Black Desert New Pet Breeding System Guide

A guide to the newly introduced Pet Breeding system added on March 23 to NA/EU Servers.

As of the March 23 Patch, you can now breed pets in the NA/EU version of Black Desert Online. We are using the new Korean pet breeding system which Korea just received a week ago. By reading this guide, I assume you know the difference between pet levels, tiers, special skill, and buffs. If not then you should consult this guide.

How to Breed

There are some basic rules of pet breeding in Black Desert:

You can only breed pets of the same species (i.e. no cat breeding with dog).

The two pets you are trying to breed must not have a tier difference of more than 1 (i.e. you can breed a tier 1 and a tier 2 pet together but not a tier 1 and a tier 3 pet).

When you breed two pets, both parents will die and you get a single offspring.

To start breeding, you must check in the two pets and then click on the exchange button. This will open up the breeding interface which you can then add in the pets. You also need to name your new pet offspring and select if you like to inherit any of the parent’s transferable skills (buffs), which I will cover below.

Buffs

Pet can grant buffs to owners when they are checked out. The pets you brought fresh off the Pearl Store are tier 1 and will only grant buffs once they reach level 10. If you want to have them give you buffs at lower levels, you must breed them to advance Tier 1/2 pets have 1 buff, Tier 3 pets have 2 buffs and Tier 4 pets have 3 buffs. The type of buff you get varies depending on the species of the pet you breed. Shared buffs are those that can be obtained by any species of pet.

Shared: Combat EXP Increase 3%, Karma Recovery Increase 3%

Domestic (Dog, Cat, etc.): Cooking/Alchemy/Processing/Farming EXP +3%

Aves (Hawk, etc.): Fishing +1, Luck +1, Fishing/Hunting/Training/Trade EXP + 3%

Monster (Snowman, etc.): Gathering +1, Gathering EXP + 3%

The EXP Bonus is capped at 3% per pet. The combat EXP buff is apparently fairly rare and people have spent lots of money buying various pets to breed without getting it.

When you breed pets and pick the Transferable skill option, your pet offspring will copy over the buffs of that parent. If your offspring happens to advance a tier and gain an additional buff slot, that buff slot will be filled with some random buff from the list above. If the parents have good buffs you like to keep, I would pick this option. Otherwise don’t pick any or pick the non-transferable option so you get rolls at new buffs.

You can see what buffs your pet give when they are checked out by looking at the pet window. For example I have two Tier 3 pets summoned and I am getting three buffs here (+3% EXP Alchemy/Processing and +6% EXP Farming). Buffs from different pets can stack and add up. However, the same pet cannot have two identical buffs (so EXP bonus for anything is always capped at 3% for as single pet). So here both pets are giving me 3% Farming EXP and they add up to 6% EXP.

The maximum EXP boost you can have from the pets for any specific category appears to be 9% assuming you have 3 pets out with the identical 3% boost.

Advancing Tiers

Part of the pet breeding is getting the buffs, the other part is advancing in tiers. Pets can advance in tiers when you breed them together. The rules for tier advancement are as follows (taken from this thread).

T1 + T1 = T2 or T3

T2 + T2 = T2 or T3

T2 + T3 = T3 or T4

T3 + T3 = T3 or T4

T3 + T4 = T3 or T4

As you can see, when you breed two parents, your offspring will generally advance a tier but in the case of breeding Tier 3 and Tier 4 pets it is possible for the offspring to go back down to Tier 3.

Levels do still play a factor but the system is predominately RNG based. If you want the best chances at advancing a tier, obviously breed two Level 10 pets. However, I have gotten Tier 3 pets from breeding two level 1 Tier 1 pets so if you are in a rush and have money to spend levels may not matter as much.

Special Abilities

Each species of pet have a special ability. For cats this is detecting gatherable resources, for dogs this is detecting hostile players and for hawks this is finding rare mobs. Through breeding, you have a small chance to switch this around or get a new Taunt Monster special ability, which can be a bit annoying.

For example my Tier 4 dog has gained this Taunt Monster ability and lost the detecting hostile player ability. My Tier 3 cat has gained the ability to detect hostile players but lost the ability to detect gatherable resources.

Offspring Appearances

When you breed pets, the offspring will correspond to the breed of the parents. If you breed two different breeds together, you will get one of the parent breeds. The appearance of the offspring can be different from the parent, even if it is the same breed. You can also change the appearance with the appearance change coupon found in the Pearl Shop.

Dogs

Cats

Birds