Optimizing Your Cash Investment In Black Desert Online

I felt with many changes that Pearl Abyss is making that now is a good time to reassess the cost of getting into Black Desert Online (BDO). Black Desert Online can be a very expensive game to play, either in required time invested, real life cash invested, or both. Attempting to play BDO without making purchases from the cash shop can be done but it's an absolutely miserable way to try to play the game. I want to talk about what people might need to play this game, and why, so this is going to get long. Buckle up!

So let's look at two things here - one is what I personally feel I need to enjoy the game. You can scale this up or down yourself as you see fit. And the other thing to examine is how to optimize your cash expenditures to achieve these goals. I will list all prices in "Pearls", the in game currency for BDO, or "loyalties". You can assume that 100 pearls equals $1 US. There are ways to lower that cost for the pearls currency and we'll discuss those later. There is also a "loyalties" system in game. Each day that you login, you get 200 "loyalties". These are points that increase each time you login. After 10 days, you'd have 2000 loyalties. After 100 days, you'd have 20,000 loyalties. Loyalties can purchase some items that are also available in the cash (pearl) shop but in limited quantities.

Starting at the character level, because we'll look at account expenses later, we have to ask what you need to make a character viable. BDO greatly limits your inventory space and without expanding it outside of the game, you're liable to find the space given to be insufficient. At the start you have 24 inventory slots out of a maximum of 192. There are in game quests, both in the main story line of the game itself and in some side quests, that if every single one is done, give you 33 more inventory slots. I personally have found that somewhere between 100-120 inventory slots is usually sufficient, if I am diligent about minimizing the extra "niceties" that my character has. Personally, I have multiple characters with a full 192 slots unlocked but that's not really necessary for everyone. 

So let's assume you're going to want to obtain another 64 inventory slots (since inventory slots align in blocks of 8). The cheapest way to do that is to buy two +4 inventory slot coupons via the loyalties shop (max allowed), then buy 3 +16 inventory slot coupons, and one +8 inventory slot coupon. Total baseline cost of this is 3000 loyalties (15 separate days in which you have logged in), 3 * 1450 pearls per 16 inventory slot coupon, and 800 pearls for one 8 inventory slot coupon. Total pearls baseline cost is 5150 pearls or $51.50.

Then we have to look at weight allowance, because unlike many other games, things have weight in BDO. Weight is measured in terms of "LT". You start the game at level one capable of carrying a few hundred LT and while that seems a lot, it will rapidly become obvious that it is not. Weight allowance increases slowly as you level. By the time you reach level 60, your natural weight allowance is going to be just shy of 800 LT. But you have to remember that, depending on the armor and weapons you choose, your gear will ultimately set you back 80 to 100 LT. So your free weight allowance is lower by that amount.

Also, you are going to want to carry specific things with you, such as food, pet food, healing potions, mana (or other equivalent) potions, fireflies (for lighting at night), etc. Then, in addition to that, you're going to find yourself acquiring a large array of dropped items while adventuring. This last category is important, because the process of "making money" in the game, using "silver" so you can engage in trade in the game world's economy is directly tied to how much loot you can carry out of the current area in which you are adventuring.

It's that number which will determine your efficiency while adventuring. If your free weight range is too low, you'll have to make far more trips back to town to sell or unload items into storage. So what's a good target to work towards? There are multiple ways to increase weight allowance. First, you can "train" weight allowance upward. This is a tedious process that could take months and months to get to max weight allowance. And what does it give you at the end? +52 more LT. That's it. You can also buy weight (and inventory) increases via the "loyalty" system in game. With loyalties, you can buy a +50 LT increase for 3500 loyalties. So you can buy 50 more LT from the loyalty shop every 18 days a maximum of 4 times for a max weight increase of 200 LT.

Pearl Abyss (PA) also sells weight increases for "Pearls" which you can obtain for real life cash. You can buy each of these weight increases one  time. There is 50, 100, 150, and 200 LT weight increases available for 600, 1000, 1350, and 1700 pearls each. You can add up to 500 total LT for 4650 pearls, or approximately $46.50. There are ways to optimize this expense and we'll discuss that later, but this is the baseline cost for these weight increases. In addition, as a "special" in the case shop, a few times per year, PA will also sell a 250 LT and a 300 LT weight increase. These two taken together are another 5200 pearls or $52.00. The baseline total for purchasing all these weight allowances is thus 9850 pearls or $98.50. Remember, this is for one character only. Weight increases apply per character, not account wide. Same with inventory slots.

So, what else might a single character need? A pearl shop costume. This is directly "pay to win" marketing. Visible Gear in BDO occupies up to 7 total slots. There are 8 costume slots to consider to give a specific "look" to your character. These slots are head, armor (chest), feet, and hands for what you wear, and mainhand weapon, offhand weapon, and awakening weapon for the weapons you carry. Your costume slots also include an underwear slot, an earring slot, and glasses or other facial adornments slot. There is a facial piercing slot but that slot gives no statistical benefits.

Costume pieces each have a specific stat increase, and the set has bonuses that apply with 4, 6, or 8 pieces worn. With a full 8 slots occupied, you get the 4 piece bonus, the 6 piece bonus, and the 8 piece bonus all stacked together. These include an ever present +10% combat experience gain, +10% skill experience gain, -10% gear durability reduction, and +10% death penalty resistance. Trust me, these values are significant. You can play without them but your appearance options are far more limited and you'll have to work even harder than those who have pearl shop costumes to level, gain skills, etc. A single costume that covers 7 of these slots (ignoring the earring and glasses slot for now), will cost you 3400 pearls baseline price. Then add in a set of underwear for 700 pearls as the 8th costume piece and you are at 4100 pearls, or $41.00  for one single costume that cannot be transferred to another character.

So far, just for weight, inventory, and costume needs, for one single character, we have expenses of $51.50, $98.50, and $41.00. You might choose to just get just the first 500 LT weight increase which lowers that $98.50 to $46.50.

This is the bare minimum to play and feel effective in your character. But single character expenses are not everything. There are also account wide expenses.

One new account wide feature is "family" inventory slots, which you unlock the first time you have a character reach, I think, level 58. You can currently have a maximum of 40 "family" inventory slots with a maximum weight allowance (separate from other weight allowances) of  500 LT, of which 300 LT comes from the cash shop. Every four family inventory slots cost you 800 pearls each and after the first four family inventory slots which you gain from a quest, you have to buy the remaining slots from the cash shop. You can buy 4 family inventory slots for 800 pearls each so 9 times that is 7200 pearls. You don't need all 40 slots but you are probably going to want 20, maybe 24 of those slots, so that  cost is 3200 or 4000 total pearls or $32.00 or $40.00.

Weight allowance for the family inventory in the cash shop is sold in +50, +100, and +150 LT sizes. But honestly, if you do all the quests you'll have 200 LT to start and adding just the +100 LT increase is probably going to be plenty. So let's call this 1200 pearls or $12.00.

The next account wide thing you'll want to have are pets. In BDO, pets do your looting for you so you don't have to stop and loot. And trust me, given how fast the monsters come at you, you may not have time to be bending over to pick up loot! Let the pets handle that! Now, you can get 3 pets in game for free by completing specific quest lines, so at the baseline, you only need to buy 2 pets to reach the maximum active pet cap of 5 active pets. The cheapest pets are the classic pets like cat, dog, and a few others at 900 pearls each. That's a total of 1800 pearls or $18.00.

The next thing to consider for account wide purchase is "vault" space. There is no global vault space in BDO that can hold any type of item. There is a limited "warehouse" in the Central Market (CM) but the storage limits on that can be eaten up rather quickly. So what most people do is choose a  few "home towns". Every town starts with 16 vault slots. There are two ways to increase vault space in the game. The first way, in game, is via "contribution points", which you earn from questing. Contribution points can be used to rent buildings for storage space which increases your vault space. But be forewarned, it can take a lot of contribution points to max out the 192 vault slots in any single town and contribution points actually have better uses than for this.

Consequently, people often purchase vault slots from the pearl shop. Cost for vault space varies per town. The more expensive storage is in the larger towns and that is because the larger towns are the ones  that have access to the Central Market. These cost 225 pearls per 8 slots of vault space. All other towns cost 150 pearls per 8 vault slots. There are a few exceptions to this overall pattern. Velia, a starter town you reach early in the game costs 150 pearls per 8 slots. So do Shakatu, Old Wisdom Tree, and Duvencrune. Of these cities, if I were starting today, I'd look to add extra vault space to Velia and Duvencrune probably first. So let's say you wanted to add 104 slots each to Velia and Duvencrune, to give yourself a place to store crafting materials, etc. That's 12 +8 vault storage coupons per city for a total of 24. Then 24 * 150 pearls each is a baseline cost of 3600 pearls. And now you have two cities capable of holding 240 total different sorts of items or stacks of items (many items do stack, especially crafting items like copper ore or iron ore or maple timber, etc.). That 240 slots is probably not enough to do every major life skill but it can let you get started. You'll just have to manage your space efficiently is all.

Related to vault space and to the Central Market, another account wide thing that I consider a "nice to have" are maids and butlers. Maids and butlers are of two specific types - storage (vault) maids and butlers or Central Market maids and butlers. Each maid or butler you own of a specific type lets you open the nearest major town's storage and either put in or take out one item or one stack of items up to a limit. I consider maids and butlers nice to have and you don't have to buy these though. Why? Because the longer you play, the more maids and butlers Pearl will simply give you each year as rewards for various events or even just reaching certain amounts of "played" time. Maids and Butlers are 1200 pearls each and if you want to buy a few, go ahead but I don't see these as necessities.

The final expense that most roleplayers insist on having is the "Value Pack". Value Packs provide the following benefits:

Each of these benefits are useful. Value Packs can be bought for 30 day time periods or 90 day time periods. The baseline cost of Value Packs are 1500 pearls for  30 days and 4500 pearls for 90 days. If you consume two 30 day Value Packs, the buffs do not double but the time duration is now 60 days total.

What a Value Pack gives is useful and it is account wide. You get extra inventory and storage slots. You get 200 more LT weight allowance. You get unlimited use of Merv's Pallette, a dye system in game but be warned if you dye with Merv's Palette then let your Value Pack expire, the dye colors no longer show. They will show again when you resume another Value Pack. You also get unlimited beauty salon so you can constantly tweak your character's appearance for free. Buying Appearance Change Coupons gets expensive fast and that's the only other alternative there. You get a 30% bonus to Combat, Skill, Life, and Mount experience. You get daily barter increases (bartering is the trade system at sea where you can become a sailing merchant). The remaining bonuses are useful but would require more explanation of the game itself.

But in short, Value Packs are considerable value for the money and many roleplayers treat them like an ongoing monthly subscription cost. So we have this cost of 1500 pearls or $15.00 per month, and our other minimal investment costs for the account and for one character are $245 total to get started ($139 of that is character only investment).

Now it turns out there are some ways you can optimize some of your purchases. PA first offers something called the "Legendary" account upgrade. What's in it? This is what's in it for $80.00.

The two outfit boxes are the "default" pearl shop costume for each class, and you might not prefer that but still, that's 6300 pearls or $63.00 of goods right there. You also get a 45 day value pack to start, which would otherwise be $45.00. You get three of the most expensive pets and those three would normally cost 4050 pearls or $40.50. You get two maids or $24 worth of goods there. And you get 20 inventory slots, which normally would be 1900 total pearls or $19.00. Oh, and you get 3000 pearls to spend as you please. That's over $220 of goods right there. And you get a 20% Discount Coupon to use with your 3000 pearls.

The other ways to save some money are simple - wait for sales and/or wait for Discount Coupons to be given out which sometimes happens during specific events each year. Using sales during your first 6 months in game, you can slowly round out that inventory space, that weight allowance, etc., and get as much as 50% off at times.

Finally, some people will tell you to buy pearl shop items in game off the Central Market for Silver, but many pearl shop items are never or super rarely put up for sale. And others are high competition items so good luck beating others out to get that! On practical terms, I do not find relying on in-game sales of pearl shop items for silver (game coin) to be effective, especially since PA hard caps max prices on pearl items and some are simply worth than the silver cost allowed for them.

That $245 to start playing the game effectively can be gamed, up or down, based on your own needs. Note that this number includes no housing decorations, no costume set for your mount, none of the extra blessings other than Value Pack, such as Blessing of Kamasylve or Secret Book of Old Moon which I don't consider necessary to have but nice if you can afford them.

But this is pretty close to what I'd tell anyone considering playing BDO on retail to evaluate before committing to the game. This is also why I tell new players to play a bit and find your favorite class before committing - because once that money is spent on one character it cannot be transferred to another.

The cost of BDO is my primary reason these days for not recommending the game. It's also open world PVP but I think I've been killed by other players maybe a dozen times total in 5.5 years of playing BDO? It's not really that common unless you behave like a jerk so I don't worry about it anymore. What BDO does offer is breadth and depth of game that I've not seen in any other MMO since SWG or early Ultima Online. Technically, I can't sing its praises most of the time (it does have some faults) enough. It's just that cost factor that is unfortunately intimidating to many gamers.      

As a final note about the game, the new "Season" system makes creating and gearing a new character to almost end-game levels far easier than ever before. Clearly, PA is trying to appeal to a broader audience. We'll see if that helps even though costs have not dropped enough in my personal opinion.