Greetings Adventurers,

We hope you tuned into the official Heidel Ball Stream hosted in Korea a little while ago!

Please be reminded official stream channel for Black Desert Online NA/EU is https://www.twitch.tv/blackdesertonlineofficial.

If you had missed the stream, that’s okay!

Here’s a recap (the script) of the keynote stream given by the chief producer of Black Desert Online, Jae Hee Kim for you to check out:

*Screenshots are provided in Korean. (images will be replaced shortly)

*Please keep in mind the and scheduled dates included in the script is based on Korean client and may differ for NA/EU content update schedule.

Start preparing for the Shai by signing up for our newsletter before the Shai release. You'll get a special reward upon release HERE.

Script:

Introduction

Greetings Adventurers,

This is Jae-hee Kim, the Chief Producer in charge of development for Black Desert.

I have presented in every Black Desert meet and greet since 2015, but I feel this time is special and ever more meaningful. We, at Pearl Abyss, love hearing all the great stories that our Adventurers from Black Desert got to share.

Of course, we do realize there is still much we can improve on.

So just like the Voice of Adventurers we presented at before, I hope we can create even more opportunities to meet you all directly. We will try to actively communicate through Black Desert official streams and website, Facebook, and other methods. I’m hopeful that this will mean we can communicate better and faster.

Please continue to show your passion for Black Desert. We will try to develop the game in a way more people can identify with it.

Before we get into the main topics today, I’ll give you a simple summary of the new direction that Pearl Abyss plans to move forward with for our updates.

Weekly Updates

All games have bugs, but if they affect your gameplay, then it is definitely a serious issue.

So we tried to come up with a plan as to how we can provide a more stable game service.

There were countless updates to Black Desert ever since its launch. Initially, we even had two updates every week on Tuesday and Friday. When the server stabilized we continued to perform maintenance once per week.

Weekly updates was no easy task, but I think this was made possible by the loving community of Adventurers that continued to show their passion and play the game, as well as the drive of all the developers in Pearl Abyss to create a good and fun game.

As the amount of contents grew larger in Black Desert with the constant updates, “the time it takes to create new contents" and the “amount of time needed to find the cause and fix issues” and the “trying to respond to new issues rising up” was just needed too much in a weekly update cycle.

As a result, the new updates were lackluster compared to the earlier updates while we didn’t even have enough time to fix the growing number of issues appearing in the game.

The reason why seemingly simple bugs were not being resolved for a long time was because the complexity of gaming content, economy, and balance increased, and more urgent problems that needed to be addressed continued to arise.

We tried performing maintenance every other week to try to improve on this point, however, this had very little effect. We continued to contemplate how to get the massive list of bugs resolved and provide quality update.

There were a lot of great updates, but for some, we couldn’t see them through and have disappointed our Adventurers. We will strive harder to plan these updates and take plenty of time to test them, while making standard patches to fix bugs and problems.

Following this decision could lead to content updates coming later, but we want to strive and provide stable service along with contents that do not seem rushed. We hope you will accept this out of the goodness of your hearts.

Also, every time an update does poorly people started talking about how a number of staff were moved to new projects.

I think I’ve told you in the past that the number of developers that started on Black Desert was around 50 while now we have about 150 people. Currently, game design, programming, engine, DB, sound, character, background, effects, animation, UI, QA, web development, and others are divided to form more specialized teams. Overall, we have expanded to around 200 people that focuses on Black Desert alone. This is only counting the people in the development section, and we are also currently hiring new staff and experienced people. So please continue to show us your support.

Major Improvements

Moving on from updates, there were a number of points we could not devote our attentions to from previously, either due to lack of time, issues of higher priority, or structural problems. A major point that represents this would be - buffs.

As Black Desert was updated, methods of getting stronger increased. Buffs from cooking, alchemy, other contents, and events continued to stack making the effects so complicated and difficult to distinguish. It was complicated for quite a while, right?

There was a lot of feedback about them and we thought about reworking buffs as well. However, reworking buffs appeared to require the same amount of effort that went into creating the Central Market. So unfortunately, it went lower in our list of priorities.





Buffs

But now, we will start working on reworking buffs. Actually, reworking buffs was something that I wanted to do for a long time ago. It seems that it took 4 years to get started.

Just to give you an idea of where we are headed with reworking buffs, we will reduce the cooldown on each of the foods so that people can eat again if they used the wrong item and to improve buffs of bigger meals and elixirs so that you won’t need to use a large variety of items.

Also, we want to make it clear for you to know what you already ate. For instance, if you ate a Calpheon Meal, then the Calpheon Meal icon will appear. Also regular debuffs, buffs, and short buffs will be displayed in 3 rows. This will allow you to see the current status of your buffs even more clearly.

This isn’t a big update, but we couldn't start working on it as it takes months to prepare and work on. Still, I think this must be done for Black Desert to continue on and be loved by Adventurers.

We started working on this since last month and we hope to get the update finished sometime this month.





Better Interaction (R)

Something similar to buff that we could not work on was free interactions.

We want to make it possible for you to interact with NPCs and objects while mounted on horses and other mounts.

Wasn’t it annoying to get off your horse to talk to someone then get back on before moving? This improvement will allow you to stay on your horse while talking then continue on our way.

Enhancements and stacks

There are a lot of people that gives us feedback on the Black Desert enhancement system. I too understand the feeling of wanting to become stronger as quickly as possible as a player myself.

However, Black Desert is not only about results. There is a process, a start, development, and finish. The beginning and development portion of the process… are especially important to what makes Black Desert.

If you all take time to look back at your past memories of games, you will find good memories, frustrating memories, and happy memories. I believe in the power of growth shows when you are able to look back at the frustrating moments and smile.

I am not saying that the situation we have now is perfect.

For newcomers to Black Desert, we put in our efforts to help them get adjusted by displaying the probability of success to reduce the stress and difficulty of enhancing while creating systems like “Enhance” option to increase probability, Stabilized Magic Black Stone, and the like.

On top of that, we will continue to come up with ways for veteran Adventurers, that have attempted countless enhancements, to reduce unnecessary frustrations and stress.

We made new functions that allows you to recover some of the Black Stones used to build stacks by extracting, purifying equipment to make it easier for you to start building stacks again, devouring items to quickly build stacks with ease, and securing stacks through Dragon Scale Fossils that can be obtained in Drieghan.

Stacking is such a major part of Black Desert and instead of removing it completely due to its inconvenience, we plan to develop more ways for you to get stacks by playing various contents.

We are also planning to buff the 20 stacks you get for using Dragon Scale Fossil in the to-be-updated Sherekhan to 40 stacks.

Class Balance

I’m extremely careful about balancing as it cannot be perfect. Still, it may be too disappointing if I did not touch on this topic at all. So let me talk about this briefly.

If you take a look at our latest balances, you may be able to see the direction we are heading. Many of you probably already know of this.

We’re going to be more cautious but bold when buffing and nerfing classes.

More so than before, we are taking more time to understand what you want and empathize with it. The amount of time going through the fine details and analyzing the data to compare and find what the true core of the issue has increased. By doing this, I hope to reach the goal where we can create better patches where more of you can agree with.

This was already patched, but to share a fun bit of statistics with all of you about Mystics, the kill/death ratio of Mystics this year out of the 17 classes was at around 7th to 10th place. This ranking was similar across all regions.

Additionally, based on Korea, out of the top 100 Adventurers with the highest gear score, 41 of them are Mystics (there are 6 Dark Knights). They could be this popular because Mystics are just that amazing, looks great, or versatile. However, the fact that many of the top Adventurers with the best gear and control play them could have been the reason why you felt that huge impact even bigger.

Class balance constantly sways due to a variety of changes like time, popularity, patches, items and so forth. We will continue to listen to your opinions and put in the effort by analyzing data to make truly necessary balance changes and keep adjusting balances in the direction it needs to go.

Under Development

I’ve started to lose count of how many times I’ve presented O’dyllita. I even heard of people calling it “Re-dyllita”.

But for those that are curious to know the current state of development, its initial release date was moved from the start of this year to this winter like we’ve informed you last time. We decided that simply adding a new region would be pointless so we are trying to plan how to make the region distinct.

So instead, we released Star’s End and Blackstar with new stories and hunting grounds that could be released sooner. O’dyllita’s current release is aimed for winter this year.

Adventurers don’t just want new hunting grounds of a similar difficulty as everywhere else is what you want. Most Adventurers are probably expecting new hunting grounds, new goals, new contents and more from a new region.

O’dyllita that was under development was not enough to meet these expectations so we quickly switched gears and developed Star’s End which has a distinct feature.

O’dyllita is now under development again and is aimed to be released this winter. We are doing our best to release a great region, so please be a little more patient with us.

Territory War and Platoon Subjugation

I’m sure many of you are curious about Territory War and Platoon Subjugation which was announced during our last Festa.

Territory War went through a number of tests in Black Desert Global Lab and the major framework for Territory War is almost completed. But, we thought Territory War would be meaningless if Conquest War and Node War were left untouched. So development of Territory War has come to a stop and we are currently discussing how to improve Node/Conquest War.

Platoon Subjugation was at first a function for convenience. We wanted to allow Adventurers that login during the weekend to have sub characters go out and bring in some income, even though it wouldn’t be the most efficient method.

The functional development has been completed. However, we are contemplating the experience this system gives to our adventurers and the kind of impact it would have on the philosophy and on Black Desert itself. This content is not that high in our list of priorities so you can think of it being postponed for the time being.

We will release the contents like Node War, Conquest War, Territory War, Platoon Subjugation and more in Global Lab and announce the news through GM notes when there is progress in their development.

Summer Update!

Now! You all waited a long time for this.

Now is the moment you all have been waiting. I will start announcing our update plans for this summer.

What will be released this summer? I’m sure many of you are very curious and worried. Actually, because of bug fixes and such, there might not be a lot of time to prepare much. Still, I will announce today the updates we are slowly preparing to release.

The major topics I will be talking about can be divided into Life, hunting grounds, improvements for war, and new contents in development.

Life skill balance rework

To start talking about the overall direction of this update,

As life skill levels increase, standard income increases steadily. Also according to life skill levels, faster game play is made possible by increasing crafting speed according to level and giving more convenience and benefits.

Additionally, the value of life skill levels will be raised as the chance of getting special materials.

This isn’t a major change from the past, but our basic direction is to increase the merit behind increasing life skill levels slowly by increasing the number of products that can be made at a time with life skill mastery which in turn will give additional income.

We believe this must be fixed before we can continue with our updates. We will be adjusting life skill levels and masteries and increase income evenly between the different life skills.

Life skill reworks will be available on Black Desert Global Lab soon. Please try it out yourselves and give us your feedback.

Life skill content update

Life content is difficult to decide on and is a content requires a lot of discussion.

Just to tell you some topics, creating ocean breeze effects or other effects that may affect fish in the sea, Fishing Guru and Farming Guru being able to build farms, ranches, or plantations. Life skill linked sea minigames, minigames that can be played in taverns, and other new play patterns, and reworking Imperial Craft Delivery with Imperial Delivery by integrating them to increase overall profit are currently under discussion.

Along with defeating monsters, we will improve on Life Skill contents to make it an even bigger part of Black Desert.

Monster Ground rework

We are aware of the recent increase in new and returning Adventurers that has in turn created a significant influx of Adventurers flooding popular hunting grounds like Gahaz, Crescents, Aakman, Hystria Ruins and others. To improve on this point, we have prepared the following changes.

First off, the patch that was applied about 5 days ago was a rework to Fadus, which previously was similar to Sausan, was made more fun and value by adding rare monsters and increasing their AP to become a hunting ground a tier above Sausan.

Additionally, the rare monsters were prepared to be a change up to the repetitive pattern at Fadus.

They are different from the regular rare monsters as if these rare monsters are attacked, then the monsters in the surrounding area will also attack, they use 3 different weapons and their attack patterns are different for each.

The one holding the staff uses magic attacks from range, but they are easier to attack from behind. The one holding a dagger has fast attack speed so they may be difficult to deal with. Also, the one with the axe mostly attacks from melee range so it is advantageous to attack from a distance, and the like where you can experience various attack patterns.

Polly’s Forest

Continuing on, we are also going to rework Polly's Forest. This is probably a location that was long avoided by our Adventurers. Polly's Forest will be completely changed from being similar to Helms to more like Gahaz. As there isn’t enough room in Gahaz and Crescents to share between everyone there, we will make going Polly’s Forest a good alternative.

Polly’s Forest hunting ground difficulty and item drops will be adjusted. Additionally, treasure mushroom boss monsters will appear. When you defeat this monster, your character will become more powerful.

Ash Forest

Issues around newer hunting grounds are changing with the times. Currently, the number of Adventurers that think there aren’t a lot of hunting grounds for them to choose from, and those that go to Aakman, Hysteria, Abyssal level Sycraia Underwater Ruins are growing. This is a natural phenomenon caused by the increase in game play hours which causes the higher specs to become standardized.

Therefore, we’re preparing to rework Ash Forest to become a higher tier hunting ground compared to Hysteria for the top end Adventurers that surpass Abyssal level.

Ash Forest is being developed to recommend AP 310 and DP 400. New monsters will also be added.

When a certain monster is attacked, all Ghosts in the area will have their DP decreased. However, their AP will increase and swarm the area so you will need to stay on your toes. There probably won’t be any Adventurers that can defeat them alone. It will be a place where you can slowly try out later.

Ash Forest is aimed to be released this month. Previously, the reason for getting stronger was for people that were PVP focused. However, in the future, hunting grounds like these will be the reason why people will strive to become stronger.

If previous hunting grounds were only focused on silver income, hunting grounds in the future will be focused in steady income, rare item drops that can make you rich, try to get more Combat or Skill EXP, or try to get specific items, and the like. This and reworking previously unpopular hunting grounds to challenge top end Adventurers to fill their appetites.

Conquest War rework

As time flows in an MMORPG, a gap in people’s gear will appear. This is a natural part of the RPGs which is the result of time investments.

However, the difference in strength has steadily increased, the strength among Adventurers that enjoy Node War and Conquest War became polarized and made it a content that became difficult to try.

Of course, characters’ strength and guild member numbers, and unity are the most important factors in war. Still, we are trying to figure out a way to make war fun and interesting even when these differences exist.

If previous Node War and Conquest War were closer to pure test of strength, then the new Node War will be designed to test the guilds’ coordination and strategy.

Also, we are also discussing possibilities to combine areas to make goals for strong and weaker guilds. Balenos unification, Calpheon unification and the like.

This won’t be a simple fix for the current problems by reducing the number of nodes or castles. We are trying to make the wars more interesting even if the number of guilds decreases and for the guilds that are currently participating to find it more fun.

When the basic rules are complete, they will be explained in more detail in a GM note or in Black Desert Global Lab. Changes made to Node War and Conquest War is a very sensitive topic so a lot of consideration went into them. So we ask for your understanding as this issue is taking a long time to figure out.

Red Battlefield, Battle Arena, Arena of Arsha, Guild War, Node War, Conquest War, and the like. Black Desert continues to expand in PVP contents as it got a lot of attention, but PVE contents was not able to get the attention it needed.

Of course, various life contents and Lakiaro, Savage Rift, and others were satisfactory but only to a certain point. Eventually, the cycle of Adventurers returning to defeating monsters continued.

We thought this as we were developing Savage Rift, that we needed more PVE content that could challenge our Adventurers.



New PVE content - Altar of Blood

This is what gave rise to the new form of PVE content - Altar of Blood.

As we needlessly forced the use of matchlocks and buildings in Savage Rift and this became the reason why it fell into a repetitive pattern. To improve on this, in the Altar of Blood you will be able to use your own gear.

Basically, Altar of Blood is played in a part of three in a simple defense-style game where you will need to protect the relic from the flood of monsters. Instead of simply relying on the specs, you will need to know the timing, direction, and characteristics of the monsters your fighting to protect the relic.

Communication between Adventurers is crucial and the three Adventurers will need to continue to plan and cooperate, if the team is not able to think on their feet there will be no hope of success. Successfully defending the relic using tactics will bring a new kind of fun.

There will also be a ranking system for this so that you can complete with other people’s strategies as well. As this content requires 3 party members, gather some guild members or friends to try it out.

Even when the developers were testing out the content, we could see people relying on each other and also getting upset at each other in the office. I just wanted to relay the message that’s just how much the developers got into playing the content and caused their emotions to show.

Like I mentioned before, Ash Forest and Altar of Blood will become a reason why people will strive to get stronger. Even Adventurers that have the best equipment need to cooperate or they will die in an instant. We hope you will enjoy it.

Improved UI

Black Desert doesn’t simply end with the launch of the game, but is continuously evolving and transforming into something new through continued updates. The Remaster update revamped its graphics and sound quality to the next level. In addition, the title was also released for play on steam and on console.

We believe that Black Desert should provide for a more intuitive and easy-to-play user interface in order for it to continue to be enjoyed across the globe.

Due to the fact that the UI design of the original title was centered on providing a level of freedom only possible through the use of a keyboard and mouse on PC, we had to tweak our UI to accommodate gameplay on our console version.

During the process of developing a UI for our console version, we tried to maintain our existing PC platform UI as much as possible. Despite this, we faced several realistic development and maintenance challenges that required much time and effort to deal with, which even to a certain extent began to affect our development timetables.

In light of this, we attempted to make ends meet by recruiting additional talent to work on the project while also trying our best to meet deadlines. However, due to the overwhelming nature of the task at hand and the incidence of continued delays, we had to resort to realistic means of dealing with the situation.

This was why we decided to develop a single UI that will be shared across both our PC and Console platforms.

We are well aware of the fact that the User Interface is the very means by which our game is recognized and enjoyed by our users.

We also realize that a change in our UI--especially a UI that has already been recognized and established among our users--may entail some effort by our users to get used to. We understand what is at stake more so considering this was the case when we changed our UI in the past, as was the case for our adventures who have been playing our game for quite some time having a preference for the former ESC menu.

The enhancement UI may have changed significantly from what you used to see. Please continue to give your suggestions so that we can improve any inconveniences.

Couldn’t we just make multiple versions of the UI? This could be something you might be asking. In truth, the amount of time required to create UI is takes up a significant amount of the total development period. If we were to make multiple versions, then it would slow down our development as a whole.

Shai

The new class is, Shai.

Just like what you saw, they are adorable.

Shai is going to be a type of class that does not exist in Black Desert.

Unlike the other classes that are specialized in combat, the Shai are better suited for a supporting role. Therefore they have very few skills but their strength comes from how easy they are to use.

They wield a Florang, a huge boomerang that is the same size as their height, as their main weapon. And a special Viclari that has the power to heal and protect allies.

Shai and their characteristics of curiosity, cheerfulness, and their fondness of silly pranks are expressed in their skills.

Shai Skills

Their main skills are named ”Hop”, “Come Out, Come Out”, “Get Well”, and more.

The skill “Come Out, Come Out” discovers all enemies hidden in stealth in the area, “Get Well” heals allies. Can’t you also already kind of guess what “Hop”, “Go Away” and ‘Play Dead” are going to be?

Actually, specialized classes like Shai depend on preferences so in a development perspective, it was a lot of concerns. At first, we worried if it can be released as an independent class at all.

There was a lot of requests from multiple countries, we also have gained the know-how from releasing 17 classes and 17 awakenings on how to make such a class fit into the Black Desert world. So we decided to take up the challenge.

Shai class is different from other classes as it is specialized in gathering and alchemy. A Shai character will be created with Professional level gathering and alchemy. They must have this to be significantly advantageous than other classes.



Shai is the only one that can make bonfire through alchemy. The bonfire was developed to only have a social function, but it will have small added functions as well.

As this is a class not built for combat, Shai will not be that powerful. Still, she was developed so that she does not fall that far behind other classes when it comes to defeating monsters. On the other hand, Shai is given a unique and powerful skill set and role in war to support allies.

Not to mention they are adorable.

Start your journey with the three new types of donkeys that will be added for the special enjoyment of Shai’s using donkey skills that is exclusive to them.

Especially, enjoy the various Donkey skills that only the Shai can use to go on a journey. Unlike the video, you cannot ride the donkey backwards, but you can lie on your donkey and enter “Wander mode”. This is one of their fun skills that allows you to travel across Black Desert in peace. Start your adventure with a Shai today with the three new types of donkeys.

The Shai will be playable from now on the Black Desert Global Lab and you can start pre-registering for the Shai on our official websites. We expect to start early customization on the 12th, next week. Japan, Russia, Taiwan, NA/EU, South America, Turkey & MENA, Thailand, Southeast Asia, which includes all the regions will start Early Customization on the 19th so look forward to that.

As we release the Shai class, some of you may worry that we started changed our direction with classes.

Black Desert has always released beautiful and stylish combat specialists. This was a common way for developing, and the rules we came up with were too worldly. We had an unspoken agreement not to make classes that do not fit the world.

So the idea came to be, why don’t we create a class using a race within the game?

Starting with the Shai, even if they aren’t popular, our small goal is to release a new type of class every year.

Do you remember the image I showed during our last Festa presentation?

Actually, it wasn’t just a way for us to say goodbye, but a hint for a new class. Do you see the weapon planted in the sand?

We went through countless concepts for the new class and that weapon represents a class we’ve been mulling over, a male class based on the middle-east region.

We are also discussing possibilities other classes from different races like the Shai: Demibeasts, Rhutum, Fadus, Dwarf and other races to become a new class.

We have many classes made for internal testing purposes without any planned release date.

This is part of our effort to create an even more solid Black Desert world.

The Great Expedition

Although it may be the case that sea-faring content may not necessarily carry the greatest appeal to all of our adventures, we were quite taken aback by the level of interest and persistent requests for such content updates. The Great Ocean update aims to live up to such anticipation.

We tried to take a new direction with the ocean contents this time around. The previous ocean contents revolved around fishing, sailboats and frigates, and sea monsters. We believed that keeping to this formula would make it difficult to bring something fresh and interesting. So we have planned a whole new sort of ocean content.

Starting off with the addition of tidal currents and wind direction. If you are lucky or studied ahead of time, then you can travel across very quickly. However, if you were not prepared than traveling may become even harder than before.

Remodeling ships, hiring a crew, and using a variety of devices to sail across the sea and winning over the currents and conquering the ocean will become a new objective.

New ships are prepared for you to enjoy the new content as well. They will be very familiar to some of our Adventurers, they are carrack, galley, and the like. We paid special attention to how ships are handled and controlled so that it would be more fun.

To add even more depth to the ocean contents, new islands will be added and various goals will appear. Each new island has a unique theme and story, and has unique content like bartering. There is also an island where Crio and Papu are competing against each other. There’s also an island where you would just be awestruck by looking at the fantastic view.

Also, you all know about Patrigio, the emperor of the night, right? The truth behind Patrigio can also be found here.

Yes. The screenshot you’re looking at now is the Panokseon (Armored Ship) that is under development. We plan to add sailors to the update to allow adventures to man the cannons on their ships while playing alone. We believe this will provide a more active adventure on the high seas compared to our existing great oceanic content.





The Great Expedition update is fairly large so the update will be applied over 2 weeks. To start off on part 1, the new standard ship and new islands will be released. Then in part 2, contents unique to the ocean contents will be released.

We hope you await the Great Expedition with as much anticipation as the Shai.

Closing

This is all I have prepared for this presentation of this year’s summer and future updates. I hope you all liked it.

Recently, I had the chance to listen to some music on Youtube, during which time I experienced an epiphany of sorts. I was swept away by a powerful rush of emotions that made the songs I had been listening to prior to that moment feel like they were nothing. It was a moment that gave me the chance to look back at the work that I had completed thus far. I realized that I might have been too focused on fixing problems concerning the games I developed that I may have overlooked some aspects concerning fun and excitement. It got me to admit my wrongs.. Over the next few years, I will try to work beyond just fixing or improving the game and become a person that creates fun.

We'll continue to make new contents so that veteran Adventurers won't become bored. We'll continue updating so that new and returning Adventurers will say, "it got better than before."

One of the ultimate goals of Black Desert is to be fun for people that like action games, strategy games, RPG games, life games, and others even if they are just starting out.

We at Pearl Abyss are truly grateful for the numerous people that have began playing or returned after we started servicing the game ourselves. We spend each and every day experiencing pleasant surprises of the love you showed us. We are truly grateful.

Gift

I have prepared a gift as a sign of my gratitude.

Every Adventurer in Black Desert will receive a pet Wizard Gosphy. The Wizard Gosphy pet will be available through coupons that will be sent to your Web Storage so refer to a separate notice. (*It will be sent during June 12 regular maintenance for NA/EU).

Thank you!