In Black Desert Online (BDO), players are given the choice of 12 zodiac signs when creating a new character. These signs define a character’s in-game personality and affect how they interact with NPCs. Each character has a unique horoscope, which affects their personality and success in the game.
The primary purpose of horoscopes is to increase amity or friendliness with certain NPCs, which can be used to achieve various goals. However, they do not directly impact gameplay. The only benefit of horoscopes is that they increase amity gain when using the conversation mini game with NPCs with the same horoscope.
The Owl Horoscope, for example, is associated with Rovat Marino, a character born under this sign. Characters born under this sign are known for their mercantile nature. Horoscopes provide a small advantage for characters in BDO, as they can be found in the amity window and affect the amount of damage a character can deal.
To discover a character’s horoscope in Black Desert, players can access the horoscope feature in the game’s interface. This will provide valuable information about their character’s traits and personality.
In conclusion, while horoscopes may seem like no impact on gameplay, they play a crucial role in shaping a character’s personality and interactions with NPCs. While they may not directly impact gameplay, they provide a small advantage for players in BDO.
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Wow! Im glad i clicked on your article. This is one of the best reviews of BDO ive seen. I started BDO back before there were any guides and it was a bit confusing for me too but i kept at it like you did and like you said i enjoyed every minute of it. Most reviews only level up to 40 or 50 and call it a bad game but seeing you actually grind it out like a normal player would was satisfying to watch. FYI you can level to 61 in like an hour if you min max everything lol But youll learn that while making an alt and if you have a few friends that can help. BDO is truly a unique game unlike anything i had ever played before. YOu can fish all day, kill monsters, train horses, gather, cook, do alchemy, or just travel around and find hidden places hardly anyone has seen, theres underwater places you can adventure around too! Its one of those games i think will go down in history for me as one of the best games ive ever played. The longer you play and more people you meet i.e in guilds and such youll find your place within the game. Some people grind for the newest meta gear while others just use their play time to run dungeons with friends. Im glad you enjoyed yourself and I hope you get to play it again.
Loved this review! I joined around when the game released in the west and played for a few years but I’d still call it one of my favorite MMOs. The characters I made almost 10 years ago now still fuel a lot of my artistic inspiration and exist as original characters in drawings, paintings, 3d models, written stories and even a friends’ D&D game. Actual roleplaying was never my thing, but they have entire backstories, families and worlds, and I still speak to friends about these characters we made and we still remake and replay them in other single/multiplayer games whenever we can. It’s really nice to see someone recognize how much of a blast the game is even without MTX, the game has a really bad rep for it and while there’s potential for overspending and addiction it really only takes a reasonable upfront investment to get some (imo) necessary QOL upgrades, unless you’re interested in the competitive side of the game (mainly: pvp related activities or competing for max level). A couple things you missed: a lot of cash shop cosmetics (and the game’s premium membership) are available on the marketplace from other players. You can pre-order them for regular currency (silver) if they’re out of stock, which puts you into a lottery system with other players once they go on sale. While it can take a long time to win these auctions, as a mid-lategame player it’s essentially just a waiting game. By the time I stopped playing I had dozens of premium outfits spread across my characters that I never had to pay a real life cent for.
Im a long time player of bdo (over 30k hours since 2016) and i just gotta say, great article honestly, Bdo is an insanely massive game with so many systems and things to do along with amazing graphics and probably one of the best action combat systems of all time, it always makes me a little sad when people refuse to even look at the game because of p2w, Most of the items in the store are convenience, really niche or can be obtained through the in game marketplace after another player sells one, Though there is one item in the store you can not sell that i would 100% tell any player to buy and that is the tent, Its a personal campsite you place down to repair gear and buy buffs with silver when out an about and is incredibly useful but comes with a $50 price tag (Most new players will wait for an event coupon or the tent to be on sale before buying one) Some other things i want to add: Joining a guild is highly reccomended in bdo, even though a lot of the content is single player, learning alongside people or having someone there who can help you out is a really nice thing to have, also they give some pretty good buffs just for being in one so its pretty worth Using skills on the hotbar is generally worse, the skill will either be slower or not allow cancels/flows as cleanly as the combo based input, but that doesnt mean the hotbar is useless, some skills can only be used though hotkey for example, and others can be used to swap you between weapon stances (Awakening to mainhand and vice versa) in one swift motion Outside of the usual content in the game, BDO runs some incredible events for some short term goals, usually handing out items that can only be obtained from the cash shop (Maids, Pets, Outfits/Costumes and so on) along with other handy materials, These events usually include some kind of Coupon Code that you can redeem in game for even more items Some useful websites to help you out are “garmoth.
That was a very good and thorough review as a new player. I started last July and had a very similar experience. I kept wanting to play it, but constantly for years heard it was horrible pay-to-win. I finally gave it a try and I’m still playing and loving it 7 months later. I really wish I had tried it years ago and judged it for myself. Apparently, Kakao handed the western publishing rights back to Pearl Abyss about three years ago and it has become less P2W since. The biggest thing for new people to understand is that it’s a marathon. It can be very overwhelming at the start, so just stash everything and then eventually piece by piece work on figuring out what it’s for. PA has been making a lot of changes to simplify the game update after update.
The graphics are great if you either a) like to have the feeling someone smeared a handful of vaseline over your screen // have every texture flicker with every step you take because you didn’t want the vaseline or b) like to have objects like trees, groundclutter, shadows and even parts of houses pop in within 20 meters into and out of existence
A real perspective and experience shared with open honesty, much appreciated. As a BDO beta to launch player I feel this game has come a long way, and I’m glad to see that new players coming into this game can truly enjoy it whether they want to lifeskill, do combat, pvp, etc. Thank you for making the effort to make this great content!
Magnus quest was one of those quest i wouldn’t do, until a mate of mine kept saying him and me should (we though at the time we could co-op it) Well, despite all the puzzles, despite all the boring stuff, the usefulness you gain out of that quest alone is immense, free PEN armor, you can use storage all over the game (doesn’t matter what city) and a teleportation (saves a HUGE amount of time) and of course the Magnus skill, it is a blessing in disguise. So, if people feel discouraged about the quest, hang in there, i felt the same, but when I did it, got the quest done, i haven’t looked back and was happy I actually took the time (did it over 2 days) So yeah, this game is huge, a lot of potential, so many classes as well, it’s fun at time IMO (i event spent 30+ hours at Blood Wolves in one sitting for HP piece.) giga grind, but y’all can take your time.
After perusal this article I’m still on the fence with BDO, I’ve watched plenty of gameplay and have no shortage of time to invest but to me BDO seems to advanced for someone like me to really get into. All the different systems and ways to go about different aspects of gameplay seem more complex and require more brain power than I intend to put into a game. Honestly though this article was well put together. Thanks dots!
This is NOT your average BDO new player experience. You see, Waydot actually knows how to use google and how to find useful information, to look for the bigger picture first. 99% of people are actually too dumb to read what is clearly written on their screen, so they complain about the many convoluted systems when all they have to do is probably find some NPC to talk to or slap some monster around. Waydot is already more prepared for this game than most of the brainlets that post on the official BDO sub every day.
I’ve played this game for almost 2 years, and have spent less than I would on any monthly subscription mmo. It’s been a much better experience than I imagined it would be. I was expecting some phone-game mechanic money-pit. I’ve been very happy with how wrong I’ve been. This is all subjective of course. But all in all it’s been a great time.
I’m always surprised how no one seems to mind the scuffed camera in this game. If you turn the camera you end up shuffling awkwardly backwards. You cant just walk around and take in the scenery without always charging forward like sonic the hedgehog, or grinding to a slow walk animation because the camera doesn’t turn 360 like everyother game.
I was a BDO content creator for a while, I pushed my gear quite a bit from 2020-2021 which was really the last sort of time period where gear mattered in the endgame (e.g. pushing from the 90th percentile to the 91st). If you want a fairly unbiased take on the game from someone who was pretty deep into the entire ecosystem, and having played it since 2017 when it was a completely different game, I’d be happy to jump on a call and discuss it live etc. I also maxed a hardcore in rs3 and followed you since like episode 2 of your series over there, would be happy to discuss in particular the p2w mechs etc.
I’ve stumbled upon your article by random chance and really enjoyed it. Black Desert has been one of my main games since I started it in 2017 and I play it regularly. There truly is a lot to explore in the game and I have yet to do some of it after seven years of playing. One thing I noticed you mentioning a lot in your article are the great visuals and I couldn’t help but notice that you’re not even playing on higher graphics settings. If you’re still interested in the game, you should see how it looks like in the Remastered mode, because that’s just beautiful to look at. Great article!
I hate that I never did that old account transfer way back when, lost so much progress on my mains, all my currency, … everything. I don’t even remember in that game, it’s been so many years. My Pearls..? I don’t know. I dread the fact of starting over from nothing, and having to collect and upgrade my gear back to +15 or whatever. I thought it was truly awful.
This is definitely an interesting series, but I’m not sure what this website is…Have any games actually been worth continuing to play after the 100 hours or once the article is made, you uninstall and move on? It feels sort of like what Josh Strife does with his MMO articles, but there is at least a bit of a consistent game going on in the inbetween times. What’s your consistent game? I really like the way you talk about the games but there are so few that are actually worth taking on, what happens when you run out?
Your articles are short and great and from an actual new players perspective. I love them. thanks to you i reinstalled Lost ark Online (a game i had awaited for 5 years until it came out and then i thought it was gonna be some forever taking slog) and i will reinstall BDO as well. You make it sound worth the experience at the least.
Ngl I got my season to 61 in 4 hours…..Marie cave op. Also your sage’s appearance didn’t look like it was changing with different armor because: 1 you had an outfit on and/or 2 you were looking at the sub weapon without realizing it’s always going to be there(the sage sub weapon is the 2 shoulders ribbon looking things that are on either side of your cape) great vid though
I have been playing BDO for many years now. I think I overall spent about 100 bucks and it was to buy myself limited pets just because I liked them. I dont understand why do some people claim this game is P2W, the developers are insanely generous when it comes to events or anniversaries, you get free highest tier pets, free highest tier outfits, free attempts at PEN gear (the Js hammer), many cron stones, collectibles that you can eventually exchange for valuable items, it just takes time. If you want these things instantly you can pay for it, but if you are a long term player you will get everything for free from the developers. It was super hard to get a dream horse in the past, expensive and time consuming, and now you get one for free just like that. They also gave the highest tier maxed fairies twice I think, which was also an expensive item in the past to own. You can purchase items that can change your horses skills and make it a better horse overall and I recently found out that I had plenty of those in my inventories without ever buying one, I guess they were given during some events. If you wait and invest a lot of time in the game it will pay you back.
Bad points- 1. Map is shit, not a good navigational system. 2. for fight every charcater have different buttons leading to confusion sometimes, 3. seasonal character is trap most new player might not be able to finished it. 4. Based on gacha to level up weapons and armor. Most players don’t even max their weapon. 5. World boss system is confusing a little bit. 6. Storage in every city can only be access throw that city only, and tranport takes time. 7.good stuff is p2w after all its korean mmo. 8.classes are gender lock, most update are about new classes.
The biggest reason googling for BDO is hard is because of how many systems and requirements are interconnected. 1) To complete this quest, you need to talk to NPC11. 2) This NPC won’t talk to you unless you have knowledge X, Y, and Z. 2.a) Knowledge X requires you to speak to NPC2. 2.a.i) NPC2 won’t talk to you unless you have knowledge A, B, and C. …………etc Suddenly just trying to get a single NPC to talk to you to complete a single quest has turned into a literal worldwide adventure to speak to other NPC’s and gain knowledge, sometimes to OTHER questchains, etc… I literally just gave up on a pretty crucial quest chain that gives a permanent family-wide +1 DP buff because it mimiced the situation i described above. After realizing how deep the rabbit hole went just to finish a SINGLE piece of a ~20-piece quest, I decided it’d go on the backburner indefinitely.
The impression of BDO that you heard before going in was 100% true back in like 2016 so it was definitely a fact but just has changed over the years to be less true. Its still a game with RNG infested systems but the p2w has toned down afaik. I played it a ton bw 2016 n 2018 so I have 1st hand experience of what it was like in those times. I just enjoyed grinding on my sorc n building my ship/ life skilling so I wasnt too bothered by it at the time but it was def a thing. Not to mention that the change by adding the season mode esp for new players is very different from the old usual experience most ppl are referring to. Think of it like comparing No Man’s Sky at launch to it today or some other game that has undergone massive changes. Unfortunately, after my left arm became paralyzed in late 2018, It was a struggle to try n get bck into the amazing combat with mouse only bindings so I never rly went back. Had so much fun in the few yrs I played though that I had a hard time finding a different game with a class that plays like sorc that I fell so in love with.
Not gonna lie, 6 hours for 58-60… You can get 0-62 in 3hours. Your offhand is not enchanced. Magnus Questline is tedious, yes. You used high failstack and valuable Cron Stone to enchant very easy gear. But we all did rookie mystake it’s alright. But you actually played BDO the worst and most painfull possible way, but still manage to do a positive review, i’m impressed.
The game is definitely pay for progress, but thousands can be lost in the enhancement system. Everything is obtainable with the in game currency and it’s mad easy to make. People love to complain because they give up on it hours into the game. The realistic cycle is Grind>enhance>fail enhancement> rinse and repeat in terms of progression (gear wise). I know people that have chosen not to do any of that and did nothing but life skill and buy gear via the central market.
I know endless grind will reward me with better gear, but 1.2bil an hour for a PEN weapon worth 122bil is just not worth the time cause of how mind numbing PVE is, If I could make the same from different capped PVP modes then yes I would love this game. But after 8 years, that is still not the case…
If you don’t get frustrated by BDO’s rng you’re either a noob, consistently spooned or such a whale that you simply don’t care. 😀 Also, it’s important to realize that the new player season experience is MUCH different from what you would have gotten prior to its introduction. This absolutely includes the enhancement system, as everything you need to upgrade the season gear is basically provided for free during the level-up process, while the probabilities are massively boosted compared to regular equipment. If you don’t want to be incredibly inefficient in your gameplay (i.e. manually picking up loot or leaving it behind), several hundred dollars worth of MTX are basically a must somewhere down the line.
i kinda find it funny how he’s talking about pen gear like it’s something you’ll just eventualy get full set off xD i played bdo for about 2 years some time back before season servers was a thing and think i saw someone i knew get pen items at max 4 times and these dudes were serious grinders… i myself was still filling out my tet set when i stopped playing 😛
This is a really good review tbh, you mention so many times though that you’d heard this game was a P2W grindfest, that’s partly because….well it sort of was for a while, a lot of the things you got with the seasonal servers and season pass used to take SOOO much longer to obtain, Pets were handed out FAR less often, and they are relatively important closer to endgame, the dream horse…wow is getting one of those (or a second one) the original way a lengthy process. Things have changed A LOT in the past few years though, The game in NA/EU used to be published/run by an entirely different company to Pearl Abyss, who at the time was only running the KR servers and developing the game, idk the entire story, but my personal option is, that company didn’t care as much about the game or the players and was just cash grabbing, when PA took full control over all regions, things did change for the better, the game is FAR less P2W then its ever been, sure, you can still buy your way ahead, but what do you really want for a game with no subscription that regularly goes on sale for $1….I’m sure as hell not complaining.
34:45 “..and I haven’t played with others”. That sums up my experience with BDO when I played a while back, there’s a lot to do, but it’s just a lot of solo content, which for an MMO is disappointing in my opinion. The levelling experience is completely solo (and from what I recall, quest objectives are per player, so it discourages levelling with others), you don’t queue for dungeons or such and play with other players like you’d find in most other MMO’s, the lifeskills stuff is also completely solo. You see a lot of players wondering around in towns, but the game’s content does not encourage interacting with other players so they all feel more like NPC’s – and a lot of the time they’re idle grinding their lifeskills anyway so they might as well be NPC’s. Supposedly there was some multiplayer PvE content later added, but the levelling experience never seems to introduce you to this, though it’s a convoluted mess so I may have missed it.
This was a great article to watch and to see a new players perspective. It’s nice to see how well you figured a lot out on your own. I know full well how overwhelming things can get and the sheer amount of things just thrown and dumped onto you starting out. Definitely keep going, as someone said you barely scratched the surface, and there is a loooot more! Again, this was great to watch. Keep it up! Earned a sub and like!
it was much much MUCH worse in the past 🙂 the last year or so they are trying to simplify things as much as possible and tbh they are doing ultra excellent work. but still it is most complex sandbox on the market in my opinion. very nice article from new player perspective. P.S. yes Magnus is shit, from my point of view, this kind of content does not belong to BDO at all. But rewards from that questline are game changing so in the end you feel big satisfaction after completing it. P.S.2 did you use cron stones on Tuvala gear ? could not say what gear it was because my eyes were bleeding heavily 🙂
This game is beautiful but there are certain things that I just don’t care for. The armors not actually changing is a major miss. The giant PARKING sign is absolutely emersion breaking lol. Like who thought PARKING in neon green was a good idea? The combat is pretty cool overall, but I’m so used to older combat systems that this is so fast. Going through hundreds of mobs by 1 shotting them is also kind of blah to me.
Hello, I was one of the few people who got a closed beta invite and even preordered the game. But I stopped to play in 2019 (I even played on a private server, because I wanted to get things I could never achieve/pay on official). The point at 16:15 annoyed me quickly and I deactivated it in the first hour. The first thing I do in EVERY game is to check ALL settings. And I HATE to watch (the most) BDO streams/videos because many are not aware how annoying this popups are. Most just ignore it, but I am autistic, I can’t even ignore a small led flickering or the ticking of a clock. (And I hate how sensitive my feelings/sensations are). Thanks for mentioning it at that point! Btw on my website are a few old clips from BDO, I think a few may be funny 🙂
I also played BDO this year for a couple of months. Pretty much enjoyed it and it felt really fun! The only downside and the reason why I stopped playing is simply a lot of inputs: I mean even for a “low apm”(I’ve played guardian/sage/striker) classes you still end up pressing a lot of buttons and doing a lot of stuff while going in circles killing mobs. It just made my fingers hurt after an hour or two. I even tried a controller, but also felt a bit too exhausted. But maybe it’s just me
Its a game I’ll probably at least give an actual honest try at some point, especially since I got it free through Twitch Prime, but honestly it doesn’t look like my kind of thing. Good to know that its not super pay to win (or at least not anymore), but I like a more… guided experience I guess you could say. I find sandbox MMOs a bit too overwhelming for my poor little brain. I at least need a story to follow through most of the game so I can figure out all the systems before I can start actually making plans for what I want to do outside the main story. Its just too much to give a brief tutorial story and then thrown into the main game and have little to no threads to follow or knowing what’s actually important or not to focus on
i started bdo like 3-4 months ago and i think i am about to quit it. yes it´s fun and all that but 1. it´s a solo player based game what kinda suchs for a mmorpg and for ALL NEW PLAYERS OUT THERE 2. after 270-280 ap you stop growing. without spending money in it or grinding like hell you will get nothing. i didnt turn of my pc for like 2 months.. if i dont grind i do afk lifeskill but there is no point in doing this. end game helmet costs 7.000.000.000.000 silver and getting it your own by lvling it is almost impossible. you can grind like 4-7 days for 1 chance of trying to lvl up ^^. its buy to play and then u have to spend money in it to continue. without the pass you get -30% silver from the market like … how can ppl still say its not p2w? ppl buying skins like crazy and making crone stones out of it so they dont have to grind another week for ONLY ONE TAP OF TRYING TO LVL THEIR GEAR! in the open world you just get killed in 2 sec but have to fight for the grinding spot later on ^^ in the guild wars you get just sniped from everywhere and the 3v3 is fun but there is no point with all the random shit ppl arround you. If you playing this game for a while it may makes sense keep playing it but as a new player you should stop wasting your time. after 3 chars you cant go into novice server so the open world pvp is always on. after 6 classes you either had so spend 20k loyalty what you get for free (200 a day) but u need them for better stuff or you spend 6€ for a character slot.
i hoped they got rid of that Black Spirit thing. It was SOOOO disturbing, SOOOOO annoying that it was THE main reason to quit playing this game… Back then they had only line 5 classes… Now they have ALOT MORE, this is good, but that black bastard with it’s terrible voice is still there… Really… disappointing.
Thanks for this. I have spent the day comparing New World, Black Desert, Final Fantasy 14, and Guild Wars 2 to try and narrow in on what I seem to like. Your review really helped get ahead of some thoughts I may not have been able to consider until pouring hours and hours in. Its still on my list thanks to your detailed breakdown and highlighting the right things. Appreciated.
I was BETA player on this and played until it got close to moving publisher, and have barely played since, but dont mistake the fact you haven’t used cash shop th eimportant of the cash shop, basic things like storage, that alone you can sink abot £1000 to have enough storage, as when you start gathering and crafting all the towns have seperate storrages, then when you get to end game you HAVE TO SPEND money to get the enhancements if your not fully max on all your gear at VERY minimum forget your skill points etc you will be killed in under 2secs EVERY TIME. PVP is forced and this comes to fore when you get to level 60 and you have to find the better locations to grind XP because these locations are hot spots and you WILL have to fight to keep your spot, if you aren’t geared up you can forget it, PVP is a food chain. Is it a good game, hell yes, and your conclusion is true, new player jump on have a go, its very fun, and to this day is still the best graphically and combat mechanically out there. But, unless you are very $$$ rich in real life you will never make even close to top of food chain in this game,
Yeah Levi, “Evil do us harm” is the bomb for new players, 59 to 60 and 60 to 61 only take a couple of hours via questing… if you are doing the right quests… he has a great series on this… also Pansy has great info and BiceptimusPrime for later progression… there are others like Anders as well… This game is like getting slapped in the face with a truck at first, but is my go to game nowadays for a few reasons primarily because I can get on whenever and there is no push I can Season a character every now and then and it is easy and fun and the combat mechanics are amazingingly fun once you work it out. In this way it is very sandbox like… and the least stressful and easiest to drop in on after months away (because life still has to happen) (I played WoW since release / FF14 / ESO after it got sorted /GW2 / New World (although I think I am done with that unless the Devs grow a brain) Never got into Runescape and haven’t tried Eve or SWTOR… I tend to let Asmon test games for me but will make sure to see all your catalogue now as well starting with your new “Discontinued”. Great vid liked and subbed
When ppl realize you don’t have to take the grind path the entire journey is when the game doesn’t feel as daunting. The only reason to go the grind path if you want the fast progression to the end game. Having a balance of everything makes the game a lot more enjoyable. Ps. Enjoyed my watch and gald you enjoyed your stay
I have a more of an acquire taste comment: “Please, if any BDO official ever get to read this, or be reached by it… Implement some sort of a quest that >challenges< a player that have just obtained to use Hold F till all of the F skills (skills plural) than use the Drift Skill (F is Instant Acceleration followed by ~it`s follow ups) to (because I don`t know if canceling the cooldown of F is intended mechanic and I certainly do not want it ~fixed) the cooldown of the F skill… Just to hold it again for all of it`s ticks (2 per Pegasus and Unicorn, 3 per Doom horse, it`s doomed beauty in contrast to respectively Gliding over distances of Elevated Places and Skill Usability on Desert Terrain for the other two) for even more Instant Accelerations. My New BDO dream is to see a “New Player Reviews BDO” and than within that clip to see him Actually Full Speed riding their >fully Skilled< t9 Horse. I just wanna see that.
If they gave it the same socialized love and lore as ESO, it would be absolutely amazing. I enjoy the game quite a bit but its lacking so many things that make a mmo … Well a mmo. Theyve been making alot of QOL changes in the past years. Mainly the biggest one ive liked is being able to access all storages from any city. Kind of insane that i even have to “praise” something like that right lol. At the end of the day though it must be said this is THE grinding game. If you just like grinding and grinding and grinding mobs .. then go right in and give it a shot. Their dungeons (only have 3) are okay but barely anybody does them. The bosses in Land of the Morning Light and Undying are cheesy, boring and have invincibility phases that are only ment to try and stop the fight. They arent “mechs” in the way that most people know it to be from other mmos that add difficulty while still pushing through it. Barely any group grind areas either. Its very sad how much they could open this game up to other players, yet they want that singleplayer experience in a mmo more than anything. They will be coming out with a 5man arena boss content but they had to scale it down from what they said were going to be 10+ people raids. Sure we have weekly guild bosses but that is only weekly and thats like 1 hour of content only. A nitpick for people who enjoy this, night time is barely dark and doesnt last long (mainly because it has a mechanic tied to it with higher item droprate and xp gain during nighttime).
Just a heads up from a guy who was there a decade ago at launch, in the middle of s** show called BDO, when we all paid 60$ for a game that we were told it will newer go in P2W direction like Korean or Russian servers at the time. Stay away from this game. The game is full p2w and its a rare example of a good game designed around cash shop. If you really want to sink hours in to it you will have to pay big bucks.
The pop ups telling you what people do is proply invented more for guilds and raids Like in lost ark stuff pop up like : ” this raid has openend ” And stuff So people know ” Hey it started i wanted to go there ” or something I guess that was here the plan But i dont care if somebody enchant his wooden toilet the 20 times though
Never played any MMO, I’m more of an ARPG player, PoE specifically, but since that game starts to bore me I’m thinking of trying one. This is one of the couple which I’m considering delving into, along with ESO, and Lost Ark, as they look most interesting, so I appreciate your thoughts about it, it looks like a good game. One thing that I don’t understand though is why it has such a weird anti-thematic gear upgrade system. As an ARPG player I’m used to the system where if you want better gear you just go slay more monsters and find upgrades that way. Gathering and spending materials to get x% chance in order to upgrade your gear feels totally anticlimatic and also like a boring activity.
I played BDO during 1st day release NA (not steam release) and stopped after being on and off with the game 3 years in. Honestly the season servers are more like a tutorial of the game. Once you start upgrading meta boss gear you will see the true grind and you have to worry about how to make money in the game. Where one upgrade can take months of grinding if you plan to just buy gear rather than risk being RNG carried. What makes the game pay to win is melting costumes for crons which can save tons of time if you decide to upgrade from TET to PEN boss gear. Playing without melting costumes will take days before you can even do one attempt for PEN. Also the setup for your worker node empire, dailies, imperial turn ins, lifeskilling or grinding to make silver is like 95% of the game. To even lifeskill you need to quest everywhere to get the required energy max amount along with discovering all the knowledge in the game in order to be as efficient as possible with your time lifeskilling. This is more of a honeymoon review. Once you reach mid game you will get a more true feel of the game. Nonetheless a great review for a brand new player. In the end, what made me quit was my time to fun ratio. I felt like I was not enjoying the gameplay loop. Once you’ve experienced your class it becomes mundane and the combat becomes monotonous which is the main draw for most players which quickly becomes a non factor after thousands of hours grinding a rotation or life skill gathering. Only fun really was when you finally get your upgrade but then you realize you have to regrind all that money back up again.
This game is so confusing. I’ve tried and tried. It is NOT beginner friendly at all!!! But here’s my issues: – my inventory is full of stuff I don’t know if it’s trash or stuff I need to keep. – you can’t buy things (like I tried to buy the crappy, only saddle you can buy from a store npc) because you have to build up other stuff first (I can’t remember exactly what it’s called now) but I apparently need to talk to lots of other npc’s, which I tried but it didn’t build up that (whatever it was I needed). – just trying to do basic things is super confusing. – leveling up anything/everything is a pain (like the saddle issue I had), locked behind other shite to do (can’t even fish, without the same issue as with the saddle). – interface is messy and clunky. Not everyone has time to look for articles to figure out how to do every. little. f-ing. thing.
I play BDO on and off, last time was over 3 years ago. Before Pearl Abyss had left and NA took over servers. At that time it was full on in your face P2W. I have not logged back in to this day. Good to see the new owners may have made some good choices for the community. Thanks for the article. I may look into it again or not. Take care and ah Peace. CU. P.S. keep the articles comming. Laters 👍👍👍
I feel the same. The game is beautiful. The combat is wonderful. But for me. The story forgettable/non existent. Everything is overwhelming.Virtuality no help if you need help with a problem, or trying to figure out something. FOR ME! it as exhausting and felt more like a chore than a game. I got bored pretty quickly. I still will recommend this game to anyone because everyone has different experiences.
You pay real money for pets that collect loot for you. To upgrade them, you have to combine two pets, with a small chance to get a tier 2 pet. When you fail you just wasted real cash. There are 4 tiers of pets. Fairy system is cash cash cash. Want your fairy to auto use pots for you swipe the card. Costumes are forced on you to spend real money to sell for silver to buy powerful items or scrap for cron stones to prevent your enchantment from degrading. The tent buff costs $50 and is a powerful buff. You can spend months achieving something that others can obtain by swiping their credit card. Inventory is not shared across characters. New, powerful classes are introduced to encourage you to spend money on more inventory and weight capacity. Class balance is very poor. You will never catch up to someone with a 760+ gear score. There is very little group content outside of PvP. Life skilling is very shallow, and you will be tempted to swipe your card to make it easier on yourself. This man only seen 2% of the real game. BDO is made to make new players feel good. But when you get to the real endgame YOU WILL be compelled to spend real money and not just a couple bucks $1000…. Oh I forgot there are 4 subscriptions with powerful buffs. Loot drop rate buffs are sold in the cash shop. Enhancing fail stacks are sold in the cash shop.
I’ve been playing for 6months this is the best review so far 1 thing is missing is the guildraid, my first ever raid while going home from khan to velia we crashed to other players ship both at full speed a guildmember got swooped in their ship so we had to go back XD newbie me had a blast now I just put an alt char on khan then switch after, that magnus part I too didn’t understand why I was there took me 14hours to finish it, was fun those puzzles and the npcs I’ve met along the way. if I could erase my memory and play this game again for the first time im down.
Being overwhelmed in BDO as a new player is an understatement. The game is beautiful optically. The gameplay is interesting until level 50 or so. But all that menus, the billion items and materials in your limited space inventory, the awful upgrading system, the pearl shop, the visuals of your gear that are almost the same in your whole game, the hundreds of different mechanics and things going around just to make the game feel longer…… And the feeling that you need to get through hours of hard studying to get a university degree just to play this game….. Oh….God!….. I got my character around level 50 two years ago. Stopped playing after experienced all that and got so tired I never got back to continue. To bad they are keep doing that things in games that should be simple and fun because the worlds they make are so good…..
Also, assuming I would want to try this game, what difference would it make if I choose the normal server instead of a seasonal? Wouldn’t it be easier for me as a new player to start the normal server, which as you said has slower progression, so I probably wouldn’t be overwhelmed with as many mechanics at once, and could just slowly progress and learn the game at more leisure pace?
I think BDO has a good mix of mobile game and MMO elements that mesh really well together… you can do a lot of activities afk so you can setup certain things then go to work or do whatever you have to do then come back and you weren’t just completely idle the whole time. Things take a lot of time but it’s not all time wholly invested into it. I just recently started myself (played at the very start for like a couple weeks was confused and stopped) Didn’t have/know my account from back then so I started from scratch and it’s been fun so far, still learning lots everyday but at this point I feel I have the basics down I’m just trying to learn the intrinsic nuances of the game now. It seems like a hardcore game and you can certainly treat it like that but it’s also a very casual game where you’ll see tons of people afk weight training or horse training or fishing the world definitely doesn’t feel dead despite it’s massive size either.
Any suggestions on how to best handle the number of quests available? I find that a bit overwhelming in that – they’ll all be filtered, all the repeatables etc, with life skills from memory not even being defaulted out of the gate. But enablign them all – you could basically not leave the starting area there’s so much to do.
What is funny, you only end “tutorial”, and spend so many hours of playtime. After season server you get to normal progression, but you have missed 2 other “starting” quest line, I think they should be not taken as first, but some people would love companion in Eternal Winter Mountains, or unique story, base on Korean folklor and unique bosses. I don’t even mention pvp, because there is so many options.
I’ve watched so many articles of ppl playing BDO. I have never seen anyone do a dungeon or a raid, I’ve just seen ppl upgrading armour or mounts and grinding… like that’s not a bad thing, I’m just used to upgrading gear through doing dungeons or raids, but tbh I don’t know if I love the idea of just grinding endlessly to get mats to upgrade, I don’t know I’d have to try it out tbh
The season experience you showed is just that…only on the season server. Once you finish season the game plays differently. If you don’t compare your progression to others and treat it as a marathon and not a sprint it will be enjoyable if you enjoy grind and rng. But they have been adding fail safe mechanics to upgrading so it is better than it was before. Eventually you will get where you are going.
Kinda glad I stumbled across this. I have an account from launch and decided that it’s changed so much I wanna go back and ride my horse around a bit. It was about to be deleted after almost 4 years of inactivity after the transfer from Kakao to PA so Im glad I caught it. I spent a lot of time getting that horse I have and there’s some charm to the mindlessness of BDO that I miss. Plus, it’s free if I want it to be. Being competitive? Yeah you need a ton of money, but to just play? You’re fine without. There’s a lot of new classes I wanna try. Samurai was the newest one when I left.
I love auto run and auto farm features. Bots exist anyway so why not have it. Keep some content like raids, solo dungeons etc available but leave the farming for the auto farm features. Great design all game should have it. Allows you to participate in the economy and the game whenever you got a few minutes to check in
ill tell you this. after getting in depth with the mechanics, and doing the math on what the real money cost would be for a basic setup in qol to make the game not tedious i was at like 200 dollars. i did not spend the money and then uninstalled. these are features such as mounts and pets, though the way this game handles these items is by giving them a level of utility. playing the game you will see that it intentionally creates problems for the player, then solves those problems with paid solutions.
I first played this game in 2022 and after I got a fairy I quit playing because I still did not understand the game my character is a high level I dont know how I got that far in the game without knowing what to do I got stuck a lot then I quit I wanted to do the story and got lost that is why I quit the game
Bro that right here must be one if not the best new player review we ever get. Bdo takes a lot of time for new players to quest and level their first char. The legend even did the magnus WITHOUT A GUIDE. What a monster did we let loose here. I wish you the best in your future journey. Join a guild to get better and faster info on things you might want to know. And keep at it. Season is the real tutorial and jetina the wall we overcome to really get into the game. Once your class clicks with you, it will be absolutly amazing. just try to not use the skill bar on skills you dont specificly need to. Thank you for your open mind and the time you invested. bdo does a poor job of guiding new players, but you got it.
as a player with 15K hours and 752gs sorc and witch main, tbh this is the best mmorpg i ever played in my life, especially in Kombat system and PVP, and tbh i can’t feel enough when i try the other MMO, but I do not recommend this game to a new player, the deeper u play the deeper the game will take ur life in it. at some point u gonna meet good friends and guild, enjoy the game with them, there will be drama, unnesecery and weird drama as well, but u need to keep ur priority right, irl must come first, cuz this game can easily burn u out and it feels like ur second job. i have love and hate relationship with this game, bdo is not a game but a rabbit hole, that’s it. oh ya, tent is the only item that u need to pay in this game, u also can pay 3 months Value pack or just pay 180 days thing but that’s not rly neccesery, u can pay more than 1K USD and gain nothing in this game, so don’t bother to pay more.
I’ve played bdo for many years and for thousands of hours both on console and on pc reaching close to 650 gear score and over 100 billion silver in my storage across 6 characters, you barely scratched the surface of the game and its issues, striving for pen black star gear at 300 fail stacks to only have a 2% success rate, if you was lucky enough snipe outfits off the market using them to dismantle down into cron stones or having to pull out your wallet to buy tons of outfits to dismantle them down to be able to have a small chance on getting that pen gear you need, or selling them on the market and making stupids amount of silver, literally having no in game dungeons or group content and just mindlessly grinding the same end game mobs over and over again competing for grind spots against other players who more than likely are way over geared than you non stop and theres many more issues and problems with the game, theres no other game that compares to bdo its truly one of a kind but its long term problems are not worth the headaches
As its currently on steam for 89p, it was a no brainer to buy and try. We are a family of three WoW players who just can’t afford the game any more so i’ve been looking to bring us together with something like this. Your article has allowed me to pull the trigger on the game and now are just waiting to find the time we can all play together. I love the skills in games like this so i would love a article on this in the future. New subscriber 🙂
Everyone keeps saying it’s a marathon. That’s code for its a grind fest. I’m 200 hrs in and don’t feel like ive really accomplished anything. No matter what I’m working towards I always know that it’s going to take forever or I’ll need to kill the same creatures for 5 to 10 hours for a specific items to drop just to ATTEMPT to upgrade one piece of gear and hope the Random Number Generator gods except my sacrifice. There’s a lot of great stuff going on here but it’s so time consuming for me and the rewards feel like those gacha mobile games that want you to just break down and buy some items with real money so you can have a better chance at getting what you are working towards.
I will never forget the sheer joy I felt during the exploration of the world of BDO. The world is huge, and gorgeous. You can hunt for interactable objects, which will give you knowledge entries, short descriptions of an item/prson, or it;s lore relevance. I remeber I was very qurios of what happened with the previous qeen of Kamasylvia, since we get no mention of what happened to her during the Kamasylvia questline (only the fact that her sister trough a coup took the crown). I got the knowledge entry during teh Star’s End Questline tho, far later. XD
It’s a hot mess – what I call a mmo mish mash! BUT, it’s a helluva a lot of fun for a solo PVEr like myself…until it’s not. Far too many systems, currencies and objects/items to deal with, most of which are useless. I did enjoy my 2nd (or 3rd?) return to it last year and worked through the 2 new campaigns which were a lot of fun. I played a new Drakania through the Mountain of Eternal Winter campaign, and the Maegu through the Land of the Morning Light. The graphics are some of the best in any mmo and combat is fluid, although I’m not a huge fan of the preset combo system, eh. I did finally finish a couple of the longer quests, which was a fun challenge (mostly) – the well fast travel one, which took a long time, and another one to get a much have artifact/book. Once I got my high-level pegasus travel became almost trivial, as it was so much faster than other horses and being able to glide down mountains was a huge time saver. I didn’t really get or like the conversation mini-game and housing and worker system just felt overcooked and unnecessary, YMMV. It’s one of the better mmos for mostly solo PvErs like me.
BDO is not pay to win. That is ridiculous. I played this game for about three years and stopped for a few. When I came back I had to start from scratch and I didn’t mind at all. It is so much easier now to get good gear and progress through the game. I surpassed my old character that I played for a few years within 45 days or so. I loved it before and I am sooo happy I came back. BDO is hands down the best online game I have ever played. It is incredibly complex and overwhelming but it has a great community and plenty of resources if you have questions. There is simply nothing else like it. From making a vast network of node farming to building a ship and hunting sea monsters…capturing, raising and breeding horses to hunting monsters with matchlocks…27(!!!) classes each with an awakened second class…tell me what other game can match it and I’ll give it a try. Until then I’m playing BDO until I die, and then I may haunt the game. So watch out.
Its crazy even when you havent even scratched the surface, you have already seen how far fetched and over exaggerated the information is from the majority of haters who constantly shit on the game . That being said this was one of the cleanest new player POV experiences i have ever watched and ill be subscribing to see what other opinions you may have when you explore the game further out of seasons.
I don’t understand why people actually enjoy playing this game. Don’t get me wrong, I tried the game and I played for a decent amount of time. Honestly the game basically go from this point to that point, kill that enemy, etc… The story is boring and I couldn’t keep up with it after 2hrs, I click skip, it’s not interesting and worth time to read. Combat feels so…fake I guess? I always feel like the animation of the combat is totally separated from the game. I got to lv34 and couldn’t keep up because I felt it was so boring, I don’t know what’s the end game like
23:15 I have played BDO for 6 years as a free to play casual. I got rng carried a lot. I even got double PEN Blackstar. I ended around 310ap, 312aap and 380dp. which is not that bad for a free player and you can actually go watch my BDO uploads on youtube on this website HOWEVER I quit because of the Magnus questline. I have tried multiple times to get back into the game.. I try to pick that questline up where I’ve ended and then I just hate it completely and I quit again. The sad part is I need to do Magnus to even progress and open up stuff which I cant even recall since I’ve quit a year ago.. I miss this game so much but I really cannot take take that questlines or any of the stupid quests. Quests in general and especially on BDO are so tedious and buggy to do and they really make it easy to dislike questing.. I would pay in game silver to skip quests if I could
No idea what this season pass is or what a seasonal server is, but when I played BDO a few years ago you HAD to buy stuff off the cash shop to guarantee upgrade or spend hundreds of hours grinding for one PEN. It seems they’ve changed that, or at least made this seasonal gear easy to upgrade. I’d be willing to bet as soon as you get off the seasonal server all the progress beyond that seasonal gear is much more RNG/p2w reliant.
The problem with BDO is that you did not go deep enough to find out just how bad the grind is for some things, and that even $1,000 is not enough to cut the thousands of hours of grind. Example: Watch Kanons article titled “I spent $1,000 in BDO to expose the P2W…”. This article shows why BDO is considered a Pay2Win MMORPG (and as some say just “pay”, no longer even pay2win). Also, Asmongold did a great reaction article to the article I mentioned above. Now, that does not take away from the fact that BDO is arguably one of the best MMOs out at this current moment, but it is definitely a Pay2Win game regardless of how fun it is.
Not necessarily pay to play, there is a monthly free trial event and when you reach a certain lvl your account will become permanent. Not necessarily pay to win, its more like pay for convenience but you can do without top up Not necessarily horrible RNG, its just RNG if its horrible its YOUR horrible RNG some just have sh*t luck and some are just enviable and infuriatingly lucky Not necessarily all exhausting grinds some play the game semi afk all through out life skilling and can still gear up easily Not necessarily hard to find info about what to do in BDO its just how you look for it like being specific in your wording or just join a long established guild and ask anything you want and they’ll point you in the right direction There’s a whole lot to explore in the game even veteran players can’t claim they know everything about the game and they still discover new things
Anyone who says BDO is P2W has never once in their life played BDO, or any P2W MMO. Can you spend THOUSANDS to get a minscule edge in gear? Absolutely. It’s not a dolphin thing either. You literally will spend thousands, and you’re just getting your gear maybe one level above what everyone gets for free with a small amount of effort. Grinding is the true power gap, the more you grind the better you will be. Period. A person with TET vs PEN is basically equal. A person level 65 vs 66 is massive. And grinding is purely on the player. All of BDO’s “P2W” is just minor convenience and a minor time save. That’s not P2W on an MMO as old as BDO. Otherwise every single player who has played longer than you, regardless of money spent, is “P2Wing” you.
As a returner black desert player, shes great a recommend u giving her a chance, and quick tip when u press on the monster logo on the map it showed what is that place is giving and u can see some # thats telling u about the place, like #combat_exp . Good luck and welcome to black desert love your contect and nice showcase love it
I think it’s missleading to say the game is beautifull and optimized. It is clearly not. Graphics pop up everytime, there is bad sync with other player when you play with them and you need a very good gpu to hope running the game smoothly and SSD storage. If you dont believe me, go watch some content about pvp, siege or world boss. Nothing is synchronized. And when you get endtier horse, graphics popup are even worse.
Cash = Premium / outfits —–> Cron stones —-> upgrades. The game is heavily based on upgrades, without cronstones you will never get the PENs. Unless you are extremely lucky with chain of successful attempts without failure ( nearly impossible). Endgame progression is literally full time job grind (for half a year to a year.) If you are a casual grind person, LOL better off doing crafting or gathering or pay money to get cronstones. You could take years to catch up to BiS full build if you dont buy cronstones for upgrades as a casual player. Medium grinders/ players maybe 1 year ish, depends on their playing time. Why do i say its heavily p2w. Lets face it, MOST OF US don’t have the time to play 8 hours or enjoy grind for 5hr+ straight cuz we have a life outside. WHICH eventually we will turn towards cash shop outfits ->cronstones method too shorten our time into the game. Not to mention some of us can be impatient when we are tempted by the PEN upgrade stage. Its an option, but its a very direct option that you have to take to have a balance life . Therefore, it is a HEAVILY based P2W. Unless you don’t have life outside of bdo. Anyone trying to tell you ITS not heavily based p2w, thats a lie. Because its either they don’t have a life outside ( outside activities as much and spend most of their time on bdo or pc) or they just trying to get you into the game to keep you as a companion. Sure there are guild mates, but are they your real life friends that you constantly meet or hangout with?
the non-mmo mmo, BDO. Oh boy. For as extensive as the character creator is, the lack of (free) fashion options is rather disappointing, though its not as though it matters as you cant show off anyway, there is absolutely no sociability in this so called mmo. Not to mention it is one of the grindiest ‘mmo’s’ I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing. It has way too many systems in it that it just never explains too well. The story is that of a generic mmo where you want to skip the dialog, it is, honestly that bad. I wish I could have liked this game. The character creator is genuinely great. But with the lack of fashion, let alone sociability theres not much point to it.
When it’s comes to Black Desert, Nobody wants a GACHA game like genshin impact or honkai impact there should DEFINITELY be more options for MALE classes. Don’t get me wrong the already present male classes are AMAZING. I doubt BDO will show any love, They’ve been not very generous with creating male classes lately but I would definitely go back and persuade my friends to play it with me if there were some more male classes besides the ones they’ve already had for the longest.
From RS to BDO, man you’re trying it all. You got me back into RS, maybe I’ll try BDO again, too. I hit softcap over 700 GS a while ago and haven’t played much since. Edit: I saw your website over a year ago, when you first started RS3 and invited me to a discord you just created for the community. It’s so cool to see how much it’s grown. Keep it up! (:
The classes aren’t genderlocked in the way we think of it as western players, a lot of eastern mmos consider themselves “online rpgs” and the classes you see are more akin to different characters in the story, rather than choose race then class like we’re used to. (also why a lot of the class names don’t make much sense as they’re often just titles or the characters name) Still effectively genderlocking of course but i think its worth understanding why
saying you shouldnt take “p2w grindfest and horrible rng” as a fact, is a straight lie lmaooooo goodluck getting your pets highest tier, godroll fairy, perfect dream horse, and full pen gear though. after you join a top siege guild and node war all the time you see what this game really is… unless your one of the weirdos who stays in world chat doing lifeskills saying “uhh nooo bdo is Not a pvp game”.. meanwhile theyre just being scared until they can buy all their gear and then try pvp lmaoooooo. if you have 1000s of hours in this game which is common, put the game down a month. youll be able to enjoy life again and you can finally try other games. there are no casuals in bdo and if they are casual theyre not really playing.
Strange take as I have never searched for a single thing or issue in the game and not been able to find the answer almost immediately by searching it. Yeah the visuals don’t change much in the beginning levels but that’s pretty different later on with the better weapons that have particle effects…that is also where some people bitch and moan about being “pay to win” because of the outfits etc…..even though you can buy a lot of those with in game money….but that is the main way of changing your appearance.
Auto running is your best friend fast travel is non existent in black desert 😂 bro that intro was not around when I played this game for a whole year and barely scratched the surface of black desert also the classes are gender kicked yes but you can have two genders for one class so musa and maehwa are the same class just different genders but I’m guessing scholar hasn’t got a male counter part yet