Eriane’s Apprentice Journal

The Compendium of Novice Mistakes

Update: Now until August 30!

Limited time Special Question: Free Dream Horse Guide (Click to Expand)

Prerequisites

Can only be completed between July 5 to July 26
UPDATE! Now available until Aug 30, 2023 (Wed) before maintenance

Guide

Right now many people have questions about the Dream Horse. Yes, it’s available until August 30. You must collect BOTH the Vipiko’s Calling Horn AND the Vipiko’s Rocking Horse from your Challenge Log. Your challenge log is one of the buttons at the bottom right of the screen.

Once you have them you must Process them together to make a Vipiko’s Dreaming Horse (item). In order to process you must first be in an idle animation, meaning don’t be in combat stance, if you are press the TAB key. Now open your Inventory (i) and click on the Process button. There will be icons at the top where you can choose what type of processing you wish to do. Select the Manufacturing button.

From here you can select your horse materials. Select both the Vipiko’s Calling Horn and Vipiko’s rocking Horse and place them in the manufacturing slots. You do this by right clicking on the items. Once you are ready, click on Manufacture.

This will take some time, perhaps a minute. When it completes it will give you a new item called Vipiko’s Dreaming Horse (Item). When you have this item you can right click on the item to select which horse you will want (or Censer Bundle). You can register your emblem at a stable and you’re done!

You wish to submit a support ticket but for what reason? Do you think a quest is bugged? Are you stuck? Do you want a refund? Do you need gameplay help? Want to create a new character or delete one? Okay let’s have a talk so you can avoid needing to wait for a response.

a. Frequent support ticket questions with your answer here

“My quest is bugged, help!”

First, your quest is most likely not bugged. This is rare to happen but if it does, make sure you’re not in a party and you are following the quest directions as intended. If you still have issues then cancel the quest and start over again. Most likely you were either in a party, missed a step or don't have a pre-requisite complete. You may wish to try BDOCodex to learn more about your quest.

“I want a refund!”

Second, if you want a refund I wrote about how you go about it in this guide so check it out!

"I want a GM or CM to guide me"

GMs and CMs are not there to help you play the game so please don’t contact them for gameplay help unless there is a legitimate concern. You can ask the community instead! You can ask in the forums, the oasis of knowledge, discord and in-game chat. Please look up your gameplay question before asking your question! I have provided a nice list of websites you can use too in in this guide.

“I want to delete a character or start season over”

If you have questions about deleting your character, you certainly can! You can recreate your season character as well but be warned that if you accepted any season challenge reward and they are character-bound, you will lose those rewards.

“Did I lose my account??”

Did you lose your account? Did you happen to not transfer your account from Kakao to Pearl Abyss? I’m sorry to say but your account cannot be recovered because of privacy laws that PA must follow. All the data has already been deleted and you were sent e-mails almost every month for a full year. You must start over if this is the case. I’m sorry. But the game is so crazy good now! However, if you think you lost your account because of nefarious reasons, do contact customer support! But if you haven’t played in years, chances are it’s gone for good.

b. When to use the ticket system

The ticket system is there for you, but you shouldn’t rely on it for every question you may have. Instead, you should consider when it's appropriate to submit tickets. For example, perhaps you have experienced a game-breaking bug that isn’t covered in this guide? Perhaps you want to report another player for harassing you? Please note that PvP is not harassing however there is a fine line between killing each other and stalking and continuously harassing someone. Perhaps there is another breach of abuse you would like to report? Or maybe you would like to write a heart-felt letter to the developers in private?

There are many reasons why you should submit a ticket and you shouldn’t feel bad for submitting anything. When in doubt, you can always submit at ticket. This guide is intended to help you get your answers fast. I would advise for everyone’s sake that you take the time and look and see if anyone else has encountered your issue. BDO is not an easy game and there is no tutorial for most of the game.

Black Desert Online has a First and Last Name system. Your last name is your Family name. This name is shared between your characters. I understand it’s difficult to come up with a full name on the spot but taking the time to pick a good family name is the right choice. Otherwise, you’ll be spending real money to change your family name. So make it count!

Speaking of family, all of your characters are a part of this “family”. They share silver, storage, investments, knowledge and more!  For more information about family names take a look at 51. Family name and Character names in chat, how it all works for everyone’s sake

When you start the game, you’re asked where you want to start your adventures between 3 choices (as of 2023). Do you pick Balenos? The Eternal Winter region? or the Land of the Morning Light?

Tempting as it may be to join the frey in the latest expansion, I would advise you not to choose this. It is there as an option for those truly eager to play it but I can’t stress enough about the disadvantages that this choice would bring you.

Save yourselves from the headaches that a new player or returning player would face and start in Balenos. After you have completed the Balenos questline, you can go to the Land of the morning Light if you want to go there as your next choice. The time you spend in Balenos is worth the effort, trust us, the entire Ambassador’s Team says so.

So you started a new character and you completely forgot that you needed a season character! Ouch, that hurts! Well, there’s no recourse for this and support will not help you because it’s just not something that can be done.

However, you can still salvage your character you like… If your character is below level 25, you can stop playing with that character, create a new season character and level the season character until you are content. Once you are content with the season character’s level and you are ready to graduate, you can do what is called “Fughar’s timepiece” which will copy, yes copy not transfer but copy all of your combat XP and skill XP to your < lv25 character. If you have reached level 62, both characters will now be 62!

But let’s say you are to high level, is it really that bad? No, you only gain some bonus XP % on season so it’s okay, it won’t matter too much in the grand scheme of things. If you would prefer deleting and starting over completely, you can and your family data is still saved including your knowledge, contribution points, investments etc…

Olvia servers are available every day of the year, they are PvE only servers and have XP related bonuses. You can only be a part of Olvia if you meet certain requirements so veteran players cannot play. Olvia does not support World Bosses at this time! So you will not ever notice a world boss notification or see them in the world. Season servers only exist during season events. They are very much like Olvia only that new players and veterans can play together. Most servers are PvE but there is an Arsha Season server where players may play in an open world PvP environment where PKing does not have any penalty.

There is also the regular servers which you can play on and then there’s the golden looking ones which is your guild’s home servers. This means you can swap between those servers without any cooldown timers. There were once Elvia servers which is a special super powerful world but instead of accessing it from the server selection screen, you can access elvia from any server now. It’s the green button to the left of your minimap.

Earlier we talked about deleting a character and salvaging a non-season character by using Fughar’s Timepiece. But what is the point of recreating a character or creating a new character? Well, for starters, some people believe their character has bad RNG. While this may just be superstition, there are people who reroll for that reason (I'm not one of them).

The second reason is that people may like their character a lot and would like to have a twin so they could have an evil version of themselves or want a different horoscope or more energy etc… It’s also a lot easier to share gear between two characters of the same class than having to use an advanced and expensive system that “tags” gear between characters.

But if all else, you may want to experience different classes for the fun of it. Later we’ll talk about the importance of having a Level 49 character.

Do not forget to use Fughar’s Timepiece! This is very important! This is a limited time item that you obtain as a seasonal character which copies your combat XP and your skill XP to another character that is below level 25. If you don’t care about playing another character, consider at least using them for increasing your family fame fund (free silver every day) and using it as a storage mule.

You MUST complete this quest before season ends and before you graduate.

Hovering over an item will give you information about it. Most questions regarding items can be answered by reading it. It’s a harsh reality but many don’t. Don’t be that person who doesn’t read.

Example of a context menu when hovering over Moray (Item)

In-game there are several ways you can ask for help. You can ask people in your guild or alliance, you can ask people in your friend’s list, you can ask in “Group Chat”. What is group chat you ask? It’s the chat that is colored in blue. You can connect to a group (by default it’s Lunar Halo Inn) and you may ask questions there as you desire. People wearing hats or crowns are supposed to know their stuff, feel free to ask your question there.

Ah, so you got stuck somewhere? You can’t leave? You have options! The first option is the “escape” command. Everyone has this and you can use it once every 15 minutes. You don’t have to ask a GM to get you out of a hard to get out spot. Press ESC on your keyboard then click on the Escape icon. If you can’t find this you can either search for “escape” without quotes in the search bar in the menu or you can click on [Character F2] > [Escape 8].

The second method is by using a Map. You can purchase a map from the Central Market and collect it using one of your maids. When you have a map, you can teleport to the nearest node or town from a selection list.

So you think it’s a good idea to skip the main story and rush through everything, is it a good idea? The answer is generally no. Some people may say “oh I’ll rush with this character and then do it slowly my next” but that never happens. There will be an excuse!

The only time I would recommend skipping content is if you started playing a few days before season ended and you wanted to boost your way to level 60+. Other than that, it’s not a race. Remember, no complaining that the story is bad if you just skip through it! smh…

Unless you’re rushing to make the season’s deadline, don’t rush your character! You really need to learn your class. Leveling up naturally is the way to get a solid foundation. People often complain that their class isn’t good but the reality is that it’s because they don’t fully understand their class. Each class has advantages and disadvantages, they may not be  completely balanced but they are for the most part good at something.

Your first horse depends on when you join. If you join during season, see if there aren’t any seasonal rewards for a Tier 8 (T8) horse, which is the highest tier before Dream horse (T9). If no event for a free horse exists you can either capture your own or buy one from the horse market. I would not recommend buying a horse from the stable keeper. But how do you do it either way?

a. Buying it from the Horse Market

Simply go to a main town, preferably one where you’ll be comfortable to ride your horse wherever. It has to be a main town, not all stables have the horse market. Go to Velia, Heidel or Calpheon for example. Once there, there is a Market button click on that and you can sort horses to your liking. Buy a horse that best suits you, look at their skills and level. Be sure not to overspend, if it’s your first horse, don’t spend more than 40mil silver if possible. Get something, anything. It’ll be yours.

b. Capturing your own horse (it’s easy!)

The horse capturing mini-game is easy now. All you need are two items. The first item is a Capturing Rope and the second item is Lump of Raw Sugar. You can buy the capturing rope from a stable keeper and the lump of raw sugar from the Central market or make your own (it’s cheaper).

You must then head to a place where wild horses graze. I suggest trying west of Heidel near the farmland. You will see horses if others have not captured them. When you find a horse you can right click on your Capturing rope and a mini-game will appear. You must be close enough while targeting the horse to see a target crosshair marker. When the time is right, press spacebar to "lasso" the horse. You will enter another mini-game which is a tug-of-war. You must approach the horse and when the horse lifts its legs into the air you must press spacebar again and play a third minigame. Keep tapping spacebar until the timer runs out. You will be able to keep walking towards the horse. Eventually you will be close enough to give it a Lump of Raw Sugar. Use the context menu that appears on top of the horse to give it some sugar, baby!

Once you’ve captured your horse you can bring it to the Stable Keeper. You don’t have to be on the horse, it will follow you, even if you zoom-zoom using a different horse, it will teleport to you eventually.

At the stable keeper when you talk to him you will see a register button. If this doesn’t appear yet, your horse still hasn’t arrived nearby the stable keeper. Be patient. When you register your horse you will give it a name, call it whatever you like it’s yours.

Tansie has a great horse training guide for this occasion! If you want to learn more, take a look: [ link here ]

You want to level up your Naru gear? That’s great! Because in order to get Tuvala Gear you must get your Naru gear leveled to PEN. But before I explain how, let’s talk about the enhancement levels.

The armor and weapon enhancement Levels:

The accessories enhancement Levels:

To upgrade your armor, you will need to have Beginner Blackstone Armor which are obtained through questing the main story. You can also obtain Beginner Blackstone Weapon which are for enhancing your weapons.

You will need to unequip your weapon or armor, whichever you want to enhance and then speak with the black spirit (,). There will be a menu item called Enhance. In this menu you can select both the Beginner Blackstone (weapon or armor) and your chosen weapon or armor. Click on the enhance button to begin the enhancement. Once it’s done, it will have made the weapon or armor stronger!

But... Does it always succeed?

The first few levels will be a guarantee. You can guarantee your (weapon/armor) enhancement until +5 and then it will begin to fail. But don’t worry, when it comes to NARU GEAR, you can just not worry about what people call using “failstacks”. You’ll learn more on this later. Just keep shoving attempts into your weapons and armor pieces.

What about Naru accessories?

Don’t bother, it’s a waste. You can get your Tuvala accessories later by buying them with Tuvala Ore which is obtained later when you’re playing level 50+ content.

Naru weapon and armor are now all at PEN, now what? – Converting to Tuvala

Now that you have reached PEN, you can either use the in-game interface during enhancing to covert to Tuvala or you can press the inventory button (i) and there will be an icon there to upgrade.

Once you’ve completed the upgrade to Tuvala, you will be so much stronger! However now enhancing Tuvala will require failstacking.

What is failstacking? How do you know how much you should use?

Failstacking or using Failstacks is when you use advice of valks as a means to improve your odds against failing. If you don’t use any, your chances of failure is much higher! For instanced, if your chances of enhancing something is 50% without any failstack. You can use advice of valks +30 to improve those odds. Perhaps those odds will now become 75%? The exact amount is difficult to tell without knowing what you’re enhancing and at what level.

However, BDO does provide a great way to know what your failstack will bring the number up to. In the enhancement menu, you will see two + icons if you click on the top one, you will bring up a that screen.

If you select an advice of the valks, you will see what it can do for your current enhancement attempt.

If you fail an enhancement, your equipment (Tuvala in this case) will go down a level. That means if it was TET and you failed the enhancement, it will go down to TRI. If you fail again it will go down to DUO and if you fail again it will be at PRI. When a weapon or armor is at PRI, it cannot go any lower, that is the “new base”. For accessories, if you fail, both accessories shatter unless you use cron stones to protect it, in which case only the accessory you are trying to enhance survives the attempt.

Comparing with what other players have succeeded with (in-game)

You can compare failstacks with what other players have done in-game by clicking on this icon

This will show you a list of % and failstacks used to succeed. This wonderful Quality of Life (QoL) feature is very convenient as people no longer have to rely on third party websites to get numbers. The numbers shown in-game are aggregated results by other player attempts.

Failures can improve your chances!

I’m not just saying that in a karmic retribution type of sense, I’m saying that when you fail and you’re not using cron stones to protect your enhancement (will explain what cron stones are later), your failstack will increase with every failed attempt. Veteran players use season characters to build really good fail stacks for cheap by ensuring they fail a lot on their enhancements. That is a bit of a complicated and advanced for this moment but it just goes to show you that people will find creative ways to get the best out of their failures. If you fail, you’re one step closer to success! (At least that’s what I tell myself)

"With your failures comes too good of failstacks" - Uncle Ben

Your enhancements may be too good for the level. Let’s first talk about what kind of failstack you need for Tuvala.

I’ve created an enhancement chart. You are free to follow this chart or any number of charts that exist online. You may also go with whatever your gut instincts say, some say that is the best guide of them all. The range is min vs max, where max value is where I would personally not go beyond and just keep the failstack for something more important if possible.

The Enhancing process

There is a method to this.

1. First you enhance your equipment to DUO (excluding accessories, that’s a later thing).

2. Then you start upgrading one to TRI. If it fails, then enhance something else to TRI. If that fails, enhance something else to TRI until it succeeds.

The reason is you will build your failstack. However, you shouldn’t build too high of a failstack as shown in the chart. 

If for example you failed enhancing a TET and your FS is at 45, you would not want to use that same failstack on a TRI. Instead, you would save that failstack and use a proper failstack for the equipment level.

Saving Failstacks

You can save failstacks so that you’re not forced to use them when they get too good.  In order to save failstacks you will need to unlock Nadder’s Band. Black desert foundry has a nice guide which is linked a bit later.

Using Cron Stones for Enhancing Naru / Tuvala?

No, don’t do it! Do not do it, do not do it, do not do it! They are too precious!

Notes about enhancing accessories

Oh my dear accessories, you are the forbidden fruit. When enhancing accessories, you will have to always sacrifice one accessory and if it fails…. You lose both! You can use cron stones to prevent losing both but Tuvala isn’t the right place to use them.

Learn more about enhancing!

I have written far too much about enhancing and yet we’ve only scratched the surface!

Special Related Quests

There are three important quests that you will need to undertake. Well, four if you count the season challenge logs.

1. Enhancing with Fughar

The first is when you are enhancing Tuvala, you can speak with Fughar and he will give you quests to complete for Advice of the Valks. These are wonderful because it’s basically helping you upgrade for free, almost… All you need to do is accept the quest, unequip the equipment that you have enhanced and then equip it again. This part is important! If you don’t do that it won’t complete the quest.

2. Regional Quests

The second quests are called regional quests. You can do these once per season. You should go around different grinding zones and complete the regional quest there. When you are at a grind location, there will be an icon next to your map at the top right and this will show your seasonal quest such as kill 250 monsters in the area for tuvala ore for example.

Once it’s completed, you must click on “Receive reward” and  if there’s another quest for the region, you can keep grinding for the next level. Please keep in mind that you must meet the region’s level requirement. If you find a guide that says you can grind say, Desert Naga and you’re only level 50, you won’t see the regional quest. Also, you have to be in a certain spot to see it. Under most cases, you can still grind in the area if you don’t see the notification and it should count. For example if there are multiple grind spots and you know you can get the regional quest and you’ve been doing it but need to grind in a different spot, it will likely get counted. You should confirm that it is getting counted by going back and forth once in a while.

3. Weekly Regional Quests

The third kind of quest is a weekly regional quest, this quest can be accepted near a mob grind zone, like Polly’s forest, Forest Ronaros, Bashim Base, Desert Nagas, etc… These will give you a substantial amount of enhancement crystals of your choice for season. You must complete this before wednesday reset time (8PM EST for example).

You may walk a lonely road but joining a guild is quite important in this game. The first reason is that you make free money (up to 5milion silver per day) by just existing in a guild. This kind of silver can pay for many things such as 1milion can go towards your daily mansion rental fee.

The second reason is because people will actively hunt other players that aren’t part of a guild. If you don’t want to have the protection of a guild, then that is your choice, you are absolutely free to do this. I would however also recommend that you join Arsha servers for a better PvP experience.

· Guilds provide buffs! You can have many buffs as thanks to the guild, given that they have unlocked it and can actively use it.

· Access to guild missions! You can make more money while grinding or doing your lifeskill activities. Why say no to free money?

Weekly guild activities are also fun! Every week guilds tend to go together at Vell (a big monster at sea) and also complete various guild boss challenges that are exclusive to the guild.

Every guild has their own requirements, some require that you use discord, others just want you to be alive. Sometimes you may not know what kind of requirement a guild may have entirely and if you can’t dedicate yourself to play every day, you may get kicked out from a highly active guild.

Many guilds do not have such high requirements, but some do. Knowing how casual or hardcore a guild is up-front is important and perhaps giving a guild a test-trial for a few days to see if it’s right for you may also be optimal. Don’t worry, Guild Masters won’t take offense, hopefully.

If you’re a Lifeskiller, don’t join a PvP guild. Likewise don’t join a lifeskilling guild if you’re into siege wars etc… Because that guild will most likely never go to war.

There are just so many guilds out there, focus on the right one that speaks to you even if it takes several days of going through different guilds and thinking about it.  You don’t want to be established in a guild and find out that it’s not the right kind of guild for you.

You’ve been grinding or lifeskiling for a while and now you can hardly move. What do you do now? Well, you could use up all of your maids to place your items into storage which is fine, you can do that, I do it all the time. However… There is another nice trick you can do.

The one simple horse trick

You can get a horse and dump all of your heaviest loot in your horse. Yep. The horse can carry as much as it needs to. You won’t be able to put more than one item type in it but it can carry a crazy amount of weight. You can use your maids to move your other items which aren’t as heavy to keep grinding indefinitely!

Some people have so many maids that they never, ever need to use a horse to carry it! But what do you do when you want to go back? Simply put the items back on your character and ride your horse. Your horse will run normally like magic! Hey, I don’t make the physics here!

How else can you increase your weight capacity? (Pearl / Loyalties)

You can purchase weight increase items from the Pearl and Loyalty Shop. Personally, I went a long time without them thinking it was a big waste of money. But then I went for it and got +750LT and wow, what a change! I had already maxed out my loyalty enhancements and combined with that much LT increase, it made my life so much better. No regrets!

You can also use Crystals

You can purchase weight limit increase crystals from the Central Market or find / craft them yourself. I likely will not be keeping up with this guide to update whenever a new crystal is released so instead I defer you to Ambassador Tansie’s guide instead.

For more details on how to increase your weight capacity, visit https://www.blackdesertfoundry.com/how-to-increase-weight-limit/

You are now at level 49 with 99.9% XP and for some reason or another you can’t reach Level 50. Now what? In case you have missed the notification that appears on your screen any time you perform an action or kill something, you will need to speak with the Black Spirit and complete [To Level 50]  Go beyond your own limits.

When you accept this quest you will get a new item in your inventory called Clear memory piece. Open this item. It will now say Quest completed. Speak with the black spirit again to finish the quest. Now you have unlocked the ability to go beyond level 49% Go and kill something that can get you more than 0.01% XP and you will be golden.

Please keep in mind that just because an item isn’t very rare, it doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. Always reference the item if you’re uncertain of its importance.

This question is tricky and very difficult to explain because it relies on so many variables.

· What is your gear score? Meaning, what is your AP, AAP, DP?

· Do you have crystals? If so, are you willing to risk dying with them equipped? (meaning they might break)

· What are you trying to grind for? Skill XP? Combat XP? Silver / hr? Legendary/treasure items?

· Do you plan to grind on your own or with someone else? What about 5 people?

You can do one of three things.

1. You could just go with the wind and explore on your own, no worries and let destiny take you wherever it takes you.
2. You could use Monster Zone info which is a QoL interface found in the game. It allows you to find out what monsters are found in which zone and what their drops and requirements are. You can compare your stats with the required stats there. To access this, open the main menu go to Adventure then Monster Zone Info.
3. You can use online guides.

Links:

You can get negative karma accidentally but before I say how, please take note that there is Naval Fame (Karma) which is family-wide which is different than character based karma. Naval fame is not forgiving and is very, very hard to go back to being a good guy but character karma such as PKing another player on land, is fairly easy to go back to neutral / positive.

You can become “red” if you kill another player without them attacking you first. You can lose karma by killing protected animals such as horses. You can lose karma by getting caught stealing from NPCs. Please note that NPCs have affinity towards you and by getting caught you will lose some of that, sometimes you’ll lose the ability to complete quests, even main story quests! So be careful who you pickpocket. There are some NPCs like in the desert that you can kill which will also reduce your karma.

Simply put, do not kill or hurt things you shouldn’t be hurting. Even attacking other player’s ships will harm your naval fame considerably.

As a reminder, if you’re at war with another guild, or if you weren’t the instigator, you will not lose karma. Do not “flag up” when you’re engaging in PvP! If you do “flag up” which is when you toggle PvP mode on, you will likely get karma penalty depending on the situation. You don’t need to turn on PvP to defend yourself against another player.

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