Windows 10 The Black Desert Online!!!

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi Everyone.

I'm currently downloading The Black Desert Online.
The game goes live in the US and Europe this week.

This game wasn't even on my radar until a few days ago.
I've done a lot of research before committing my $50 but it looks like it will be worth it.

This it a non subscription game, you buy it and play it.
You can buy stuff in game using real $$$ but I never do in these things and have just as much fun.

From what I've read this is a huge game, the download is 32 Gigabytes.
The graphics are fantastic I can't wait to see the real thing instead of the fuzzy videos.

It's a living world something like the Witcher 3 with crowds of NPCs and amazing detail to the environments.

It's open world with no loading zones and when you enter a building the door opens and you walk in.

But the thing that really sold me was the character development and customization.

I've never seen character design with options as extensive as this.

You can modify everything, from the facial structure to the hair strands.
And the characters are very realistic, (something that's important to me) I outgrew cartoon MMOs like WOW which was great in it's day but I've been spoiled by games like the new Tomb Raider, The Elder Scrolls Online and The Witcher 3.

Here's a Video....



And here's one of the Character Design options, note that the guy creating this is matching a photo of a real person...



It features player housing and lots of crafting options.
I've kind of gotten bored with The Elder Scrolls online, I'm on my second time through having maxed one character and started many others, I've played it since beta.

I'm currently also playing Rise of the Tomb Raider, (the best graphics ever in my experience).
But I'm more then half way through that so I'll split my time until I finish it.

I'll come back with some comments when I actually get to play the game.

Mike

 

[kemical]

Nice post Mike, thanks for the heads up.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I've been playing for a while now and I have a little feel for the game.
This is the most complicated MMO I've ever played and the combat it fun, but it's not without its weaknesses.

My main character a female Hunter (there is no option here, as to sex, the classes and gender specific so if you want to play a hunter then you will have a female character) is level 29 now, but she looks exactly the same as when she started.

One of the things that I look forward to normally is the fact that my character will look better she levels.
You don't get that in this game.

You can buy outfits in the real money store but that seems to be the only way to make your character look better, and it's not cheap.
To buy 10,000 credits (enough for several outfits for one character it will set you back $100 dollars!!!

That's too rich for my blood, I'll have to just stay looking the same.

The auction system doesn't work at all, everything sells for a preset price so you can't lower your price to get it to sell, so there is no real economy. I place 30 things in the auction and eventually removed 27 of them and sold them to venders.

You can make ingame money fairly easily, but that's not much help because there isn't really anything to buy.
I found a really good bow in the auction for a reasonable price early on, by pure luck.

But I've never found any other bow to replace it since.
There is on that I'd like to buy, but it costs 32,000,000 silver, I don't know how you would ever get that much cash together.

But the game is fun to play, you can start a business, grow potatoes, or my favorite fish for a living.

The great thing about fishing is that you don't have to be there to do it. I just leave my character fishing when I go to bed at night and in the morning when I get up I have 60 to 100 thousand silver of fish to sell. LOL

Well time to eat.

Mike

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I've found that an easy way to play is do the quests, but when you get into a high density combat area that is challenging but not impossible, just stay there after you complete whatever that goal was, (i.e. collect things from Froggers or kill so many of something).

Combat is the way to level up, quest may have some physical rewards but don't contribute a lot toward leveling.

I happened to hit level 26 at a quest location at exactly noon local time.
This prompted me to see how long it took to level up to 27 without doing anything but kill and loot the froggy things in the swamp.

So I just started killing them as fast as I could.

It took only 47 minutes to go from level 26 to 27, and got me a lot of loot, in addition.

So that's my pattern now, when I do a quest that takes me to an area with a massive mob I complete the quest requirement and then just keep doing them in until I reach the next level. If I'm already halfway to a new level that can be as little as 25 minutes of so.

I've not had problems doing the cooperative quests by myself, since a hunter can pretty much avoid damage, it's just a matter of keeping at it until the big guy falls over.

In fact about the only times that I've been killed is when my character gets stuck someplace and can't move.
This usually happens at night, when it's hard to see where you are going and run into some obstruction that you don't see in time.

I'm level 30 now, for the rewards you get is 100,000 silver, and some major boosts in skill.

I do still miss having an overall story like The Elder Scrolls online, I really got involved in the story and the characters.
In this game I always feel that I should be doing something rather then just wandering around picking up misc, tasks.

Other than fishing I haven't gotten involved in money making, I haven't hired workers or grown potatoes or anything like that.

The thing I miss most about the game it not having a working auction.
I'd really like to buy better armor and weapons but there just isn't much you can buy from the auction or from vendors.

I have about 1.5 million silver now but there isn't really anything to spend it on.
I wish you could by costumes with game money instead of real money, I usually am very fussy about what my character looks like.

But to buy just one outfit for my hunter would cost $30 in real money, this seems kind of excessive to me, and I don't see many other players who have spent the money either.

Mike