Greetings Adventurers!

With less than a week left before Black Desert Online is both developed and published by Pearl Abyss, the Black Desert Studio is thrilled to say hello to our North American and European Adventurers.

In our last three posts of this series, we’ve guided you through the various changes that will take place after the start of Pearl Abyss’s direct service. Our goal has always been to improve the Black Desert Online experience to be as enjoyable as possible for our Adventurers.

Today will be the final part of this four-part series and is titled “Adventure Support.” It covers a range of topics from in-game support perks to gameplay quality-of-life improvements. Keep reading on to find out what we have in store to help you on your adventures!

Revamped Loyalties Shop

We’re working on revamping what’s currently sold in the Loyalties Shop to help our Adventurers have even more fun in their adventures.

By looking at the past data on items sold in the Loyalties Shop, we identified what items were most popular and used this to plan out how we will revamp the shop with items that will help your gameplay. Don’t worry though, some of the most frequently used items, including time-based buff items similar to the Value Pack, will not be leaving the Loyalties Shop and continue to be available after it’s revamped.

Additionally, once we revamp the Loyalties Shop, we’re planning to make it possible for any Adventurer who enjoys Black Desert to be able to get 200 points from Challenge every day. Afterward, we plan to update ways to obtain additional Loyalties from a variety of rewarding and appropriately demanding “in-game” contents.

Beyond this, we’re also looking to make sure this revamp will become something that will truly be helpful to our Adventurers, so please stay tuned!

Special Items in the Loyalties Shop

The revamped Loyalties Shop will also be getting event-like “Special Items” added as well.

These “Special Items” are intended to match and react to content updates, in-game trends, etc., more quickly by us being able to rotate them for specific periods of time.

This will be set up with items that are usually hard to acquire or just helpful in certain situations. However, there may be additional purchase limitations as we have to respect the impact they may have on the in-game economy. As such, we’ll also be carefully considering what items will be sold and other factors to ensure the existing balance is maintained.

Improved Value Pack

On the NA/EU servers, Value Packs currently grant a +10% Combat/Skill/Life/Mount EXP buff. This percentage was decided according to the pace content was consumed at the time the Value Pack was first introduced to the NA/EU regions.

Since then, a great number of updates have expanded the game’s contents and brought new items that increase the rate you gain EXP. Thus, we reached a conclusion that the current EXP value of 10% was pretty negligible to most Adventurers. As a result, we’ve decided to take this opportunity with the service transfer to change the Value Pack’s buff to a 30% Combat/Skill/Life/Mount EXP buff, so Adventurers can truly feel its significance.

As a side note, the Value Pack will continue to be purchasable from the Loyalties Shop, so its buff will be available to as many Adventurers as possible.

Supporting Adventurers Across Large Regions

Many Adventurers from across North America, Europe, Oceania, etc. come together to play on the North America and Europe servers of Black Desert Online. Unfortunately, this means there’ll be unavoidable inconveniences to gameplay such as lag/delay.

For the future, we will be looking into ways to reduce the number of inconveniences Adventurers may face when playing across such large regions. Here are some of the plans for improvements that we have in mind:

1. Improvements to the Network Environment

We’re making preparations to improve the network environment to help mitigate and reduce network issue such as lag/delay that may occur during gameplay. Our hopes are that this will help our Adventurers better enjoy the game.

2. Adjusting Time for NA/EU Server’s World Events

Over the years, we’ve consistently heard many requests to adjust the times for various world events and the start time of Node/Conquest War on the NA/EU servers. After taking into consideration a wide array of time zones and the universal patterns of daily life such as commutes, sleep, DST (Daylight Saving Time), etc., we’re planning to make time adjustments so more Adventurers can enjoy the world events at more appropriate times.

On the other hand, we believe the time zones for the European servers are relatively less inconvenient compared to the North American servers. However, if you have differing thoughts or views regarding this, please feel free to send us your feedback. We’re internally reviewing what we can do to ensure the best conditions for everyone’s gameplay.

New Faces, New Voices, New Font

New faces, new voices, and a new font are all coming to the NA/EU servers of Black Desert Online.

1. Changes to Default Customizations of Certain Classes

We’ve gotten back feedback that the current default customizations of certain classes don’t match the tastes of North America and Europe. And when we changed the default customizations for some of the classes on Black Desert Console service, we found that they were incredibly well-received. With this experience in hand, we’ll also be changing the default customizations of some classes for the NA/EU servers of Black Desert Online.

Preview of Wizard’s Changed Default Customization

Of course, Black Desert’s flexible character customization tools give Adventurers the power to bring to life their own unique, stylish, and awesome characters.

2. Adding NPC Voices

We have good news for Adventurers who have been wanting to hear the voices of NPCs in different languages. Besides just the default English voice lines, you’ll soon be able to hear the Korean and Japanese voice lines as well. Whenever you want a different experience when talking to an NPC while adventuring, how about giving a different voice line language a try through the in-game options?

3. New Font – Strong Sword

Produced in collaboration with a Korean font company, Strong Sword is a font designed to express the motif its name implies by embodying the sharpness and power of Black Desert’s combat.

The new font will be available after the start of our service. Adventurers who are already accustomed to the existing font will be able to freely select it or the new font from the in-game settings.

New Support Systems are Being Prepared

Since the start, the Black Desert Studio has tried to provide new, returning, and existing Adventurers the support systems they need to settle into the game. We’ve implemented improved tutorials, added settlement funds from Igor Bartali, revised the early flow of the game, improved the UI, and our most recent attempt – the introduction of season servers.

But, we won’t be stopping just there; we’re currently preparing new support systems for Adventurers playing Black Desert now and for Adventurers who haven’t even started their journey yet.

These new systems are being developed as content for Adventurers who play Black Desert for a long time or play very actively in mind. Their current stage is at a point where we’re still considering various factors such as their scope, what they include, and how they will work.

As soon as we’re ready to reveal this new support system, you’ll be the first to know, so please stay tuned.

More details about what’s stated above will be provided in future announcements.

We’ll continue to do our best to listen to your valuable feedback and keep improving Black Desert Online to be as fun as possible.

See you in Black Desert Online on February 25! Until then, happy adventuring!