BDO Beer & Cooking Guide (Black Desert Online)

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. Chicken Meat is also a good resource for making Imperial Cooking Boxes called Apprentice’s Five-Grain Chicken Porridge Cooking Box: 20 Five-Grain Chicken Porridges (Ground Bird Meat x2 + Mineral Water x2 + Grain x3)

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 to Cook Beer: the Very Basics of Cooking

After you have amassed a nice stockpile of grains, you are finally ready to get cooking (literally)!

First, you will need to purchase a residence in town. There are many smaller homes for only 1 Contribution Point. Click on the Velia icon on the world map (M), then select “Residence” under the drop down filter. This will highlight all available Residences that you can purchase with your CP.

Click a blue house and a window will open for you to purchase the home. Click on “Residence” to make sure you convert your home into the correct type, so that you can place Cooking Utensils inside it.

Cooking Utensils:
Next, buy a Cooking Utensil from a cooking vendor, the Marketplace, or craft one yourself at a tool workshop. If you are new to the game with little Contribution, money, and resources, just purchase a cheap Cooking Utensil from the vendor. David Finto is the local chef at the inn in Veila and sells everything needed to make beer except for the grain. Major cities and towns will likely have a chef, cook, innkeeper, or another vendor that sells cooking supplies and Cooking Utensils. Some higher durability Cooking Utensils have a penalty buff that increases cooking time and are best used for extended periods of AFK cooking or overnight cooking. Each batch cooked will reduce the durability on the cooking utensil by 1. A Balenos Traditional Cooking Utensil has 500 durability, so you can make 500 batches of beer before the utensil becomes useless and needs to be discarded.

Cooking Vendors:
Cooking utensils can be sold by Innkeepers, Farm Vendors, Chefs and Material Vendors. To quickly find the nearest Cooking vendor, press the NPC button on the top right of the screen and then click the turkey icon labeled Cooking. This will create an auto-path so you can purchase the vendor supplies for beer making.

Cooking Utensils to Craft or Purchase:

Cooking Utensil	Durability	Buffs	Vendor Price	Crafted	Crafted Ingredients
Cooking Utensil	100		1,000	Level 1 Tool Workshop	15 Rough Stone 10 Melted Iron Shard 2 Black Stone Powder
Balenos Traditional Cooking Utensil	500	Cooking time increased by 5 seconds	50,000	Level 1 Tool Workshop	8 Rough Stone 10 Melted Iron Shard 10 Black Stone Powder
Intermediate Cooking Utensil	500			Level 2 Tool Workshop	25 Rough Stone 10 Log 15 Melted Iron Shard 7 Black Stone Powder
Serendia Traditional Cooking Utensil	1250	Cooking time increased by 6 seconds		Level 2 Tool Workshop	15 Rough Stone 20 Log 15 Melted Iron Shard 15 Black Stone Powder
Advanced Cooking Utensil	900	Cooking time decreased by 1 second		Level 3 Tool Workshop	20 Polished Stone 5 Usable Scantling 20 Melted Iron Shard 14 Black Stone Powder
Calpheon Traditional Cooking Utensil	2000	Cooking time increased by 7 seconds		Level 3 Tool Workshop	15 Polished Stone 8 Maple Plywood 30 Melted Iron Shard 30 Black Stone Powder

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 (byproducts)
While cooking beer, you will also proc extra dishes, so be sure to have at least 7 free spaces in your inventory. Turn these into different NPCs for extra rewards like Contribution Points and Milk. To easily find the NPC, right click the dish and select NPC Location. Autopath (T button) and done. Northern Wheat Plantation is a level 30ish area near Calpheon City. To be safe, I suggest turning in your extra dishes in Heidel and Alejandro Farm.

Extra Dishes from Cooking Beer and their Rewards:

Cooking Beer Byproduct	Exchange Rate	Item Received	NPC Turn In	NPC Locations
Dish with More Ingredients	2	1 Beer	Villager (near cook Olivia)	Heidel or… Northern Wheat Plantation
Dish with Weird Texture	5	3,000 Silver	Villager (roasting pig on spit SE of Marketplace Director Cleia)	Heidel or… Northern Wheat Plantation
Taken Out Food	5	Cooking Experience	Villager (near cook Olivia)	Heidel or… Northern Wheat Plantation
Strongly Seasoned Dish	3	1 Milk	Xian Merchant Guild representative (near General Goods Vendor Lara)	Heidel or… Northern Wheat Plantation
Dish with Poorly Prepared Ingredients	5	Contribution Points	Beekeeper	Alejandro Farm or… Northern Wheat Plantation

How to Place & Use a Cooking Utensil
After you have purchased a residence and gathered your beer making ingredients, go inside your Residence and use the placement button at the top of your screen to install the cooking utensil. In the placement window, your cooking utensil will be represented by a small icon at the bottom of your screen. All placeable housing items in your inventory will be listed here inluding alchemy utensils and house furnishings.



Click the Cooking Utensil icon then mouse over to the room and click again. Press the down arrow key (or spacebar) to place the utensil. You may move or rotate the utensil if you wish. Press Esc key to exit placement window.

Approach the Cooking Utensil and press the R key to open up the cooking window. Recipes are only shown once you have discovered them, so use an online source to learn the ingredients or the ingame crafting knowledge (F2 button). Place the ingredients for 1 beer batch only in the cooking window, then choose the Continuous Production button to make more than 1 batch.



Once you have successfully learned the beer recipe, the next time you want to make it, all you have to do is select the Beer recipe in the drop down and the last 10 batches you made will appear in a new window. Select which batch you want to duplicate, and it will automatically add those ingredients to the cooking window for you.



At higher levels of cooking skill, it is possible to use less materials to make the same recipe, but the recipe is not guaranteed to succeed. When you fail the recipe, the ingredients are consumed in the process. Also the higher your cooking skill, the more procs you will make in one batch.  After your cooking skill reaches Skilled level 1, you may crit on making beer and make Cold Draft Beer which restores 3 worker stamina.

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

Items That Decrease Cooking Time < Base beer cooking time is 10 seconds. >

Icon	Cooking Time Reduction Item	Decreased by:	Acquired By:
	Teff Bread	0.3 seconds	Cooking Utensil (Beginner Lv.6) Teff Flour x5 + Mineral Water x3 + Leavening Agent x2 + Salt x2
	Teff Sandwich	0.5 seconds	Cooking Utensil (Professional Lv.1) Teff Bread x1 + Freekeh Snake Stew x1 + Grilled Scorpion x1 + Red Sauce x3
	Seafood Cron Meal	0.6 seconds	Simple Cooking Balenos Meal x3, Calpheon Meal x3, Margoria Seafood Meal x1, Ancient Cron Spice x1
	Advanced Cooking Utensil	1 second	Tool Workshop Level 3 20 Polished Stone, 5 Usable Scantling, 20 Melted Iron Shard, 14 Black Stone Powder
	Alchemy Stone of Life	0.5 – 2 seconds	Alchemy Tool (Skilled 5) 8x Shining Powder, 5x Blood of the Sinner, 6x Powder of Time, 9x Pure Powdered Reagent, 9x Clear Liquid Reagent
	Life Spirit Stone	1.1 seconds	RNG drop from Kamasylvia mobs
	Verdure Draught	1 second	Simple Alchemy Worker’s Elixir x3, Elixir of Swiftness x3, Elixir of Time x3, Tears of the Falling Moon x1
	Silver Embroidered Cook’s Clothes (up to +5 enhancement)	1-7 seconds	Costume Mill Lv.1 9 Cotton Fabric, 10 Powder of Earth, 15 Black Stone Powder
	Canape Costume Set	2 seconds	Pearl Shop Outfit