Table of Contents
Introduction
Farming is one of the many lifeskills from which the game Black Desert Online offers to its players. Other than farming, this game also includes housing, fishing, trading, siege events, and battles, as part of the game’s feat in a player to character customization by developing a player’s relation to its identification in the game.
For starters, farming in Black Desert Online has its basic need—to rent a farm. Now, how are you going to acquire land suitable for farming?
Renting a Farm
-Start by clicking the NPC button. You can find it right next to your mini-map at the upper right side of your screen.
-Type fence. This will allow you to see all the NPCs that you know that rent fences.
There are three options to choose from in renting a fence.
- -Small fence costs three (3) contributions for four (4) farming slots.
- -Medium or Plain Fence costs six (6) contributions for seven (7) farming slots.
- -Large or Strong Fence costs 10 contributions for 10 slots.
Counting the ratio of contributions to slots, the smaller fences would give more farming slots per contribution point. But the decision on which fence you are going to rent would settle depending on your circumstances. Small and Medium fences may cost you less contribution per slot and could help you save, but these fences time-consuming and take more resources to maintain. You are going to decide if saving a few contributions will be worthy of an extra investment of planting, harvesting, and maintaining. Since large fences are time-efficient, it would be the most advisable fence to choose from.
Another factor in deciding how to choose the right size in farming is your plan on how to utilize it. A crop like grapes would take two (2) slots. Other than that, you don’t have to sweat through other crops occupying more than one slot because most of the crops, except what I mentioned earlier, only take one slot per seed.
In contrast, livestock requires a lot more space than crops. For cows that need haystacks, four (4) slots are needed while chicken feed for chickens occupies three (3) slots each.
After securing a fence for your farm, you must think thoroughly about what you want to grow on the farm.
How and where can I get seeds?
-Picking plants around with hoe equipment can produce seeds. But it is not a good use of energy unless you just need to gather weeds for livestock or alchemy.
-Marketplace. This is also a place where you can obtain seeds. Just simply click the NPC button then the marketplace and go straight to the nearby auction house. You can see the available seeds by typing seed in the search bar. If you are looking for higher quality or rare seeds to trade crates, the marketplace is a suitable option.
-Purchasing seeds from a seed vendor is also another way to have seeds. Just click the NPC button and type seed in the search bar. This will show all the NPCs that you know who sell seeds. Vendors here usually offer different types and quantities of seeds.
The next step is deciding where to place your fence and seeds. Similar to the real world, a bunch of plants here in Black Desert uses the same information about plants. Growing in-game plants uses the same necessities in growing a real plant. Climate and weather are a few factors to consider in real-life farming which also applies to Black Desert Online farming. Once you meet the necessities of a plant, their growth would be finest. Knowing how to farm in-game won’t be difficult because you can easily know the level of temperature and humidity on the game through clicking various options on your World Map Filter on the upper right corner of the screen after clicking World Map.
Moving your farm from one place to another
If you feel something wrong while growing your plants–whether they are not growing well or you just decided to move them someplace else, you can always move your farm after the plants have been harvested. Using the options from World Map Filter will help you find a location where to perfectly put your farm for it to grow your plants well.
Farms can be placed anywhere grassy outside Safe Zones and Node War areas. Worrying about land ownership won’t be a huge deal in-game because unlike games like archage, you can overlap your farm with other players. Once you’ve remained onto your farm, the game will show you an outline showing your farm.
Managing Farm
Start by right-clicking the fence in your inventory. After finding a location and placing your farm, walk through it and press the interact button. Select the items you want to place across the bottom and click a location on the farm where you wish to position it. For seeds, you can plant it anywhere inside the fence as long as it is not overlapping with an existing structure.
Growing Crops
Crops only grow when you are online. If you log-off when you’re no longer playing or if you only play for a short time, your investments in farming wouldn’t be much profitable.
Seed
Each seed has a crop information window showing you the seed’s preferences compared to the farm statistics. You can simply access it by walking to the seed and pressing the interact button. After pressing the button, a window will appear which shows bars that upon sliding, will show you if your seed would improve or suffer depending on temperatures and humidity. Remember that this preference will only help you determine the best environment for the crops you are currently growing.
Another information you can access in the window is your farm’s water level. This will allow you to know when to refill to make sure you reach your production goal.
Water for Crops
Distilled or purified water is most fit for crop production. To find water, click the NPC search button and go to the nearest materials vendor to buy water jars.
If you are searching for an alternative way to get water, you can have your workers craft jars if you have workbench housing type.
- Take the jar to a fresh body of water such as a lake or a river, step ashore.
- Right-click the jar in your inventory to fill the jar. Filling multiple jars is also doable by placing it in the hot bar and using the corresponding number to automatically fill the jars. Filling the water jars falls under ‘gathering’ so it also requires energy.
After gathering some, you can add water straight up to your farm. The water would be more beneficial for each use if you utilize the heating feature in the processing window to distill it first.
Watering your farm
Step through your farm, right-click the distilled water in your inventory and you can finally water your crops.
Growing your plants may require pruning or blight treatment. These circumstances will cause crop growth to slow down significantly so this needs immediate attention to be taken care of. The farm indicator on your map will turn red, meaning your crops need to be tended. By hovering over the icon to view what you’ve planted, you will see how each seed is progressing and what particular crops need what type of care.
While you can tend crops or treat blight by hand, you can also send workers to tend to these farms.
- Left-click the farm icon in the upper left corner of your window.
- Click the list to choose the worker you want to send to your farm. These workers can only tend crops and can’t actually harvest or replant for you. One type of useful worker is Giants—they have high stamina and their working speed isn’t a huge factor so there’s no need to feed them often.
Harvesting a Crop
After hitting 100%, you can harvest your crop by basically walking up to them and pressing the primary interaction key(r) to harvest fruits or flowers. Using the secondary interaction key is also possible to harvest crops.
Pro-tip: You would want to harvest fruit or flowers by picking them between 100-150%. If your crops grow further than 150 percent before harvesting, it is most likely that you’re going to get less fruit or flowers. If this thing happens, choose to harvest seeds instead of using the breeding option.
Livestock
You can grow cows and chickens on Black Desert. Cows grow on haystacks, which in turn, produce milk, beef, and ox hide. Similar to seeds, haystacks have three (3) qualities: normal, high-quality and special. To make a haystack, you would need to gather 50 weeds by using bare hands or buying them on the marketplace and then using the drying feature found in the processing window.
With these, farming in Black Desert Online wouldn’t be that hard anymore. Happy Farming!