What’s up, boys and girls? Welcome to this Black Desert online guide to the best ways to earn silver. Silver is a crucial thing in this game as pretty much everything can be purchased with it; upgraded armor, outfit crafting, utensils materials, yep, you name it, and you can probably buy it with in-game money.
So, the reason for this article is that I wanted to go through the top five ways that I think are the best ways to make silver. This should help you get on that economic ladder and allow you to start purchasing some gear or whatever you want. So let’s get right into it.
Table of Contents
Number 5: Horse Breeding
Coming in at number five is Horse Breeding. In Black Desert, you can tame horses in the wild and then level them up to a maximum level of 30. Every horse has a tier ranging from 1 to 8. A tier 1 horse is the most common, whereas tier 8 is the rarest and hardest to obtain. As you increase the horse route tiers, they get faster, have better acceleration, turning and breaking.
“But how does this earn you money?” I hear you ask. Well, you can only tame a horse up to tier 5 in the wild. To get any higher, you have to breed them together. The way breeding works is that the higher the level the two horses you breed together, the better the chance you have to increase their tier when you do the breeding. The fowl can either downrank a tier or increase by one or two tiers or even three tiers in some rare cases. The way you can make money off of this is by merely leveling up two horses to level 30 and then breeding them together. If you get a higher rank, then you can sell it on for a profit of potentially millions of silver, but you may gain no money at all if the fowl doesn’t rank up.
Another thing that dictates the value of the horse is the abilities it has every time they level up. There is a chance for them to learn a new ability. Some of these are a lot more valuable than others, for example, drift and instant acceleration increase the value of a horse by a substantial amount. So this is another way to make some good money. If you don’t fancy your luck at breeding, then you can always just sell freshly tamed horses or even sell the breeding attempts. Females have one breed attempt, whereas males have two, and you can place these horses on the breeding market to sell these attempts.
The only reason that this is coming at number five and not higher is because it’s a risky way to make money. You could either make millions of silver, or you could make a lot less, and if you intend to level the horses yourself, then it’s a pretty massive time investment. It took me about 20 to 30 hours of AFK riding to get my tier 5 horse to level 30, so it is by no means a quick way to make money. But if you can, you may get a decent payout.
I will do a more detailed guide on horse breeding in the future. I myself enjoy horse breeding, as I enjoy the chance element in it. So far, I haven’t been that lucky with it, but who knows, one day it might pay out big, and I could get the tier 8 horse of my dreams.
Number 4: Fishing
At number 4, we have my personal favorite, mainly because I’m incredibly lazy, and that is fishing. I love the way the fishing system has been designed in this game. The way it works is you can either fish yourself by casting a line, waiting for a bite, and then hitting the space bar, followed by playing a short mini-game in which you have to enter keys in the correct order.
So the way you make money through fishing is by merely selling your fish to a trade manager. Fish come in varying rarity, which is white, green, blue, and gold. White fishes go for a couple of thousand silver, whereas the goldfish can go between a 40k and 150K silver. As you level up your fishing, you have a higher chance to catch the rarer fish, so the more you do it, the more.
You’ll earn from it.
Another thing that you can get from fishing is ancient relic shards. These are used to create boss scrolls to summon bosses. You can either combine five of these to make a scroll, or you can just sell them on the marketplace for some quick cash. It’s your choice, but these bosses can drop some pretty good loot, and you can make quite a lot of money from doing it if you’re in a group with some friends, who each have their own summon scroll.
Different fishing spots also allow you to catch better fish. As an example, fishing at Velia will not net you as much rare fish, but if you were to craft a boat and head over to the deep sea or go to an island, you would catch a lot more fish from this. I recommend doing this as it gives you something to do, and it’s a lot more fun and satisfying.
The final thing I’m going to mention about fishing is that if you were to receive more money for your fish, then you can try selling to an NPC called the Imperial trade manager. These guys give double the standard price for a fish, but they will only buy a set amount of these in a set time. So if you’re fishing at a very saturated spot, then the chances are that people will have already sold all the fish possible to the Imperial trader, meaning that you won’t be able to sell any of your rare fish to him. So try and hand them in off-peak times for a better chance to make some sweet money off of this.
Number 3: Trade Runs
In Black Desert, you can craft trade crates out of various materials to be sold on to trade managers. You can craft them from pretty much anything; oars, wood, fish, elixirs, food, mushrooms, and much, much more. There are a few ways to do trading in this game, so I’m going to try and explain them briefly now.
The first way is by doing the trades yourself. The way this works is that you would get your trade pack and carry it by foot or horse to the trade vendor. The further you travel them, the more money you will make from it. If you cross the pack out of iron ore in Hydel, then it won’t be worth very much at all, a couple of thousand silver at most per pack.
But if you travel to the next closest town like Velia, then all of a sudden it will have a lot more value. So, to make a substantial up mark on your product, you should travel as far as your contribution points allow you to because you need to connect all the nodes in between each city to receive the bonus from trading. If you were to trade between a town like Trent, all the way to Heidel, then you could be making a pretty lovely up mark.
Other trade crates are also worth a lot more money, so an elixir trade crate could be worth around 100K silver at the city you’ve crafted it in, so imagine the amount of money you’d make if you took it halfway across the map. You can even carry multiple trade crates at once. That’s the potential for an awful lot of money.
So, that’s the first way to make money off of trade crates, but if you don’t fancy doing all these journeys yourself, then you’re going to get pretty bored of doing them. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could transport your goods from one town to another without the need to do it yourself? Well, you’re in luck because in this game there is a storage transport system. As long as two towns are linked through nodes, you can use the transport system to send your packs to your desired city. You can do it without even connecting the nodes, but it triples the price of your delivery, so I’d recommend linking them up before doing this. It can take an hour or two if the distance is excellent, but it doesn’t cost much silver to do, and it allows you to spend your time doing something else.
To get this started, you go to your town storage keeper and select the transportation button, select the destination, and then the transportation type, which is usually a freight wagon. Add the items that you wish to transfer and then press the send button, and that’s it. Wait a little while, and your details will now be at your desired town. All you have to do is meet the goods there and carry them to the trade manager from the storage.
Number 2: Life Skills
Coming in at number two is life skills, but more specifically, alchemy and cooking. With these two skills, you can make an absurd amount of money, but don’t expect it to come easy. The reason I haven’t taken this path to make my money is that it requires you to put a lot of time and energy to get your skills to a high enough level so that you can start making decent money off of them. If you wish to pursue this path, then get grafting. You’ll need to get your cooking and alchemy up to at least a professional level before you can start making some money off of it. There are a few ways that you can make some pretty easy money off of these, so I’m going to tell you both of them now.
The first way is pretty straightforward. Once you have a high enough level to do so, you should start crafting food like the Calpheon Special. This is a consumable which provides players with buffs, which helped them out with grinding. However, a lot of people, myself included, can’t be bothered to craft this themselves, so they will simply purchase them off at the marketplace. The materials required to make this aren’t too demanding, and you’ll find that they will sell pretty damn quickly. You can use this method to make some quick and easy money, and you can also do this with alchemy. Elixirs ones, like the elixir of hunting, are pretty damn popular because they increase the grinding speed for players, so this would make for some quick and easy cash.
If you don’t fancy using the first method, then the second way to go about it is by making trade crates of these items. I mentioned this earlier when I was talking about trade runs, but if you combined train runs and alchemy trade crates, then you’re in for some serious cash. Like I said earlier, if you mix a variety of elixirs to make a trade crate, this will be worth over a hundred thousand silver, so that is a way to make pretty massive money off of life skills in this game.
Number 1: Grinding
So that means that my favorite way to earn money in Black Desert Online is, of course, grinding. While this may not be the funniest way to make money in this game, it’s the most stable.
Things like horse breeding, trading, or whatever could earn you big money, but grinding is the best way to make a guaranteed and steady income. A lot of mobs in this game dropped collectible and tradable items, for example, catfish drop a powder which, if you obtain a hundred of these, you can trade them to an NPC for around sixty thousand silver. These items have a very high drop rate, and it does not take long to accumulate a lot of them. Trash at higher end spots have alot higher value such as Aakman which gives 7500 silver
A lot of mobs in this game dropped collectible and tradable items, for example, catfish drop a powder which, if you obtain a hundred of these, you can trade them to an NPC for around sixty thousand silver. These items have a very high drop rate, and it does not take long to accumulate a lot of them.
The second thing is that grinding is excellent for obtaining random world drops, like black stones, relic shards, forbidden books, or even armor and weapons. You can either use these drops to supplement your income or use them to improve and upgrade your character. Different grinding spots offer varying amounts of average income. Places like catfish can net me around 1.5 to 2 million an hour, whereas somewhere else like Elric can provide closer to 3 to 4 million an hour. Still, you need to keep in mind that the amount of money you earn can vary, depending on your gear and the number of rare drops that you get while you’re there.
There is a stat in the game called luck, which if you obtain it through items like lucky underwear or crystals will give plus luck, then you can get up to 5 luck. This increases the drop chance of rare items, so it’s worth utilizing this if you have some spare crystal slots to use. If you don’t fancy grinding for a lower yet stable income, then maybe you want to try your luck out at getting some infrequent item drops. Grinding around places like the Witches Chapel will give you a chance to obtain a very sought-after witches earring. This is either a lovely accessory to gain some AP, or you can sell it on at the auction house for around 9 million silver.
Still not enough money for you? Well then, it’s time to go and try your luck at killing some ogres then. These guys can drop an item called the Ogres Ring, which is worth over 50 million silver. If you get that, you’ll be on to a very lovely payday indeed. Keep in mind, guys, that these prices are subject to change, as the western version may have the marketplace prices adjusted.
There’s a lot more I could tell you about grinding and how to do it efficiently, but that’s something I’ll cover at a later date. If you can’t wait for that, then I suggest checking out some grinding guides. There is a lot of useful information about how to maximize your income in any given spot.
Good Luck and Have Fun
So that’s it for now, guys. Now you know my top 5 ways of earning silver if this has been helpful for you or if you’ve just enjoyed it, then please do drop let me know. For Black Desert content, until next time, guys take it easy and peace out.