Lost Ark: Cash Shop Currencies Explained - Breaking Down Crystals and the Currency Exchange

[@josefranciscouzcateguiflor5181]

thank you!! very well explained. It's simple but daunting the first time you look at the fricking store 🤣🤣

[@AniYirie]

Thank you! I kept seeing videos which described the currencies in-game but never explained how to actually exchange them (no demonstrations either, so thank you for that!!!).

[@ChristianHernandez-fd5tg]

GOOD VID BROTHER! KEEP PUSHIN

[@nestor5780]

thanks for the concise explanation. a few other guides were just 10 minutes of monologue without substance. Have an updoot

[@retrotgames]

Love that you found it useful! I'm not tryin to waste anyone's time here.

[@kevinRD25]

Thanks a lot, this video was really helpfull to me.

[@GeTakeo]

Thank you for the useful guide :) . Subbed and upvoted.

[@DarkEpyon]

It’s definitely an over complicated system

[@arminhg2978]

thanks man you are the cure of my headaches :D

[@CaribouOrange]

Thanks, useful and not 40 minutes.

[@retrotgames]

Thanks so much! Appreciate you stopping by and dropping this comment.

[@ailynae]

thank you. useful! :)

[@retrotgames]

Thank you!

[@VincWins777]

awesome!

[@mode2967]

this slaps

[@retrotgames]

You slap, my man.

[@dilsoncamacho4100]

I get what you are saying but I don't really get why anyone would be willing to sell royal crystals for gold at such a low rate. What I mean is that at the price there 10 dollars would only give about 320 gold to the crystal seller, but someone could go to a gold selling website and buy more gold for that same price.

[@kboba]

same concept irl with buying black market stuff for cheaper and buying from a licensed professional is more $$ Kinda hate how royal->blue crystals is a middle step to mentally halving your monies. 1 royal crystal is give or take 1 penny and converting it into blue crystal is roughly a 2:1 ratio. Meaning Mari’s shop in real money value is the blue crystal price x 2 and that’s rough total cent/dollar value you paid for. All this royal crystal/crystal/gold exchange middle step thing i feel like just tries to disassociate yourself from the real $$ value.

[@arkhire5883]

about the currency exchange, I get that you trade gold for crystals but, where do people trade cystals for gold? who buys? and where?

[@retrotgames]

As far as I know there's no way to convert blue crystals into gold. The way the "market" works is an undercover conversion. So when someone sells Royal Crystals for gold, it's matched up with someone who's buying Blue Crystals for gold. So you can sell Royal Crystals (real money) for gold, and you can buy Blue Crystals for gold, but you can't do the inverse. When you sell Royal Crystals for gold what's actually happening is that the Lost Ark "bank" is converting your Royal Crystals to Blue Crystals, then finding a Blue Crystal buyer. This part of the exchange is not exposed or available for players to interact with.

[@naokmoon1487]

on Buy Crystal Tab, did I really see you won for 88gold a 95 crystal + a free 238 Royal Crystal as bonus ? :D Cuz you were at 3762 Royal crystal before buying your Blue Crystal and it has increased to 4000. It seems profitable if its the case!

[@arminhg2978]

btw i have one question , is there anyway to sell the blue crystals in currency exchange ?

[@Xbigmike17X]

that's what I was trying to figure out. I wanna buy them low and sell them high. but you can't sell BC I figured out that its people selling their Royal Crystals for gold that determines the price for Blue Crystals. at the same time when someone is selling their RC the crystals are converted into the BC witch someone is trying to acquire in exchange for gold. the person buying gold with RC is getting that gold from the person buying BC. the game converts the RC to BC

[@arminhg2978]

@@Xbigmike17X wow !! I'm Happy to know that now , thanks for the info kind sir

[@littledroid5753]

how to sell crystals, how the game detects the prices to increase the costs!

[@josiesetiawan9516]

What's stopping me from listing at 1 gold and 9 quantity to get 9x95 crystals

[@retrotgames]

The order would never get filled and would expire. The game won't execute a sell order that doesn't have a corresponding (real) buyer.

[@peterabajian1823]

is there a way to turn blue crystals into royal crystals?

[@retrotgames]

Currently, no, there is no way to get Royal Crystals other than a credit card.

[@peterabajian1823]

@@retrotgames it says in the description of the currency exchange that 100 blue crystals = 238 royal crystals? what could this mean then?

[@retrotgames]

@@peterabajian1823 this is one of those things that really isn't explained anywhere in detail. As I understand it, the way the exchange works behind the scenes is as follows: when you exchange Royal Crystals for gold, 238 Royal Crystals are converted to 100 Blue Crystals, then those 100 Blue Crystals are traded with a real player for in-game gold. This is how the exchange process works (the two tabs in the exchange window), and why it's like a "stock" market. The 238->100 numbers are simply providing the formula for what base value Lost Ark assigns between Royal Crystals and Blue Crystals. You can then see that increasing the supply of Gold changes the value of Crystals and vice-versa.

[@peterabajian1823]

@@retrotgames ah i understand, thanks for the info!

[@dredge9306]

@@retrotgames but why are ppl dumping all their gold into crystals right now, there is no way of getting it back to gold and def not for any sort of profit, cheaper cosmetics gold wise maybe? and isnt gold like super important later on

[@okyki]

But why is the sale price of gold different in the top box under Buy Crystals? On my server, the rec. sale price under purchase gold is 265, while the rec. sale price under purchase crystals is 205. Is this taking into some conversion or hidden tax? If the sale price for gold is 265 and I follow the rec. sale price to purchase crystals for 205...will just no one buy it? Like should I list it for 265? It is driving me mental....

[@okyki]

Also your purchase for 95 crystals was done instantly but it forces me to list mine?

[@retrotgames]

@@okyki I was being very generous with the price I listed it for, so it instantly matched with a seller. I had to list it, but it executed instantly. I'm not 100% on this one, but I'm fairly certain the reason your prices are so far apart is actually a weird quirk in the recommendation algorithm. I just did a quick test to try to confirm this. The recommend price seems to match the "best" price on the current market, but that DOESN'T mean it's the best price you'll get. Keep in mind that there are two sides to the system, there are people that are "offering" gold for a certain Blue Crystal price, and there are people that are "offering" Royal Crystals for a certain gold price. These two offers don't always overlap, and until they do, zero actual transactions will happen. If you watch the recommended price it will change every few seconds, sometimes being much closer and sometimes much further. I just checked my shop and I saw 283/218 as the recommended prices, I bought 100 crystals with an offer of 218 and right afterwards the price immediately recommended me 283/282. I'm guessing it's some outlier offers? Or it's just a delay in the recommendation system? I wish I knew for certain, this is my best guess. If you look on the left hand side of the exchange, you'll see two panels - the "Sale Offers" panel and the "Purchase Offers" panel. The bottom of the sale offers and the top of the purchase offers are where these two sides "meet" (or not). Until there's overlap there, no money changes hands. This is why you have to list your purchase for 100 (95) crystals - the game doesn't know if it can actually meet your price until it enters your order into the market. This may not have made things less confusing, but hopefully it helped... the system is not intuitive...

[@okyki]

@@retrotgames Ok this makes much more sense. Just because the rec. price doesn't mean I should even trust it. I see that is just the game trying to get me crystals for as cheap as possible. But if I put a higher amount of gold to request the blue crystals I am much more likely for it actually sell (automatically by the game which seems to be some market protection system.) I also tested it a little bit using my 10 daily limit lol and realized when I'm matching the "recent prices", or even offering more, it was actually successful and sold because those were real players live prices and the lower rec. amount must have been the real low outliers making the system suggest a lower price.... At a certain price way higher than the rec. price though, the "accept" button was greyed out and would not let me post it. I was more so confused because the top left box of lowest offers is completely blank everyday for whatever reason, so that must be a bug. Hope I got it now. You are a godsend. Prices skyrocketing too its 343 now lmao

[@okyki]

Either the daily limit or transaction history is also bugged. I posted the 10 max yesterday but when I log in today the limit was still 10/10 and somewhere in the middle of that between 3-4 pm pst it randomly switched days so it all counted towards today I guess. Such a messed up system...

[@retrotgames]

@@okyki I think we're actually seeing another weird bug here. I went back and checked my "218" offer that I posted this morning from this thread, in my history it actually sold for 281... which is not what I posted it for... I wonder if there's an actual issue where numbers are getting misreported or reversed? Either way, I THINK the "Purchase Gold" sale price is the most accurate of all of them. It seems to be consistently correct.

[@kaibo9058]

I listed 453 gold (rec sale price) and only received 95 crystals (amount obtainable). How do I request for more blue crystals?

[@Toxicblackmambahs]

you can't 95 is the default... you have to play 453gold (atm 625 gold for me today) for 95 crystals. When this video was made it was 83 gold...

[@Toxicblackmambahs]

however you can adjust your offer price from 453 to something you think is fairer for the 95 crystals.

[@gustavor9850]

How can i sell my blue crystals for gold?

[@retrotgames]

As far as I know, there are zero systems in the game for converting blue crystals to gold.

[@thomasnguyen4427]

thank you for the explanation, the user UI is so fucking trash. Misleading icons, no hover over tooltips over the actual important phrases & details someone who'd want to see where their money is going, and no equations to show how the markets function that provide adequate and sufficient context for an individual to grasp an understanding of the layout. Sure, there are some, but all they serve is to further obfuscate the context given behind the other, sparse tooltips, as they were not translated or describe with linking the various phrases & layout in mind, but rather independently.

[@BluSky1]

casinos games like lost ark make up a lot of currency so they can rip off the new gamblers.