BDO Worker Promotion is used to upgrade a worker’s grade and improve his speed and performance. When a worker increases in grade, his base stats also increase.

Worker Promotion Improved Stats:

  • Workspeed
  • Movement Speed
  • Luck
  • Stamina

Access the “All Worker List” window by clicking the Pickaxe icon in the user interface.

BDO Worker List Button

Click the “Promotion Information” tab on the right.

Workers that have available promotions will have a number and a highlighted Promote button.

Every worker rank can have a maximum of 4 possible promotion chances, depending on how many levels they have obtained with you. (Purchasing workers at the market does not reset the max promotions. Marketplace workers may have 0 to 4 available promotions already.)

BDO Worker Promotion

Worker rank is also known as worker grade or worker tier.

Filter worker ranks by selecting the Grade drop down box.

 

Worker Promotion

Promoting a worker requires 8 hours, and if successful, he will be raised one rank.

For example, a blue Skilled Worker can be promoted to a yellow Professional Worker.

 

Worker Rank Order:

Naive > Normal > Skilled > Professional > Artisan

 

Worker Promotion Overview (Raising a Rank)

  • lower rank workers are easier to promote (Skilled workers have better promotion chances than Professional.)
  • you can only promote one worker at a time
  • we get only 4 total promotions per worker rank (1 Promotion Chance at levels 10, 20, 30, and 40)
  • promotions can be stacked and saved, but level no longer increases the chance of promotion. (patch May 31, 2023)
  • successful promotion rerolls the worker, resetting all stats and removing all previous skills and promotion chances.
  • promotion lowers a worker’s level to 1, but raises the grade by 1 improving base starting stats of Work Speed, Movement Speed, Luck, and Stamina
  • promotion opens up the possibility of newer and better worker skills

 

Worker Promotion Chance

Worker Promotion Success rates are shown in the table.

Source: patch May 31, 2023

As with all things BDO, your luck may vary.

 

 

Promotion Test Success Chance
Normal to Skilled Promotion 90%
Skilled to Professional Promotion 70%
Professional to Artisan Promotion 50%
BDO Worker: Artisan Human

Promote via Leveling

Worker Promotion requires you to level your workers. (Unless you purchase a worker from the Worker Exchange that has unspent promotion chances.)

When your worker completes a job (work cycle), he earns experience points based upon the following:

  • Worker EXP Formula: Worker EXP = Job time(Minutes)*1.2 + 10

This EXP can be seen in each worker’s EXP bar located below his portrait, and as a percentage next to his level.

When a worker builds up enough experience points, he gains a level. He keeps gaining levels up to level 40.

After level 40, he continues to build experience, but it caps at 100% until it is used up in worker skill exchanges. 1 skill reset costs 20% of the EXP bar, allowing you to build up enough experience to reset skills two times at once.

Benefits of Leveling Workers:

  • Increased Workspeed, Movement Speed, and Luck.
  • Increases skills. Earn 1 skill every 5 levels. At his 30th level, he can begin to reset skills to try for ones that matter to you.
  • Higher worker sale price.

Worker Promotion Speed

Worker Promotion can take allot of time, depending upon how fast your worker levels.

Speeding up the rate that your worker levels, also increases the rate you can try to promote them.

Level workers faster on 1 tick (5 minute) craft jobs. For example, crafting fast crates in 5 minute jobs would earn better experience than gathering iron ore at a close node that takes 20 minutes to complete.

At a certain point, around the 45 minute job time mark, distance and job time fails to matter. So a 1 hour work cycle will level workers about the same as one 3 hour work cycle clear across the world.

  • Worker EXP Formula: Worker EXP = Job time(Minutes)*1.2 + 10
BDO Worker Job: Blackstone Powder

Buying Worker Promotion with Pearls

The promotion process takes 8 hours to complete. The clock runs down and eventually completes even if you’re logged off.

If you want to see the results of your promotion attempt early, then you can spend real money to instantly complete a worker promotion.

The cost starts at 290 Pearls ($2.90) and lowers as time passes.

It does NOT guarantee a promotion.

BDO Worker Promotion with Pearls
Minutes
Remaining		 Pearl
Cost
30 15
60 30
90 45
120 60
150 75
180 90
210 110
240 130
270 150
300 170
330 190
360 210
390 230
420 250
450 270
480 290

 

Worker Ranks (Grade or Tiers)

Workers have 5 different grades that show us their rarity and strength. Worker grades are shown by the color of their name. In BDO, the best worker grade of Artisan is colored orange.

  1. Artisan – the best worker tier and most difficult to obtain. Keep this fella if you get lucky on seeing one! Normally you have to go through the Promotion process to get an Artisan worker. You can sometimes get lucky at the Worker Exchange. (Work Supervisor’s Worker Exchange button). Reportedly, it takes about 1.8k energy (360 rolls) to obtain one. (less than 1% chance.)
  2. Professional – more common than Artisan, but still requires a very lucky roll. I like to roll new workers at the Work Supervisor until I get at least this grade. (Last try cost me 1040 energy, but then got the next one with 100 energy) Highly RNG!
  3. Skilled – try not to hire anyone below this grade. Skilled grade is where you really start to see big improvement in worker stats at level 30. Skilled workers and above can be sold at the Work Supervisor. (Click Worker Exchange then Register.)
  4. Normal – most common tier, but has significantly lower stats than Skilled workers. Until you gain more Knowledge, which increases your energy, you might have to settle for this at first.
  5. Naive – poor stats! Click View Another button.

 

+1

Worker Leveling Info

  • for levels 1 up to 12, all grades require the same EXP
  • at level 12+, higher tier workers require more EXP
  • after hitting level 30, all tiers require 20% EXP for skill resets
  • Workers average 132 XP/Hour (minimum: 72 to maximum: 192 EXP/Hour)
    • 35 days to level an Artisan to 30
    • 4.7 days to earn a skill reset for all grades
  • Named workers require the same EXP as Skilled
  • Naive workers require the same EXP as Normal

Worker XP Tables

The following worker xp tables show how much experience is required to fill up that level to gain the next level. For example, a level 1 requires 30 experience points to progress to level 2. This is shown in the lv1 column.

 

Tier lv1 lv2 lv3 lv4 lv5 lv6 lv7 lv8 lv9 lv10 lv11
All Workers 30 45 63 86 112 140 171 209 255 312 381
Total EXP Required for level 10 = 1,111 EXP
Average time to achieve level 10 = 8.4 Hours

 

Tier lv12 lv13 lv14 lv15 lv16 lv17 lv18 lv19 lv20 lv21
Naive, Normal 442 513 596 692 803 940 1100 1287 1506 1763
Named, Skilled 462 560 678 821 994 1203 1456 1762 2133 2581
Professional 469 577 710 874 1076 1324 1629 2004 2465 3032
Artisan 477 597 747 934 1168 1460 1825 2282 2853 3567
Total Artisan EXP Required for level 10 to 20 = 10,183 EXP
Average Artisan time for level 10 to 20 = 77.1 Hours (3.2 days)
Average Artisan time for level 1 to 20 = 85.5 Hours (3.5 days)

 

Tier lv22 lv23 lv24 lv25 lv26 lv27 lv28 lv29 max
Naive, Normal 2081 2456 2899 3421 4037 4805 5718 6805 30000
Named, Skilled 3124 3781 4576 5537 6700 8107 9810 11871 30000
Professional 3760 4663 5783 7171 8893 11117 13897 17372 30000
Artisan 4495 5664 7137 8993 11332 14392 18278 23214 30000
Total Artisan EXP Required for level 20 to 30 = 99,925 EXP
Average Artisan time for level 20 to 30 = 757 Hours (31.5 days)
Average Artisan time for level 1 to 30 = 842.5 Hours (35.1 days)
Average time for each 50% EXP Skill Reset: 113.6 Hours (4.7 days)

 

NOTE: It was reported that workers sent to farms placed with fences are in a special xp table/chart and showed significantly lower EXP

 

My Promotion Strategy

I spend energy until I can hire a Professional or Artisan worker. It’s a bit costly, but it’s worth it to me because I have alot of Alts that can hold 500+ energy. I attempt to promote a Professional as soon as he turns 10 and will keep trying to promote him until I obtain enough family energy to try for an Artisan again.

Skilled workers I usually avoid, but if I do have one, I promote at level 10 then fire if it fails.

What’s your favorite promotion strategy?

 

Sources & Additional Info