top of page

Black Desert Online

Black Desert Online is a sandbox-oriented massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Korean video game developer Pearl Abyss.

Gameplay Playlist

This is my playlist of BDO playthroughs as a Witch and Dark Knight and my “Today I Learned” series of features that I’ve learned as I play the game. Click on the top left corner of the player above to see more or click here to see my playlists on YouTube.

Story Video

Video Name

Witch Character Creation

Dark Knight Character Creation

Dark Knight Playthrough (Level 1 to 10)

Dark Knight Playthrough (Level 10 to 15)

Questing

Questing

Quests are tasks given by NPCs, the Black Spirit or via the guild menu. They are only available if you meet certain requisites and these can range from level or skill requirements to finishing other quests to having enough Amity.

Black Deserts allows you to define preferences for what quest types you like and per default (!) quite a few are disabled. To ensure especially in the beginning that you see all quests and do not lose out on rather essential quests which offer an increase of your inventory space, open the quest menu by hitting [O]. Then make sure “all” is selected. If you deselect certain quest types they will not even be shown to you even if you speak to the NPC!

Some quests can require you to choose which path to go. For example the Black Spirit will ask you sometimes to act against a citizens interest and not fulfill their task as intended.

Questing & Progression

Upon reaching a new, unexplored area, talk to all the NPCs that show up as question marks on the minimap. They give contribution points and energy that can be used later on for hiring workers, purchasing residence etc.

The NPCs have icons above their heads to indicate quest availability.

  • A yellow framed icon indicates they have a quest available.

  • A green framed icon indicates the quest has been accepted but not completed yet.

  • A red check mark over the icon indicates the quest objective has been fulfilled and the NPC will now provide the reward.

Some quests have multiple objectives and as you complete individual aspects you will be notified via text in the middle of your screen. The quest marker on the map will be updated accordingly.

Once a quest has been obtain, you can click on the “squiggly arrow” beside the quest to show a path to the quest area. Clicking on the “running man” icon autopaths you to the questing area. Make use of the minimap.

Quest Types

There are seven types of quests in Black Desert:

  1. Black Spirit Quest – These are quests linked to progressing your Black Spirit. Some Black Spirit quests ask you to sabotage quests by other NPC. You can decide which path to follow – help other NPC or strengthen your Black Spirit. If you help the NPC you gain Contribution Points. If you help the Black Spirit you gain Combat Points.

  2. Main Story Quest – This quest will reveal more of the main story.

  3. General Quest – This is a basic quest given by any NPC throughout the game.

  4. Explore Quest – These quests send you to find new areas.

  5. Trade Quest – These quests are related to trade goods.

  6. Crafting Quest – This type of quest will require you to produce a specific item.

  7. Repeatable Quest – Quests that can be repeated at set intervals.

Contribution Points

Contribution Points

Contribution Points (CP) is a pool of resources that you can used as investments. These points have multiple uses from purchasing houses, investing in nodes and renting items.

How to Obtain Contribution

Completing the following will give you Contribution Points or Contribution XP. Contribution XP is needed to fill up the Contribution bar on the top left of your screen. Filling up the bar completely gives you a Contribution Point.

  • Black Spirit Quests - Certain quests will offer Contribution XP as a reward. To check which quests gives this reward, press ‘O’ to open the Quest window and click on the Main tab.

  • City Daily Quests - Certain quests will offer contribution as a reward. Some of these are repeatable.

  • Cooking or Alchemy - Turning in cooking dishes or alchemy reagents e.g. Making beer will sometimes also make dishes like Dish with poorly prepared ingredients. Mouse over the dishes to see where they can be exchanged for Contribution Points.

Contribution Recovery

To regain the Contribution Points, you simply need to withdraw or cancel the investments and you have them back in your Contribution Points pool.

  • Invested Contribution - If you invested your contribution in a node all you have to do is open the world map, click the node you invested in and click the withdraw button.

  • Rental Items - When the rented item is returned to the NPC who rented it out, you will regain the contribution spent to acquire it.

  • Houses - If you have purchased a house, navigate your map to the specific town, then click on the house you have rented, you will find a button to sell the house. Selling the house will remove the benefits the house granted you but restore the contribution invested.

Energy

Energy

Energy is a player resource, shown in the top left corner of the screen near the level indicator. It can be increased by discovering new knowledge. This will raise your total amount of energy. As you expend this energy, it will regenerate over time.

The easiest way to get Energy is to unlock every node and talk to every NPC in every town. This is pretty easy to do and is by far the fastest method to get your energy up.

Energy Uses

Energy can be used for various in-game activities.

  • Crafting

  • Interaction with NPC

  • Theft

  • Buffs

  • Obtaining Knowledge (H)

  • ​Trading

  • Resource gathering

  • Fishing

  • Node Management

  • Gathering

  • Contracting Workers

Energy Regeneration

Energy is regained by following means:

  • Independently - 1 Energy is regained every 3 minutes as your character stay online or if it is offline, you get only 1 Energy every hour.

  • Quests - Simple daily quests, which do not require any energy wastes and usually regenerate 3 Energy. Crafting quests regain 5 Energy, but they require some Energy for execution. Partially these Energy wastes could be overridden, if you buy required quest objects on public sale.

  • Wine - You can buy a glass of wine in a bar. Wine costs 50000 silver and regains 3 Energy.

  • Bed - Sleeping in bed increases your speed of Energy regeneration.

  • Pearl chest - As you open pearl chest, bought in the premium-shop. When you use you get pearls and pearl blessing (recovering of energy +1 +1 luck, chance to get the item + 2.5%) for 1 hour.

Nodes

Nodes

Nodes are locations on the map. Nodes can be activated by investing Contribution Points at the Node Manager. If two adjacent ones are activated the nodes become connected. This allows automatic transport between their Warehouses for lower prices (otherwise one pays 3x the fee) and manual trade between them for full pricing (otherwise you only received 30% of the item price).

Furthermore activating a node allows you to invest Energy into the node which in turn gives you bonuses in the node area such as more loot drops or higher resource numbers.

Activating a node is also necessary to automatically assign workers to gather resources from resource nodes and bring them back to the region’s Warehouse. Certain Nodes not only have regular Resource Nodes attached to them but can have additional Hidden Nodes too. The latter become available at the Node Manager if one talks with the Node Manager and pays 35 Energy. Afterwards they are unlocked for workers. Hidden Nodes offer special resource gathering for workers, like the excavation node at the Ancient Stone Chamber for Trace of Earth and Trace of Ascension. Another Hidden Node is at Lynch Farm.

Types of Nodes

There are currently two types of Nodes: Location Nodes and Resource Nodes.

Location nodes have a Node Manager NPC which is used for navigating nodes and connecting them via contribution points.

City                    Connection              Danger               Gateway

 Trading Post                 Town                     Village

Resource nodes are places you can send your workers to gather resource or make financial investments for you.

     Farm                       Forest                  Investment                Mine

How to Connect Nodes

City or Town nodes you visit are automatically activated without needing contribution points. When connecting nodes it is best to start from Cities or Towns you have discovered then work your way out. Location Nodes that can be connected will have a white line from one to the other. Nodes that are currently connected will have a yellow line linking them together.

To connect nodes you must first go in person (!) to the Node Manager NPC. To find the node manager you can right-click the node icon to set a pathfinder. Once you are at the node manager, speak to him/her and press “Node Management”.

This will open the map and show any location or resource nodes neighbored or belonging to the location node. If there are nodes you haven’t discovered that can also be connected to the node you are at, the locations will be shown on the map.

In the top left corner of the node manager you will see a window showing all the node information such as whether the node has a Trade Manager (sometimes Node Manager and Trade Manager are the same person), the country, territory, node managers name, which guild is currently controlling the node and the amount of contribution points it will cost to invest in the node/activate it. If you activate a note that is neighboring already active nodes, they will be connected.

To connect the nodes, click “Invest”.

To cancel the connection between nodes you can open the map at any time, click on the node icon, then click “Withdraw”. This will refund your contribution points. In the case that you have invested energy to level up the node, withdrawl of contribution points will reset this.

You need to visit a Node Manager in person to activate it but you can withdraw from anywhere any node through the map – as long as it is not connected to two other nodes. Basically you can only withdraw from activated nodes on the outskirts of a node network.

You can also further invest in a node using energy. This will increase the nodes level. The higher the level, the more loot drops you will get from monsters in this area.

Workers

Workers

In Black Desert, you can hire Workers to help gather materials for you from nodes you have connected.

Hiring and Firing

Workers are shared across your family, rather than character-specific. At a larger city’s work supervisor you can spend 5 energy to see a random available worker varying in race and quality. Refreshing the random selection costs 5 energy each time.

Once you have found a worker you wish to hire, you spend a sum of silver ranging from 1,500 silver to 90,000 silver to hire the worker for use out of the city your purchased it in. The worker can lodge anywhere in the region the city is in.

As long as there is a node connection you can assign workers to work in other regions – but cannot move a worker’s lodging to another region. That means his work efficiency will drop if he has to travel far between the place of his lodging and work place.

Certain NPC’s can sell higher tier workers if you have gained enough Amity with them.

The map has on the bottom right a button to open your worker management screen. It lists all workers belonging for the region selected on the map (so switch between the maps regions to manage workers in different regions!). You can fire workers through that menu if you chose so.

Assigning Jobs

Workers can be assigned to resource nodes, workshops or banking.

To assign a worker to gather a resource and bring it back to the regions storage you need to unlock all connecting nodes between the work location and the worker’s city of origin by spending contribution points. You must also have spent contribution points on both the final location node and the resource node belonging to it.

If you assign workers to a workshop they will take resources from storage, process it and put the resulting good back into storage – provided there are empty slots. Worker can craft a wide array of items but which item depends on the type of workshop you assign them to. Once again all nodes between the lodging of a worker and the workshop have to be connected and they will only access the regional storage. So having good A in storage at region X will not be accessible if the worker lives in region Y.

The third option of jobs workers can perform is to send them to investment nodes with gold bullions in your storage in hopes that they bring back interest. With this method, you will always be guaranteed that your investment will be returned in the least. This option is the longest single action for workers to perform in Black Desert.

Action Points

Worker consume Action Points from a limited pool they have. When a worker runs out of Action Points, you can either use a food item to restore their points, or let them sit idle for a long period of time to recover. Conversely, you can fire the worker and just hire a new one.

Worker Management

The worker management is located at the bottom right of the world map, or through the mining pick button located beneath your experience bars. Via the worker management, you can check their job progress, restore their Action Points, send them through an upgrade test, cancel their remaining work order, or fire them.

Upgrade Tests

Upgrade tests are available to a worker once every 10 levels, with the chance to go up in quality by one level. They take 24 hours to complete, and you can only have one worker in a test at a time. Upgrade tests continue to progress even while logged out.
Worker Exchange
You can use a work supervisor NPC to buy and sell workers to other players, allowing you to directly profit from a developed worker. Multiple factors effect the price of the worker, such as quality(color), abilities, and level. Using the market, you may discover a worker tailored to a specific task you perform.
bottom of page