Black Desert/Trading
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Trading
the trade of the land
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| Type | Life skill |
|---|---|
| Practiced | Across the roads of the continent |
| Bought at | Designated nodes, spread across eight territories |
| Sold at | One representative town per territory |
| Value depends on | Distance from the origin of the goods |
| Depends on | Nodes, workers and Contribution Points |
| Premium route | Imperial Delivery |
| Revamped | January 17, 2024 |
| Related | Bartering, the sea equivalent |
Trading is the overland commerce of Black Desert, a life skill built on carrying goods away from the place they came from and selling them somewhere that wants them more.
Every trade good remembers where it originated, and the price it fetches rises with the distance between that origin and the counter it is sold at. Moving goods a long way is the whole of the skill.
It is the least self-contained of the life skills. Trading rests on nodes, workers and Contribution Points, so a serious trader is really running a supply chain rather than a delivery route.
1 How it works✎
Trade goods are bought at designated nodes scattered across the settled territories, from Balenos in the west through to the Mountain of Eternal Winter. They are sold at the representative town of a territory rather than anywhere convenient, which means one counter each in places such as Velia, Heidel, Altinova, Valencia City, Grána and Duvencrune.
Prices are not fixed. They move on a four-hour cycle, and rumors circulating in a territory can push a good far above or well below its usual value. A trader who watches the market makes considerably more than one who does not.
2 Crates and workers✎
The other half of trading is manufacture rather than transport. Crates are made in town workshops by workers, and a crate counts as originating from the worker's home village rather than from the workshop that assembled it.
That detail governs how a trading operation is laid out. Choosing which town a worker is hired from decides where the finished crate is deemed to come from, and therefore how far it can profitably be carried.
Node connection matters just as much. A chain of connected nodes has to run between the origin and the point of sale, bought with Contribution Points, and goods sold across a broken chain fetch a fraction of their worth.
3 Imperial Delivery✎
Imperial Delivery is the premium route. An adventurer packages specific goods for the imperial court and is paid far above the ordinary market rate for them.
The catch is volume. Only a limited quantity is accepted before the offer resets, so the return depends on preparing in advance and arriving early rather than on trading steadily.
4 The 2024 revamp✎
Trading was rebuilt on January 17, 2024, and the current shape of the skill dates from that change rather than from the game's launch.
The revamp narrowed where goods can be bought and sold, replaced the old purchasing arrangement, and withdrew the general trade goods that town trade managers had handled directly until then. Processing trades such as ingots and crop boxes were unaffected and continued throughout.
Anyone reading older guides should treat them with care. A large amount of published advice describes the system as it stood before this date, and much of it no longer applies.