Though achieving my first dream horse in BDO was the biggest excitement in Black Desert Online, I’ve actually put most of my time towards Mystical Ellie’s Water Festival the past two weeks. This was because of the fishing event at Terrmian Beach – the location of the festival – where you can fish up koi and golden sea perch.
Each koi is worth 500,00 silver and each sea perch is worth 10,000,000 silver. No typos.
Considering top gear and mounts in BDO can be in the billions of silver, this isn’t as much as it seems. But for a player who still hasn’t established a financial foundation just yet, I jumped on the event as quickly as possible.
I got there right after the server came up from maintenance, and actually saw when there were abundant fish at the festival fishing spot. It didn’t take long before people flocked in with horses and camps as far as the eye could see, lending a further festive feeling to the location.
I already really liked the place due to the lovely ocean view, rainbow fountains and capering baby elephants. The music there is pretty nice, too. So it’s been a good place to fish just for location.
It got crowded pretty quickly!
Needless to say, I had no idea how much of a money maker this would be for me. I went in with about 10 million silver on my character – oh how proud I was of that! – and at a lowly level of fishing.
Thanks to the 100% xp lifeskill boost, my fisher gal is now Artisan 4 and has made over 400 million silver from this event! I honestly don’t know exactly how much she’s made since some of the profit came in terms of crystal shards that went instantly to the warehouse storage – but seeing as that’s also 400 million silver or so, it’s been a good haul!
I did a few of the quest, in particular, the quest to get the elephant statue for my Grana mansion. My poor giant house is so empty that anytime furniture is offered, I’m seeking it out! I don’t even care what it is at this point. 🙂
Cute though!
Anyhow, today is the last day of the water festival, so I’m trying to make what I can of it while it’s still out there. I haven’t been able to keep up with all of the BDO events since so many seem to come and go, but this one was worth the time!
Now I have an artisan 4 fisher in my ranks with a number of new fishing titles I’ve earned, too! Once the event rolls off tomorrow, it’ll be back to training my horses again, which is just as exciting.
I usually don’t run the new Alliance raid the week of release. I’m not sue why I did this time around, and I did it as a healer on the first try to boot – healer was my only job with a high enough ilvl at the time.
I’ve been slacking on gearing up this expansion… just call me a little tired of expert runs every day. Thank goodness for crafted battle gear you can buy off the marketboard! But… that’s neither her nor there.
Not only did I go in as healer but I went in mostly blind. As it was the day after the raid’s release, there weren’t any full guide videos at the time – the first one I saw was released the day after I first cleared it. And thankfully, I could watch that video before I ran it the second time on another character.
Most folks know my stance on Alliance raids by now and are probably tired of hearing it. Gone are the days of encouraging casual folks to do these raids and helping them get through. S/E has proven time and again that after Void Ark, Alliance raids are just not content for truly casual players – I’m talking folks who don’t have a strong grasp on how to pick up mechanics and respond to things quickly.
This raid was no exception. It’s learnable for sure, but a lot of things are not intuitive, no matter how much the raid bosses are designed to “teach” you mechanics through experience. The third boss, especially, left me in a state of “what just killed me?” pretty often until after I watched a video to better understand how the mechanics are put together.
Basically, I tell FC folks to watch a video rather than die a million deaths on this. I’m sure in a few weeks, things will settle down, but this first week has been a doozie.
Glamour… Rather Not
And the gear design this time around? Let’s just say, the main reason I ran Bunker as much as I did was to farm for the glamour. I even admired the gear from Factory enough to push through it several times.
On the flip-side, I find the gear this raid to be either mostly uninspired or just plain something I would never use. Not to mention, the male version of certain sets are just… awful (IMHO).
What even happened here? Compared to the elegant female gear, this is awful unless you want a military-looking set for a bard or dancer (machinist could pull it off, maybe). And I don’t.
In fact, I got those pants above as my first drop and glamoured over them immediately. Just yuk.
Story? What…?
The main kicker for me, being someone who has not played Nier, is that the story just went down some crazy rabbit hole that I gave up trying to follow. You have a bunch of angry dwarves that are supposed to tie into this alien android plot and… the story just left me far behind in the series of quests between the second and third raids.
I got that there were good androids and bad androids, but we never got to know the good androids for long enough for me to feel anything for them by the end of the storyline. In fact, I don’t recall spending all that much time with them at all outside of the raids. I’m never paying much attention to NPCs and their chatter when mechanics are flying around during fights. Smack dab in the middle of a boss fight is the worst possible time for a game to try to make me connect to characters!
So it really felt as if the story was certainly trying to connect to the folks who already cared about these characters through Neir. And not so much to anyone who had no clue as to why we should be caring about these characters in FFXIV.
I know that I’m not the only one who didn’t “get it.” There was a post on Reddit, which apparently got removed (huh), that discussed disappointment with the raid storyline. Though the original post isn’t in tact, the follow-up comments nail a lot of my feelings on this.
I knew going into this raid series that the concepts and aesthetics for Neir generally don’t appeal to me (I will say that I do have it free on the Xbox Game Pass, so I might still try it to see if it changes my mind). The one thing that folks who enjoy Neir say is the story is amazing – and I’m all about story.
So maybe that’s why I was disappointed that there really wasn’t anything all that gripping, thoughtful or mind-bending about the raid story itself. The boss designs were meant to make you go “huh,” of course. But I was expecting something deep and engrossing when it came to the plot.
Of course, there’s these follow-up weekly dwarf quests that we’re getting that might help explain some of this(?) I plan on doing them to see what I can learn, but I hope it’s worth the annoyance of the game sending me back into the Factory or Bunker to run around and pick up trashed technology for the fifth or sixth time.
I know this sounds like a relatively negative post and I’m sorry for that – I hope that for whomever this raid is geared toward, you had fun with it. I’ll continue to run it on my healer mostly because this is the most challenging content I’ve attempted during my healer practice, and I have a lot still left to learn. Plus, even if I think the gear is ugly, it’s still an upgrade for my bard and I can always glamour over it.
A few weeks back, I posted about how I’d finally got a T8 Charger and was now tackling awakening it into a T9 dream horse in Black Desert Online. I knew this was going to be a huge undertaking, and was prepared for it to take months, if not even a year for the process to pan out a return.
In fact, I’ve hardly spent much time on courser training since I brought her to Stonetail Ranch. I had a bunch of the materials you need to complete courser training from the handouts at the anniversary and just random boxes I opened over the past couple months. But I was also picking up a conch shell every night with loyalty points, and slowly amassing the items I needed for my first try.
I was really shooting for the pegasus, like just about everyone else, but I also tossed materials in there towards the unicorn, Dine, and a tiny bit towards Doom (who I didn’t want). Last night was the first night I thought to head back to the ranch as I had enough materials to hit the 200% I needed for the first awakening attempt.
Keep in mind, I read the first attempt you make at awakening has a 1% chance of success. When you fail, you earn failstacks that increase your chance of success by 1% each time. You’ll get it… eventually… but the materials you need to awaken the charger, not to mention the stone to facilitate the event, take time and effort to gather.
I was just telling Amoon yesterday that I was in it for the long haul, and quite resigned to the idea that I’d be working on this for months. But something extremely unexpected happened last night when I attempted my first awakening…
No… I thought. No… that didn’t just happen!
But it did! I was absolutely beside myself in shock and excitement!
The bad news: It wasn’t the pegasus. The good news: It wasn’t Doom.
I think I’d probably have sold Doom for an attempt at the 12 billion it’s worth and just buy another courser to start over again. I’m not a fan of Doom, sorry.
Dine, the Unicorn, was my second choice. She can’t glide and she won’t be able to be part of the attempt at a T10 horse whenever that comes out on our servers. But she is supposed to be awesome for desert travel. I will totally take her for my Shai main, which actually fits quite well!
So now I have to train her up again and try to regain the skills she lost. After awakening, the horse returns to level 1 and loses their skills. So, it’s back to training and skill swapping. Thankfully, I still have some skill swap tokens from when I was training her as a charger.
I’m really after getting all of the important skills that she needs – sprint and instant acceleration – to be the best horse that I currently own. It’ll be fun to train her up from scratch, too!
I feel like achieving my final goal came a little too easily… but you know… I guess I could always try it again if I want the challenge of it. Trust me, I’m not complaining!
Fêtes are a new type of FATE (some people joke it’s just a misspelling of “fate”) for crafters and gatherers intended to celebrate the completion of the Firmament in Ishgard. Fêtes happen in day-long sessions with a day or two cooldown between them.
To see when the next fête will begin, enter the Firmament and check the timer.
When a fête begins, you can expect it to last about 30 minutes between all of the events. There’s nothing difficult about the fêtes themselves. What you’ll struggle with most is seeing around the massive number of people who are doing the fêtes with you.
Some Tips on Fêtes
You must be a crafter or gatherer to take part.
You can join a group, but the only thing that really counts is your personal contribution. Group members cannot earn you points, so grouping doesn’t really help or hurt.
The number of points per fête required to earn gold vary. #1 requires 6 points, #2 requires 3 points, #3 requires 4 points, #4 requires 4 points and #5 requires 6 points. It’s best just to shoot for as many points as you can manage.
Earning gold will get you 2 boxes per event with a total of 10 boxes by the end.
Some fêtes start automatically, some require you to click the Join the FATE button to start – so keep a lookout!
Press and hold the X keyto hide player names – this is a huge help when it comes to seeing objectives better!
Click the zero keyon your number pad to target the nearest object – even in the middle of a bunch of other players! Click the zero key a second time to interact with that target.
Don’t be too hasty! Keep an eye on your cast bar as you interact and don’t interrupt your own actions by being in a rush.
You have more time than you think you do! These fêtes act like turn-in FATES, which means you actually have an extra minute of time even after the first timer counts down.
Players only show up right in your immediate area, so you can actually use this to click-target objects far away as you’re running towards them. I’ll give an example of this later in fête 5.
Follow the crowd if you don’t know where to go. They’ll show you where the next event is taking place.
What’s in the Box?
You can get up to 10 gifts per for finishing gold for each event. The contents of the box varies from things like the new Antelope Stag mount and the Peacelover’s Attire Coffer for the new glamour – these seem to drop pretty often – to dyes, balloon decorations, barding and even minions.
Some rewards – minus the Archon egg stand!
Fête 1 – A Twist of Fête
The first event introduces the mascots of the celebration. This one is pretty simple, but has a few things that stumps folks.
Click the Join FATE button – this changes your hotbar and adds three emotes to it.
Emotes always correspond with the mascot – #1 is always pig, #2 is always chocobo and #3 is always moogle.
When a mascot does their emote, click on them to target them – then click the corresponding emote on your hotbar to imitate them! Making sure you have the mascot targeted is something that seems to throw people off.
Once you’ve got it, this should be one of the easier events to finish.
Fête 2 – Made of Softer Stuff
The giant plush moogle run event!
Four boxes of Stuffed Toy Material appear in the area. There are three steps you have to complete to get a point.
Interact with the Stuffed Toy Material and wait until you’re done sewing the toy.
A toy will appear next to the box, interact with it – wait until you’ve picked it up.
Transport the toy to the wains (wagons) and interact with the wain to send the toy on its way.
Repeat!
This is where hitting the zero key on your number pad is essential!!!
Double tap zero to make the toy. Pause a moment – don’t get too ahead of yourself – and let the toy appear. Then double tap zero to pick it up. When you reach the wain, double tap zero again to drop it off.
That should get it done for you!
Fête 3 – Shear-a-Yak
Next up is shearing the giant ram.
You must click the button to join this FATE. It will put a new shearing skill on your hotbar. Here’s some tips for this one:
Target the ram and use the shearing skill.
Three pieces of yak wool will appear around the ram on the ground somewhere. Use the X key to hide player names and see them better.
The double tap of the zero key can target and interact with the wool to help you pick it up in the middle of the crowd.
Once you have all three, take them to the chocobo mascot to get your point. You have to turn in the three you have before you can shear the ram again.
Then, just repeat to earn points!
Fête 4 – Toy Hunter
This is Piggy’s toy hunt event. You’ll see three interactive boxes in the area. One of them has a toy and the other two inflict the piggy status on you.
Interact with the boxes – double tap the zero key for ease.
If you get a toy, run it back to Piggy to turn it in for a point.
If you get piggied, try the next box – note that you can’t open a box while you have the piggy status, but it usually wears off fast.
Repeat for points!
Fête 5 – Presents of Mind
This event you have to pay mind to a couple things. There are three different colored presents and only one type will be lit up for you at a time. Depending on the name of the present, you must pick it up and deliver it to a corresponding NPC waiting at the other end – either an artisan, merchant or child.
Again, the difficulty comes with so many huge packages in view. But I’ve discovered something nice about this — you can pre-target both the package and the NPC as you’re running towards them since you’ll only see the players that are closest to you.
So make the best of your time running up and down – click the package to target it before you reach it, then tap zero to pick it up.
Click the NPC you want to deliver it to as you’re running towards them, then tap zero to deliver it.
And that should get you through the final fête!
Best of luck opening your gifts! May RNG be with you!
I know I’ve been writing a lot about BDO lately, but I’ve also been playing FFXIV just as much as always. I’ve just not had anything exciting to talk about since we’re all waiting for the patch to drop tonight.
However, over the weekend, I attended a couple of fun community events with my RP alt, Amon.
On Saturday, a FC I’m a part of on Marlboro set up what’s called a Full NPC Raid for Syrcus Tower. This means that we invited the players who have NPC characters or look-alikes to come and create a full pre-made raid party.
Of course, Amon had to be there, along with Syn on her Scylla character. But quite a few showed up! Enough for two full runs, in fact.
On Sunday, we attended a Hatching Tide art party hosted by another FC on the datacenter. The funky thing about this year is that Easter fell so early in April, I thought we wouldn’t be seeing a Hatching Tide event. Well, that was wrong – we’re getting one after the patch drops this week.
So may as well celebrate the new patch and have an art party!
Another patch is upon us next week, and it’s time for me to take a look at the 5.5 preliminary notes to see what interests me. As usual, this glosses over the stories/dungeons/raids because these are pretty much givens.
Yay!
I’m going to let this be the stand in for all of the housing and decoration updates. There are a LOT of them, and all of them are really good. I like how different this housing exterior is, though I’d likely never use it myself – I only have a small house and this seems to take up quite a bit of yard.
Good updates to Triple Triad! I really need to play this again.
In particular, this is the Rainmaker hairstyle. I’m glad they’re putting it back in there for people who missed it because it was odd how it never returned for any of the Make it Rain Campaigns.
Very very nice and much needed! Thank you!
Also very nice. I really need to get back into fishing one day.
Okay. I REALLY need to get back on that boat. This sounds great!
This sounds like a lot of fun. I hope I can catch one.
These are both really cute mounts! I guess I’ll have to make an effort to get to these fetes!
I wonder if these will have something to do with the Ocean Fishing changes?
This is so so so nice! Thank you! Much needed!
Yes, yes, yes, yes to all of this! Thank you!
Nice!
Nice for those Nier fans. I’ll pick these up, but I doubt I’ll put them to use, myself. Can’t knock the addition of new hairstyles, though.
Never had too much trouble with this before (unless there was a spinning tank), but any help is welcome!
Awesome! Keep going with this! I’ve needed to take screens in Fractal before and this would have come in handy!
Nice retainer changes! I still have some retainers that need leveling up, so this will be handy!
Hmm….
Another set of custom deliveries? I’m not against them, but it seems awful late in the patch cycle, especially one where we’ve already crafted quite a bit. I’m going to assume this is a follow up to the Firmament, which means I need to hurry up and get those quests done on three characters this weekend.
I wonder what this is about? It wouldn’t happen to be super expensive gil mounts, now would it?
Wait… wait.. what is this “Object” option you speak of? If it’s what I think it is, this could be AWESOME!
This is a nice option, but only relevant if you have 4 players already in your party (which we almost never do when I play). I’d love to see it where one day Leveling could understand this automatically when matching players rather than it just being a setting. But it’s a very nice option to have.
Meh
Actually, there was nothing that I saw that made me go meh this time around.
Overall
This patch has a lot of nice QoL stuff that we really need. I also see that it’s going to nudge me back into things like Triple Triad, the Firmament and Ocean Fishing. That’s not a bad thing — I’ve been needing new projects to think about. So this should be enough to keep me going until the expansion, though I know we have another half patch coming out between the two for story at least.
One thing I’ve learned about BDO is that you really need to pay attention to the details in the weekly Patch Notes. Events come and go quickly, they drop coupons for free items in the notes, and spend a good bit of time explaining important changes to the game – including this new Narchillan gear addition.
So why am I making a little bit of a fuss (in a good way) about Narchillan gear?
Well, due to the bonus XP event last month, I’ve gotten all of the characters that I’m going to level past 50 to at least 56. This allowed me to pick up the Oasis gear for them (which is said to be temporary). But in the meantime, I’ve been wondering what to do to gear up aside from that.
I’m pretty much a solo player and I don’t really need the top of the line gear because I don’t expect to be doing major end-game content in this game. In fact, if Oasis gear wasn’t temporary, I’d be just fine with it. But I have a feeling that with the introduction of Narchillan gear, Oasis gear is on the way out – or maybe they’ll just let us keep it, which would be nice.
Based on the guide I linked above, Narchillan gear ranks somewhere between DUO and TRI Blackstar gear. I believe Blackstar is some of the highest gear you can get right now, so for the ease and inexpensiveness of Narchillan, this is a really awesome set for someone like me who has nothing but Oasis.
I tested it out, and though you can only do the quests for each item once per family, you can bank the Narchillan gear and pass it around between your characters. Sure, this isn’t as convenient as having a set for each of them, but the fact that it isn’t character bound is what really motivated me to work on this.
To get Narchillan gear, you have to start a questline with Fughar – a deer-looking fellow that’s usually located near stables in the big towns. There’s a quest for each piece of armor (accessories are not included in this) and for one main-hand, off-hand and Awakened weapon. Weapons, obviously, can’t be shared across different classes, so this is the one you do have to make a choice on.
Basically, upgrade a piece of Naru gear to PEN and trade it for each piece of Narchillan gear. If you’ve tossed your Naru gear for any reason, you can talk to Fughar to exchange beginner black stones for those. It also takes beginner black stones to upgrade the Naru gear.
Because you can do quests for pieces individually, the best way I found was to look across all my characters and take inventory of the number of beginner stones they still have – lucky I kept most of them. Then, I spread out the upgrades across my characters as best as I could. So one character would upgrade the helm, another the chest, another the gloves, etc.
This was my first time upgrading gear to PEN. I learned a LOT about the upgrade system – and finally understand what Chron stones are for! I know that sounds silly as a player who has accumulated over 1,000 hours in this game…
Proof! I haven’t claimed it yet because I haven’t decided where I’m going to put the bed…
But I just haven’t had a need to upgrade gear based on my playstyle so far.
I did run across an issue where I’d run out of black weapon stones at one point. I also ran across the issue where I’d tossed out all of my Canon Awakened weapons, which you need for the Awakened weapon trade-in.
Thankfully, I’d left off in the middle of my Awakened quest on one character. So I finished that up, got the Canon weapon for him, and traded it in. You receive a box instead of a weapon straight out, so you can put this box in the bank and it becomes the Awakened weapon of the character who opens the box.
Amon got the Awakened weapon since he’s been using his Greatbow from the beginning and Shai don’t have an Awakened weapon. I know it seems dumb to give my Shai the rest of the weapons, but she remains my main, even if she’s not as strong as some of the other classes in the game.
At this point, I feel as if the Narchillan gear has me set for whatever leveling I might decide to do eventually. But last month I’ve leveled so much that I’m giving BDO a bit of a break in that area. Most of my time this month has been spent running horses and sailing ships for fishing. But in time, I’m sure I’ll be using this gear for leveling of some sort, and I’m glad to have it.
Over the weekend, I had some time to begin exploring ships in Black Desert Online. I mainly wanted to try out AFK fishing in the Ross Sea, which I heard could be pretty lucrative.
Knowing this was not going to be fishing in a safe area, I chose to level a whole new character and stop her at 49 just to be my ocean fisher. I’m glad that I did – more on that later, though.
From the Shakatu’s seals we got during the transfer and anniversary celebration, I picked up a Epheria Sailboat. I have some interest in possibly bartering on down the line, but for now, I just wanted to try fishing in the sea off of Port Epheria, which I’ve heard was safe from monsters. This is because at level 49, I don’t believe my fishing character can actually work the canons on the ship and defend from ocean monsters. So sailing further and exploring all of that will have to be done on another character someday.
Taking her out of port the first time
The actual mechanics of sailing are very easy in BDO. Nothing confusing about how to get the boat to move. You do have to buy “rations” while in port before the ship can leave the dock – I guess you can consider it like fuel in a way. There’s also a sailor system, but I didn’t look into that since I wasn’t planning on sailing all that far.
Once you get out into the Ross Sea (and beyond) you’re in uncharted territory. You have to uncover the fog of war on the map and you have no icon to know your location. You also can’t use the automapping features to get back to port. I think there’s a way to see where you are in the sea (compass?), though I never went deep enough that I couldn’t use island landmarks to get me back to port again.
My entire goal was to get one zone out, just a bit inside the Ross Sea, to fish. This “distance” would make the fish I brought back to port worth more. Also, out on the sea, fish seem always abundant, so AFK fishing was always at its fastest times.
My fishing character, Finch, went out there with zero fishing experience and a handful of buffs they’ve handed out over the past few weeks. After a couple sessions, she’s now mid-Skilled rank at fishing and has brought in over 9 million silver in fish profit alone (not counting the crystal shards I’ve sold). She is decently geared for lifeskilling with a Balenos +10 rod, so that helps lend to the leveling.
Just fishing, please don’t PK me!
At first, I went back and forth on whether I wanted to use Finch for fishing as I did have Amon at Skilled fishing due to time he’s spent AFK fishing in Grana. Everyone I’ve heard from says not to worry about taking a level 50+ character out into the ocean – that people fish for hours and hours and have never seen a PKer.
Well.
My very first night fishing, I was sailing back for the dock to unload. As I did, I noticed a squat little boat attempting to cross paths with mine. I was on autopath, so I veered away a bit to give them room. That’s when I saw I was being targeted, and that ship fired canons at mine.
My ship took a bit of damage from the attack. But, they only fired on me once – my thoughts are they saw they couldn’t hit me and decided it wasn’t worth it to keep chasing. So I’m fairly sure they were after a PK there. Had I not be under level 50, they would have had their PK, or they would have beat up my ship pretty badly as I tried to escape. I have no clue how to defend myself on a ship.
I guess I keep running into these so-called rare PKers who don’t exist. This is the fourth time someone’s tried to kill me in this game. Only once has actually been successful – the time I dumbly went AFK horse training on a server that phased into Node Wars. I guess everyone can be killed in Node Wars, even if you’re under level 50. Had no idea – live and learn and stay clear of any server with a number 1 after its name.
Anyhow, the rest of the time I’ve spent out at sea has been uneventful. I’ve seen other ships in my area, likely fishing like I am, and no one has bothered me.
Though my first time out, I almost beached my own ship, which was extremely frustrating! I accidentally ran aground on a sand bar and couldn’t find a way off – not even jumping into the ocean and “calling” my ship worked. I began to think I’d have to buy that SOS loyalty item just to get free, but then a game blip disconnected me from BDO. When I logged back in, my boat wasn’t quite in the same location as it was before, and that gave me just enough wiggle room to rock it off the sandbar, thank goodness! Now, I’m super careful about coming near anything that looks like it could snag my ship underneath.
The only other exciting thing this weekend was getting my Narchillan gear quests done. I’ll have to talk about that in another post, however!
This is not an April Fools joke – this really happened yesterday!
On Tuesday night, I left a couple of BDO horses breeding – a T5 male and a T6 female (with the bleh ketchup/mustard coat). When I woke up the next day, I was greeted with my first ever bred T8 horse from the coupling!
Ever since I started breeding, back 5 years ago when BDO launched, it was my goal to breed a top tier horse. Back then, it was T7. Now the highest you can breed is T8.
The only thing about this horse is that she’s a T8 female. Why is this significant?
Because based on the BDO horse calculator, she shouldn’t be possible from this pairing.
Below, you can see what I should be able to get from a max level T5 male and T6 female.
There’s an 8% chance of a T8 Male based on this, but NO chance of a T8 Female!
So not only was this an extremely lucky breeding, but it’s downright impossible… or just so improbable that it doesn’t even register on the calculator!
Anyhow. I was so excited to get a T8 of my own breeding (more on that later) and one of my favorite T8 coats, that I sat down and mapped out her family tree. It turns out that on both sides of her family, I can trace her lineage back to the two very first horses I ever captured five years ago!
Click for bigger image
The satisfaction in this is why I kept that silly spreadsheet all these years. That just goes to show you that you never know how things are going to play out until they do.
Dream Horse Progress
Kizmit isn’t actually my first T8 horse – I didn’t post about this yet, but last week I took my Shakatu’s seals and turned them in for a ship and a T8 horse (that came with one of the skills needed to become a Courser).
In BDO, to get a T9 horse – known as a Dream Horse – you first must have a T8 horse. You must then train them to level 30 and ensure they have all the proper skills to become what’s know as a Courser.
This is not easy to do. In fact, the guides say it’s nearly impossible to get an organic Courser considering all the RNG and the difficulty of learning the skills naturally.
I bought the T8 horse with all intentions of making it a Courser anyhow. She came with one of the rare skills already, and I had a stack of skill change coupons from various log-in rewards over the years. So I got to work on it.
The good: By the time she was level 30, she had enough skills to pull it off.
The bad: By the times she was level 30, she was missing ONE of the required skills needed even after several skill changes. And… I’d be lying if I said I didn’t throw some RL cash at the shop when the April fools mount skill change coupons went on sale.
Apparently, I got pretty lucky in the end because it can take quite a bit of cash for coupons to get what you need for the Courser. I had 20+ failstacks, I’ll tell you what, and I was starting to worry it wasn’t going to happen.
But then it did!
Kodie became a Courser!
So now I’m taking her to Courser training and she’s on the very slow track to become a Dream Horse one day. I hope. This is going to take a lot of time and effort… but that’s okay. Since I just achieved one project – breeding my own T8 — this will be my next goal.
I’m not done by far, though. I’ve got a couple T7 males and I plan on training them and the two T8 females to hopefully produce more T8s if I’m lucky. At least more T7s. Either way, my breeding stock is slowly kicking out of the T5 territory and moving up into the T6-T8 area.
Eventually, I hope to provide pretty nice horses for all of my characters. I certainly know the worth of having a well-trained horse with the proper skills now.
