Lost Ark’s weekly update tomorrow will aim to clarify and expand upon some of the rules introduced around Powerpasses and Rapport, including a three-day waiting period before players can take advantage of gold they earn.
Powerpasses, which are a way to instantly level a character up to item level 1302 and let them partake in bonus events to progress to a competitive endgame level, have been disabled since before last week’s update. This was noted as temporary, but there has been no update since about the status or the reason why the decision was made to halt their use. Players can’t even get claim passes at this time, so it is a complete stop for “an issue with the feature”.
Shortly afterward, gifting was also disabled, again without stated reasons and no updates as to when it will return.
It’s easy to imagine that these measures have been taken in order to fight exploits and botting since previously, The team made some decisions to delay gold Awards in the main story Quest as well as shifted access to certain features without having verified accounts.
The new rules that will go into effect in this update are:
Gold earned from the Rapport system will be received as “withheld funds”, which are subject to a 3-day withholding period during which they are restricted in the following ways:
Cannot send withheld funds through mail
Cannot deduct from withheld funds when accepting billing mail
Cannot use on 1:1 trades
Cannot use in Auction House
Cannot use in Marketplace
Cannot use in Loot Auctions
For the first 72 hours after using a paid Powerpass, all gold earned by trading Una’s Tokens will be received as withheld funds and subject to the 3-day withholding period.
With this patch, it does seem like answers on Powerpasses will be coming soon, as the patch notes mention an additional update later this week.