BDO

Why, of all games, BDO?

stargrace October 4, 2021 No Comments

I’ve been talking about BDO for a few weeks now, and even after New World released, I’m still feeling this game more than anything else out there right now. I know it might seem a bit confusing, the game isn’t ‘new’ (it released in 2016); so why the sudden influx of posts about it? I decided to clarify with my main points – and I’ll list some cons at the end too. It’s not ALL sunshine and roses (but it’s pretty damn close).

• The game is absolutely beautiful. It surpasses any other game I’ve played, especially if you set the graphics to remastered.
• The combat is incredibly fluid, and yes I know classes are gender locked and no one likes that in 2021 – but there are so many choices and most choices have a counterpart, so I’ve never really felt upset by it. Hold down the left or right mouse button and ping off some combos and you feel like a master – and it LOOKS great.
• You can highlight a quest objective (hit control to free mouse look, then click on the run icon on your quest on the right hand side) and hit T and you will auto run to your location. That’s right, you don’t have to search maps or hunt down where you’re going next just highlight it and hit T. You’ll run or ride there. Need to get to the other side of the map? No problem, you can auto ride / run your way there and go take care of something IRL.
• Speaking of maps, the world is ENORMOUS and the maps are AMAZING. They have sun and moon cycles on them. They’re probably some of the most involved maps I’ve ever seen in a game. You can watch events happening on the maps in real time.
• There’s player housing. There’s crafting. Incredibly involved crafting. There’s crafting you can do while AFK so when you can’t actually play but you want to play – you can! You can make progress while at work. Legit not cheating progress. You can make coin, level your horses, you can even sit at a training dummy and gain experience and skill experience that way. There’s harvesting. Farming. Fishing. Leveling your horses. Breeding horses. There’s a barter system. A sailing skill! Boat missions. Trade missions. Alchemy. Cooking. Hunting. There is SO MUCH TO DO. There’s also achievements to go after if that’s your thing in the way of titles.
• The community is active. It is a pvp-centric game so yes you’ll always have ‘those’ people around, but it’s active and most people are more than happy to answer questions. This game has been called the MMO where you never HAVE to play with others, and that’s exactly what I’ve found. I joined a guild where the key point was ‘life skillers where you never have to say a word’ – perks of a guild, without having to deal with folks if I don’t want to. That being said, you can create your own guild too and do all that if you want. It’s completely your choice!

A few cons –

• Yes, it’s a pvp game. It’s not optional like it is in new world, but I’ll be honest I’ve never even seen any PVP in all the time I’ve been playing. Number one if you’re below level 50 you can’t and number two, for the most part, people are in very specific areas doing PVP so it’s avoidable. You can fish and train your horses in secure locations, or just never accept the quest to ding level 50 – and you’ll never have issues.
• There is always chat about the game being ‘pay to win’ – but if you don’t concern yourself with what everyone else is doing, this honestly isn’t a big deal. There are TONS of goodies given away on coupons and codes to redeem and daily login rewards and events that I haven’t bought a single thing from the pearl store and I have no idea how they make any money. Sure, you can pay and make things easier. Faster. Less RNG. They are items I would consider pay to win – but what exactly are you ‘winning’ – there’s only one dungeon in the entire game (they’re adding a second). Most of the ‘winning’ is whatever you personally set as a goal.
• The UI is a confusing mash up of buttons and buffs and icons. It’s daunting to look at all that and have no idea what any of it is for! Guess what. You don’t NEED to know what any of it is for! Give the game a week, a solid effort of actually playing, and watch some of the beginner videos by EvilDoUsHarm on YouTube. Stick with it, and just honestly ignore the UI. Play the game, run to quests, do some of the AFK chores. I found it incredibly overwhelming when I started too but I plugged along and honestly, this is one of the best games I’ve played in ages.

Gear – Simplified

stargrace October 3, 2021 1 Comment

One of the most confusing things to me when I started playing BDO was gear. It’s still pretty confusing, so let’s look at just season+ characters and simplify things. First of all, if you’re a season character you can’t wear regular gear, so you’ll be looting gear that you can’t wear sometimes. When you’re questing, you’ll be given blue gear – Naru gear (I know technically you get white and green gear first but let’s start with Naru). You’ll see tons of people talking about ‘PEN’ – and this is a tier of enchanting. As you quest, or log in daily, or just exist, you’ll earn beginner black stone armour/weapon. You summon your black spirit dude, click enchant – and with the stones and the armour in your inventory, you use the UI to enchant the gear.

The game fools you because the first few times you do this, you’ll have 100% chance at success. Then things get hard. Now, Naru is special gear and they’ve made it even easier than regular servers, so you SHOULD be able to get all of your gear to PEN without too much difficulty. I believe that means 1-15 and then 5 levels above that to reach PEN. Needless to say it uses a ton of materials.

So once you’ve gotten your gear (ignore accessories!) to full blue naru PEN, you’ll remove it, and go talk to Fughar – type his name into search if you’re not sure where he’s at and you’ll get an auto path to him. Talking to him gives you some quests to turn in that Naru PEN gear for Tuvala gear. It’s yellow/orange, and it’s enchanted a bit to be better than the Naru you were wearing.

Your next goal is to take that Tuvala gear and enchant THAT using the supplies you’ll be collecting – ideally to PEN level before season+ ends sometime in December.

This is where the grind of the game comes into play. You’ll fail. A lot. Your items will go down in durability. You can repair this durability by exchanging tuvala ore with a blacksmith for the same slot as the item you’re trying to mend, and then using the blacksmith interface to repair the durability. When you fail an enchant you’ll go down a tier in levels on it and that sucks. Honestly, just try to get your tuvala as high as you can. When you end season+ your tuvala gear will get exchanged from season+ to regular server stuff, and you’ll be able to use it on non season characters.

Everything else? I’m ignoring for now. Sure some min/max people are out there trying to pen accessories, but we get a set after season+ so I’m just not bothering.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Bring on the MANY Events

stargrace September 29, 2021 No Comments

In what I can only assume is an attempt to keep people from wandering over to any other new games that may have released this week (see what I did there) Pearl Abyss announced a bunch of new events that have started up – and some of them I’m pretty excited about.

Fishing for silver and gold is exactly what it sounds like. This event runs for 14 days and if you’re a fan of fishing, you can catch special fish in specific locations that are worth 500,000 silver and 10,000,000 silver respectively. I’ve been working on this one already, and made more money than I’ve ever had – granted in the bigger picture type of scenario it’s barely a drop in the bucket, but it’s really nice easy money especially if you spend your free time AFK fishing. On that same note, they have a gathering version where you can find golden insect amber in your travels.

The mysterious knight might show up while you’re adventuring, and if you see this NPC you should hail him and claim the 300% experience buff that he’s offering. There’s also daily attendance rewards, the loyalty event where you should check out the loyalty shop each day to get items for only 100 points, and of course the season+ pass event. There’s a legendary giveaway where if you manage to get PEN on three of your tuvala items you’ll be automatically entered into a draw for a legendary account upgrade, and if you have never played Black Desert Online before but you want a free copy of the game, you can sign up for a 14 day trial, get to 50 (it takes no time at all) and next maintenance it will auto upgrade to a full account.

Honestly? This is exactly the sort of stuff that keeps me playing. Like a lot of gamers, I love loot boxes, I love free things, and I love events. They may not be your thing, and that’s perfectly alright, but for me they bring around good feelings and happiness – which is something that I want to see more of in gaming. For now? It’s back to fishing.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Butlers, Maids, and Fairy – Oh My

stargrace September 25, 2021 No Comments

Of course if you’re not already confused by Black Desert Online, there are a ton of other systems in the game that can help you out with that. Now that I’ve gotten a handle on combat, questing, AFK fishing, AFK training, and pets – next up is to figure out what butlers, maids, and fairy are for. I’ve actually unlocked one butler, one maid, and I have a fairy in my inventory but I have absolutely NO idea what they’re for, or how they work. I keep seeing people mention that I should feed my green gear chests to my fairy, but I don’t have an actual physical one yet that I can tell. Mousing over the fairy object says I should take it to some tree and use it there, whatever that means. It’s one of the things I want to figure out before too long. I think I can send my maids / butlers on tasks to .. do .. well, I have no idea what. Something useful? Maybe. Hopefully?

In the meantime I’ve just been AFK grinding my way to level 60. Real life has been incredibly rough and I haven’t managed to find any time to actually play. By the time I have a few moments in the evening I’m just too tired to even think. I’ve been trying to keep up on some cross stitch projects I have going, getting a few rows of knitting in here and there, and then of course there’s the two toddlers and just every day life to contend with. Needless to say, gaming has taken a very back seat interest. I’m hoping things calm down soon(tm) but we’ll just have to see.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

A Bit about Pets

stargrace September 20, 2021 No Comments

One of the neat features that I enjoy in Black Desert Online comes in the form of pets – not just pets, but collectable pets that offer buffs to players. You can have 5 out at once, and they also wander around your house if you happen to have one of those. I’ve gotten a few from quests and claims and a few from events. They level up as you have them out and about with you, and they have a hunger bar that requires you to feed them snacks.

Some of the best pets of course come from the pearl shop but I haven’t felt like I NEEDED to buy any from there. If you absolutely want to be the best there is, sure, you might want to purchase it. I feel like I’ve gotten quite a few pets by doing very little. Tier 4 is the highest they can go, and level 10 within that tier. The ‘better’ they are, the more they eat. You can put them in groups and use them in those groups so it makes sense to have different pets for different things, like adventuring vs. life skilling. You give them a name and then access them through the pet window on your UI.

Plus they’re just dang cute.