Assuming you’ve already done your research on “things I wish I knew” and “top things to know before playing”, here are my own top 20 tips that you must know before level 20, when playing Black Desert Online!  Be sure to read my Tips & Tricks for the New Player that answers 10 basic questions asked by players.  The tips in this series of posts are a bit more in depth, so I had to break it out into 4 parts.

I currently play Valkyrie that I’ll be using mainly for Cooking, and a Witch that I’ll be using for PvP/Siege content with my guild.

1. Your workers need a place to stay. Invest in Lodging.

If you’ve completed the quest in Velia that gives you a Worker, you’ll need Lodging for him before you can put him to work.  You won’t be able to Contract Workers from the Work Supervisor until you invest a Contribution Point in Lodging.

Select Lodging

Select Lodging. This particular lodging is not upgradable to make more lodging.

To do this, hit “M” to bring up the World Map, click on Velia, then a blue house and check to see if it’s a building that has Lodging available, like in the above screenshot.  Click Purchase: Lodging.  This invests a Contribution Point into it, and then you’ll be able to right click the Deed/Contract that’s in your bag.  Now you can put your worker to work!

Why can’t I pick a gray house?  Why can’t I pick any house?

If a house is gray, it means you can’t purchase it because there are other buildings attached to it that you have to invest in first.  Think of it like in order for you to rent the 2nd floor of a house, you’re forced to rent the 1st floor as a precondition.  As you explore larger cities, you’ll see that there are a lot of houses daisy-chained together and you’ll be able see the prerequisite to investing in a house by clicking on “Check Purchase Conditions.”

2. Putting your worker to work… but first connecting nodes.

I’m assuming you have no idea what connecting nodes are, or why you need to do that — you can just do this now and thank me later: connect Loggia Farm to Velia, and have your worker pick potatoes.  (You can also pick potatoes at Finto Farm.)  Sidenote: you’ll also need nodes connected to get full profit for what you’re about to sell to a Trade Manager.

You don’t need to invest Contribution Points in a major city (like Velia), those are freebies.

How do you connect nodes?  To connect Loggia Farm to Velia, you’ll need to invest Contribution Points into the node: Loggia Farm.  Go to Node Manager Severo Loggia and click Node Management.  You have to visit the Node Manager of that node in order to invest Contribution Points to that location; you can’t do this remotely from the world map (although you can withdraw contribution points this way).

He's a Node Manager

Velia node map

In the upper left-hand corner, click the “Contribution Invest” button.

Invest a Contribution Point in this node. I've already invested so the button isn't there for me.

Invest a Contribution Point in this node/location. I’ve already invested so the button isn’t there for me.

Then click on the Loggia Farm – Potato Farming, and also invest in this node.  You’ll be prompted with the UI to commence working, and you’ll see a Worker List.  (If you don’t have workers yet, see point #3 below.)  You can change the number of times the worker will do this job.  Set it to Maximum Quantity, then click the “Start Work” button.

Get your worker to harvest potatoes for you.

Get your worker to harvest potatoes for you. All of my workers need more beer to Start Work, so I can’t change the quantity. You can have 1 worker per task.

As soon as you do this, you’ll see your worker run out to Loggia Farm from Velia in your world map; you might even run into him on the road!  You’ll find your potatoes in the Warehouse in Velia (so be sure to leave a couple of spaces open).

3. Hire a worker.

How do you get a worker if you haven’t completed the quest in Velia that gives you a Worker (mentioned in point #1)?  You’ll need to go to the Work Supervisor and hire one.  Assuming you’re still pandering in Velia, go to Santo Manzi and hire one.

Santo Manzi

Work Supervisor in Velia

Remember you need enough Lodging in the city to hire more workers.  Worker names in white text are common workers — they’ll do fine for now.  You can’t “move” a worker from one city to another so don’t be too concerned with the quality of worker until you’re familiar with nodes and have a desired connection/harvesting strategy so you can be the most efficient with your Contribution Points.

Giant Worker name is in green. That's slightly better than names in white.

This particular Giant Worker name is in green text. That’s slightly better than names in white.

Unlike connecting nodes where you have to visit the Node Manager to connect nodes, you can tell your worker to start harvesting a node through the world map.  If you haven’t set your worker to work yet, just hit “M” to bring up the world map, and click on the node you want your worker to start harvesting (see the screenshots in point #2).

4. Beer. You’re going to want to make a lot of beer.

When you understand the game well enough, you’re going to realize that your workers stopped working and you need to recover their stamina.  What do you feed your workers to replenish their resource?  Beer.  Put yourself ahead of the game and start harvesting potatoes early, since that is an ingredient you’ll need to craft beer.

You can also cook beer with wheat or corn or barley.

How do you cook beer?  Here’s what you’ll need, in the order you’ll need to do them, although you can skip steps #1-3 altogether by just picking potatoes yourself at a farm.  But you don’t want to keep doing that; you want to go out and grind/quest/explore the world!

  1. Invest a contribution point on Lodging for your Worker to live in. See point #1 above.
  2. Connect Velia to Loggia Farm (or Finto Farm) by investing Contribution Points into that location/node.  Also invest in the Potato Farm.  See point #2 above.
  3. Hire a worker from the Work Supervisor if you don’t already have a worker.  See point #3 above.
  4. Invest a contribution point in a Residence. You’ll do this the same way as in point #1, but choose Residence instead of Lodging. Pick a different building, don’t Change Usage on the building you chose for Lodging just to save Contribution Points. That’s just silly.
  5. Buy a Cooking Utensil from David Finto, if you don’t already have one. How do you find him easily? See point #5 below. Also buy some water, fermentor, and sugar from him, according to the recipe below. Go to your Residence and place your Cooking Utensil in it.
  6. Use the Cooking Utensil to make beer.  See my previous post on how to split stacks (hint: it will automatically prompt you).  You’ll need:
    6 water (Mineral Water)
    5 potatoes/wheat/corn/barley (if you sent your workers out to gather this, it will be in your Warehouse)
    2 fermentor (Leavening Agent)
    1 sugar

    Only put in the amount for ONE beer.

    Only put in the amount for ONE beer.

    If you have a bunch of potatoes in your bag, be sure to only put in the exact amount for ONE beer.  Don’t multiply it and put 12 water, 10 potatoes, 4 leavening agents, and 2 sugars.  Click “Continuous Production” and from here, you’ll be able to set the Maximum Quantity to make, and it will automatically calculate how much to produce, depending on all the ingredients you have in your bag.  Make sure you have enough room in your bag because you’ll get some extra food as a byproduct of cooking that you’ll be able to hand in as tokens to certain NPCs in exchange for other things.

Now you can feed your sober workers by clicking on the Worker icon, hit “Recover” and Shift+right click on the beer icon to fully replenish the worker’s energy.  Hit “Repeat” to have him continue what he was doing.

Recovering alcoholics

Recovering alcoholics

5. Map search: find NPCs and plan your renting strategy.

Sometimes you’re in a city and you forget where the Cook is.  You can easily set the autopath to NPCs by clicking on the Search NPC icon next to the minimap, and selecting the Nearby NPC you want to visit.  I talk a little bit about NPCs in the minimap in my last post.  Even if you haven’t discovered them yet, it will autopath/auto-navigate you to that NPC; you just won’t be able to Find NPCs by name if you haven’t discovered them yet.

Just a click away

Just a click awayy

What’s really useful about Map Search is when you have some Contribution Points saved up and you’re trying to strategize which buildings to rent in a larger city.  Let’s say I plan to have a lot of workers in Calpheon so I want the building with the most Lodging available.  Which building has the largest capacity for workers?  You can do a search for it in the world map by choosing Lodging and playing around with the Levels in the dropdown.

These buildings have Lodging that can be upgraded to Level 3.

These buildings have Lodging that can be upgraded to Level 3.

It’s really handy so you don’t have to click on every single building to find out what’s in them!  How do you make more lodging?  Pick a building that has a larger capacity for Lodging and you can upgrade with silver.  Unlike Contribution Points when you make an initial investment in a building, the silver you use to buy an upgrade is not refundable.

 

Did this guide help you? Can you help me, and take this quick poll — how do you prefer to consume this type of content (like tutorials, tips, and how-to’s)? I’m thinking of doing video guides but I myself prefer reading articles like this that I can just skim over. Let me know what you think!

Be sure to check back for Part II of IV, by bookmarking this site or just signing up for emails!  In the last Part, I’ll post my favorite resources for BDO info.

Comments

comments