Originally written by Biohack (u/Biohack), who generously published a Money Making Guide in “How to make money in black desert online“. I did little to the guide but added pictures and a bit of formatting. It’s now kept on GrumpyG, with Biohack’s permission. Thanks Biohack!! I will update this Money Making Guide with any new updates from the money maker. 🙂 (Biohack is currently amassing too much silver in Black Desert Online! You can see for yourself by following Biohack on Twitch and Reddit.)
Biohack’s BDO Money Making Guide
The general concepts in this guide are accurate as of Nov 2018. The numbers (especially in the active income segment) are no longer accurate and there are certainly ways to make over 100M an hour as of the end of 2018. Lifeskill mastery will have large implications for the content here when it is released
Hey All Biohack here. “How do I make money in black desert?” Is a question that gets spammed on Reddit constantly, with something like 3 new posts asking basically exactly the same thing in the last 24 hours. I figured rather than reply to each of them, I’ll write up a little guide that I can post a link to every time this question comes up. Be forewarned this is aimed at brand new players and is going to be pretty basic. Here we go.
When asked “what life skills should I do to make money in black desert online?” legendary life skiller mickinx recommended the following three, gathering, cooking, and processing. I think this is great advice. To understand why you need to know the three ways one makes money in BDO. These are Passive income, AFK income, and Active income. Let’s talk about each and how those 3 lifeskills are related.
Passive income: Passive income is defined as income that is generated regardless of what your character is doing in game, you should try and leave your game on 24/7 to maximize this. Passive income is generally measured in silver per CP per day. This is because the most important thing when it comes to passive income is the number of contribution points you have. Silver per day per CP typically ranges from ~50k to over 1M. Combination CP/active time investments typically yield highest results with things like farming easily pushing over 200K+/cp/day when combined with cooking or trading.
Cooking is related to passive income because when cooking any recipe you have a chance to get the item “dish with poorly prepared ingredients”. This can be turned in for contribution points and, when you have 1-2 second cook time, is one of the best ways to increase your CP.
255 is the first significant soft cap in contribution gains and every player should strive to get at least 255 CP as quickly as possible. To increase your CP I recommend the following guides Calpheon daily route, and morrolans How I got 260+ contribution. To learn how to get the most silver out of your CP I recommend morrolan’s Advanced Node Guide.
AFK Income: Unlike passive income, AFK income requires that your character actually be doing something in game, however, as the name implies, what it doesn’t require is that you actually be at your computer. Processing is king when it comes to AFK income, hence the recommendation from mickin, however with the increasing price of relic shards and better drop rate in kamasilvia fishing has become more competitive. Profit from AFK income typically ranges from 1-3M per hour. Highest common AFK profits per hour are from processing Fir and Acacia but these resources are hard to get in large quantities. Processing wood generally nets the most money per hour with the limitation of only being able to AFK a few hours. Processing metal is good for longer AFK sessions because it is lighter and in some cases processes slower. It is very common to use remote desktop applications such as remotr from your phone or chrome remote desktop from another computer to refresh processing and feed workers while at work, school, etc…
For guides on processing I recommend my processing video and I also recommend checking out this spreadsheet which I maintain with current prices on NA server.
If you are interested in fishing I recommend moonraker’s kamasilve fishing guide and balzor’s guide on blackdesert analytics.
A note on Trading and trade crates: Trading is one of the most misunderstood and over hyped life skills in all of BDO. That’s not to say doesn’t have its place and can’t be good, but it needs to be understood properly. The most important thing to understand is where the profit in a crate comes from. Typical values in the profit for a crate tend to be something like 40% of the profit from worker gathered resources and 60% from processing. That’s right for many crates nearly 100% of the value of a crate comes from the workers and processing. The reason most people make crates is because when you sell the materials on the market place you have to pay the market place tax, which comes out to 15.5% with a value pack.
I point this out because too many players rush to get into trade crates without having first done the setup to get a good worker empire. If you’re interested in trade crates focus on CP and workers and processing before going for trade levels. Basically think about trading as a way to min/max passive and AFK income, but not as a sole source of passive and AFK income.
Here are some of the pros and cons to trade crates:
PROS:
- Don’t have to pay the marketplace tax to sell plywood.
- Don’t need to use marketplace slots to get rid of product.
- Will gradually give trade levels over time.
- Allows for additional min/maxing with the market place.
CONS:
- Ties up hundreds of millions of silver for weeks at a time in order to be efficient.
- Mediocre CP efficiency without +3 workers in grana.
- Requires more active management than nodes.
- Requires initial investment to level up.
My general rule of thumb is you should move from processing and selling on the market to processing and making trade crates when 1 billion silver no longer represents a large amount of silver and gear progression for you and it won’t be a big deal to have a lot of assets tied up for a large amount of time.
If you’re interested in trading here is catsensuals guides to the basics, here is my FAQ on trade crates, and here) is a general introducton to the wood/metal economy.
Active Income: Finally we made it to the last section of the guide, active income. As the name implies active income is money you make while actively playing the game. This is far and away the most silver you will get per hour with typical profits in the range of 10-30M with some methods able to make well over 30 and some even pushing 40-50. Gathering is an active life skill and is top tier when combined with cooking/alchemy/workshops. This is why gathering makes the list of mickin’s top 3 beginner lifeskills. That being said if you hate life skills there are plenty of ways to make active income through combat as well. Grinding profits will depend heavily on your gear and pets, but other methods include, farming elite rotations 1, and 2, savage rifts, and boss scrolls. Here’s morrolan’s beginner gathering guide for those interested in that.
It would be impossible to cover all the ways to make money actively so let me just give you some advice. First, be skeptical of guides that sound too good to be true. If someone telling you how to make 75M an hour sounds like bullshit that’s because it is. There are active methods to make money that are 30M+ an hour but they are not well known and would be dog shit as soon as they were put into a guide because markets would crash and locations would become contested. Expect 10-20M an hour as a new player. Second, be creative. My favorite response to “what’s the best way to make money in bdo?” is always “the one only you know about.” The reality is if you are copy catting other people to make money you will ALWAYS be behind the curve. The richest people in the game are the ones who constantly test new strategies and take advantage of them before they become common knowledge and are ruined. Finally never stop searching for knowledge. The difference between someone who knows what they are doing in BDO and someone who doesn’t is MASSIVE. A top tier veteran who comes back to this game could easily pass the majority of players in progression in the matter of a few weeks/months simply by knowing how to do things efficiently.
To end i’ll leave you with a link to blackdesertanalytics.netlify.com this website is a bit dated but as a TON of useful information you can use in your BDO career. Best of luck!
