Table of Contents
Introduction
Like many MMORPG games, money is essential to progress through the game and perform various activities. In Black Desert Online, silver is the type of currency used for sale and purchase. You need money to buy equipment, buffs, progress through quests, resources, and perform certain lifeskills, like trading, farming, or processing. Thus, it is crucial to find ways to obtain silver if you want to improve your gameplay experience.
There are different approaches you can choose to earn silver, from fishing, selling resources, cooking, and even perform some alchemy. Therefore, it is best to understand all the basics of money-making and choose the best paths that suit your needs and time availability.
Types of Money-Making Methods
Whether you are a beginner or an experienced veteran, it is always good to know all different ways of making money in BDO. These include active and passive methods that you can do while you play or overnight when you sleep.
Profits From Scrolls
Scrolls are a great way of making money at low AP levels. However, some players find it quite tedious and boring after a while. Since the only prerequisite to obtaining profits from scrolls involves possessing the said scroll items. You can farm them or purchase them directly from the central marketplace.
There are three types of scroll items:
- Ancient Relic Crystal Shards
- Forbidden Books
- Scroll Written in Ancient Language
For the Ancient Relic Crystal Shard, it is recommended to have at least 100 AP, while it is best to have between 130 to 140 AP for the Forbidden Book.
The Scroll Written in Ancient Language is the one that requires the most amount of AP, which is 160 at a minimum. Although these AP levels are not entirely necessary, they will allow you to obtain the scrolls faster.
Remember that the amount of money you earn per hour ultimately depends on how quickly you can execute it, the scrolls’ prices, and the memory fragments.
It should be noted that each Scroll has to be used in specific locations. To find out where you have to go, right-click the Scroll and then press enter. An auto path should appear on your map, which will pinpoint where you must travel. Once you have reached the destination, a small beam of light should appear. Just walk to it and right-click the Scroll to summon the boss monsters.
You have to kill the boss and complete the quest to obtain the reward. You must also loot the boss for extra silver, treasures, and equipment. Once it is killed, simply open your black spirit and receive your reward bundle. This reward constitutes most of the money made by each Scroll, and you also obtain memory fragments from it.
It is recommended to pre-order the scrolls like you see the people doing here. The difference in profit is huge if you manage to get them at 1.25 mil each vs 1.4 mil silver each.
Ancient Relic Crystal Shards cost 1230K each in the marketplace. Considering the shard purchase, you are still able to make between 35 to 40 million silver an hour if you stay in the recommended AP brackets. The profits increase as you reach higher AP; therefore, this standard profit can augment even further.
To create a scroll, you must place them in the plus sign. Make sure to turn off auto-arrange.
Cartian scrolls can produce about 50 to 70 million per hour. However, the final profit depends on the price of Memory Fragments and Forbidden Books.
Just as you did with the Ancient relic shards, right-click the Scroll and press enter to create a marker on the map. Travel to the pinpoint location and summon the boss. Kill it and loot him as well. This Scroll also has a chance to drop memory fragments, so be quick to pick them up. Finally, take your reward from the Black Spirit.
Last but not least, we have the Scrolls with Ancient Language. Although these scrolls are the most expensive of them all, they yield the highest amount of money. Combine in a plus sign to create a Pile Fe Scroll, which produces around 70 million silver per hour if the prices are good. However, the final profits can increase to 100 million per hour due to the extra loot.
Remember, this all depends on what price you are getting the scrolls for!
Overall, you should do Relic Crystal Shards if you have low AP and the Forbidden Books and the Scrolls Written in Ancient Language if you are at 150 AP level or above. Additionally, you can also check if the scrolls are worth doing. You check the Scroll you want to do, and in its menu bar, you can see the reward silver you will receive. Other players prefer to preorder because you can do some scrolls with lower prices, but higher rewards. The defining factor is the difference between the costs of the scrolls and the amount of profit made from selling the memory fragments.
Grinding
Although the scrolls might be the most lucrative method in this guide (you could make 1 billion silver in ten hours, but you can risk burning yourself), you can add other approaches. Like life-skilling and grinding, as a way to unwind yourself. Grinding is another excellent way to make money if you are a beginner or a returning player.
Grinding On a Horse with a Ranger
Before addressing the grinding spots, there is a small grinding feature you can do with a Ranger. If you have a Ranger, you can horse-back grind, which can yield around 30 million silver per hour in certain locations. It is a straightforward method since you do not need special gear. The mention of this grinding is associated with the presence of game events that involve random drops for mobs, which equals money. Take, for example, the April Fool’s event, where fake accessories were dropped. However, few of those were authentic and high-cost accessories. Rhutums is an excellent location for doing this, since it drops lots of green items.
You need a Ranger at level 56 minimum because this is where you reach the last absolute bow skill and max out your razor wind scope. These two skills are necessary for this approach. Next, you need a horse with stirrups attached to it so you can execute mounted attacks. Additionally, you can incorporate a buff, like the Oasis Food or a Destruction Spirit Stone, to increase your attack speed. Now, you simply ride around and kill the mobs with the horse. One of the best spots for this grinding method is in Elrics.
Other Grinding Spots
Helms
Helms is another excellent place to grind for silver, especially if you are a beginner or have an AP base level of 80. However, this location is far more lucrative if you have unlocked your Succession or Awakening and have an AP of 120 or more.
Additionally, there are elite mobs that yield far more money than regular ones, if you can complete it. They are in the caves. You can make around 40 million an hour if you keep up a steady pace and a good rotation.
Gahaz
Gahaz Bandits is an acceptable grinding spot if you have at least 175 AP. You can make around 50 million silver in an hour if you own Pets and kill Elite mobs. You need to be able to follow the rotations properly to obtain the most profit as well.
Blood Wolves
Blood Wolf is another option for grinding if you have a character at level 58 or more and approximately 180 AP. Some players have earned around 60 million silver in an hour when possessing good AP, loot scrolls, and RNG.
This spot can carry you all the to 230 AP or more and final profits do increase your AP increases too. Parts for infinite potion drop here also, which to some players are very valuable, it’s why I grind here.
Life Skills
One of the main mechanics in BDO is Life Skills, and some players spend the majority or all of their gameplay, improving their life skills. In the beginning, life skills might not seem an excellent money-making method, but it does become very lucrative in the long run.
Before starting, it is advised to purchase or obtain a full set of Loggia accessories. You just need to find the NPC vendor Camellia Loggia and buy them, and they cost one million silver each. It seems a lot of money, but it worth it in the end. Additionally, you can acquire a Life Skill XP bonus when you have a proper set.
Farming
Farming is an exceptional life skill, where you can make around 10 million silver per harvest. Each harvest only takes a couple of minutes. Therefore, if you do about three to four harvests a day, it can be 30 to 40 million a day. A steady amount of money for anyone, I would say. You need to have workers so they can do pruning and removing the pests without any interruption. If you want to level up, it is best to keep your workers out of it and execute them manually. This way, you will receive the experience and level up your character. I recommend placing your farm outside loggia farm, west of velia.
The best location to place your farms depends on the types of crops you want to grow. You can click on the groundwater information icon located on the top-right corner of your screen to view the water supply. If the place you want to create your farm does not have enough water supply, you can choose another one or water the plants yourself. You must keep your crops’ hydration level adequate, or they will grow slowly. An appropriate location to place your farms are next to Loggia Farm since it is easy to access it.
A crop usually grows in about four hours and fifteen minutes, which means you can execute three to four times a day if you have enough time available or coordinate your harvesting properly in a specific timeframe. Some people like to incorporate imperial cooking when farming because you create a useful resource surplus to create dishes and sell the imperial boxes for money. You can enhance your profit to approximately 60 to 70 million per day when doing farming and imperial cooking together.
Many players love this money-making combo because it is easy money and provides a steady and reliable income regularly. If you make your calculations, you can make around 2 billion silver in one month if you have discipline and efficient time management.
Imperial Cooking
As said previously, most players pair up farming with imperial cooking. With imperial cooking, you need to collect certain resources to create a recipe from different tiers.
You can make 10-150 million per day from turning in your boxes depending on your cooking level and contribution points. Once you have a stockpile of materials, it’s low effort too.
There are six cooking tiers: Apprentice, Skilled, Professional, Artisan, Master, and Guru. The Apprentice tier is where the beginners start, where you learn to understand the basics of cooking, and as you increase your level, you can progress to higher tiers. The highest tier is the Guru tier. If you want to learn more on how to do imperial cooking, make sure you read our imperial cooking guide.
To start a successful imperial cooking session, you must have enough resources to create dishes constantly. Most ingredients are obtained from your worker empire cooking material nodes, such as the Loggia Farm, Alejandro Farm, Northern Wheat Plantation. Although there are many ingredients necessary to make certain recipes, the basic elements you need are chicken, wheat, potatoes, eggs, pumpkin, olives, and corn. You must understand the mechanics of wheat-based products and fruit items.
If a recipe needs wheat as an ingredient, it truly means that it needs a starchy-based product, like wheat, barley, or corn. Likewise, an apple ingredient means any type of fruit, such as pumpkin, strawberries, etc. Other cooking essentials, like salt, sugar, and mineral water, can be bought from the merchant vendor in every city. There are certain recipes in each tier that are the best options to cook because they need basic resources that you can have on the get-go. These include boiled bird eggs, five grand chicken, grain soup, omelet, pickled vegetables, etc.
In the Apprentice level, you can earn about 10 million silver per day, and as you progress to the upper classes, you can earn even more. Although the Guru tier is the highest, some recipes are too complex or require too many ingredients. For this reason, most players stick to the Professional cooking boxes since you can produce about 30 million silver a day without fully using your surplus. I usually turn in master cooking boxes or professional when my stock runs out.