Black Desert Online Life Skills Guide

Black Desert Online isn’t just about epic battles and flashy combos—there’s a whole world of activity waiting for those who take an interest in life skills. Whether you find peace in farming, the thrill of hunting rare fish, or satisfaction in crafting, these non-combat pursuits offer a different way to shape your adventure in the world of Black Desert. Many players find that spending time on gathering, cooking, or trading can be just as rewarding as conquering monsters, especially when it comes to earning silver, unlocking unique items, or simply enjoying a change of pace from the constant action. If you’ve ever wondered how life skills actually work or why so many players swear by them, a closer look might show just how much depth and flexibility they bring to the game.

Processing Guide

Processing is one of Black Desert Online’s core life skills, letting you transform raw materials into refined products. It’s not just busywork—it’s a crucial step to progress up the economic ladder, whether you’re outfitting a trade empire, cooking rare feasts, or pushing your gear through those intimidating enhancement stages. Here’s how you can get started, level up, and turn simple resources into real silver.

What Is Processing?

Processing is the act of refining gathered materials into more valuable products. Think of turning wood into planks, iron ore into melted shards, or raw hides into leather. You use processing almost everywhere in BDO—from simple trade crates for imperial delivery, crafting weapons, cooking, alchemy, and more.

Processing comes in several types, each accessible from a single processing menu:

• Shaking (mixing ingredients)
• Grinding (pulverizing)
• Chopping (cutting up timber)
• Drying (removing moisture, requires sunny weather or in-house)
• Filtering (sifting special items, like feathers)
• Heating (smelting metals)

Access the processing menu by pressing L.

Basic Requirements

To start processing, you just need some raw materials and a basic knowledge of the process. The good news: Anyone can process right from the start! For more advanced processing, such as crafting plywood or pure crystals, you’ll need to finish certain quests or level up the processing skill.

• Beginner Processing: No requirements, all accounts start here.
• Higher Levels: Crafting plywood, brass ingots, etc., requires higher processing ranks and quest completions.

Tools and Gear

• No tools required for basic processing. Some processes (like drying) need you to be outdoors and during clear weather (unless you use a residence).
• Processing costume: Optional, but wearing the Silver Embroidered Craftsman Clothes boosts experience gain and auto-processing time.
• Processing Stone: Used for mass processing (lets you process items in batches). Limited by your mastery and stone type.

How To Process Step by Step

1. Gather ingredients: You can get these from gathering, farming, fishing, or the marketplace.
2. Open the Processing menu (L).
3. Choose the method: Pick Shaking, Grinding, Heating, Chopping, Drying, or Filtering.
4. Put in the materials. (For example, two pieces of rough stone under Heating will get you melted iron shards.)
5. Click Start. Watch your character get to work.

You’ll see the processed item pop up in your inventory if successful.

Types of Processing

Let’s break down when (and why) you’ll use each method:

• Shaking: Blending things, like making dough (flour + mineral water) for cooking.
• Grinding: Making powder from ores (ex: Rough stone > Powder of Time).
• Chopping: Turning logs into timber, or timber into planks (and then to plywood).
• Drying: Used for fish, meat, hides—also for making feed. Weather matters!
• Filtering: Gets used mainly with feathers—turning light feathers into finer feathers.
• Heating: Smelting ores, like iron or copper, into melted shards, then ingots.

Leveling Processing Fast

Your processing skill rises each time you finish a successful batch. The higher your skill, the faster you go (and the more types of processing you unlock).

• Fastest leveling: Process large stacks of basic materials, like timber, ores, or wheat, which are plentiful and cheap.
• Auto-processing: Use a processing stone to process stacks of items at once.
• Outfit matters: Silver Embroidered Craftsman’s Clothes (Processing) adds extra EXP and some speed—worth picking up early.
• Daily quests: Several cities feature repeatable processing quests for experience rewards.

The key here? Volume. Select a cheap resource, buy or gather in bulk, and let your processing run while you do something else (or leave it overnight if you trust your energy bar and PC).

Mass Processing

After hitting Artisan 1 Processing and completing the quest “Mass Production” (given by Black Spirit), you unlock mass processing. This is huge—it lets you process up to 10 batches at once, saving hours of time. Pair this with processing stones and mastery gear for the best results.

To mass process:

• Acquire a processing stone from the marketplace (e.g., Sharp, Brilliant).
• Equip the stone and hit the “Mass Process” button in the processing window (L).
• Keep an eye on your stamina and processing resources.

Processing Mastery and Gear

Processing mastery is a stat that increases the quantity output and speed. It comes from gear, accessories, and certain foods:

• Manos Processing Stone: The best—grants speed and extra yields.
• Life mastery accessories: Rings, earrings, belts, and necklaces boost all life skills.
• Foods and elixirs: Seafood Cron Meals or alchemy elixirs can add small buffs.

Mastery gear can get expensive, but it pays off once you’re turning thousands of logs or ore piles into refined goods.

Tips and Quality of Life Tricks

• Always process in safe areas—cities, storage towns, or your residence, especially when AFK.
• Stack weight and inventory: Processing generates lots of items, so keep your weight limit in mind.
• Marketplace flipping: Sometimes you can profit just by processing cheap marketplace resources and selling the refined products.

What To Do With Processed Goods

Once you’ve built up a stockpile of processed items:

• Craft gear: Blacksmiths and crafters use these for weapons, armor, tools.
• Cooking/alchemy: Grains, powders, flour, and oils go right into recipes.
• Imperial Delivery: Trade NPCs buy certain processed items in bulk for silver.
• Node workers: Workers chew through processed materials for town upgrades and workshops.
• Marketplace sales: Some processed goods fetch high prices, especially mid-tier items like plywoods and pure metals.

Conclusion

Processing in Black Desert Online isn’t flashy, but it’s a real moneymaker and makes every other life skill more efficient. Set yourself up with big stacks of basics, upgrade your outfit and stones over time, and watch your storage fill with valuable goods—no monster hunting required. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll see why so many BDO veterans swear by their processing empires.

Cooking Guide

Cooking is one of Black Desert Online’s core life skills. Whether you’re after passive silver, imperial turn-in boxes, or self-sufficiency in buffs, mastering the kitchen opens all kinds of paths. It’s approachable for new and seasoned players and builds the backbone for most food buffs you’ll rely on during endgame grinds. Here’s everything you need to whip up a culinary empire.

Getting Started with Cooking

To begin cooking, you need a Cooking Utensil and a house (residence). Both are easy to grab in your starting city. Use the map, pick a house with a bed symbol, and click "Purchase Residence." Cooking Utensils come from the marketplace, general goods vendors, or can be crafted later for durability.

Utensil types

• Cheap Cooking Utensil: Early game and cheap; low durability.
• Advanced Cooking Utensil: Lasts longer; often bought from the marketplace.
• Balenos/Intermediate/Professional: More durable; crafted or bought from other players, good for heavy cooks.

Once you have your residence and utensil, press [P] to check your life skills. Select "Cooking," place the utensil in your house, and interact with it. You’re ready to start!

Ingredients and Sourcing

Most basic recipes need grains, meats, veggies, and a handful of vendor items (mineral water, sugar, salt, cooking wine, vinegar, etc.). You can buy these vendor items cheaply from cooking vendors in major towns. Grains and meat must be gathered or farmed, unless you buy off the marketplace.

Sources

• Grains: Wheat, Barley, Corn, Potatoes, Sweet Potato—gathered, farmed, or bought.
• Meat: Butcher wildlife or farm animals.
• Fish: Useful for certain recipes, caught or bought.
• Vegetables: Grown in gardens, gathered from specific spots, or bought for a price.
• Milk: Gather by mini-game from cows; essential for butter/cheese.

Resource management is your biggest hurdle at first. For bulk cooking, consider setting up worker nodes for grains and using alt characters or pets for gathering meat.

The Cooking Process

Interact with your utensil in your residence. The cooking window lets you add ingredients and lock in recipes. Once you’ve cooked something, it appears in your “recent recipes” list, making repeating it easier.

Basic Steps

1. Interact with your Cooking Utensil in your house.
2. Add ingredients in the recipe slots.
3. Double-check quantities (using fewer than the listed amount sometimes works, due to hidden minimums—but stick to recipes for consistency).
4. Click Start Cooking. You can batch-cook multiple times by selecting “Continuous Production” and entering an amount or just letting it max out according to ingredients and durability.

Recipe Example

Beer is the most common early recipe.

• 5x Grain (any type: wheat, potato, etc.)
• 1x Sugar
• 2x Leavening Agent
• 6x Mineral Water

Beer fuels worker stamina and always sells on the marketplace, so it’s a go-to for beginner profits.

Leveling Your Cooking Skill

Your cooking level increases every time you complete a dish. The fastest way to train is continual mass-cooking of a simple item. Beer, grilled bird meat, or boiled eggs are all good, cheap options. Higher-tier recipes raise your skill a little faster, but eat through resources.

Tips to level up quicker:

• Buy and use Silver Embroidered Cook’s Clothes for more EXP.
• Food/Elixirs like Seafood Cron Meal and Milk Tea speed up cooking and add EXP.
• Quests: Cities like Velia, Heidel, and Calpheon offer daily and side quests with solid cooking EXP rewards.
• Utensil upgrades: More durable tools keep you cooking longer before swapping.

Byproducts: What's Up With Weird Drops?

Every cooking session can yield a byproduct—a quirky item like “Dish with Poorly Prepared Ingredients.” These can be swapped at the cook vendor for milk, beer, contribution points, or high-cook XP. Never toss them. Save them up and turn in once a week.

Mass Cooking and Mastery

Hitting Artisan 1 Cooking and finishing the “Artisan Cooking” quest opens mass cooking with Advanced Cooking Utensils. Equip a Loggia, Geranoa, or Manos Cook’s Utensil for increased batch sizes (Mastery gear).

• Higher Mastery: More dishes per batch, higher odds of special dish procs.
• Manos Clothes/Accessories: Boosts speed, more output.
• Continuous production now works for massive stacks, excellent for imperial cooking.

Imperial Cooking: Turning Food Into Silver

Imperial Cooking lets you convert stacks of food into boxes for big payouts with the Imperial Craft Delivery NPC. Each box type requires a set recipe, tier, and quantity.

• Check box requirements: Vary each day and by region.
• Profit scaling: Boxes sell at a fixed price—very profitable with bulk resources.
• Contribution EXP: Extra points for each turn-in, helping node investment.

NPCs reset stock at 00:00 UTC. Early turn-ins get priority, so prep boxes in advance and wait near the vendor before reset if you’re serious about profits.

Cooking Buffs and Uses

You can cook your own food buffs for combat, life skilling, and sailing. Meals like Simple Cron, Seafood Cron Meal, and Knights Combat Rations offer handy buffs for just about any purpose. The best meals often combine three or more simple dishes.

Common uses for cooking

• Worker stamina: Beer is essential.
• Buffs: Tailor meals to your grind/farm/fight.
• Marketplace: Sell high-demand dishes for profit.
• Imperial boxes: Reliable, capped daily silver.
• Family Fame: Raising Cooking skill and making silver increases your passive weekly payment.

Quality of Life Cooking Tips

• Warehouse cooking: Stock your house with ingredients from storage to speed things up.
• Residence location: Pick a house near a storage NPC for easy re-supplies.
• Tool layout: Line up multiple utensils in the same house if you cook in mega-batches.
• Auto-path for ingredients: Right-click items in the recipe to find and buy from the correct NPC.

Conclusion

Cooking in Black Desert Online is approachable but deep. With the right setup, you can make silver on the side, never run out of worker beer, and push for mastery-level profits through imperial turn-ins. Keep your kitchen stocked, batch-cook often, and watch both your bank account and cooking experience grow.

Alchemy Guide

Alchemy stands as one of Black Desert Online’s trickier life skills, but mastering it opens up big opportunities for silver, valuable buffs, and trade items that other players always need. Here’s a practical rundown on how to get started, what you’ll need, and how to level it up fast.

What Is Alchemy Used For?

Alchemy is all about mixing raw materials into potions, elixirs, crystals, damage-enhancing stones, and reagents. You’ll use it to craft combat buffs, life skill boosters, and necessary materials for endgame gear upgrades. Some popular items include:

• Elixirs: Buffs for combat, gathering, fishing, horse training, etc.
• Clear Liquid Reagent & Pure Powder Reagent: Ingredients for more advanced recipes.
• Spirit Stones: Reusable items that grant attack, defense, or life skill bonuses.
• Resplendent Alchemy Stones: Endgame accessories for combat and gathering.

A lot of these sell fast on the marketplace, fueling other players’ life skill training or PvP pushes.

Basic Tools & Ingredients

To start alchemy, you'll need a residence and an Alchemy Tool. Buy or rent a house in any major town, place an alchemy utensil inside (from the tool vendor), and bring your ingredients from storage.

Some important basics:

• Alchemy Tool: Buy from the tool vendor or craft better versions.
• Water: Purified Water, gathered by filtering river water or buying (some recipes use distilled water).
• Blood/Oil/Trace/Powder/Crystal: Gathered from animals, mining, farming, or bought from the marketplace.
• Herbs/Fruits: Farming, gathering, or marketplace—wild herbs, sunrise herbs, and various fruits are common essentials.

Storage space is a factor! You’ll juggle tons of ingredients, so organizing your warehouse goes a long way.

The Alchemy Process

Interact with the alchemy tool in your residence to bring up the mixing window. As with cooking, you add the ingredients manually or from your recipe list, double-check quantities, and start mixing.

Easy Starter Recipes

Here are some key beginner alchemy recipes:

Clear Liquid Reagent

• 1x Purified Water
• 1x Sunrise Herb
• 1x Salt
• 1x Wild Grass

Used everywhere, especially for intermediate crafts. You’ll use this a LOT.

Pure Powder Reagent

• 1x Sugar
• 1x Silver Azalea
• 1x Purified Water
• 1x Mud Crystal

Related to many crystal and elixir recipes.

Simple Elixirs

• Elixir of Life: Increases gathering speed
  • 1x Clear Liquid Reagent
  • 6x HP Potion (Small)
  • 3x Blood (any type)
  • 2x Sunrise Herb
  • 2x Wild Grass

These are just samples—many beginner recipes vary only by a single ingredient.

Leveling Up Alchemy

The process mirrors cooking: every success grows your alchemy experience. Fastest early leveling focuses on bulk-mixing simple, cheap recipes. Clear Liquid Reagents are an easy choice; you’ll need hundreds as you progress.

Tips for Leveling

• Silver Embroidered Alchemist’s Clothes: More XP and speed per mix.
• Alchemy XP buffs: Seafood Cron Meal and Milk Tea (if you cook) provide extra alchemy XP.
• Daily quests: Velia, Heidel, and Calpheon feature alchemy dailies for extra XP.
• Upgraded Tools: Advanced alchemy tools last longer, letting you mix bigger batches.

Byproducts: Alchemist’s Special Drops

While crafting, you’ll sometimes notice “Mysterious Catalyst” or “Resplendent Alchemy Ingredient” byproducts appear. Turn these in for silver, rare materials, or direct alchemy XP to the local alchemist NPC. Save these—they seriously help skill progression.

Mass Alchemy and Mastery Gear

Upon reaching Artisan 1 Alchemy and finishing the “Artisan Alchemy” quest, you unlock the ability to craft in much larger batches. Switch to Loggia, Geranoa, or Manos Alchemy Tools for increased mastery bonuses.

• Higher Mastery: Reduces mixing time, increases yield, and can boost rare proc rates.
• Manos Clothing & Accessories: Stack EXP, mastery, and output for real efficiency.

Long-term, you’ll want to invest in this gear for pushing into imperial alchemy and high-profit crafts.

Imperial Alchemy: Turning Potions into Profit

Imperial Alchemy lets you bundle crafted elixirs and reagents into boxes for guaranteed silver with daily limits.

• Check crafting requirements: Each imperial box asks for a specific recipe, tier, and quantity.
• Time resets: Vendors refresh at 00:00 UTC, and supply limits often sell out fast.
• Contribution Points: Earn extra contribution with each box delivery.

For some players, imperial alchemy is the main money-making draw of this life skill.

Best-Selling Alchemy Products

Here’s what most alchemists keep on their crafting list for silver:

• Elixirs of Fury, Perforation, Draining, and Resistance: Big sellers in PvP and PvE.
• Spirit Stones: Always in demand, especially for life skilling or gathering.
• Crystal materials: Market staples because of constant demand for gear upgrades.
• Purified/Polished Crystals: Used in endgame enhancement.

If you’re chasing profit, check the central marketplace regularly—some days, a niche elixir spikes in price and can net you quick gains.

Quality of Life and Efficiency Tips

• Store your main ingredient supplies in the same town as your residence to cut down transfer times.
• Buy several alchemy utensils and put them in different houses if you’re mass-crafting.
• Queue up continuous production for the maximum number of available ingredients to save real-life time.
• Advanced alchemy tools speed up big batches and last longer.
• Always check imperial boxes before big crafting sprints to maximize payouts.

Wrapping Up

Alchemy takes patience and careful inventory management, but it’s powerful for players who want to boost combat, gather more efficiently, or stack up silver from imperial deliveries and hot-selling market trades. Once you find a rhythm, it becomes a steady source of profits and personal buffs, and is absolutely worth learning if you’re planning to stick with BDO for the long haul. Before you start growing crops in Black Desert Online, you’ll need a patch of land and the right tools. Unlike some MMOs that just let you pick berries from a bush, BDO’s farming system is its own self-contained minigame. Success requires good planning, crop management, and keeping an eye on those pesky pests.

Getting Started with Farming

Renting a Fence

The first step? You need land to plant things. In BDO, Fences mark out your personal farm plot. You don’t have to own the land outright, but you rent fences using Contribution Points (CP). Head to any major city and talk to the Material Vendor or search for [Fence Rental] nodes on the world map.

• Small Fence: 3 CP (7 slots)
• Strong Fence: 10 CP (10 slots)
• Old Moon Fence: 10 CP (10 slots, best for mastery—requires Farming Artisan 1+)

Often, the Small and Strong Fences are easiest to grab early. Once you’re Farming Artisan 1, swap to Old Moon Fences for improved results.

Setting Up Your Fence

With a fence in your inventory, go out into open land (can’t set up in towns, roads, or mountains). Right-click the fence, then place it anywhere there’s space and no overlap with another farm. You can set up multiple fences, up to your personal CP and plot maximums.

Seeds and Saplings

Seeds are the bread and butter of farming. You can gather seeds from wild plants using the “Gathering” life skill with a hoe equipped, or you can just buy seeds from the Central Market. There are two main types:

• Normal Seeds/Saplings: Grow into basic crops (wheat, corn, strawberries, etc.)
• Special/High-Quality/Magical Seeds: Higher tier, more yield, and sometimes special byproducts

Keep your eye out for Magical Seeds. They’re expensive, but each ones turns into a cluster of produce—perfect for mastery farmers.

Placing and Arranging Crops

Each type of plant calls for a minimum amount of space within your fence. Trees eat up the most, while veggies take the least. When planting, pack fence slots tightly to fit in more seeds. The game will warn if plants are too crowded (bonus tip: a bit of overlap is fine as long as the game lets you place them).

Farm Management: Growth, Pruning, and Pest Control

Growth Rate and Weather

Crop growth isn’t passive—you actually want to be around to boost results. The game considers weather, humidity, temperature, and overall terrain. Placing your farm in region-appropriate areas (for example, potatoes near Velia) helps but isn’t essential. What does matter is attending to your crops:

• Water: Most seeds don’t need manual watering, but drought can slow growth
• Fertilizer: Speeds up growth time—craft fertilizer using byproducts or manure
• Sunlight & Placement: Try different regions if you notice your favorite crop stalling

You can speed up the process a little more by using high-quality fertilizer or Organic Fertilizer for big batches.

Pruning and Killing Bugs

Crops occasionally show a Pest or Needs Pruning icon. These status effects slow growth and lower yield. To fix this:

• Stand next to the affected plant
• Interact (R key) and run through the quick pruning/bug-killing minigame

This also gives you some farming EXP and a chance for byproducts. If you have farming mastery, you’ll eventually unlock remote management, letting workers handle pruning and pest control instead.

Workers and Automation

Once your Farming skill reaches Artisan 1 and you use only Old Moon Fences, you can assign hired workers to manage any major farm maintenance—totally hands-off, aside from initial planting and final harvesting. This is huge for AFK farmers or anyone running several fences at once.

Harvesting and Breeding Crops

Crop Harvesting

Fully grown crops show up with a bright, spinning crop icon when ready. Click to harvest—rewarding you with produce (cabbage, alchemy herbs, sunflowers, whatever you planted) along with special byproducts.

Plant Breeding

Instead of harvesting for produce, you can choose to breed plants. This gives you more seeds (often upgraded ones) and usually a few byproducts. Magical and special-grade seeds often require breeding since they don’t drop from gathering or the market.

Pro Tip: Alternate harvesting and breeding for best returns—harvest a crop, breed its neighbor, then swap places each cycle. This upgrades your seed pool fast.

Byproducts

Every pick or prune can turn up farm byproducts like Fertilizer, Plant Byproduct, or Trace of Origin. Save these—they’re good for extra farming EXP, silver, or even contribution points when exchanged at Material Vendors.

Best Crops for Profit, Cooking, and Alchemy

• Sunflowers and Strawberries: Top earners for Central Market sales, thanks to consistent demand
• Wheat, Corn, and Potatoes: Key for Cooking life skill (flour, feed, and beer)
• Aloe, Mandrake, and Sunrise Herb: Essential for alchemy recipes and high-level crafts
• Magical Seeds: Endgame farmers swap to these for batch processing and mastery bonuses

Price fluctuates—check the market before planting a big batch, as occasionally one crop spikes. Don’t ignore niche crops either; some events or patches temporarily make oddball plants more valuable.

Farming Mastery and Gear

When you’re ready to go all-in, invest in Loggia, Geranoa, or Manos Farming Outfits and tools to rack up mastery points. Higher mastery provides:

• Bigger yields per plant
• Faster growth rates
• More and better byproducts
• Chance for extra seeds from breeding

It takes silver to get fully geared, but the payoff is real for power-farmers.

Extra Tips for Successful Farming

• Cluster fences close together for fast tending
• Craft plenty of fertilizer and always keep some on hand
• Prune and kill pests right away if aiming for highest yield or experience
• Mix and match crops: keep a batch for cooking, a batch for alchemy, and a cash crop on the side
• Set up near your main storage town for easy supply runs

Wrap-Up

Farming in BDO is a deceptively deep life skill that rewards both hands-on and AFK approaches. Whether you just want enough wheat to brew beer or dream of vast sunflower fields filling your coffers, learning the basics of fence placement, crop management, and mastery gear keeps your fields thriving. Farming is practical, profitable, and—once you master the loops—actually pretty chill.

Worker Empire Guide

Building a thriving Worker Empire in Black Desert Online takes more than just hiring random workers. It’s all about smart Node investments, efficient routes, and crafting a workflow that runs itself—earning you tons of resources, processing materials, and silver with minimal effort.

What is a Worker Empire?

A Worker Empire is a network of hired NPC workers that gather, craft, and process items for you across various nodes and cities, even while you’re offline. Workers live in lodging you buy with contribution points, connected to resource nodes and cities. A well-run empire means you’re collecting timber, ores, rare drops, cooking ingredients, and crafting materials all day without having to lift a finger yourself.

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Setting Up Your First Worker: Basics to Know

Before getting a fleet going, you’ll need:

• Contribution Points: Used to rent lodging and connect nodes.
• Lodging: Buy in a city to house each worker.
• Connected Nodes: Link resource nodes back to your storage city.
• Energy: Spent to recruit workers from the Worker NPC.

Head to any major city (Velia, Heidel, Calpheon, etc.), find the Work Supervisor NPC, and spend energy to roll for a worker. There are different types (Goblin, Human, Giant), each with strengths and weaknesses.

Pro Tip: Early on, Human Workers offer balanced stats, Goblins are speedy (great for close, quick tasks), and Giants carry bigger loads (good for long hauls or big-value items).

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Connecting Nodes and Cities: How It Works

You can’t just send a worker from one city to any node on the map—they can only work at nodes connected directly by contribution pathways to their city of residence. Always unlock contribution links from your main storage city out to resource nodes you want gathered. For example, mining Copper Ore at the Coastal Cave? Make sure Coastal Cave is connected via roads (nodes) all the way back to Velia if your worker lives there.

Quick Steps

1. Go to your World Map (M).
2. Click on the node nearest your main city.
3. Invest contribution points to unlock it.
4. Continue linking nodes along the path to your target resource node.
5. Unlock the specific node sub-section (like “Timber Node” or “Gathering Node”) where workers can work.

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Types of Workers and What Matters

• Human: Good at everything, higher chance for skills.
• Goblin: Fastest working speed, least stamina.
• Giant: Highest stamina (longest before needing rest), slowest speed.
• Artisan/Professional/Skilled: Determines efficiency—Aim for Artisan eventually.

Workers must rest occasionally as they run out of stamina. Send them food (like Beer for regular workers, Chicken for Papu/Otters from Papua Crinea) to restore stamina.

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Getting and Upgrading Workers

You hire workers at the city’s Work Supervisor NPC by spending energy for random rolls. You don’t have to settle for any worker:

• Fire bad ones, keep rolling for better stats/skills.
• Upgrade your favorite workers by leveling them up with work, then ‘promoting’ when eligible. Promotions can raise their rank from Beginner up to Artisan.
• Artisan workers complete jobs most efficiently.

Spending a bit more energy for rerolls is worth it—shoot for Skilled or Professional as a base, Artisan if you can.

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Lodging and Expansion

Each worker takes up one lodging slot. Expand your lodging by investing in city housing, converting them (costs contribution points) to ‘lodging’ houses. You can view available lodgings from the map (M) or see worker assignments and capacity from the Worker List.

Housing strategy tip: Prioritize cheap lodging close to storage so your workers can deposit goods right where you need them.

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Popular Node Routes for Profits

Here are a few reliable node routes most players start with:

Velia Region

• Farm/Barley/Potato Nodes: Loggia, Bartali, Toscani Farms (for cooking/beer)
• Timber: Ehwaz Hill—Ash Timber, Finto Farm—Potatoes
• Mining: Coastal Cave—Copper Ore (essential for early game processing)

Heidel Region

• Timber: Lynch Ranch—Birch, Castle Ruins—Maple, Treant—Cedar
• Mining: Omar Lava Cave—Coal, Moretti Plantation—Iron
• Crops: Northern/Costa Farms—Wheat/Corn

Special Agreement: City-to-City Trading

You can “connect” cities via nodes, which opens imperial trade and lets workers from one city operate in another (handy for rare resources). This costs more contribution but is a long-term project.

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Feeding Workers and Managing Stamina

Workers lose 1 stamina per completed task. Feed them Beer (crafted from Grain, Sugar, Water, and Leavening Agent) to refill stamina. Crafting large batches of Beer is essential for your empire to run overnight. Select Beer from your worker list or inventory and use the ‘Recover All’ option to keep everyone topped up.

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Upgrading Your Empire: Promotions, Skills, and Gear

• Worker Levels: As workers level, they earn skills (like work speed buffs).
• Promotions: After certain levels (usually 10, 20, 30), workers can attempt promotion exams to rise in rank.
• Skills: Artisan and Goblin workers can have 2-3 skills—work speed increases, movement speed, or special boosts to certain resources.

No special gear is needed for workers themselves, but what you do with their haul is amplified by processing mastery clothing/tools on your character.

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Automation and Remote Management

You can queue jobs for workers, setting them to repeat up to 50 times. This lets you go AFK or log off while they gather. If a node is far, consider Goblin workers for the speed. Use the Worker List (found by clicking the pickaxe icon top left or via M > Worker List) for easy job assignment, beer distribution, and overview.

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Best Worker Empire Practices

• Focus early nodes on cooking grains and timber for processing.
• Upgrade workers when possible: Never be afraid to fire a low-rank worker for a Skilled or better.
• Expand lodging before investing new nodes; workers matter more than unworked resources.
• Stockpile Beer, feed workers before long AFK/logoff sessions.
• Revisit your empire every few days. Upgrade poor workers and consider expanding pathways to rarer, high-value resources once contribution points allow.

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Conclusion

Putting together a Worker Empire is a perfect long-term goal for BDO players wanting steady passive income and supplies. Getting your network running smooth pays off as you process mountains of materials, craft, or sell your gains—often while you sleep. Refine your node routes, handpick skilled workers, and stock the pantry with Beer. You’ll thank yourself every time your storage fills up with fresh goods waiting to be crafted or sold.