Black Desert Console is marking the two-year anniversary of the arrival of cross-play and the 3 year anniversary of its debut on Xbox. Both of these anniversaries are cause for celebration, as there are special events starting today and running for the next two weeks.
The arrival of new content in Black Desert Console starts with the introduction of Artifact and Lightstones. You can add these to your collection by defeating monsters, world bosses, tackling guild raids, Dark Rifts, and even as quest rewards. Lightstones will need Alchemy for you to use them to their full potential. When you defeat monsters you may come across Imperfect Lightstones that you can purify. Introducing them to the game is intended to create a greater variety of item sets for you to choose from that suit your play style. Some of the effects are based on pre-existing ones but there will be more effects coming that work in new ways, like an increase to damage during the night time.
Characters can equip up to two artifacts and the artifacts each have two Lightstone exclusive slots. So you can Infuse your artifact with lightstones to give you offensive, defensive, special effects, or life skill effects. There's a whole guide available on how this system will work and how you can benefit and customize your characters for your adventures. After today's update you'll be able to find two slots on the equipment UI, where you can start equipping artifacts you obtain.
The game is also marking two anniversaries including the second anniversary of cross-play with daily login rewards, and a special reward where you can collect birthday cake and Crom stone x400 from your challenge menu. There will also be a special anniversary hot time event. This will give you 24 hours of hot time with combat XP + 400% and skill XP + 100%. There will also be several dates for hot time at different planned hours in each region.
You can also add a little danger to your celebration by taking on Garmoth, who will now be up for the challenge twice a week, with a double chance to receive Garmoth’s Heart as a reward. If you don’t get it as a reward though, if you’ve got lots of silver and nothing to spend it on, Garmoth’s Heart will be in the Imperial Auction.
For more on the update, see the notes here, or head over to Black Desert Online for all the event details and rewards.