Are you ready to learn more about Black Desert Online? The 2nd Beta Review in Progress for Black Desert Online highlights the certain features that players look for in an MMORPG. I'm going to explain the leveling experience, death penalty, open world PvP system, enchanting, combo system, and more. Most of the content in this Review

Leveling Experience - To Quest or Not to Quest! Bonus!?

When playing new MMORPG's most people will often wonder what kind of leveling system will they experience. Black Desert has good amount of quests, I even unlocked new ones in the main city, but they don't give much or any exp at all. Which leaves the question, what is the rewards for completing these quests? Completion of certain quests will grant a player more skill points. This results your character not having enough points to learn or enhance your skills. Quests will also build your relationship with NPC's around that area. After you have accumulated enough relationship points, you can obtain equipment from the NPC as a reward. You also miss out on the whole lore and story of the game, hidden quests, NPC node system, buying houses (requires contribution points), hire carriages for product trading and more. The more points you have the bigger and better house you can purchase.

What did I do? I mainly focused on the easy quests first until I hit level 30. After that, I figured it was best to grind like an EXP machine and focus on my dark spirit quests only. There is actually no real benefit of grinding like crazy, I think. I just do it because I'm weird like that and want to be more prepared for upcoming Guild Castle Sieges. At first I thought the grind was slow, but once I figured out where to hunt I was able to level up faster. I suppose I can blame myself for skipping out quests that shows me where to hunt. Eventually, I ran into monsters that doesn't hit like a truck. Oh boy, was I in heaven! Cranked up some music and grinded like crazy. I even watched a few TV shows while I was at it. I earned a lot of money grinding about 200-300k, which was a lot to me! I ended up purchasing a stronger weapon and continued to grind as it's the fastest way to level up. The leveling pace is actually not that bad if you know what you're doing. One player already hit the beta max level cap within the first week of test and not to mention the fact that servers are only up for about nine hours a day. A few guild members of mine are a only a couple levels away from 50, I hope it stays the same on release and perhaps more variety.

Combat Mechanics - Explained Again

Other than the death penalty the action combat keeps me on my toes. Most people are still confused on how the combat works in this game. It's not like the average spam three rows of skills type of game. Black Desert Online is an Action MMMORPG and the amount of skills it offer is just right, not too many skills to play around with and not so little to get bored with. Skills flow through each other that it looks like I am pressing one skill at a time, but in reality I am executing a series of key strokes one after the other. I've listed a sample combo and some of the commands below.

W+RMB > D+F > Shift+LMB > RMB > Turn Character to Side and Shift+A > Face Behind Enemy Shift+LMB to RMB > D+LMB x2 and so on. Players must adapt their combos on how hard the monster hits, if it hits too hard, they will need to blink out of combat and back in again. I've listed most of the skills that I have learned under level 39. Extra skill points are used to enchance the skill damage, effect, and unlock others ones later on.

Q = Restore Mana Depending on Dark Spirit Stacks

Q + Spacebar = Defense Buff

LMB = Normal Attack

RMB = Pew Pew Dark Orbs Attack

Shift+LMB = Dash Attack

Shift+RMB = Chain Attack

Shift+WASD = Blink

Shift+WASD 2x = Blink followed by tumble explosion.

LMBxRMB alternate then Q = Fast way to recover Mana

Shift+Spacebar = Convert Mana into HP

Shift+LMB to RMB = Dash Attack Followed by Kick

F = Kick

W+F = Power Knock Back

D+F = Instant Knock Back

D+RMB = Large Dark Orbs

AorD+LMB = Side Slash

W+RMB = Blink Strike

LMB+RMB = Kamehameha (Obviously not the real name)

LMB+RMB Hold = Power Kamehameha

LMB+RMB to Spacebar = Absorb Kamehameha

D+E = Small Group Fear

W+E = AoE Group Fear (Forgot if this was quick key)

Plus the other random combos that I forgot.

There are other skills, that I don't use often like the Dark Spirit Bomb. For those skills, I just set it on my 1-9 key. I'm only one level away from 40, so I going to be getting something cool soon, I think. Oh and the Z and X keys are a universal skill that shoots beam for the formation system. Like I previously stated in my Part 1 Review, you can use a gamepad to map all of the keys or drag the skills to your hotbar.

Open World PvP, Death Penalty, Karma

In the previous beta, players were able to PK each other at level 30. This has now been changed to level 40 which is going to make my adventures a bit tougher later on as I am very close to 40. You can tell if a character is below level 40 because their character name will show up Green. When they are above 40 their character name will become purple/blue and is auto flagged for PK. There is a PvP Toggle Button that also appears at 40, when turned on you can target and PK other players. Regardless on or off, you can still get PK'ed. Players that misbehave and kill random players will increase their Karma points (성향) and become Chaotic. If they have too much Karma, then they will most likely drop or lose bonus items in their "inventory" on death. The "Normal" death penalty is a random chance to lose socketed gems and weapon enchants. Still confused?

Death Penalty Simplified

1. Breaks Gems depending on the quality, some gems are more tougher than others.

2. Lose EXP (Depends on Karma Value) (Lawful 2% EXP Loss) (Chaotic 5% EXP Loss)

3. Weapon and Armor Enchants go down with Black Stones.

4. Random Items from Inventory is dropped. (Chaotic Only) (Not All Items)

Enchanting System

The Enchanting system in Black Desert is fairly simple, upgrade stones drop from monsters and you can enchant equipment by summoning your Dark Spirit guide. When you fail to enchant a piece of equipment, the maximum durability of that item goes down. Fail enough and you will have one useless enchanted weapon. How can one restore the max durability? Find a blacksmith NPC in town and give him an extra copy of your weapon to be used as fodder, it will only restore a few points at a time. The gem socketing system hasn't changed much compared to the previous beta and probably doesn't need much explaining. Just socket some gems in on your gear for more bonus and stuff.

Conclusion - Having a Blast!

I am still having a blast with this game and will continue to play it til the beta ends. Thanks to Black Desert Online, I have been neglecting a lot of my work lately. A lot of players won't probably get used to the whole grind thing because they have cool games with field events and quests like FFXIV FATES that I enjoyed dearly and Guild Wars 2's quest events. Black Desert also doesn't have any instanced dungeons yet, or at least I haven't ran across any. Everything seems to be a true open world seamless MMORPG so far. I'll probably go over the Housing stuff later on though there are other sites or users that covered it already. Stay tuned for sieges this week or the next!

Publisher: Daum

Developer: Pearl Abyss

Game Site: http://black.game.daum.net/



Three Pages to Follow!

English Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Pearl.Abyss.Black.Desert

Korean Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Daumblack

Steparu Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Steparus