Lost Ark outlines May update, delays server merges, and shares early Shadow Raid clear stats

Lost Ark’s latest team update covers a few immediate changes for players, along with another attempt to calm concerns about the game’s future. The big takeaways are early stats for the new Serca Shadow Raid, a look at what’s coming in May, and confirmation that the server merges planned for this month have been pushed back.

According to the official post, Amazon Games and Smilegate are also stressing that support for Lost Ark isn’t winding down, saying more content is planned through the second half of 2026. That follows recent layoffs at Amazon Games and cuts affecting Lost Ark’s team, which led to a lot of player speculation about the MMO’s long-term plans.

On the gameplay side, the update includes some early performance numbers from Serca, the first Shadow Raid boss added after Kazeros’ defeat. In normal mode, roughly 71% of clears across both gates were completed with no deaths, which suggests the new raid type has been fairly manageable for a lot of groups. Hard mode was much less forgiving, with flawless clears at 31% for gate 1 and 14% for gate 2. The post also says Guardianknight has the most total clears so far, while Breaker has the lowest average deaths per clear.

May’s update will add more cards to the Wandering Merchant lineup. The point there is to help players finish key card sets, including one tied to June’s upcoming Abyssal Raid, Horizon Cathedral, which arrives with the Cadarum Isles region.

There’s also a limited-time event on the way. Snowflake Argos, a reworked version of the Argos fight, starts May 13 as a standalone event.

The one thing not arriving on schedule is server consolidation. The team says the server merges originally planned for May have been delayed, and it’ll share the new timing later.