Even though most of this month has been taken up my my cross stitch SAL and poor days with MS issues, I haven’t forgotten about my cable crush hoodie. I’ve been working away on it slowly, I separated the back and front, and now I’m just working on the front. It’s a lot of sweater, and so squishy and soft. I’m really looking forward to being able to wear it once our winters drop to -40C. At this rate it won’t be too much longer before we’ll be seeing snowflakes.
September 15th started the new season (fall) for Black Desert Online, and of course I wasted no time making a new season character! This round I decided to go with a Shai class, the only support class in game. This character has a penalty to PvP, not many skills, and no big AoE attacks – but they get a bonus to life skills (crafting) and are SUPER CUTE and fun to play (IMO). Their attacks include hops, skips, and jumps, plus swinging a GIANT boomerang. It’s adorable.
This time around I have a lot more time (I came into the last season with only two weeks left to it) to level my character, and I know a lot more about the game. The season rewards have changed some, and there’s a ton of events going on at the same time (8?!) in what I can only assume is an attempt to get people to stay focused on BDO while Lost Ark and New World go through release. You can even get yourself a free copy of the game, if you sign up to play for free for 14 days and then reach level 50. Next time there’s maintenance, you’ll be given a copy. Speaking of, if you get three pieces of gear to Pen quality while playing in seasons, you can earn yourself the $90 upgrade to the game too (only 100 people from NA and 100 people from EU will be chosen for this). I think that would be awesome.
Another QoL change was a quest for a T5 mount. You used to have to progress to a certain point that was quite far in (my last character never made it there) before you could get it, but now you reach that point much easier. So I have a T8 female and T5 male horse – once I get those leveled up, I’m going to attempt to breed them and see what I end up with. I’m excited!
My Shai is nearly to the point that my Guardian was at quest-wise, so even though I’m technically re-doing content I just did, it doesn’t feel too bad. I’m also taking some time to work a bit of life skills along the way (AFK fishing while I write this post) and Shai start with gathering and alchemy at professional 1. I still know pretty much zilch about life skills, but I’ve been making my way through videos (slowly) in preparation for when I do get started in honest. I’ll probably continue to work the main quest on my Shai and try to reach 60-61 and then we’ll see where I’m at.
Honestly, BDO is not the game I thought I’d be playing right now, but I’m very glad that I am. It’s fun, there are tons of people around, and I haven’t had a day where I’ve been bored (yet). I know there are complaints about it being a Pay2Win game, but honestly I have not personally experienced any of that. I also haven’t spent any money on the game aside from my original purchase of it. Yes, you CAN purchase items from the shops, but all of the free things you’re given, alongside the event things, means I just haven’t found a need for anything extra. While that might change, I’m not really expecting it to.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
I turned on the remastered graphics for a bit, and just wow. This game is beautiful! Of course my computer starts to scream and complain after some time with it on (especially in the cities) but it’s still just lovely.
When I started playing Black Desert Online two weeks ago, I had no idea that there was a catch up mechanic implemented by means of ‘seasonal’ characters. This works almost exactly the same was as Diablo, where you create a new character, level them up, get perks, and then at the end your character ‘graduates’ over to a ‘regular’ one. The current season ends September 15th, and I’ve been trying to learn and cram so much into this short amount of time before it ends, that there’s just no way for me to get a hold of everything.
Thanks to some awesome friends and YouTube videos I did manage to reach level 58 on my seasons character. I also got my free necklace, picked up a T8 horse, and leveled to 58 – I was hoping for 61 but time was just not on my side. I’ve learned how to enchant armor/weapons, and know the basics to unlocking my awakened self, finishing that quest line and getting new skills, too.
I picked up my time piece which I’m going to use tomorrow, and that will turn my seasons character to a regular character, and take a character that I have under level 25 (at this moment it’s my sorcerer) and create her into my season character – adding on the levels and skill points that the guardian had earned. It basically lets you clone your seasons character to one that is under 25. No reason not to do that.
Today I meant to work on the main story quest, but instead life got in the way so I set myself up with some AFK fishing, and horse training. Dancer, my T8 white horse, is now level 24. I also played around with the remastered graphics – which are absolutely stunning, but my computer fans don’t really like playing on that graphic level for too long (especially in cities). I’m looking forward to starting another seasons character, I hear they’re doing a few things different this time (like making enchanting gear easier) which is always nice. Some QoL bits that are always handy.
Anyway, I might be able to squeeze out another level or two before the end of tomorrow, but we’ll see. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
When you look for BDO on steam, you find it under just ‘Black Desert’ so I have no idea if the game should be BDO or just BD or what. Anyway – another post that I’m writing ahead of schedule! I honestly cannot even remember the last time I played a game and had this much content to write about. I never in a million years would have thought that the game that would have sparked my interest to such a degree would be BDO. I have some theories on why this is the case, but that’s not the subject of this post.
I have a seasonal Guardian who is currently level 55 and I wanted to learn how to enchant her gear. Turns out the whole basis of this game is grinding. Something I actually don’t mind, let’s look at some of my other favourite games / things to do in games – Wurm Online. My ultimate favourite game is about nothing BUT grinding. Getting ‘good’ skills takes years. Even in games like EQ I would camp named for hours. Some methods of grinding are fun and rewarding, others are really boring. Doing dailies every single day in WoW is a good example of a grind that I honestly am just not a fan of. I get bored easily and rarely see the point.
Back to enchanting gear. I mentioned that my weapons and shield were Naru (just a type of blue tier gear) and I had moved them to +7 and +5 the reason behind this is because on the seasonal servers you have a 100% chance to succeed the enchant. When you fail an enchant you lose durability. I gathered up all of the ore and stones I had been collecting since I started playing (quest rewards, not actual harvested ore) and went to the blacksmith. There, I exchanged my Tuvala Ore for Tuvala weapons and armor. Then I enchanted all of those to +5 and +7 respectively. After that, I took my weapon, and enchanted it as far as I could before I either couldn’t enchant it any more, or I started running out of supplies. RNG is a fickle creature, and it’s where part of the ‘grind’ comes in to play. So once you “graduate” from being a seasonal character, you can no longer enchant this gear – but I believe you get to exchange it for the ‘real world’ versions. The goal, is to get to a tier of enchant called ‘PEN’ (I don’t know all of the tiers off of the top of my head). I managed to get my weapon to DUO before I ran out of supplies, but you don’t want to run out completely because you need to mend up all that durability you lost while failing enchants. You can mend your stuff two ways, using memories, or using the base version of the Tuvala armor/weapon you’re enchanting. The memories will restore one durability, the weapons/armor restore 5 at a time.
Now this process sounds pretty confusing, but it’s not so bad when you’re at the blacksmith doing things. Calculating whether you’ll have enough materials is annoying, you don’t want to be without a weapon after all. The thing is, as a brand new player to the game, I would have had NO IDEA how to do any of this without having a ton of help from friends or reading some very extensive guides and I think that’s where a lot of the overwhelming feeling comes from in games like this. The game does remind me a lot of EVE – but in EVE all of the menus and “things” to do are HIDDEN and the UI is presented very basic which I think gets rid of a lot of that anxiety. In BDO the UI is FULL of STUFF everywhere, and your eyes are all over the place with no idea what any of it does. You’re also drowning in scrolls and potions and chests and ores and all sorts of things – but now I actually know what 90% of that is for, and it makes a HUGE difference. Granted, I still have issues with inventory, and I still have stuff in storage all over the various cities, but I actually feel like I’m very slowly getting a handle on things.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
A Pixel Nomad 