Black Desert Online: Looking Ahead At Its Renewed Endgame and Future

After the massive class rebalance a couple of months ago, Black Desert’s PVE meta has changed drastically. Succession Woosa was the top dog for so long, and now, all of PvE was balanced around her. It's not often you see MMOs do this, even if there's clearly a dominant class or spec. 

But let's go back a bit to Woosa's release.

At the time, it was pretty well accepted that upon her release, she was incredibly strong. She did great damage, had very good AOEs, good enough (albeit a tad clunky) movement, both short range and long, extremely good forward guard protections, and was quite easy to play. Everything you could possibly want out of a PvE class, succession Woosa had, at most stages of gear progression to boot.

Then, after a short while, Maegu was released. Maegu was equally as busted, arguably more. She provided ample movement, particularly moving while attacking, which is very valuable when repositioning, as it allows you to maintain damage and buffs/debuffs. She had incredible range and great AOEs, did very high and consistent damage, and was even easier to play than Woosa. Back then, our most popular grind spot was by far Elvia Orc Camp. Though it may not have been the best spot in terms of silver earned, it was incredibly safe, the rotations were easy, and it was very close to Heidel, making convenience pretty paramount. For a long time, the next step up was considered to be Gyfin Underground, but was far too dangerous and risky for the average player.

On top of all this, crystals were getting expensive. Why would I risk losing up to a billion silver or so in crystals for a seemingly marginal increase in income? 

Looking back, this is a pretty funny contradiction amongst the community that I've noticed. maximizing silver per hour is always the topic of the day, but very few actually do things to maximize it. 

(Almost like it's a video game and you shouldn't treat it like a job, and you shouldn't min-max yourself into being miserable!)

Raising the bar

The change to seasons, along with the free TET Blackstar weapon, has significantly raised the floor on where Black Desert puts you in terms of gear progression. I cannot overstate just how powerful getting a TET Blackstar is these days. I don’t want to give the “back in my day” lecture, but the amount of time you save by not only being able to jump into Elvia spots very quickly and start grinding endgame gear, but also being in a position to potentially spike a PEN Blackstar, without interacting too much with the enhancement system if you don’t want to, and how often they give away all the enhancing materials you could possibly need, including failstacks, the time it takes to get to the endgame is so incredibly short now compared to days of old.

Rounding things out

So, how does this tie into what there is to actually grind? Well, there’s this little ol’ item called Dehkia’s Lantern. It quite literally changes some grind spots into endgame grind spots, changing the drops and difficulty of said spots. Almost all of them involve standing in a single area, a pleasant change of pace from the normal kind of grind, and a clever balancing decision involving classes without much mobility, as well as allowing more accessibility to modes of income. 

Each Dehkia spot has small mini-mechanics to break the monotony as well. Dehkia Thornwood has a mini-boss, the Dark Knight, that spawns every few spawns, forcing you to pay attention. Dehkia Aakman and Hystria also have a boss every few minutes, but there are also AoEs that keep things interesting. They aren’t groundbreaking or even innovative, but they keep you attentive. 

Additionally, the requirement for Dehkia spots is Dehkia’s Light, a material that you get from heating older yellow accessories (Ogre Ring, Tungrad Earring, etc), at PRI or higher. This is a very interesting way of keeping that portion of the economy fresh and active as we move into the Deboreka meta, as well as giving people a reason to do those pesky Dark Rifts every now and then. Newer players make money, endgame players spend. A win-win.

What this means for the future

Speaking of Deborekas, those three accessories are the name of the game now. But also, they’re easier than ever to obtain. TET debos readily sit in the market from about high 70 billion at the time of this writing, and grinding for a TET only takes about 14 of each accessory on average. With how many drop rate events and scrolls they give us, combined with how much more easily you can obtain them now, and how easily you can get at least 1.5 billion silver an hour these days (upwards of 2 billion if you’re really good). You can find yourself decked out in endgame gear with just a tad bit of dedication, while still having that sense of accomplishment when you do make progress. 

Pearl Abyss has also made a point to allow us to grind for multiple things in one spot as well. Dehkia Thornwood will give you silver and the La Orzeca helmet. Crypt will give you Deboreka Belts and the La Orzeca armor. Dehkia Aakman and Hystria will give you Debo Earrings and the Treasure Map pieces. This is such a great change in pace, and it’ll make it that much more enjoyable to make some horizontal progression, as well as vertical. 

Black Desert is in a very good state in terms of PvE and progression. Almost every class can work at endgame, there are a plethora of places to go out and grind, and the amount of silver you make is at an all time high. If you’ve been wanting to get out and finish your accessories or your treasure items, now is the time to do so!