Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

BDO: Is it supposed to be this easy?

Belmorn, the Monarch of Darkness is dead, therefore I completed the main storyline. As usual, epic reward was waiting:

This is really good dev humor, just like the introduction speech of the commander of the anti-troll fortress: "we don't feed trolls". Anyway, there were no further directions and I assumed I'm just lost in the sandbox now, destined to find my own stories. So I went exploring the edges of the map. I found a good trick to make it less of an aimless wandering:

Mediah, the expansion territory was still too red for me (46) and only introduction quests were given. So I went exploring the land in Serendia and Calpheon which I haven't seen yet. This means land where no quest sent. The edges were abundant with regions with no useful NPCs, for example the coastline regions between Epheria port and Olvia are totally deserted. So I kept moving and reached the forests around Trent, which were similar: only token friendly NPCs with no interaction and lots of monsters. I even made a "look I'm all alone in the wilds" picture before I was surprised with the busy logging town:

Then once, the NPCs at the destroyed roadblock started to give out quests en masse. Why? Because I reached level 47, so they decided I'm strong enough to face the Ruthums at their outstation and the Mansha goblins. Which is cute, because I reached level 47 farming Ruthums and avoided Manshas simply because they died too fast and I spent most of my time walking between packs.

No, I'm not bragging about my "leetness", because there is none. I still can't use the default controls and took lot of time to be able to use Ultimate Severing Light which can't be used from quickslot. My skill tree is far from the flavor of the month, simply because I can't use most of the skills properly, so I use what I can. I maxed the "useless" skill Shield Strike, because it activates when only right mouse button is pressed. Of course I meant to combine it with another button, but I press the mouse before the button, so Shield Strike goes out, now at least it's a maxed one. I regularly activate some weird combos when leaving too little time between movement and skill activation. Yet I've slain monsters in silly rate despite the game considers them "too hard" for me.

Are the target demographic is so much worse than me? I know M&S pretty well, but still, the game not even offering the quests to kill easily farmable monsters? It seems that while BDO utilizes hard combos and demand high reaction "skills", yet they guide players in a way that you can literally complete the recommended fights by randomly pressing the three function keys arranged around WASD. I guess the game is full of totally lost players and they aren't necessarily M&S, since they have no reason to ever consider anything but randomly mashing keys as their current performance leads them to series of victories.

This will be interesting. I don't know yet how, but it will be.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

For someone who followed your EVE adventures this is really hard to read. Instead of dominating markets, toppling empires (or aspiring to, at least) you ride a scantily clad doll across a landscape littered with scripted monsters.

I am sure you have some kind of master plan, dominate the auction house, sponsor world-firsts or similar but I can't do other be sad that EVE lost you to this abortion of a WoW clone.

Gevlon said...

@splatus: BDO has levels, so you have to reach max level to do such activities. I'm not planning to keep grinding, I assure you and the dozens of offtopic posters saying the same.

Anonymous said...

BDO does not have max level but only a soft level cap of IIRC 50 right now.
If you just wanna trade or produce, you do not even need that.

From what I have seen on youtube and co., most people that want to get to level cap as fast as possible grind monsters that are above their level.

So I do not think that the NPCs giving quest "late" should bother you too much or says anything about other player's skill level :)

Anonymous said...

You did relise from the start that mobgrind is the way to go for cxp. BDO supporters five you the information. And if you bother to search "black desert online leveling guide" in any searchengine of your choice you will land on sites like http://www.blackdesertfoundry.com/2015/05/05/leveling-1-60-guide/

On quests, you get perfectly fine quests for manshas, catfish, giants, skeltons etc. the warehouse guy in calpheon gives you introduction quests adn black spirit also to go to hex sanctuary to an npc Becker. and black spirit sends you to monestary.

Gevlon said...

@Anon: I was fully aware of that, actually written that. But I would have preferred doing quests which reward contribution XP for the dead mobs.

Anonymous said...

Mobs (even Violents) are not a challenge because they are not supposed to be. The challenge is in farming them at fastest possible pace - and some mastery of combos is handy here. The elaborate combos really come into play in PvP, where correct execution can allow you to slaughter equally-geared enemies despite their numerical advantage (I'm not that great with my Ranger but I managed to win 1v2s, some Sorcs from my guild can take on 4 people at once).

It also must be noted that best grind spots (highest XP and loot yield) are often heavily contested and fought over. Wars can easily start over them and PKing to shove someone out of a good spot is the norm.