Black Desert/Balenos
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Balenos
the starting region · once the Kingdom of Cron
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Velia, the village at the center of the region From the Adventurer's Guide, Pearl Abyss
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| Ruled by | Republic of Calpheon |
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| Main settlement | Velia |
| Terrain | Coast, forest and farmland |
| Settlements | Velia, Olvia |
| Landmarks | Cron Castle, Balenos Forest |
| Former state | Kingdom of Cron, under the Bartali line |
| Borders | Serendia to the east |
| Difficulty | The lowest in the game |
| Added | 2014, at launch |
Balenos is the westernmost region of the world of Black Desert, a mild stretch of coast, forest and farmland, and the region where nearly every adventurer begins.
It is the gentlest country on the map. The monsters are the weakest in the world, the terrain is easy to cross, and the fishing village of Velia at its center serves as the first hub most players learn to use. Balenos answers to the Republic of Calpheon, which absorbed it without a fight.
The quiet is recent. Balenos was once the independent Kingdom of Cron, and the ruin of Cron Castle on the northern cliffs is what remains of the night that kingdom ended.
1 Geography✎
The region occupies the far west of the continent, facing the sea, with Serendia beyond its eastern border. The coast is broken by inlets and beaches, and the interior rises gently into wooded hills.
Velia stands at the center, a working fishing village with a harbor, a market and the first storage most adventurers use. Olvia lies to the northwest in open farming country, known for its livestock and its fields rather than for any defensive value. The ruined Cron Castle sits on high ground to the northeast, and the Balenos Forest fills much of the ground between them.
The waters offshore matter more than they first appear. Balenos is where most players catch their first fish and buy their first boat, and the routes out of Velia lead to the open sea and eventually to Margoria.
2 History✎
The oldest story attached to this ground concerns the Edana, who carried black stones and are remembered for ending an age when people turned on one another with unnatural strength. Their civilization disappeared afterward and left a sealed stone chamber in the south of the region, which nature spirits are said to guard still.
The Kingdom of Cron came far later. Noir Bartali III founded it and built a castle to match his ambitions, and he was remembered as generous toward common people and hard on his nobles. He grew obsessed with living forever as he aged.
An alchemist from the eastern desert offered him exactly that, in exchange for help summoning the alchemist's own master. The ritual demanded the lives of children, and the king supplied them. It failed. The castle's towers came down in an explosion that flattened the country around them, and nobody inside survived, the king included.
Survivors gathered at Velia, which is why the village became the center of a region that had lost its capital. The Bartali name outlasted the kingdom, and the family still supplies the chiefs of Velia and Olvia.
A plague killed roughly half the population of the western continent in the years that followed, and a weakened Balenos passed to Calpheon along with Heidel and Keplan. It offered no resistance, which is why it kept its towns and its people where Serendia did not. Calpheon later became a republic and posted a guard camp in the east of the region to hold the trade road.
3 Settlements✎
| Place | What is there |
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| Velia | The central village and the first hub of the game, with a harbor, a market, stables and the storage most adventurers start from. |
| Olvia | A farming town in the northwest, built on livestock and crops, and the quietest settlement of any size in the game. |
| Cron Castle | The ruined seat of the Kingdom of Cron, held now by soldiers left over from a Mediah force that occupied it. |
4 Hunting grounds✎
Balenos carries the easiest hunting grounds in the game, and they exist mainly to teach. Imps hold the woods and the bridges near Velia, goblins camp further inland, and the coast has its own weak beasts. A character can clear any of it long before the systems that matter later become relevant.
Because nothing here threatens an experienced player, the region empties out quickly. Adventurers move on to Serendia within a few hours and rarely return except to fish, to farm, or to run trade goods through Velia.
5 Role in the game✎
Balenos is the tutorial made into a place. The opening quest line walks a new character through combat, gathering, storage, the stable and the first steps of the main story, and it does all of it inside a few minutes' ride of Velia.
That design has held up through every expansion. The game has grown eastward for a decade, and the map now reaches from this coast to the deserts of Valencia and beyond, but the starting point has not moved.