This Beer and Beginner Cooking Guide was originally written by Birdie, and was edited by me. It’s now kept current on GrumpyG. Thanks Birdie! ! I will update this Beer and Cooking Guide with any new BDO patches/changes. (Birdie currently enjoys cooking beer and feeding her hungry workers in Black Desert Online.)

Birdie’s Beer & Cooking Guide

Cooking in Black Desert Online is my favorite AFK Life Skill. It’s rewarding for a number of reasons. The biggest advantage Cooking brings, is that it rewards Contribution Points. It’s also a very easy Life Skill for beginners to BDO. Cooking ingredients are easily obtainable and it can even be profitable if done correctly. If you have a worker empire, you’ll soon find Cooking Beer to be a regular activity, unless you want to spend silver on buying Beer at the Marketplace.

One of the first things you learn when you start investing in nodes and assigning workers, is that they get hungry (and thirsty). For BDO newbies, cooking beer is a smart choice. This worker food recovers 2 worker Stamina (aka Action Points). If you are a beginner cook, this is one of easiest worker Stamina foods you can craft. Beer is a good Stamina food to level cooking, because grains are easy to obtain and the cost per Stamina is one of the cheapest of all worker foods.

BDO Beer Recipe (1 Batch of Beer)	Acquired By
5 Grain (aka Cereal or Starch: white/normal grade) (you may substitute 2 high-quality grains or 1 special grain or 1 high-quality + 2 white grade grains)	Nodes Farming Gathering
6 Mineral Water	Vendor
2 Leavening Agent	Vendor
1 Sugar	Vendor

NOTE: As of the July 18, 2018 patch, beginner cooks can make Grilled Bird Meat, which is also a good and inexpensive Stamina food for workers. Most players, who are interested in cooking, already send workers to the two Chicken Meat nodes outside of Velia, because they provide a valuable rare food of Eggs.

Grilled Bird Meat Recipe: Chicken Meat x2, Deep Frying Oil x6, Cooking Wine x2, Salt x1

Chicken Meat Node List: Bartali and Finto Farms (Velia)

Grilled Bird Meat is a good worker stamina food to make. There are few uses for Chicken Meat and this is one of them. Grilled Bird Meat might not be as convenient to use because it recovers 3 Stamina instead of Beer’s 2 Stamina. For example, when you go to recover your worker stamina, a worker who only needs 2 Stamina will not automatically eat this food via the feed all workers button unless you manually force him to. Forcing him to eat it by right clicking the food icon next to his icon would forfeit the 1 extra Stamina since he only needed 2 Stamina. But Grilled Bird Meat is an awesome food to use, especially when all your workers are running on empty from a long over night work session. The critical version recovers 4 Stamina.

BDO Grilled Bird Meat Recipe (1 Batch of Grilled Bird Meat)	Acquired By
Chicken Meat x2	Nodes
Deep Frying Oil x6	Vendor
Cooking Wine x2	Vendor
Salt x1	Vendor

Step By Step Beer Making Plan

1. Gather & Stockpile grains (or Chicken Meat if making Grilled Bird Meat)
2. Purchase Residence in town
3. Purchase Cooking Utensil and Ingredients
4. Install Cooking Utensil in Residence
5. Get Cooking lots of Beer!

BDO Beer Nodes: How to Get Grain for Cooking Beer

Grain is a must have item, for not only beer, but also many other cooking recipes. Any grain will work for making beer. BDO considers the following crops as grain: potatoes, corn, barley, wheat, and sweet potatoes. Normal quality grains can be gathered passively from nodes by workers, gathered by hand, or farmed.  High quality and special grains can be farmed with rented fences or gathered by a worker at Shuri Farm sweet potato node in Mediah as a crit.

Grain Nodes
Grain nodes in Veila cost a minimum of 3+ Contribution Points: 2 points for the main farm node, and 1 point for each grain subnode. Each node needs 1 worker to work it and each worker requires 1 lodging. Your first worker in Veila doesn’t require lodging (he will work free, but you must feed him). So, to begin passively collecting grain on one node, you will need a minimum of 3 Contribution Points. To collect grain on 2+ grain nodes you will need to purchase lodging. You can have a total of eight workers depositing goods from 8 subnodes into your Veila storage. Please be sure there is enough space at your storage manager to hold the crops that the workers will be colllecting. You need 1 space for each type of crop.

Side Note:

Velia offers a maximum of 8 workers, that cost a total of 6 Contribution Points in worker lodging. But, it is possible to assign workers from other cities to nodes around Veila if those nodes are connected to the other city. If you are just beginning your Node Empire though, you will not have enough Contribution Points to do that.

Worker Lodging for Veila Workers:

Lodging Location	Lodging Building & Room Number	Number of Lodgers	Contribution Cost	Purchase Requirement Chain	Total Collected Contribution Cost
Veila	Veila 1, Room 1	1	1	none	1
	Veila 1, Room 2	2	1	Veila 1, Room 1	2
	Veila 1, Room 3	2	1	Veila 1, Room 2	3
Toscani Farm	Balenos 6-1, Toscani Farm	2	3	none	3

To hire workers for chained nodes connected to Veila, visit the <Work Supervisor> Santo Manzi, in Veila. Each time you attempt to hire a worker, you will spend 5 energy. View our Knowledge & Energy Guide for how to acquire more energy. A random Giant, Human, or Goblin worker will be offered by the Work Supervisor. Naive (gray) workers are the lowest quality and should be avoided. Without too much energy spent, you should be able to acquire a Skilled Worker (blue). If you want to save your energy, you can see what workers are being offered for sale by other players by clicking the Worker Exchange button (otherwise known as the Slave Market).

If you need help learning how to connect nodes and hire workers, please see our detailed Worker Guide and Node Guide.

Gathering Grain by Hand
Grain can be actively gathered by hand near farms. Gathering takes 20 seconds for beginners who have no access to Guild buffs or gathering speed items. (2 seconds is the lowest gathering time with +5 Gathering, a shining tool, and a Serendia Special.) Each time you gather, 1 energy is used. Energy regenerates at 1 every 3 minutes while logged into the game. To increase your energy pool, work on completing Knowledge categories.

Gathering by hand, without a hoe equipped, will mostly yield weeds. Don’t vendor the weeds! They are used in Alchemy. Buy a hoe at the <Material Vendor> Zaaira in Veila, or at the Marketplace if you have enough silver. To find Zaaira, click the NPC icon in the upper right of your screen and click on the material icon. That will draw a path straight to her. Press T button to autopath. She sells Old Hoe for 55 silver, but it only has 10 durability. You will only be able to gather 10 times with it before it breaks and needs to be discarded. She also sells Improved Hoe for 50,000 silver with 30 durability. Improved Hoe shaves 10 seconds off your gathering time, but is costly.

 
Grain Nodes and Gathering Areas near Veila:

Grain Node	Main Contribution Point Cost	Subnodes	Subnode Contribution Cost	Hand Gathering Fields Nearby
Loggia Farm	2	Potato	1	Corn Potato
Toscani Farm	2	Corn	1	Corn
		Corn	1
Bartali Farm	2	Potato	1	Potato Corn Corn also at Marino Farm nearby
Finto Farm	2	Potato	1	Potato

The image below shows the location of all the Velia grain/cereal nodes you can purchase to make beer. ( I obtained the map’s background from somethinglovely.net Thanks Fam! )

Obtaining Grain with Farming
Farming also yields grain. You need seeds and a fence to start farming. Seeds can be acquired through gathering vegetation, the Marketplace, and seed vendors. A Withered Seed, sold by vendors, is the lowest quality seed, which will not yield very good results. But the good news is that you can breed them and sometimes obtain better seeds, which produce better crops. The next tier after Withered Wheat is the normal white grade Wheat Seed, which after about 5 hours from planting, will yield an average of 70 wheat. Camelia Loggia at the Loggia Farm in Veila sells Withered Wheat Seeds for 220 silver each.

The image below shows the location Camelia Loggia, who you can purchase Withered Wheat Seed from. It also shows the location of a Small Fence vendor, Martina Finto. ( I obtained the map’s background from somethinglovely.net Thanks Fam! )

Fences are rented from NPCs with Contribution Points. When you return the fence, your Contribution Points are refunded. Each fence type has a limited number of spaces for seeds. A small fence has 4 grid spaces. Grain seeds only take up 1 space each, so you can plant 4 grain seeds in 1 small fence.

Fence Rental NPC Locations & CP Costs:

Fence	Number of Spaces	Contribution Cost	Vendors That Rent Fences	Vendor Location	Nearest City
Small Fence	4	3	Martina Finto <Node Manager>	Finto Farm	Veila
			Enzo <Node Manager>	Dias Farmr	Calpheon
Plain Fence	7	6	Finlin <Material Vendor>	Tarif	Tarif
			Paola Toscani <Farm Vendor>	Toscani Farm	Veila
			Norma Leight <Node Manager>	Northern Wheat Plantation	Calpheon
			Mercianne Moretti <Node Manager>	Moretti Plantation	Heidel
			Mayeri <Furniture Dealer>	Trent	Trent
			Goolie Gianin <Node Manager>	Gianin Farm	Keplan
Strong Fence	10	10	Flaviano <Material Vendor>	Heidel City	Heidel
			Geranoa <Material Vendor>	Calpheon City	Calpheon
			Lashir <Material Vendor>	Altinova City	Altinova
Shabby Fence	1	0	Quest reward from Jemkas Wyrmsbane: Because I Like You (Requires Gathering: Beginner 7 or quest chain)	Northern Guard Camp, north of Heidel	Heidel

Click on the Farming Icon in the upper left of your screen to assign a worker to your fence for automated weed and pest control. Weeds and pests will slow down the growth rate of your crops if not taken care of. Weeding yourself, however will increase your farming skill. With normal quality seeds (white), you can expect to gather normal quality grain, and rarely high quality crops. You can gather your crop when it’s done growing after 100%. If you decide to breed your crop, keep in mind that seeds do not stack, so have plenty of space in your inventory. Five normal quality grains = 2 high quality grains = 1 special quality grain.


How Many Ingredients Should I Buy to Make Beer?
Buy and gather enough ingredients for several batches of beer. For example, if you purchased the cheapest and most economical basic Cooking Utensil for 1,000 silver, you will make 100 batches of beer because this utensil has 100 durability. Therefore, you would need enough ingredients for 100 batches of beer. For 100 beer recipes, purchase: 600 Mineral Water, 200 Leavening Agent, and 100 Sugar. You will also need to gather 500 grains.

Cooking Beer Produces Extra Goodies (Witch’s Delicacy byproduct)
While cooking beer, you will proc an extra dish, called Witch’s Delicacy. It is turned into the cooking vendor in Oliva for milk, beer, or CP/Cooking Experience. To easily find the NPC, right click the dish and select NPC Location. Autopath (T button) and done.

Witch’s Delicacy aka “the milk byproduct” has a 2% chance to be acquired each cook. That means every 500 recipes cooked, you can get 120 milk.

Read our guide on Witch’s Delicacy.

Cooking Basics

Please visit our Cooking Guide to learn more about how to cook.

Cooking Guide Highlights:

• Obtain the correct type of Cooking Utensil
• Obtain Residence housing
• Find Cooking Vendors, including the most rare and helpful ones
• Gear to speed up Cooking Time
• Basic Cooking User Interface

Worker Stamina Recovery Food:

Icon	Stamina Food	Stamina Recovered	Ingredients	Skill to Craft	Crit Version	Skill to Crit	Crit Stamina Recovered
	Beer	2	5 Grain, 6 Mineral Water, 2 Leavening Agent, 1 Sugar	Beginner Level 1	Cold Draft Beer	Skilled Level 1	3
	Grilled Bird Meat	3	Chicken Meat x2, Deep Frying Oil x6, Cooking Wine x2, Salt x1	Beginner Level 1	Steaming Hot Grilled Bird Meat	Skilled Level 1	4
	Oatmeal	5	9 Flour, 3 Milk, 3 Onion, 2 Honey	Apprentice 1	Refined Oatmeal	Skilled Level 9	6
	Fish Filet Chips	5	2 DriedFish, 7 Flour, 3 White Sauce, 2 Salt	Apprentice 1	Mouth-Watering Fish Fillet Chips	Skilled Level 9	6
	Cheese Pie	7	7 Cheese, 3 Butter, 5 Dough, 3 Egg	Apprentice 6	High Quality Cheese Pie	Professional Level 3	8