elicit the biggest cringe from your group.
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Have you met the five exclamation marks yet? Does the text chat in the endgame drift completely into yelling? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments!
