Black Desert Online

 I have been playing this game for a while now. Even have a seasonal character. But I'm probably not gonna talk about that. It's a little complicated. So, it's a fantasy MMORPG. Honestly, I hardly ever play anything but a fantasy RPG. I could do without the MM aspect of that acronym, but hey, at least this way, there's the market. I do use that quite often. It is a place where players can buy/sell items to/from other players. It's a great thing. 

So, what is BDO. Apart from being a fantasy MMORPG. It's a little confusing at the beginning. Like, you have your basic controls and you can pretty much make do with just that. Treat it as just a basic hack-n-slash. But it's so much more. There's a management aspect to it, production, investing into the cities and areas on the map. That one took a while to figure out. But basically, if you invest into something, for example, a farm, you can order your hired workers to produce stuff you can then sell and use that money to buy that weapon you absolutely need. 

I don't use this aspect of the game much, but I am not completely ignoring it. 

There's also a PVP aspect of the game (don't confuse that with PWP). I'm completely ignoring this. I have always treated MMOs as single-player. I mean, I use the market, but that's the only multiplayer aspect that I'm all for. 

The game has stunning graphics and basically, I bought it after I realized that Mobius Final Fantasy was discontinued and taken down. The graphics of BDO are very similar so of course, I had to have it. At first, I just played it for the graphics, nostalgia reasons, and all that rot, but then I got into the story as well and well, it's epic. I will have to read the text for the first part of the storyline more carefully when I create a new character, but hey, I think I have the gist of it. Still, I'm not gonna spoil it for you. 

You can choose from many character classes. The one thing I would like to see that isn't there now is the availability of both genders for each class. That is one of the few things that are pissing me off. I wanted to create a ranger. A male ranger. But it's not possible. If I want a male shooter, I need Archer. And yes, that's what I'm playing. My MC is an Archer and I'm happy about it. The one type of class I personally don't recommend is any type of spellcaster. I mean, if you can play that, kudos to you. But I can't and I prefer rangers and archers and marksmen in general. 

There's a multitude of skills each character class can learn, but the beauty of it is that you don't really need all of them. In the end, whatever you're playing, see if you have a healing skill and learn that, a healing skill is a must in my opinion. Then, look through the available skills, and if you absolutely have to use them, pick one or two that you really like and stick with those. You honestly don't need to learn the key combinations for all of them. I don't think it's even possible. I mean, you could hot-key them, but hey, if you're like me, you'll be hotkeying tools instead of skills. Even if only so that you don't have to open your inventory every two minutes and switch the tool for a different one. That one is a pain in the ass. 

I think that having the necessary tool in your inventory should be enough. You shouldn't have to equip it. Honestly, if this was a thing, resource gathering would be so much faster! 

Now, I said something about a seasonal character at the very beginning of this post, right? Well, the thing is, occasionally, there's an event. A new season of sorts. I think it is based on the seasons of the year. Right now, we have a summer season. And if I understood it correctly, most seasons come with a new character class. Right now, the newest class is a corsair. I'm planning to create one. Because I've seen many in the game and one of the hairstyles is really gorgeous. Which, another thing that I would change. Enable all the hairstyles for all the classes! I mean, you can gender-separate it if you really must, but this would be awesome! I could just put the hairstyle on my ranger! 

So, back to seasons. My seasonal character is a Valkyrie. And I kinda hate her. She's too tall. Should have played with that a little more. But unless you have another character standing next to your creation, the scale is hard to guess. 

But I'm not gonna get rid of her unless and until the season is over, because she's already level 55 and finished a lot of the seasonal quests. Well, not really quests but she got the season pass rewards. And most of them can be forwarded to my non-season characters, aka my archer. My IlluStarlight. Yeah, I'm keeping the OC alive! IlluStarlight is my darling OC and I won't give him to any of you! I won't even let you borrow him! Don't even think of looking at him wrong! Mine! 

Still, regardless of my hatred of my Valkyrie, the rewards are SO worth it! And if you have a chance, you should definitely try the game and if you can, create a seasonal character. But make sure you like him/her. Or you'll end up like me, just waiting for the season to end so that you can put all the things from her inventory into storage and then delete her. I really should have gone with the corsair. At least then I would have liked the hair... Oh well, I know for next time. Because yeah, I'm gonna create another seasonal character when the next season comes. And I know it will. Because this looks like something that will be a recurring event. It kinda/sorta already is.

So, go play the game. It's not that expensive and you can get it on steam. I got it when it was on sale and at that point, it was really cheap. So I couldn't resist. Glad I bought it. I really enjoy it and I think you might too. 

~AnnElfwind

Written on the 5th of July, 2021