When you look for BDO on steam, you find it under just ‘Black Desert’ so I have no idea if the game should be BDO or just BD or what. Anyway – another post that I’m writing ahead of schedule! I honestly cannot even remember the last time I played a game and had this much content to write about. I never in a million years would have thought that the game that would have sparked my interest to such a degree would be BDO. I have some theories on why this is the case, but that’s not the subject of this post.
I have a seasonal Guardian who is currently level 55 and I wanted to learn how to enchant her gear. Turns out the whole basis of this game is grinding. Something I actually don’t mind, let’s look at some of my other favourite games / things to do in games – Wurm Online. My ultimate favourite game is about nothing BUT grinding. Getting ‘good’ skills takes years. Even in games like EQ I would camp named for hours. Some methods of grinding are fun and rewarding, others are really boring. Doing dailies every single day in WoW is a good example of a grind that I honestly am just not a fan of. I get bored easily and rarely see the point.
Back to enchanting gear. I mentioned that my weapons and shield were Naru (just a type of blue tier gear) and I had moved them to +7 and +5 the reason behind this is because on the seasonal servers you have a 100% chance to succeed the enchant. When you fail an enchant you lose durability. I gathered up all of the ore and stones I had been collecting since I started playing (quest rewards, not actual harvested ore) and went to the blacksmith. There, I exchanged my Tuvala Ore for Tuvala weapons and armor. Then I enchanted all of those to +5 and +7 respectively. After that, I took my weapon, and enchanted it as far as I could before I either couldn’t enchant it any more, or I started running out of supplies. RNG is a fickle creature, and it’s where part of the ‘grind’ comes in to play. So once you “graduate” from being a seasonal character, you can no longer enchant this gear – but I believe you get to exchange it for the ‘real world’ versions. The goal, is to get to a tier of enchant called ‘PEN’ (I don’t know all of the tiers off of the top of my head). I managed to get my weapon to DUO before I ran out of supplies, but you don’t want to run out completely because you need to mend up all that durability you lost while failing enchants. You can mend your stuff two ways, using memories, or using the base version of the Tuvala armor/weapon you’re enchanting. The memories will restore one durability, the weapons/armor restore 5 at a time.
Now this process sounds pretty confusing, but it’s not so bad when you’re at the blacksmith doing things. Calculating whether you’ll have enough materials is annoying, you don’t want to be without a weapon after all. The thing is, as a brand new player to the game, I would have had NO IDEA how to do any of this without having a ton of help from friends or reading some very extensive guides and I think that’s where a lot of the overwhelming feeling comes from in games like this. The game does remind me a lot of EVE – but in EVE all of the menus and “things” to do are HIDDEN and the UI is presented very basic which I think gets rid of a lot of that anxiety. In BDO the UI is FULL of STUFF everywhere, and your eyes are all over the place with no idea what any of it does. You’re also drowning in scrolls and potions and chests and ores and all sorts of things – but now I actually know what 90% of that is for, and it makes a HUGE difference. Granted, I still have issues with inventory, and I still have stuff in storage all over the various cities, but I actually feel like I’m very slowly getting a handle on things.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!