What do you mean by “card collection bonus” and why should I care?

Card collection bonuses is yet another progression system in Lost Ark to make your whole roster stronger. Besides getting a few more stats by completing book collections, you also receive bonus damage to certain types of mobs, such as Demon, Beast, Plant, Undead, etc.

Demon damage is the most important in the game as the majority of boss fights are Demons. This is different from being susceptible to Holy or Dark damage types.  

With Chaos Dungeons now dropping the low rarity cards like candy, it no longer is required to find sources of white cards from the Peyto or Fermata weekly merchants unless you want more low tier cards faster or like spending pirate coins. They used to be the only real reliable source of white cards, but no more, thank Kharmine!

Gatekeeping notwithstanding, bonus damage is an important (and long min/max route) to more damage, especially as Global gets closer and closer to reaching KR’s endgame where it becomes extremely expensive to continue honing and costly to progress your character in other ways.

Bonus damage is the very late game in Lost Ark.

Total Books Bonus

Open the Card Collection (Roster icon -> Card Catalog, or [Alt+C]) and click on the Books tab. The right column displays all the card book bonuses from what you have collected so far.

Completed books (all cards fully enhanced) appear in gold text, while unlocked books (at least one card collected of each required for the book) appear in blue text.

Each time you collect a new card and add it to your card collection, it applies the collection status to a new book. You need all the cards in one book to unlock the book collection and will receive base stats, for example Specialization +2, or even several at once.

This is why it’s important to never delete cards and just store them on an alt until you can expand your card collection with blue crystals

To expand the card catalog with 10 more slots, click on the Enhance tab and scroll down to a locked row called “Expand Catalog Slots.” It costs 50  per row, so do it as you can afford to if you plan on playing the game for a long time.

Yes, You Can Inspect Other Players to See Their Bonuses

Just like your own, it is possible to see the bonuses of other players through their character panel. Inspect their character and click on the Details button in the lower right, under their stats. Here is a random person and they put a lot of effort (or money) into their cards:

How to Get That Juicy Bonus Damage

View Your Current Card XP Total

On the Enhance tab, at the top the value is called “Card XP Enhancement Points” which is your total. Don’t squander your XP on things you don’t need (yet)!

View Books by Damage Type

Books tab: At the top center, there’s a drop-down menu with “Bonus Classification - All” at the top of the list. Select the damage bonus to view.

The example used will be for Demon damage, as it’s the most important one.

Select “Bonus vs. Demons” in the drop-down menu. There are different bonuses depending on the book, some are more valuable than others. Some books are also cheaper to enhance than others, so keep that in mind.

The Awakening Level Total is the total number of awakening pips per card in the book.  If the row is in white, it is unlocked and added to the total collection bonus. If the row is gray, it is not activated..

Example: The total pips add up to 28 to unlock the required “Awakening Level Total 24” for the 2nd line of Bonus vs. Demons, but the last 2 pips are still missing so the 3rd row of bonus isn’t activated.

Get the Most Out of Your Card XP

Be wise about spending card XP, it is hard to come by and you will need a lot of it. If you are still going for Light of Salvation 30 or other sets for your particular class/build, ensure you’re withholding at least some card XP so you don’t cry if you have all the cards to complete your set but no card XP.

Card rarity matters when awakening (enhancing) cards. White is the cheapest, followed by green, blue, purple, with gold/legendary being  the most expensive. For example, the last awakening (5th pip) of a white card can cost 10,000 XP while a legendary can cost a whopping 194,000 XP. Be smart about how you use your card XP. Don’t forget, it also costs silver and scales the same way card XP does.

Tables & Resources for min/maxing

Protect Card XP (and silver!) by Pre-Enhancing Valuable Cards

If you are concerned about accidentally using too much XP and are about to complete an important card set like Light of Salvation, it’s possible to enhance (consume XP) for the next tier without having all the cards yet to awaken (consume cards).

Here, Brelshaza was awakened to 4 pips and then fully enhanced before the rest of the cards were attained. No more worrying about accidentally using too much card XP on other stuff.

Easy Enhancing Method

It can be annoying using the Search feature for cards, and impossible for cards “J” and “S” since you can’t search for cards with fewer than 2 letters. Solve this by using the Notification Setting. Each card has a rectangular toggle on the left, when active it is highlighted in gold. To make it easy to enhance cards without searching all over for them, keep your card Notifications clean. Only activate it for cards you want to enhance as a priority.

 In the Equip tab it is in the upper left

In the rest of the views it is on the left above the awakening pips

To view cards with this active, click on the “View Cards with Notification Settings” in the upper left of each tab

When looking through the Equip or Books tabs and picking cards, activate the Notification and then change tabs to Enhance and turn on the “View Cards with Notification Settings” option. The view is much easier to deal with. Once you are done with a card for now, turn off the notification on it to keep your view clean for the next ones.

Awaken Cards for the Bonuses Wisely

Make sure you scroll through the list of Books on the left column as you keep enhancing books. You may have some really easy picks from already awakened cards in other books or sets.

If you want to min/max, you can calculate all the XP required vs. bonus unlocked. If you’re not wanting to do that amount of work, the following examples may help.

1. This book collection has 10 cards (a lot), but all are very easily attainable and green/blues are cheaper to enhance (Demon)

2. Here, the blues were fully awakened. As there’s no way to fully awaken the book for the last bonus since there are missing cards, there is no reason to enhance Blackfang or Calvasus and waste card XP since no value would be attained as they are incomplete (Demon)

3. Inexpensive with only 2 cheaper cards, high priority! (Demon)

4. Thunder was already fully awakened for another book. The first 2 pips of the green cards and first single pip of the Salt Giant would make getting the first bonus cheap for now (Beasts)

5. Cheap cards to awaken to a total of 32, but would wait to awaken to 40 for later as there’s probably better options. Mari is already fully awakened from another book, which helps (Beasts)

6. Tempting as it needs only 6 pips to a high total 20 unlock. Fully awaken Morpheo and then 1 of Zinnervale here, then leave it alone (Beasts)

7. Another easy pick since 4 cards were already awakened from other books and the last one has all the cards, plus it is a cheaper blue card (Beasts)

8. None of these are worth awakening further since 2 Danikas are missing for now (Demon)

Tables & Resources

Raid Boss Damage Table

Type is the enemy classification. Weakness is the elemental damage type the enemy is weak to.

Note: There is no bonus to Ancient types

Guardian Damage Table

Type is the enemy classification. Weakness is the elemental damage type the enemy is weak to.

Listing the more relevant guardians 1490+

*If you have other info let me know

Card XP & Silver Costs Table

Some people forget about the silver costs so that is also included here

Card XP Sources

Most sources, but not all are listed

Repeatable:

• Duplicate cards - Once 15 cards have been attained, any further cards become duplicates and converted into XP. Legendary is 2,300
• Chaos Dungeons
• Chaos Gates
• Field Boss
• Adventure Islands with card rewards
• Event Shop/merchant
• Stronghold: RNG merchant vendors for dispatch seals (each spawn)
• Stronghold: Cookie Exchange Merchant (Weekly)
• Ebony Cubes
• Wandering Merchants
• Challenge Abyssal Dungeons
• Chaos Line: Blood Magick Stone Exchange vendor in South Vern Bellion Ruins (Weekly)
• Legion Raid Exchange vendor for Eye of Decay (Weekly)
• Tea and Libra Guild Vessel (merchant ship outside every major port)  for Pirate Coins (Weekly)
• In-game Shop

One time rewards:

• Rapport NPCs
• South Vern, Rowen, Elgacia, Pleccia, Voldis stories
• Moko Island vendor (Witch)
• Island completion
• Collectible Masterpieces rewards
• Collectible Music Box of Memories reward
• Adventurer’s tome: Elgacia
• Tower
• Una’s Tasks reputation

Card XP Item Amounts

Duplicate Card XP Amounts

Automated Tool to Maximize Card Enhancing

• Card Calculator from LoaChart does the work for you. Uncheck for 21:9, open your card list, sort by name, then take 8 screenshots. Drag and drop the screenshots into the upload area. It will take into account awakened cards and which you need to use for the damage bonus, then rank them off cost.

Spreadsheets: Cards That Share Bonuses

• Card Bonuses spreadsheet by /u/Nsbhyfr  with introductory post up to date for Voldis

Shows cards shared among books and sets to min/max cross books

Sort by Combined (Descending Z to A) to see what the most valuable cards for those three sets are relative to Card XP

• Card Books for Damage spreadsheet by toxix on Discord, up to date as of Oct ‘23 (no longer maintained)

Huge list of all cards, checkboxes, card info, sets, books, shared sets, farmable cards, etc.