Grinding Spot Guide Work in Progress:
This guide – like all other guides – is currently a work in progress.
This BDO Grinding Spot Guide takes a look at the many hunting zones in Black Desert, in which you can level. Lets use a table to sort BDO Grinding Spots by Level, AP, DP, Silver per hour, and Experience.
As many other things, it is very hard to choose the correct place to farm, since there are sheer endless possibilities. With this BDO Grinding Spot Guide we are trying to create a comprehensive archive of useful Grinding Spots for Money, Grinding spots for XP and Grinding spots for items.
Highlight of our Guide:
- Data-table s with a lot of secret and not so secret Grindspots
- Tips on which are the best bdo grinding spots for money
- A list of recommended Videos by very passionate BDO Players
- Everything else you need to maximize your gains!
You should always keep in mind, that even with all this tips, the best grinding spot not only depends on your gear, population, your class, but also very much on your own preferences and play-style. What works for someone else perfectly, might be mindbogglingly boring to you.
So in case you cannot get warm with a Grinding Spot even though many people recommend it as the Crème de la Crème, don’t sweat it, and just find another spot. You know the saying, there are lot’s of fish in the sea, right ? ?
BDO Grinding Spots For Money
When playing an open-ended game like Black Desert, it is important to make every hour of grinding count. In total you can improve your grinding efficiency in Black Desert Online by more than 400% with some optimizations !
Item Collection Scroll:
Have you ever wondered if the increased drop rate scroll works in a different way. I have heard people saying that the bonus will not only be added additive. Consider that an item has a drop rate of 1%. If you have a 50% increased drop rate chance, it will be calculated as 0.01 + 0.01 × 0.5 = 0.015 which is still a small chance. Usually for items with very less drop chance, the increase in drop chance given by the scrolls are less likely to be noticed. I also believe that this is how it works.
This is 100% how they work. They are a useless item in places where drop chance of alreadt low. Save them for valencia or pirates
Any place with blue accessory drops that are in demand in the meta that you also have at +10 node, that also drops enhanced greens, relic/book/scroll and black stones. This is the bulk of your money from a loot scroll.
I did the math on stream once based on the drop rates. So helms, hexe, and pirates in that order. Never use scrolls for yellow accessory drops on thin loot tables (crescents, aakman, hystria, etc…) because you’re making way less per hour.
No those are additive. So it’s a total sum of percentage default (let’s say 100) + costume (10) + VP (30) + part splendid exp (15) + milk tea (8) = 163% of the exp total per hit or an extra 63% from exp add ons.
Besides pets, the biggest influencer of money earned at grinding spots is the Item Collection scroll available in the Pearl Shop. The numbers here don’t include that. I frequently see players report an increase of 60% when using these. From my own experience, I noticed a big difference, but unfortunately didn’t think about doing the math and recording it against a normal grinding spot session.
You can also obtain Item Collection Scrolls by turning in 10 Dark Spirit’s Greed from completing Dark Rifts. You get 1 per Dark Rift, so it’s not an easily repeatable thing.
Pets:
Silver is highly impacted by pets. If you only have 1 pet, you can’t earn the money reported at these grinding spots because loot will be left behind. Money reflects 5 Tier 3 pets.
Polar Bears increase your weight limit by up to +50LT, which can increase both your XP/Hour Rate and Silver/Hour Rate greatly, but allowing you to bring more potions in order to minimize your downtime. In my tests, up to 39% of the time was actually spend running back and forth restocking/repairing/dropping items, this is insane to take into context.
The other recommended Pets are Dogs, which add up to 4% Combat XP at Tier 4, multiplied by 5 this is a whopping 20% of extra combat xp!
Value Pack:
The reduced market rate alone with the Value Pack is – well – invaluable.
- Inventory Expansion 16 slots
- Storage Expansion 16 slots
- Combat/Skill/Life/Horse EXP +10%
- Distant Node Investment (Consumes 10 Energy)
- Max Weight Limit +100LT
- 30% bonus to the Marketplace sales collection amount
Combined with all the other stats, it is obvious that it is probably one of the most imba buffs in Black Desert Online, and most player have a Value Pack actively running pretty much all day – every day – every week – every year .
To sell, or not to sell :
Most money in Black Desert is made by trading in collectibles from Farming and selling items at the BDO Market Place, also known as Central market.
You are free to sell everything for a profit, since in almost all cases the profit-scaling of items is very limited by Black Desert Planned Market (restricted prices). There are some exceptions where crafting can double you revenue, but this is rather the exception, and in all circumstances requires a big time commitment and a lot of math. Like in real life, everything that is easy, does not return a lot.
Items like Spirit Dust, which are limited from selling, still have some value to them since you need it in order to craft a Caphras Stone. Ancient Spirit Dust is quiet valuable because of this, but if you prefer to buy your Items fully enchanted on the Central market in order to avoid as much RNG frustration as possible, it makes sense to just sell absolutely everything without exception.
What factors do affect money making in bdo?
There are too many small factors to mention them all, but the biggest are :
Your Gear, both AP and DP
Your Class
Your Level
PVP Interactions
Weight Limit
Inventory Size
Travel Distance to NPCs
Maid Count
Party Size
Motivation
Special-Events
Buffs
RNG
Yeah well, and those are from all. It is close to impossible to have every single of those factors optimized to 100% efficiency, like always in life sometimes we have to make compromises, so it does not make sense to manically try to force something.
Instead keep those factors in your head, and try to optimize whatever is possible in a relaxed way while playing BDO.
Grinding Spots Combat Exp Per Hour
While not as prone to RNG as Grinding for Money in Black Desert, Combat Exp per hours can also have a high variance to it, because of all the factors just mentioned above.
Even details that seem very disconnected, like Inventory Size or Weight limit, can have an enormous effect on your achieved XP/Hour.
A good way to keep track of your efficiency and XP/HR is to use our one and only XP/HR Tracker, that is included in our Black Desert Online Bot.
My number 1 advice is to keep the down-times to an absolute minimum, and always keep the walking distance between you and npcs for selling/storing/reparing and restocking in mind.
More detailed information about all the different +% Combat Exp Buffs, all possible combination and how to best combine them, you can find in our BDO Leveling Guide.
Grinding Spot Videos and Black Desert Video Guides
Here are some videos of people who put a ton of work and effort into doing various calculations, so it is definitely worth it to check it out.
Black Desert Help for Beginners
It’s always hard to be a new player in a game, but more-so in Black Desert. Due to the sheer endless amount of possibilities, it’s very hard to understand the priorities and what to do to really efficiently progress in the game. This Video showcases how a veteran proceeds in Black Desert Online, when starting again from scratch.
Be Sure to also check out our beginner Guide found here : https://bdo-fishbot.com/black-desert-online-beginner-guide/
How to make over 30 Million Silver as Beginner in Black Desert
Once you have mastered your first steps and understand the basics, I would recommend to continue here in order to make some more silver in addition to the Ancient Relic Crystal Shards that your Black Desert Online Bot brings.
General help to choose where to grind with xp AP in BDO
Now it is time to really start up the grind-machine.
This Video is a good Guideline, and I recommend all new Players in Black Desert Online to check it out.
The Best Grinding Spots for EXP at level 56-59
Even in later stages you might sometimes feel lost, since the mass of possibilities and different Choices rather increases than decreases, so on your way from Level 56 to 59, check out this Video.
The Best Grindspot for level 60
At this point you came very far, and to really maximize your grinding efficiency, check out this Black Desert Video-Guide.
Grind Spots in Mediah (Low and Medium AP)
A very undervalued spot for Farming, because it is already implemented in the game since 2016, is Mediah.
There are a ton of awesome Grinding Spots, and back in the past all of them would be crowded 24 hours a day, on all channels. For some the endless battle over Saurons with other guilds were the hey-days of Black Desert Online, while others, especially solo players or small groups, had absolutely no Chance to complete for this spots.
With the many updates ever since the first release of Mediah, a ton of new spots for leveling and grinding money have been added into the game, and Mediah slowly has become forgotten. So today, all the sweetest spots from the past are barely contest, which many people take as sign that there are no good Grind Spots in Mediah anymore – this is a widespread misconception.
There are both areas that are not only great for farming xp, but also yield a respectable amount of Silver at the same time. Also Forbidden Books can drop everywhere in Mediah, which are combine-able like Ancient Relic Crystal Shards, in order to start a Boss-Quest with Memory Fragments as reward.
Helms post (90-110 AP)
| Category | Summary | Description |
| Recommended Level | 51 ~ 54Lv | |
| Distance Efficiency between Village | ★★★☆☆ | The village is far away, but there is a NPC that allows you to repair right around the corner (Node Manager) |
| User Density | ★☆☆☆☆ | *cricketsound* |
| Difficulty | ★★★☆☆ | Besides the Golems quiet easy and straight forwart |
| Hunting Sensation | ★★★★☆ | Thrill of mass hunting the sturdy Helm tribe monsters |
| Unique Drop | Asula’s Crimson Eye Ring, Asula’s Crimson Eye Earring, Scarla Necklace | |
| Mount Parking | Necklace, Earring, Ring | NPC Bolero in front of the Helms Post |
| Type of Monster Zone | Hunting for growth | When a character’s total AP is above a certain level, the efficiency does not increase. It is recommended to visit more efficient hunting ground. |
Oh boy, I can remember back in the spring of 2016 when I first saw the beautiful Landscape surrounding this area. Everyone was crazy about grinding at Helms. You had constant guild battles going on, over who is allowed to farm. This was during a time when a PVP Death still brought heavy penalties with it, including the destruction of your gems and the losing of XP. So on an unlucky day you might start with 20% on your level 50, and at the end of the day you are back at 0%. But it was worth it! Hands down, Helms Post is one of the best places to farm early-on in the game.
Today Guilds don’t care about Helms Post anymore, which allows new players to kick-start their Black-Desert Online Experience by making rapid progress.
The Helms Post consists of 3 Areas :
The Outer Area
The Main Post
The Caves
All those areas are absolutely awesome for grinding, but i would recommend to sticking first the first 2. The mobs are dropping a lot of valuable trash loot that can be sold to an NPC for a fixed amount.
Lateron, once your AP is going towards 200, you can start farming the deep depths of the caves, where are a lot of elite-mobs and the drops are even better.
Here is an awesome Video-Guide, showing one of the best farming routines for Helms :
Abandoned Iron Mines (70-90 AP)
| Category | Summary | Description |
| Recommended Level | 51 ~ 53Lv | |
| Distance Efficiency between Village | ★★☆☆☆ | Close to town, but the hunting ground is so large… |
| User Density | ★☆☆☆☆ | Barely a human soul around |
| Difficulty | ★★☆☆☆ | Generally easy, but the Elite Mobs might be able to 1-punch you with their power-strikes |
| Hunting Sensation | ★★★☆☆ | With the Elite Mobs you will not get bored, but since you can evade their attacks, you can kill them even with bad gear. |
| Unique Drop | Necklace, Earrings | Asula’s Crimson Eye Necklace, Ridell Earring |
| Mount Parking | Depends on start location | |
| Type of Monster Zone | Hunting for growth | WhenOnce you reach a certain character level and AP it makes sense to move onto the next spot to incrase you xp & silver per hour. |
Another one of the most popular forgotten grinding spots in BDO. My own, and a lot of other very big guilds would run xxl guild grind missions on this spot every single day, since due to the high density of monsters it allowed to complete very big quests very fast. But not only is the monster density great, they additionally have a very nice drop rate for several valuable items. That’s it you think, but no, in addition it was one of the highest xp/hr grind spots in the game.
Now you can probably understand why it was so popular, and cannot understand why it isn’t anymore. Well, I cannot either.
The Abandoned Iron Mines is a large ring-shaped Area with 3 layers of rings, all accompanied by an unbelievable view.
The basic layout allows for a very good and natural farming routine, since all you have to do is run straight, up and down the 3 stories of rings.
At the writing of this Guide, the place was completely abandoned, even though the Elite Mobs are an extremely good source for both Hard Black Crystal Shards, and Sharp Black Crystal Shards
You should check out this video, to understand how the area exactly looks like, and get an Idea how to efficiently farm the pit :
Manes (100 AP)
| Category | Summary | Description |
| Recommended Level | 51 ~ 53Lv | |
| Distance Efficiency between Village | ★★★★★ | Tarif is right around the corner, awesome. |
| User Density | ★★☆☆☆ | You will barely meet anyone |
| Difficulty | ★★☆☆☆ | Not that hard, and awesome for continuous AOE grinding. |
| Hunting Sensation | ★☆☆☆☆ | The area is little bit boring, compared to the beautiful landscape of the others |
| Unique Drop | Belt, Necklace | Belt of Shultz the Gladiator, Necklace of Shultz the Gladiator |
| Mount Parking | Wherever | |
| Type of Monster Zone | Hunting for growth | Once a certain limit in AP and Level is hit, it is recommendable to switch areas to keep increasing your silver/hour & xp/hour rate. a character’s AP is above a certain level, the efficiency does not increase. It is recommended to visit more efficient hunting ground. |
Manes, wow. I can remember the days, before our big merger, when we were still an ambitious small guild and being bullied of the Helms Post. For us, and for many other small guilds, the manes were an awesome place for farming, almost on-par with the top grinding spots, but at the same time barely contested and mostly ignored.
It’s very near to Tarif, which means that restocking on potions, selling loot or repairing items does not consume a lot of time, which is, as we know, very important for grinding efficiency.
A very great Video highlighting all drops, showing possible crafting mats being gathered there and more can be found here :
Sausans (100-180 AP)
| Category | Summary | Description |
| Recommended Level | 53 ~ 56Lv | |
| Distance Efficiency between Village | ★★★★★ | Both Kusha and the Sarma Outpost are extremely close |
| User Density | ★★★☆☆ | The most contested Grindspot in the past, but at the moment not so bad. |
| Difficulty | ★★★☆☆ | Relatively easy to farm due to the lack of bad elite monsters. |
| Hunting Sensation | ★★★★☆ | Let the season begin! Highest Monster-Density of the early game, combined with tons of trash loot that can be sold for a lot of silver. |
| Unique Drop | None | |
| Mount Parking | Always annoying, your mount will likely die. | |
| Type of Monster Zone | Hunting for growth | For this area you already require quiet good equipment to really farm it efficiently. |
Sausans – the grind spot of the grinding spots in BDO.
The Area is blood-sieved by millions of characters that gave their live on the Sauron Training Ground – but it is not the Saurons blood (well, them too :D), but the blood of players who list their battle in one of the endless ever going guild wars around the sausan area.
The Guild who controlled the Sausan Area back in the day was generally regarded as the strongest guild on the server – on all servers.
I myself have probably lost over 200% of combat xp at that area, due to the PvP-Penalty that would chip away on your hard-farmed xp every time you die, sitting at the edge of my chair fighting off the next guild that was trying to ambush us in order to claim the spot for themselves, being filled with a rush of joy every time we fought them off, and almost crossing the line of insanity when I died the 10th time in a row, while only missing 20% to finally hit level 55, which took 2 weeks of farming 16 hours a day to achieve.
All in all, my memories of the Sausans are very fond, and checking back at the area, it is not even close to as populated as it has been, since all the big guilds moved on.
One thing to keep in mind to really maximize your silver income while grinding in black desert online in general, but especially here :
Free your Inventory and have as much free weight as possible. The drop-rate and monster density are both insane .. but so is the weight of the trashloot.
I very much recommend for you to bring a Wagon as well, otherwise you will greatly suffer in regards to both xp and silver farming efficiency.
ACanadianNoob’s Grinding Spot Guide
Black Desert Grinding Spots
There are more grind spots than just Gahaz and Fogans for people under softcap you know ?
Your results may vary depending on gear, class, buffs, and especially effort. The money per hour here are estimates by me assuming 5 tier 1 pets on alert mode. Some spots don’t have money estimates because perhaps the prices of the drops are too volatile, I haven’t grinded there enough, it’s heavily dependent on your skill, or I can’t grind there currently.
Early game grind spots:
Assumes buffed with Simple Cron Meal.
<100 AP <Lv50: Rotating around elite monsters from Calpheon such as Energetic Fat Catfishmen, Violents at Mansha Forest, Abandoned Monastery, and Rhutum Outpost are great ways to make starting cash. Also very good if you do not have pets or have less than 4 pets. Also straight up grinding Hexe Sanctuary is decent as well.
100-149AP <Lv56: Helms (surface) up to 25mil/hr, Wandering Rogues up to 30mil/hr, Manes Hideout up to 20mil/hr, Abandoned Iron Mine up to 30mil/hr. Elite rotation around all of these areas make the most money in these spots.
150-179AP <lv58: Fogans 25-ish mil/hr, Bashims 18-20mil/hr, Nagas 20-ish mil/hr, Pirates (15-30mil/hr, high trading helps a lot and the spot is quite inconvenient to go to and leave), Sausans up to 40mil/hr (lots of weight/maids required unfortunately), Fadus Habitat (recently got a rework, not sure how much money/hr), Helms Cave up to 30mil/hr (should be much higher but dependent on seal prices and AFAIK they butchered some of the rotations). Can start at 140 ap if you use species damage weapon like bares or elsh.
180-209AP <lv61: Gahaz up to 40mil/hr (if your rotation has elites), Cadry up to 35mil/hr, Tshira Ruins approx. 25mil/hr, Polly Forest (once it gets its rework it will be a grind spot at this tier – take the video with a grain of salt, most KR players use loot scroll in their showcase videos. assume 66% of the trash loot and 50% of the rare drops)
180 tri kutum: Protty Cave, Blood Wolf Den, Crescent Shrine (you want this AP to 1-2 shot the guardians)
Mid game grind spots:
Assumes at least level 60 with max awakening skill levels and common absolutes from mainhand tree depending on class. All mid tier spots assume buffed with Simple Cron, Ancient Grindstone/Villa buff, Destruction Spirit Stone.
209 tri kutum: Centaurs and Basilisks. (rely on price of belt / Black Magic Crystal) (assumes no villa buff)
209 tet kutum: Sherekhans and Pila Ku. sherekhans for hoom crystals + marnis and pila ku for scrolls
220 tet kutum: can start grinding Manshaums, especially if you’re a Musa. try to get at least 2200 marks.
220 tet kutum: Some parties will carry you at Mirumok at this ap. if they offer do it. the money and the exp will make it easier to get to 235ap in the future, especially with capotia earring. (capotia ring, tri crescent, tet weapons, capotia earring, tri blue coral earring, tri orkinrad belt is enough to get 235ap for kinda cheap)
220 tet kutum: Sycraia Underwater Ruins upper level can be done at this AP fairly well. It’s not the best money though.
Late game grind spots:
Assumes at least level 60 (Hystria and Sycraia need higher levels or mobs will be purple and dodge your attacks) with max awakening skill levels and common absolutes from mainhand tree depending on class. All spots assume buffed with appropriate Cron meal, Ancient Grindstone/Villa buff, Destruction Spirit Stone, Giant’s Draught.
235 tet kutum: Manshaums makes an appearance here again. Many classes that weren’t able to get good loot at 220 kutum will be able to get decent loot at 235 kutum. Manshaums is a very good spot for mobile classes and will often outpace Aakman grinding until 245 kutum on many classes. Drop rate is very important here as small mobu have as little as 37.5% chance to drop trash loot. So things like ecology, Arsha server, luck rate, node level, etc. are very important here! (simple cron)
235 tet kutum: Mirumok ruins parties will take you at this AP. Expect about 1.9-2.1K trash loot an hour at main rotation. North America Party finder Discord here: https://discordapp.com/invite/yEdp7k6 (simple cron)
235 tet kutum, 285+ DP: can do Aakman. some classes can do it before this point like around 225 tet kutum (witch/wiz/archer/lahn), some classes can attempt hystria at this point (sorc, mystic). your goal is 3k trash without loot modifiers like item scrolls but it’s still worth if you only pull like 2.5k. Keep in mind some classes need even more AP to grind here and have it be worth more than previous spots, like 245 Kutum (Striker, Ranger, Mystic, Musa etc.) (energizing cron)
Lv61+ 245 tet kutum, full TET DR boss armor (296 DP): some classes like sorc and dk and mystic and warrior have a nice time at Hystria at this ap. some others need to wait until 261 or even 265 nouver to get good at hystria and some never get there and will always make more money elsewhere. aim for 1.5k trash before loot scrolls or better. (Exquisite Cron)
Lv61+ 261 Nouver, 308+ DR based DP: Star’s End is a decent grind spot for Blackstar materials, and should be a good grind spot once erosion earrings are added to the game.
Lv62+ 261+ TET/PEN Kutum, 324+ DR based DP: Sycraia Underwater Ruins Abyssal Level Archer needs even more dp cuz squish (Simple Cron)
Closing
There’s some spots you can go to in order to make silver. Always do some mild testing to make sure you can make more money from new spot than old spot before moving on to avoid inconveniencing people who would otherwise make even more at new spot. Assume for the first few hours until you have some practice in at a spot that you’re at around 50-65% efficiency and will get better as you learn rotations and pulls (especially true for aakman/hystria)
Edits
Edit: forgot to include grass beetles at Olvia / Velia plains for over 1 billion silver an hour at 300 AP. especially prioritize the big scary violent ones /sarcasm btw
Real Edit: Some gems / items to help you grind at spots above your current gear level:
- Dark Red Fang Valor glove crystals are great PvE options if you can’t afford JIN Vipers. Once you’re around 300 accuracy you have a solid hit-chance against most mobu in the game except Hystria, Pila Ku, and Sycraia Abyss. These crystals give you 5 AP per and 2 crit which is really solid. Despite what people tell you hidden AP is real AP too.
- Valtarra Spirit Crystal helps in Kamasylvia places, and if you’re under 245 Kutum they’re marginally more effective than critical crystals with the added Kama mob damage as well as hidden AP. Highly recommended if you’re trying to do Manshaums/Mirumok at 220-244 AP. Critical crystal still better at high AP though, but hidden AP and monster damage does help get over DR thresholds in the mid game.
- Macalod crystals help a bunch if you’re willing to sacrifice defense for additional hidden AP, accuracy, and stamina.
- Precision crystals are a must for mobu that you need to keep CC’d that have high resists. For example keeping Aakman mobs knocked down or Hystria mobs stiffened/stunned can increase your trash/hr by as much as 500/250 or more at Aakman/Hystria respectively. Outside of these places sometimes hidden AP crystals are better in mainhand but only marginally and precisions help in PvP too, so…
- Resistance crystals like RBF Adamantine and BMC Vigor / Intimidation help a lot when you’re starting out and don’t know how to avoid CC attacks from mobs. Bound effects at Manshaum can slow you down considerably, and getting knocked down or stiff-locked at Aakman/Hystria can literally be the death of you. These don’t increase your damage but may help if you find you’re getting CC’d a lot.
Real Edit 2: Linked grind spot review/guide/example videos to each grind spot that I could find a good one. Prioritized YouTubers like Duodecil, Kanzetic, and Not Theworst, as long as they had a relevant and decently up to date video available. Keep in mind you may get different results, and to take each example with a grain of salt.
Real Edit 3: Formatting.