Review from new player

hello everyone,

This post is more for people who are thinking of switching but haven't yet from retail. I played bdo retail since launch and recently decided to switch to private server for many reasons such as: time needed to progress, P2W, no flexibility in switching characters or alts. I played many classes and never found myself just playing one because i enjoyed them all.

Pros:
Progression in level
you can reach 64 rather quickly and unlock capotia equipment. This is huge and this is how retail should have been. This make progression so much smoother to soft cap and unlocked areas that much more quickly to farm. Also leveling an alt to 56 only take a couple of hours so if you don't like the class you can easily switch. You can also easily progress in life skill levels which make gathering, fishing, and processing so much more enjoyable.

Drops:
i have only played a couple of days but legendary drops are so much more welcome. These things blow up anyway when you enhance them. The market is very healthy with accessories which is such a nice sight to see. It isn't ran by log in awards, some may still be but no where near as bad. Also farming world bosses is amazing for drops and getting the gear you want but there are some down sides to this which i will explain later. getting memory frags is easy, sharps drop regularly on gathering. Just overall amazing

Pearls:
you get free pearls for every 30 minutes logged in. Can't tell you how great this is. Level playing field for everyone and if there is something you want just wait. No costume melting yet i believe as well, but don't think it matters as income comes so easily you can just buy crons stones if you want.

Commands: (premium only)
.drop filter is a god send. Serious i love just picking up important items that drop and not everything. .rescue to go to olivia to go to world bosses is also amazing. escape to go back to altnova is killer as well if past media region.

Events:
increase drop events, enhancing up events, all these are great. Wounder if you can do some of the specialty events that retail has but i guess i will learn that in time. So far love the events

Enhancing:
rates are much better even during an event. Accessories seem like you still want to kill yourself but armor and weapons are much easier and makes you feel like you can truly progress when you have the funds. Basically just stock pile and wait for enhancing event and go all in.

Cons:
LAG:
i dunno if it was just the weekend, but man the lag can be up to a second or two. I believe this is probably due to the population as almost all the servers were overrun. I am on the pacific coast of the US so it may be different for others based on region. But, this is probably the biggest con for me.

Overcrowding:
every server is packed and since there is special drop groups it is very hard for a new player to grind at locations as every spot is taken by by groups. Cat fish, nagas, hexe, etc. places that aren't usually packed are packed here due to population and special deals grind parties. Hard for new players to catch up so join a guild and get a group and even then your ap is so trash people may dump you off. At least this has been my experience. They are opening a EU server so this may help drastically with the overcrowding and lag.

Trolls:
seems to be more prevalent here. People mass kills other people at world bosses, randomly ganked just trying to ride somewhere, knocked off horse all the time. This is probably due to the 100% karma bonus from premium pack. Kinda sucks that there isn't much protecting new players so i guess get used to getting murdered all the time for the first bit. This will definitely turn many players away because you cannot compete with seasoned players. however the karma system allows people to defend spots easily. It is definitely a difficult medium to find between the two.

Siege/ savage rift:
Siege not in game yet. i believe this is being worked on. Savage rift is not worth while would love to see increase drop rates maybe on ogre spawn and orge ring drops. Or at least i don't see savage rift used much.

Bugs:
can be a little buggy with enemies in the floor and floating in the air. boss spawns also can be buggy and not spawn at all. It is kinda expected with a private server i guess.

Indifferent:
World bosses
the navigation and boss timers in game is amazing!!! so amazing only problem is competing with seasoned players for gear to progress as a newer player because you will never reach the damage charts high enough to get it most times. Gear drops frequently so people use it to repair or sell for pearls i guess?

WTS posts:
this is crazy the amount of posts through server chat there are. I don't understand this as pearls are free just for logging in. Would love to see the role playing channels switch to a WTS channel. Would make the experience more enjoyable.

SD groups:
great for making money since all items set up for specials deals is automatically sold during server update. However make it very hard for a new player to grind locations such as cat fish or hex since there are groups that kill on site there.

Guides:
Not very many guides for new players. Enhancing is the hardest to relearn and when to build stacks on what, and what stack is for pri and duo etc. Not sure what the new enhancements rates are so research is definitely warranted.

Market:
the market is vastly different. It is good and bad. Things that are easily purchasable on retail such as tools, costumes, cooking alchemy items, and horse gear are not on the market, because they are not worth producing due to income. Only AFK activity worth is horse breeding. Trading is disabled, so fishing isn't worth while either. You have to have a worker empire not for money but for items which is different. I would love to see a revamp to see AFK more worth while somehow, but i get it and i kinda like that i have to make everything and kinda don't. There are Pen items on the market so definitely a give and take.

Donate shop:
some things you can get on retail but not here. Such as a hedgehog. Which i think it weird, it is probably due to the increased sharp rates from gathering anyway but don't see why this is locked off behind the donate shop and not in the pearl shop. I guess it could be game breaking if in the pearl shop, having too many sharps. I do love that you can purchase your dream horse and arsha weapon skins if you so choose. I recommend getting a horse as that will be a limiting step for any new player. Premium membership is kinda pay to win as it gets in this server. Not a must have but definitely worth your time.

Remastered version:
not in game yet, would love to see the graphics updated. I believe this is being worked on?

Of course there is so much more to learn in this version and it isn't an end all be all. Just a general first impression for anyone thinking of switching. I am definitely going to stay and highly recommend it to others. I think the changes are refreshing.

TLDR:
totally worth your time to give it a shot. If you can handle a little lag sometimes, and re-logging helps you will definitely stick around. Much better than retail but expect some bugginess sometimes.

 

amerigo's welcome package in the pearl shop has a hedgehog. the cash and pearl hedgehogs vary in function I believe but yes, there's a hedgehog in the pearl shop.

one concern I had when I joined is that the game doesn't start you off with at least one pet. on day 4 you get one from the rookie thing I think but when you join it's like 5-6 hours before you can get a cheap (900p) one with pearls. With rates like this you could be 60+ before you even get a pet. My experience was that I got my pet and was already level 64. Then I had no stones or anything to enhance my gear because I wasn't able to pick up any drops without putting everything else to a halt so I can manually pick up loot 1 by 1. On NA i had to buy the game to start playing (retail) which included a pet right from the start. Here there is no such thing; you buy with cash or wait 5 1/2 hours + miss a lot of loot.

next concern is the lack of consumables on the market. Where is all of the food? I guess nobody wants to bother with them because of their convoluted crafting design... but yeah. There are not enough meals available. Maybe there should be a NPC that sells these meals for silver or something since nobody wants to make them.

lastly some thing don't sell. It would be nice to have some alternate use for lemoria gear etc to avoid selling an 8m+ piece of gear for less than 100k silver because it just doesn't sell on the MP. The economy here is vastly different with fewer players and high rates. More incentive or a rework to some things could lighten the workload and make these items more prevalent in the market maybe. idk.

 

I don't think it is due to convoluted craft design for food. I just don't think anyone wants to make them for anyone else since you make so much more money actively grinding, and afk horse training. It just isn't cost effective to do so. That is why i put it in indifferent because it is a different type of economy and those things i believe you will just have to AFK make for yourself. However maybe adding some important food and elixirs to a NPC for purchase woul dbe nice such as magic tools as well. But, i am not sure how far they can go modding/adjusting to do this to add to their tables. I agree on the pet stand point definitely makes it harder, but isn't the end of the world though. I also wasn't aware the amigo package was on the pearl shop. I couldn't find it maybe i overlooked that.

Now about lemoria, it is bad for many reasons. One with how quickly boss gear is acquired, you have to enhance it like boss gear, and the skill exp isn't useful from it. I don't think that will ever be a good set and you will just have to deal with that. Besides SD farming is much better. Many things don'y sell on the marketplace and i don't see a way around that due to the income and availability of items. Grind SP deals or grind somewhere that items will definitely sell. Not sure if they can modify vendor cost of item but maybe selling it at 2 mil to a vendor for items that don't sell on the market place would be nice. Some items that don't sell you are off better just melting them if possible.

 

If crafting meals was made easier, more people would do it. But it's not easy... take margoria meals as an example. So either:

• increase the base cost on MP as incentive for income (profit)
• make the craft easier and with less steps/mats (convenient)
• put gathering vendors around that supply all cooking/alchemy mats in exchange for silver (non-profit but very convenient)

Whichever is chosen, more meals would be made. Selling players the mats wouldn't go hand-in-hand with an increased MP base price though ofc. It would simply cut out the time consuming mat gathering runs at a cost. This would be for crafting personal use consumables, not for profit). An example of this method would be the strawberry vendor in Calpheon; skip the gathering step but lose out on some income. We need either convenience or better pricings to get people crafting again.

Couldn't melt Lemoria. That's my point. You either vendor it or delete it because you won't be selling it on MP for 8m+. I'm not discussing the usefulness of the Lemoria Set vs BiS. I'm just saying that there is nothing to do with these items aside from vendoring, which makes some places less appealing as casual grind spots compared to others. It's not a worthwhile drop and saturates the loot pool for little reason (the rates over-saturate the market). Furthermore, I really don't want to afk horse-train for months on end to buy BiS PEN gear. There's no fun in that for me because I want to invest time in the game and my character. My AP/DP isn't competitive at all yet and there are only a few places I can go to grind. Make cooking better or shoehorn in some 'dev'ine intervention in regards to mats/meals.

 

I mean technically, the meals are easier to make on this server cause its easier to hit higher lvls of cooking which means you can skimp on mats when you hit master and i believe the server drop rates effect gathering, so youre obtaining more.

 

I think it'd be better if they added a few more servers, impossible for a new player like myself to grind without someone killing me, and I can't even properly defend myself because I just started lol

 

Yeah you need to guild up and as deals with someone stronger if you want good income. You can also grind for MoS or witch earrings not the best but is definitely doable for new players. Just don’t be a karma bomber I am starting to see this more and more with the server it is super annoying.

 

There is four things needs to be fixed if you ask me, I've been only playing here for 3 days and its been fun and its still fun these just has to be checked
Bugs such as mounting on horse can be annoying sometimes, flying npcs, monsters going inside the ground
Servers are hella crowded we might need some new ones
I don't know if the servers are laggy but it is laggy for me
Too many bombers all around grinding spots

 

hedgehog will increase your base item gathering by 30% DOES not increase shards drop rates. only the 10 scrolls from 90 days package increase the drop of shards for 1 hour still the drop rate suck.