You’ve finally chosen a class after agonizing for hours, and maybe reading my previous piece on how to choose one (wink wink).
Once you start your Season, you’re probably going to be overwhelmed because Black Desert has so much item bloat it’s kind of ridiculous. You manage to make it through the Season after you ask your friends, server chat, or your favorite content creator (I’m a big Fakeuni and Biceps fan myself), or you just power through and you figure it out later because the newbie inventory is a godsend. When you finally crawl out of Season, and you’re now let loose onto this absurdly huge open world, you probably have no idea what to do. It’s just you and your free pegasus and a bunch of people in Heidel, afk fishing or cheering. You might ask yourself, "Soooo, what now?"
For the Grinders Out There, This One is For You.
This won’t be a typical grind spot guide…not really, at least. I will attempt to help you with the important progression points in PvE as a whole. Note that any of this stuff is truly mandatory to experience Black Desert in its entirety, like life skills or field/world bosses, the large majority of pvp, but if your goal is gear progression, then this is the place.
For the purpose of this article, I will be referencing Garmoth.com for most points. This site is basically the one stop shop for everything you could possibly need, short of an index or encyclopedia. It has everything, from guides, to world boss timers, to grind spot aggregate silver per hour, to gear planners and caphras calculators. It truly has everything you need.
There are three golden rules when grinding and gearing:
- Never, ever sell an upgrade that you’ll need long term: I know some of you are very lucky, and may have tapped something like a PEN Blackstar in your first month. If you are one of the fortunate ones, you should never, under any circumstances, sell it. If you have an item that, at any point, you know you’re going to need in the future, the money you would get now, is not only going to get taxed, but is going to be lost in the future when you’re inevitably going to rebuy it. That Garmoth’s Heart you spiked from the world boss is worth a whole lot more than the ~9 billion silver it’s listed as, because it’s so extremely hard to get (I had my pre-order up for a year before I got mine!) I’m not a fan of the saying “Money isn’t everything”, but it definitely applies here.
- Always grind where you want, but grind with purpose: You don’t have to grind at the most efficient spot or whatever. If people are going to have quips about how endgame doesn’t have much to offer, then trying to be the most efficient all the time is an express trip to burnout. Also, grind spots can be class dependent as well. If the best grind spot isn’t exactly great for you, or if you would rather take it easy while you grind, then a place like Hexe Sanctuary or Dehkia Thornwood isn’t exactly the best. That said, you want to make sure that you’re getting good out of where you do grind, so don’t skimp on things that would help with that!
- Never sell Caphras Stones: Until you are at the super late game, you will always need caphras stones. These allow you to further upgrade your gear past the enhancement system, and you will need to have caphras level 10 on your armor to upgrade them to the Fallen God set. These are essential to your gear progression. Keep them!
Setting Up Your Character: Important Items and Buffs
- Simple Cron Meal
- Frenzy/Beast Draughts
- Crystals
Simple Cron Meal is a food item that will be useful for you for 95% of your time playing in PvE
They are extremely cheap, and will give you such a huge benefit in PvE that it simply cannot be understated. 30 AP against Monsters is huge, and it’s very likely that you wouldn’t be capped on Attack/Casting speed, Movement speed, and Critical Hit without it. The extra 150 HP and -6% damage from monsters is definitely useful as well. It’s by far the most effective stat boost you can buy for the price.
Draughts function similarly to food, but stack with it. They don’t last as long; only 15 minutes per standard draught, but when you start pushing the limits of what you grind, these will come in handy. Beast’s draught is a cheap option for many spots, or for spots where you’re overgeared, but would like a bit of a bump in damage while not needing the HP on hit as much. Giant’s draught is usually used for large scale pvp, but it’s useful for spots where you can get special attack damage most of the time (Air, Down, and Back attack are all considered special attack damage). Frenzy draught is the most popular, especially as you get more geared. The initial -15 DP may sound scary, especially if you’re already cutting it close on DP requirements, but the rest of the stats more than make up for it. For many classes, the HP on hit is exactly what will keep you alive, and can singlehandedly be the reason why you sustain yourself. The true downside is that it's a tad bit more expensive than other draughts, but that isn’t a huge deal when you start raking in more and more silver.
Help On Demand
Evergreen resources: Garmoth.com, Blackdesertfoundry, In-game Find My Item tool (ctrl+F), Class Discords
Garmoth.com will be your go-to for anything PvE, including grind spots, yielded silver per hour, sorted by class, drop rate, buffs, etc. You can also plug your character in and figure out any calculation you could possibly need, including, but not limited to: AP caps in zones, accuracy, crit rate, and resists. Garmoth also has plenty of guides for multiple aspects of PvE, and if it doesn’t, then BlackDesertFoundry does. The in-game Find My Item tool is a recent addition that does exactly what it says. Type in the name of the item, then in that same window, you can pull it from wherever it's located, as long as you have the appropriate maid to do it (Black Spirit’s Safe does not require a maid!)
(Note for those who like to nitpick: This is not an all encompassing guide on every single grind spot. If you wind up finding a spot that isn’t on this list, that’s great! If you wind up not being able to do a spot because of your class or skill or whatever, that’s fine too! This is merely a rough layout on what’s possible/what’s out there.)
Grind spots - Post Season (~240+AP/303+DP):
- Priorities/side goals: Infinite Potions, Adventure Logs, Magnus Questline, Jetina dailies/weeklies
- Spots: Gahaz, Kratuga(Agris), Centaurs(Agris), Cadry
You have quite a number of choices once you’re gear capped in season and you’re officially “let loose” into the world. You don’t necessarily have to graduate to do most of these, but you’re going to get noticeably stronger/have some nice quality of life when you finish these. Forest Ronaros, Blood Wolf Settlement, and Sherekhan (Both Day and Night) provide the pieces for the Infinite HP potion, and Navarn Steppe, Tshira Ruins, and Manshaum Forest provide the infinite MP potion. Note that these potions have recently become available on the Central Market, so you may opt to just grind the silver to be able to purchase them (while supplies last?), but it is unknown what the availability will be on the NA/EU servers.
Completing the Magnus questline not only gives you access to a fast travel system throughout the regions and access to all of the storage in every single town in Black Desert in one, but you get a free PEN boss gear of your choice. Combining this with the free Jetina boss gear from season graduation, and you have yourself a nice foundation for investing caphras stones. The Jetina dailies and weeklies let you work towards a guaranteed PEN accessory, as well as reformed gear, which allow you to convert that TET boss gear you got out of season into PEN. Choosing the daily that lets you grind at a spot that you were going to anyways allows you to double dip on progression!
Lastly, the Adventure Logs don’t have to be done immediately, as a lot of them can be quite long and tedious, but they provide permanent stat boosts, and the only cost (for the most part) is time. I worked on these slowly, when I either didn’t feel like grinding, or was busy with something else. These are arguably the most important thing to work on when it comes to gear progression, but by no means is it something you need to get done fast.
Artifacts are effectively pieces of gear that allow you to use lightstones, which give you even more stats, there are a ton of stat combinations, and Garmoth.com has an entire directory on what lightstones give what, but getting artifacts will be the “hard” part. Kratuga Ruins is one of the best and only spots for obtaining all of the artifacts, while also giving really good silver per hour at around. This is the spot I try to go to as soon as possible, as artifacts and lightstones are incredibly powerful, and will be a major contributor to your damage as a whole. Centaurs is one of the best grinding spots with Agris, all the way until you hit endgame, really, and especially if you’re playing a faster class, like Awakening Valkyrie, Succession Berserker, or Succession Maegu.
Grind Spots for 269AP:
- Priorities/side goals: Vell’s Heart, Garmoth’s Heart, cups
- Spots: Sycraia Abyssal Ruins, Elvia Fogans, Elvia Altar Imps (2 players), Elvia Castle Ruins (3 players), Gyfin Rhasia Temple (5 players), Tunkuta (2 players), Star’s End, Star’s End Pillars (360+dp)
269ap is a very big jump in power, and it’s also when a lot of spots open up, but the previous spots are more than good as well. If you want to work on your cups, then the Elvia zones are more than good. Sycraia Abyssal Ruins is an incredibly well rounded spot that any class can do effectively. It gives some really nice silver/hr, especially when drop rate events are going on. Caphras Stones are plentiful, and you’ll have a steady supply if you stay here for a while. It’s also a solid spot if you’re low on loot scrolls, as a level 1 loot scroll is more than enough. I still come here sometimes at 700 gearscore, just because it’s a very chill and relaxing spot to just turn my brain off and jam!
As far as Vell’s Heart and Garmoth’s Heart, well, good luck. You should go to each of these world bosses whenever you can, while also making enough silver to put a pre-order out on them. The chances of getting either of these are incredibly low, but it’s worth doing because of how massive the upgrade is. In my experience, Vell’s Heart is a tiny bit easier to get, but still, expect to wait quite a while to attain either.
As you start getting more and more geared, it might be a good idea to get some more DP if you haven’t already. This will better prepare you for the later spots in the midgame, as well as position you properly when you start making a push for even more AP! Utilizing the resources available to you, like Garmoth.com, will take you extremely far and give you a better understanding of what, and how to grind. Remember, Black Desert is a marathon, not a sprint!
