Lost Ark’s Machinist class arrives this month with big own-brand Iron Man vibes
The Machinist is both armoured and heavily armed
Fantasy MMO RPG Lost Ark introduces its next advanced class on September 28th, the Machinist, and he has a certain smug, goateed high-tech familiarity to him. Think of the Machinist as the Aldi equivalent to Marvel’s Tony Stark, Iron Man. He’s still packed to the circuit boards with machine guns, lasers and drones, even if he is an own-brand alternative to the Armoured Avenger.
The Machinist is Lost Ark’s fifth gunner advanced class, following on from the Deadeye, Gunslinger, Artillerist, and Sharpshooter. If your bevy of guns and drones doesn’t absolutely, positively finish off every enemy in the room then the Machinist can suit up using the Hypersync ability, which even has a big and blasty chest beam. You can’t keep going forever in the suit because its core energy is expended by using abilities, but landing attacks will top it up.
You’ll have a couple of different class engravings to muck about with and enhance your Machinist. The evolutionary legacy engraving pumps up your Hypersync suit, increasing the damage it can deal and reducing cooldowns, while boosting core energy to give you more time inside the thing in the first place. On the flip side, the Arthentinean skill class engraving concentrates on enhancing your Machinist’s use of their drone, boosting drone and joint skills, and their movement speed when paired together.
The new Machinist class arrives in Lost Ark part way through its current Arktoberfest event, which I wrote about before I went down the pub last Friday afternoon. Arktoberfest runs until October 3rd and is all about beer, pretzels, sausage and all things related to Bavaria’s Oktoberfest. It’s the first major in-game event that wasn’t previously in the original Korean and Russian version of Lost Ark. I’m still giggling to myself about its daft beer-head cosmetic nearly a week later.
Ed wasn’t a fan of Smilegate’s MMO when he tackled Lost Ark earlier this year. “Even as you're cleaving through hordes of goblins, Lost Ark demands little from you aside from coasting your mouse and mashing buttons,” he said. The game does seem to have a sense of humour going for it, though. It also keeps popping out regular events and content updates at a monthly pace, unlike other live-service RPGs that haven’t managed to keep that up.
Lost Ark is free to play on Steam. You can read the full details and skills of the Machinist class here.