On December 12, the Black Desert developers presented a Dev Talk with our Adventurers worldwide at the CalpheON Ball. We truly appreciate all the questions and feedback we received, and we’ve prepared this GM Note to serve as a recap for everyone.

▲ Upcoming New Class Concept Image

This question is the most commonly shared one by Adventurers worldwide. The developmental direction and priority have changed since the Heidel Ball, so we want to take this chance to clarify their current status.

[10 vs 10 Crew Battles & Trading Rework]

First off, let me share which content are put on hold for now.

10 vs 10 Crew Battles will be developed after we finish the Arena of Solare, which is currently under development.

As for Trading, we need to thoroughly test it for balancing due to how extensive it is. Therefore, it has been put on hold, so we will share more info once we start developing it again.

[Arena of Solare]
Arena of Solare is a 1 vs 1 or 3 vs 3 ranked arena. We will release it with maybe just 1 or 2 stages at the start. One will be an open space while the other will have environments for Adventurers to take advantage of.

With the rank system, we are also preparing rewards to match. As to make the ranking system freer to participate in, we will be making the system based on characters rather than by families.

As the Mountain of Eternal Winter will not be released globally within this year, We know many Adventurers may feel disappointed. So, as soon as Arena of Solare development is finished, we will first preview it in a global event, and then officially release it to all regions at a later time.

[New Red Battlefiled Map: Valencia Street Battle - Korea Update in December, Global Update Soon After]

Set in the city of Valencia, it will have a different set of rules that are based on occupying new regions.

You might have thought of it as a rather safe place, but it will offer a fresh new experience once it becomes a location of major battles. We are aiming to release it in Korea on December and then the rest of the world soon after.

Unfortunately, the Red Battlefield is currently closed due to optimization issues on console. Once the optimization work is complete, we will try to re-open Red Battlefield with the new map.

[Mythical Diné]

Mythical Diné is currently under development. And like we shared before, it will be able to run on water with the skill "Waterwalk". However, we were not able to prepare a preview of it. We will showcase it as soon as it's ready.

[Calpheon Elvia Realm - Next Focus of Development After Mountain of Eternal Winter]

Calpheon Elvia Realm has been under development bit by bit. After the Mountain of Eternal Winter is released, we plan to jump right into developing it, but there is still much we need to work on.

[Blackstar Raid - Developed After Calpheon Elvia Realm]

The Blackstar Raid will be developed after Calpheon Elvia Realm. Star's End is already a high-end monster zone, and when it turns into an Elvia Realm, it will become truly terrifying.

We prepared a clip of the Troll zone in Calpheon. Let's watch it.

▲ Calpheon Troll Zone

We are preparing something similar to the spirit weapons, but we are looking to use pre-existing weapons like Azwell, Bares, Elsh, and Seleth this time around.

Green weapons had a special effect where they would get stronger when it rained, along with other environmental factors. In Calpheon Elvia Realm, we are going to make Adventurers adapt to the constantly changing environment.

We aren't at a state where we can talk about release dates just yet as it might take a bit longer to develop. We will be showcasing this to our Adventurers when the content is ready.

[Hardcore Monster Zone: Terror of the Abyss]

The vision range effect you all saw in the recent Halloween event "House of Horrors" was actually developed for Terror of the Abyss, where you would explore the abyss with limited vision while fighting monsters. Each time you died, you would only be able to keep half the loot you'd collected up until that point. So you would constantly need to weigh your options between staying and leaving, similar to a roguelike game. We plan to make it a soloable monster zone, and we will reveal more details as we go deeper into its development.

[Black Desert Mini Server – May Be Available During the Winter Season]

The mini server’s development is completed to a certain extent. It might even be used during this Winter Season. Recently, we did a major event in Japan with the mini server. Teams from different regions of Japan formed teams and participated in various games. So, we plan to use the mini-servers for events as well as for other uses in the future.

The mini server can be used by a person alone, or they can choose to invite some guild members and friends. It's a place that Adventurers can freely use for a set period of time. So, we will try to make it meaningful content for our working Adventures that play more casually.

Also, the new Red Battlefield update is planned to be released soon.

▲ New Red Battlefield

With these questions alone, we understand just how much our Adventurers want PvP content, so we will try to get them out to you as soon as we can.

As for the Karma system, we have no plans to change the system in any major way. This is because Black Desert exists as one huge field. We feel that the Karma system is a "standard" where we can distinguish between "PvP" and "PK." We will maintain a somewhat free PvP system on the field, but we want to discourage PK. However, we've heard stories from certain regions where the Karma system is being abused. We are currently looking into an operational solution to improve on this issue.

We currently have more forms of stat limit systems including in Conquest War. The goal for this is for new Adventurers to be able to join with just full Tuvala gear and experience the battles as well. Also, we recently improved the AI in the Battle Arena, as requested by Adventurers. Additionally, we are working on visual effects that show opponents getting knocked down or stunned by skills. These improvements to the game are being made so that new Adventurers can also have fun in PvP and get good practice. We will continue to improve on these points.

A. This is a great suggestion. However, command posts and forts are the centerpiece of strategy. So we are more careful about making such a massive change as we did with the campsites to them.

Nevertheless, we can help remove some of the stress caused by terrain to a certain extent for at least the forts and command post, excluding the annexes to a point where you will be able to feel the difference. We will try to work on this and make it available on the Global Lab first.

We also empathize with builders having a hard time. Not to mention Kamasylvia... with all those creatures about. They used to hinder construction. But with the remote installation system, much of this will be resolved.

Also, we are currently working on the guild ping-related improvements that we got a lot of suggestions for.

As you can see, much of it was improved. We tried to make it easier to use, and we will continue to work on further QoL improvements like these.

As we mentioned during the 3rd anniversary of self-publishing in Russia broadcast earlier, we plan to have a Russia vs EU World Conquest War event in the future. We recently did the Arena of Arsha Tournament with Adventurers from Japan, Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau. We plan to continue doing events like these in the future. We also hope that the current pandemic will end soon so that we can invite Adventurers from around the world to Korea so that we can do a global Arena of Arsha Tournament as well.

Well, we currently have the stat limit in Node/Conquest War so that guilds can grow in stages. It definitely has the advantage for people that have more options to participate, but there is the downside of where all the stats of the gear are not applied directly.

However, this stat limit is applied the same across the board for everyone. So it is difficult to make special exceptions for certain classes. If there is a change we can apply, it will be a change that can be applied for all classes. And as the stat limits are based on the progression of our Adventurers, the system will constantly be changed in the future. Also, we will continue to monitor the balance between Node/Conquest War that have stat limit and that don't have them and adjust accordingly.

While raising the income for AFK life skills is important and is something we will be looking into, we also plan to work in tandem to increase the appeal of life skills by adding content such as ice fishing and mini-game content like Lakiaro. Ultimately, instead of life skills becoming content purely focused on income, we want to make it more meaningful in regards to the life of Black Desert.

Additionally, life skill repeatable quests were also mentioned. We will definitely be adding these. For harpoon fishing, rather than improve its income, we will try to think of way of making it more fun. We will improve on its income later. As for Hunting, it's been a focus for us to make steady updates for. First off, we will work on making Caphras Stones obtainable through Hunting. This update we can make soon.

After this, we plan to make improvements to Blue Whale and Khalk. We did improve the drops for Blue Whale recently. But we will continue to make improvements through future patches. Not only make changes to drops but to make the drops usable in more places as well. Therefore making Hunting more valuable.

The new uses are still being discussed. Adventurers have already given us so many good ideas. There were suggestions to make Blue Whale Molar Earring and Khalk's Earring upgradeable; or make the primary materials more available to be used to make elixirs in Alchemy; or even be able to make the molars and claws materials to make alchemy stones or spirit stones; or make bones and teeth materials to make special bullets. These were truly valuable suggestions and we are looking into each one of them.

Also, we received requests to extend the use of fences. Some Adventurers found their fences were removed after they came back from vacation. We are thinking about perhaps extending it to 2 weeks.

We understand the inconvenience of getting off ships, moving guild or party members onto ships, and moving ships due to other ships in the area. We also want to make improvements to these issues as well. However, it's a tad bit difficult from a development perspective to execute. We will continue to look for possible solutions to these problems. The point you've raised may not be completely resolved, however, we did think about something we could do right away. We will first look into making a function that automatically collects ships back to the wharf if the ship has been idle for a long time. Also, there was a suggestion to be able to get a hold of the helm of the guild galley by pressing the ship icon. Rather than making a separate icon, we are thinking about making it a guild skill.

And while Gyfin currently maintains its position as a party monster zone, Adventurers sadly aren’t really visiting its lower floors. In fact, the lower floors have a dungeon-feeling and it is a very appealing place to go. That’s why we’re discussing revamping the lower part of Gyfin from a 5-man to a kind of 1-man dungeon concept to serve as a place for the strongest Adventurers to find a challenge. Today, we just mentioned Mirumok and Gyfin, but we will continue to think about what to do with the other zones that Adventurers brought up to us like Protty Cave, Waragon, Sycraia Underwater Ruins (Upper Level).

Lastly, due to the increase of new Adventurers, we've seen an influx of mid-range Adventurers as well. So, we will continue to think of zones for these Adventurers to go to as well. Especially with the season servers, we have many in the 240 AP or higher range. Like you said, this has caused a focused gathering of Adventurers in certain locations. With most of the classes getting a buff in PvE combat during the reboot, we will try to constantly improve the monster zones for 240 to 270 AP range to open up the different choices of monster zones.

Therefore, the potions were no longer getting hunted by Adventurers slowly gearing up, but primarily by new Adventurers who set is at their next goal. Thus, with this change, we chose to adjust the difficulty (of obtaining the potion pieces) accordingly. However, Lafi Bedmountain's Upgraded Compass, Archaeologist's Map, and Rich Merchant's Ring are completely different conceptually from Odore/Ornette. So, we want them to retain their value as treasures.

As most of our console Adventurers already know, we are currently focused on addressing optimization issues as of late. While developing for next-gen console platforms is important, we still have many Adventurers playing on older platforms, so we are working on optimizing the existing build as well as developing for the next-gen build.

It is difficult to go into details but to give a brief explanation, each update takes up a bit of the memory allotted to each console device. Since we kept rolling out updates, the game continues to take up more and more memory. Now it grew to the point where it exceeded the memory usage threshold, which is the reason for the frequent crash issues.

We've been doubling our efforts to reduce the memory usage to below this threshold with multiple optimization patches. I believe our Adventurers in console may also have felt that thanks to the latest patches, the frequency of said crashes has been on the decline. Once this process is complete, we are looking to carry out regular optimization updates so that this issue doesn't occur again.

Also, about older outfits getting outfit-specific animations as well. Unfortunately, as it requires exclusive animation work, it would seem difficult for us to make new outfits, and add animation to older outfits at the same time. So, we are trying to see if we can apply certain animations that were already made and have them applied to the older outfits as well.

And someone gave their feedback about the skill window being a little inconvenient from the Late Night Talk Show. Rest assured that we didn't forget about that.

Rather than resetting the Black Spirit's Adventure, for the Adventurers that have received all the completion rewards, we plan to make a second completion reward board and loop the two completion boards. It might not be all that big, but Adventurers will be able to continue getting little rewards every time you roll.

As for Fishing Missions, we understand that it takes too long to catch certain fish, so we’re going to completely revamp this. Instead of catching certain fish, you’ll need to catch certain grades of fish or a certain group of fish. We hope this will make fishing missions a bit more fun. And we will also improve normal fishing quests along with the guild missions as well.

We've also been getting a lot of opinions about the improvement of guild mission, which most commonly included mission rewards. Guild missions were originally intended to contribute to a guild’s growth by giving activities each guild member could do well or in areas they enjoyed. However, each person’s time is rather valuable, we ensured there would be individual rewards as well. Yet, it seems that over time, the individual rewards became more emphasized. The addition of high-level rewards such as the Margoria missions seems to have played a role in them. In the end, we believe it’s our fault that this balance has been lost. We are working to improve guild mission rewards, and we will adjust the rewards to Margoria's level along with the revamps mentioned earlier.

And we will also work on expanding special missions where guild members can cooperate with each other to avoid being funneled into only one mission. For this special mission, various goals such as for Hunting, Gathering, etc. will be available, so cooperation will be needed to complete them. The rewards will be adjusted compared to individual rewards since this requires cooperation or the rewards will be greatly beneficial to the growth of the guild. Our goal is for them to be more meaningful and encourage time together.

There’s also been a lot of feedback saying that the guild raids except for Khan don’t give enough rewards. In the past, we tried things like Breath of All Creations to make guild bosses a bit more special. Beyond this kind of thing, we’ll try to come up with other ideas and bring back the appeal of guild raids.

We’ve also heard a lot about guild positions. For this, we’ll try to add more positions that give some authority. However, we’ll try to come up with more interesting names, unlike the rather serious names we currently have. But since positions/authority can be abused and bring risk to a guild, we’ll carefully review it before releasing any update.

Lastly, we received QoL suggestions such as not being able to tell if a mission was received/completed on a different server. This is something we’ll look into improving.

For example, the cutscene we showed you a while ago for the Mountain of Eternal Winter was developed in Black Desert based on what we saw as we developed the new game engine. If the feature that allows in-game characters to climb up walls is added with the new game engine, this same feature might also be developed with the Black Desert engine. In this way, the Black Desert engine and the BlackSpace engine synergize well with one another and our development is likely to continue in this direction going forward.

The Black Desert engine shows off its exceptional performance as Black Desert has one of the best-quality graphics among online games. In addition to high-quality graphics, the numerous NPCs and monsters, beautiful and large-scale backgrounds, and dynamics in action are the major strengths of the Black Desert engine. Also, being able to apply the great suggestions that our Adventurers send us, and being able to update as much content as we do every week is also thanks to the Black Desert engine.

We think that our Black Desert engine is high-quality enough for our game to be one among the top online games worldwide, and it can be used to continue developing what we want to achieve. And we will continue making improvements on our Black Desert engine.

Do you remember the games we all used to play in the past? Prince of Persia, Romance of the Three Kingdom series, Uncharted Waters Online, etc. We still haven't forgotten these games and play them up to this day, probably because we're attracted to the unique traits of each game. I think the most important point for Black Desert would be to continue to maintain its unique charm. At the same time, we will continue to take on new challenges in our own way. Like creating the season servers to make it accessible to new Adventurers, and creating many types of devices or features that can help Adventurers progress through various content they have to overcome while playing. Instead of simply following trends or popular concepts, we hope to improve upon the strength of Black Desert and not fear change. As Black Desert is a game where we make our own memories, Black Desert will continue to grow one step at a time.

Rather than sticking to MMORPG Black Desert, we want to make Black Desert a game for people to make great memories when life wears you out. Our ultimate goal is to make Black Desert enjoyable no matter when you log in.

We plan to provide another announcement with the questions from our online audience members who didn’t have enough time to ask at the Live Q&A.

Please stay tuned!