Can you change your class gender in Lost Ark?

Lauren Bergin
lost ark gunslinger female

Can change your class’ gender in Lost Ark? Here’s everything you need to know about each character.

Smilegate RPG’s beautiful world of Arkesia is home to a whole cast of charming characters just waiting for you to pick up your mouse and keyboard and pay them a visit in Lost Ark.

Your own character also comes in a vast array of shapes, sizes, and cultural backgrounds. With extensive customization options, you can create a persona that mirrors the hero or heroine you’ve dreamt about, or reimagine yourself as Arkesia’s savior.

If you’ve played similar dungeon crawlers such as Diablo 2 Resurrected, however, you may be wondering whether Smilegate’s hack and slash adventure mirrors Blizzard’s OG gender-locked classes. So, here’s a breakdown of whether or not you can change your class’ gender in Lost Ark.


Contents


lost ark deathblade assassin class
Lost Ark’s character design is stunning, but can you change from male to female?

Can you change gender in Lost Ark?

In short, no, you cannot change gender in Lost Ark. Each Advanced Class has a specified gender that you will have to play as.

While customization options do allow for more androgynous characters to suit non-binary players, you will be assigned either the male or female gender.

lost ark character select screen with female gunner gunslinger shooting
As you can see on the character select screen, classes are separated into male and female specialisations.

All class genders

Of the game’s 17 playable classes, nine are female and eight are male. They are all listed below, with the asterisk (*) denoting upcoming classes:

Male  Female
Berserker Bard
Destroyer Sorceress
Gunlancer Glavier
Paladin Scrapper
Striker Soulfist
Artillerist Wardancer
Deadeye Gunslinger
Sharpshooter Shadowhunter
Deathblade

Will Lost Ark remove gender locked classes?

It looks like developers Smilegate will not be removing the gender lock, and instead are looking to add new male and female versions of existing characters (for example, the female Berserker).

In a developer blog from December, 2021, the devs write that “From the earliest days of Lost Ark’s announcement in the West, we heard players’ feedback about gender locked classes loud and clear.

“While not every class in the game currently has a male and female counterpart available, we wanted to be sure to include those that do early on. In the future, Smilegate RPG will be creating more counterparts for classes that are still gender locked, and we will bring these to Arkesia in time.”

This has been further echoed by Amazon’s franchise lead, Soomin Park, in an interview with Eurogamer. “It is something that will roll out over time,” she states. “Classes are tied pretty closely to their character models in terms of function and animation, so bringing opposite gender characters to a class takes more work than just making a differently gendered model available.

“In the future, Smilegate RPG will be creating more counterparts for classes that are still gender locked, and we will bring these to Arkesia in time.”

So, while you won’t be able to play as a female Artillerist or male Shadowhunter upon release, keep your eyes on the future, as new heroes are inbound!


As Smilegate announce new classes and, hopefully some new male and female counterparts to existing ones, we’ll keep this page updated.

In the meantime, though, be sure to check out our Lost Ark class guides:

Artillerist | DeadeyeGunslinger | Sharpshooter | Bard | Sorceress | Deathblade | Shadowhunter | Berserker | Paladin | Gunlancer | Scrapper | Soulfist | Striker | Wardancer

About The Author

Lauren was formerly Dexerto's Features Editor and resident Diablo Sorceress. With two Master's degrees under her belt and a lot more Steam achievements, she specializes in all things Blizzard and Riot Games, with some Lost Ark and FFXIV on the side.