Hunting in Black Desert

Yesterday I reached level 20, which meant not only could I finally use my pet for the Tamer class but I was also given a reward for reaching that level, much like claiming the daily rewards. One of the options was a magic crystal that would increase my XP for one of the crafting skills. I recognized most of them—gathering, fishing, cooking, etc., but one of the crystals said “hunting.” Huh. Since the game is terrible at explaining how to get started in just about everything, I searched online a while to figure out what exactly it was and how to get started.

I’m glad I did because it sounds interesting and I would have never figured it out on my own. And I’m assuming others might be interested as well and equally unsure of how to get started, so I thought I’d write a simple guide.

The first thing you need to do is go to Velia and find the guild manager, Laiano Pietro. From Laiano you can rent a practice matchlock ( a hunting rifle) that you will use for two dailies to earn hunting XP.

Location of the guild manager (you should be able to make out my character’s icon on the west side of town).

 

Once you have the matchlock, head down to the fishing docks and find a little otter-man named Crio who will give you a quest for hunting seagulls along the beach. You’ll definitely need to turn on all quests to be able to see the hunting one he offers. Equipping the musket is just like equipping a regular weapon only it makes your character walk slower and disables jump (space bar causes you to kneel down and aim instead) so you’ll want to get in position before equipping.

Crio’s location on the docks

 

From that point it’s a simple point and click shooting mini-game with moving targets. They aren’t that difficult to hit but the seagulls have to be close because the matchlock doesn’t have much range and sometimes the camera angle can make it difficult to aim your weapon but I found it worked best to just let the birds fly close to where I was aiming rather than moving around a lot to track the birds and risk the camera clipping grass or a wall. You only need to shoot two birds to complete the quest, then return to Crio for your reward and for hunting XP.

Location of the Cattle Ranch

 

After that, you’ll want to travel down to a cattle ranch set in between Heidel and Lynch Farm Ruins. There’s a little wooden house with a villager there who will give you a quest to set up a scarecrow because the eagles are scaring his cows (uh, sure why not). Once that’s complete he will give you a second quest to hunt the eagles. This time you only need to shoot one and then you can complete it for more XP. After those first two quests I was about 83% of the way through level 3 hunting. I tried shooting more eagles to see if that would increase my hunting skill but it didn’t; only the dailies will give you XP.

“Wait for it….”

 

Eventually you can rank up and make your own musket but I’m not sure how that works just yet. Ultimately the goal is to get your hunting skill high enough to go after whales and crocodiles. Whaling sounds interesting if I can find someone with a good boat, but I think the crocodiles are probably what I’ll go after. I don’t really know what benefit there is to hunting these things but it sounds like fun. The gathering and crafting skills in BDO seem like a huge time investments but hunting is something I can spend a little time on daily while still focusing on combat quests or playing other MMOs.