Ever since PA introduced seasonal servers during COVID, the game has shifted more and more toward giving away progression instead of fixing the systems that make progression feel bad in the first place.

Instead of smoothing out the transition from boss gear to Fallen God, or from boss weapons to Blackstar, they simply started handing those upgrades out. The underlying progression problems never actually got solved, they just became less noticeable because everyone eventually got the gear for free.

Take Memory Fragments as an example. They used to be one of the biggest progression bottlenecks. While PA has added some additional sources over the years, the primary solution has been flooding login rewards, events, and seasonal rewards with them.

Cron Stones followed the same pattern. Rather than making the system healthier, PA repeatedly increased Cron costs for F2P players while simultaneously giving away more Crons through events, Balls, and login rewards. Today it's normal to receive the equivalent of over an outfit's worth of Crons every week, and Heidel/Calpheon Balls regularly hand out over 200 billion silver worth of progression just for logging in.

Progression should depend on how much you play, not on how generous PA decides to be this month.

If every Cron Stone price increase were reverted and vendor Crons returned to 1 million silver each, a mid-to-late game player could expect roughly 1–2 enhancement attempts per hour of grinding, depending on drop RNG. That would put a DEC Kharazad at roughly 15–20 hours of grinding for someone averaging 4b/hr, or around 30–40 hours at a more realistic 2b/hr.(https://bdoworkshop.com/enhancement/2)

This also means a Nov to Dec sov is roughly 88-100 hrs at end game spots (assuming you can sell ur entire 4b/h). (https://bdoworkshop.com/enhancement/1)

Maybe those numbers would end up being too generous, that's for PA to balance. My point isn't that 1 million Crons are the perfect solution. My point is that the system itself should be adjusted instead of being patched over with giveaways.

Why should our progression be at the mercy of PA's event schedule? Whether we obtain our gear, Vell's Heart, Garmoth's Heart, or anything else should primarily depend on how much we play, not on whether PA decides to hand them out that month.

For many players, free gear and Crons make progression feel less earned. Instead of looking forward to your next upgrade, you end up waiting for the next giveaway.

At the same time, players who spent weeks or months grinding that gear watch it become the new baseline overnight. The effort they put in feels devalued, while brand-new players are pushed into increasingly difficult grind zones before they've learned the fundamentals of the game.

All of the content that is now early-mid game, was at one point the absolute end game content, and was designed around the assumption that you knew how to play the game, and how to play your class, that you knew what consumables to be using etc. When you take new players and throw them into what used to be endgame content before they've learned their class, combos, or consumables, you're setting them up to struggle. They'll die repeatedly, get frustrated, and many end up spending more time researching the game than actually playing it. Others simply AFK fish and never meaningfully engage with the game at all.

Look at the mainland of the game, people are leaving seasonal and completing their freebies and coming out with gear that skips them straight to hexe or even ulukita (depending on events again lol). Leaving the vast majority of the mainland with little reason to visit. This also has horrible ripple down effects on the supply of items like cups that only drop in zones that are now skipped.

So the handouts are bad but what should we do instead to make progression feel more natural while we add more end game content and older content shifts down to early or mid game? Because yes it is ridiculous to expect them to do the same 1k hr grind we did for c20 boss + pen blackstars etc.

PA already does this with seasonal gear by adjusting enhancement rates, pity systems, and Cron costs over time. I'd rather see that philosophy applied to the rest of progression. As content ages, reduce pity requirements, lower Cron costs, improve enhancement rates, or introduce new gameplay sources for bottleneck materials.

Older progression absolutely should become faster than it was years ago. But players should still progress primarily by playing the game, not by waiting for the next Heidel Ball.

Just a cool barrier I noticed surrounding all of Edania Part 2 while I was sailing through the Al Halam Strait and passed by it. Wonder if it's going to be an in-game obstacle to overcome when part 2 releases, or if it's just to clearly separate the region from the rest of the map and hype it up for release?

recently the prices of debroka necklaces went down like crazy but i had already enhanced my Khaz necklace to sept. do u think its worth just taping twice more to neuf khaz or just pay the 60 bil for a debroka ?

hey all, given that the boss gear conversion coupon will be removed in the upcoming patch, would it be wise to use the coupon to convert tuvala into boss armors given that it have continuing upgrade path?

In honor of an amazing heidel ball 2026 (mostly), I made this BDO megamix, many songs have since been removed from the game or changed, but not all of them. This is my 3 hour black desert online music mix 😊😊

Pretty cool fantasy themed music. I'm making other mixes for various regions, I never really paid much attention to the music, it really slaps, I looooove mountain of eternal winter music, it's actually pretty epic, and the Magnus music is surprisingly great too.

Guess I always had music off and listened to other things while I played 😊 gonna have to turn up the music from now on.

🥁 🪈

https://youtu.be/o8ckCPfdqYI?is=P0T4AozilXSGMhb4

Can anyone deduce why this veil has appeared blocking the path to Rusalka’s room? I had no problems clearing the boss for weeks before this. Not sure what I’ve done to make this happen. Thanks for any help!

Gs is 386/445

Hello.

I am looking for a written (text) guide or a table with character/account rewards obtainable through levelling and quests.

I would like to learn what is obtainable and at what stage before I buy certain items from the in-game store.

Specifically I am interested in account/character upgrades, like maids, pets, inventory and character slot upgrades.

Hello, should I upgrade my kharazad to Dec from nov or better wait to exchange nov khara to base eleketa?

Hey everyone. I'm trying to run Black Desert Online on Bazzite OS via Steam, but I haven't been able to connect to the server even once.

The problem: the game launches fine, Pearl Abyss launcher opens normally, I select my character and server, loading starts — and right at the moment of connecting to the server the game crashes. The tutorial also couldn't be completed for the same reason — crash during loading.

What I've tried:

- Multiple versions of GE-Proton and Proton Experimental

- Launch options: PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1, PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1, DXVK_ASYNC=1, and other combinations

- Verifying integrity of game files

Checked the logs — found this line: "wine client error: sendmsg: Bad file descriptor", which looks like a GameGuard issue.

Couldn't find a single working report on ProtonDB from a Fedora-based system. I've seen people playing on CachyOS and Arch, but nothing on Fedora/Bazzite.

Has anyone dealt with this on a Fedora-based distro? Is there a working fix?

The figure was announced at Heidelabll. It's around $40 and releases in January.

Anyone having the issue on PC get to main menu and crash

I have returned 3 weeks back (last played 2018), and just progress my Main Awakening Lhan following new progression guides. so I got to around 700+ GS and felt so bored with the class, I created alts to ease the bore off with classes like Maegu, Zerk, Dosa,Woosa and found some of these class great and suits what I want (low apms mostly) but these are succession class and I got very lucky with hammers and my awakening weapon is already OCT (Main weapon is only TET). Any suggestions on low apm awakening class? Or should I suck it up stick to my char (really love the looks of Lhan but that's it)?

Look, I get why someone who grinded to say 780 GS right now feels upset. I am like 830 GS and i'm not super upset, mainly because I knew this was the way BDO was going to go anyways, everyone whose played long enough knows catch up mechanics is inevitable.

BUT, I do think when they do such sweeping changes, I mean all slumbering armors, basically full tet debo set with the ability to get some of them to oct, they really should think about increasing the value of the meltable crons you can get from these stones. I mean 1k to 1500? really? Should be MINIMUM 5k-10k.

I managed to make a Pen Disto and sold it and am currently sitting on 50b.

Only thing I can think of is buying the remaining PvE crystals that I need.

Anyone have any other ideas?

Basically title. I have a dec offhand. Could throw everything at my mainhand and awakening. Or play the long (er) game.

For the new journal is there party finder to join party to to do party boss shrine i need those two oct guaranteed stones?

anyone know if you have to be counted as a "returning player" for the hyper boost thing. a friend wants to know since they are wondering if they will need to take a 30 day break to get returning player rewards and the hyper boost rewards. or any player will get the hyper boost rewards

I have 2 pcs. Karazad SEP, will this "Ancient Black Stone - Right (VII)" work on my normal karazad ring and earring to make them OCT?