BDO

Imperial Cooking

stargrace October 17, 2021 No Comments

Yesterday I was doing my cooking and thinking to myself “what the hell use is this stuff, we can buy better from vendors” – and then I learned about Imperial Cooking.

Basically after you’ve cooked some stuff (I’m doing grilled bird, as an example) you hit the L key, tab over to Imperial cuisine, and you can stuff those items you’ve made into boxes that weigh 50LT each – package them up, and then deliver them to one of two NPC in the lands (I use Oliva, it’s close the NPC is Lotz Pavarotti). You can sell them to these people for a nice hefty sum – if someone else hasn’t already delivered all of the items for that good. It’s shared server wide, but varies per server, so let’s say the imperial dude is accepting 500 boxes of chicken on one server, on another someone might have already sold a bunch so he’s accepting 32, or zero.

This AM I made 1400 grilled chicken, packaged them up, and delivered them for a nice little sum. There are different boxes for each tier of crafting and a nice list of items you can package up can be found here which is a fantastic site if you don’t want to watch a video for everything. Sometimes, I just want to read the text.

Any way, now my Shai is at skilled 10 and I’m really happy with that. The workers are eating their chicken and the excess is being sold to the imperial dude, and I’m not going to ask what he’s doing with so many boxes of supplies, after all that’s a bit rude.

One more mechanic that I’ve managed to figure out thanks to guild mates and web sites! The list continues to grow. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Life Skills? We’ve Got Those!

stargrace October 15, 2021 No Comments

Yesterday a really awesome Halloween patch was released in BDO, but of course instead of looking into that at all I’ve been working on my life skills. First, the fishing event ended (boo) and that happened to be my major form of income for a while. Now I’m looking into other things. I started learning about contribution points, nodes, and workers. Basically you spend points unlocking things on the maps (nodes) and then you can put workers there to gather / harvest whatever that node provides. It gets more complicated than that with linking nodes and finding valuable workers, but that’s the basics.

I used this node calculator to figure out what I wanted where, and to start off I went pretty simple. I have 5 workers. I have one doing chicken/eggs – I use this to create grilled bird meat, and it feeds all of my workers. That’s right, they have stamina and they can run out. Then I have another worker gathering potatoes. This can be used as flour or a number of other things. My third worker is out harvesting grapes, another is gathering iron, and my final worker gathers honey.

With these supplies I can either use them to produce items (like grilled bird meat) and then use those items, or sell them, either to players or NPC. I haven’t worked out everything I want to do with it all yet, but it’s a nice start into cooking and I’m currently at cooking skilled 4 which makes me pretty happy. Cooking is also nice and relaxing, in fact almost all the life skills are. Probably why I enjoy them so much. I spent some time working training and leveling up my horses so that I can breed them, but that will be another time.

I haven’t decided which character I want to boost with my time piece yet. You might recall that everyone gets a time piece this season and it basically swaps your current season character to another character, boosting them to the same level with the same skill points. My Shai is currently my season character, at level 60 (ideally you’d want 61/62 but I’m happy with 60) and I’d like to boost a combat orientated character to finish off the rest of the season pass. I did create a tamer which is lots of fun, but I’m not sure if that’s who I want to actually play. I also have a guardian at 58 that I’d like to reach 60-61/62 with. I’m thinking training books for that one.

Then there’s my entire other account, where I also have a shai and a lahn. I’m not sure what I’ll do with that one yet.

I won a BDO twitter contest this week, which was awesome! I got (hah) another copy of the game, and a master pack of goodies that I’m hoping to use on my main account since it’s so far behind all the new goodies everyone gets. I’ll give the game copy to a friend, or my husband since he’s expressed a little interest in playing and of course I want to foster that! I’m hoping to explore the Halloween things tomorrow, but it has been a busy week with not a lot of free time, and it has been uncomfortable to sit at my desk for any length, so we’ll have to see. For now I am in game mostly AFK just doing the life skill thing (as it is meant to be done).

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

GM Events, Twitch Drops, and Fishing – Oh My!

stargrace October 10, 2021 1 Comment

Event screenshots in BDO remind me of GW2, where it’s just a blurry mass of bodies participating and difficult to get an awesome shot – normally a good thing, speaking volumes about the population.

This weekend was one filled with events to partake in, and on the 13th the Halloween ones begin in BDO. I know this has been an attempt at player retention while other games did their thing (that’s right New World, I’m looking at you) and I’m quite happy that I can benefit from it. On Friday/Saturday/Sunday the GM’s hosted rift events on Season_2 and Season_3 servers where you could show up to one of four locations and defeat some rift mobs for a chance at season+ items (mostly used to enchant your gear). I got a bunch of tuvala ore, some time-filled black stones – and an awesome DUO tuvala belt. The belt was especially nice because I don’t bother enchanting my accessories in BDO, so it was a free upgrade. The GM ran the event twice for us on Sunday as it was the last round, and everyone was thankful and praised them for their efforts. Sure, chat was typical PVP game chat (pretty crass) but I think for the most part everyone had a great time.

Then there were some twitch drops that have ran for a few days. You basically watch a BDO twitch streamer who has drops enabled and you’d get various free things. One of the things you could claim was a copy of the game, there were three chances for that actually. A few friends picked it up and I’m glad they didn’t miss out on the opportunity. I found some new streamers to watch (Salt, is one who does a lot of RNG enchanting on his channel that was amusing to watch) and it was neat to see how others play the game.

The fishing event that I’ve been participating in for a few days now wraps up on the 13th (maintenance, a bunch of other things ends then too and then Halloween begins) so I’ve been trying to take advantage of that as much as I can. My Lahn is partially into 57 now, and I’ve been questing through her main story in an attempt at wrapping it up. I’ve also been working on enchanting my gear which is finally at the tuvala stage, but no where near PEN. I keep failing the enchants – a lot.

The guild is doing well, I believe we’ve got 6 members now, two of those being myself. I don’t think or expect the game to have staying power for everyone, but it’s certainly something I’ve settled into as being my main game and I’m quite happy with that decision.

You can find me in game under the family name Reveurs – or Soiree. Our guild is Quail’s Tale Tavern, we’re life skillers and proud of it, hehe!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Quail’s Tale Tavern (and other Adventures)

stargrace October 7, 2021 No Comments

I was doing some thinking last night and came to the conclusion that perhaps I should start my own guild in Black Desert Online. Now, I ‘run’ guilds in a few games, but they’re not what I would consider active, at all. They’re used mostly for storage and because I don’t always play nice with others. BDO just feels like a different game to me, one I actually WANT to play for a long time. I’ve been playing for almost two months now and I still enjoy it as much if not more – and there’s tons of stuff I haven’t even explored yet, like bartering, sailing, and all that good stuff.

I decided to start up the Quail’s Tale Tavern, a life skill guild for any mutual friends who wanted to join. We’ll never be big and take over the world, but that’s fine by me. It’s a quiet place to call home and rest if that’s your thing. If you’d like to join just let me know and we can make that happen (discord, twitter, in-game, whatever works).

My lahn is now sitting at level 53, and has spent most of today attacking a training dummy because my hands have been too sore to play. Sure, the levels come slower than if I had of just been out exploring and questing, but that wasn’t really an option. At least this way, I can still ‘play’ – and I honestly couldn’t be happier. The class is just plain fun to watch, and I’m not sure what character I’m going to time piece yet on my alt account, but I’m pretty sure it will be another lahn on my main account.

Two good friends joined up in game today and added themselves to the guild which just makes me smile. I love seeing others enjoying themselves and giving the game a chance. I feel like this game has flown under the radar for a long time because of the MANY confusing mechanics, but sticking with it and learning in smaller bite sized doses has been much easier. Ignoring the onslaught of quests and UI gimmicks has been key to my enjoyment. Well, that and horse training. I’m very close to being ready to breed my first mounts – I’ve got my fingers crossed for a Tier 8!

There is also another new event that involves twitch drops – you can read about it here. It works much like New World’s current event where you watch for an hour, claim a reward, watch for two hours, claim another reward, watch for 5 hours, get a reward. There are new rewards each day, and it runs for a number of days. You need to link your twitch account to your BDO account through the BDO web site, then you claim the items on twitch, and redeem them back on the BDO web site. They’re not game breaking items, but hey, free is free.

Goals? I’ve got those! I can only set the guild emblem on Monday’s (why? I have no idea, it’s in the rules. Maybe the person who goes around approving guild emblems only works Monday’s) so that’s one goal. I’d like to get ranks and stuff set up but BDO has everyone do a mandatory 14 day trial as a new member before you can be promoted (minus the guild leader) so I can’t assign anyone yet. I think this is a great idea, it auto assigns you to a ‘general’ player once your two weeks is up. During this time you can’t earn guild incentives (money) so you’re less likely to hang out waiting to abuse the system. You also have to wait 24h before joining a new guild after leaving one, so there’s lots of time to think things over.

Anyway. 53 inching my way to 61 on the lahn, working on fishing on the Shai (and other crafts in time) next on the docket is to learn how to make use of the workers I have, and get into simple farming. I need to start my empire after all!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

It’s Patch Day!

stargrace October 6, 2021 No Comments

Today is patch day, which means that I need to spend a few hours downloading (thanks 5mb/s speeds) before I can play, but I did browse over the patch notes and wow, they added quite a few things! First up is their second dungeon ever – Sycrakea. It looks amazing, but you do need to complete the first dungeon before attempting it I believe. I haven’t done either of the dungeons yet, and honestly it’s not really my thing so I think I’ll let the big time adventurers partake in that one.

They’ve also added some new skills and instruments to the Shai class! You might recall that at the moment, this is my main. It looks insanely detailed and complicated! I can’t wait to dive in and figure it out.

There were some other generic class changes, some drops adjusted, monsters tweaked, really nothing out of the ordinary. They also opened up some forums to go and talk about the big class revamp that they’re working on for later this month. You can sign up to help out and be sure to test those changes and get some input in about how the classes will work moving forward.

For me personally, it’s been a fishing sort of week. I am almost rank artisan 7 which is lovely, and I’ve been catching lots of the event fish which will come in handy to stockpile for whatever goodies I want to buy. My 2nd account also swapped over to a full copy of the game today since I reached level 50 and I’m pretty tickled about that.

I still need to level my horses up so I can breed them and have a better chance at a top tier mount, but I haven’t found the time quite yet because the lure of earning silver through fishing has been pretty high. Eventually that fishing event will end, and I’ll have to figure out other ways of making money – but why not take advantage of it while I can.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself! If you want to see some awesome screenshots of BDO I’ve been posting them on twitter lately, the game just blows me away in remastered mode.