Black Desert - Korea getting serious about sandboxes

[Hawkbit]

I got a pass from Signe - thank you so much!

[Falconeer]

The biggest problem of this game, and its biggest glaring contrdiction, is that 80% of it is basically a single player game. This is even more annoying considering how beautiful and real and alive the world looks and feels.

[Rendakor]

Can you not rebind keys? Or invert the mouse?

Edit: Nevermind, found it. It's in Settings, not Hotkeys.

Edit 2: How do I get rid of these button prompts? I think I turned them on by accident somehow.

[Falconeer]

ESC ---> EDIT UI ---> Find the culprit window and click the tiny eye button ---> Save.

[EWSpider]

If you don't have many many hours to spare stay the fuck away from this game.  It will suck you in!

[Bhazrak]

Yeah it will. My goal right now is to get blue special seeds of every plant I can because.... because.

[Logain]

Is there an F13 clan or guild up and running?

[Hawkbit]

It's good overall.

The translation is bad and the new player experience is terrible. I quit after an hour last night in frustration. Today I committed another hour or two to learn what some of the stuff does and it makes better sense.

Also, black soul thing is irritating.

[Rendakor]

There's so much here that's inscrutable, and half the guides out there are from the Korean version so they use the wrong names for everything (vigor vs energy, etc.) which doesn't help.

I tried to figure out how to cook but can't find a cooking station anywhere in Heidal.

Also, searching the AH doesn't seem to work. Whenever I search for anything it gives me 0 results, even when I search for things I see clearly.

[Falconeer]

Searches in the AH have to be made under the appropriate category AND you have to capitalize the first letter of whatever you are searching for.

Not sure where you can get a cooking station in Heidel, but I know you can get it from the innkeeper in Velia. So maybe, the innkeeper of Heidel, too?

[palmer_eldritch]

There's so much here that's inscrutable, and half the guides out there are from the Korean version so they use the wrong names for everything (vigor vs energy, etc.) which doesn't help.

I tried to figure out how to cook but can't find a cooking station anywhere in Heidal.

Also, searching the AH doesn't seem to work. Whenever I search for anything it gives me 0 results, even when I search for things I see clearly.

You need to buy an oven (might be called a stove or cooker or something) from a cooking merchant. (Find merchants by clicking the magnifying glass with "npc" written below it in the top right corner of the screen).

Then you need to place the oven in a house to use it.

If you don't know how to get a house, you do it by going into the map, click on a town or city icon (a blue square with house symbols on it) and then all the available houses appear. Choose one to buy (or more than one if you like, you can have loads).  It costs money and contribution points to buy a house, but you can get contribution points back if you get rid of the house later.

You need to choose how to use your house. Each house has a number of possible uses, of which "residence" will be one. So you find a house which can be used as a residence, buy it, make sure you set it to residence and then go there and place the oven.

[Rendakor]

Yea I got the house figured out. The NPC called <Cook> in Heidal doesn't appear to be a merchant. I checked everyone else that seemed likely but none of them had one; I'll just go back to Velia.

[palmer_eldritch]

There's a cooking merchant in the tavern in Heidel.

[Bunk]

Yeah, this is a massive time burner. Still barely have a clue as to what I'm doing. Realized I'm going to have to figure out something to do with trade soon though, money's starting to come too slow.

[Pennilenko]

When ever I have real life shit to do, I go afk fishing. Once I have started fishing I send the game to the system tray (check box option when you click on end game in the menu). Come back to 20 to 50k worth of fish. Sell fish to trade manager.

[satael]

(While I have no illusions as to how long it will last) I'm enjoying being more or less clueless about alot of things in BDO and finding them out the hard way and by chance. It's a nice change to the way I've played other MMOs in the past decade where everything was about just taking the optimal path to the end game and that path felt very clear in most cases (and the sense of wonder was lost).

this was "helped" by the fact my computer died on me at the start of the year so I missed the betas and headstart before getting it back to working order.

[Wasted]

AFK fishing is great, discovering money has weight is evil.

[Falconeer]

And what about money deposited in a city's bank only existing in that one specific city's bank?

[dusematic]

I bought this game after a real life buddy was creaming over carts in the game being full of art that reflects the cargo.  The opening cinematic was so boring I skipped it, and that's coming from a guy who read the entire 14 book wheel of time series.

All the quest dialogue was equally bad.  That's when I realized I was playing a Korean mmo. The combat felt visceral and satisfying, but after an hour, I realized I was just running around, following one bright flashing arrow after another pointing the direction for things to murder Orr people to reward me for it.

That's when I realized I had been down this road before, and didn't like where it ends.  Only buy this game if you want an attractive grind, our you never played an mmo before and the boom is still on the rose

[satael]

The funniest part is that most quests actually give very little "combat" experience and actually grinding mobs is far more effective for leveling. Quests on the other hand are usually good for contribution and crafting experience (and for stuff like inventory slots).

[Bunk]

I won't even say its a good game, I'm really not convinced it is. But it has eaten up an entire weekend for me so far.

[Malakili]

The funniest part is that most quests actually give very little "combat" experience and actually grinding mobs is far more effective for leveling. Quests on the other hand are usually good for contribution and crafting experience (and for stuff like inventory slots).

To someone like me, who feels like the "quest grind" has gotten to the point where I don't really find it any more pleasing than just grinding whatever mobs I happen to want to kill, that doesn't really bother me in an MMO.  The more I hear about this the more I think I will at least be able to get the box price worth out of it. I don't know if it has any legs, but it might be fun to play something like this for a while at least.

[Falconeer]

Because grinding mobs is the least engaging activity in the game, but there's about another nine millions to become addicted to. At least for a while.

If all you are doing is level up (Dusematic), you are doing Black Desert wrong.

Clearly, I am not saying this is a great game either. But it is much more going on than what you can see if you try to play it like any other MMO. Blame is on Pearl Abyss for not making that more obvious. It's very freeform, even though it has levels and mobs are arranged by areas: you can just grind, or you can let quests guide you, or you can ignore quests altogether, or you can ignore leveling up completely. It's easy to feel a need to play it like the games it is supposed to come from, but that need isn't there.

Also, ProTip: forget about quest dialogues. The meat of the lore is in the "knowledge" tips you get in the upper right corner after you meet new people. What they babble in conversations is often unbearable, but their backstories and how they are often linked with each other is what makes this virtual world interesting.

[dusematic]

Because grinding mobs is the least engaging activity in the game, but there's about another nine millions to become addicted to. At least for a while.

If all you are doing is level up (Dusematic), you are doing Black Desert wrong.

Clearly, I am not saying this is a great game either. But it is much more going on than what you can see if you try to play it like any other MMO. Blame is on Pearl Abyss for not making that more obvious. It's very freeform, even though it has levels and mobs are arranged by areas: you can just grind, or you can let quests guide you, or you can ignore quests altogether, or you can ignore leveling up completely. It's easy to feel a need to play it like the games it is supposed to come from, but that need isn't there.

Also, ProTip: forget about quest dialogues. The meat of the lore is in the "knowledge" tips you get in the upper right corner after you meet new people. What they babble in conversations is often unbearable, but their backstories and how they are often linked with each other is what makes this virtual world interesting.

Yeah I just realized I may be a dick for coming into a BDO thread and saying it sucks, sorry.  Perhaps I'm just an old mmo-cynic at this point, going through UO, The Realm, EQ, DAOC, FFXI, Aion, WoW, Rift, Vanguard,  Guild Wars 1 & 2, Shadowbane, and probably others that I have forgotten or would like to forget.

Having said that, my typical notion is to level to max level, and then do crafting.  For example, in UO, it's going to be a lot easier to do some mining and blacksmithing if you don't have to worry about a stray orc executing you while you're off in the wildnerness with your pack mule.  In WoW, I can rapidly train up blacksmithing and mining if I'm max level, whereas, if I try to do it concurrently, it's a huge cash and time sink, and I'll probably get ganked a lot.

[dusematic]

I've been thinking about going back to something very simple and straightforward, like The Realm.  The Realm doesn't have a lot of bad window dressing.  You just grind and watch the numbers go up.  And there are 999 levels, so the numbers are ALWAYS going up. 


It's weird.  All the super bogus cut scenes are just a terrible distraction, and somehow make the game worse and interfere with the fact that we all just want the numbers to KEEP GOING UP.

[Merusk]

Holy shit that game is still running?

[Ard]

Okay, this needs to be stated a few more times, and probably on every page of this thread at the top, since they made a terrible decision regarding the interface and quests by default.  Most of the quests in the game are disabled so you don't seem them by a UI toggle.  Go into the quest log and find the switch, on the top right if memory serves, that turns them all on.  This game has almost too many quests, and the vast majority of them have absolutely nothing to do with combat.

[Rendakor]

I missed a lot of quests early on because of that; I've been going back and doing them for more contribution points now that I'm getting the hang of crafting.

I noticed that I can ship goods from one warehouse to another; can I do that without actually being at the warehouse with the goods I need? Is it important to have a completely connected line of nodes, or just have each node connected to it's city?

[Ard]

You'll want to have a line of nodes between two cities at least at some point.  That's what allows you to run trade goods and fish to them and get full price for them.  The further you can go, the more money you make usually.  Otherwise you generally want to keep your node network relatively close to home since your workers actually run around and do stuff, so the distance they move and their speed stat matters (ie don't have workers in velia mining in heidel, etc).

As far as the warehouse goes, I believe you can drill down into the city from the world map and have stuff shipped around from anywhere, but I haven't personally tried yet.

[Bunk]

I just discovered that quest toggle before I logged out last night. It hides all the crafting quests by default. I kind of understand why, the game already floods you with pointless info. You walk in to a busy part of town and its just a wall of damn text and icons. That said, I would have liked to have known those quests existed sooner. I'm doing "kill and skin a weasel" quests now at level 14.

The game has its quirks. I couldn't remember where the market was in a town, so I went to the map. I couldn't zoom in enough to figure out exactly where it was, so I right click on the label to set a marker... which lead me to the middle of an alley three blocks away from the actual Market.

[satael]

I just discovered that quest toggle before I logged out last night. It hides all the crafting quests by default. I kind of understand why, the game already floods you with pointless info. You walk in to a busy part of town and its just a wall of damn text and icons. That said, I would have liked to have known those quests existed sooner. I'm doing "kill and skin a weasel" quests now at level 14.

The game has its quirks. I couldn't remember where the market was in a town, so I went to the map. I couldn't zoom in enough to figure out exactly where it was, so I right click on the label to set a marker... which lead me to the middle of an alley three blocks away from the actual Market.

There's a NPC-button in your UI (might be at the top right corner) where you can choose "marketplace" and then just press "t" to run/ride there. 

[Rendakor]

Use the NPC button next to the minimap to find markets and such. It's super useful, and the auto run will take you right to them most of the time (it doesn't do great with stairs).

[taolurker]

Day 4 of the 7 day pass, and my character is now 17, but this time (UNLIKE my time in closed beta 2) I began working on crafting and questing while doing small bits of combat, and am slowly starting to see the appeal of this game.

I bought the shoddy tools from the very first person I found selling them and was gathering from nearly everything I killed and from various resource nodes everyplace. By the time I reached Velia Saturday I was Combat level 15 and was also Gathering level 11.. Meaning, I had lots of resources to craft and sell, as well as a bunch of quests to teach me crafting. I bought a horse on Saturday after selling some of the wood and ores I crafted together, and the Energy for crafting is certainly an interesting mechanic. Yesterday and today I was in Heidel doing quests all around there, and actually completed quests specifically for gathering and got free worker contracts, along with numerous different decorations for my house... I even have a bed to rest in now, that helps me recover Energy to complete even more gathering.
I definitely could see myself doing the crafting part, and even enjoy the combat more as I've played longer, but I don't really have any interest in Pvp. Since the only real thing to do in end-game is PvP or trading, I can't really endorse this game for long term play, although I definitely was considering buying just to corner the chopped wood market.

BTW The wheel-barrow and cow milking mini-games made me chuckle with delight.

[Rendakor]

Where'd you find a bed? And/or a light for your house?

What server is everyone on? I'm on Uno > Serendia; not sure which of those is my server (or how hard it is to switch) but if a lot of us are on the same server we ought to get a Bat Country together. If only so I can spam my random questions there instead of here.

Speaking of which, what level cooking do I need to make the Imperial Packages I can trade? I see them listed here on the recipes list but all it says is Apprentice 1; I'm at Beginner 8.

[Ard]

Uno, Orwen, and Edan are the servers.  The other names are the channels.  You can not switch servers, but you can switch channels mostly at will.  I'm on Edan.Calpheon.E2 running a small friends and family guild.