BDO Farming Guide (Black Desert Online)

Farming can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be—like many things in BDO. There are a lot of mechanics and math involved in the Farming lifeskill.

If you don’t need to know all the “dirty” details about Farming and just want to keep things simple, then keep reading. If you like complicated, skip ahead to the Dirty Details or keep reading after the Introduction and How To.

Farming Requirements:

• Land: a flat, open plot of land that suits your needs
• Fence: rent with CP or quest for Finto’s Strong Fence x2
• Seeds: Seed Vendors, Marketplace, rarely from Gathering
• Time: crops take hours to grow—must be logged in

Beginner Farming Questline

Liana, located in Velia, begins a questline that introduces you to the Farming lifeskill. Pick up the quest: [Farming] Know Anything About Farming?

The only requirements is to be level 20+ and have 3 free Contribution Points. I also recommend bringing a hoe for easier gathering of potatoes and corn at the farms.

The rewards for finishing this questline are 2x Finto’s Strong Fence. These are Contribution Point FREE and have 10 grid slots each.  

Rented Fences & Pearl Shop Fence

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 (called grids).

There are 3 different fence sizes. Each has a certain CP cost and number of grid slots for seeds.

*Old Moon fences are for Master level farmers only.

Pearl Shop Fence—Fence of Abundance

The Fence of Abundance is a 10 grid fence that can be purchased at the Pearl Shop for 1200 pearls. These permanent fences do not cost Contribution Points to use and are limited to 8 per family.

Like Strong Fences, you can exchange them for a smaller “Old Moon” version if your farming is at least Master level. Exchange the Fence of Abundance for a Sturdy Fence of Abundance at an Old Moon Manager like NPC Klau in Velia.

Seeds

If you can, buy seeds off the Marketplace or from Ahr, the seed vendor in Calpheon City. Ahr sells normal quality seeds.

Camellia Loggia, the seed vendor at Loggia Farm, sells Withered seeds. These are the worst quality seeds though so try your best to use Normal, High-Quality or Special seeds.

Normal seeds are rarely obtained by gathering with a hoe—this might take a while though!

Each seed takes up a certain number of grid slots in a fence. Example: Onion seeds take up 1 grid; Hot Pepper seeds take up 2 grids.

NPC Finder for Fence & Seed Vendors

Clicking on the magnifying glass near your mini map opens up the NPC finder. Type in the search window “fence” or “seed” to view all fence and seed vendors.

Each fence vendor shows which fence they rent and its Contribution cost.

Select the vendor you want to visit and an auto-path will be drawn to them.

Harvesting or Breeding
Once the crop has reached 100% growth or more, it’s ready for harvesting or breeding.

Harvesting a crop yields produce (onions, peppers, strawberries, etc) which can be used in Cooking or other life skills.

Breeding a crop instead yields more seeds (1-3). There’s also a chance to proc a higher quality seed.

For example: Breeding a High-Quality Onion Seed could proc a Special Onion Seed.

There are many other rare procs in breeding, harvesting, and tending blighted crops. Keep reading to find out.

Please Note:
Once a crop is fully matured at 100% or more, its hovering UI changes when you approach it. Pay attention to which key you need to press for what you wish to do.

Use, Reuse, or Recycle
After harvesting and/or breeding all your crops, you can plant more seeds and keep using the same fences.

If you are done with farming, collect your fences by stepping into them and pressing F5.

Rented fences should be returned to the fence vendor, so your Contribution Points can be refunded. You might decide to use the CP on houses or nodes instead of fences.

The fence’s tooltip will tell you where to return it if you’ve forgotten.

Dieing to be a Farmer
Seriously…you just might. Fences must be placed in Combat zones. If your farmer is level 50+, that means PVP is enabled. There are special people out there who get a kick out of killing dedicated farmers, so don’t be surprised if it happens! Season servers and Olvia servers are farmer-killer free as PVP is disabled there.

no shai were harmed in the making of this pic

Blight & Bird:
After planting, your fledgling crops can get blighted with weeds or pests which slows down their growth rate. Blight is indicated by a RED health bar. Quickly clean your crops by interacting with them to Prune and Kill Pests so the crop can get back to growing.

Food and Drink:
Food and drink? Are you growing humans or crops??

Although not necessarily a requirement for farming, fertilizer speeds the growth time of your crops. Water is usually only necessary in hot dry climates where groundwater and rain is scarce. See tables for details on how to craft fertilizer and water for farming.

Fertilizers from the weakest Inorganic to the strongest Organic:

Bottle of River Water which is gathered from fresh water with empty bottles replenishes a bit of groundwater. Process the Bottle of River Water for a stronger version that replenishes more groundwater.

You can also purchase Purified Water from select NPCs in Valencia Region.

• Sand Grain Bazaar: Waid [General Goods Vendor]
• Arehaza: Yasum [General Goods Vendor]
• Muiquun: Noura [General Goods Vendor]

Seed Quality

There are 5 different qualities of farming seeds. From lowest quality to highest quality:

1. Withered
2. Normal
3. High-Quality
4. Special
5. Magical and Mysterious 

For the most part, seed quality determines produce quality. Normal quality seeds grow normal quality produce; high-quality seeds grow high-quality produce; special seeds grow special quality produce.

There are always exceptions! Withered seeds grow a very small amount of normal produce—around 8. These seeds are purchased from Seed Vendors only and are mostly used for breeding purposes to obtain Normal quality seeds.

Magical and Myserious seeds produce special quality produce.

Exchanging Special Quality Produce

Certain Special quality produce can be exhanged for Normal or High-Quality produce at seed vendors: Garlic, Onion, Pepper, and Hot Pepper. Cooks everywhere rejoice!

This is the exhange rate:

1 Special→ 4 Normal

1 Special→ 2 High-Quality

Purchasing Seeds and Produce at Market

Normal, High-Quality, and Special seeds and produce can be purchased from the Marketplace. 

Purchasing Seeds at Seed Vendor

Most Seed Vendors only sell the lowest quality Withered Seeds, but a few sell Normal quality seeds.

Ahr is a Seed Vendor located in Calpheon City who sells normal quality seeds. Vilentia (located in Grana) and Kayle (located at Delmira Plantation near O’draxxia) also sell normal quality seeds.

To find a Seed Vendor, click the NPC finder icon at the top right of the screen and type in “seed”. Select the vendor you wish to visit and an authopath will be drawn for you.

You might notice some funny seeds at certain seed vendors: like Bumpy Seed and Contorted Seed. These strange things grow into housing decorations!  See this guide on seed vendors and farmed housing furniture.

Gathering Seeds

Normal quality seeds can be obtained rarely through gathering with a hoe.

What to Gather for Seeds:

• Get Specific Seeds:
  • Use a hoe on the plant related to the seed you want.
  • Example: Gather Fire Flake Flower plant nodes to get Fire Flake Flower Seeds at a much greater chance.
• Get Random Seeds:
  • Fruit Trees
  • Shrubs
  • Thickets
  • Dry Thickets
  • Bushes

Breeding for Seeds

Breeding seeds gives you a chance to acquire 1-3 seeds of the same seed you planted and a rare chance to proc a higher quality seed. For example, if you plant and breed a High-Quality Sunflower Seed, there is a rare chance to obtain a Special Sunflower Seed. If you plant a Special Sunflower Seed, there is a rare chance to obtain a Magical Sunflower Seed. This method will take a bit of patience and luck.

Magical Seeds

If your farming level is Artisan 1+, there is a rare chance to obtain Magical seeds through breeding Special crops. Breeding Magical crops will always yield 1-3 Magical seeds.

These rare seeds take up 5x the grids in your fence when planted but yield 5x the harvest.

Normal 1 slot seeds = Magical 5 slot seeds (Ex: Garlic, Wheat, Strawberry)
Normal 2 slot seeds = Magical 10 slot seeds (Ex: Hot Pepper, Corn, Grape)

Please Note: You’ll need a Plain Fence (7 slot) or larger to plant a Magical Garlic Seed and a Strong Fence (10 slot) to plant a Magical Hot Pepper Seed.

While farmers of any level can plant Magical seeds, Farming Artisan 1+ is required to prune, kill pests, harvest, and breed Magical crops.

Magical Seed Benefits:

• Reduced time spent actively farming as there are fewer crops in a fence
• Reduced Energy consumption as there are fewer crops to tend; assigned Workers also use less energy
• Reduced Water and Fertilizer consumption as there are fewer crops in a fence
• Increased proc chance for Blush Leaf, Fruits, etc. when Breeding
• Increased amount of Blush Leaf when Breeding
• Breeding Magical Crops produces more Magical Seeds

Magical Seed Cons:

• Reduced Farming EXP as there are fewer crops to tend
• Reduced chances to gather Weeds, Mysterious Seeds, sharp/hard shards, ect. while pruning and killing pests
• Requires Artisan 1 Farming skill to tend crop
• No increase in amount of Fruits when Breeding

Crafting Magical Seeds

You can also craft Magical seeds. Use Processing > Shaking:

1 Special seed + 2 Mysterious Seeds + 10 Purified Water.

Mysterious Seeds

Mysterious Seeds are obtained rarely through breeding, harvesting, pruning, or killing pests. Mysterious Seeds are used to craft Mysterious ‘Named’ Seeds (example: Mysterious ‘Sunflower’ Seed) or used to craft Magical Seeds.

Use Processing > Shaking to craft the recipes below.

Mysterious ‘Named’ Seeds require 5+ grid slots in your fence just like Magical Seeds, so you’ll need a Plain (7 slot) or larger fence to plant Mysterious ‘Named’ Seeds.

Breeding Mysterious crops yields 30-40 Fruits but no seeds. Harvesting Mysterious crops yields 7x the Special-quality produce that harvesting Special crops do.

Please Note: Breeding Mysterious ‘Named’ Seeds won’t produce more Mysterious ‘Named’ Seeds. This makes Mysterious Seeds a finite resource—unlike Magical seeds.

Mysterious ‘Named’ Seed Benefits:

• Increased Fruit yield – Breeding yields 30-40 Fruits
• Increased produce yield – Harvesting yields 7x the amount of Special crops
• Reduced Energy consumption as there are fewer crops to tend; assigned Workers also use less stamina
• Reduced Water and Fertilizer consumption as there are fewer crops in a fence

Mysterious ‘Named’ Seed Cons:

• Breeding does not yield more mysterious seeds
• Breeding does not yield Blush Leaf
• Reduced Farming EXP as there are fewer crops to tend
• Reduced chances to gather Weeds, Mysterious Seeds, sharp/hard shards, ect. while pruning and killing pests

Strange and Beautiful Rice Seed

When breeding Rice Seed, normal—magical quality, there’s a chance you could proc the rare Strange and Beautiful Rice Seed. When planted and harvested, the Strange and Beautiful Rice Seed produces x5 Strange and Beautiful Rice which is used to craft Miraculous Tteokguk.

Truffle Mushroom Hypha

When crafting via Alchemy, there is very rare chance to proc Unknown Seed as a byproduct. Combine Unknown Seed with Truffle Mushroom through Processing→Simple Alchemy to create a Truffle Mushroom Hypha that can be planted in a fence, grown, and harvested for an average of 60 Truffle Mushrooms. The Truffle Mushroom Hypha can only be harvested and not bred for more seeds. Surprisingly, the hypha grows into a huge tree!

Farming Fences

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 space for seeds—called grids.

Certain NPCs will rent Strong, Plain, or Small fences. To find an NPC that will rent the size fence you want, search for that fence in the NPC finder in the top right of your screen. For example, if you want 10 Strong Fences, search for “strong fence”.

To find fence vendors, hit the NPC finder button near your mini map. Type ‘fence’ in the search to see all fence vendors. You can be more specific and type ‘strong fence’ to see only those vendors that rent Strong fencs.

The Old Moon Fence requires Master level Farming to rent from Old Moon Managers. This is a 10 grid fence with a smaller footprint to allow easier placement of fences in smaller areas and conservation of fertilizer and water. Since fertilizer and water have an AOE (area of effect), a well placed application can cover several fences at once. This is especially useful when planting fewer seeds in each fence as you would with Magical seeds.

Quested Fences

There are a couple of quested fences that cost NO Contribution Points. The Finto’s Strong Fence is a must-have for any responsible conscientious CP conservationist. Follow the links to see details.

Where to Install Fences

Now that we have some fences and seeds, it’s time to decide where to place them. Fences can’t be installed in Safe Zones, node war areas, or in the Great Valencia Desert. They can’t be installed on roads, solid rock, or in rivers and bodies of water.

Fences can’t be placed on top of each other. That’s like wishing for more wishes!

Fences need to be installed on relatively flat ground, but sometimes you can place them on sand or rocky ground. You can install a fence if there is a rock or tree inside, but it might be in the way when you tend your crops.

When in doubt, attempt to install your fence by right clicking the fence in your inventory. If you see a lot of red outlines or stakes in the Fence Installation UI, it’s likely you won’t be able to install the fence there. See pic.

Many farmers place their fences North of Loggia Farm, near Velia. The location itself is convenient: near a major city, port, and abyssal well for transportation. NPCs are very nearby to rent 10, 7, and 4 grid fences. The area is large, flat, fairly empty of rocks and trees with few low-level mobs. The temperature there hits the sweet spot for a lot of different crops which is important for faster crop growth. It’s a great place for new players to start their farming adventure.

More Details on Crop Placement

When you set the seed into the fence, a window will pop up showing that crop’s information and the location’s climate. Don’t press SPACE BAR if you just want to view the information! Pressing the SPACE BAR after setting the seed into the fence, plants the seed—making it permanent. If you try to collect a planted seed, it will be destroyed!

1. Temperature: % growth every 5 minutes
2. Humidity: % chance of your plants getting blighted every 5 minutes
3. Groundwater: without water your Moisture bar will lower
4. Fertilizer: +20% growth rate (2 hours for a full bar)
5. Growth: at 100%, you can Harvest or Breed the crop
6. Health: when this decreases from bird attacks, you get less crop yield
7. Moisture: if this reaches 0, your yield will be 50% less (normally only a concern in hot dry areas like Valencia)

Other Resources

bdocodex.com has some great resources to help you decide where you should farm. You can view the Temperature, Humidity, and  Groundwater sweet spots and their effects on different crops.

Start with their Farming List. Just click on a Farming item to view that crop’s details. Then hover your cursor over the Water/Humidity/Temp bars at the bottom to view the crop’s Weather Preferences.

bdocodex also has a list of nodes that shows the Weather info for each region. Notice the high Water and Humidity levels that are found in the swampy regions surrounding Glish.

Strawberry in Velia
Just Right

Strawberry in Mediah
Too Hot

Assigning Workers to Fences

Assigning workers to fences makes farming a more AFK experience. Every 5 minutes, crops have a chance to become blighted, which really slows down the crop’s growth until it’s removed. Workers can clean your blighted crops for you, collecting weeds and the occasional Monk’s Branch which will be placed in storage when their job is done.

Workers from any town can be assigned to your fences, but keep in mind that workers have travel time to and from their hometown. Workers at the top of the Worker List have the least amount of travel time to your fence.

Workers use 1 Stamina when they travel to the fence and 1 Stamina each time they clean a crop. If you have 10 crops in a single fence, the worker could go through a ton of Stamina in a very short time depending on the crop’s Blight rate.

Workers that run out of Stamina will stop working and return home—crops will then be in danger of Blight if they aren’t mature (100% growth or more). Workers also return to their hometown if you cancel their job or remove the fence they were working in. 

Note: Workers won’t gain EXP or place weeds and branches in storage until they go home. So, if they’ve been working a while, you may want to send them home for a break.

AFK Farming & Family Inventory
Placing worker food in Family Inventory plays a major role in how truly AFK your farming experience is. Food that is placed in Family Inventory will keep workers fed automatically until the food runs out. Family Inventory makes worker management carefree and keeps crops Blight-free with more consistent growth times.

If you don’t use Family Inventory to hold worker food, keeping workers fed and crops Blight-free becomes more challenging. You would need to keep a closer eye on the workers’ stamina and manually top up the Workers’ stamina with food through the Worker UI.

In this situation, assigning workers with bigger Stamina pools would help. You would likely want to assign Giant workers to your fences because they have bigger stamina pools than Goblins and Humans. Assign Fadus in Kamasylvia and Shellfolk in LOML.

Crop Tending – Pruning Loot

Possible Loot from Pruning, listed in least to most EXP and rarity:

• Twig
• Weeds 1-10
• Blush Leaf 1-2
• Monk’s Branch
• Sharp Black Crystal Shard
• Mysterious Seed 

Crop Harvesting Yields

Crops can be harvested when they reach full maturity at 100% growth—any growth over 100% has NO effect on yields when harvesting or breeding. Produce yields are based on the quality of seed you are harvesting. Farming level does not influence yields.

• Withered seeds = @8 Normal crops
• Normal seeds = 60-80 Normal crops
• High-Quality seeds = 40-60 High-Quality crops
• Special seeds = 20-40 Special crops
• Magical seeds = Special crops x5 with a bonus of +15% to +25% (details & requirements below)
• Mysterious seeds = Special crops x7

Extra Loot from Harvesting

It’s possible to get more than produce when harvesting your crop.

Rare Procs from Harvesting:

• Extra Produce
• Shimmering Piece of the Old Moon +5% on Marketplace Sale
• Mole’s Feed Chase & Kill mole for extra loot!
• Sethra’s Artifact – Life EXP
• Sethra’s Artifact – Life Skill Mastery
• Sethra’s Artifact – Farming EXP
• Imperfect Lightstone of Flora
• Mysterious Seed
• Mass of Pure Magic

Crop Breeding Yields

Instead of harvesting a fully mature crop, you can choose to breed it. Breeding gives you a chance to acquire extra seeds, fruits, and Blush Leaf. Fruits are used in Alchemy and are usually sold out on the Marketplace. Blush Leaf is a “farming byproduct” which can be turned into certain NPCs for other usable items or used to craft Stonetail Fodder.

It’s possible to get more than seeds, fruit, and Blush Leaf when breeding your crop.

Rare Procs from Breeding:

• Shimmering Piece of the Old Moon +5% on Marketplace Sale
• Mole’s Feed Chase & Kill mole for extra loot!
• Sethra’s Artifact – Life EXP
• Sethra’s Artifact – Life Skill Mastery
• Sethra’s Artifact – Farming EXP
• Imperfect Lightstone of Flora
• Mysterious Seed

Which Crops are Best to Farm?

What should you grow in your fences? Decide this based on the following criteria:

• Usefulness
  • Most likely, you decided to look into the Farming lifeskill because you wanted certain crops for Cooking or fruits for Alchemy that couldn’t readily be found on the Marketplace.
• Silver
  • If farming doesn’t produce anything useful for you, it likely will for someone else. Sell farming products on the Market for another semi-afk source of income.
• EXP
  • If farming EXP is your main focus right now, you can power-level Farming in a few active hours of playtime. 

Farming for Things You can Use in Alchemy

Other rare and useful ingredients you obtain from farming include those used in alchemy like Fruit of Nature and Weeds.

Other Uses for Farming
Crops also provide EXP fuel for polishing Alchemy Stones of Life. In my experience, Special Strawberries and Special Purple Mushrooms provide the most EXP for polishing.

There are several decorative Housing items you can grow in your fence like this Tulip Lantern! Buy the seeds from seed vendors. Guide on farmed Housing Furniture.

Farming for Silver

Always check the Marketplace for which crops and fruits are in high demand. Blush Leaf can be exchanged for Stonetail Fodder at Liana. Stonetail Fodder is used in Dream Horse attempts and always seems to be in high demand.

The best sustainable method of making silver with Farming is to Breed 2/3 of your crop for fruits, Blush Leaf, and enough seeds for replanting. Harvest the other 1/3 for selling at the Marketplace if the crop will make good money, if not then breed all of your crop. Extra Magical Seeds can be sold to the Vendor for around 300k silver each.

The Trading lifeskill can use crops to make crates at a Workshop in town. I’ve heard its hard to make decent money doing this, but I’ve never tried it myself.

Power-leveling Farming

Farming & Life EXP Buffs:
The more farming and life EXP buffs you have active, the better! Permanent buffs are preferred of course, but if you really want to level fast, add as many temporary buffs as you can. There are many sources of Life EXP in the game→Please see this guide on Life EXP.

Also, the more buffs you’re wearing, the less energy you’ll need to hit Artisan Farming.

Note: Farming is not affected by Life Mastery. Even though life mastery gear also has Life EXP buffs, remember that Season characters can’t wear life mastery gear.

60+ Contribution Points:
It is possible to power-level your Farming skill to Artisan in just a few hours if you have enough buffs and can spare enough Contribution Points (80) to rent 8 Strong Fences. You may already have 2 free 10 grid fences from completing the Finto’s Strong Fence questline. If that’s the case, then you would only need 60 Contribution Points more to rent 6 Strong Fences.

Fence of Abundance for CP free Farming
With the addition of the Fence of Abundance which is purchased at the Pearl Shop for 1200 Pearls each, you no longer need Contribution Points to rent fences from NPCs. Though purchase of these fences is limited to 8 per family, if you have the 2 free Finto’s fences, you can now have the full max of 10 fences and 100 grid slots without using any Contribution Points at all.

Misadventures in Power-leveling a Farmer

I leveled a farmer years ago—before I understood what all the numbers and bars in the crop UI even meant. BDO was a complicated game and there were a lot of things to learn, so I took the advice of more experienced farmers like a good noob and planted farms south of heidel in the swampy area.  I recently decided to power-level a new farmer to see how quickly I could reach Artisan Farming. I was astonished at how fast and easy it was.

At first, I worried about Inventory space and used extra Inventory slots that were given away during Seasons and events. After I started, I realized that it wasn’t necessary to have a lot of Inventory on my farmer just for power-leveling. It would almost be a waste on a dedicated farmer who would mostly be  farming with Magical seeds after Artisan.

I parked another character with bigger inventory at the farms. When the crops were matured and cleaned I logged her in to breed the seeds and go to storage when necessary. This also conserved all the buffs my farmer had going since she was only logged in to clean the crops.

I chose the location north of Loggia Farm in Velia for convenience. I placed 4 Strong fences, then upped it to 6, then 8 as I cleared out contribution points that were spent on nodes.

It was pretty easy to put a short stack of Life EXP buffs on. There are so many that are stackable, given away during events. I could have used more but I wanted to be conservative! HAHA

What I Would Do Differently
If I leveled another farmer I would plan ahead better. I would have 8 fences placed right away, and the most blighty crops planted right away. I might even plant the most blighty crops with the slowest growth rate, so I don’t have to breed so much. Considering how quickly it’s possible to level Farming to Artisan, why bother breeding or harvesting if you can avoid it? Plenty of time to do that after Artisan 1 and Magical Seeds.

Advice
If your farmer is low on inventory or you don’t want to worry about harvesting or breeding while power-leveling, use a crop that has a longer growth time. This means finding a crop that is both outside its preferred Temperature and Humidity. Be sure to check on the crop’s Moisture level so it doesn’t go below zero.

Although Dry Mane Grass is outside it’s comfort zone almost anywhere, its normal growth time is short. Try planting Pepper seeds near Heidel, either in King’s Forest area, or south of the city. Look for areas with light green or cooler temps and pink or darker Humidity. See maps below for possible fence locations near Heidel.

When Pepper is planted outside it’s comfort zone near Heidel, its Blight rate increases to 8% and its growth time doubles to over 8 hours. See maps.