The 2nd Closed Beta for Black Desert started a few days ago and I have been playing the game vigorously. Just like the previous beta, I am going to write mini Black Desert Review in progress articles to share my knowledge and adventures of the game.

Combat and Skill System

A lot of you may notice that my skill bar is pretty empty. The reason behind this resides in Black Desert Online's Action MMORPG input system. Most of skills are executed by pressing two to three keys together simultaneously a bit similar to Vindictus, C9, Dungeon Fighter, etc. For example, if I wanted to blink strike I would press W+RMB together then I would have to press S+E if wanted to throw a long range stun projectile. There are a lot of combos to play around with and more skills is unlocked through a skill trainer NPC as you progress to higher levels. The skill tree is very big and you will most likely not be able to learn every skill during the lower and mid levels of the game, thus I only learned skills that I found very useful in my combos. Certain users may find it easier to drag and drop the skills to the hotbar. Doing so allows you to see the cooldown of each skill and it might be easier to chain them one after the other. Black Desert also supports gamepads which might be fun to try out someday. Back attack deals a ton of damage in this game, so I am always often trying to get behind the enemy whenever I get the chance. Once the Sorcerer learns blink the amount of mobility she gets is insane! I'm really enjoying the Sorcerer and decided that it will be my main character for the 2nd beta.

Real time Weather System

Out of all the MMORPG's I have played in my lifetime, Black Desert Online hands down has the best real time weather system. Surrounded by complete darkness at night depending on the area you're in and once you throw in a thunderstorm, then you're pretty much blind until lightning strikes. See the reference video below for more details. What makes the weather so special in this game? The world adapts to it! For example, when it's raining you will see puddles of water here and there. Characters clothes become drenched with water, buildings, tents, and stuff look wet. I'd love to see some snow in the future!

Catching Mounts

I'm just going to go ahead and explain the process of how players obtain mounts in this game a horse for instance. It looks fairly easy, but it's a lot more complicated than it looks. You must buy a Lasso that's one time use, if you miss throwing your lasso then you will have to buy another. It's better to buy 5 at time perhaps maybe more! You can drag the Lasso to your hotbar and activate it from there. Once you have used the lasso, your character have it equipped and you're ready to go! Try to target a Horse that isn't near a player because they can scare it away. Once you have the horse targeted on your crosshair, press the Left Mouse button once. You will then see short slider pop up. Keep an eye on the small white horizontal bar that will go up then back down. The timing of your "spacebar' must be precise and the perfect time to press it is when the small white bar lands on the small red section of the bar. If you end up missing the red bar, then your lasso is gone. If you didn't press "spacebar" and watched the white bar go up and pass through the red bar going down then you lose your lasso.

After succesfully hitting the first "spacebar" you can then gradually hold the "W" key to move forward and get closer to the horse. A horse silhouette will pop up on top of the screen flashing red and white. If you press "spacebar" during the red silhouette the horse will get away. Walk a good distance close to the horse and time your "spacebar" on the white silhouette of the Horse. The horse will run away if you were to just hold down the "W" key. After pressing the second "spacebar" it will put you in a mini tug o' war game with the horse where you have to spam "spacebar" to win against it. Keep an eye on the count down while spamming. You can't approach the horse in tug o' war mode. There will be a countdown right below the tug o'war meter, so make sure you keep an eye on that while spamming. When the timer hits 0 it will revert back to approach mode with horse silhouette. Rinse and repeat until you get close enough and press "R" to mount on the horse, procde to the stables NPC to register a name and personalize the mount. Players can also breed with other mounts, though I am not sure if this is implemented already.

There were two players that decided to randomly kill my horse while I was AFK mounted on it. I ended up losing the items my horse was carrying not that it's a big deal because it was just random trash. When you give your horse items, it will automatically have bags equipped. I am guessing that those players thought it was something valuable and worth killing my poor horsey over. Anyway, I wasn't worried about it much. I was more concerned about my horse not coming back to life, thankfully it did so they can run away with my crappy loot.

That's all for now, I am super exhausted staying up all night playing Black Desert due to the time zone difference between my location and South Korea. I'll most likely keep uploading more videos on my Youtube Channel so make sure you subscribe there for the latest ones. I am often updating my social media page on Facebook daily, so if you have any questions that I might miss, please feel free to post on my wall at https://www.facebook.com/Steparus! Have a great weekend.