Last night at midnight, Black Desert Online celebrated Valentine’s Day with fireworks over the cities. As luck would have it, I was scaling Library Tower of the Holy College in Calpheon at that time for a quest. The view was impressive.
Valentine’s Day fireworks over Calpheon.
The Valentine’s Day mini event is so typical of Black Desert Online. Simply, you give a piece of chocolate to an NPC, but it wouldn’t be Black Desert Online without taking that piece of chocolate through its production first. The event involves buying a cacao seed and fence, scouting out a location to erect the fence and plant the seed, waiting for the tree to grow (only 30 minutes), harvesting the cacao, grinding the cacao beans, and then performing Simple Cooking with the cacao powder, sugar, and mineral water to produce a piece of chocolate.
Watching the cacao grow.
I gave my piece of chocolate to Lara as she was the only event NPC I recognized other than Valks, and I really don’t like Valks. Lara is an orphan and cheerfully sells potions in Heidel, so I thought she was most deserving of the chocolate. The gift giving is actually some sort of popularity contest. At the conclusion of the event, if you gave chocolate to one of the four most popular NPCs, you get a chance to win valuable prizes, or something. Honestly, I’m just interested in the participation prize. I would rather grind mobs than make candy bars, but it’s cool Black Desert Online has the Valentine’s Day event, and I hope developer Pearl Abyss continues to do the themed firework shows for other holidays throughout the year.
Just when I thought Black Desert Online couldn’t wow me any more, I discovered Longleaf Tree Sentry Post. It’s an interconnected Elven outpost built in the trees above the Cyclops infested area of southwestern Calphaon. The Ewok Village Action Playset from Kenner was one of my favorites as a kid, and the Longleaf Tree Sentry Post made me feel as if I was in a functioning village built into the trees. The variety of locales in Black Desert Online is astounding. Making me feel as if I was a kid again with my Return of the Jedi toys = priceless.
Traveling through the trees via aero car!
However, leveling slows down greatly after hitting 50, and I’m starting to see how important Amity — Black Desert Online‘s take on Reputation — is for advancing in this game. A quest from Keplan has sent me to Herman Feresio in Calpheon for completion, but he refuses to talk to me until I build 500 Amity each with Valks and Theophil Batian. Valks is a dick, and Theophil Batian is only interested in Theology which I currently have incomplete Knowledge of at 4/9. So there’s much still to be done. This quest seems to set up the Mediah quest chain, so it seems to be something worth working towards storywise.
No talking to this guy just yet.
Conversations require Energy, and as I had temporarily exhausted mine trying to pique Valk’s interest, I decided to head out and quest west of the city. Many Catfishmen died in these quests. After slaughtering 300 of them, I got the title “Fish Hater” before being sent to kill 300 more.
Not a good day to be a Catfishman.
Wiping out an entire colony of sentient fish gets old after awhile, so I decided to head further west to finally see what Port Epheria is all about. Since I did all the Keplan quests, I fortunately have Knowledge of everything Philaberto Falasi has interest in. He’s the Goblin guy that sets up the quest chain for the recently released Margoria expansion. Currently, I have my Ranger alt working on building Amity with him as I continue to level my Sorcerer.
Atop the lighthouse at Port Epheria.
I’m not exactly happy with the grind that kicks in at level 50 in Black Desert Online, but the game world continues to amaze me. There’s no quitting just yet when there’s so much still left to explore.
Today’s journey in Black Desert Online saw me hitting level 50 and heading to the southwestern portion of the game’s continent, a forested land of goblins, treants, and some cycloptic foes.
“This dude was strong. His body was like armor made of muscles.” –The Black Spirit
With dinging 50, leveling appears to be slowing down drastically, but the game is as fun and beautiful as ever, and I’m looking forward to getting into the Mediah content.
A few minutes to midnight EST in Black Desert Online, the GMs killed the lights turning day to night in-game for fireworks to celebrate the Lunar New Year. We gathered on the cliff overlooking the seaside town of Velia on the NA_Velia3 channel.
One minute to midnight, January 27, 2017. In-game it was actually morning with the GMs giving us the night sky.
Some of the sky lanterns had been added to the game earlier while others were launched by players gathered on the cliff during the event. All that collected color was wonderful to witness.
Fireworks and sky lanterns for Lunar New Year!
While I attended the event on my recently created Ranger, immediately beforehand I had just launched my completed raft with my Sorcerer. I was actually out on the water when the GMs switched day to night. I thought, “That was abrupt!”
Landlubber no more, my raft is completed.
My thanks to the GMs for putting this celebration together in Black Desert Online. It was a great gathering in a fun game.
Black Desert Online is not the type of game I usually get into. When I started the game, in fact, I had no idea what I was getting into. I knew it was a gorgeous-looking action-MMORPG, but I was clueless as to the extent crafting and trade played in the game. The open world of Skyrim never could hold my attention, and Archeage, though pretty, turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. So, chances were high I wasn’t going to put much time into this one. However, as I would find out, knowledge is power in this world of politics, spirits, and corruption pitting the Republic of Calpheon against the Kingdom of Valencia, and this mechanic made me love Black Desert Online.
Starting out in the town of Olivia, this photorealistic fantasy game is simply gorgeous, but it is not without its flaws. The annoying onscreen messages defaulted to on, the repetitive yapping of NPCs, the heavily-marked three-dimensional map, and the atypical skill tree menu threw me off greatly. I come from simpler days. However, I forced myself to play on. Then, when I realized I was playing a sandbox MMO with the goal to craft and trade, I most assuredly was not going to continue. Yet, still I kept on.
I’m feeling a bit eel.
I think the photorealism of the characters and world, along with the cuteness of the black spirit companion, kept me going. Even on my aged PC, the game is still visually captivating. As leveling is quite quick and easy through the simple slaughtering of foes with your daily grind EXP boost, I didn’t feel hurried to level and decided to head out and explore this world. Exploring virtual environments is something I love to do, and a game is only as good as to how much of its world it allows you to reach. This is how the game grabbed me. It’s a big, beautiful world to explore in Black Desert Online, and by the time I was on the edge of an actual desert in the expansion zone of Mediah, the game had won me over.
Then it just got better.
The revealed fraction of the world I’ve explored.
Black Desert Online is really a game about knowledge. Starting out I knew you were supposed to talk to people, but it took me a while to discover the extent of it. Some NPCs simply will not talk to you if you haven’t spoken with another NPC first, and, in at least one case I’ve encountered, built Amity with two other NPCs through striking up conversations with them.
What’s more, entire quest chains are unlocked inconspicuously through this method. I went back to the city of Velia to do some quests I had skipped my first time there when I got eager to get out and explore. After doing quest after quest after quest, I finally talked to some random kid with a quest fishing at the docks. Soon enough not only was I learning about fishing, a humanoid Otter was teaching me how to build a fishing pole. After that, I was referred to another guy who directed me to hire workers and build a raft, which is currently nearing completion. None of this would have been made accessible had I not first talked to that kid fishing.
Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?
Consequently, this game has gotten me to reflect on how we gain knowledge in our own world and what we choose to do with it. It’s gotten me to appreciate the roles transportation and capitalism have played in the advancement of human civilization and to ponder the relations of human capital to the means of production. I didn’t ask for this. I just wanted to play a video game.
Black Desert Online elevates tediousness to an artform. Unlike in our reality, where work often goes unrewarded, there is definite payoff and payout to our daily struggles as we pursue our goals in this game. It’s a video game that makes learning and planning fun. Mindless shooters and cartoony platformers have their place, but so do overly complex fantasy games about trade and economics. Who knew?
Citizens of the Republic of Calpheon protest living conditions in the slum.
Available in Europe and North America through Kakao Games, Black Desert Online is buy-to-play but reasonably priced at only $9.99. I started with the seven day free trial and purchased the Starter’s Package when it was half off at Christmastime. The cash shop is mostly cosmetic items, and I just know if I’m not careful I’m going to blow a lot of money there. A Chinese New Year outfit was just made available for a limited time. How can I resist?
If you do jump into Black Desert Online, do yourself a favor and complete all the early quests and read and listen to everything or you will most likely find yourself lost. For me, the learning curve was steep, but the game does teach you how to play a good deal of it, and, fortunately, every issue I’ve had Google gave me the answer as a top result. It’s a game I most definitely wasn’t going to keep playing, but I’m glad I did.
