What Is Card Book
In Lost Ark, the card system is very important. And it is divided into two types of cards: one that you can equip for a bonus if more than one of the same type is equipped, and a collectible card that—once you have the entire set of(the set is called a book)—gives you permanent stat bonuses. Here I will tell you Why you need to Focus on Card Books and Which Ones to Awaken For Extra Damage.
Message for New Players
Before we start, there is some more advice for new players. Chances are you cannot afford to open up more characters or slots in your cards. And never delete any card you get, including the grays. Just do not open them. The reason is that eventually, Books will also give you passives.
Books (and What the Collections Mean)
The equipped cards give you a passive. Books also give you passives. However, the way this works is that as you awaken your cards and different card book sets, you get a bunch of passive stats.
And the difference between the books and the actual equipped cards is for the equipped cards, you could only get the benefits of one set at a time or two sets. But with books, you can have all of these activities at the same time.
The main books you'll care about are things that give you Bonus vs Demons. The reason is that every single end-game boss is a demon, so getting bonus damage from your cards is a massive source of damage.
For Advanced Players
You are probably sitting on a ton of card XP, but you don't know what cards to awaken, so you can see the google spreadsheet that shows you which card sets give you how much bonus damage; how much XP it costs; the efficiency of the XP to damage that you're receiving, and it allows you to track it. You first need to make a copy for yourself; that way, you can start interacting with it.
Once you've made your copy, then you can start checking things off. It's pretty simple, you can see the actual XP required to level up the cards in comparison to how much demon damage these cards give you or these books give you.
For example, you want to see your Moonmist Manor. And you need to go into the game to search for Moonmist Manor, switch back to your spreadsheet, find Moonmist Manor, and select it to check off. It will be saved forever so that you can track which sets you need to upgrade and how to upgrade. And you can get a better idea of which one you want to focus on first and where you're at.
Why Book Collection Matters?
The reality is that 1% or 2% damage doesn't seem like a lot, but I can give you a different example of getting 1% extra damage. Chances are you want 18 awakening light of salvation, unless you are a class with insanely high crit like a Berserker. If you compare the damage bonus of a lostwind cliff 18 to lostwind cliff 12, the damage bonus is usually between 1 and 2%. It's not a big damage bonus, but players are willing to do card runs, use card selection packs, etc.
Upgrading your books is much easier and freer than getting 18 awakening light of salvation. This is massive because when you're in the endgame, you're not getting 10% or 15% damage increases anymore, a 5% or 1%, 2% damage increase is absolutely massive.
A Message About Undead Damage (Akkan)
Another thing is that you'll notice there is a tab for undead damage on the spreadsheet. This is because Akkan in gate 3 converts from Demon to Undead, and getting some free under-damage is useful. This is like so far in the future now. I would not commit card XP toward this. However, Akkan just got a damage multiplier. He takes 2x the amount of damage magnified by how much undead damage you do, so once you start getting closer to Akkan, you can think of investing some of your cards' XP into this because it's a pretty huge damage boost, especially if he's taking 2X. And as you notice, a lot of the total XP for the undead sets is much lower than the Demon sets, which get a little spicy towards the bottom.
And the reason for getting the undead tab is that we eventually have to defeat Akkan.
A Word of Warning about Card EXP
Another warning is to be careful with how much card XP you use. Once you start doing this, you will start melting down your card XP. It seems like a lot if you have 3 million XP, but it isn't. If you're in a position of awakening for light of salvation, you need to save card XP to charge the last cards to upgrade the last piece of light of salvation. And card XP is not something you care about until you care about it, and once you don't have it, it does not come from a lot of sources. It's a finite resource, so you must be very careful when upgrading something.
Keep yourself with a little pillow to still be able to upgrade your important legendary card sets that you can use on your equip tab.