Black Desert Gardening and Farming Guide

A guide to Gardening and Farming in Black Desert Online tailored to the NA/EU version.

Farming/Gardening Basics

Farming/Gardening in Black Desert Online is a great way to get some of the materials for cooking and making a profit later on with Sunflowers. Additionally you can get a large amounts of carrots for cheap to replenish your horse’s stamina. To get started, all you need is some contribution points.

With the May 18, 2016 update you can now have workers manage your farms, more details below.

NA/EU Region Differences

Compared to the Korean/Japan versions of the game, there are currently no way to make Haystacks.This means you cannot have cows on your farm to gather milk/beef/leather.

Renting A Fence

To start farming, you will need to rent a fence from some NPCs using contribution points. The rental is permanent as long you keep using it. If you don’t use it for 7 days, it will get deposited back to your storage and you can go back to the NPC to return it to get your contribution points back. Of course you can always remove and return the fences early if you decided farming isn’t for you.

There is a NPC in Northern Guard Camp north of Heidel that will give you an introductory quest for farming and give you a Weak Fence which can field only a single corp. It is rather useless but better than nothing if you just want to try it out.

There are three types of fences you can rent (Small, Plain, and Strong). Beware that some seeds take up 2 crop spaces and can affect how many of them you can plant per fence.

Small Fence costs 3 contribution points and allow you to plant 4 crops.

Plain Fence costs 6 contribution points and allow you to plant 7 crops.

Strong Fence costs 10 contribution points and allow you to plant 10 crops.

If you are going to max contribution point efficiency, small or plain fences are better if you don’t plan to use scarecrows/waterways but once you are at the point where you have enough contribution points and just want time efficiency you probably want the strong fences.Strong fences also get the most benefit from scarecrows/waterways since they take up crop spaces.

To find the NPCs that will rent the fences to you, you can open up the NPC window and type in Fence, this will list all the NPCs you know that rent them. Of course if you havn’t explored much they won’t show up but I will show you some example locations below.

Strong Fence can be rented from Flaviano inside Heidel. He is also the material vendor so just click on Material button when you are in Heidel to find him. Small/Plain Fences are rented from the two farms just south of Heidel. Mael Costa rent Small Fences and Mercianne Moretti rents Plain Fences.

Once you find the NPC, click on [Rent] button in the dialogue window and a new Contribution Item Rental window will pop up, allowing you to rent the item and get it in your inventory if you have enough contribution points.

There is no limit to how many fences you can rent from the same NPC so you can go rent multiple ones.

Putting Down A Fence

In general you can put down a fence in a grassy area that isn’t near a contested node or inside a town/city. When you right click on your fence in your inventory, you will see a placement mode being activated. Move the fence around the area to see places where it lits up blue. That is where you can plant your fence. Obviously you want to pick some place that your alts can reach easily as you may need it to tend to your farm later on while taking into consideration of the temperature and humidity of the area. Once you have placed a farm, press R to enter placement and place your seeds. Garden usage at top left corner of the placement window tell you how many crops you have planted and the max number of crops.

Unlike other games like Archeage, farms/gardens here are not contested. Instead, they are instanced which means that even if other player’s farm are nearby, you can still drop your farm on top of theirs and their farm will disappear out of view.

Once your fence is setup, you will be able to view its location on the world map by a dark blue icon. This will turn into red if there are blight/pruning problems.

Groundwater/Temperature/Humidity

If you are planning to farm a specific plant, it might be important to take into consideration the groundwater/temperature/humidity of the area, which you can view with different filters on the world map.

Groundwater Distribution

Groundwater distribution can shift with rains so the pattern always changes. This isn’t something to particularly worry about.

Temperature

Temperature is different in several regions. The area around Olvia for example is a bit warmer (represented by yellow) than the rest and some plants like Grapes and Sunflower have a high growth rate there. You have to use some real world knowledge to deduce if a plant will like a warmer area or colder area.

Humidity

Humidity can affect the blight rate of a particular crop. If the humidity isn’t suitable for the plant, it may blight more and have its growth slowed. The regions with more intense reds are more humid than rest and may change as rains come and go.

Finding Seeds

You can breed crops in Black Desert to get more seeds so once you have acquired a single seed, you can plant it and then get more. So technically all you need is a single seed to get started.

Gathering

Seeds can be gathered from Bushes/Thicket using barehands or gathering hoe you can purchase from material vendors or crafted (requires Tool workshop). This is a random and slow method (depending on your gathering level, most weed at low levels) but you can find random seeds for free this way while leveling up your gathering skills.

Marketplace

If you want a specific seed however, you will need to buy it from the seed vendor or Marketplace. Marketplace is a hit or miss since it is stocked by other players but sometimes you can find cheaper seeds than buying them from vendor.

Vendor

The seed vendor in Heidel is named Hunt. He is located in the northmost part of the city and he has a rather poor selection of seeds. It is only sufficient for the most basic farming.

If you want a more complete selection, visit Calpheon which is far west of Heidel. There is a seed vendor there named Ahr that has probably the most complete selection of seeds you can expect from a vendor. You only need to purchase one seed to get started but if you want to be time efficient probably buy 2-3.

Workers

You can now have workers tending to your farms, and they will prune weeds and remove bugs until their action points are depleted. Only one worker can tend to a farm at a time. To do so, simply left click on the farm/garden icon to display a list of all your farms. Click on the list button next to the farms and it will let you select workers to tend to the garden. Workers will not harvest/breed seeds for you and you do not get any farming XP from their actions.

Workers that have their lodging closer to the farms will have less travel time compared to workers far away but you do not need to have nearby nodes connected or anything and can use any worker that is available.

Upon on returning, workers will store everything they got from pruning weeds/bugs in the warehouse (i.e. Weeds, Kermes, Monk’s Branch, Spirit Leaf etc) so make sure you have enough space in the warehouse. Giant workers are best for this as they have the most stamina and you do not need to feed them as often.

Crop Information

To view crop information currently, you need to press R to enter placement mode for the garden and then click on each crop individually. There is suppose to be a method to click R on an individual crop to view the information directly but it is currently bugged.

Online/offline

Crops only grow if you are online. If you are not online, their growth will be halted so make sure to login and just AFK if needed.

Temperature

The temperature bar you see here compares the crop’s preferred temperature vs the temperature of the garden. The little vertical bar tells you the crop’s preferred temperature and the bright red area tell you the garden’s temperature range. The 1.50% tells you the growth rate of the crop every 5 minutes. You can adjust the vertical bar by moving it around and the displayed % will differ. This tells you what temperature range this particular crop prefer. For example I shifted the little bar to the right and the growth rate went up to 1.79% instead of 1.5%. This means that this particular crop prefer a warmer temperature and will grow faster if our garden was planted in a warmer area.

Don’t get confused and think you can change the crop’s growth by shifting the little vertical bars around. They are only there to show you what the crop prefer and how it likes the current garden conditions. This give you an idea of where to move your garden for best growth rate for that particular crop.

Lets look at another crop. This particular crop’s preferred temperature is in the range of the garden’s temperature and we have the highest growth rate. If we were to increase the temperature for example by moving the garden to a warmer area, the growth rate drops by 0.05%.

Humidity

Humidity bar acts the same way as Temperature with the difference being that the % represents the chance of the crop catching blight.

Sunflower here has a preferred humidity inside the range of our garden’s humidity. Therefore blight has the lowest % of happening (3%). If we planted a garden at say at a higher humidity area, the same crop would have a 10% chance of blight.

Water/Moisture

The water bar tells you how full the groundwater is below the garden. The % displayed here is the change of the crop’s moisture with the current water level. To raise the water bar, you will need to pour Distilled Water i(info on how to make it below) into the garden by standing inside the garden and right clicking the item in your inventory.

Generally you want the crop to be at 100% moisture as dropping below 75% moisture can affect crop yield.

Fertilizer/Estimated Time

The fertilizer bar tells you how much fertilizer is left in the soil. There are three different types of fertilizers and they will each fill the bar to a different extent. Inorganic Fertilizers, the lowest tier, will fill the bar about 50% of the way, Fertilizer Byproduct will fill the bar about 65% and Organic Fertilizer will fill the bar about 85%. They all reduce the growth time (estimated time) by the same amount, with the only difference being on how long they will last.

Here is a comparison between a crop using Fertilizer and one not using Fertilizer. You can see the estimated timer was reduced by about 20% from 13 hrs to about 10.2 hrs.

Blight/Pruning

Blight and Pruning are two issues that can increase the crop’s growth time by 50% if untreated.When there is a Blight/Prune issue, your garden icon on the world map will turn red instead of the normal dark blue. Compare the growth time of the same crop with and without blight.

Due to the lack of a feature on the NA/EU servers that allow your workers to prune/cure blight for you, you will need to manually do it yourself. The best way is to park an alt next to the farm so you can just relog to fix the issue. To fix blight/prune, you simple need to run next to the affected crop and press R to prune or remove insect. Blight/Pruning does not affect crop yield, only its growth time so you can ignore it if you don’t mind waiting twice as long for the plant to grow.

Bird Attacks/Health

Birds can attack your crops and reduce the overall health of your crop, which can reduce the growth time. I personally havn’t seen many bird attacks but you can prevent them with a Scarecrow, which is discussed below.

Summary

Growth speed of the crop is affected by: Temperature, Blight, Pruning, Fertilizer and Bird attacks.

Yield of the crop (not seeds) is affected by: Water and harvest time (before 120%). This is discussed more below.

Taking Care of Your Garden

Water

The groundwater at your garden often isn’t enough, especially if you have multiple crops planted. You will need to water. To get water for your garden you need to collect them from the river. To do this you will need to find a material vendor in a town/city by using the NPC button and then purchase Empty Bottles.

With the Empty Bottles in your inventory, walk up to a river and right before you touch the water, right click the bottles in your inventory to begin transforming Empty Bottles to Bottles of River Water.

Bottle of River Water can be used to water the garden but they don’t add too much water.To make this efficient you want to convert them to Distilled Water by pressing L (processing) and select Heating. This will convert them to Distilled Water at a 1:1 ratio with extras depending on your processing skill which give you even more water.

Waterway

Waterway will reduce the water consumption of your crops by 50%, which is a must have if you have lots of crops. Unfortunately they will take up a crop spot so you have less space for your crops. To craft this you need to use your contribution points to find and make a Carpentry Workshop by using the house filter at the top right of the screen inside a town/city.

Making it requires 2 Logs, 8 Bottles of River Water and 1 Black Stone Powder. You need to put them all inside the Storage and have your worker make it via the Carpentry Workshop. Logs can be obtained by using an lumber axe and cutting down trees. Black Stone Powder can be obtained by making a Refinery and have your workers process the Rough Stones you get from mining rocks like Fieldspar which are all over the map. Alternatively, you can acquire Black Stone Powder by breaking down the random crystals you get from questing via the Grinding option in processing (L).

You install the waterway the same way you would plant a crop in the placement mode.

Scarecrow

From time to time, birds will attack your crops and reduce the overall health of your crop which in turn translates to slower growth. To counter this you can install a Scarecrow, which is also made from the Carpentary Workshop. Like Waterway this will also take a spot on your farm. I personally havn’t found a need for this but if you need it you can make it with 10 Logs and 1 Black Stone Powder.

Fertilizer

There are three types of fertilizer you can make for your garden: Inorganic, Byproduct and Organic.The only difference as far as I am aware is that they give different amount to the fertilizer bar in the garden window information and does not give different growth times. Therefore it might be just easier to make the Inorganic Fertilizer than bother with the other two.

Inorganic Fertilizer

This requires 5x Grain (i.e.5x Potato, 5x Barley, 5x Corn or 5x Sweet Potato). Press L to open the processing window and then select Drying and put in whatever Grain you have (must be the same one). Since you cannot split stacks in the processing window just put in whatever you have and move your character once you think you have processed enough.

Fertilizer Byproduct

This requires 3x Inorganic Fertilizer and 2x Leavening Agent. Leavening Agent can be brought from the cooking vendor. If you are in a town/city use the NPC button to the left of your mini map and select cooking to find the NPC. Select the Shaking option in the processing window to make it.

Organic Fertilizer

This requires 1x Fertilizer Byproduct and 2x Distilled Water. Make it by using the processing window and select Shaking.

Harvesting and Breeding Crops

Breeding (Getting Seeds)

You can select the F1 option once a plant has reach 100% growth or more to breed the crop. This will produce 1-3 seeds from the crop, with the possibility for higher quality seeds.

There is a tier system within the seeds.

Withered Seeds

Regular Seeds

High-Quality Seeds (green)

Special Seeds (blue).

To get High-quality seeds, you breed crops grown from regular seeds. To get Special Seeds, you breed crops grown from High-Quality speeds.

Planting Crops for Breeding requires less micromanagement as nothing affect the yield/tier of the seeds but RNG and farming skill. So you can ignore water, birds and even pruning/blight if you plan to not tend to your garden for a while. Also unlike harvesting crops, having a 120% growth does not lower the yield.

Crops grown from Special/High Quality seeds have more yields and you can substitute them in for regular version of the crop with fewer amounts. A Special crop is worth 5 regular crops and a High Quality crop is worth 3 regular crops. So instead of using 5 potatoes for a beer, you can just use a single special potato and get the job done.

Harvesting (Getting Crops)

If you plant seeds to be harvested for the product via the R button, then you need to pay more attention. If the moisture level gets low, your yield will be reduced so you need to monitor the water usage often. Also, you must harvest the crops between 100% and 119% as letting the crop getting to 120% will drastically reduce the yield.

Blight and Pruning affects the growth speed but not the final yield of the harvest so you can ignore them as well as long you stock your garden full with water, use a waterway and harvest before they reach 120%.

Harvesting also costs energy so make sure you don’t run out of it or have an alt to harvest for you since they share the energy cap but use their own energy.

Farming skill will increase crop yield as well so as you get higher in farming you will get more crops.

Byproducts

Much like cooking, you can get some byproducts when breeding, harvesting, or even while removing insects from blighted crops. Examples include byproducts you can exchange for high quality seeds, silver, fertilizer and trade items that are worth 10k silvers.

What to Farm

Sunflower

Sunflower farming can be a fairly lucrative way to make some silvers. Your goal is to breed Sunflowers until you get a Special Sunflower Seed and then you keep breeding them until you get enough Special Seeds to populate a couple farms. You want to harvest about half of the Special Sunflowers and breed the other half to keep your stock of special seeds.

Make a Crop Workbench and have your worker make Special Sunflower Crate with the harvested sunflowers. Sell the Crates to traders merchants for 15k silvers each.

Additionally, regular Sunflowers are used to make Tea with Fine Scent with cooking as it is the only flower that can be mass produced without manual gathering. These teas are used to make Milk Tea, which give a 8% XP buff are in high demand.

Due to the long grow time of Sunflowers, you need to be online at least 5+ hrs a day for the Sunflowers to grow.

Carrots

Some people farm blue quality Carrots the same way as Sunflower and then make them into carrot juice using the cooking recipe of 1 Special Carrot, 3 Sugar, 3 Flour (any grain) and 4 Mineral Water. You can then sell the Carrot Juice to NPCs at 220 silver each. Use the byproducts to trade in for silver, contribution xp, beer and milk.