Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

BDO: Calpheon timber crates guide

Warning: there is evidence that GMs collude with exploiters. Maybe it's not the best idea to play this game.

This post is part of the BDO Wealth Guide.

I wrote about my misfortune with crates, now I worked with them enough to write a proper guide.

Calpheon timber crate is a special trade item created by workers in a building with wood workbench. It needs 5 fir, 5 cedar and 5 birch plywoods with 1 black stone powder. It has no expiry and can be sold to any trade vendor. Due to distance bonus, it worth making it at one end of the map: Trent (one workbench in town, another in the next node) and sell at the other end: Ancado Inner Harbor. If you sell it for over 120%, you get over 140K for a crate:

First thing first: having high contribution points (level alts) is mandatory for this due to the long connection (you can also see some of my work nodes). If you don't want to have high CP, just forget crates.:

Second thing, transportation: you can't offline travel with trade packs. You can't reach Ancado on road with an AFK cart. However you can use the warehouse-transport feature! Send your crates from Trent to Epheria port (790 silver each) and from Epheria to Ancado (4100). Crates don't stack while transportation and you can't transport more than 100. A transport takes 2 hours but only a few clicks to send. So every time you come back from AFK, check the 3 locations and receive what arrived and send what's need to be sent. You can theoretically save 8 CP by skipping Epheria and transport on the Trent - Calpheon - Tarif - Altinova - Ancado Inner Harbor route but that occupies the transport system for 8 hours with 100 crates. And you'll make more. Just use Epheria! In Ancado there should be a permanent alt with a cart (just travel by ship and buy the cart in Valencia). The income should be converted to gold bars and sent to Altinova via warehouse transport.

Third thing, materials: while your worker empire can easily reach 3 birch, 3 fir and 2 cedar nodes (third is a bit expensive), that won't provide you enough materials, just about 30-40 crates worth a day. Having all those nodes and an alt locked just for 30-40 crates is a dumb waste. So you need to buy more wood. Fir and cedar sells around 600, Birch around 300. 8 needed for a plywood and 5 plywoods needed from each. That's 60K material cost. You should check the market often for new listings and buy lots of timber.

Fourth thing, processing: you must process all the timber into plywood. That's lot of processing since 1 plywood takes 20 seconds to make (4 processes of timber make 4*2.5 = 10 planks, 1 process makes 2.5 plywood, 5*10/2.5 = 20). So the plywoods of one crate needs 300 seconds aka 5 minutes of processing. For 200 crates a day, that's 1000 minutes or 17 hours a day processing. Follow the processing guide and if you don't want to process at least 10 hours a day (AFK of course), forget the crates. You can save lot of time by buying planks or plywoods directly when they are cheap enough. Important thing: don't forget the price of processing. Just because you process the timber, it's not free. You could process iron into steel or unsellable timber to plywoods to vendor. For example you can only vendor Ash timber for 70 each (560 for 8), but if you make plywood, you can sell for 2240. That's 1680 silver profit on a plywood that you will not make if you make crates. So for the 15 plywoods per crate you can estimate 25K processing cost. You don't have to process in Trent, you can process anywhere and use an alt to offline travel to Trent with the plywoods.

The material, processing and transport costs are around 90K. So your income is 40-50K per crate. What you have to do for it? Lock down your CP and log to the Ancado alt. He must be online for 10 minutes before using the trader NPC. Traders rarely offer 130% max price. If you or someone else sold crates recently, it's lower. Every % will cost you around 1K. I use to sell over 115%. If it's lower, I switch channels, which is more waiting and no guarantee that there will be better price. Even if you find 130%, after selling 60 crates, it will be below 115, forcing a jump and wait. While jump and wait is AFK, it's not long-time AFK, so you must be around the computer. Also, while your alt is waiting, your main is not processing, and you could make 70K in 10 minutes processing. Sure, you can process with your Ancado alt, but that means sending the materials and sending the products back and leveling processing on that alt. As a middle ground I send her Silver Azalea and she makes concentrated herbal juice and when enough are made, offline travel to Valencia and sell it. Before selling the crates, you must do a successful bargain minigame which is stupid, takes time and energy points!

So think about all these before jumping on crates! But if you do it right, that's another 10M a day with little clicking.

18 comments:

Destabilizator said...

I'm making other crates, but few notes:
- I've used all lodging available in Trent (5 guys) and set the workbenches up in Calpheon (those you can get for 2 CP/workbench), it doesn't add much time (especially with artisans with +3 packing skill - make 4 crates in one go, it's godly)
- I'm selling in Valencia due to Desert Trade Bonus
- I'm delivering to Valencia myself (auto-path to Sand Grain Bazaar), there's no limit how much you can overload your mount and it doesn't slow down anymore - it's still as fast as riding without Shift and you don't need to connect Epheria
- Overloaded horse doesn't slow down in the desert!

NightL said...

Is there a reason why you go to Ancado instead of Valencia?

Gevlon said...

Longer distance, less travel.

Destabilizator said...

Maybe something to consider, as you cannot supply all the raw mats yourself and have to buy anyway, what if you ditched all the nodes and bought it all, investing CP into more lucrative nodes?

Gevlon said...

@Anon: my route isn't the optimal on its own, it's optimal considering the nodes I use anyway. If I stopped doing timber crates, I could free up like 25 CP, the rest of the nodes would stay for themselves.

The third birch cost 2 CP, because I already had the previous nodes for themselves (wheat plantation for wheat, Beriarto farm for the excavation. Longleaf on the other hand connects to nothing.

@Destabilizator: these nodes are very lucrative on their own. So if I'd buy all my timber, I'd still have them and sell the timber. Which makes little sense, so I just use them myself.

Destabilizator said...

All great, but when you overload YOUR ASS with crates, you cannot sit on any mount, so overloading horse is your only option.

Ofc for transporting material, you can overload yourself (it's unlimited, but eventually you cannot move without mount)... but if you have to transport so much, maybe you should move your base.

Anonymous said...

What amount of cp is adaquate to start this?

Anonymous said...

isnt it better if you connect sea nodes from velia -> iliya -> Ancado , does it work?

Gevlon said...

You can connect sea nodes, but land nodes also have work nodes on them

Saito said...

How would you be able to make 140k per crate? I am crafting in epheria port, and I am shipping to Ancando. I am not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I get like 90k or so when I do this.

Gevlon said...

@Saito: check price %. Trader NPCs buy for different prices on different channels

Hubba said...

@Gevlon i would say if you are fisher guy go through sea and if not then maybe land , i dont realy see important nodes between altinova -> ancado expect maybe basilisk

Anonymous said...

I have all my workers in Heidel. If I use my Heidel workers and mats in a Trent workshop, where is the source of those crates? Is it based on the workshop (Trent) or where the worker is from (Heidel).

Thanks for the guide!

imacat said...

i believe that the crates will be sourced from the workshop not the item location

Taavi said...

It's based on where your workers and you materials are located

Biohack said...

People please don't use this guide to make crates. It's very out dated for the current meta.

There are numerous things that are no longer relevant. For example with the ranger awakening patch the minimum value of plywood was raised. The current price of calpheon crate plywood after tax, even if min listed, is 138K per crate. High level traders (minimum master 2 but realistically master 10+) will happily buy plywood for that price as well. As you can see this guide has you turning in crates, transporting them all the way across the world and turning them in to make 140K per crate, that also costs beer and BSP resulting in you actually making less money following the information in this guide vs selling the plywood on the market.

If you are looking for passive money just sell your materials either raw or processed (AFK processing is still good money). If you do want to do crating the desert trade buff you get at master 2 is mandatory. If you don't have it you will virtually always lose money or waste a huge amount of time compared to selling the processed materials.

If you want more info on processing without master 2 read this reddit thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/blackdesertonline/comments/5wsl1j/psa_you_dont_need_master_2_trading_to_make_money/?utm_content=title&utm_medium=user&utm_source=reddit

FFFam also has a great crate calculator on his site:
http://www.somethinglovely.net/bdo/crates/

Greedy goblin if you are still around I would encourage you to edit this guide to reflect the current meta. If you would like any help I'm the #2 trader in NA and make thousands of crates a day and would be happy to help you modify it.

Asterysm said...

Biohack, you're not losing money under Master 2, you're just breaking even starting around Apprentice 6-8 (at current plywood prices). But you're also gaining Trading experience, which enables you to get more money. And these packs don't rain from the sky, so while people are processing and preparing a load, they can level their trading and be at least low Skilled by the time they pack up their first full load. And of course much higher skill by the end of the turn ins.

Anonymous said...

Biohack always tries to convince people not to do trade, because he will have less competition to buy plywood. Once everyone got master 10 trade, they will buy plywood until there's no supply. He knows that, and tries to slow down the process. Fk him.