After such a long time and figuring out what to make, I've come up with an idea different from any other topic on the forums. Players have left stories behind as they continue playing the game. Particularly the older players. The questions are the following:

What brought you to the world of Black Desert? What kept you playing, despite the epic wins and epic fails on your journey? I am sure we all made big gains or big mistakes from our own actions. What did you do in your first fifty levels?

I plan to begin first with a fairly long text.

When I began the game, I saw two classes to my liking. However I had a dilemma what class to be my first - Warrior or Dark Knight. After minutes of thinking I chose warrior and it took me like 20-30 minutes to make his look. I made my first class. Now I can see what the game had to offer. Back then the newly created character’s staring zone was the town of Olvia. I came here completely clueless. What I remember is that there was a tutorial and I had to accept my first quest. So far so good. I figured that out. Then as I went onwards I eventually got to a quest, leading me to the training dummies. Next I had to press buttons. Eventually I got to something bizarre for me personally. I remember vaguely I had to press LMB+RMB. I wasn’t sure at first, if this was first LMB and then RMB and I continued trying different combinations like a headless chicken. Until I accidentally pressed both mouse buttons at the same time. The quest finally was done. I almost thought it for bugged. Hahah.

Then I continued leveling throughout Balenos. And back then I used to buy gear from vendors. First reblath, because it was cheap and affordable from Velia. As I kept going traveing from Balenso, through Serendia and then to Calpheon, I had no idea that gear progression was done by enhancing only. I was used to themepark MMOs only back then. I had black stones, but they were not much. I was leveling up my first character with non-enhanced gear up to… Maybe level 43? I can’t remember. And I didn't have any pets. I heard once, that if my enhance my gear and if it’s max. durability reaches to 0, it could break. However back then my question was that if the broken gear is recoverable somehow. I didn’t want to risk it at first, but then… I decided to go full yolo on a Steel Taritas gear bought from the MP. I enhanced my gear back then to at least+8. Back then I didn’t know memory fragments were not the only source for item durability recovery and I used them all. Gosh… I had better options and I didn’t even know. (When I began playing there was no Naru gear, nor Tuvala.) And before enhancing my gear it took me some time to kill anything. One time, almost at level 48, I went to the border with Kamasylvia. I saw several mobs. I tried to kill one, but I ended up being one-shot xD. I knew I was not for here and moved elsewhere. I was trying to tame a horse once and it took me like… 20 tries to get one. After all this spacebar mashing. My own adventure kept going and even if I made mistakes on my own, I learned from them. I met decent other players as well. With several of them I still keep contacts to this day.

EDIT:  Cool topic and it's funny to think back when we were new.  The game was less informative and discovering things on your own was huge, wasn't it?  Unlike now.  Gearing is so dead-easy nowadays.  I kinda miss those days when things weren't spelled out in balck and white, but alas, this is a new day and age.  I was in a similar boat when starting out.....I was using Agerian Gear, which is one of the worst, but it got me through.  The below text is long.  At work and bored ATM, so if you read it, I hope you have time too.

Started the game at launch with a few friends, about 5 of us in total.  I started a little later than them and I ended up picking Sorceress because, 1) I read her description and she was touted to have both ranged and melee capabilities -  this supposed versatility gravitated me to the class, 2) None of my friends picked Sorc, so I wanted a class unique of them, 3) She has booba.

When I first logged in and found myself in Olvia, I remember running around and talking to every NPC with a gray "?" icon on the minimap, since my friends told me this was what I was supposed to do.  I didn't really know why, they mentioned "Knowledge", but I wasn't sure, but took their advice.  Ran around all of Olvia without doing many quests, just talking to NPC's in the area lol.

Fast forward some weeks, I was still behind my friends.  They were grinding at Marni's Lab, I believe, I was still stuck in Serendia, doing quests.  Be it a combination of work, not knowing what to do, and still playing my previous MMO, I was behind.  Didn't understand the game fully and it didn't help me understand the game because there was so much "hidden" information back then.  Even things like Weapon's and Armor's stats weren't clear, just simple descriptors.  They seemed to have a lot of fun, we'd be on Discord and all talking, and I would foam at the mouth when they were PVP'ing.  Sounded like so much fun, but I was still behind and they were too hyper-focused on their gains and PVP to go back to help me lol.  They'd give advice, but I didn't like grinding, I wasn't into lifeskilling, and the PVP combat was all I was looking forward to, but didn't know what to do to catch up.  I ended up quitting the game for a while.

Fast forward a few months, and my old MMO was taken over by new devs who ruined the combat by introducing new mechanics and destroying older, but better, ones.  Quit that MMO and started playing Street Fighter again and got into League of Legends.  It was fun, but I was craving an open world, MMORPG experience.  Logged back into BDO and it was around the time Mediah 2 got released.  Awakening recently got releaased and Sorc's Scythe looked soooo good.  This set me with a goal -- to get my Scythe -- so I levelled up, did quests, grinded, and watched many YouTube videos and scoured Google for information to learn the game.  By this time, more guides were available which made learning the game much easier than around launch.  I was wearing Agerian Armor for a while and didn't make the switch to Grunil until much later.  Stats were still hidden, didn't really know much about Armor differences.  My Agerian was lowly enhanced, but I made due.  Pushed through, fighting Rhutum's, enemies in Mansha Forest, to finally make my way into Mediah...fighting Mane's, Helm's, and Elric's.......eventually reaching level 56.  Levelling was much slower at the time and this was a huge accomplishment for me....not only in levels, but it meant I could also finally get my Scythe.

Learning Awakening Sorc is a tale of love and hate lol.  Man, pre-Rabam's, pre-class reworks, original Awakening Sorc, with low gear......let's just say......I got absolutely torn to shreds in the beginning lol.  Sorc used to be considered hard to play in those days, she wasn't like now.  Not as user friendly and you absolutely NEEDED to learn all her animaiton canceled to be good.  Much less Super Armor, few good Frontal Guards, but mostly unprotected...I-frame was her only real reliable protection, so you had to be good, because stamina managnement was very important.  Still is, but now, Sorc plays very different than she used to.  Open World PVP was so good in those days, but I was so bad.  Rekt after rekt, I'd actually find myself literally running away from others when people came into my grind spot.  It kind of felt bad getting kicked out, but I knew my place on the totem pole....I was still weak and new.  This gave me motivation to push my gear higher and get good with my class so I could defend myself better.  Getting plowed gave me motivation.  So I grinded in side-rotations, primarily "Beach Rotation" at Sausan's was my go-to.  It was somewhat contested, but the really strong players were in the upper levels, like main rotation, so it was perfect....allowed me to grind and PVP with players around my gear level.

At this point, most of my friends quit.  What was once the person who was behind everyone was the only one playing BDO lol.  One friend who quit came back when I told him I was back in BDO and he caught up and we still play to this day.  Another friend who quit came back a while after and now the three of us play BDO, mostly doing our own thing, but on Discord and doing RBF together and finding fights in Arsha sometimes.  Mostly grinding these days, though, as IRL is a thing and we don't play as much as we used to.  We still log in nightly and play games.

BDO is much different now.  PVP is dead compared to before.  But it's stil motivating to me to get gains that help in PVP, like RBF and node wars.  I recently discovered Succession Ranger and she's a load of fun, trying to get better with her.  My next gear goal is a PEN Lunar Necklace, I need about 30 billion for it, so not too bad.  What keeps me in BDO is 1) The combat, 2) The familiarity, 3) Friends, both IRL and in-game, 5) Constant gear goals, possibly non-gear releated goals, like maybe making a Carrack one day (but I hate lifeksilling), 5) No other MMO interests me ATM, 6) Freaking love, love, love Sorceress.....even up to this day <3

I remember starting as a maewha but being dissappointed by the spear awakening. I re-rolled to ninja, hated it until 56 but then...THEN... I HAD 6 KATANAS!! I never looked back since. 

CM. I made my own DK, before I hit even 55 with my first character. And now I see, where the nickname comes from. I was going to figure it out. :) Yes. I also like my own DK. :)

Short version of how i discovered BDO : NCSoft turned my favourite MMO Blade & Soul to. . . .so after spenting hundrends of hours in that game i decided to completely delete my NCSoft account. Since then i've never touched any NCSoft game.

At that time i was looking for something new to play and one of the Blade & Soul Youtubers i used to watch had videos showcasing BDO. I gave the game a try with the free Trial. Well i liked that i could ride mounts for free compared to other games and the graphics looked good. I leveled up killing a bunch of random crap without knowing anything about the game. Then some random people offered me to join their guild. I joined their guild and i learned the basic stuff about the game. One time they told me to go and help finish a guild quest. During that duration of time a group of PK'ers came and kept killing us. I used to be very good in PvP in almost every genre of online gaming, but i kept dying with 2 hits no matter how well i played this game. I was like "i can't be that bad in this game, it sure must be my gear or something". So ye, i continued my journey of gearing up to the point of reaching 600+ gearscore.

You know what i learned by the time i reached 600+ gs? That no matter how much i play, in this game i will never reach endgame gear. The chances of upgrading my gear to the final level is insanely low and will take hundrends of hours for just 1 tap. Also my class is garbage in PvP, i will never be able to 1 v 5 like some broken classes that can rotate 24/7 I-frames / Super Armors, teleport from the one side of the map to the other, Grab and using other unfair in game mechanics.

The game looks good for the first few days / weeks / maybe a month max 2 if you take it very slow and you don't ask a lot of questions, but when you realise what type of BS it really is, you will want to run away from it. Not to mention how toxic this community really is. The first thing another human being told me in this game was "DFS?".

I started to play BDO during the open public (korean) beta and honestly I had no idea what I was doing because it was all korean. I had to use a fake korean address or whatever just to play due to the laws of the country. But I was able to play for a couple of days I think just a weekened and I was blown away. Mind you that the best the market had at the time was arguably Tera (RIP). Fast forward a year (I think) and the game released in the US for a meager $40 to own. Heck yeah I'm in! ... Then it went to $5-$10 to own in no time LOL

The game itself was insanely immersive. It was so beautiful that I didn't care if my computer could not handle it in full 60fps, I just adored it. Knowing that everything you did had some level to it was great too and you could earn knowledge of things, grow an empire, there was this band playing in velia (still is but music is on mute now). The game felt very cozy.

Nobody knew how to play the game and there wasn't a wiki you could just go to or youtube you could reference. NOBODY was giving away information because information was how you became better and richer. I made a killing off of selling couch cushions at a whopping 300k silver each! (Really wish furniture would go up in price to match inflation)

At some point I eventually made it to 49. To become level 50 and join the crazy open world PvPvE or to just remain 49 and stay a noob? Well obviously I need to keep going! Starting then we were all competing at I think Sausons and Pirates I think. The level cap I think was around 56 or so? Unfortunately Kakao was an awful publisher so I quit fairly soon after joining because their servers were unreliable at best if you could ever connect. Their forums were always flooded with angry people. I don't know what happened after the exodus but I know they released the remastered and xbox versions and eventually it became good to play again.

Everyone had very high expectations for this game, it was the talk of the world in gaming. But the crazy amount of griefing that existed and the bad servers (wasn't pearl abyss fault, it was all on kakao) didn't leave a good image for people. The servers are pretty reliable now and griefing happens seldomly. The only thing that makes me sad about this game is that I never got to go on a grand adventure with friends. It's hard to describe what that means but we all seem to get caught up in min-maxing and forget about just taking a step back.

If I were to tell a new player about this game, I'd say take it as slow as you like. Don't rush, just enjoy the sights and everything you can. Min-maxing is overrated.

I came here from a long sojourn with a failing D&D MMO.   While I signed up in February 2021, this game was a Valentines Day gift from my husband.  He knew I was showing less interest in the old MMO and told me to try Black Desert instead.  I started playing in March, but found the interface a bit overwhelming.  I always do my research and found YouTube video guides by EvilDoUsHarm ( Levi Dousharm ) very helpful.  I made some mistakes early on in the game, but found my path.  The first time through is always going to be your longest because it is new.   

As a rule of thumb, I play all MMOs by the same methodology. Send in the first 2 characters to explore and gather materials needed.  Once you gain the knowledge and skills needed to play the game, have the first 2 characters play the game, while the next two replace them as the labor force.  This has always worked the best for me when starting out in an unfamilar game.

Black Desert has proven to be a multifaceted game, with something here for anyone and everyone.  On day one I was able to buy a house and start gathering and crafting.  For this being an "Open World PvP" this aspect never bothered me as real pvpers keep me on my toes and add more immersion than the standard NPC can provide.  The ability to buy and sell mounts for silver and a cash shop that focused on cosmetics not pay to win items, is indeed a breath of fresh air.

Currently I am training up two of my character's hunting skills.  Even when I might think there is nothing more to do here, I find something more, and new goals are available everywhere you go.

Have fun!