Eventually, you hit a point when you realize that grinding and grinding often is the only way to truly succeed in the game. The problem is that the game doesn’t really encourage you to do any of it.
Make no mistake there is a lot to do in Black Desert. About the time I hit 50 is when the illusion started to wear off. Then I joined a guild and began to feel the need to grind to 50 to help out with guild activities. I enjoyed all of the extracurriculars and leveled at a much slower pace. I was a Conqueror’s Package purchaser and during the headstart I found that I was so wrapped up in the world that despite the fact that it was proven that you could hit level 50 in a mere eight hours I quickly hit a point where I had more hours played than levels. On top of all of that there are thousands of quests, a trade system, an impressively deep node system, and a whole system of NPC workers.
Gathering, processing, horse training, horse taming, fishing, and sailing are but a few of the game’s extracurriculars. There’s a vast world to explore and tons to do in it. When I first started Black Desert Online I was quite enamored with it.
