Black Desert/Life Skills
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Life Skills
the game beside the fighting
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| Skills with a level | Ten, each tracked separately |
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| Ranks | Beginner, Apprentice, Skilled, Professional, Artisan, Master, Guru |
| Second measure | Mastery, added September 2019 |
| Experience | Pooled across the whole family |
| Combat required | None |
Life skills are the part of Black Desert that has nothing to do with fighting. Ten of them carry their own level and can be taken to the top without an adventurer ever killing anything, and together they supply most of what the rest of the game consumes.
They are not a diversion from the real game. High-level combat runs on food, elixirs, ships and enhancement material that players make, so a committed life skiller is a supplier the fighters depend on rather than someone opting out.
1 How life skills work✎
Each skill is measured on its own. An adventurer can be a master cook and a complete beginner at hunting, and progress in one does nothing for another.
Levels advance through named ranks — Beginner, Apprentice, Skilled, Professional, Artisan, Master and finally Guru. The first five ranks are ten levels each, and Master and Guru are far longer than everything below them put together, so the last two ranks represent most of the work.
Mastery is a second measure laid over the first, added in September 2019. Level governs what an adventurer is allowed to do, while mastery governs how well it pays: better yields, better odds on rare materials and larger returns from the same effort. Every level gained adds mastery, so the two rise together without being the same thing.
Experience is no longer tied to a single character. It pools across the whole family, so time spent on one character counts toward the same skill on all of them.
2 Gathering✎
Taking raw material straight out of the landscape with one of six tools, and the skill most of the others are built on.
Full article: Gathering
3 Fishing✎
Rod and water, and the one skill that keeps working when the player is not watching.
Full article: Fishing
4 Hunting✎
Shooting wild animals with a matchlock, and the only life skill with genuine boss fights.
Full article: Hunting
5 Cooking✎
Turning crops, meat and fish into the food that carries buffs, done indoors at a utensil.
Full article: Cooking
6 Alchemy✎
Elixirs, potions and the alchemy stones that exist nowhere else in the game.
Full article: Alchemy
7 Processing✎
Refining raw material into the stock that nearly every other craft needs.
Full article: Processing
8 Farming✎
Fencing off ground anywhere in the world, planting it and breeding up a seed stock.
Full article: Farming
9 Trading✎
Carrying goods away from where they came from, and selling them where distance makes them worth more.
Full article: Trading
10 Horse Training✎
Taming, breeding and raising mounts, up through Coursers to the Dream Horses.
Full article: Horse Training
11 Sailing✎
Crewing and improving ships, and the skill that makes the open ocean usable.
Full article: Sailing
12 Bartering✎
Exchanging goods between the islands north of the continent, which funds sailing rather than earning silver directly. Bartering is usually counted among the life skills and is grouped with them here, but it does not carry a life-skill level of its own. It advances instead on the number of barters completed, which opens further routes.
Full article: Bartering