You can change the settings related to the game yourself.
If you set the screen and texture quality to your PC’s spec, you can enjoy the game in a better environment.

▲ You can change each option through game settings located at the
bottom right of the game screen. Also accessible via the main menu (hotkey: Esc).

▲ The main settings menu window.

If you don’t want to adjust all the options yourself, in the main settings menu you can choose from predefined preset options depending on your preferred gameplay style.

If instead you prefer to customize the game settings yourself, you can do so via the various groups on the left: Performance Settings, Display Settings, Audio Settings, General Settings, and Interface Settings.

• Performance Settings: Options involving the game’s graphics, optimization, camera, and NPCs that affect the game’s performance.

• Display Settings: Options related to the game window, the game graphics, the camera range and effects, and the screenshot settings.Remember that if you set the screen to suit your PC’s spec, you can enjoy a more optimized game environment.

• Audio Settings: Options related to the game’s audio. For example, you can turn on or off a particular sound type, or control its volume.  

• General Settings: Options related to several functions and features of the game, including some quality of life settings, toggle what names, effects, alerts, etc. you want visible on the screen, modify the way the World Map is displayed, choose the game’s language, and more.

• Interface Settings: Options related to the interface of the game. They include the game’s action, UI, quick slot, and other hotkeys, mouse options, and the settings in case you want to play with a gamepad.

In this group one can change the various settings that affect the game’s performance, be them graphic settings, game functions, camera settings, or NPCs visual effects.

The Graphics & Textures section shares all its options with the Display Quality section of the Display Settings group, and thus will be explained in that part of this page.
The same applies for the Camera Performance section with the Camera Graphics section of the Display Settings group.

▲ Functions that can be modified to improve the game’s performance.

Among the options one can choose here are:

- Selecting the optimal frame for game performance, from 0 to 60.
- Upscale options, which render in-game graphics smaller than the actual resolution: Normal upscale, or employing AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 (only in Remastered Mode or above).
- Low-power option, to use less of your computer’s resources at the cost of game performance.
- The attack decision effects during combat.
- The effects when attacks and blocks miss during combat.
- Performance Optimization, which raises your PC’s memory usage to optimize game performance.
- Effect Optimization to give priority to effects or game performance.
- Character Optimization to adjust from how far away other Adventurers (players) are visible.
- The option to hide other Adventurers depending on the situation, for example when many of you are gathered at the same location, to avoid lag.

▲ Workers & Pets section.

Here you can toggle if you want to make your workers employed around the world visible, how many pets you want to see (all of them, only yours, or none), and if you want to hide certain secondary NPCs found throughout the world of Black Desert.

Please keep in mind that while most of the secondary NPCs may serve no purpose, some may give or complete certain quests. Due to that, if at any point you cannot find a specific NPC involved in a quest, uncheck this option, as it may be what is hiding the NPC from you.

In these you can adjust the different display-related settings, such as game window settings, options that affect the game graphics, the display effects, the camera range and effects, and the settings for screenshots.

Black Desert supports functions to adjust the basic resolution of your screen, the game’s texture & graphic quality, as well as the ability to turn a variety of options on and off by yourself. Through this, you can change the display settings based on your PC spec and enjoy the amazing views of Black Desert’s world, or make swift movements in combat where hundreds of adventurers are fighting at once, in the best way possible.

– Game Window

▲ The Game Window section.

This section allows you to personalize various game window settings: If you want to play the game in Full Screen, Full Screen Window, or Game Window, the screen resolution, the scale of the user interface (UI), and the game’s crop mode which reduces the display area while maintaining resolution. This last one is a function that leaves the interface as it is, and only reduces the area where the background and the characters are being displayed. The picture that has to be displayed becomes smaller, and so the burden on the PC is lighter.

▲ If you use The crop mode, the burden on the PC decreases since the displayed screen becomes smaller.

– Display Quality

▲ The Display Quality section will let you change the overall graphic quality of the game.

This section will also allow you to toggle various other functions, including:

- Anti-aliasing: none, FXAA, or TAA.
- SSAO, to display shadows more realistically.
- Adjust the display clarity.
- Display faraway objects more clearly.
- The camera’s depth of field, depending on the focal point.
- Display faraway NPCs more clearly.
- A blink effect when your character is being attacked.
- Reduce the build-up of snow when this weather effect occurs.
- Display monster blood splatter effects.
- Show or not bloodstains.

Regarding optimization, you have a few additional display options, such as:

- Remove effects from other Adventurers.
- Remove faraway effects.
- Specify the mode you want to use AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 as: Ultra Quality, Quality, Balanced, or Performance.

The downside to removing other Adventurers' effects is that you can’t grasp the skills the opponent is using during PvP.

As for upscale options, the downside to the normal upscale function is that the resolution goes down drastically because small pictures get expanded. But if you use this function on a low spec PC, it will help you greatly.

▲ In upscale mode, the resolution drops a lot, but it works great on low spec PCs.

– Effects

▲ The Effects section is useful for example in case you need to adjust the brightness of the game.

Here you can choose among a variety of photo filters to set the display’s color scheme, adjust the display’s gamma and contrast, the opacity of effects, and the intensity of the focus effect during combat.

When it's night time, or if you go into a dark cave, the screen might be too dark and you might feel uncomfortable. In times like these, you can use the gamma adjust function.
As the gamma value goes up, the screen becomes brighter and you can see dark places relatively comfortably.

But when daytime comes and it becomes brighter, you might not be able to distinguish the screen properly since it’s too bright.

▲Comparison between Gamma 0%, which is the initial value, and 50%, which is the highest setting. When daytime comes and it becomes brighter, you might feel dazzled by too bright light, so you would need to adjust it to an appropriate level.

There are color vision aid options prepared for players with protanomaly and deuteranomaly.
If you activate this function, some colors in the game change so that they can be easily distinguished.

– Camera Graphics

The Camera Graphics section will let you adjust the vision range and various camera effects.

For the camera vision range, remember that a lower range will improve the game’s performance. Both low and high range values present advantages.
The advantages of setting the vision range higher are that the character becomes smaller and you can see further terrain around it.

The advantages of setting the vision range lower are that, since you are looking at the scene at a short distance, you can see the movement of your enemy more clearly.

▲ If you adjust the camera vision range, you will be able to look down at the character from a higher perspective.

Regarding the various camera effects, you can adjust the value of all camera effects via Overall Camera Effect, or specify via the below sliders such as Vibration, Motion Blur Effect, Camera Angle (Action), and Camera Zoom (Action). Screen shake or afterimages happening during character's movement and their use of skills might be a bit too much for some Adventurers, and thus we recommend everybody sets them to their preferred values.

If you set them to 100%, you will be able to enjoy a more fun and lively experience, but if you feel dizzy by the overwhelming amount of effects, you can reduce or eliminate them.

▲ Example of all camera effects at 0%.

– Screenshots

▲ Screenshot section, which for example lets you decide if you want a watermark to appear or not in the screenshots you take.

You can change the resolution of screenshots you can take by using the Print Screen key in your keyboard. Depending on the graphic card you have, you can take high-resolution screenshots above 4K, which you can then set as your PC’s background with one click inside the game.

But if your graphic card does not support the higher resolutions (4K or 8K) that have been selected, even if you select the screenshot size as high-resolution, the screenshot will be taken in normal resolution size.

After taking a high-resolution screenshot, it takes a few seconds to process, so you need to be careful during a combat situation (PvP, combat zone, etc). We suggest that you take pictures in a safe environment.

▲ If you click the set wallpaper button, the screenshot you just took
becomes your PC’s background wallpaper!

Do keep in mind that the ‘Set Screenshot as Background’ window does not show in Photo Mode.

On Black Desert screenshots the Black Desert mark (watermark) appears, and you can adjust the watermark type, location, size, and transparency in this section.

▲ Images where watermark transparency is adjusted.

▲ You can choose your watermark from the logos
of all the countries where Black Desert is serviced.

The audio settings allow you to turn on or off the music that comes out when you enter combat, or the background music.

Not only that, as you can turn on or off the sound effects and various ambient sounds play separately as well.

It is possible to adjust the volume of each sound one by one while all the sounds are on.

▲ The Audio Settings.

For example, you can toggle if you want to be alerted when whispered by another Adventurer. 
You can keep the sound of the game on when sending the game to the system tray, in case something happens to your character.
You can toggle if you want to hear music playing nearby of your character’s location.

Do you prefer to not listen to combat music and continue enjoying the track playing in a zone? You can choose to do that as well.

Ever wondered how the NPCs sound in Korean or Japanese compared to the English voices? Give it a try.

Below those options you have the following slider options:

- The overall volume of all sounds.
- Music volume.
- Overall sound effect volume, with individual sliders for combat sound effects volume, combat sound effects clarity, others’ volume, and music volume.

In the general settings you can enable or disable certain quality of life options, toggle names you may want to see, game alerts, and other information on screen, change how the World Map is presented, determine the language for the NPC voices, watermark, game itself and the chat channel, enable or disable the chat filter, and select if you want to receive invitations from other players and a few other options detailed below.

– Camera Graphics

▲The General Settings first section, Quality of Life.

Combat assistance is a nice tool to have if you’re starting the game. Aside from this option, you have the ability to toggle aim assistance, separate the different quick slots, simplify the UI, and activate a screensaver.

▲ The Simplify UI mode activated.

Using the Quick Slot option, you can drag more skills and items into quick slots, not only the basic 10 by default. Not only that, but you can also place the quick slot in a location of your choice.

You can edit the shortcut of quick slots as well. If there is an unused key such as -,= or \, they can be added as quick slot shortcuts, allowing you to use the item quickly during combat.

After selecting the quick slot, in the menu (hotkey: Esc) – UI Edit, you can move each quick slot to your preferred position.

▲ If you use the quick slot option you can not only use
more quick slots but also move the slots to any place you want.

– Show/Hide

The Show/Hide section will let you decide which elements you want to see in relation to a few topics:

Characters:

- Highlight your character when entering safe/combat zones.
- Show NPCs you have quests with in different colors depending on the quest status.
- Show the NPC in different colors depending on the amity status you have with them.
- Highlight your allies in Conquest War in green/blue, and non-participants in orange.
- Highlight enemies in red.
- Show your guild members in blue.
- Show your party members in green.
- Show everybody’s pets, only your pets, or hide all pets.
- Show or hide your fairy.
- See or hide other Adventurers’ campsites.
- Select the number of maids/butlers you want to make visible while inside your residence.

You also have an option to enable customization of the location of your HP bar, Black Spirit’s Rage gauge, and PvP button here. Once toggled on, you can alter them in the Edit UI function.

Show/Hide Miscellaneous:

- Show attack decision effects in combat. If you select it, attack results such as down attack and back attack will appear in text in the middle of combat.
- Display defense icons.
- Display when attacks are blocked or miss.
- Enable or disable the combo video guide for characters below Lv. 35.
- Enable or disable the skill combo guide, only usable if the skill guide is toggled on.
- Make the mast of big ships transparent for better visibility.

▲ When you use various crowd control (CC) skills,
the text is printed above the character who was attacked.

– Alerts

Here you can select which alerts to make visible.
If you do not wish to see the system notifications that get displayed endlessly in the middle of the screen, you can turn them on and off through these options.
You can just leave the notification messages that you are interested in and turn off all the other messages to make a cleaner interface. However, it is highly suggested for new Adventurers to initially disable most types of alerts until they’re more familiar with the function of each one.

▲ You can turn off the notification messages
that get displayed endlessly in the middle of the screen.

– World Map

In this section you can select how you want the World Map to open with 3 possible styles or no animation, and set the camera angle for the World Map.

–  Language

Here you can set the language for the NPC voices between English, Korean, and Japanese, select what regional watermark you want the game to show, toggle on and off the game’s chat filter, in what language you want the game to be in between English, German, French, and Spanish, and what Chat-Channel you want to be in between International, English, German, French, and Spanish.

–  Miscellaneous

These are settings related to the navigation guide, interactions with other Adventurers, and others.

You can set the theme for the UI between the classic look or a few other options such as season: summer, winter, or spring.

You can toggle the navigation guide and customize it to show how the route that leads to your destination is represented.
The basic setting is in guide arrows, but you can also choose between marked line where a dim light will appear, or guide fairy which lets you know the direction toward the light pillar that is your destination.

▲ When using the navigation function,
you change the method of guidance toward your destination.

In addition to the navigation guide aesthetic, you can also choose between exact and smooth options for both land and water navigation paths. Each one offers advantages.

Regarding character interactions with other Adventurers, you can disable party and guild invites, duel requests, trade requests, and even Yar! requests.

Aside from these, there are a few other functions that can be toggled on and off. Rotate the minimap to match your character’s perspective, close window UI like your character profile if you’re hit, close full screen UI like the Pearl Shop if you’re hit, set the camera to follow the direction of your movement when using auto-run, enable LED animation effects for your Razer peripherals, and adjust the camera speed during auto-run.

▲ The interface settings will let you modify a great variety of hotkeys.

In all these sections you’re given the option to modify the hotkeys for keyboard and buttons for gamepad.

There are two types of shortcuts as a whole.
There are the Action Hotkeys, where you can change the shortcuts for specific actions such as skills or using items, and the UI Hotkeys, where you can change the shortcuts of various UI windows.

What you need to keep in mind is that if the key you are trying to register is already in use, the original shortcut key disappears. So, after changing the shortcuts, you must see if there are any void shortcuts that have been created.

In Mouse Interface you can invert the mouse both horizontally and vertically, adjust its sensitivity, enable the option to move by pressing left mouse button (LMB), and lock the mouse cursor to not move outside the game display.

Similar options for gamepad are given in the Gamed section below, allowing you to use one, enabling the gamepad-only UI, its vibration, adjust its sensitivity, and invert the game’s movement like with the mouse.

* The content of the game guide may differ from the actual game content, depending on the update and content changes.