Black Desert/Workers
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Workers
the labor force behind the economy
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| Hired from | A work supervisor, in any town |
|---|---|
| Costs | Energy to look, silver to hire |
| Housed in | Lodging, bought and set aside for them |
| Kinds | Goblins, humans, giants, and regional peoples |
| Fed on | Beer and other simple food |
| Grades | Normal, Skilled, Professional and Artisan |
Workers are the hired labor of Black Desert, NPCs an adventurer employs to run production while doing something else entirely.
They are what makes the economy passive. A worker sent to a mine keeps mining whether or not the player is logged in, and an adventurer with a well-organized workforce earns from nodes across the map while personally standing somewhere else.
Almost every crafted thing in the game passes through them at some point. Ore, timber and crops arrive by worker, crates are packed by worker, and the trade and cooking economies both run on what they produce.
1 Hiring✎
Workers are taken on from a work supervisor, who is found in every town of any size. Looking at the list costs energy, and hiring the worker costs silver scaled to how good it is, so a run of poor candidates is expensive in both.
Housing is the real constraint. Each town provides lodging for one worker free, and every worker beyond that needs a house bought and given over to lodging rather than used for anything else. A large workforce therefore competes directly with residences used for cooking and alchemy.
2 Kinds of worker✎
Which people a worker comes from decides how it behaves, and the trade is always between speed and endurance.
| Kind | Character |
|---|---|
| Goblin | The fastest at both working and moving, but with little stamina, so it stops sooner. |
| Giant | Slow, but with the stamina to keep going far longer, and a talent for producing more. |
| Human | Balanced between the two, and the usual choice when neither extreme suits. |
Several regions supply their own peoples. Papus and dwarves behave much as goblins do, faduses resemble humans, and the Land of the Morning Light brought in dokkebi, dolswe and shellfolk.
3 Stamina and food✎
Every task a worker completes costs stamina, and a worker that runs out stops until it is fed. Beer is the standard remedy and the reason it is brewed in quantity across the game, though grilled meat and similar dishes work as well.
Keeping a workforce fed is a large part of running one. That is why cooking and worker management tend to be practiced by the same players.
4 What workers do✎
A worker can be sent to a production node, once Contribution Points have been invested in it, and will keep gathering from it indefinitely. They also staff town workshops, where they craft from materials held in that town's storage, and tend crops in a garden.
Investment banks are the exception, since a worker placed there produces silver from gold bars rather than goods.
5 Promotion and skills✎
Workers gain experience as they work and level up from it. At every tenth level a worker can attempt promotion to the next grade, and the odds fall as the grades rise: the first step succeeds nine times in ten, the last only half the time.
Promotion costs progress. A promoted worker returns to level one at its new grade, so an owner trades immediate output for a higher ceiling.
Skills arrive at random as a worker levels. The valuable ones raise working speed or allow trade goods to be packed quickly, and every worker eventually learns to carry finished goods to storage without being told.