Black Desert, by its nature of MMORPG, will irremediably offer you to advance your character. Indeed, you start at level 1 (yes, if I can assure you) and you will go up to 60… 61…, 62 and so on according to your experience gains.
You guessed it: Black Desert does not have a level cap. However, with today's most dangerous monsters revolving around level 60, the conclusions are obvious. In addition, be aware that from level 50, a death will result in a loss of part of your experience.
That being said, the game is a long way from offering you a single experience bar:
- A bar for Skill points
- A bar for Energy
- A bar for Contribution points
- One bar for Breath, one for Strength and one for Health
- A bar for each element of "Life" (harvest, crafts, trade, riding etc ...)
- An experience bar for each of your mounts
The Quests
Quests will not all reward you the same. Indeed, several bars will sometimes make progress only one. Here's what a quest looks like when offered to you:
On the right, you will find the name of the quest, then its description and finally the proposed rewards. The first insert concerns what you will get in full (here from the Contribution 
) and below the optional rewards from which you can only choose one (here we are offered to choose between 5 Potions of Life and 3 Potions of Mana)
You understand that completing this quest will increase your Contribution and Health bar, but that you will not gain a single point of experience for your character's level itself. It is important to remember this well so that you do not wonder why your character's “main” experience does not seem to be moving forward.
Here are some examples:
More on quests ...
The above icons correspond respectively to:
- Character experience
- Skill Experience
- Contribution Experience
- Competence Point (s)
- Knowledge (see Energy)
- Health Experience (see Breath, Strength, and Health)
The quest tracking table looks like this:
Note (right) the preview of the quest when you hover over it with the mouse. A right click will establish the path for auto walking (or simply to serve as a benchmark). Indeed, rather than making you move in a straight line, if a path is defined, activating the auto walk will make your character move forward on the path in question. He will not defend himself, however, and the route is not always the smartest, so beware of surprises.
The game also has the traditional options in terms of quest tracking with, from left to right:
- Summary Display
- Abandonment of the quest
- Establish the route
- Establish the route and start auto walking
You can also open the Quest window with the normal shortcut (O by default) or by left clicking on it on the monitoring table.
Regulars will not be disoriented, the window offering the display and sorting options that are generally found (filter by zone, display by sorting, etc.).
The different bars
Now let's go over the different experience bars your character has. Here is the inset of a level 50 where we see that it is at 0.099% of the level 51 of the main experience which we spoke about in the introduction. Now let's take a look at the others.
Skill points
This bar is used to generate skill points to place (K by default) and will essentially fill up when you fight. However, some quests will grant you a bonus in skill experience. , or even a bonus in skill points directly .
Here it says that I have 42 skill points that I can assign right now.
The .55 just behind tells me that in terms of experience I did a little over half the bar to get one more. In the image above, the notification with the "25" in the red circle tells me that I currently have 25 possibilities to place my points (unlock a new skill or improve one that I already have). This bar is obviously specific to each character.
Energy points
These points are common to all of your characters. To increase your maximum Energy points, you need to accumulate knowledge. To do this, the methods are very diverse. Indeed, speak to an important NPC for the first time, kill a monster enough times, discover an area, consult a book, or simply as a quest reward. , all these activities will give you knowledge. As you can see, ultimately anything that is likely to fit into your codex will help increase your maximum Energy.
Okay but what is it for?
Concretely, each time you carry out a key action that the developers wish to regulate a little bit, Spirit will be spent. This includes in particular the fact of:
- To harvest
- Chat with NPCs to improve your relationship with them
- Greeting an NPC (improves your relationship more surely but with much less profit than conversation)
- Unlock certain knowledge from certain NPCs
- Talk on the world channel
- Recruit workers
- Return Proof of Defense (see Contribution)
- etc ...
In addition, investing your Spirit points on one of your previously activated Nodes (see Contribution points) will make it gain levels (up to a maximum of 10) and each level gained will increase your chances of loot on the monsters in the area. affected area of 5% per level. Be careful, however, deactivating a Node will cause you to lose levels irreparably.
You gain 1 point every 3 minutes (connected or not). Here, we see that I have 65 points out of 65, that is to say that I will not generate any more as long as I have not used at least one (and I therefore have every interest in doing so). ).
Contribution points
Still below, we find the Contribution bar which, like Energy, is common to all your characters.
Some quests (a lot) will increase your bar . Once this is completed, you earn a point and so on. You can also gain Evidence of Defense by facing local invaders overnight to return them and thus gain Contribution experience.
The contribution points can be used for 3 things in particular:
- Obtain an apartment (in the broad sense, therefore accommodation, storage, workshop etc.)
- Activate the Node of the zone where you are located, provided that it is connected either to another or to a city.
- Rent an item offered by an NPC.
Be careful, however, an important nuance, the points earned are used to obtain things but are not spent: they are placed. Indeed, if you use 1 (sub assistant) to obtain accommodation, the day you sell it, you will automatically recover your point.
Here, we see that I have a maximum of 79 Contribution points and that I have 27 usable left. We therefore deduce that I have already placed 52 (79-27). However, do not panic, in order to navigate as little as possible, hovering the mouse over it will show you the current distribution of your points.
What is the point of activating a Node?When you invest Contribution points to activate a location node, you extend your influence to that location. This is mainly used for 2 things:
- First of all, it will expand your business network. Indeed, a set of Nodes constitutes what we can call a trade route to trade and send your workers to work.
- Then, this will directly affect the loot you find on nearby enemies (see Energy points)
But roads can be used for other things. For example, having things transported from one storage to another will cost you three times the price if the path taken is not under your influence.
Breath of Strength and Health bars
Here are 3 very pragmatic bars. Indeed, each of them progresses in a precise way to give a precise effect:
- The Breath bar progresses simply by moving on foot (walking or running) and helps to increase your Endurance gauge (runs, rolls, etc.)
- The Strength bar progresses while carrying trade items, and allows you to carry heavier inventory.
- The Health bar increases each time you eat a dish, and grants a maximum bonus of Health Points at each level
Commercial objects?
Trade items are sold by the corresponding NPCs (Trade) and have no other uses than to be sold in places where the buyback rate will be advantageous. It is also possible to transport these items by your mount if it is nearby at the time of purchase, however this method will not increase your Strength bar.
And the others
The bars for the elements of "Life": the subject is obviously far too vast to be treated here. Just know that this includes most of the activities that do not relate to direct combat. In general, practicing will make you progress, thus harvesting, cooking, riding your mount etc ...
Each bar works in both tier and level. 10 levels as a beginner, then you will pass Apprentices with another 10 levels, and so on. Many objects or actions require a level of a tier in a given activity.
For example, you will need a beginner level 5 in Training to use lassos; so you will have to ride something before you are able to capture your first horse.
And here is a transition for the last bar of experience discussed here: the one concerning the mounts.
Note that each mount has its own experience bar, which will progress by straddling it and which will automatically unlock skills as you level up. You can display this window while standing next to your mount (F3 by default) or while on it (P by default).
NB: As the official localization is still in progress, some terms in this article are still supposed translations.
