In the world of Black Desert there are a variety of life skill activities that you can discover, relax in, and enjoy separately from the exciting combat you’ll become familiar with as soon as you create your first character.

All life skill activities are closely related, so even if you concentrate on one and challenge yourself to become a guru of it, you’ll inevitably end up naturally delving into others as soon as you explore the different options the game offers.

You can experience life skill activities while you are leveling the characters. However, in order to receive a life skill-related quest, you must toggle the quest preference for Life and Fishing quests at the bottom of the Quests window (hotkey: O).
If you do not check these types of quests to be visible, you will not be able to receive a quest even if you talk to the correct NPC to obtain it.

After this is done, you can summon the Black Spirit (hotkey: ,) and access the Guide option.
There you can press the [I want to learn ~] options. The navigation guide will guide you to the place where you can obtain the quest, and the text will tell you its requirements.

Of course, you can simply go and for example buy a gathering tool from an NPC shop and start gathering, even if you don’t do any of the life skill introductory quests.
You can start any life skill activity at any time, as long as you know how to perform it.

Life skill activities allow you to experience several aspects of the world, provide a way to earn silver, give compensation for combat and contribution EXP, and reward useful items. However, if you think you do not need help to complete the quest, you can buy your own tools and step into production.

Tip!
Life skill quests are displayed as a green box on the icon above the NPC’s head.

As the EXP obtained from performing life skill activities accumulates, the level of each life skill increases. For the most part, every 10 levels, the title that refers to the level changes.

For example, if you obtain additional EXP when you’ve reached the maximum EXP at
Beginner Lv. 10, you will become Apprentice Lv. 1.

The life skill titles are the following, in order: Beginner, Apprentice, Skilled, Professional, Artisan, Master, and Guru.

As you advance through the levels of each life skill, you will receive rewards through completed challenges (hotkey: Y).

When you reach certain levels for each life skill, you unlock leap quests. You can go to the next level of that life skill without the need to do these quests, but they offer a good amount of EXP as a bonus for completing.

As mentioned previously, each life skill is related to the others. An item obtained from fishing or gathering may need to be processed before being usable. Whenever you hunt, you also gather. The crops you obtain from farming are often ingredients for cooking and alchemy. What fish you obtain, you can sell to a trade manager, and sailing and bartering go hand in hand.

In particular, gathering and processing are closely related to cooking and alchemy as well.
This is because the ingredients for both these life skills can be acquired, or made, through gathering and processing.

For example, in order to acquire high level processing items you need to obtain and process leather glaze and metal solvent, made through alchemy, together with other materials.

Above you can see an example of how certain items involve several steps, often via multiple life skills, to be improved. The green boxes indicate gathering, the blue ones processing, and the orange one a mix of alchemy and processing.

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