In Black Desert, all characters possess karma. If you kill other Adventurers, wild horses, or other protected fauna, or you’re caught stealing from an NPC, your family’s karma will decrease. This is shown as a numerical value that can be checked in your character’s profile, in the My Info window (hotkey: P).

However, it does not mean that you cannot fight back against other Adventurers attacking you. You can counterattack using the PvP system that is applied when someone attacks you first.

If another Adventurer attacks you first, that character will be displayed in red and a knife-shaped icon will appear next to the character's name.
The character who attacks first will have their family karma decreased by 3,000 points, but if the character attacks again within the 3 minutes given as self-defense time, their karma will not continue decreasing.
Regardless of whether or not a counterattack occurs, if the character kills the opponent, their karma will be reduced by a minimum of 50,000 points, and to a maximum of 120,000 points, depending on the difference between their attack and defense values.
The combined attack and defense values between characters are compared, and when a strong character kills a weak character, more karma is taken away from them.

A family's karma cannot go above 300,000 points, so if you kill at least two Adventurers, it will drop below 0.

Note that a character who has been attacked will not suffer any penalty even if they counterattack and kill the character who took the lead and initiated unsolicited combat.

As seen above, the character that attacked first appears in red.
If you want to be the one attacking other Adventurers first, press the key combo Alt+C to activate the PvP mode. That said, if you’re the one receiving an unsolicited attack from another Adventurer, you can defend yourself without switching to PvP mode.

◈ Consequences of Negative Karma

If your family’s karma decreases below 0, several penalties will be applied to them.

– The town guards in almost every city and post will become hostile to you, and attack you on sight.
– Your characters’ names will appear in red, and other Adventurers will be able to attack you.
– You will lose more Combat EXP than normal when dying while possessing negative karma.
– There is an increased chance of magic crystals breaking when dying.
– There is a certain chance for your equipment to have its enhancement level decrease upon death. However, enhancement level loss and magic crystal loss will not happen simultaneously.

In addition to the above, dying in the desert, a generally lawless area, with negative karma will soften up the penalties applied to your characters.

➤ For more details regarding character death penalties, please check the [Death Penalties] page.

◈  How to Recover Karma

A family’s karma is recovered by defeating any kind of monster commonly found throughout Black Desert’s world, except for those that cause your karma to decrease (wild horses and protected fauna).

Lastly, to learn more about PvP in Black Desert, please check the [PvP] page.

 * The content of the game guide may differ from the actual game content, depending on the update and content changes.