If you would like to watch a video instead of reading, FakeUni created an excellent node tutorial for beginners:
Hello and welcome back to another BDO guide. I would like to take the time to explain the very basics of nodes workers and how you can get started off with your Empire. In order to get started with your node Empire, you must have some contribution points, this is a third mini experience bar you’ll see beside your level. Contribution points are used for investing in nodes and for hiring workers.
Contribution points are earned through turning in by products produced from cooking farming or by completing quests. Regardless of how you earn contribution XP, contribution points are required to get your empire started. I recommend cooking for the fastest way to level up your contribution levels in the beginning. You may also use contribution points for various workshops, extra storage space, your own home and lodging to hire workers.
The purpose of this guide will be to show you how to hire workers and begin putting them to work.
Table of Contents
Finding and Investing In a Node
The first thing you must do before anything if you must find a node, most of the nodes are discovered by walking into a general area nodes and then are unlocked by talking to the node manager and investing contribution points into that area. Do note that if you have a value pack, you will not have to talk to the node manager in order to invest contribution points into it but you will need to have the node unlocked. This will also consume 10 of your available energy if you are to use remote.
Okay so the node in this example I will be getting to know that contains iron or you’ll notice that I can’t unlock this node yet until I’ve invested into the previous node that will connect to this one:
Nodes work like a pathway, you have to first build the path in order to send a worker to the desired destination now that we’ve invested in this we can now connect our Pathway to wear an iron ore node. let’s invest in Iron ore node. Once we have done this we must go a step further and invest in the iron ore itself now we have our Pathway to our iron ore node.
We can now begin the process of sending a worker there we get a worker worker’s require housing in order to be hired. In order for you to give them housing you must invest in lodging for them to live in now before I go further into this I would like to point out that all cities will provide you with one lodging, for one worker.
If you need more here is how to do it open your map and select the city at the top right-hand side you will see 3 tabs, click the middle one and then select a lodging in the drop-down, this will display all the lodging in that City selected.
From there you will select a lodging and purchase it for its price with your available contribution points.
The flashing houses are the ones that can provide you with lodging once you have purchased them. After the purchase is made of the cooldown will show how long it takes to complete after this finishes you’re ready to hire another worker
Hiring Workers
At the top right-hand side you will see an NPC icon click this and select the worker option this will Auto-path you to the closest worker supervisor.
Talk to the worker supervisor and select the contract worker option do note that this will consume five energy to do one worker if you get a worker that you do not want to hire you can view another one at the cost of an additional five energy.
Do also note that you never want to hire a naive worker. I would recommend you to hire only blue workers, orange workers or yellow workers.
Now that we have our worker it is time to send them to work open your map and select the node from their select the material and select the worker to go there.
Make sure you change the workload to Maximum quantity so they won’t stop until they run out of energy and then select start work congratulations you’ve now begun your Empire.
How To Manage Your Workers
All your materials that the workers have gathered will show up in the city Storage that you hired them in now is your worker continue to gather resources eventually they will become tired and need to be re-energized, there’s only one way to bring up their Spirits, beer. You can press the little pickaxe in the bottom right corner when you pull up your map to see the worker list.
This list contains info about which city the worker is in, what they are gathering and how much energy/stamina they have left.
Yes beer is literally the only thing that keeps these folks happy and on their toes you will be able to replenish all of your workers by selecting the recover all option and be able to send them back previously what they were doing by selecting the repeat all function. You can purchase beer through the marketplace or you can cook beer yourself the recipe is very simple and a great first thing to consider learning how to cook.
Promoting Workers
Now remember how I said you don’t want to hire those naive workers overtime your workers will level up and acquire more skills to make them more efficient at specific tasks. You will also notice that you will have the ability to promote open to their next year but be warned naive workers cannot be promoted promotions will take 24 hours to complete and they will have a chance to either succeed and proceed to the next tier or fail and remain the same.
If they succeed they will return to level one and their skills will recette proceeding to the next year if you have a worker you don’t like you can remove them by selecting them as selecting the fire option or by registering that worker at the worker exchange through the worker supervisor is there a keeping an eye on the worker exchange of sometimes valuable workers do get posted here and you will be able to purchase them for price.
Over time, your contribution level would become higher your Empire will expand and your passive income will grow workers can be utilized for more tasks such as up keeping farms and workshops I will go on to explain this in more detail at a later time.
What Are The Best Nodes to Invest In BDO?
If that leaves you with questions on what nodes you should be choosing from here be aware that unlocking nodes in the game help you discover more of the in-game map and levels up a total amount of energy you have to go to discover this overtime. This video is also helpful for choosing which nodes to invest in:
In the beginning, if you want to cook I recommend unlocking bees for nodes near Velia and these two nodes near Heidel, for wheat potatoes and corn all three of these materials you can use to cook for beer to feed your workers.
This is the recipe for beer:
You can also create an item called the essence of liquor which is a great item to make for easy contribution experience in the recipe is quite easy, just use one flour, one fruit and a leavening agent, showing the picture below
This recipe above is mainly what I used in order to grind all the way up to 300 contribution points, with the help of cooking. Dish with poorly prepared ingredients, which is a byproduct of cooking gives you contribution points when you turn them in. This can then be made into honey wine to make a profit, but in this case, I was only concerned about gaining contribution points and not directly profit.
Another helpful resource for finding all the node locations on the map is Famme’s BDO Map, which can be found at:
http://www.somethinglovely.net/bdo/
Right now I would like to leave it here and leave you with a very Basics on how to get started with your Empire when first entering the game hopefully this guide helps you learn how to get your workers started in Black Desert.