Processing
There is a variety of life skill content available within the world of Black Desert. You can harvest potatoes and other produce from a farm, or go fishing down the waterside. You can cut down trees and gather timber, or collect sap from them. You can hunt wild animals both on land and at sea, and from them acquire hides and meat.
From these resources, you can craft various items and even the specialty of each town for use in trading. That’s when the processing life skill comes into play.
The Basics
Out of all the life skills, processing is the act of changing the properties or form of materials you obtain through simple procedures.
Processing may sound similar to cooking or alchemy, in the sense that existing materials are used to create a new product, but there is an important difference.
The output of processing is not the complete end product, but is instead used as an advanced material for other life skills, such as cooking and alchemy.
Open the Processing window (hotkey: L), select the type of processing, and then insert the required items to start the action. However, remember that you must have at least 2 free slots in your inventory, and that your character must be under its weight carrying capacity limit.
Although processing does not have any special requirements for the most part, there are some types that are affected by the weather, such as drying which can only be done on clear days, and filtering which requires wind to be present in the area. Repair, which is carried out indoors, requires that you have an anvil installed at your residence.
Items made through processing are often used as materials for cooking, alchemy, and workshop crafting.
Right click an item to select it from your inventory, and then press the start button to begin processing it.
Types of Processing
There are several types of processing options. Select the desired type of processing from the Processing window and you will see that knowledge acquired through processing will become active in the Processing Knowledge list, allowing you to check the recipe for these.
The different types of processing are the following:
It involves mixing two materials together.
It is usually employed to mix water and a cooking ingredient that has already undergone processing to acquire dough, to make fertilizer for crops, or obtain better quality gems, hides and feathers.
With this method, by grinding ingredients in a mortar one can mainly acquire flour, make fabric threads, remove the impurities of certain gemstones, and turn different types of stones, crystals, and gems into powder.
Via chopping, one can typically turn timber into planks, and planks into plywood.
Only available on clear days, and on land.
It removes the moisture from a material, changing its properties.
Used to dry fish or meat for long term storage, make fertilizer, or to refine animal hide..
Only available when the wind is blowing.
Uses a sifter to sort out the valuable materials out of a dense pack.
It is very effective to thin out feathers, and is also used to obtain both purified water and alluvial gold.
Melt a material with a strong fire to change its form or extract a new material from it.
Besides the obvious use with metals, this can also be used to transform magic crystals, improve plywood, and melt equipment pieces to obtain their component parts.
Can be done in front of an anvil installed within a residence. Allows one to freely repair equipment that has lost durability, instead of making them go to the nearest blacksmith NPC.
You can only repair one piece of equipment at a time, but you can have a character repair something and switch to another character in the meantime.
The original character will be displayed as being in the process of repairing.
A processing method employed to perform quick and simple alchemy on the spot by combining simple ingredients without the need for an alchemy tool.
It is usually used to combine herbs and mineral water to create herbal juice, improve elixirs and magic crystals, and craft certain enhancement materias.
Note that to perform more elaborate alchemy one requires an alchemy tool installed on their residence.
Can do simple cooking on the spot without the need of any cooking utensils.
It is usually used to combine grain and mineral water to create grain juice, produce star anise and citron tea, and prepare certain types of combined meals.
Note that the more diverse and delicious range of food made by cooking is not acquired through this procedure. Instead, one requires a cooking utensil installed in their residence to prepare those dishes.
Via this option, one can package both dishes and elixirs into boxes. These are then delivered to certain NPCs involved in imperial delivery for silver.
➤ You can read more about this topic in the [Imperial Crafting Delivery] page.
This option is used to produce materials needed for guild crafting.
➤ You can read more about this topic in the [Guild House] page.
One can craft a wide range of items with this type of processing, like life skill mastery-related equipment, certain accessories, items used to decorate your residences, instruments, and much more.
Processing Level
You can carry out processing more efficiently with a higher level of the life skill.This is because the higher your processing level, the more resulting items you will receive, even when you’re processing the same materials as before. Likewise, the success rate of the processing action is also increased.
Additionally, there is also a chance you will acquire a higher grade product when before you wouldn’t. For example, iron ore is heated to produce melted iron shards, and these shards are in turn heated to obtain iron ingots. When you’re heating iron ore with a high processing level, you will not only acquire melted iron shards, but also have a chance to acquire iron ingots directly.
As a last note, remember that you can’t carry out any processing when your weight reaches 100% of your weight capacity limit, so it is difficult to do mass processing actions with all the materials inside your inventory. In these situations, for convenience one can find a character costume in the Pearl Shop to be able to carry out processing actions with the materials still in storage.
Processing Success Rate
When you’re processing materials you might see a message from time to time saying something similar to “the process is not going as planned,” or “processing is taking longer than usual.” A processing action being successful or not depends on one’s processing success rate.
Keep in mind that failing a processing action does not incur any loss of materials. It is a simple matter of the time taken to complete the action. It also has no effect on the number of produced materials, or their quality.
If one finds themselves taking a long time to process a given material, know that there are several ways to increase the processing success rate. Wearing silver embroidered craftsman’s clothes, activating certain alchemy stones, and consuming specific dishes, elixirs, and draughts will help greatly increase the success rate for processing.
Learning the Advanced Processing Knowledge
To craft a higher grade item using processing, one does not only need specific materials crafted through alchemy, such as metal solvent or plywood hardener, but also need the beginner and/or skilled knowledge certificates of that type of processing to successfully carry out the action.
If one tries to process an item without the relevant knowledge entry certificate, then they will not be able to get any product from the processing action.
The beginner certificate can be acquired by Adventurers with a processing level of Apprentice Lv. 4 or higher, by accepting and completing the quests from the NPCs listed below.
However, the type of quests to be seen by an Adventurer, as specified at the bottom of the Quest window (hotkey: O), must include the Life option in order to be able to accept these quests. Therefore, it is advised that one examines whether the All option is selected before talking to the NPC.
Knowledge Type |
Quest name |
Requirementa |
Available NPC |
Shaking – Beginner |
[Processing] Toys (?) for Kids |
Apprentice Lv.4 or higher |
Lara |
Drying – Beginner |
[Processing] Need soft Hides! |
Apprentice Lv.4 or higher |
Techthon |
Filtering – Beginner |
[Processing] Filtering Feathers |
Apprentice Lv.4 or higher |
Dora Fonti |
Heating – Beginner |
[Processing] Learning Higher Processing Skills |
Apprentice Lv.4 or higher |
Ficy |
Grinding – Beginner |
[Processing] Learning Higher Processing Skills |
Apprentice Lv.4 or higher |
Ficy |
Chopping – Beginner |
[Processing] Learning Higher Processing Skills |
Apprentice Lv.4 or higher |
Ficy |
As the skilled certificates are of a higher tier than the beginner ones, the conditions for accessing their quests are more demanding, and it is more difficult to acquire them.
Most of the quests are carried out in the territory of Calpheon, and as for the certificate for skilled shaking, it can be acquired as a challenge reward once one reaches the artisan processing level. As seen below, this means one cannot obtain the certificates for skilled grinding and filtering before reaching processing artisan.
Knowledge Type |
Questline name |
Requirements |
Available NPC |
Heating: Skilled |
[Processing] Excellent Magnate |
You must fulfill all the following: Can acquire the knowledge entry by completing the [Processing] Materials for Skills quest which is part of the Excellent Magnate questline. |
A villager inside the building of Keplan’s Arms Dealer and Armor Vendor NPCs. |
Chopping: Skilled |
[Processing] Amazing Tree Art |
Must have completed the Can acquire the knowledge entry by completing the [Processing] Processing Wood with Fire quest at the end of the questline. |
A villager near the Armor Vendor NPC of Trent. |
Drying: Skilled |
[Processing] Pride of Behr |
Must have previously obtained the following entries: Can acquire the knowledge entry by completing the last quest of the questline: [Processing] The Best Hide. |
Likke Behr |
Shaking: Skilled |
- |
Must reach the level of processing artisan, and then claim it as a reward from the Challenges tab of the character profile (hotkey: P). |
- |
Grinding: Skilled |
[Processing] Geranoa's Proposal |
Must have the Shaking: Skilled entry, and have completed the [Processing] Pride of Behr questline. Can acquire the knowledge entry by completing the quest [Processing] The Best Jewel, part of the questline. |
Geranoa |
Filtering: Skilled |
[Processing] Gotta Pluck Them All |
Must have completed the [Processing] Geranoa's Proposal questline’s last quest: [Processing] Troubled Oberen Farm, from Geranoa. Can acquire the knowledge entry by completing the last quest: [Processing] Hunting to Extinction. |
Matheo Oberen |
As a summary, one begins by first obtaining all the beginner certificates, and then they can obtain the skilled certificates for the various types of processing in order, starting with the heating one. The last three (shaking, grinding, and filtering) require reaching artisan processing to acquire them, or to unlock the quests to do so.
Processing Mastery
Each one of the life skills has a mastery value tied to it, which depends on the life skill level of the character and other variables, such as equipment increasing it. This mastery lets one perform the life skill’s action better, or obtain better results from it.
The increase in processing mastery allows one to carry out mass processing actions on a large scale, processing several batches of the same item at once. For example, if usually the procedure of processing iron ore takes x5 iron ore per processing sequence, one’s mastery may allow them to process x20 batches at the same time. The time it takes to complete the sequence is longer, but shorter than it would take to process them individually. This way, given the example above, one can process x100 iron ore for each single processing action.
To carry out mass processing, one requires a processing stone. Green grade processing stones are sold by NPCs Camellia Loggia and Zaaira, in Balenos, while blue grade ones are sold by NPCs Zaaira in Velia, Techthon in Heidel, and several others throughout the world.
For a yellow grade one, however, one needs to craft it themselves, or purchase it from the Central Market. You can craft it via the manufacture processing option with the following materials: Moonlight Opal x30, Gem Polisher x15, Manos Stone x5, and Magical Shard x50
Once a processing stone has been equipped, the Mass Process option will be enabled in the Processing window.
Accessing the Life Skill tab of the character profile (hotkey: P), one can hover over the processing section to see how many batches of a processing action they can carry out at once.
Once this has been checked, acquire the materials to process, press Mass Process, and once the action has been completed the result will be seen.
In this example, out of 1,000 units of birch timber, a single processing action has used 235 units of them, or seen another way, 47 times the normal 5 units it would process normally.
Processing Quests
One can accept processing-related quests from a variety of NPCs in the world of Black Desert.
First, we recommend that you proceed with the processing quests you can find in Balenos, the first territory most Adventurers explore.
It requires some time and effort to complete these quests, but for rewards, you can obtain contribution EXP, processing EXP, as well as rare items like hard & sharp black crystal shards.
We also recommend that you proceed with advancement quests, called leap quests, to help you reach a higher processing level quicker.
You can accept the first leap quest once you reach the processing level beginner Lv. 10.
Once you’re at this processing level, summon the Black Spirit and check its guide menu, where you can find the available leap quests for all life skills. You can be guided to the NPC you can receive the quests from more easily by simply pressing them from the list.
* The content of the game guide may differ from the actual game content, depending on the update and content changes.