My Current Game State In Black Desert Online As Of October 2018
At the point where I'm writing this post, I'm a member of Greythorne, originally founded as a role-play guild but expanded now to a "social" guild, but where roleplayers are welcome and much of the guild leadership are active roleplayers as well.
Still, even as roleplayers, people seek to improve their characters over time. I often get criticized for not selling off gear but it's just not my style. As a consequence, I have two level 60 characters. Both of them are in full boss armor and full boss weapons. There are two "shorthand" ways to express the state of your character's gear in BDO. The first is to list the three main stats that show on your inventory page. These are attack power, awakened attack power, and defensive power, also known as AP/AAP/DP. The other way is to just give your renown score (called RS and sometimes intermixed with GS), which is a composite score based on the above three stats plus some formulaic tweaking.
My Dark Knight has an AP/AAP/DP of 211/219/281. All her boss gear is at least TRI enchant levels and her awakened weapon is TET enchant. I'm aiming to get her AP mainhand weapon to TET enchant next. This is a snapshot of her gear.
My Lahn has an AP/AAP/DP of 199/201/249. All her boss armor is DUO enchant and all her boss weapons are TRI enchant levels. Here is a snapshot of her current gear.
I have several alts that are often as well geared as many of my guildmates. People ask why I keep so much gear around but I just enjoy gearing up each character as an exercise of its own.
One of the things that keeps me busy with BDO is what are called "life skills". In other games, these are often referred to as "crafting" but the word crafting fails to capture the breadth and depth of BDO's life skills. Besides typical gathering skills, like lumbering or prospecting of fishing, you can farm. You can create jewelry, weapons, armor, clothing. You can fish. You can build boats including frigates and sailboats, and yes, they are visually stunning and can carry many players. And, my favorite thing, you can tame, breed, level, and train horses.
Unlike other games where my characters have roleplayed having extensive financial empires, in BDO you really can. I have billions of silver worth of raw materials in storage around the game world. As I process through it, I can generate hundreds of millions of silver per week.
What's interesting in BDO is there are some life skills that can only be done by you, the player, but there are other tasks that can only be done by workers you hire, and finally, there are tasks that you or your workers can do.
In addition to selling raw materials, many manufactured items can be resold on the marketplace as well. So can "intermediate" materials. Examples of intermediate processing might be prospecting for ore, which you can optionally purify down to metal shards of a specific type (like zinc shards or iron shards), which can then be further processed by mixing with other materials into brass ingots, bronze ingots, steel ingots, etc. And those ingots can be used to fashion different kinds of armor, weapons, or be used as components in ships, horse gear, furniture, etc.
The breadth of BDO is breathtaking. When I get tired of breeding, leveling, and training horses, I can take a break and focus on crafting things for resale. Or I can just run trade routes, carrying items from one city to another, for rewards. Or I can fish, endlessly.
BDO doesn't kick you from the game for being idle. In fact, it has tools to help you perform certain actions while idle. You can fish while AFK, all night if you like. You can process ores into shards, until your inventory space/weight is full enough to cause your character to stop. You can set up unattended riding loops, to ride all night while AFK so you can level that new horse.
Consequently, once you login, there are all sorts of temptations to just set your character up doing some AFK activity all night rather than just logoff as in other MMOGs. You can even gain 99% of the experience you need to level while AFK training on a dummy in town. (Shades of Ultima Online, huh?)
BDO still has all the drawbacks it ever did. To maximize your fun in the game, you're going to want to buy many conveniences from the game's cash shop (Pearl Shop). You could easily spend absurd amounts of cash there making your gaming easier. There is still open world PVP, though it has been very rare in my personal experience. And advancement through the game (armor, weapons, etc.) is still highly dependent on random number generated "luck".
So while I can't recommend the game, it has been great fun for me which is why I'm still playing 31 months later and don't see myself departing for another game any time soon.
Still, even as roleplayers, people seek to improve their characters over time. I often get criticized for not selling off gear but it's just not my style. As a consequence, I have two level 60 characters. Both of them are in full boss armor and full boss weapons. There are two "shorthand" ways to express the state of your character's gear in BDO. The first is to list the three main stats that show on your inventory page. These are attack power, awakened attack power, and defensive power, also known as AP/AAP/DP. The other way is to just give your renown score (called RS and sometimes intermixed with GS), which is a composite score based on the above three stats plus some formulaic tweaking.
My Dark Knight has an AP/AAP/DP of 211/219/281. All her boss gear is at least TRI enchant levels and her awakened weapon is TET enchant. I'm aiming to get her AP mainhand weapon to TET enchant next. This is a snapshot of her gear.
My Lahn has an AP/AAP/DP of 199/201/249. All her boss armor is DUO enchant and all her boss weapons are TRI enchant levels. Here is a snapshot of her current gear.
I have several alts that are often as well geared as many of my guildmates. People ask why I keep so much gear around but I just enjoy gearing up each character as an exercise of its own.
One of the things that keeps me busy with BDO is what are called "life skills". In other games, these are often referred to as "crafting" but the word crafting fails to capture the breadth and depth of BDO's life skills. Besides typical gathering skills, like lumbering or prospecting of fishing, you can farm. You can create jewelry, weapons, armor, clothing. You can fish. You can build boats including frigates and sailboats, and yes, they are visually stunning and can carry many players. And, my favorite thing, you can tame, breed, level, and train horses.
Unlike other games where my characters have roleplayed having extensive financial empires, in BDO you really can. I have billions of silver worth of raw materials in storage around the game world. As I process through it, I can generate hundreds of millions of silver per week.
What's interesting in BDO is there are some life skills that can only be done by you, the player, but there are other tasks that can only be done by workers you hire, and finally, there are tasks that you or your workers can do.
In addition to selling raw materials, many manufactured items can be resold on the marketplace as well. So can "intermediate" materials. Examples of intermediate processing might be prospecting for ore, which you can optionally purify down to metal shards of a specific type (like zinc shards or iron shards), which can then be further processed by mixing with other materials into brass ingots, bronze ingots, steel ingots, etc. And those ingots can be used to fashion different kinds of armor, weapons, or be used as components in ships, horse gear, furniture, etc.
The breadth of BDO is breathtaking. When I get tired of breeding, leveling, and training horses, I can take a break and focus on crafting things for resale. Or I can just run trade routes, carrying items from one city to another, for rewards. Or I can fish, endlessly.
BDO doesn't kick you from the game for being idle. In fact, it has tools to help you perform certain actions while idle. You can fish while AFK, all night if you like. You can process ores into shards, until your inventory space/weight is full enough to cause your character to stop. You can set up unattended riding loops, to ride all night while AFK so you can level that new horse.
Consequently, once you login, there are all sorts of temptations to just set your character up doing some AFK activity all night rather than just logoff as in other MMOGs. You can even gain 99% of the experience you need to level while AFK training on a dummy in town. (Shades of Ultima Online, huh?)
BDO still has all the drawbacks it ever did. To maximize your fun in the game, you're going to want to buy many conveniences from the game's cash shop (Pearl Shop). You could easily spend absurd amounts of cash there making your gaming easier. There is still open world PVP, though it has been very rare in my personal experience. And advancement through the game (armor, weapons, etc.) is still highly dependent on random number generated "luck".
So while I can't recommend the game, it has been great fun for me which is why I'm still playing 31 months later and don't see myself departing for another game any time soon.
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