Greetings Adventurers! Welcome to Black Desert. Before we start to explain some of the basic functionality, let’s quickly talk about some tips and suggestions!

As a new player to Black Desert, we heavily recommend questing through the early stages of the game so that you can get a feel for the combat mechanics. This will also allow you to get naturally introduced to things like enhancing, getting better gear and leveling up. There will come a point where you will want to explore everything else the game has to offer, but for now let’s focus on the basics.

An important thing to remember is that levels are not the most important thing in Black Desert. Your level doesn’t offer raw power like in other games. It will allow you to unlock new skills, gain accuracy to help you hit monsters, but it doesn’t give a huge boost to your Attack Power (AP) and Defense Power (DP). For that, you will need weapons and armor, and enhance them to unlock more power. Weapons and armor can be gained through quests, earned as drops, or purchased from the Central Market. We will explore more about enhancing later.

Let’s go through a few of the basics you will probably want to know.

The Camera
First thing many people want to know is how to adjust the camera. To adjust the camera, you will want to hold down the Right Analogue stick for around 2 seconds. From here, you can zoom in and out by using the analogue stick, or adjust the overall position of the camera with the D-Pad. Once you move with the left stick, you will exit the camera mode and can continue playing as normal!

Servers

Unlike other MMORPG’s, Black Desert does not tie your character and progression to specific servers. You can switch between them with no penalties or cost to you.

There are no monsters!
Black Desert has daily PvP events that guilds can enjoy. During this time, no monsters will spawn on the Balenos 1 and Serendia 1 servers. Make sure to switch to a different server if you are starting out at the following times:

Sunday~Friday: 6:00 PM ~ 8:00 PM (PDT), 18:00 ~ 20:00 (UTC)
Saturday: 6:00 PM ~ 9:00 PM (PDT), 18:00 ~ 21:00 (UTC)

Learning Skills
To learn skills, you can talk to a skill instructor found in most towns and cities. To find the nearest one, open the world map, press down on the Dpad, find the skill instructor icon and press RT to set a path. Once there, you can use skill points (earned through combat) to learn and upgrade your characters skills. Some skills are called Flow: X. When you learn a flow skill, you will not necessarily learn a new active skill, but can link skills together in new ways, offering more damage or a quicker animation for a different skill. These flows can be tricky to master, but they really help differentiate between a good player and a great player.

Enhancing
Enhancing is an integral part of Black Desert due to the bonuses it will give your character. To enhance weapons, armor and accessories, you will need to talk to the Black Spirit and select Enhancement. For weapons and armor, the first few enhancement levels are guaranteed, but there comes a point where you can fail enhancements. Fear not, for every failure gives you an enhancement chance, which will boost your chances on your next enhancement (regardless of what it is). Remember that each enhancement level powers your weapons, armor, and accessories up considerably.

Enhancing gear requires Black Stones of the corresponding type (armor/weapon) and failed enhancements will result in the item losing Max durability. Unlike weapons and armor, accessories need to be enhanced by using 2 of the same items. For example, to enhance an Ogre Ring, you will need another Ogre Ring to do so. If an enhancement of an accessory fails, both items will be lost.

To repair durability, you can do one of the following things:

● Use an item with the same name at enhancement level 0 to restore 10 durability.
● Use memory fragments to restore some durability depending on the weapons grade.

All repair functions (including Max Durability and general repair) can be done through a Black Smith.