Tip: Never Log Out

If you've been to the docks in Velia or Hiedel, you probably know that AFK fishing is pretty popular. However, you may not realize that many of these people are after more than just fish. You see, Black Desert wants you online. All. The. Time.

Next time you're ready to walk away from the computer, you might want to consider minimizing BDO, instead of logging out.

Why?

Workers

If you have workers gathering resources or crafting, and you log out, they'll continue working until they finish their current task. However, they won't start a new task! If you have a lot of short tasks queued or a lot of workers with queued tasks, you may be missing out on a lot of worker time.

Farming

Did you know your crops only grow when you are logged in? That's right. When your character vanishes, your crops all go into stasis until you return.

Energy

This is probably the most obvious item on the list, but your character recovers energy much faster when they're logged in. Ten times faster, in fact.

Not only that, but you can put your character to rest in a bed to further increase your energy recovery. A bed bought with silver will boost your energy regen to twenty times the offline rate. A cash shop bed will grant you 30 times the offline rate.

Some people love the AFK features of Black Desert, and some people hate feeling obligated to be online all the time. Personally, I'm on the fence. It's nice to come back to a little extra money after being away from the game, but it also makes it feel wasteful to just log out at the end of a night, without bothering to set up a character fishing.

One final word of warning: if you do keep your character logged on all the time, be sure to at least switch characters once a day, or the game may not give you your 100 daily loyalty points. It's easy to forget about them when you don't have the icon blinking at the bottom of your screen.

Is Fishing Badly Designed?

Fishing is obviously pretty popular in Black Desert Online. Visit any shoreline within sight of a city or town, and you'll find it packed with battle-hardened heroes who have swapped their weapons of war for fishing rods.

However, just because something is popular doesn't mean it's a good thing. Is the fishing system good for the players? Is it good for the game as a whole?

Before we get into that contentious question, let's talk about how fishing fits into the game.

• The act of fishing always consumes fishing pole items, and may also consume some other single-use items like food and paste bait. It's possible to consume energy while fishing, but I don't think a lot of people actually do.
• The act of fishing produces some vendor trash, which is sold for silver. It also produces fish, which can be sold as trade goods for a limited time, or used in crafting - mainly cooking. Like all trade items, fish do not stack in inventory, so they take up a lot of space.
• During fishing, there is always some amount of wait time, where nothing is happening. During this wait time, you cannot look at the knowledge screen, processing screen or map (and therefore you cannot direct workers). The wait time is increased in areas that a lot of people fish and is decreased by items that improve fishing skill, such as paste bait.
• There are two types of fishing: active (manually controlled) and passive (no user involvement). Active fishing requires the player to perform a 2-step quick-time-event to reel in the fish, but is faster. Passive fishing doesn't require the user to do anything, but adds an extra 3 minute delay to every fishing cycle.

The Good

Fishing ties into other BDO systems nicely. Fish make sense as trade goods, since they're caught in a variety of places, and they would naturally be worth more in distant lands where that type of fish cannot be caught. They make sense as a ubiquitous cooking ingredient.

Fishing also contributes to the feeling of realism in the world. Over-fishing legitimately affects the viability of fishing in many areas, and encourages people to seek out less popular fisheries. The limited time period where fish "go bad" also feels realistic, as well as the option of being able to dry the fish for a lower-quality, but more durable product.

Active fishing gives players a relaxing activity to pursue that demands much less attention than combat.

Passive fishing gives players the opportunity to walk away from the game while their character continues performing a viable money-making activity. However, inventory space limitations, fishing pole durability, and the extra 3-minute wait ensure that active fishing is more rewarding than passive fishing, which is fair.

The Bad

The mandatory wait time forces the player to do nothing during the majority of time spent fishing. Being unable to work on production, direct workers, or even plan your next move on the map means you're pretty much forced to just stare at the bobber and wait. This is not exactly an engaging experience. That may be fine for someone who wants to watch Netflix while they play, but for people who just want to get the fish they need for a quest or for crafting, this tedium does not improve their game experience.

The quick-time-events for actually catching the fish are complicated enough that you do have to pay some attention, but not really challenging for most players. You can't completely tune out, the way you might when clicking the bobber in World of Warcraft. You also can't feel any real satisfaction in the act of reeling in a fish, because it's too easy. And the occasional time when you do manage to mess up the quick-time-event feels extremely irritating, especially after waiting several minutes for a fish to bite.

The fact that passive fishing (and other AFK money-making ventures) exist means a certain amount of guilt for any player who wants more silver, but doesn't leave their character fishing while they're away. Players who consistently fish while AFK will have a not-insignificant advantage in the long term. For players with limited time to play, setting up AFK fishing at the end of a session, and selling the results at the start of the next session can feel like an annoying obligation.

The Conclusion

So, is the fishing system in BDO good or bad? My vote is somewhere in the middle. 

I love the immersive details, and the way fishing fits so nicely into other systems like trade, cooking and knowledge. I like the extra silver. But fishing can also be incredibly tedious if you're not in the mood, and it can feel like an obligation sometimes. I'll admit that I've been forcing myself to occasionally just log out instead of setting up an overnight fishing expedition, to fight the feeling that I'm being wasteful whenever I'm not making money AFK.

What about you? Do you love fishing, hate it, or a little of both? Do you fish actively, or do you only take out your rod before you turn off your monitor for the night? Let me know what you think, in the comments.

The First Week - My Impressions so Far

Alright, if you started at the official BDO launch, it hasn't been a week yet. Actually, even if you did get early access, it hasn't been a week yet. Still, I think it has been long enough to get some first impressions.

The Launch

First, there were a few problems with the launch. People who pre-ordered were sometimes waiting days to get their bonus items. Some people selected one server to create a character, and later found out it had been created on an entirely different server. Some of them sent all their pre-order bonus items to servers where they now had no characters.

Overall, these launch issues were pretty standard stuff for an MMO and were largely confined to the "soft-launch". Daum addressed them, to the satisfaction of some players, and the dissatisfaction of others. There wasn't an excessive amount of downtime or major issues. I think the launch was relatively successful. I wasn't hit by any of the bugs though, so that obviously affects my perspective.

Every server and most channels seem to be very busy continuously since launch. They haven't announced any additional servers (a la Blade and Soul). You can take that as a lack of success, or just good/lucky planning.

There seem to be a lot of players having a good time. There are also a lot of people in channel chat, asking questions about a wide variety of things. The depth of the game seems to have hooked a lot of players.

On the other hand, every 5-10 minutes, someone feels the need to shout about how utterly terrible the game is on channel chat. Some are probably just trolling for reactions. However, I think this will be one of those love-it-or-hate-it games that generates a lot of internet name-calling.

My Impressions

I will say right up front - I am one of the people who loves the game. It is not without flaws, but the good parts have been outshining them for me.

There is a huge variety of things to do. Not just quests and killing things, but building your empire of production and workers, trading, farming and gathering. You'd be hard-pressed to find another MMO with so many things to do that don't require you to kill a single monster. It's incredibly refreshing.

As a result of this, it's easy to get distracted. I've played quite a bit, and I admit I haven't gotten a character to level 20 yet. I keep telling myself I should go kill something. And then I end up building a raft, or running from quest to quest for hours.

Quests and Flow

Some people have claimed that the abundance of quests and having an actual storyline disqualify Black Desert Online from being a "sandbox" MMO. I think this is misguided.

In World of Warcraft and the many "theme park" games that have followed its example, the tutorials and quests grab you and push you through the game. You complete each quest hub in sequence and the game leads you to the next.

BDO certainly has quests that lead you around and teach you things about the game, but it hardly feels like you're being led around by the nose. In fact, everything is spread out, and if you try to do all the quests, you quickly feel like you are being pulled in a hundred different directions.

There are so many quests. They have far more variety than most MMOs. And a ton of them are repeatable daily. It's quite possible to just run quest after quest after quest until they fill all your available play time. I had to make a rule for myself to only do the "main" quests, and ignore (most) repeatable quests. BDO is laid out like a banquet of activities, and it's largely up to the player to pick what interests them and pursue it.

The game doesn't hold your hand. If you're used to the "theme park" tutorials guiding you, you will start out feeling like you don't understand most of what's going on. The supposed tutorial is short and barely teaches you anything. However, you'll have some quests to follow, and you'll start learning. You might find something that really interests you. Maybe you get excited about the idea of taming a horse, or making a boat. And you can ask channel chat, or do a few google searches, and start figuring that out.

If you just keep exploring, doing some quests, and trying new things, the game will teach you. It's not a focused tutorial. Instead, it requires you to seek it out. However, over the course of a couple days, I've found quests that walked me through farming, gathering various resources, production, workers and nodes, cooking, making tools, building boats, trading, fishing, conversation, and how to use my skills. Even the ambient spoken dialog of the NPCs often gives you really helpful hints about how to play!

Black Desert Online gives you everything you need to learn how to play. It just doesn't shove it down your throat. It doesn't point you in a particular direction. It lets you pick the direction, and then helps you a little bit along the way.

This is going to turn a lot of people off of the game. It's perfectly understandable - not everyone wants to go through the confusing bits to get to the meat of the game. That's okay. BDO seems to have a great sense of what it is, and who it's for. It sticks to its guns, instead of trying to please everyone. This necessarily limits the audience, but it also creates a more focused game that is going to satisfy the people who like what's on offer.

Leveling

There are a lot of different "levels" in Black Desert Online. You have a skill level for different crafts, for trade, horsemanship, farming, etc. You gain separate experience points for skills, for contribution, and for your "main" level (which mostly only relates to combat). Splitting all of these things apart facilitates that feeling that you have a lot of different options. You can spend a lot of time working on your cooking and get really good at it. Then you can look at all your other experience bars and levels and let them guide you in other directions.

The downside though, is that "main" level, combat level, is still put front and center. It has a bigger number and a bigger experience bar than the others. People still feel like this level is the true indicator of your character's progress (especially if they come from the world of "theme park" MMOs).

As a result, you can spend a lot of time doing something like cooking. You can really enjoy it and honestly make a lot of progress. But if you're stuck in the habit of worrying about that "main" level, you may feel like your accomplishment is hollow. I don't think the game encourages this kind of thinking a lot, but it might take a change of mindset for some players.

Itemization

Black Desert Online has a lot of items, but not necessarily in the right places to satisfy players.

There are tons of items involved in the crafting system, and this gives it a lot of depth. For the person who loves crafting, it's satisfying to mine ore, chop wood, refine and combine ingredients, possibly using your army of workers, and eventually build all that stuff up into a boat or a wagon. This is the sort of thing BDO is great at.

For those who like trade or collecting, there are a lot of good options too. The way fishing feeds into the trade system is nice. The variety of items dropped by monsters is nice too. You get some vendor trash to sell at shops, some trade items, and some items that can be saved up and traded in bulk for money or other items. There's a nice variety.

For the folks who love combat, the itemization is lacking. There isn't a wide variety of gear. Even worse, many players feel like the equipment available in-game looks terrible, and you're basically forced to spend $20 or more in the cash shop if you want your character to not look homeless or stand out from the crowd of other homeless characters. This seems to be a general trend in MMOs - I've seen the same arguments in GW2 (although it's much less of a problem there). Game companies are going to have to figure out how to address this and still make money.

Combat

This is perhaps the biggest item I am not qualified to talk about in detail. I've only scratched the surface of the combat system. That said, I like it. I think it's one of the best combat systems in MMOs today.

The combos can feel a little daunting when you're used to just tapping the number keys. Additionally, if you haven't memorized the combos for your skills and don't have a good idea when to use different skills, the combat feels clunky and slow. This will probably cause some people to leave the game fairly early on.

However, as you begin to get the hang of it, the combat becomes fast and smooth. You learn how to dodge away from enemies, do big, slow hits and small, quick hits, and you learn how to refill your MP or HP on the fly and when you need to use potions.

There is a big, ugly learning curve, but the combat feels progressively better the more time you put into it. Once you get the hang of it, the Black Desert combat system is equal to, or better than any other action-combat MMO on the market today.

Little Things

• Leaderboards are awesome - It's a small thing, but it 's cool to see how you compare to the rest of the population in particular areas. The fact that I am fairly high up on farming (despite doing very little actual farming) tells me that most of the players haven't so much as touched a seed or a fence. It's also cool (or maybe disheartening?) to see how rich I am compared to the rest of the players. Not rich. Not rich at all...
• Clumsy characters are awesome - Of course, some people will hate this. It sure ain't Assassin's Creed. Players can climb, but they need a lot of ledges to do it, and it's easy to fall, or almost fall. Horses are also challenging to handle. I've witnessed people launch themselves off cliffs by accident. This can be annoying, but I think it adds to the feeling of playing a real person in a real world. You can't scamper up the side of a building like a squirrel. You can't fly like superman around town. Magic and combat prowess aside, you're largely an ordinary person. Hopping on that horse for a high-speed jaunt feels good, but not over-the-top. Climbing to a high place can feel rewarding because it's not terribly easy to find the right footholds or make the jumps.
• The knowledge system is great. Yes, it mostly boils down to the sorta-kinda-interesting conversation mini-game, and increasing your maximum energy. But knowledge is just so well integrated into all aspects of the game. You learn new pieces of knowledge by killing monsters, or butchering and skinning animals, or talking to people, completing quests, discovering new areas, and crafting new things. Everything you would consider to be a piece of knowledge is pretty much represented as such in the game, from soup recipes to geography to politics.

So, is the Game Dead Yet?

That's right. Once you get about a week in, it's about time for the internet trolls to come out of the woodwork and start proclaiming the death of the game. They'll be wrong, as they usually are. The game community feels big and healthy. People have complaints of course, because the game certainly isn't perfect, and people are people.

Honestly, I think there will be a pretty big chunk of players who leaves within the first month. Maybe more than the average MMO. A lot of people are going to get past the challenging surface of the game, into the fun of the deep systems. And some people will get there and just not like those systems.

I suspect the game will have a lot of staying power too, though. It scratches an itch that a lot of people have been feeling. A good-looking, modern sandbox MMO. It has some new and interesting ideas. It eschews a lot of the core ideas of theme park MMOs, and WoW specifically. Also, interestingly, ArcheAge seems to have primed this community, only to let them down with blatent pay-to-win mechanics, so those players are flocking to Black Desert in droves. From what I've heard, they all seem to love it.

I think that's enough analysis for now. I need to weed my farm and check on my workers. I'll do an update in a couple weeks, once the "honeymoon" period is over and we see how people have settled into the game. Until then, expect more guides, tips, and assorted BDO fun. See you in the game.

Tip: Selling Items

There are a few different ways to sell different items in Black Desert Online. Knowing the differences can make you a lot more money.

Trade Items

These are bought and sold by traders. Fish and some items dropped by monsters are trade items, and can only be sold to traders.

For trade items, it's important to connect all the nodes between the place of origin, and the trader you're selling to. If they're not connected, your base price will only be 30% of normal.

You can raise the price even more if you sell far away from place of origin, and if you do the "bargaining" game (which is mostly luck, as far as I can tell).

Vendor Trash

These are junk items. They say "can be sold to a vendor for a low amount". And that's pretty much all they're good for.

Marketplace Items 

These items have a "Marketplace Information" section in their description, with a HIGH and LOW sale price. These items can be bought and sold on the Marketplace (a.k.a. auction house). All equipment falls into this category.

Exchangeable Items

A certain amount of these items can be turned in to an NPC for a reward. Sometimes it's more money than they'd normally sell for. Sometimes it's other items, some type of experience, or knowledge.

Many of these items even have several different NPCs that want them, and different items to exchange for.





Right-click one of these items to bring up a mini-menu that lets you target the exchange NPCs, or track the amount of the item that you've collected.

This way, when you're trying to farm enough of the item to turn in, you get an easy counter right next to your mini-map, so you don't have to keep opening your inventory.















Bonus Tip: Want to know more about an item? Just Shift-left-click on it to bring up its wiki entry.

Tip: Converting Silver to Gold

Unlike many MMOs, money actually weighs you down in Black Desert Online. As your wealth grows, you may start to feel like your silver coins are taking up too much of your carrying capacity. This especially becomes a problem when you have a lot of silver in one town that you'd like to move to another.

However, there's an easy solution. Silver coins can be exchanged to gold ingots and back again. These ingots weigh less than their equivalent in silver. Talk to any storage manager and select "Currency Exchange" to exchange your silver for gold, then move it where you want it, and exchange it for silver again.

Be aware, there is a 0.1% conversion fee. (For example, you pay 100,100 silver for 1G, but selling 1G only gets you 100,000).

Gold ingots come in several sizes.

• 1G (100 thousand silver coins)
• 10G (1 million silver coins)
• 100G (10 million silver coins)
• 1000G (100 million silver coins)

Tip: Convert Potions

Ever find yourself with a stack of potions that are too weak for your level? Don't toss them. They can be upgraded into better potions!

You can exchange 2 beginner potions for 1 small potion at Lara (General Goods Vendor) in Heidel. This works for HP and MP potions.

Other potions can be upgraded 3:1 by using the Processing life skill, through simple alchemy.

Energy - Everything You Need to Know

This is a post in the "Everything You Need to Know" series. These posts dig deep into core topics of Black Desert Online to show you exactly how they work. If I've missed anything, please leave a comment or send me a message through the sidebar, and I'll update this post.

What is it?

Energy is a very important resource in Black Desert Online. It is like a limited currency that can be spent on different things. Unlike contribution points, each character on your account has their own energy points. This means each character you create will give you more energy to spend at any given time. Energy naturally regenerates, so if you find yourself running low, you can always wait a few minutes to get some more.

How Do I Increase my Maximum Energy?

Acquire Knowledge. You can gain knowledge by exploring new areas, killing different types of monsters, talking to NPCs, and many other things. (View your knowledge with the H key, or from the Esc menu.)

Your maximum energy is increased by filling up knowledge "groups". These groups consist of related pieces of knowledge - like all the different types of imps in an area, or all the interesting NPCs in a town. Your maximum energy will increase when you finish a group, and often it will also increase when you get the group half-complete.

Be aware that you can only unlock each piece of Knowledge once per account (not per character). However, maximum energy is shared across all the characters on your account.

How Do I Gain Energy?

1. Natural Regeneration - Any character that is online will regenerate 1 point of energy every 3
   minutes. Characters that are offline will regenerate 1 point of energy every 30 minutes.
2. Sleep in a Bed - Beds can be deployed in a house that you've designated as a residence. Sleeping in a bed bought with silver will regenerate 2 points of energy every 3 minutes. Cash shop beds will regenerate 3 points of energy every 3 minutes. Offline characters cannot sleep in a bed, so they can't get the increased regeneration bonus.
3. Complete Quests - Many quests reward energy upon completion.

How Can I Spend Energy?

NPCs:

1. Dialog options - Many NPCs (and even some objects in the world) have dialog options that cost some energy and reward you with a piece of knowledge.
2. Conversation mini-game - When talking to an NPC, use the "conversation" option to start the mini-game. This will give you the opportunity to discuss bits of knowledge that you've acquired that are interesting to that NPC. Starting the mini-game costs energy, but continuing through multiple rounds once you've started does not cost additional energy.
3. Theft - Some NPCs have a "theft" option that allows you to attempt to steal from them. The attempt will cost energy (regardless of whether it was successful or not).
4. Greet an NPC - Any NPC with an amity rating will have a "greet" option. This allows you to spend energy to slightly increase their amity value. This is usually not a good way to spend energy, as you can get much more amity through the conversation mini-game, once you have knowledge that the NPC is interested in.
5. Bargain with a trader - For 5 energy, you can attempt to increase the price of items you are selling.
6. Proof of defense - Sometimes a settlement will come under attack from monsters. These monsters will drop a "defense token" item, specific to that settlement. These tokens can be traded to an NPC (in their item description). The NPC will have a dialog option that costs 3 energy and several tokens, but rewards you with contribution experience.

Gathering and crafting:

1. Gather resources - Resources like wild plants, trees, and ore can be found throughout the world. Gathering from these costs 1 energy.
2. Crafting - Different crafts cost varying amounts of energy to complete.
3. Go fishing - If you hold down the spacebar while casting, you can cast further. Going above 10 on the meter costs energy, but will improve your chances of catching something good.
4. Farming - Each time you plant or gather crops from a farm plot, it costs 1 energy.
5. Milking a cow - Milking a cow costs 5 energy.

Nodes and workers:

1. Node investment - Once you've activated a node, you can invest energy into it. This will increase the loot drops from monsters killed in that node's area.
2. Contract workers - Every time you ask a work supervisor NPC to show you a new worker for hire, it costs 5 energy. 

Other:

1. Speak in world chat - Yes, that's right. Every time you talk in global chat, it costs you energy.
2. Learning skills - When you learn skills from a skill trainer, it's free. If you learn them out in the field (away from skill trainer), it will cost you energy.

Launch Day!

It's launch day for Black Desert Online. Of course, thanks to the variety of head-start pre-order options, many of you have already been playing. But by the time this post goes live, the game should be open for everyone.

EDIT: Apparently the maintenance was extended by a couple hours. That's MMO launches for you. The patch is now available though.

If you pre-ordered and you forgot to claim your bonus items, you can do so on your account page at https://www.blackdesertonline.com/myinfo/

If you have 7-day friend invites, you should be able to send those out and claim them sometime today as well.

Tip: The Best Ways to AFK

For better or worse, Black Desert Online is a game that wants you logged in as much as possible. It has several features that give you advantages for staying online, even when you're away from the keyboard.

So how do you get the most of your AFK time? Well, you have a few options.

Fishing

AFK fishing is built into the game, making it the most popular AFK activity among players. However, it's not entirely obvious to new players how it works. 

You have to equip a fishing pole and stand by the water, just as you would for normal fishing. Cast as normal. Then...just walk away. You'll get fish on the line, and eventually, if you don't do the fishing mini-game, your character will reel in the fish for you. AFK fishing is quite a bit slower than "active" fishing, so you won't catch fish as quickly when AFK.

Just like normal fishing, AFK fishing will use up the durability of your equipped fishing pole. It will eventually need to be replaced. You'll also want to have your inventory as empty as possible to hold all those fish.

When you first start, there is a check box to "Throw away useless items caught during auto-fishing," which you can use if you want to keep more inventory space open for better catches.

Resting

Your character can sleep while you sleep!

You can build a bed in a house you've designated as a residence. Using the bed will cause your character to rest (but only if they're logged in). Resting will improve your energy regeneration rate.

Beds bought with silver will give you energy regen of 2 points per 3 minutes.

Beds bought from the cash shop will boost your energy regen to 3 points per 3 minutes.

Crafting

Maybe your energy is full and you have lots of raw materials. Well, in that case, you might want to start your character on a production task, like heating ore, or a crafting task, like cooking a hundred plates of fried fish, or mugs of beer. You can never have too much fried fish and beer.

Of course, the larger your maximum energy, and the more energy and materials you have, the more effective your time will be.

If you're able to check in periodically, you can also alternate between crafting and resting in a bed to speed energy recovery.

Running

Any time your character runs, it will slowly level up your stamina. Thanks to the auto-run-to feature, it's easy to run your character around quite a bit without having to interact much with the game.

On the world map, pick a location that's far away from you, then right-click to set it as your navigation target. Exit the world map and press "T" to auto-run to your target. Now you can also walk away and do something else for a while.

If you'd like to automate the process even further, you can use macros or clever gamepad tricks, like the stuff described here. However, this is technically against the terms of service, so do this at your own risk! (Note: The A and W keys together will run you in a circle when you're holding a fishing rod.)

In some other regional versions of BDO, a feature has been added that allows you to set multiple navigation targets in a loop, but this feature is not currently in the NA/EU version. It is possible that it will be added in a future update.

More Running

Leveling your strength is similar to leveling your stamina. Instead of just running, however, you need to run around with trade goods in your inventory.

Unfortunately, trade goods make you a target for bandits. These are the little black and red icons on your world map, and if you run into their area with trade goods, they'll pounce on you, and when you come back to your keyboard, you'll be sad.

For this, you pretty much have to use macros or hardware shenanigans to level while AFK, at least for now. When the auto-looping features from other versions get added, this will be much easier.

Eating

Your maximum health is leveled up by eating cooked foods. The most effective way to level it up is to eat 30-minute foods every 30 minutes.

First, you'll need a supply of this type of food in your inventory. Again, you will also need a software program that can emulate mouse clicks. Open the inventory and set the auto-clicker program to click the food every 30 minutes.

This is a bit wasteful compared to simply using the food in the course of your normal play, but if you don't mind the cost, it will level your health quickly.

More Tips and Tricks

By the time this post goes live, readers who opted for the Conqueror's pre-order package will be playing the game! I hope the servers are running smooth as butter for you.

Whether you're already playing or waiting impatiently, we're all itching for as much info as we can get. So I've grabbed a couple useful videos from around the community to scratch that itch.

First up, Njoy32Gaming has 29 tips for beginners, in only 5 minutes:

If you've got time for something a little longer, take a look at Paindog's "Things I wish I knew before playing Black Desert Online."

I found a few good morsels in these videos. Hopefully you did too. For all you Conquerors out there, have fun playing! I'm only moderately jealous. The rest of us will join you soon.

What to do in the First Few Hours of Black Desert Online?

With the NA/EU launch approaching, I thought I'd share some tips for your first few hours of Black Desert Online, based on my experiences in closed beta 2. BDO is a fairly open sandbox game, and it has a few unusual mechanics that you are mostly expected to just figure out as you play. This may feel disorienting for players who are used to Western theme park MMOs.

I plan to do some more detailed guides shortly after launch, when I can actually verify things and take screenshots on the live client. But for now, here are six tips for getting the most out of your launch day.

Make some alt characters.

Whether you're the sort of person who likes to try every class before committing, or the sort who picks a character and sticks with it forever, it's useful to have alts right away.

The main advantage you will get when first starting out is energy. When your account is brand-new, your maximum energy is very low. (Your account has a max energy value that is the same on all your characters, and it increases as you gain knowledge.) So, at first it will be fairly easy to run out of energy.

Energy regeneration is time-gated, but having alts can help. If you burn through all your energy on your main, you can switch to an alt and use their energy. Just be aware that energy regenerates much slower for offline characters. While you're playing, your energy regenerates 1 point per 3 minutes. Offline characters only get 1 point per 30 minutes.

You can also make good use of your alts by spreading them out in the world a bit. Unlike many MMOs, the towns in BDO have their own warehouses, stables, etc. If you left an item in storage halfway across the world, it can be a long walk to retrieve it. However, if you have an alt nearby, you can make it a one-way delivery instead of taking your main there and back again.

Alts can also be useful for buying nodes. You might be off doing quests on your main character and gain a contribution point. But you want to spend that point connecting a far-away node. Luckily, your contribution points are shared across characters, so you can use a nearby alt to grab that node.

Do every quest you see, especially your Black Spirit quests.

You may have seen people talk about how grinding in specific locations is the fastest way to level in BDO. This is true, but quick leveling isn't everything.

Quests give you a lot of good stuff. They refill your energy and grant experience toward contribution points, which you will need to connect nodes, use workers, and buy houses. Your Black Spirit quests will get you potions, skills, additional inventory space, and an easy first mount.

Spend energy carefully.

When your account is new, your max energy is low and there are lots of things to spend energy on. You can gather, purchase or upgrade nodes, use workers, or play the conversation mini-game with NPCs. Even using world chat costs energy!

So, until you have a high max energy (and maybe a bunch of alts full of energy too), you'll want to think about what you spend it on. If you really want to build up your empire of workers, you may want to save it for node and worker management. If you'd rather just dabble in crafting, you may want to spend it on gathering. Or maybe you want to bump up the amity of a particular NPC so you can unlock their bonuses.

At the start of closed beta 2, not knowing what I was doing, I made the mistake of wasting all my energy "greeting" NPCs. All this does is raise their amity a point or two. It is much less efficient than the conversation mini-game. So don't be like me: use your energy carefully, at least until you have enough that you don't need to worry about running out quite so easily.

Another easy mistake: training skills outside of town. It's not obvious, but this uses energy. If you go to the skill trainer instead, there's no energy cost.

Explore.

Whenever you're in a town or city, seek out all the NPCs with icons over their heads. The quests are worth doing, but even just talking to them is beneficial - you'll gain knowledge, which increases your max energy by one, and gives you more topics to talk about in the conversation mini game. Plus, if you like getting into deep fantasy worlds, you'll find that there are actually a lot of interesting connections between the characters, and they occasionally give you useful advice or information.

Explore out in the wilderness, too. There are nodes everywhere. Chances are good that if you see an empty space on the map, there's a node there to find. You may find farms or other gathering spots with a particular food that you'll want for cooking or crafting later. If nothing else, the world is gorgeous, and you might just find an amazing view.

Figure out your skill combos.

If you do your Black Spirit quests, you'll get an introduction to combat early on, but it basically just has you hit a couple of keys without explaining what they do. And honestly, you can just spam any skills you want for the first few levels and have little problem killing things.

Around level 10, once you've acquired a few skills, it's worth going through them and figuring out the combos and when they're useful. Which skill can you use to regenerate your mana? Which skills are ranged, and which ones are melee? Which ones are area-of-effect?

You can bind skills to hotkeys to use, but you shouldn't! Skills activated via hotkeys actually use more resources than the same skills activated with key combos. Memorizing the combos takes more work than traditional MMOs, but you'll get used to it quickly. And BDO's excellent keyboard layout for the key combos keeps all the keys you need very close at hand.

Sell items to the right person.

Very early on, you'll start picking up different kinds of items, and it's not necessarily obvious what you should do with them, or even that they're different.

Vendor trash is the easiest type to deal with. These items have no purpose, and can simply be sold to any NPC with a shop. These items descriptions say something like "this can be sold to a vendor for a small amount".

Some items can be sold on the auction house. These have a low and high price listed in the item description in red and green. They can be put up for auction in a town. Usually, even the minimum auction price is many times higher than the price you will get for selling to a vendor. This includes equipment, although it will have to be repaired if it is damaged.

Trade goods are items that can be sold to a trader. There are a number of factors that go into the price you get for trade goods, and I'll probably do an in-depth post in the near future.

Finally there are certain "exchangable" monster drops. These are typically dropped by a specific monster type, and you can trade a certain number of them to a specific NPC for a reward, such as a consumable, or a lot of silver. The item description will say how many you need, who will exchange them, and what reward you will get.

Saving these items up and trading them in is typically much more profitable than just selling them to a vendor. The items that can be exchanged for silver usually give at least double the silver than if you had vendored them. The down-side is that you have to collect enough of the item to do the exchange.

Have fun!

Hopefully you found some helpful information here. Come back soon; I'll be posting frequently as soon as we're able to get on the servers and play. In the mean time, have fun!

Beginnings

Black Desert caught me by surprise.

I didn't follow the development. I didn't pay attention to the launches in Korea, Japan or Russia. I knew some people were excited about it, but I never dug too deep into why. But I love to try new MMOs, so I signed up for beta testing on a whim.

When I stepped into Closed Beta 2, I quickly realized this was something interesting. The slick combat. The crafting and trading and worker systems. Knowledge and conversations. A world that legitimately looks like a real place, with realistic geography and weather and flora and fauna.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those unapologetic fanboys. The game clearly has some issues too (cough-grind-cough). But I'm excited to see a game where developers are trying new and sometimes wild things, and throwing away some of the stagnant concepts that have burdened MMOs for years.

I've only been following the game for a short time, so I'm not exactly an expert. But I'll be heading out into the wilderness and figuring it out. As I learn from my adventures, I'll be sharing my discoveries and thoughts here. Hopefully you'll find them interesting and informative.

If you're planning to get into the game and you haven't pre-ordered yet, today is the last opportunity. If you feel like dropping some extra cash, you can get the virtual bells and whistles, and you'll be able to log in as early as Feb. 28. If you don't feel like spending quite so much, you'll be logging in with me, in the first days of March. Either way, I'll see you in-game!