Black Desert Starter Guide

[Malkion]

Official Site: https://www.blackdesertonline.com/

Classes:

Classes are unique and GENDER LOCKED. Meaning the Ranger is female and will always be female. The developers have indicated that it takes as much time to develop a new class as it does to duplicate a class (for gender) so they would rather add new lore, content and make a new class than make gender clones of the same class.

Current Classes are:

Warrior (Male), Valkrie (Female) ~ Melee oriented Sword and shield fighters. The Valkrie has some healing/buff/support capabilities.

Wizard (Male), Witch (Female) ~ Typical Elemental Spell Caster type. The only instance of class cloning to date (but they are not exact copies I am told)

Ranger (Female) ~ Supposedly there is a male archer type character in the works. But NOT a Ranger due to lore reasons. (the rangers are female elves and male elves are rare and currently NPC only)

Berserker (Male) ~ Dual-Wield Melee Fighter. There will not be a female counterpart for lore reasons. (Opposite of Elves there are apparently few female giants)

Sorceress (Female) ~ Dark Magic wielding Melee/Mage. I have read they are working on a male counterpart along the lines of a Necromancer (rumor)

Tamer (Female) ~ This is like a female ninja or martial artist. She uses evasion to mitigate damage and a short sword to deal it. Very interesting playstyle considering the action combat system. There is a rumor of a male counterpart the Ninja.

NOTES: I have played each to level 10-15 (to get the basics) and each class is really well put together. The Zerker seemed a little more fragile than I had expected but I had no real issues with any of the classes. Granted all low-level experience. I have read that in later levels the Zerker is THE melee DPS and the Sorceress is THE 1v1 pvp class. While Archers and Mages DOMINATE in group pvp/guild wars.

Combat:

The combat is an action combat system with no auto attacking or Tab-Targeting. You can lock onto enemies (Sort of) by keeping them in front of you. This makes combat very positional and you also have active dodging and evading by 2x tapping movement keys. Also, you have to gain knowledge of an enemy before you can see its health/mana. You get ranks for knowledge D-A or something to that effect.
c-c-c-combos! The combat skills you learn can be used to create combos which increase the power of the attacks. Its very fun, in my opinion and the key/mouse combinations are intuitive and relatable to each class. For example the Ranger’s combos revolve around moving out of the way of incoming melee attacks to deliver flanking/rear attacks. So by pressing an attack and a movement key to the left you dodge to the side of your attacker and shoot an arrow into their ear.

There are damage increases for REAR and DOWN positional too. For example the Warrior has a move that knocks down the opponent (S+LMB). While prone you get huge damage bonuses on all your attacks on this opponent until they get back up and face you. Also the Ranger has a kick move that spins her opponent around (facing away from you) and gives you a backstab attack opportunity.
The combat is really fun, in my opinion. In most other games you just press 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 (yawn)

Questing:

Quests are pretty typical. Go fetch this, go find that, go kill this or that. Go talk to this person ETC. There are only so many ways to hash out NPC quest content. However I want to note that some quests are level based and some you have to unlock by doing other content. (Which I will attempt to explain later). You earn Contribution Points through quests (and other content) which you use to “unlock” Housing and material nodes (for farming resources) and trade routes.

Crafting:

I have only just scratched the surface of the crafting. You can farm resources like most other games, OR you can hire workers to farm/craft for you. These workers you have to buy housing for and feed to regenerate the energy they use to perform the tasks you assign to them. There is an awesome write up on workers here http://blackdesertfoundry.com/2015/07/31/workers/ Your workers level up which unlocks other abilities for them (like increased speed of resource farming or crafting or better chances of getting better quality drops ETC)

Here is a nice list of Cooking recipes and things related https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1&sle=true#


You have to use Contribution Points to unlock Resource Nodes in order to assign workers to that node to farm materials. You can actually level up the nodes, too by investing your energy points into them. Leveling the nodes increases their output and chances of rare items.

Housing:

Housing is complex, cheap and accessible. You need housing to craft items; there are different types of houses for different trades. You need special workers housing for your employees and there is also a residence for you. You purchase housing using Contribution Points you earn through questing and unlocking knowledge. At level 18 I had about 40 Contribution Points where I had bought about 4 different houses and had a trade route established between 2 of the 3 cities in the starter area.
Nice write-up on Housing in BDO here http://blackdesert.info/guides/housing (Brief) and here: https://www.reddit.com/r/blackdesertonl ... s_housing/

Travel:

No portals, recalls or instant travel options. You must buy/acquire mounts to travel build boats or rafts to travel on water. The animal mounts require feeding to replenish their stamina and they can be killed. Mounts also level up and gain speed ETC.

Trading:

There are Wagons to use for moving trade packs from one town to the next. The whole Trading system is complex and fun, too. If I take an item from one town to the next I get a market report on the items to show what the item is currently paying and I can even barter with the NPC traders I am selling my packs to increase my trade value (or if I fail to barter lower my profits). Trading is very complex and I haven’t even begun to fully understand it all. There is a decent write up here: http://blackdesert.info/trading

I have figured out that the AH has market fluctuating pricing and set ranges. Meaning that if I sell the sword I found I cannot set the price to a billion silvers. The market value (in a range) for those items is set (4000 silvers to 9000 silvers) when someone wants to buy my item the actual price is dependent on the supply currently on the market. Less little swords means the price goes up to the max value. This type of system eliminates (nearly) people cornering the AH market and inflating AH prices.

PVP:

The “End Game” is currently PVP oriented. Guild VS Guild fighting over resource nodes and trade route, castle sieges ETC. There are supposed to be arenas and open PVP areas coming to the game. There is also a Bounty type system (ala Ultima) based off Karma where if you attack too many people you lose Karma get flagged and are able to be attacked by others without them loosing Karma.
http://blackdesert.info/guides/pvp

Intimacy and NPC Relations:

Talking with NPCs gives you Enmity which can unlock other quests, knowledge and content. Some NPCs won’t even have conversations with you until you have a certain amount of knowledge in areas they are interested in. Brief write up on that http://blackdesert.info/guides/npcs-int ... -relations or in-depth http://dulfy.net/2016/03/04/black-deser ... ity-guide/


Other Notes:

Everything has weight. Even money. You can quickly become encumbered. You can buy (housing) a warehouse in the town and use it to store your cash and collectibles.

The NIGHT IS DARK. Buy a lantern or you could get lost or die out in the night. Also they only last so long so you may need to get another.

You can AFK Fish. It is built into the game. If you cast your pole in the water you can come back hours later and your guy will still be there fishing. It is 10x slower than actively fishing but it is a popular option. I think the reasoning is that your workers continue to work when you are online and you also get fishing skill and exp and some loot items and knowledge from it too so there are many advantages to just letting your character fish while you sleep or go to work instead of just logging it off.

Jumping isn't disjointed from the environment. In WoW you could jump around like a ninny and it didn't really relate to the actual environment. Jumping in BDO is like taking a standing broad jump. Also jumping next to a wall wont let your char fly over the wall your char will attempt to climb up on the wall.

The cash shop. There were many people concerned about a P2W Cash Shop (Pay to Win). Apparently the producers took the concerns seriously and removed Boats and other things players in beta were concerned about being P2W. Though there are still some mounts and % exp increase items available. Things you purchase from the loyalty/cash shop cannot be later put on the AH for sale for in game cash. (currently)

There is no instancing. Currently all content is available in an Open World`Sandbox style. No dungeon instances or raids no instancing at all.


Speed/Grinding Leveling Guide: https://pb.reddit.com/r/blackdesertonli ... guide_150/