BDO Beginners Guide (Black Desert Online New Player Tips)

Some people hate Guardian because they say it’s boring and slow, and others love it. To me, it’s not boring at all. I suggest you play a class that looks fun to you at least until level 56. At level 56, all classes can change their play style by using a whole new set of skills.

• Trial Character Limitations: Can’t impact Family Fame. Can’t do normal activities like Attendance Rewards, In-game Mail, Challenges (Y), Node investment, and Guild Bonuses.

<Guild Name>
Title
Family Name
Character Name

All the characters that you create on your account will have the same Family name. This Family name will be visible text above your head to players who run into you. It will also be visible in chat. No matter how many different characters you make, you will always have this name. In BDO, you can’t role play and experiment with having different characters in different guilds. Each character is tied to the Family name, which you can’t hide. (Unless you purchase and put on Pearl Shop outfits called Treant/Desert Camouflage.) When you join a guild, all your alts join as well.

Players can switch between viewing Family or Character names in chat, by clicking the gear icon on the chat tab.

To hide other players family names and the text and icons above their heads, press Escape key → Settings → General → Show/Hide

This only shows/hides names in your User Interface. Other players will still be able to see your names, title, and guild if they have this setting turned on.

Rookie Attendance Rewards

Attendance Rewards are game items you obtain every day just for logging into the game. View them through the Escape Menu.

You also get another reward for logging in, called “Loyalties”. Loyalties are used to purchase Cash Shop items (F3). For more info about playing F2P with the BDO Loyalty Shop, visit our Loyalties Guide.

Typical Beginner “Rookie” Attendance Rewards:

• Value Packs to last one month.
• Tier 5 Horse
• +6 Inventory Slots
• Kuku Bird pet
• Enhancement Goodies (Keep these)

Collect your Attendance Reward goodies via the “Safe” icon located at the bottom right of your screen.

Sometimes Guild and other special event Attendance Reward tabs open up. Returning players (who have not logged into their account for 30 days) also get a special tab.

Notice that Attendance Rewards are only available for a limited time. “Loyal” Attendance Rewards normally only have a short monthly window. “Guild”, “Rookie”, and “Returning” player tabs usually have a broader time frame to collect.

• View our Season Sever page, that gives you all the details.

• Oliva server is optional. You still have access to all other servers.
• Certain content is not available in Olvia, such as Node War, Conquest War, Red Battlefield, and Horse Racing.

There is an Olvia server icon which is displayed for new and returning players.

• When you bring the mouse cursor over the icon, the time left for Olvia servers is displayed.
• The icon is located where the Value Pack icon appears.

Like all MMORPG games, BDO has its share of people advertising this or that. With Chat Filters, you can completely remove those types of ads. But you have to remember, if you put “.com” in this Chat Filter, you will have to delete the term to ever get a website recommendation from a friend, for example.

• Filtered words can be up to 50 characters long.
• The chat filter is literal, not case sensitive and does not support wildcards.
• Any chat containing the filtered word will be completely removed.

The following gets rid of many gold sellers as well as people spamming chat with memes, annoyances, etc.

    trump
    alienware
    .com
    .c0m
    ,com
    . c o m
    .uk
    .cn
    .ru
    www.
    w w w
    w.w.w
    www
    WvVw
    VG0LDS
    VVVVVV
    3vv
    4bdgold
    bikinipanda
    cash
    cheap fast
    cheap gold
    daum cash
    dotcom
    fast delivery
    f$st delivery
    goldceo
    g0ldceo
    goldah
    goldaa
    g0ld
    g o l d a h
    lgfans
    mmook
    okaygoods
    powerleveling
    powerlevel
    powerlevl
    powerlvl
    powerlvel
    panda
    p a n d a
    pvegolds
    pvpbank
    wellmmo   
    \ / \ /  \ / \ /  \ / \ /
    B1|<1N1P@N|)@ DOT (0M
    |)@UM C@$H 50 0/0 0FF
    |
    )
    @
    /
    $
    fa ggot
    fa git 
    wwwww
    ccoomm
    ocomo
    gwf

Pearl Shop Basics

To purchase Pearl Shop (F3) items, you must first buy Acoin (Abyss Coin) via the official Pearl Abyss website. Use the Acoin to buy a box of Pearls at the Pearl Shop in game. The Pearl box will go into your Pearl Inventory. Access the Pearl Inventory by clicking on the Pearl button at the top of your main Inventory window (I). Right click the box to collect your Pearls. Now you can buy items from Pearl Shop with Pearls.

$100 American dollars buys 10,000 Acoin. 10,000 Acoin can buy a Pearl box with 11,500 Pearls (10,000 base pearls + 1,500 extra)

A limited number of Pearl outfits, pets, and horse gear can be sold at the Marketplace. Always double check that the Pearl item has a Marketplace Value if you plan on purchasing Pearl items to sell on the Marketplace.

Please visit our Pearl Shop & P2W Guide for more details on the P2W gear you can purchase to make the game easier.

Pearl Shop Gifting

You used to be able to give Pearls and Pearl items to friends, but this was removed. BDO takes serious effort into quelling the actions of gold/account/power leveling sellers, but their ads are still visible in chat. You can use chat filters to block them.

Giving Money (Silver) & Game Items Away

The main game currency is silver, and it can’t be given to another player. Player to player trade is very limited in Black Desert Online. Most things like gear and accessories cannot be given or traded directly to another player and must be sold at the Central Market. Some exceptions are Health and Mana Potions and some foods and drinks. Also, once those items are traded, they become bound and can’t be re-traded or sold.

Energy

Energy is another type of currency in the game and has many uses, such as allowing you to use Life Skills like Gathering and Farming. Maximum Energy is increased when any character you play completes Knowledge topics. Your Energy and Knowledge gained is shared across all your characters (Family).

The easiest Knowledge topic to complete is the Character type, in which you have to talk to the NPC to gain their Knowledge. Talk to every NPC with a question mark on your mini map to discover them and gain Knowledge. Press the H key to see a breakdown of all the Knowledge to be gained. For a more detailed guide on Energy, please read our Energy Guide. There is also a Knowledge Guide and a Knowledge Locator to help you find the nearest Knowledge to your location.

Energy can be actively restored through quest rewards. Energy can also be increased with potions and buffs; most notable is Blessing of Kamasylve, which increases Energy regeneration by 2. It costs 2000 Loyalties (10 days of logging in for one hour) or 1,250 Pearls. ($12.50). Small energy tonics cost 200 Loyalties.

 

Contribution

Your Contribution pool is shared across all of your characters (Family). Each character adds Contribution exp to the pool by completing quests. To gain more Contribution Points, finish as many quests as you can that award Contribution. (Most do.) As you gain knowledge and amity with NPCs, more quests will open up to you. You can also obtain Contribution through Alchemy and Cooking, which provide a byproduct that you turn in to an NPC. (You get about 1 byproduct every 5 crafts.)

Contribution has 2 main uses in BDO. Most people spend their Contribution on purchasing Nodes and building their “Worker Empire”. It takes Contribution Points to buy lodging for workers. Any kind of workshop housing will cost you CP as well. Renting weapons, armor, and storage space is another option for spending Contribution, for players that don’t like crafting or world building.

Combat Skills

Beginners have until level 57 to freely test out their class and change skills. Skill Points can be put into any skill to level those skills up and increase their strength. Spending Skill Points is limited by level, available Skill Points, and sometimes skill pre-requisites. The majority of Skill Points will be obtained via fighting monsters. There are some quests that give them as well.

Experiment While You Can!
Once you reach level 57, you will need a Pearl Shop (Secret Book of Old Moon) to reset your Skill Points. These cost at minimum 500 Pearls or 2000 Loyalties. You do get one for free for completing your Awakening quest line.

For more details on Skills, please view our Skill Guide.

Beginner Travel & Navigation

Beginner Travel Tips
Right clicking anywhere on the World Map (M) or the mini-map will draw a path to that point. Right clicking a node icon will take you to the Node Manager. Press your T key to have the game auto-run a path for you. Auto-path will follow the safety of roads as much as possible. Be careful when doing this outside of roadways, as your character can get stuck on trees and other objects. Not all roads are safe and sometimes auto-path takes overly long routes, so be watchful auto-pathing in areas you’re unfamiliar with.

To find merchants and other NPCs, click on the NPC icon in the upper right of your screen.

In the Search field of the “Nearby NPC” window, you can search using an NPC’s name or their title. Sometimes certain helpful words are included in the title. For example, the search term “fence” will give you all the NPCs that will exchange fences for Contribution Points, so you can start the Farming profession.

NOTE: This NPC finder tool will only show NPCs you have spoken to already. That’s another reason to speak to each and every person when you arrive in a new place. The category buttons in the NPC Finder are the exception. (For example, Stable will take you to the nearest <Stable Keeper>, even if it’s your first time near the city.)

Get your rope ready for, Horse Taming!

While you are at the <Stable Keeper>, you may want to purchase food for your horse (carrots) and pets (Cheap Feed). Horse Health and Stamina (Power) can be recovered for 500 Silver per 1% by any <Stable Keeper>.

If you lose your mount or forget where you left him (poor guy), you can locate him by right clicking on your horse icon in the upper left of your screen. A path will be drawn to your horse. Left clicking on the horse icon will call your mount to you, but if he is too far away, it won’t work.

Remote Collection:

You can also retrieve your mount by remote collection at the <Stable Keeper> if he is not stabled in another city. If you left him at Toscani Farm, but you are near Heidel, go to the Heidel Stable Keeper and choose “Remote Collection”. If you do this, your horse will lose its health and you will have to pay silver or give him carrots to recover him.

Mount Transport:

• You can transport mounts held in another Wharf/Stable to the current Wharf/Stable. Guild mounts are excluded from this function.
• Transporting a mount costs 1 million Silver and will take 10 minutes to complete.
• Transporting mounts with trade or barter goods in their inventory have a certain chance to lose all those items.
• Large ships cannot be transported to areas they cannot traverse to (rivers, lakes).

ALERT! Don’t learn the hard way and drown your horse like I did! 🙂 Your mount does take damage! He will loose health from monsters hitting him and from drowning and falling off high places. If your mount dies, recover him at the <Stable Keeper>.

You can only have one mount/wagon out of the Stable for each character. Your characters don’t automatically share mounts. If you want to give an Alt your mount, you must place him in the stable at the <Stable Keeper>.

For a more detailed guide about getting around BDO, pease visit the guide, Fast Travel.

We also have a beginner friendly guide on Training & Horses.

Pets gain 1 skill at level 10 of tier 1 or upon reaching tier 2.  Another skill is added when they gain tier 3 and another one at tier 4.

Pet skills stack up to 5x with each pet that is checked out of the stable. So you can have up to 5x any of the same pet skill. For example, 5 pets that have a Combat Exp skill would give +25% Combat Exp. However, one pet can’t have multiple Combat Exp skill.

This Pet Talent and Special Ability table is just a small list of available pets. To view all of them please visit this BDO Pet Guide.

Is BDO Free to Play?

There is no subscription fee for playing Black Desert Online. It also has a 7 day free trial. However, you usually need to make a purchase of $10 to continue playing BDO. This will give you the basic game without any extras. The Value Pack and other limited day items might be considered a type of subscription fee. For example, the Value Pack lasts 30 days and decreases Markeplace taxes. It also gives good buffs to weight, inventory, and experience.

Is Black Desert Online P2W? (Pay to Win)
This is a hotly debated topic, because everyone has their own definition of what Pay to Win means. But most people agree that you do have to spend more than $10 to make the game enjoyable.

Pets are a good example of what many consider P2W. They aren’t required to pick up loot, but if you don’t buy them, you will have to repeatedly mash the same pick-up button over and over again after every mob group that you defeat. Mob groups are usually 5+ so that’s 5x pressing the R button to do something that quickly gets boring and routine…. (So it’s basically, R + Wait for pickup animation… R + Wait for pickup animation… R + Wait for Pickup animation… Not very exciting.)

Even with the maximum of 5 pets, you may have to wait for pets to pick up loot, depending upon how fast you can kill monsters and what Tier and Level your pets are. In order to raise a pet’s Tier, you have to buy another pet and combine two pets into one, so that doubles the price.

Tier 1 pet costs:

• 1 pet: 1100 Pearls ($11)
• 2 pets: 2200 Pearls ($22)
• 3 pets: 3300 Pearls ($33)
• 4 pets: 4400 Pearls ($44)
• 5 pets: 5500 Pearls ($55)

BDO has been more generous giving players free pets lately. Beginners to BDO will get the “Rookie” Attendance Reward. At the moment of this writing, that included one free Kuku pet that is Level 1 and Tier 1. You can usually obtain a free pet if you complete a Season. A limited amount of free pets can be obtained via Quest/Attendance/Challenge Rewards.

You will notice that two Kuku pets can’t be used at the same time. You can, however, Exchange 2 Kuku pets to create a higher Tier Kuku that has faster loot speed and better buffs.

Please visit our BDO Loyalties Guide for more info on ways you can use Loyalties to play for free. We also have a Pearl Shop & P2W Guide covering all the ways you can Pay to Win.

Beginner Quest Tips

If you enjoy questing, be sure to select All quests at level 20, so you won’t miss out on any extra quests and rewards. Certain types of quests, like Life Skill quests, will not even show up at the NPC if it is not turned on in your Quest window. Press the O key to open the Quest window.

Quests are important for beginners to BDO, especially the main story quest that is provided by the Black Spirit. It will give you a nice chest piece, Inventory expansions, 4 pets, and other goodies helpful to Beginners.

Main Story Chest Piece

Another reason to complete the main storyline is it’s required in order to obtain a Fairy, which provides a large variety of special buffs you can’t obtain any other way, like instant resurrection without death penalty and auto-consumption of health potions.

Crossroad Quest in Heidel, Serendia

After you complete the quest, ‘Paying Off Debts,’ to take money to Bobby Lauren in Heidel, you will have a window appear where you can select a Crossroad quest line of your choice. The window will not disappear until you make a selection of a Crossroad quest line. The Crossroad quest lines don’t impact the main Black Spirit quest line rewards. So you will still get the same inventory slots and Beginner gear, no matter which quest line you choose. They do have differing rewards for Skill Points and optional items like gold bars, Black Stones, etc.

• You can choose and play through 1 among 3 dividing quest lines at Serendia. The quest you choose at Serendia will eventually join into one quest at Calpheon.
• Each dividing quest line has its own story, and each has its own path of Monster Zones to go through.
• ① Crossroad I quest line starts with [Crossroad] The Lamenting Head of the League of Merchants. This gives a balance of quest amount, goodies, and combat.
• ② Crossroad II quest line starts with [Crossroad] Silence, We’re Done Here!. This choice is for players who don’t like questing, but still want the major main quest line rewards, like pets, bag slots, etc.
• ③ Crossroad III quest line starts with [Crossroad] Each of Their Reasons. This quest line is for the quest lover that doesn’t mind spending time doing lots of errands and gain more goodies.

• After completing the Black Spirit’s Gift (Adventurer’s Tome) quest, you will get an item with the effect “Prognyl Silver Bar Gain +20%.” Prognyl Silver Bars are frequently obtained with beginner quests and can be exchanged at the Storage Keeper for 20,000 silver.

Black Desert Online Storage

For hoarders like myself, it will not take long for you to discover Black Desert Online storage can be a real issue. That is, unless your plan is to buy Pearls with real cash to increase Storage. When you are first starting out, it’s not as bad. But expect to get much more loot after you hit level 51 and arrive in Mediah.

Most Life Skills require lots of storage. You may want to choose one Life Skill to focus on. For example, you might want to store Cooking ingredients only and sell Alchemy ingredients to make more room. Cooking is much easier for a BDO Beginner to get started with.

Most small towns and cities have a default storage of 16 slots each. This is where workers from that town or city will place goods they have gathered from Nodes. Storage is shared with all of your characters, enabling you to give gear and other items to alts.

Keep a Space Open in Storage

Make sure you always leave one empty space in the city Storage, or your workers will get severely confused and not work anymore until you free up a space. This occurs even if they are harvesting something that is already stacked inside that city’s storage. Poor workers! 🙁 To me, this seems like more of a game bug. Similar weird things can happen when your character has a full inventory. So, if you are getting weird errors, when trying to hire a worker, for example, always check to see if your inventory is full! They like to sit in your pockets? LOL! Funny, but true.

Item Rarity & Colors in BDO

Many item names and icon borders in BDO are color coded to help you determine how rare something is. Workers, Life Skill levels, and items are all colored by grade/rarity. (They have a colored name/title.) Lowest is gray. Gray items are considered trash for the most part and most can be sold at the vendor.

Some items can be exchanged for more than vendor price, if you have a large quantity of them and exchange them to a certain NPC that wants them. This type of exchangable loot has been removed from the majority of beginner grinding areas, but keep a watchful eye in later levels. Right click the exchangable item to draw a path to the closest exchange NPC.

Some items like Memory Fragments are colored wrongly, so be sure to ask before discarding items you’re unfamiliar with.

Workers have grades as well:

1. Artisan
2. Professional
3. Skilled
4. Normal
5. Naive

Color grades reflected in Life Skill levels:

1. Guru
2. Master
3. Artisan
4. Professional
5. Skilled
6. Apprentice
7. Beginner

BDO Leveling Guide

For details on the best leveling spots, Combat EXP buffs, and more, please visit our BDO Leveling Guide.

There is no level cap in BDO. However, there is what people call a “soft cap”, where it gets to be nearly impossible to obtain a certain level. You see this reflected in the image I obtained of one of graphs available on Smite Datamining, which shows the amount of xp needed per level. As you can see, the xp needed for level 63 is much more than the amount needed for level 56. Getting to level 56 is fairly quick, but after level 62, leveling gets extremely difficult.

PVP & PVE Death Penalties

On normal servers, characters of level 49 and under are safe from PVP, but player versus player combat can’t be avoided at level 50 and beyond (You can run, but you can’t hide.) After you complete the quest that lets you move past level 49, another player can “flag up” and attack you at any time, except in safe areas like cities and towns. The Black Spirit quest, [To Level 50!] Breaking New Ground, must be completed in order to level up from Lv. 49 to Lv. 50.

Unwanted PVP occurs most often because of hunting territory squabbles. If you don’t like PVP, stay away from other player’s “rotations” for popular grind spots. You will still get PVP’d while grinding, when someone wants to take your leveling spot, but it’s not an every day occurrence, if you choose grinding spots that are less popular. Switch channels when grind spots are full.

PVP flagged characters have glowing red names above their heads.

A few players go perma red for the fame and excitement. These players enjoy having negative Karma (aka red Karma). Negative Karma occurs when you “flag up” and keep killing players that aren’t flagged for PVP (that don’t have a red name) and your Karma points sink below 0.

Dying with Positive Karma (You died with 0+ Karma):

• PvE Death: Chance to lose crystals + guaranteed exp loss
• PvP Death (Someone flagged red and hit you.): Trade items can be destroyed.

Dying with Negative Karma:

• PvE Death: Guaranteed exp/crystal loss + chance to lose 1 gear Enhancment level.
• PvP Death: Guaranteed loss of crystals (usually 5 max) + guaranteed XP loss (more than Elion’s Tear can recover) + chance to lose 1 gear Enhancement level
• PVP Death in Desert: Jail time only: sentenced according to Karma (30/50/60 minutes) Desert area is in Valencia whenever you can’t view yourself on the World Map. You will see a desert icon on your mini-map.

Negative Karma players will be attacked by NPC guards, except in the criminal’s town inside Valencia. Having extremely negative Karma can even destroy the gear you are wearing upon death.

PVP penalties do not apply during node war, RBF (Red Battlefield), guild war declarations, duels, or arena.
PVE Penalties don’t apply for some boss deaths. (Dark Rift bosses have no death penalty. World bosses do give death penalty.)
Arsha is a special PVP server that removes any Karma penalties, and also increases loot drops for level 50+ players.

Guild Benefits

Joining a guild has tangible benefits besides socializing and group activities. Guilds can earn points though guild quests and player advancement that they can spend on passive buffs to stats like Gathering, Fishing, and AP. There is also a daily contract payout amount that starts low and increases with time.

At one time, joining a medium or larger guild gave an extra daily attendance reward. This may happen again in the future.

NOTE: Guild payments coupled with active sea monster hunting is one way to earn silver for guilds that work together in vanquishing the terrors of the sea!

Summary of Life Skills

Pressing your P key will bring up a window with your character’s information, including a list of Professions (Life Skills) under “Life Skill”. There are 7 ranks for each Life Skill and 10 levels in each rank. Master has 30 levels and the highest rank of Guru has 50 levels.

We see color grades reflected in Life Skill levels:

1. Guru
2. Master
3. Artisan
4. Professional
5. Skilled
6. Apprentice
7. Beginner

Vist our Life Skill Levels guide for a more detailed guide on Life Skill Levels and the Life Fame benefit.

For a beginner guide, with recommendations specific to new players, please view our Beginner Life Skill Guide.

Life Skill Summary

You can read Life Skill summaries below. For more detailed Life Skill guides, follow the links:

• Gathering – using an axe, hoe, tanning knife, butcher knife, fluid collector, pickaxe, empty bottle, shabby shovel, bare handed
• Processing – AFK chop, heat, dry, filter, shake, and grind resources into processed materials
• Cooking – AFK cook gathered material inside your residence on a Cooking Utensil
• Alchemy – AFK brew gathered material inside your residence on an Alchemy Tool
• Training – taming wild horses, AFK running horses on a loop, horse breeding
• Fishing – AFK fishing or active fishing via mini game
• Hunting – active hunting with a Matchlock and butchering the corpse with a Butcher Knife
• Trading – active or semi-AFK trading by buying or making trade goods and delivering them far away.
• Farming – planting seed in a rented fence and tending the crops
• Sailing – sailing quests, hunting sea monsters
• Barter – trade collected land goods to Barter NPC’s located on islands and ocean objects.

BDO Hotkeys (Default)

The image below shows the default Hotkeys or Keyboard Shortcuts for different commands in BDO. The one you will use the most will be the Escape key. Through this, you can pretty much do anything you want, including accessing a helpful crafting knowledge database (F2) with recipes and item drop locations.

One very handy tool in the Escape Menu is the Central Market button. You can make purchases away from town, as long as you have Silver in your Warehouse.

Links to Helpful BDO Sites

BDO has a great community of people. Many of whom have created websites and tools to help us in our adventures:

• bdocodex.com and bdolytics.com and altarofgaming.com – databases for everything Black Desert Online. Huge help to me!
• blackdesertfoundry.com – beautiful Black Desert Online guides. Lots of great content.
• garmoth.com – very helpful site with lots of great tools.
• Forums – I find allot of good info puttering around in the following forums:
  • naeu.playblackdesert.com – current official forum for bdo, active and helpful community
  • reddit.com – has a helpful Black Desert Online forum
• somethinglovely.net – my goto BDO Map site when I get lost, used to look up not only nodes, but crate (trading) calculations and horse breeding calculations. Also has leveling/hunting zones with recommended AP/DP. Lots of goodies here!
• incendar.com – lots of interesting BDO info here.
• bdotools.com – Amity calculator that works good for most NPC’s
• blackdesertanalytics.netlify.com – helpful articles about Life Skills and Making Money
• urzasarchives.com – guides on World Bosses and spawn info.
• Gear Enhancement/Upgrades:
  • Enhancement Guide – basic and advanced Enhancement
  • Failstack Charts – Enhancment Success Percentages
• Discord Channels listed on reddit: (live chat and talk web app that is a good source of info, help, and current events)
• dulfy.net – older guides, but can still be helpful.