Black Desert Online

Weekend Wanderings in #BDO

stargrace March 27, 2016 0Comment

An Easter event is taking place in Black Desert Online. You go out collecting eggs and turn them in for various house rewards. You can also choose to eat the eggs instead and they’ll give you buffs. Unfortunately you need 40 of any one egg type in order to get the housing item, so the chances of me getting any of them is pretty slim. At the time of this post I have a grand total of three eggs, two different types. I’m sure I could try to go crazy and farm them, but that’s just not how I enjoy playing the game.

When I logged in yesterday I realized that I had skipped a bunch of areas on my way to Velia. I headed back to the Western camp and picked up a bunch of tutorial quests that involved harvesting, crafting, and trades to the outer farms. I received a second donkey, and two more free workers. Since I don’t have lodging for them I’m just keeping the forms in my inventory for now. One of the tutorial quests taught me how to craft trade goods in order to sell them for more money. I set a worker out to create a potato box, using 10 potatoes (which another worker harvested) and a black powder (which my 3rd worker crafted in the refining house I purchased). Then I went and did a bit of AFK fishing in anticipation of my potato boxes completing. I haven’t sold them yet so I’m not sure how the money compares to vendor sold trade items, but it should be an increase. I completed a few kill quests that just wanted some local wildlife and I thought about just how large and involved the world is.

I still haven’t claimed my purchase items yet, and I haven’t decided on a permanent home to live. I have a cheap residence over the Inn just to be able to use my cooking tools and I’ve put a few furniture items in there that I got from quests simply to move them out of my inventory. I still need to find some sort of light source for the inside of the home, it’s always way too dark.

My character reached 50 hours played, and I got a claim reward from it that included some experience boosts and some dye. I’m still only level 18, but that bothers me less and less as I find other things to focus on and keep myself busy. The game requires quite a bit of time investment, something I don’t mind. It’s nice to feel pride in creating things again, pride in the levels I do have.

Today I’m hoping to explore worker created trade items a bit more, and finally step into the amity game. I also have a lot of trade quests that I want to clear out of my journal. I had three quests to trip little children in the town of Velia, but I had no idea how to trip them so I ended up forfeiting those quests for now. I tried to run into them, run ahead of them and cut them off, etc, but nothing would give me an update no matter who I attempted it on. Maybe I just never found the right NPC, but it was frustrating me. I need to remember that I don’t NEED to complete every quest (though it would be nice). I even tried to watch a few videos on those little kids running around. Everyone else seemed to be able to find them and “trip” them within two minutes or so. I spent a good hour running around – nope.

Maybe next time.

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

Completed a Raft – So what’s Next?

stargrace March 23, 2016 2Comments

When you’re workers are doing stuff, you need to be online. They don’t complete things while you’re offline, which helps account for the numerous AFK fishing people out there. The game really doesn’t want you to log off. In some ways this is a fantastic idea, it makes the world look constantly vibrant and filled with players even if they’re not actually doing anything or active, because they just never log out. In other ways this is a weird awkward system.

My workers finally finished the 28 steps required to create a raft license. I turned in my quest, got some experience, and set out on the open water as soon as I could. The cute little otter NPC who resides on the docks of Velia gave me a quest to head out to an island and visit some family members of his, so that’s where I went. Once there, that otter gave me another quest to gather him some fish, so I set out to do just that. Of course I never caught any of the fish that he wanted because that’s how my luck in video games goes. Like Stardew valley, for example. I had been catching loads of sardines, no problem. Then one day I got a quest for sardine. Not a single one to be found. You can apply that lesson to pretty much any video game I’ve ever played.

I find the raft very lovely, though I’ve heard many others complaining about it. I don’t find it slow at all, and after the awkward handling of my first wagon, and my first donkey, I think that it handles rather well. Better than either of those other mounts so far.

Now that this major craft project is completed I have to decide what I want to work towards next. Completing quests in my journal? Staying in Velia? Moving on to the next town? Linking more nodes? Simply exploring? I also need to decide what to do with my Velia workers in the meantime. One is still out collecting potatoes, but I have two others free. The shipyard does let me make a ferry, do I want to make that as an upgrade to my raft? Or I could free up those houses I bought for something else, or I could swap them to a different function. There’s always so many choices to make – the joy of sandbox games.

If you’re playing Black Desert Online these days what have you been up to? How do you spend your time? Let me know in comments!

More Lodging, More Workers

stargrace March 21, 2016 1Comment

Still working out node management and workers, today I decided to finally purchase a house that could be designated as lodging (granting me the ability to hire an extra worker) and then upgraded it so that I could hire 2 workers total (plus the 1 ‘bonus’ one that I started with). Now I’ve got three workers. I have one working on my raft (it’s almost done, I’m on step 25 out of 28 at the time of this post) one is off collecting potatoes, and the third is off collecting.. chicken meat. For now. I think I’ll probably swap that to some sort of ore collection in the future. In order to do that, I’ll need to link some nodes.

Before I can link any more nodes, I’ll need to earn more contribution points. Right now I have only 1 available, and that’s where management comes in handy, and planning what it is you want to do, and where to spend those points. I’ve also been neglecting my questing because I’ve been focusing on getting the raft done, and AFK fishing in the meantime. I managed to hit beginner10 in fishing which FINALLY allowed me to wear the gear they gave me way back when. Why they felt it necessary to give me gear I wouldn’t be able to wear until I had many hours dedicated to fishing, I’m not sure. I’ve also almost reached gathering10, which will allow me to don the outfit they gave me for that. The problem with these outfits is that when you equip them they bump gear out of the way, and they fill more than one slot, so suddenly you need to have 4 inventory slots free for your regular gear. Yes, inventory is still an issue for me, but not quite as big a deal as one may think.

I know the raft is nothing fancy, and a lot of people even say to just skip it, but I want to get the full experience, and who knows what quests unlock once I complete it.

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

Getting Started on a Raft

stargrace March 20, 2016 2Comments

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was pretty sure I wanted to get going on a raft, but I was so involved in other quests that it was taking me a bit of time to get around to it. I had picked up the quest from the harbor and the first thing I had to do was buy two houses, one for refining, and the second for a shipyard. It was easy enough to click on each house type and figure out which ones would give me what I needed, and I made sure the houses were linked, too. I added more storage, and now I have 6 houses in Velia. One acting as residence (cooking utensils need some place to go after all), two acting as warehouse (storage, I can never have enough), one acting as a tool workshop (I need my fishing rods!), and then the refinery and the shipyard. The refinery lets you make black stone powder from rough stone, and it’s used in quite a few recipes. The shipyard allows you to make a raft or a ferry. Of course I only have the supplies for a raft.

Creating a raft is pretty simple, but it does require an investment of time. You need to process logs (to be more specific you select manage crafting at the house that is a shipyard, and your worker needs to complete each step) – 25 times, each time takes 21m. Then you need to process 3 black stone powder. Once you’ve finished those processes, you’ll have a raft license in your warehouse.

I know the raft is an incredibly slow vehicle, but that makes a lot of sense to me after obtaining my first ground mount which is also pretty dang slow and awkward. I finally got a quest for a donkey this weekend even though I’ve already had my wagon for quite some time.

I also haven’t claimed my explorer’s pack rewards yet. I haven’t made any alts, so I’m trying to hold off in case I decide to play someone else the majority of the time. I know you can trade the items between your family members on the same server, but it seems like a bit of a hassle to me, so for now I’ll just leave the items be. Though I AM eager to get some lighting in a proper house. Any time I use my kitchen utensils I feel like I’m in a dungeon. Of course I bought that residence because of its proximity to the kitchen (easy to go and purchase supplies) so it’s really not that great of a home to begin with.

Thanks to the ongoing St. Patrick’s Day rewards I’m also collecting a small bundle of dye to use in the future, which is neat. Now that I’ve been playing the game steadily for a bit of time it feels like I’m very slowly getting a handle on most of the systems – though to be honest the node system still evades me, I’m not sure how nodes are linked, or how to link them. I’ll need to figure that out better and do more research.

Overall? I’m really enjoying myself. There are still some systems I haven’t explored yet (like amity) but meandering along doing my own thing seems to be working out well. Here’s hoping I can reach level 20 before too long, I’m almost level 18 at the time of this post.

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

Lets Make some Beer

stargrace March 19, 2016 1Comment

I still only have one worker at the moment. It seems to be enough for my immediate needs while I continue to explore my way around and figure out the question to that time aged question of sandbox MMOs “what do I want to do”. After harvesting bunches of potato, and creating me a bunch of fishing rods, my worker was running low on stamina. I had read that beer is the perfect thing to use to recoup stamina, and so I set out to make a batch (or two or three). I had some in my inventory from a quest so I used that first to replenish the worker (who is now almost level 9) and then went to the inn to buy some ingredients.

Beer takes 5 potato, 6 mineral water, 1 sugar, and 2 leavening agents. Then you need to have a cooking utensil placed in your home. You put enough ingredients to create the recipe once, otherwise it will eat your supplies and only give you one item.

Cooking is neat, and I learned a few things about it – like each time you do a combine you have a chance at a byproduct. The byproducts seem random, but they may be tied into the success of cooking, I’m not sure. Each byproduct can be given to an NPC in the next city, but you’ll want to have about 5 of each before you walk all the way there if you’re still hanging out in Velia. It’s quite a ways away.

When you turn in the byproducts you’ll get a variety of rewards ranging from milk (another cooking ingredient), contribution points, experience, etc. I ran to the next city before I realized that you need to have a number of these byproducts on you for turning them in. I turned in what I could, and then sold the rest to vendor because lets face it I just don’t have the inventory space to cart around 4 different types of byproducts from the one time I decided to do some cooking.

I haven’t created any alts yet, but I’m starting to see how they could come in handy. Instead of trying to ‘do it all’ on one character, I could dedicate different characters to different tasks. Then my inventory may not be so full, because I could shift items over to whoever is working on that craft. So far I’ve just been focusing on my main and have had very little desire to create more characters – something that’s pretty odd for me, I have alts in pretty much every game I’ve ever played for any length of time.

Once the beer was done, I replenished the stamina of my worker, and set him back out collecting potatoes. He’ll do that until he’s out of stamina again, I’ve set it to repeat the last task. This’ll give me the ability to make even more beer, and maybe by then I’ll have more than one worker who will be doing tasks for me. I haven’t decided yet, but I do know I’d like to eventually make my raft, and I know it will go faster if I have more workers dedicated to it.

How have you been spending your time in game? Let me know in comments!

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