One thing I really like about black desert online is that the game tries its best to cater to ALL gamers. If you enjoy grinding, you can grind, if you don’t enjoy grinding – then don’t. Have lots of time to play? Perfect – and now what about if you don’t have much time to play? You can do that too.
I’ve already touched on AFK fishing and AFK horse training (both let you earn passive income and are good ways of working a skill while not actively playing) but there are also some training books you can obtain that let you earn experience (both combat and skill point) while AFK. I’m pretty sure you can purchase these training books in the pearl shop but so far I’ve managed to get 3 of the 24 hour ones, 20 of the one hour ones, and a handful of the 3 hour ones. They work very easily, you use them as you would any other scroll / potion and then you head to a town that has scarecrow training dummies. There are some in Velia, the starter town. You can then interact with the scarecrow, and passively gain experience for so long as the scroll lasts. Your character stands there fighting the scarecrow automatically.
Now, actually playing your character would be MUCH faster, but if you’re strapped for game time and still want to feel like you’re making some sort of progress this is perfect. I’ve been having issues with my hands lately but I still wanted to feel like I was doing something progression wise in game, so I’ve been using the scrolls on my Shai. She started at level 56, and is now almost at level 59. Of course due to the nature of BDO you’re going to see almost invisible gains before too long (I think right now it takes me 30 minutes to earn 5% experience) but it’s still something, for nothing but AFK time.
These features mean a lot to me. Gaming is how I feel ‘normal’ and connected to the world. When I can’t play I feel sad, and when I can’t play because of a physical limitation it’s even worse. Very few games allow these types of features and I completely understand why (it only takes one person to ruin it all) but for a person like me, it’s almost priceless.
These scrolls also cap at 99% into your level, so you do have to pay some attention and go out and manually level that last 1% but it’s still a really nifty feature that I am sure I’ll be taking advantage of over time.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!