The crafting system in Black Desert Online is complicated and can be particularly overwhelming to a new player. To help organize your crafting life, follow these beginner crafting tips for Black Desert Online and get the most out of the game.
You’ll start out the game in Olvia, a sleepy village in the middle of the forest. Tutorial quests will pop up right away. Just follow these for now, even if you would rather run off to gather everything you can find. In fact, keep doing the quests until you’ve reached level 8 to 10. I know, that’s tough for us MMO hoarders. However, there are several reasons why you shouldn’t pick up everything you can at this point:
1) Your inventory space is limited. Completing quests will let you unlock extra inventory spots.
2) Most gathering requires tools. Each type of item (i.e. wood, stone, hide) requires a different tool. These will also fill up your inventory.
3) You will need contribution points to start REAL crafting. These are obtained through questing.
4) Veila is a better town for crafting. You might as well do the quests that lead you there.
Important locations early in the game.
So what if you just cannot resist your crafting urges? The best option at this point would be to pick one or two resources and focus on those. Plants are easy to gather and don’t require a tool. However, if you do purchase a scythe, your chances of obtaining something helpful are much greater. Otherwise, you will find mostly weeds, which I have yet to find a use for. You can sell them for a measly amount of silver.
Equip a tool and press R to gather when you find an appropriate resource.
Keep an eye on your Energy. This is indicated by the count on the upper left of your screen with the flexing arm icon. Every time you gather something, you use 1 point of energy. Energy is slowly regenerated over time. It will also be used to process raw materials into something more useful.
Where do you find a scythe or other tool? Find the material vendor in Olvia before you leave on your adventures. If you plan on a lot of gathering, buy more than one. The tools break over time and cannot be repaired.
Buy your tools from a material vendor.
You can also craft tools, but you won’t be able to do this until later in the game. Also, many of the crafting quests that I’ll direct you toward below will provide the corresponding tool when you start them.
This brings me to another beginner crafting tip that is not immediately obvious. Talk to everyone! This should be your first task when you arrive in a new location. Every time you talk to someone new, 1 point of energy is restored. You also need to talk to NPC’s to unlock quests. Use the mini-map to find NPC’s you haven’t met – they will appear as question marks.
Some of the crafting quests will allow you to use items already in your inventory to complete them, even if you haven’t activated the quest already. Other ones will require you to harvest items like corn after you have spoken to the NPC. Even if you already have the corn in your inventory, the NPC will require new corn. So talk to everyone before you spend a lot of time plucking every potato from that adjacent field.
Harvest plenty of corn. You’ll use it later.
If you follow the tutorial and black spirit quests, you will soon find yourself at the Western Guard Camp. Talk to everyone here and make sure that you start the Tether Stronger quest from the two guards by the northern tower. This will award you crafting goodies and a donkey when you complete it. The donkey provides extra inventory slots, although it isn’t a very sexy mount otherwise.
Make some stronger chains for these guards and you’ll earn a mount.
At some point soon, you will find that you’ve earned a contribution point. You will see a message flash across your screen when this happens, but can also check the count in the upper left with an icon that looks like a medal.
When you’re ready to build your crafting empire, head to Veila. This town is to the northeast of the Western Guard Camp and you can get there by following the road from the east gate of the camp, following the road that hugs the coast, or just wander northeast. Once you arrive, talk to everyone. Make sure that you befriend the guy with horns by the docks. This will provide you extra storage in the warehouse. Just keep in mind that this bank is not shared between locations. When you are ready to move on from Veila, your items will remain behind unless you remember to retrieve them.
Click on Veila from the world map to view houses and other details.
As you speak to everyone in Veila, you’ll soon see that many of the quests are related to crafting, houses, workers, and nodes. This is where you should focus your gameplay because crafting anything substantial requires a house. The node system will let you hire workers to gather and process resources while you are away.
There are two general ways to start crafting from your raw materials. The simplest and safest way is to use the processing window (Esc-pick processing OR hotkey L). This allows you to combine raw materials at any location. This is also a safe way to experiment, as your materials won’t be used up if you try to combine items that don’t go together.
This is basic crafting through processing.
Select a process on the left side of the processing window (i.e. shaking, chopping, heating) and look to see which items in your inventory are highlighted. Right-click to select those ingredients. The processing circle on the left side will have one or two dots on its periphery. For processes with one dot, you can only add one ingredient. For those with two dots, you can use one or two ingredients. Click the button to start your work, and watch what happens. If your ingredients are incompatible, you will see a message: Nothing will be made like this. If you see a different message: Processing is not going as planned – this is okay, just be patient. If you picked compatible ingredients, you’ll soon have a new material (i.e. planks, herbal juice, jerky).
The quests in Veila will walk you through this process also, but you can certainly play around with it before then. Once you create something through processing, you will keep this knowledge. It will stay on the right side of the processing screen so you can remember it for next time.
If you decide to gather and hoard a few items early in the game, some of the best ones to keep include potatoes, corn, herbs (any type), logs, ore, and rough stone. Logs, herbs, and ore are easy to gather, but can fill up your inventory because there are several types of each – birch logs, fir logs, maple logs, etc. However, you can still consider gathering these for the experience and sell them when you need the space.
Soon after arriving in Veila, you should buy a house (and there is also a quest that will walk you through this). You will need a contribution point and a little silver. Open the world map and click on the town of Veila to view houses. Some are shown in blue and others are gray. You can only purchase the blue ones to start with.
If you plant to craft weapons, don’t make this house a lodging or residence.
Click on each house to view its attributes. Each house can have one function – residence, lodging, storage, or workshop (several types) – but only one function at a time. So you will need to think through your strategy. If you like the idea of breeding horses, then don’t turn the only house in town with that option into lodging or a warehouse, for example. However, also keep in mind that the contribution points you need to purchase a house are refundable. You can change your mind later. Any silver that you spent will not be refunded.
For beginner crafting, start out with a house for lodging. This will let you hire multiple workers who can harvest and process materials for you. You will soon want houses for storage and a workshop also. Each house will require contribution points, but as you work your way through the quests in Veila, these will accumulate quickly. When you’re ready to start cooking, you will also need a house for a residence.
As you start to craft in a workshop, you will inevitably have to learn about the node system. You also need to explore and unlock nodes before you can send your workers to a location to gather resources. Each node is unlocked with a contribution point, and the quests in Veila will walk you through this. The node system is best learned by going through it yourself, although can also be explained in other guides.
Here you can see some of the available workers and crafting items in a workshop.
When you’re ready to explore crafting on your own, just be aware that your resources may be at risk. For cooking, you will eventually place a cooking utensil in your residence. This allows you to combine up to 5 ingredients, but if your ingredients aren’t compatible they will be used up. This is also true for the number of ingredients. For example, if your recipe requires 5 potatoes and you put 15 in, it may make your desired product, but will use up the surplus potatoes.
Talk to the chef in Veila and he’ll run you through some quests and then give you this cooking utensil.
How do you find out the recipes for crafting? The quests in Veila will give you some of this information. There is also a crafting notes area in-game that can be accessed through the main menu (Esc). However, this isn’t terribly helpful at this time because it doesn’t tell you how many of each item you need for a recipe.
I haven’t found this very helpful yet. Maybe it fills in as you discover the recipes?
I haven’t found a good way to discover recipes in-game yet. For workshops, these will show you the resources that you will need for alchemy items, furniture, and weapons.
Go out and experiment with beginner crafting in Black Desert Online. Before you know it, you will have built an entire crafting empire!
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