Greetings Adventurers,

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

A whole month has already passed since the start of this new year.

As January was the opening month of 2019, we tried to introduce variety of new contents during the last month to make the journey even more enjoyable.

We have introduced countless updates during the past, yet the last couple of months were especially filled with various important patches.

We introduced new contents without rest including Bartali’s Adventure Log, War Hero, Dark Rift, Shadow Arena, Central Market, Privacy Mode, removal of weight for silver, decrease of the variety of loot dropped during the early stages, removal of the Node Connection requirement for trading fish, revealing the enhancement success rates, Devour, and Territory War which is currently under development. (Some of the contents are yet to be released in NA/EU)

I decided to present this Dev Note today as I believed there may be many Adventurers out there who’d like to learn more about the newly introduced contents and the intentions behind them.



Adventure Log

Requirement: Complete the Main Quest in Calpheon (Looking for Adventures), reach Lv.51 then summon Black Spirit.

How to proceed: Clear the mission written on the log, claim each completion reward and receive the next chapter from Black Spirit.

“How can we make adventures more meaningful, fun, and enjoyable with riddles for everyone?”

Previous quests are mostly repetitive and passive as they were intended to deliver the story and guide Adventurers as tutorials.

Early on, the many quests worked together to create different ways to play. However, these play patterns started to become standardized as time passed and the importance of completion rewards increased. This resulted in some quests getting abandoned entirely.

However, the Adventure Log was designed with the intention to add various in-game experiences. It was not only meant for the new Adventurers who just completed the main quests in Calpheon that are still learning the game but also experienced Adventurers. There also isn’t a time limit to allow Adventurers to complete it at their own pace.



The Adventure Log was added for Adventurers to go beyond the existing quests and repetitive tasks to take on new challenges and experiences through various contents. Complete each mission written in the logs and enjoy the small bonuses for characters to gain.

This will allow Adventurers to try something fresh and give them a new motivation by introducing a new challenge. Instead of focusing on the growth of characters only, Adventurers can explore places where they’ve never visited, enjoy different contents never attempted and discover new elements all over the world of Black Desert Online.

There are many ways Adventurers can enjoy Black Desert Online. The Adventure Log can be fun as it gives missions to complete and try many of these ways. For example, Adventurers can fish Grunts at Velia shore, but they can also go out to the ocean, or find a hotspot where seagulls are flying over it. There is the common way of obtaining Black Stones by visiting the Central Market and defeating monsters. Then again, Black Stones can also be exchanged for using Hunter’s Seals, received as quest rewards, obtained from various random boxes, crafted, or earned by playing Shadow Arena. There are so many ways Adventurers can choose to achieve their goals.

We designed Adventure Log to be cleared one after the other whenever Adventurers are able to instead of completing all the missions in one go. Therefore, some missions are easy to complete, and some require time and effort. More importantly, the rewards are applied to all characters within the same Family, which is a great advantage to have when growing new characters.

Are you having fun following Igor Bartali’s past adventures?

We hope our Adventurers enjoy the upcoming updates to the Adventure Log and the various elements within Black Desert Online.

Dark Rift

Requirement: A family with at least 1 awakened character atLv.56 or higher.

Note: appears at random times, no penalty upon death, Boss HP does not reset

"How can we make defeating monsters less tedious?"

"How can we deliver an intense game experience within a short amount of time?"

"How can we help Adventurers that cannot play for a long time to grow their characters?"

As mentioned from the previous DEV NOTE: Executive Producer’s New Year Greetings, one of the solutions we came up with other than the introduction of Shadow Arena was the Dark Rift.

Majority of Adventures focus on defeating monsters and enhancing their gear and accessories in Black Desert Online. However, this eventually led to ‘boring’ monster hunts to become a necessary process and resulted in a tedious game experience.

In order to lessen the stress, we are trying to diversify play patterns in ‘defeating monsters’. Instead of repeating the same activity over and over, Adventurers can now enjoy Shadow Arena whenever they want. We also wished to provide an opportunity to earn a certain amount of gain without relying on defeating monsters. This why we developed the Dark Rift.

Dark Rift will open for anyone who completed the quest '[Awakening Complete] Memories of the Past'.

Upon completing the quest above, Dark Rifts will be open and boss monsters will be unleashed. If an adventurer does not defeat a boss monster from the rift, there can be a maximum of 10 boss monsters awaiting on the list and they will not disappear over time. After defeating a boss monster, the next appearance will be appear at random within one week.

By ensuring that the boss monsters do not disappear even after time passes, Adventurers who can’t be online every day still have a chance to defeat the monsters when they can and claim rewards.

Defeating the boss monsters spawned from the rift is no easy task, but there’s no penalty upon death and the monster’s HP does not reset. So even if the character needs better gear and advanced control, the boss monster can be defeated at some point in time if they keep trying.

Furthermore, we are currently planning to make the boss monster weaker as time passes. If the boss monster is left undefeated until the very end, Adventurers with lower AP will be able to defeat the boss. However, the rewards will remain the same.

There are many ways to enjoy the Dark Rift.

- Experienced Adventurers with a lot of play time can start the combat immediately.

- Adventurers who can only play for a certain amount of time every day can defeat all of the boss monsters at once and wrap up the day.

- Adventurers who play for a short amount of time can still earn a certain amount of silver just by clearing a Dark Rift.

- Weekend Adventurers can defeat all the boss monsters that have already spawned from the rift to start off their weekend.

We have created a new accessory box named ‘Boxes of the Dead’. It is intended to provide many yet various accessories for Adventurers. An increased in the amount of supply will decrease the market prices of accessories. This will provide more opportunities for those who want to enhance at a lower cost.

Items coming up on the market depended on specific events before. However, this new content can supply more items and reduce the amount of time defeating monsters to obtain a certain item. Therefore, even if Adventurers can’t obtain an item by defeating monsters, This is another stable way to obtain the item they want.

Along with the accessory box, Adventurers can receive bonus items such as Memory Fragment, Black Stones, Ancient Spirit’s Powder, and Dark Spirit’s Greed. Later we will update various boss monsters in other territories to make the content rich and more enjoyable.

Our primary goal for the first half of 2019 is to ensure our new and returning Adventurers to have an easier time getting settle down in the game. Also, we’d like to provide opportunities for those who can play for a limited amount of time to still earn a certain amount of silvers so that every Adventurer can play and enjoy together.

Currently, we have been constantly tuning the level of difficulty in order to improve fun factors by increasing value and adjusting the number of obtainable junk items in the early stages of the game. We are aiming to lessen the stress on new Adventurers who don’t have enough inventory and weight in order to provide a better experience.

Along with these content updates, we will constantly develop and make improvements on existing contents including new gears, Node/Conquest War, Horse Training and Life contents such as Trade for experienced Adventurers.

Thank you.