Welcome Tiger’s Tips&Tricks! Guide made on 30.10.2024

This guide’s goal is to tell you how to save silver with effort by telling how you can obtain the generally best crystals for life skills and PvE, aka grinding. You can obviously buy all the Crystals from the Central Market if you don’t mind spending silver on them. And some of them you should buy because it can be extremely tedious to get or impossible to get with low gear.

If you think I missed a relevant crystal or missing details on how to get some of the crystals, please do share and comment. I'll update the guide as necessary.

Extra Crystal slots:

You can get 2 extra crystal slots for free by completing the main quest for Land of the Morning Light Donghae. You’ll get the 1^st somewhere in the middle of the main quests and the 2^nd close to the end.

You can also get 1 extra slot with Karanda’s Heart in your Awakening weapon, or 2 if you use a Garmoth’s heart on the Awakening weapon. And no, you can’t get 3 slots by using both Karanda’s and Garmoth’s hearts in the Awakening weapon simultaneously. The Hearts are essentially Reform stones and you can only use 1 Reform per item. (Sovereign uses Reforge stones so don’t even try -_-)

Life Skill crystals:

Without further ado lets get started with the generally best life skill crystals. In all simplicity you want to use Vital Crystals for that sweet +10 mastery per crystal. 140 easy mastery from 14 crystals is pretty goated.

You can get Forest crystals on your own by life skilling in the Land of the Morning Light Donghae region. You can make the Forest Crystal into the Vital (mastery) or Life (life exp) crystals. Not sure about Seoul region. I get them from my node workers at the Dokkebi Forest node. You’ll need a Dokkebi worker there since they are the only workers that can work there by design. I think I get about 1 per month or so, so its very very slow, but at least you’ll get the job done.

I’m not going to delve into life skill specific crystal because there are very good guides on YouTube for specific life skills like hunting which Bairoghaan made a very good guide for it months ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUMvn-j_1Hg

How to obtain the Best-in-Slot PvE crystals:

1. The easiest, and probably the most boring at the start, is doing Land of the Morning Light main quests and unlock all the nodes in the Morning Light. You want to put Dokkebi workers at the Golden Pig Cave node, both the Dokkebi Forest nodes, and Beonbawi Valley node. You can get all Land of the Morning Light crystals (Crystal of Brutal Decimation, Crystal of Mysterious Darkness and Harmony Crystals to make Ultimate Macalods and Hooms) from those except the Girin Tear. EDIT: You use the Darkness crystals instead of Corrupted Magic Crystals at Back attack-oriented spots like Underground Gyfin and Darkseeker’s Retreat.
2. Girin Tear you can only get from doing the 5 weekly Black Shrine bosses. You can also get the other crystals from those. For the fastest way to get a Girin is doing Calamity 5 bosses to get Girin (and the other 2, Haetae and Bonghwang) Crystals and not the Fragments that you get Calamity 1-4 difficulty. So instead of needing to get 9 Fragments to make 3 Crystals to make 1 Tear, you can just go for the Crystals.
3. Probably the most annoying one but guaranteed Rebellious Spirit Crystal you get from doing the weekly Guild Bosses, or from doing the whole chain of main quests from Balenos to Mediah and Valencia part 2 (now a side quest line that starts from Afuaru after doing the Valencia main quest) and Kamasylvia main quests. You get the 3 different Crystals you need for the Rebellious from the last quests of Mediah (Black Spirit Crystal), Valencia part 2 [now side quest line starting from Afuaru after the Valencia main quest] (Awakened Spirit's Crystal) and around midway Kamasylvia (Valtarra Spirit Crystal) main quests. EDIT: Rebellious Spirit Crystal is ironically it is the most expensive crystal in the game, at least in EU, at the moment I’m writing this guide. Also, for min-maxing, Valtarra Spirit Crystals have +3 Kamasylvia damage in them, which can have their uses if you are geared enough.
4. Corrupted Magic Crystals are just easiest to buy from the Central Market. But you can make these from Clear Blackstar Crystal which drops at Star’s End.
5. For the Ancient Magic Crystal of Crimson Flame - Power you go beat Bheg field boss for the best chance to get. You can also get them from some main quests, but that's like 1-2 max from a long chain of quests (I know how much you all love questing) EDIT: Not among the Best PvE crystals anymore, but you’ll need these if you want to make Ultimate Combined Magic Crystal Macalods on your own)
6. Somewhat easy but can be annoying to get is the Dark Red Fang Crystals, both Valor and Armor, by getting the (fake) Red Kagtunaks at Blood Wolves. The Valor is great as it is since it gives +5 AP and +2 Crit. But you do also need the Valors for Ultimate Macalods and Armors for Ultimate Hooms. You can also also make Kagtunaks without grinding, but you need to have done this quest line https://bdocodex.com/us/quest/7111/1/ and then do Red Battlefield to get 50 seals and get the Red Essence, which is 1 ingredient for the self-made Kagtunak. I think the Red Essense is used to make Human Damage Crystals too though.
7. Now comes the most complicated crystal, the Ultimate Combined Magic Crystal Macalod. You’ll start by getting Combined Magic Crystal Macalod at Drieghan grind spots, which you’ll then use to make HAN Combined Magic Crystal Macalod by combining the basic Macalod with any JIN, BON, or WON crystal (search on the Central Market, these require life skilling to get) and 3 Garmoth Scales. After getting HAN Macalod you use that to make Ultimate Macalod by combining it with Dark Red Fang – Valor and Harmony Crystal, that you can get from Land of the Morning Light.
8. The Glorious Ah'krads and Glorious Olucas' can be easiest to just buy from the Central Market for about 1 bil each on average. But if you don't mind PvP, exchanging daily 20 Solare seals for (30 seals from a Win, 20 from a Draw, and 15 from a Defeat) 10 days in a row will get you and 10 Essence of Gallantry to make 1 Glorious Crystal. Or do the Guild League for similar effect. You get 1 Essence whether you win or lose. The Base Ah’krads crafting materials drop at Thornwood and Crypt of the Resting Thoughts. Olucas from the Olun’s Valley.
9. The Crystal of Precise Destruction, Crystal of Dogged Patience, and the Crystal of Stalwart Fortitude are the new Best in Slot PvE crystals additions from the Dehkia lvl 2 spots at Ash Forest and Olun’s Valley. These Crystal you will most likely have to buy from the Central Market. You’ll need a measly 1100 total AP just to be able start grinding at the spots, so it’s very unlikely that you can get these crystals yourself unless you are endgame geared and most likely already have these crystals.
10. Even though you shouldn’t need extra accuracy for PvE anymore, for Accuracy you can get JIN Vipers quite easily, but time consuming, horse training and imperial turning in the lvl 15 or higher horses for the Golden horse training seals. The Ancient Magic Crystal – Viper drops mostly from World and Field bosses which you use to make Black Magic Crystal – Viper, which you in turn use to make JIN, BON, WON Vipers. The result is for the last stage is RNG unfortunately.
11. Or an alternative is the Visionary Crystal of Elkarr by grinding Tungrad Ruins or City of the Dead in Ulukita. You’ll make these by combining Kuadir Fragment, from Ulukita, with Crystal of Elkarr, which you make from Elkarr, that drops from Kratuga, and Black Magic Crystal – Precision.
12. Just as an addendum, Crafting the crystals will require extra materials like Magical Shards, Forest Fury and Magical Lightstone Crystal too. And for Land of the Morning Light materials you can exchange with the Sangpyeong Coins, like Harmony Crystals or Forest Crystals. Read the item descriptions for the details what you'll need.
13. I'll try to eventually add the Karazad accessory special Crystals, but you should only need the Jin All AP +4 crystals for PvE.
14. There is also so the Middle Outfit crystal slot, but I'll just give you a link to my favorite guide website about it: https://www.blackdesertfoundry.com/crystal-sockets-guide/#OutfitCostume_Crystals