I want to thank Morrolan for making an excellent video guide, which helped when creating this guide. If you would prefer to watch a guide instead of reading, make sure you check out this video:
In this Black Desert online guide, we’re going to go over some general tips about progressing your worker Empire and then take a city-by-city look at the best nodes across the game.
If you’re looking for a node guide to building your worker empire as a beginner, be sure to read the Node Guide For Beginners.
Table of Contents
- 1 Hiring Workers
- 2 Promoting Workers
- 3 Managing Workers In BDO
- 4 Buying Workers From Other Players
- 5 Best Type Of Worker To Hire
- 6 How To Use This Guide
- 7 How To Unlock Excavation Nodes
- 8 Best Nodes In Velia
- 9 Best Nodes in Olvia
- 10 Best Nodes in Heidel
- 11 Best Nodes in Glish
- 12 Best Nodes in Keplan
- 13 Best Lodging in Calpheon City
- 14 Best Nodes in Port Epheria
- 15 Best Nodes in Trent
- 16 Best Nodes in Kamasylvia
- 17 Best Nodes in Tarif
- 18 Best Nodes in Altinova
- 19 Best Nodes in Sand Grain Bazaar
- 20 Best Nodes in Shakatu
- 21 Best Nodes in Valencia City
- 22 Best Nodes in Arehaza Town
Hiring Workers
For hiring workers, the first thing you should do is fill up empty character slots that you have on your account. Since each of these characters has their energy pool but they will regenerate passively, even when the characters are not online. You can then use these energy pools every few days to hire more workers there are five tiers of workers that you may encounter when you talk to the worker supervisor NPC.
Never hire the naive workers even if you are brand new to the game, they’re just a waste of lodging since you can’t promote them. I would personally recommend only hiring Blue(Skilled) workers, Yellow Workers(Professional) or Orange(Artisan) Workers. Promote Workers of all types until you progressed beyond needing them and of course, hire yellow and orange workers of all types whenever you get the chance. Orange workers are pretty rare and will only show up every two or three thousand energy spent so even if you were at the point decked out with you’ll still want to hire yellow workers just to level them up.
Promoting Workers
Promotions are more likely to succeed on a higher level but leveling all the way to thirty usually takes too long a good balance is to level a worker to 20. Then do the promotions back to back. You should aim to always have a worker taking the promotion test somewhere 24/7 as this is will be the biggest bottleneck towards your worker empire.
Managing Workers In BDO
You recover the workers’ stamina points with food such as beer or chicken. You can cancel the current workers’ task by clicking the red x button. You can repeat the task by clicking the repeat task button. To start a promotion test you can click the two arrows pointing up, the number displayed is the promotion tests you have left for that worker. Use the recover all to recover all your workers with beer. Then you usually want to click the repeat all button after you have recovered the workers, so you repeat all the actions that they have previously done. If you would like to fire a worker, click a worker so it’s ticked on the left side and then press the fire selected button.
You can manage the workers by clicking the button with the pickaxe:
Or if you’re in your map you can click the little pickaxe in the bottom right corner:
Buying Workers From Other Players
Sometimes it could be worth it to check you worker Exchange here if you can find workers that are low-level they are very cheap so these are really good deal workers that are maxed out at level 30 can be a bit more expensive. You just going to have to decide for yourself if it’s worth paying a tax and if you don’t have a worker that is currently being promoted sometimes you can find yellow or blue workers on here that still have promotions left, it’s pretty rare. The worker exchange is global by workers in every city, not just the city you’re in.
Best Type Of Worker To Hire
Now, in the long run, the Artisan human is by default going to be the best worker on most nodes, however, Artisan Goblins tend to be better on nodes with 1500 distance or more.
So if you click on a node without sending a worker there and you could check the workload and distance over here if you want to learn more about what these stats mean then I recommend checking a more advanced guide. if you get a good grasp of the ideas in of the stats you won’t ever need another node guide for me or ever again even when new content is added in there are some other exceptions with goblins. If you’re someone who goes for periods of time, like 8 hours or more, you might find yourself in this in a situation where giants are the best.
Or if you simply don’t want to feed your workers that often, you can go with a giant/human combo empire. You want to know kind of the ins and outs fit your playstyle and your schedule and plan accordingly.
How To Use This Guide
For the rest of the guide, we are going to take a town by town look at which nodes are a high medium and low priority. Instead of trying to max out a particular town all at once you should focus on getting the high-priority nodes across every town as soon as you. Then once you get into like a 150 to 250 CP range you can come I got all those you can use your remaining points usually for people in the 250 to 350 range to take the low priority nodes.
It’s impossible to take every node in the game even with 400 contribution, don’t follow these numbers to strictly they’re going to vary a lot from person to person, depending on what else you’re doing with your contribution. Just use them as a general guideline and unless otherwise stated you can always just sell the materials to get from these nodes.
If not in if you’re just wondering in a why we take a node or not, the answer by default is going to be too because you can sell it on the market for a lot of money. There’s a lot of factors that go into this based materials that you know the way yield, so all of that stuff is being accounted for when we decide the prioritization.
How To Unlock Excavation Nodes
If you can’t see these nodes, which is true for any excavation nodes in the game, the way you unlock these is like going to the node manager you invest in the area node first. Then that will give you a dialogue with the NPC where you can talk to them again and spend 30 or 35 energy, by talking to the node manager. Talk to them again, spend energy and then that will show you the shovel node and it’ll be unlocked.
Best Nodes In Velia
We start off by talking about Velia. Velia is going to be a bit more complicated than the other cities due to how many you’re going to get your lodging in Velia in the middle of town right here pick all these up as soon as you can because there are a lot of higher priority nodes around Velia.
And then you can also get two lodging at toscani farm:
So since lodging is so limited this is going to depend on if you have cash shop lodging.
High priority Nodes for Velia:
Iron and copper at Coastal Cave
Arrow mushroom node at forest of plunder
Ash Timber Node at Ehwaz Hill
Fortune Teller at Ehwaz Hill
High priority If Cooking:
Potato and chicken node at Finto Farm
Potato and chicken node at Bartali Farm
Potato at Loggia Farm
Corn Nodes at Toscani Farm
Medium Priority If Not Cooking:
Copper Ore at Goblin Cave
Ash Timber at Goblin Cave
Maple Timber at Forest Of Seclusion
Copper Ore at Forest Of Seclusion
Low Priority If Not Cooking:
Sunrise Herbat Balenos Forest
Ash Timber at Balenos Forest
Excavation node at Ancient Stone Chamber if you’re doing alchemy
The best nodes around Velia are the Iron and copper ores at the coastal cave, Arrow mushroom node at Forest of plunder and the ash timber node at Ehwaz Hill. There’s also a fortune teller mushroom know at Ehwaz Hills that you can consider high priority, but only if you’re skipping the cooking nodes.
Let’s go over the cooking nodes. You should be taking the potato and chicken meat nodes at Finto Farm, it’s actually the eggs that you’re after here the chicken meat isn’t very important. Potato and chicken meat at Bartali Farm, two corns at Toscani farm. All of these are going to be a high priority for someone who is cooking.
But if you’re not interested in doing the cooking you can skip these no so high priority if you’re doing the cooking. If you’re not cooking you can also take Goblin cave as a medium priority both the copper and Ash and you can take Balenos forest ash timber and sunrise herb as a low priority.
In Ancient stone chamber, if you’re someone who needs the Trace of Earth if you’re not doing alchemy you can probably skip this altogether.
Forest of seclusion is a medium priority only if you’re taking cooking nodes and you might have the cooking nodes but also the forest of seclusion if you want to send Olvia workers to the Forest of seclusion.
Best Nodes in Olvia
In Olvia the best lodging is 6-1, 6-2 and 6-3:
High Priority Olvia Nodes:
Iron and Mushroom Node at Coastal Cliff
Medium Priority Olvia Nodes:
Grape Node at Costa Farm
Low Priority Olvia Nodes:
Ash Timber Node at Wolf Hills
Copper Nodes at Imp Cave
I’m skipping some of the low priority nodes in Olvia. There’s a medium priority grape node at costa farm and then a high priority iron and mushroom node at the Coastal Cliff. Once you coastal cliff it links you to Coastal Cave and that’s what allows me to send my Olvia workers all the way down to the Forest of seclusion.
Best Nodes in Heidel
In Heidel, the best lodging you can get is the 8-1 tree, with room 1, 2, 3 and 4. You don’t need to get all of these at once, just get it as you need it.
High Priority Heidel Nodes:
Excavation Node at Lynch Farm Ruins
Cooking Honey Node at Alejandro Farm
Flax Nodes at Moretti Plantation
Flax Nodes at Costa Farm
Medium Priority Heidel Nodes:
Pumpkin Node at Alejandro Farm
Maple Timber at Northern Plain of Serendia
Fleece Node at Lynch Ranch
Pumpkin Node at Costa Farm
Wheat Node at Costa Farm
Maple Timber at Castle Ruins
Low Priority Heidel Nodes:
Silver Azela at Lynch Farm Ruins
Silver Azela at Northern Plain of Serendia
Flax node at Kamasylve Temple
So the trace of savagery is a material that if you’re just taking it and selling it it’s not going to give you a whole lot of silver every day. But if you’re stockpiling it for crafting and a future it’s going to be very worthwhile even if you’re not doing a lot of crafting right now. If you ever get into crafting it’s very worthwhile and it’s on the way to stuff that we’re taking anyways so pick this up as a high-priority node either way. Then next to it the silver Azalea node which is a low priority node.
After that we have a high priority cooking honey at Alejandro Farm. Then there’s a medium priority pumpkin node.
To the West we have a medium priority Maple node and Northern plain of serendia and a low priority Silver azalea.
Then there’s the fleece node in lynch ranch. This is the only fleece node in the game, which makes it a medium priority.
South of Heidel we have some high-priority flax knows one of them’s Costa Farm and then there’s also at Moretti Plantation. Pick the wheat nodes since we’re in the area anyways getting flax we might as well pick up the wheat, even if you’re not cooking.
If you are cooking then obviously the wheat is a high priority if you’re not cooking then just pick it up after you pick the flax.
In Eastern Gateway and get a medium priority Maple node and that paves the way to get a low priority flax node out in Kamasylve Temple.
Best Nodes in Glish
Lodging in Glish is straightforward, just take them all, start in the bottom left corner. Lodging in Glish is pretty straightforward, there are not that many buildings.
High Priority Glish Nodes
Iron Ore at Southern Cienaga
Cloud Mushroom at Southern Cienaga
Medium Priority Glish Nodes
Lead Ore at Glish Swamp
Cloud Mushroom at Glish Swamp
Low Priority Glish Nodes
Pine Node at Serendia Shrine
Best Nodes in Keplan
The best Lodging in Keplan is 3-1:
High Priority Keplan Nodes
Coal at Keplan Quarry
Cedar Timber at Oze Pass
Low Priority Keplan Nodes
Lead Ore at Primal Giant Post
Iron Ore at Hexe Stone Wall
Pine Timber at Marie Cave
There’s a very high priority coal node that you’re going to take as soon as possible. At Kaplan that’s you get the lodging here at 3-1 if you need it if you have grabbed that lodging in intake there’s another now if you do have cash up lodging. If you have cash shop lodging you can get to Primal giant post and Marie cave. That’s all of these like I said if you have cash up lodging it’s a pretty expensive connection so you can take this as a low priority.
Best Lodging in Calpheon City
Calpheon City the best lodging is going to be down here in the bottom left corner tucked away:
And then if you still need extra lodging then just take the ones that cost one CP and offers lodging.
High Priority Calpheon Nodes
Barley at Northern Wheat Plantation
Wheat at Northern Wheat Plantation
Paprika at Northern Wheat Plantation
Birch Node at Old Dandelion
Medium Priority Calpheon Nodes
Tin Node at Khuruto Cave
Excavation Node at Bernianto Farm
Birch Timber at Bree Tree Ruins
Tiger Mushroom at Bree Tree Ruins
Fir Timber at Phoeniels Cabin
Tin Ore at Behr Riverhead
Low Priority Calpheon Nodes
Birch Timber at Quint Hill
Lead ore at Quint Hill
The higher priority nodes out of Calpheon or going to be Northern Wheat Plantation even if you’re not doing cooking they are still worth grabbing these. Even if you’re not doing for cooking and you can just sell the materials to the marketplace.
In old dandelion, we have a birch node going to be a high priority. Khuruto cave tin ore medium priority. Berniato farm has traces here that we can get from excavation node. Similar to the if you’re just getting traces for the sake of selling them to the market it’s not that exciting but you might want to grab this and just stockpile the materials. Since this is a cheap node that we can get because it’s on the other nodes we’re taking anyway itself is a medium priority.
There’s a low priority connection that you can do to Quint hill which has lead ore and birch timber. Then some more medium priority nodes south of Calpheon, connect over the mountain to Phoeniels Cabin which gives fir timber and Behr Riverhead which gives tin ore and it also gives powder of Earth. Powder of Earth which is useful for cooking clothes so keep that in mind. Fir Timber is also highly valued for processing. If you are just selling the stuff to the market than medium priority is fine but if you’re actually doing a lot of processing then you should pick this node because it’s worth more than they sell for on the marketplace.
Best Nodes in Port Epheria
High Priority Port Epheria Nodes
Fishing Drying Yard 1 at Randis Island
Medium Priority Port Epheria Nodes
Fish Drying Yard at Serca Island
Fish Drying Yard at Baeza Island
Fish Drying Yard at Albresser Island
If you plan on doing cooking then you should use your free worker slot in Epheria to at least grab the fish node at Randis Island. I like this one over here that has the dried octopus since dried octopus has the only ingredient out in these fish knows that counts as Seafood.
When you’re cooking there’s two different categories of regular fish and seafood and fried octopus and it’s only the one that going to count for the second category. So you can grab that if you don’t care as much about the seafood you can get the one at Secra Island since its closer to town and just get yourself some more fish instead, for fried fish, good feed etc.
After that if you feel like you need more you can get cash shop lodging for Epheria. So you can either grab that where you could buy some extra points of lodging for one CP each.
I just picked the ones with the dried octopus. They don’t give a ton, but I figured overtime it adds overtime and then I can use them for seafood recipes. So I can’t tell really how to prioritize these as it all depends on how much you’re cooking and what you’re doing.
Best Nodes in Trent
The best lodging in Trent is in Behr 1-2:
High Priority Trent Nodes
Cedar Timber at Lumberjack’s Rest Area
Medium Priority Trent Nodes
Fir Timber at Treant Forest
Fir Timber at Mansha Forest
Tin Ore at Rhutum Outstation
Low Priority Port Trent Nodes
Silk Honey Grass at Longleaf Tree Sentry Post
Cedar Timber at Longleaf Tree Forest
Trent has a very high priority Cedar node over at Lumberjacks rest area.
And then after that, you’re going to come over here and get some lodging from Behr you can get bear 1 and 2 is going to be three contribution points, you can then take these two workers. You can then take the two workers and put them on the tree nodes at Treant Forest fir Timber and Mansha Forest Fir Timber node as a medium priority. Possibly a higher priority if you’re someone who does a lot of AFK processing now if you don’t have cash shop lodging that’s going to be it for Trent.
If you do have cash up lodging then you can also expand over to Rhutum outstation.
Best Nodes in Kamasylvia
Medium Priority Kamasylvia/Old Wisdom Tree Nodes
Moss Tree Timber at Shady Tree Forest
Noc Ore at Lake Flondor
Low Priority Kamasylvia Nodes
Noc Ore at Southern Kamasylvia
Pink Mushroom/Blue Mushroom at Polly’s Forest
The worker setup in kamasylvia is going to vary a bit depending on whether or not you have workers in the region doing crates. Even if you’re not doing crates the nodes around here aren’t very exciting.
Theoretically you’ll have one free slot in Old Wisdom Tree and one free slot and Grana. If you want to try and take this Moss Timber node at Old Wisdom Tree you can give it a shot but there’s a chance that it won’t even sell if you can get it to sell it’s probably a medium priority.
Same thing over here at Grana you can use your free workers slot at Grana at Lake Flandor at medium medium priority, its not a bad node, it also gives you powder of Earth. But again it just depends on if the Noc Ore actually sell.
If you do have cash up lodging you can expand a bit more in Grana a bit more; there’s another Noc Ore down here in Southern Kamasylvia, it doesn’t come with the Powder of Earth.
In Polly’s Forest there’s a mushroom node, the pink mushrooms here won’t sell but the blue mushrooms might.
Best Nodes in Tarif
The best lodging in Tarif is in Shuri Farm 1 and 2:
Medium Priority Tarif Nodes
Zinc Node at Omar Lava Cave
Coal Ore at Omar Lava Cave
Acacia Timber at Stonetail Wasteland
Cotton Node at Kasula Farm
Low Priority Tarif Nodes
Sweet Potato at Shuri Farm
Trace of Earth at Ancient Ruins Excavation Site
Moving over to the Mediah region. Don’t take any of the lodging in Tarif, it’s not very efficient. If you need extra workers lots for Tarif, instead invest in the lodging up at Shuri Farm.
Now when it comes to tariff nodes there’s three medium priority knows that we’re after here. There are a Coal and Zinc and Omar lava cave and The Acacia Timber up at Stonetail Wasteland and most of the value from these nodes comes from their processing values.
Best Nodes in Altinova
The best lodging in Altinova is going to start at 6-1 and then you can just work your way through the middle tree:
Low Priority Altinova Nodes
Iron Ore at Abandoned Iron Mine
Zinc Ore at Abandoned Iron Mine
Elder Timber at Veteran’s Canyon
Elder Timber at Gorgo Rock Belt
Purified Water and Bag Of Muddy Water at Kundid Vacation Spot
There aren’t any functional nodes around Altinova; there are iron and zinc down at abandoned Iron Mine. These nodes get rough black Crystal, but nowadays you can usually get these in the marketplace. There’s a zinc node down here. I think it is an excellent material to have for processing, but the workload for this node is too high.
Then there are a couple more low-priority nodes on the east side of Altinova. There are two Elder Timber nodes at Veteran’s Canyon and Gorgo Rock Belt. You can sell Elder Timber to the marketplace for a good price but it’s still a very expensive connection. If you do decide to grab these, however, make sure you also grab Kundids Vacation Spot for the Purified Water and Bag of Muddy Water.
Best Nodes in Sand Grain Bazaar
Medium Priority Sand Grain Bazaar Nodes
Copper Ore at Capotia
Nutmeg Node at Bazaar Farmland
Low Priority Sand Grain Bazaar Nodes
2 Iron Nodes at Crescent Mountains
Date Palm at Crescent Shrine
Titanium Ore at Crescent Shrine
At sand grain bazaar you have a copper node over at Capotia and a nutmeg node at Bazaar Farmland. These are either going to be a medium priority or low priority depending on the workload now I’m not going to explain workload in depth here.
Just go to the top right corner of the map and click on territory resource information, that’ll open up a green bar right here and you and look at the green one to the left. If it’s bar is close to the top like 95% or higher than take those two nodes as a medium priority if it’s below 95% like it is now then you can wait till later to take him so low priority. They’re not nearly as good when the workloads are low.
After you grab these you can work your way down to Crescent Mountain these are also low priority is to iron nodes that also gives rough black crystal and then over a crescent Shrine there’s a low priority date palm node and a very low priority titanium node Titanium. Titanium ore unfortunately even though it’s a high-value material the yield on the titanium nodes out of Valencia is very low so don’t worry about this until you’re done tell with everything else.
Best Nodes in Shakatu
High Priority Shakatu Nodes
Star Anise at Shakatu Farmlands
Fig at Shakatu Farmlands
Shakatu has some interesting nodes, because of how close these nodes are the town they can be very good at just depends on a couple of things.
There’s Star Anise in Shakatu farmland. if you can actually sell Star Anise on the market that this is a high priority. It usually takes a few days for star anise to sell on the marketplace, the problem is sometimes its difficult to sell. If you actually can sell the stuff and it doesn’t take too long or if you just don’t mind having it sit on the market then you should take this as a high priority.
The other two nodes at Shakatu Farmland, the figs are similar to Sand grain bazaar the priority of these is going to be based off the workload in the area so again will back out will come right now and the bar for fig is all the way up to the top. If this is close to the top or if it’s 95% or higher than take both the Fig nodes as a high priority and if it’s under 95%, they’re a medium priority.
Best Nodes in Valencia City
Valencia City High Priority Nodes
Date Palm at Valencia Plantation
Freekeh at Valencia Plantation
Date Palm at Erdal Farm
Valencia City Medium Priority Nodes
Pistachio at Erdal Farm
Silk Culture at Erdal Farm
Pistachio at Valencia Plantation
Valencia City Low Priority Nodes
2 Teff Nodes at Fohalam Farm
Because cooking is becoming more popular some of the nodes have jumped up to be high priority nodes from earlier in the guide again you can use the green bar to kind of assess the popularity of a node and if you see this drop behind 95%, these drop in priority.
We have a date palm node and a Freekeh node over at Valencia Plantation. Then another date palm node at Erdal farm. Now we consider all three of those to be high priority assuming the green bars high and assuming the materials aren’t too flooded on the market.
There’s also two pistachio knows one of each of these locations that you can mess with it looks good but I don’t know how long it’ll stay good so if you want it could be very good money but it can also usually crash.
The Silk Culture, when silkworms are selling on the market this is a lot of silver so if you can actually sell it then you can take us as a high priority. I find that’s usually the stuff just sits there and it takes like a week to move if it moves at all. if you’re in a region where the stuff is actually selling then take it.
So the Teff Nodes in Fohalam Farm aren’t as valuable so this is a low priority.
Best Nodes in Arehaza Town
High Priority Arehaza Town Nodes
2 Palm Timber at Areha Palm Forest
In Arehaza you’ll have one slot by default, you can buy a second one off the Pearl Shop and once you do that send both workers from Arehaza Town. If you can’t or don’t want to buy the Pearl Shop lodging just sent one worker from Arehaza and one worker from Valencia. But either way both of these nodes are recommended.
I hope you enjoyed this node tutorial for each town in Black Desert. If you have any feedback, be sure to comment below, I hope you enjoyed this guide!