Black Desert Online

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.

No Time to Game? No Problem!

stargrace September 19, 2021 No Comments

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!

Leveling A Shai

stargrace September 18, 2021 No Comments

Through a series of very simple quests (I’ve just been working the main story quest, it’s much the same as FFXIV) I found my Shai at level 54 without any sort of effort at all. I know that levels start to get more difficult from here on out, but Pearl Abyss does their best to make it enjoyable – and addictive.

Speaking of addictive, one thing they also have is numerous coupon codes that you can use in game. In fact there’s an entire website dedicated to posting these online so others can find them. I must have entered at least 10 codes in the past two days, and they give potions, scrolls, and various other simple items that you would normally have to purchase from the pearl shop. Whether it’s brilliant marketing to get you to spend once you run out I’m not sure, but I certainly enjoy having a lot of extra goods kicking about.

Last night I was dealing with the side effects of my 2nd Moderna covid vaccination shot, so I didn’t get much gaming in. I did some fishing and picked up my daily Oasis treasure chests, but that was about it. Tonight I’m hoping to inch my way towards 58 – ideally I’ll be 60-61 before graduating the seasons server. Which brings me to my next subject – life skills. This is crafting, and something I am REALLY interested in, the main reason I’m playing, actually. You’d never know it because I’m having so much fun leveling up and exploring the world I have had zero time to work on those skills aside from horse training and fishing. I still need to watch videos on how everything works, and see how to make myself a life skiller. I’m also wondering if I need to do life skills on various characters, or can one character do it all. I was watching a stream last night where the player was using different characters for different things, and I’m curious as to what the benefit is.

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