BDO Gear Guide - Gotta Move That Gear Up!

Well, hello there, Adventurers! Today, we are going to talk about Gear in Black Desert Online. After reading this guide, you will know which items should you start with, how and why you should go for certain items at some point, which items to avoid, how to enhance your gear properly, and prepare for getting the Best in Slot Boss items. And of course - how to reach soft-cap efficiently and improve your AP/DP as you go higher level-wise. 

The Nature of Gear in BDO

Gearing is an MMORPG is a very complicated thing in most titles. There are hundreds of items with different bonuses, with some bonuses being useful against other classes, PvE Mobs, or for some additional utility. In World of Warcraft, for example, you would opt for a particular set from a dungeon early on, almost to then move to other dungeons that require a higher level to get a brand new set that will be relevant at the higher level of play.

In Black Desert Online, however, there are types of items that have item references for all classes, that possess the same stats and bonuses. For example, Bares Longsword and Bares Gauntlet will have the same bonuses and stats. Same AP, same extra effects, same bonus damage. The only thing that makes them different is that they are for different classes. And it applies to all Main-Hand, Awakening, And Off-Hand Weapons. 

Additionally, items don’t have a level requirement, meaning that you are free to take off items from your main Level 62 character, create a new one at Level 1, and put the same gear on that new guy. Of course, you will not be able to take that fresh character to the top tier spots because your battle prowess will be hindered by lack of skills, lack of skill points, and a vast difference in level, which will immensely decrease your damage dealt. 

Weapons

There are three slots for weapons for each class. These were mentioned before - Main-Hand slot, Awakening Slot, and Off-Hand slot. Main and Off slots are available for all classes as soon as you create your character. The Awakening slot will open to you when you reach level 56, and you complete the Awakening Quest. 

The thing about Weapons is that some classes will share the same set of Main and Off hand. For example, both Warrior and Valkyrie will be able to wear Longswords and Shields, Witch and Wizard carry a Staff, and a Dagger, Striker, and Mystic share a gauntlet and a Vambrace, Musa and Maehwa share a Blade and a Horn Bow, Ninja and Kunoichi can wear a Shortsword and a Kunai. It means that switching between pairs of these classes will only require you to get a new Awakening weapon.

Armor and Accessories

All pieces of Armor, as well as all Accessories, don’t have any class requirements. You can easily get your armor from your Warrior, and transfer it to your Witch character. This way, changing your main character after putting in so many resources into Enchanting your gear will be way less punishing, as you will only have to enchant 1 or 3 weapons, depending on your other class of choice. 

Enhancing your Gear

Since your gear doesn’t possess any level requirements, BDO balances it out with its Enchanting System. It is the thing that makes and breaks all players of BDO. Having good luck, preparing for an enchanting session, and doing it correctly is a huge part of Black Desert Online, which makes it a long-time investment. In seconds you can become much stronger, or you can go back to your power level a few weeks, if not months back. Some people call this system toxic, but it’s far from the truth. 

In theory, if you can make a lot of money, and you know what to do, you can gear up your character fast and play top tier PvP with the big boys in a month or two after creating your Level 1 character. There’s a lot of content, and a genuinely huge map to explore. By hindering your progress with a harshly punishing and unforgiving Enchanting System, you will have time to try out everything. It means testing every grind spot, every life skill, every activity there is, and you will find your own way. There are 13 item-slots that count towards your Gear Score.

Most item enchants follow this leveling process:

+0

+1

+2

+3

+4

+5

+6

+7

+8

+9

+10

+11

+12

+13

+14

+15

PRI

DUO

TRI

TET

PEN

It is a standard process for item enchants when it comes to Armor pieces and Weapons. When it comes to accessories, these only have six stages, a default level 0, and PRI - PEN. The reason for that is that accessories have a different set of rules when it comes to enchanting, but more on that, and the whole enchanting process later. 

Gear Stats and Enhancement Bonuses

Every item in BDO will provide you one of the main stats (or both for some items) - AP and DP. AP stands for attack points, and DP stands for defense points. You can figure out what these stats determine. Additionally, there are some side-bonuses like Accuracy, Evasion, and many more. These are usually tied to the name of the weapon. We won’t list all of them. You can find all of the items on BDO wiki websites, as well as on BDO Gear Planner. 

Beginning your Gear Journey

DISCLAIMER - this part of the guide is for the people, who don't have any in-game resources. They are starting the game, and they don't know how to progress with the game or with the gear. It's also useful for those stuck at +7 early game gear.

Starting our fresh with a brand new account and starting a new character on your account where you already have something, is two different things. If you’ve already played a lot on your main character, and you decide to roll a new one, you will purchase some mid-tier gear (like TRI: Grunils, TRI: Rosar, etc.), or you will give armor and accessories from your main, and buy some brand new weapons. That’s a very easy start, you can power level to 56 in under an hour if you know what you’re doing, and you are basically in the main portion of the game immediately. We treat 1-56 like a tutorial, but the real game starts at level 60 and more. 

Part I: Curious Beginnings

You create your character, you spawn in, and you see a ball of black energy. It has small red eyes. It is your Black Spirit. This little thing will be your best friend throughout the entire course of the game. It can give you various quests, you use it to enhance weapons, to put crystals in your gear, and it will guide you through the early parts of the game. This little guy will always be there for you, it will grow with you, and it plays a significant part in the lore of the game. You can experience that by doing quests. You can summon this entity at any time by pressing ”,” on your keyboard at any point in the game, as long as you are in standby (you are not doing anything else). It is your Spiderman-like Venom. And it becomes much bigger and much cooler as you progress through the game, up until the final transformation quest that makes him smaller and weaker.

Anyways, as your first character, you should do all the quests that are available for you. It can be quite dull, especially when you look at the scale of everything. Your beginner quests, before you manage to reach Mediah - there’s like 200+ of them. 200+ of fetch quests, running from place to place, killing some monsters for local communities, taking part in some activities. It seems tedious, and it is. But there are plenty of reasons to do all of your quests:

• Back in the day, you didn’t receive much character exp for doing quests. Now, it’s much better, you can essentially ditch grinding, and through quests alone, you will be able to reach level 60, even 61 reliably. The only downside to this is that you won’t have a lot of money and items as opposed to grinding, and you’ll be lacking in Combat Skill Points, but you will spend so much time grinding in Black Desert Online in the late game anyway that you can afford to do quests only.

• You will receive a lot of Inventory Expansion items. Inventory management is critical in Black Desert Online. Even at max capacity of your personal inventory, you might be lacking some space in some extreme situations. Trust me, 80 slots - not enough. The more, the better, and you can get A LOT of extra space from quests.

• Silver. A lot of silver for a player that is just starting. You will receive it in the form of golden bars, which you can exchange for pure silver when you visit your local storage manager.

• The world of Black Desert Online is enormous. No one denies that. It’s smaller than World of Warcraft, and there are no dungeons, but there’s no fast travel in BDO, you have to get everywhere by foot, by riding your horse, by attaching your horses to a wagon, by hiring a camel, or by rowing your boat and steering your own ship. Quests will lead you through the bigger cities and locations, revealing the map for you one location at a time, Velia, Heidel, Calpheon Tarif, Altinova. You should visit them all, and quests will lead you there. 

• You will receive items that will enable you to complete most quests without any serious struggles. You will receive armor, accessories, and you will get brand new weapons as well, weapons that will be hella strong early one. You will still need to purchase your own Awakening weapon and an AP + Acc Offhand, but your quests (as well as some grinding in between) should fund that as well. 

You will have to do a multitude of quests to progress through the game with them. But for someone who is just starting with their first main character - all quests should be finished. And it counts to every character that you want to play seriously, as every character has separate inventory space, and you HAVE to get as much of inventory space as it is possible. So if you happen to roll to a different character without purchasing some stuff from the Pearl Shop - you will have to do a lot of quests again.

Start with quests; here are the things that you can get:

Dim Magical Armor - A splendid armor that will serve you for a long time. Its initial power is similar to +13 Grunil. It has two crystal slots (we will tell you which one to put in at the end of the section). It grants some excellent bonuses, and it can be improved through further questing. After finishing a particular quest, this chest piece will evolve into Roaring Magical Armor. It essentially imitates PRI: Ultimate Grunil Armor, and you can essentially wear it up until you get your Best in Slot - Dim Tree Spirit’s Armor, which you will wear when you get your hands on at least +15 DTS Armor. 

As you progress further and further into the questline, you will accumulate some silver, and it should be used to get four pieces of gear. You should get your own AP + Accuracy Offhand, and Heve (Gloves, Boots, Helmet). For example, Warrior and Valkyrie will aim towards Vangertz or Axion, Musa, and Maehwa will go for White Horn Bow, etc. It’s best to get them somewhere in the process of doing the Main Quest + Mediah and heading into Valencia. It’s a smart choice to stop your questing, stay in the area that grants you decent Silver/Hour, and generate money for these four pieces of equipment. This way, you can have some extra power when you are moving towards more demanding locations, like Valencia, for example. Getting three pieces of Heve will net you some good amount of DP. Besides, there’s a unique set bonus, you get +250 HP for two pieces of Heve, and additional +50 for 3, so you get 300 HP total - it’s impressive.

The next weapon that we’re going to show can be obtained during the Valencia questline. If you’ve got some extra cash, because you saved some, or you grinded for a while, or there’s an ongoing event that made you some good silver - optionally, you can consider purchasing a Rosar or Bares Mainhand +15/PRI/DUO. Make sure that if you get +15, you upgrade it to DUO. There’s close to no risk, and after our amazing failstacking guide, you should be able to do that. 

But if you want to stick to Mainhand weapon from the questline, you are free to do so. Just make sure that you get those four pieces of equipment mentioned above - AP Offhand, Heve Helmet, Heve Gloves, and Heve Boots. Just purchase them on the market, get them at least to PRI, put some crystals in (with the best option being 2x Magic Crystal of Infinity - Experience into your helmet, for that additional 20% experience, which can be huge).

Black Abyssal Mainhand - Mighty weapon, and you don’t have to spend a dime on it to make it powerful. You can get it in the city of Altinova. You will get there during the Valencia questline. You will need to help Hakan Derk in killing some lava monsters, and you will get this beautiful piece of equipment. In truth, you can keep it up until PRI Kzarka comes around. 

Red Sand Crystal Ring - One of the rewards that you will receive, beginning your questline in Valencia. You can get five of those rings from five quests. It grants you some helpful AP. You get 2 of those, and you are set up until you get your own Asula set, which is very easy to obtain in the current state of the game.

Full Asula Accessory Set - There are a lot of posts and requests on Reddit, and Facebook, with new players asking what they should do to progress from early gear to some nice AP+DP count. And basically, everyone will say - get this weapon, this weapon, go there, and get an Asula set as fast as possible. It’s for a good reason. Asula set provides you a nice amount of Health, AP, and DP. It’s a perfect accessory set when it comes to pure stat value. You can essentially stay with them until you get a few Boss Weapon and Armor pieces. Back in the day, you had to grind for Asula heavily. There were three spots, and you had to drop 6 items, witch each having extremely low drop-rate. Some players spent an hour, or a few, getting everything. Some struggled for a week or so. Some even longer, like me. Thankfully, now you can get Full Asula Set from Quests. Do it, and enjoy some decent amounts of AP.

Also, somewhere in the meantime, you should hit 56, and do your awakening. Get your weapons to DUO at least, but try to push it to TRI, especially your Awakening weapon, it should be your strongest item in on your character.

BONUS TIP

Always pay attention to ongoing events. Most of the time, they can provide you with some really good stuff if you spare some time to participate in such events. Depending on the nature of the event, you’ll be required to do some things. Things like:

• Grinding for special items that can be exchanged for RNG Boxes, or crafted into RNG Boxes. Those Boxes can contain a lot of useful items, and depending on RNG, you can get Black Stones, Sharp & Hard Crystals, Memory Fragments, some trash Cron Stones, top tier accessories, Boss Armors and even Boss Weapon Boxes. These can be used to get a boss weapon suitable for your class, just like regular drops from bosses. Some RNG Boxes can even grant you an Accessory that is already PRI, DUO, TRI, or TET, but the chances are meager, way below 0.1%.

• Some boxes will be available to you for Silver; sometimes, you will be able to spend 150 Mil Silver on an RNG box once per day in the Pearl Shop. Is it worth it? It depends on what you’ll get. It can be a colossal money dump, or you will get some nice reward for taking a risk. You never know. 

• Sometimes you will have to visit some NPC and do some quests to get something. 

Always check if there are any events (Events tab in the main menu), check out what you can get, and get it if it’s worth it. RNG Boxes can spawn a lot of additional Accessories, increasing the supply, so it’s common for Accessories and various other items to go down in price after people list them on the Central Market. Basic economy. 

Part II: Productive Stalemate

In theory, it is the part when your gear from quests ends. Well it doesn’t, you can still get some useful things, but there are more efficient ways of progressing better, faster, and stronger. Feel free to continue with your questing, but spare some time for other activities like grinding for silver and investing it in your gear, while also investing some time into getting some best in slot items. 

There are a few things that you should do at this point in the game:

• You should focus on getting your Heve pieces of armor to TRI, or DUO if you don’t want to risk losing any progress. It is, so you can reliably grind at good spots in Valencia, without spending millions on potions. Armors at TRI will easily allow you to grind Gahaz, Crescents, or Desert Fogans. 

• You should spend the majority of your time on a few things. You should get some combat exp, you need some source of stable income, and you have to slowly fill up your storage with useful items that will let you progress. Everything can be done by simply - grinding. You will sell any trash loot. You want to stock up on Boss Scroll parts, Black Stones, and valuable things that you pick up during grinding. You should think about getting some pets, by purchasing them for real money from the Pearl Shop, or you can snipe them off the Central Market (which is extremely hard, unless you know how and when to do it, which I won’t tell you, as this creates competition). 

• Some Life Skills can generate a lot of money. Some will net you the stuff of high value as well. You should absolutely go for Gathering. It’s the easiest Life Skill to pick up, as you only need to purchase the right tool, and you are free to gather immediately. Outside of Events, Night vendor, and some RNGesus Boxes, this will be your “main” source of Sharps and Hards on which you don’t have to spend money, but you will spend your time and literally - energy because gathering ain’t free. And if you want to go for the long term - set up nodes, combine that with cooking to supply your workers with energy, processing so you can craft valuable stuff, create trash keys, and level up Trading to Artisan 5 before you sell all of that stuff on the other side of the map. But it takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of effort to research the idea of nodes and trading, so you should read some guides about that. 

• You have to check out the International Hunter Association Discord relative to your server. It lets you track the spawns of World Bosses where you should participate in. Be it US or EU server, it will track the presence of bosses on every server under a particular region. Do World Bosses regularly so you can get some boss items through investing your time, without investing money.

• Depending on your class, you should prioritize a few essential items. You should get a decent Awakening Weapon before you get Dandelion, as it should be your last weapon to get. Then you should opt to get Kzarka, Kutum, and Bhegs. Now here’s the class thing - if your class requires a lot of accuracy to deal more damage, you’ll be getting Bheg’s Gloves before Kutum. After you’ve got those three essential Boss Items, you can focus on Dandelion. Get them at least to DUO, TRI your Dandelion, and then TRI Kzarka and Kutum. 

• You should absolutely consider doing Dark Rifts. Killing bosses, receiving memory fragments, Black Stones, and some random accessories? Yes, please. It is a fantastic tool to get some items to enhance.

• If you have some Silver in your storage, at least the amount that would allow you to purchase a Boss Weapon or Armor - feel free to use some of your energy and visit a Night Vendor. They can get you some boss items at a much lower price (much higher as well). But nowadays with Central Market - there are so many Boss items on the market, you shouldn’t have a problem purchasing them from other players. 

Why did I call this part “Productive Stalemate”? Because you will still work hard and make progress, but it will take a long time, with some sprinkles of luck. There’s close to no immediate reward here. You have to TRI your weapons, you have to get yourself some new accessories, and you should fish for some Boss armor pieces. Combine that with constant grinding for silver, Life Skill activities, and enhancing sessions that have a chance of ending terribly, doing Boss Scrolls, enhancing stuff, repairing stuff, more grinding, more enhancing, looking for better ways to make silver. 

It can be the best part of BDO while also being the most tedious one. You stand before this colossal mountain, and you don’t see the peak, yet you want to be there. Some climbed high enough to see that there’s nothing there, but we all appreciate the road that we took. It is a major challenge, and this time can be as fun as you can make it. Some people become traders. Some enhance for profit, some grind away their lives, or participate in guild activities like Nodewars, Sieges, and Monster Hunting. There are lots of possibilities. 

Boss Armor or Accessories?

To this day, players are wondering which road they should take. Should they focus on accessories, or should they go straight for Boss armor pieces to get all of the extra gear bonuses? The right answer to this question is - it varies.

In theory, Accessories are more immediate, you can get them from Central Market, as +0 versions are way cheaper than any piece of Boss Armor. Accessory enhancing can be a huge money dump or a brilliant investment. And that’s the problem - it depends on luck. You can get two accessories for 35,000,000 each to get your accessory to PRI. You get that +18 FS, over 70% to enhance your item successfully - BAM - you fail, you just lost 70 Mil Silver just like that. And for someone who is just starting - that’s a lot of money that could be invested elsewhere. However, thanks to Dark Rifts enhancing accessories nowadays is way less punishing, simply because there are more ways of actually acquiring your jewelry. Each boss will reward you with an RNG Box. Each can get you something truly valuable. You can get 2 Ogre Rings for just investing your time into killing Dark Rift bosses, you enhance them, and you have a fantastic upgrade to your necklace slot, that will net you 4 AP more than Asula. 

On the other hand, you might still lose those Accessories if your enhancing fails. You lose both items, and you have to get a new one. It isn’t the case for Boss items, that will just lose their durability. So which road to take? You should consider both.

When you have the chance, you should just give yourself to the RNG gods and start enhancing those Accessories. You can easily upgrade Asula Earrings with DUO: Witch Earrings (2 AP increase per exchanged piece), which are quite cheap. PRI: Ogre Ring grants four more AP than Asula Necklace. Asula Rings can be exchanged for DUO: Mark of Shadow (again, 2 AP increase per piece). As for the belt - PRI: Basilisk Belt or PRI: Valtarra Belt will also be great (2 AP increase). Overall - 14 AP, which is huge, and it makes a noticeable difference out there in the grinding world and PvP. With good failstacks - 18 FS for PRI (70% chance) and 40 FS for DUO (50% chance), the best outcome is undoubtedly worth your time. But if you don’t want to risk it that much - just upgrade those, which will be better at Asula, when you get them to PRI. And you’ll be okay, you’ll upgrade the rest in the future.

After that - just focus on other Boss Items, get your Bheg’s Gloves to TRI, get your Urugon’s Shoes/Muskan’s Shoes, your Dim Tree Spirit’s armor, as well as Giath’s Helm or Griffon’s Helm. Choose the alternations depending on your class. In the meantime, you should upgrade your belt and necklace to DUO, but don’t risk it now if you don’t have sufficient funds to get another PRI for yourself if you pay. You can’t afford to lose stuff and then leave your slot empty, and you surely don’t want to go back to wearing Asula. 

Also, in the meantime - you should be getting your Nouver Offhand for PvP.

Part II and a Half: Road to Softcap

The holy grail of new players. Reaching softcap takes a long time for some, as it requires you to do some very risky enchants. Now, please understand that softcap isn’t a major milestone, you won’t gain any new powers, all that you have is a point in the progression when you will slow down even more.

Because to reach softcap, you need to have (You can get different Accessories):

TET: Kzarka

TET: Dandelion

TET: Nouver

TET: Dim Tree’s Spirit

TET: Bheg’s Gloves

TET: Urugon’s Shoes

TET: Griffon’s Helm

TRI: Ogre Ring

TRI: Valtarra Belt

TRI: Ring of the Crescent Guardian x2

TRI: Tungrad’s Earrings or TET: Witch’s Earrings

You can have some additional items, like Vell’s Heart (that works exactly as an Alchemy Stone) in your gear, but that doesn’t mean that you are at softcap. Softcap is what you see above. Those items, nothing more. Softcap is not necessarily a number or some major power-spike, it’s a point when your progression slows down, and each failed enhancement and each lost Accessory will hurt. And you need to have the resources to never go below your current softcap. In general - have some backup items and prepare better for your Boss items enhancement sessions—more Sharps, More Memory fragments, more Black Stones, up the ante. 

Keep in mind that at this point in the game, before you start enhancing your Accessories, you should know which Accessories your class should use and what build you are going for. Some people prefer Tungrad Belt over Valtarra, Tungrad Necklace over Ogre Ring, etc. So be sure what you are looking for.

If you ever reach this point - CONGRATULATIONS! You are still trash!

You have to be even above that to be successful in PvP. Yeah, it’s that extreme. Those gear standards, the resilience, and toughness it takes to reach that level with BDO’s enhancing system seem ridiculous. And it’s not the end yet! What about TET Ogre Ring? What about reaching that PEN: Dandelion with a 7% chance of successful enhancement? It can be a true enhancing nightmare, and your tinfoil hat won’t be strong enough to handle it for you.

This part starts when you’ve got all of your Boss Armor and Weapons. Maybe you were resilient enough to enhance everything yourself from +0 to PRI/DUO. Or you’ve purchased it on the Central Market. In general, you should wear your Boss Armor at DUO/TRI, to make sure that it’s better than your current TRI Heve set. 

Reaching Softcap can take a very long time. It depends on your resources, time investment, and sadly - a lot of luck. Again - you can snipe things on the market, but getting some TET Weapons and TRI Accessories can be pretty expensive. Getting TRI accessory costs somewhere around 1.2 Billion Silver. Similarly to TET Weapons and Armor. With 13 item slots in the inventory, you could spend about 15-20 Billion on your Softcap Gear, that you still have to enhance to a better level to really make a difference during PvP fights. 

Enhancing won’t be as expensive as sniping at first glance. But you can get really unlucky. But Imagine buying 18 Accessories - Valtarra Belts, getting five out of six to PRI, two out of five to DUO, and you don’t get any TRI, you are back to square 0, and you just lost approximately - 617 Million Silver. Yes, it can hurt you that much. And that’s only one accessory out of six. 

In general, purchasing 16 +0 Accessories is might be a good investment. You will use 12 out of them to reach max 6 PRI, and you use the remaining ones to get them to DUO. Any leftovers will serve as your +0 to reach TRI. You will additionally get more of those +0 Accs, depending on how many DUO Accessories you managed to enhance successfully. The chart looks like this:

+0 - PRI: 18 FS - 70% 

PRI - DUO: 40 FS - 50%

DUO - TRI:  44 FS - 40,50%

TRI - TET: 110 FS - 30%

TET - PEN: x>110 FS (The more, the better)

As you can see, the chances are not THAT drastic. But keep in mind that your Accessories will disappear when you fail. Personally, I advise you to go with the strategy mentioned above - get 18 Accs of the same kind, and do them one level at a time. Do those 6 PRI attempts, DUO those that leveled up, and try to reach TRI. It’s a very good technique. I use it both to get my items and to make some money with enhancing. Getting just one TRI requires four Accessories, but if you manage to succeed on that one TRI, you will still make a profit, depending on how many Black Stones you lost for Failstacks. You invested 617 Mill, but you can get 1,1-1,3 Mill Silver for selling your TRI, even if you invest 500+ Black Stone armors for doing Failstacks, that’s still around 350-550 Million Silver profit. 

Last time I did that, I was lucky enough to get five PRI, which I enhanced into four DUO, and I succeeded on my TRI immediately, leaving me with three DUO and one TRI. I lost all of my 480 Black Stones (Armor) to build Failstacks, so I sold the TRI. After stocking up on some Black Stones (Armor), I will try to TRI those three DUO Accessories. Then I will sell them again, investing money into Enhancing Sessions, hoping that I succeed on at least one accessory to get that TRI Acc. It’s very risky, but I am dumb enough to do that, and it became my primary way of stocking up on pure silver. To be dumb enough successfully, it will be absolutely mandatory to make some big brain mathematical calculations, so you know when and how to enhance profit. You just have to know when to stop. 

In general, to reach softcap, I’d recommend to either use this technique to make them yourself or to stock up on money and purchase them on the Central Market. The same goes for Boss items. However, Boss armors and weapons have a lower chance of successful enhancement. On the bright side, they don’t disappear, which is why you should prioritize Boss Armor pieces and Weapons when you are trying to reach softcap. Prioritize all weapons to TET (one at the time, don’t skip to another item when you fail the TET enhancement). Then you should prioritize Bheg’s, Urugon’s, Dim, and finally - Griffon’s. After that - work on those Accessories. Of course, if you decide to invest in Acc enhancing early on, and that’s how you make money, and it works for you, you can do them first. But I can’t recommend that to new players, as you can easily lose a lot of progress by pushing for Accessories. 

Part III: Going Even Beyond - Escaping Softcap

You took a very long time to reach Softcap. More experienced players can do that in a month or less depending on their luck, and whether there were any meaningful ongoing events. 

Now, the same question from the Part II section exists here. Should you work on your Weapons and Armor, or should you up the ante with your Accessories? Now that is tricky. Do you remember that bit about your Dandelion being one level above your items? Now it’s time to stop because PEN attempts are hazardous at this point. It is the time to focus on your Accessories and get you towards Full TET gear, which will be hard and risky to achieve. 

The reason why you want to focus on Accessories is simple. Reaching PEN with your Weapons and Armor will have a tiny chance of successful enhancements. Somewhere between 3-6%. Which is insane. Compare it to TET accessories, where you can reach a 30% chance by using 110 Failstacks. The distinction is pretty clear. 

Before you start enhancing your Accessories to TET, make sure you have a backup Accessory TRI. Meaning that if you want to enhance your Valtarra’s Belt from TRI to TET, you should have another TRI Valtarra’s Belt waiting for you in your storage or inventory. It’s mandatory. You can’t afford to lose AP or DP at this point in the game if you want to keep playing normally, with all the Grinding, PvP, Nodewars, and other activities beyond Life Skills.

At this point, you should also look for a guild that is active and wants to make money. The best guilds at your position in the game will be the ones that focus on Sea Monster Hunting. Guilds receive a lot of Silver from it, and you can make some mad Billions if you stay in a guild like that for a longer time (it will require you to be very active, and you need to have your own Epheria sailboat). Some guilds will focus on the PvP side of the Black Desert Online’s content, like Nodewars and Sieges, and you can surely make some money that way. 

In general, keep doing what you’ve been doing to make your silver and try to up the ante even more. There are lots of ways of generating a profit and acquiring pure Silver, and you have to find out what will be better for you. You can make the highest amount of silver by understanding the Central Market and investing your time to make items that other players will be able to buy from you. What does it mean to understand the market? And why is that necessary to make some good profit by listing things on it? 

Well, to understand the Central Market, you need to understand the economy of Black Desert Online. To understand BDO’s economics, you have to educate yourself on the economy. Also, you will have to make some necessary calculations. What happens if you don’t do that? Well, some time ago, when Cron Meals just came out in the game, you could have made a lot of profit by merely buying the meals needed to create Cron Meals. You would use them as components in Cooking, and you would get a batch of Cron Meals, which you would list on the market and get some Silver. The cost of the component meals was lower than the costs of Cron Meals if you were fast enough. Now… I had this guy in my guild that came up with the same idea, after four months, because he saw some old youtube video talking about it. The thing is, after four months of Cron Meals being on the market, you would essentially lose your Silver by doing the same technique. This guy invested 100 Million silver, like an absolute madlad, and came back with huge losses.

You should not blindly follow some guide on the internet when it comes to making silver (unless it’s grinding, and the guide talks about pure profit from trash loot). Sometimes it’s about items that drop on the spot during grinding, and you can determine by yourself in which zones you should grind to get items, depending on their value and supply on the Central Market. Also - watch the demand). Same with Life Skills, you can literally hop on the Market, and you can notice some interesting things when you make the calculations. 

For example, you are an Alchemist, and you decide one day that you want to check out if you can make a profit by creating Beast’s Draught. So you check its cost, check the price of the components, and microcomponents. After making your calculations, you see that it’s possible to buy two parts on the market, and if you create the third one yourself, you can make some insane profit by investing your time and money to craft the Draught, and putting it on the market. So you do that, and you watch the prices, so you know when it’s time to stop. It’s really that simple, and really hard at the same time because there’s a lot of predicting involved. You can outweigh that sheer force of luck and predictions by understanding the economy, and how it applies to BDO’s Central Market. 

Summary

Gearing is the most important thing in Black Desert Online. There’s still one thing about gear that we haven’t talked about. Failstacking and Enhancing. You can read about those in our guide, that is the second part of this guide. Right there, you will learn how to build failstacks efficiently, what you should enhance first, and how to exactly get to softcap. Tune in, follow us on Twitter, and join our Facebook, share this guide with your friends, and leave a comment or two about this one. We’re interested in your opinion, so we can reply with better and better content each time. See you at the Red Battlefield!