How to fix lag problems in Lost Ark

Lost Ark made a name for itself as an award-winning free-to-play MMORPG in its home country of South Korea. Now that it's expanding to North America and Europe, its player base has increased significantly.

Like a lot of online games, the game hasn't been perfectly smooth. A few server difficulties and connection problems later, fans are wondering how to improve their experience with the new game.

How to address the lag in Lost Ark

The easiest way to reduce lag in Lost Ark is to adjust settings to remove as much on-screen text as possible. For some reason, the game has a harder time displaying multiple player characters' tags and titles than it does rendering their animations. This simple fix works especially well in PVP and group PVE play.

Go into the settings menu, open Gameplay, and then select Name Tag. The options, including Party, Raid, Guild, and more, each have multiple sub-options. Turn off Title, Guild Name, and Chat Bubble in each category.

This will massively improve performance right away and should fix FPS drops, stuttering, and lag issues. This is the quickest and easiest way to improve performance.

Another method entails turning off third-party overlays. If a Lost Ark player is experiencing lag or random crashes, Steam's overlay might be to blame. Simply find the game page in the Steam library. Click the manage icon, then select Properties from the drop-down menu. From there, turn off the Steam overlay.

Finally, verifying game files can fix a variety of issues in the game. Simply open the same Properties menu on the game's Steam page in the library. Then select Local Files, then click verify integrity of game files. This will fix the lag in some cases and prevent crashes caused by the Steam installer.

Larger issues with Lost Ark

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A lot of players are reporting issues with the game that have nothing to do with their settings. Crashes, bugs, black screens, lag, and other issues have appeared immediately following the game's expansion.

Queue times have been an issue in the new servers which have caused the team to shut down some services. There have also been reports of forged Founder's Packs and other in-game purchases. Such threats to the game's economy are being addressed.

Some issues with lag and other performance problems will be addressed in hotfixes throughout the game's early life. This moment is akin to a new launch for the game, and like most modern game launches, there have been some hitches.