Character development | Main character Black Desert Online Guide
Last update: 11 May 2016
There are several ways to develop your character in Black Desert Online. Of course, the most important way to do so is level up. Apart from your character's level, there are three levels of crafting or activities connected with life, (such as fishing, physical training or trading training).
Character's main level - The main way in which to increase your character's level is by killing monsters. Due to this, quests that you complete do not reward you with experience for completion and they hinge on killing as many monsters as possible. However, this is not the only way to level up, because you also gain experience from fishing, or training peripheral skills. However, the number of experience points that you receive from that is too low for you to make it the main way of obtaining experience. The map has been marked for areas, where you can hunt for monsters and, as a result, level up quickly.
Life experience level - Life experience levels are levels of gathering, fishing, crafting, cooking, alchemy, mount training, hunting and trade. You level up, in each one, separately, while performing activities connected with them. For example, if you are trying to catch a wild horse, you receive experience to mount training. The higher the level of this skill, the higher the bonuses that you receive. Hunting becomes easier, you can gather more food and you catch fishes of better species.
Training - Training is yet another system that you can develop in the game. These include physical training, breath and health. For each level of strength training, you will be able to carry more in your inventory. At any moment, you can equip overloaded backpack and carry it around with you to train this skill. Your breath hinges mainly on your stamina. The more you swim (not necessarily underwater) or run around the world, the higher the level of this statistic. Higher levels provide you with better stamina and, which follows, greater distances that you can run/swim without stopping to "catch your breath". Life is the last category here. You increase its level by eating and drinking. Just like in the case of other categories (e.g. fishing or trading), health, and eating/drinking can be combined, which provides you with higher levels of two separate categories, at the same time. After you have increased life, your maximum stamina/health go up. This way, you can take more damage before dying.
All of the categories that you can level up can be viewed in the character window. Also, areas of life have been ranked, so players can compete between each other. For this, you receive titles that make you stand out in the crowd, and there appears an icon over your characters head, which specifies the position that you have finished at. Each of the abovementioned areas has a leveling system that you can additionally increase with special items. Such items are, of course, an investment, because they cost lots of silver. You can obtain some of them only by improving relationship between your character and an NPC. Such items, for example, are special fishing rods and outfits of traders and cooks. Each of the items also provides you with a bonus. Usually, this is a bonus to experience in a given area (of 5-10%). However, you can wear such items only after you have reached a sufficiently high level in that area, which is why it is impossible to use them during the first encounters. Such items are sold by the Luxury Vendor, whom you can find in every major city.