Introduction

Calphe:ON Ball started the presentation with messages from their players from all around the world to spread positivity about the game they love so much. We were then joined by CM Shirna & CM Trent from BDO Console to host and translate the stream to English.

If you missed the presentation you can rewatch it on the official EU/NA BDO streaming channels:
Official Twitch Channel
Official Youtube Channel

For other languages please check the relevant region news.

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Free Gifts/Codes

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All adventures who logged in between November 12th and 12th December will be gifted 300 Caphras Stones during the next maintenance along with many other rewards. For console players you will be receiving 300 Crons instead since Caphras Stones are not currently added to console.

For EU/NA PC:

• BDOVALK – Advice of Valks (+100) 
• BDOICED – [Event] Burning Jade Flame (combine with the Winter Bearing Egg to receive a Tier 4 dragon pet)
• BDOHAMM – J’s Hammer of Loyalty x2 (usable from next maintenance – December 16, 2020)
• If you’re unsure of an item or how to claim, check the official website for full details

For other regions:

• CALP-HEON-GIFT-1212 – Advice of Valks (+100) 
  
• 4TIE-RYOU-NGRA-UNO! – [Event] Burning Jade Flame (combine with the Winter Bearing Egg to receive a Tier 4 dragon pet)
• HAMM-ERSF-ROMJ-1212 – J’s Hammer of Loyalty x2 (usable from next maintenance)
  

Pearl Abyss self-publishing in EU/NA

Pearl Abyss officially announced today that they will be self-publishing EU/NA servers when Kakao Games’ contract ends in February 2021. They thanked Kakao for 5 years of service and promised to work towards improving their feedback and communication in the future by establishing their Pearl Abyss Eurpean Office in Amsterdam. Pearl Abyss also assured us that the transition is already taking place in Los Angeles and that they have professional personnel guiding the process, who have already helped with 3 previous transfers.

Accounts of adventurers will be transferred completely. However, you will need to apply through a transfer page that will be opening next year.

Read the official announcement on the website

Upcoming Content – Roadmap 2021

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Black Desert Game Design Division Head, Jeseok Jang, began his first presentation by explaining that he be communicating more closely with us in the future. First and foremost, he announced that PVP content has been prepared and planned for the end of december up to the first half of 2021. This is because they felt that PVP-related content has been lacking and wanted to place a greater focus on its development.

Node War Rework

• This content has already been shown on Global Labs
• All changes are going to be tested thoroughly on Global Labs before coming to live servers an all adventurers are able to participate and provide feedback.
• All nodes have been changed so that all the nodes in that region are on the same day and the same battle.
  • Guilds fight over a node one week and then can go for another node in the next week, allowing them to own multiple nodes if they are successful
  • The max amount of nodes 1 guild can hold at once is 10
  • The nodes can be stolen if you take on too much at once so you have to be strategic and may have to defend one node whilst attacking another.
  • Kamaslyvia is also a new node war zone.
• In addition to all that, sieges have changed as well so now guilds can own multiple territories at once.
• Visual guides will be provided in the future to explain the changes in greater detail

Main Server System and Server Wars

• A main server system is being introduced for Guilds
• All guilds will now designate one server and gain benefits when playing in that specific server
• An example of one of the benefits you gain is that you can freely move between the different numbered channels under the same name without a cooldown
• Invasion week and server wars are also planned to add more content that ties in with the new main server system
  • Invasion week will be held every 1 – 2 months and during this period you will be able to obtain attack and defense buffs and better benefits. However, your guild will become hostile with all guilds from other main servers and can freely “invade” other servers in open PVP battles. The details are still in development but the idea is that the main goal will be to steal the other server’s relic and if successful, your server will gain additional benefits
• Once Invasion week is over, each server will be placed into Calpheon or Valencia territory, with the hopes that it will be somewhat evenly split. Guilds belonging to each territory will then take part in a grand battle to invade or defend from opposing server guilds.
  • Guild Campsites and tactical elephants will be added to serve as frontline headquarters in these battles and add more strategic elements.
  • Developers are hoping that this content will be more open to all guilds despite their size and strength. The aim will be that guilds from the same territory will work together and protect eachother.
• Certain restrictions will be added to this content to ensure that adventurers who do not enjoy PVP are not effected. More PVE and life skill content will also be added that will effect the server war and create competition within the territories.

Bounty/Sheriff System

• A bounty/sheriff system will be added for players who feel weaker in PVP and need to call for help.
• The idea is still in development but there will be a system to call a sheriff or ask for help from the strongest adventurers.

10 vs 10 Crews

• 10 person teams (3 in reserve)
• New areas are being developed to create competitive PVP content between crews. The developers have a range of options such as Capture-the-Flag or a BDO mini-seige war.
• A rank system will be added for a Champion’s League and potentially global tournaments

Enhancement Changes

• More enhancment stages will be added to Blackstar defense gear. The stages between TRI – PEN (similar to Caphras levels) to help bridge the gap and make PEN more accessable.
• The materials needed to upgrade your Blackstar gear will mainly come from the Hadum grind spots
  • *For players who have not read Global Lab patch notes, the Hadum Servers are a new channel in development (similar to Olivia, Season, Arsha). On the Hadum channel, low level grinding spots that are designed for under level 50, become endgame grinding spots. This content is continually being changed and new grind spots are being updated each week. Hadum Servers are currently only available on Global Lab testing server.
• The developers noted that they don’t want boss gear to become invaluable and will be implementing appropriate stat increases when upgrading Blackstar gear.
• Caphras Stones will be added as a basic reward for PVP content to help meet the demand on the market

Winter Season Server

• The next Season will be starting December 22nd 2020 (Winter season). This date is the official date for Korea and may not be exactly the same for EU/NA.
• More support will be added for new adventurers to help them transition from season servers into higher gear levels after graduating.
• A GM note will be provided soon with more details on the next season

Blackstar Raid – New World Boss

• A new world boss is planned to be added to Star’s End
• Once the boss spawns, platforms will appear around the mysterious meteorite hovering above Star’s End. Adventurers will have to get high enough to deal attacks to the meteorite.
  • However, after some testing, the developers found that this made the difficulty quite high and are currently working on changing the layout of the boss fight.
• “Gimmicky” features are being added to the encounter to allow adventurers to hit the meteorite and spawn Incarnations of Corruption.
• Players will need to take up different roles and work together to defeat the new world boss
• Rewards for the boss will be materials needed to improve Blackstar gear

Mystical Fish Challenge

• The mystical fish challenge was created with the idea that a player could catch fish and it would impact the entire server. When a player caught all the mystical fish they were able to summon the Heart of the Ocean, Vell.
• To celebrate and recognise this achievement, an object or NPC will be added to immortalize the player who summoned Vell
• Initial thoughts are to add an NPC to Velia Wharf which may give buffs to players who interact with it
• Similar challenges and content are planned for the future and the first player of each region to complete the Mystical Fish challenge will be added as an NPC in their region.

New Region – Mountain of Eternal Winter

• The new region has been in development for quite some time.
• It is a never-ending winter and home of the Guardian class.
• The region is susceptible to sudden snowfall and players will need to light a fire or seek shelter if they don’t want to risk a frigid death to hypothermia
  • Guardian class will be immune to hypothermia in this region and Shai can use their buffs to protect allies along their travels
• 2 new grinding zones will be coming with the new region
  • The first new zone is called Okjinsini and resides on the Golden Mountain. In this area you may face snow trolls/yetis
  • The second new grinding zone is Murrowak Labyrinth and in this area you can find monsters that have similar behaviour to ants. In these “ant” holes you can activate the queen’s nest and fight against the queen whilst her Murrowaks flood in to her aid. The fight is described as chaotic and defeating the queen will reward you will better loot.
• A golden dragon also lays in slumber at the Mountain of Eternal Winter (is this a future world boss?)
• The new zone is planned to be released in Winter 2021

Terror of the Sea – Hardcore Grind Spot

• Monsters will become more difficult depending on how many monsters you have killed
• Some ideas for this area are that monsters will hit harder, random bombardments will appear or Elite monsters will suddenly appear
• You can leave the grind zone with whatever loot you pick up, but if you die you will only keep half of the loot you obtained.
• There are plans to add a 2 week to 1 month time restriction on re-entering the grind zone if you were killed or left voluntarily.

Mansions – Housing Update

• If you invest contribution points and certain conditions in a city, you are granted ownership of land in the town and a property deed for a mansion.
• Mansions can be upgraded using various materials and will be far more spacious. You can design the interior and also customize the exterior however you like.
• There will be options to add trees, statues, your own garden, and lighting outside the mansion.
• New furniture is planned to be added.
• A competitive rank system is in the early stages and is not confirmed content just yet. The idea is to add more than just collecting expensive furniture and will be more focused on other methods. For example,  rare points may be added to all furniture and you can collect rare furniture to increase your mansion ranking. Another idea is to add a way for players to hire thieves to steal from or try to deal a sneak-attack to other mansions.

Co-op Dungeon

• Pearl Abyss noted that instanced dungeons and more co-op content are the most-frequently requested content since the start of BDO.
• A new dungeon for co-op play has been developed, but there will not be any dungeon exclusive rewards because they don’t want it to feel like compulsary content
• The dungeon will not be instanced and will be open world. To enter the dungon you must go through a secret room in the Ancient Stone Chamber.
• The dungeon will be large and some areas may require 3 – 5 players. It is also designed for long sessions and strategic play, which may involve solving puzzles and more “dungeon” like content, in a way that fits BDO.
• Solo grind spots are still going to be developed going forward.

New region – Land of the Dawn

• Many players have been hoping for a Great Expedition Part 2, however, the developers felt that the ocean was not as big as they first thought and decided to work on an entirely new continent.
• The new region will be called the Land of the Dawn and is the home of Musa, Maehwa and Lahn classes.
• The region will be in the north of the map and expanding Port Ratt with an Asian Culture influence and theme.
• This content is in early development and estimated release date is within the next 2 years.

New Class – Nova

The class will be coming with the Winter Season (22nd December) as a global release, and pre-creation will start on 16th December.

• Pre-launch events
• Backstory

The new class is a female class that weilds a Tower shield and one-handed Mace with ice themed abilities. Watch the trailer below for a sneak peak into combat gameplay!

Developer Notes

In the final section of the Calphe:ON Ball, the developers answered questions from the community and discussed hot topics they wanted to address.

Balance

• There have been a few rebalancing efforts throughout the later half of the year but most adventurers still want more.
• Pearl Abyss began by showing the Awakening and Succession statistics and said that succession was very dominant at the beginning of the year, but now numbers are showing progress. There is still room for improvement as there are many classes with large disparities between succession and awakening. The plan is to keep rebalancing classes until this is resolved.
• Another awakening only skill is planned for the future as well as “core” succession skills.
• There was a lot of feedback that certain classes are “OP”. Pearl Abyss said that it’s important to recognise how players feel as well and will be buffing classes instead of nerfing. However, in some cases a class may need to be nerfed due to the way they perform in Node Wars and siege where there are different mechanisms. Nerfing will be kept to a minimum as they continue to balance classes.
• A fix to elevation problems will hopefully be coming as early as next week. These are the issues that arise with classes like Ranger and Wizards, where they are able to hit players on a different elevation. The proccess has been difficult for them to change and required them to rework the structure of action mechanics.
• The frame rate issues where players with a higher FPS are able to deal damage and skills faster are being looked at. One of the “easy fixes” would be to limit all players to 60 FPS in PVP, however, this is not something they want to do and are looking to optimize frame rates as much as possible to reduce the impact they make.

Content

• The developers are thinkings of ways to tell stories that fit in better with gameplay. Nothing has been decided yet but some considerations are adding more voice acting, more active roles for NPCs, story progession in the world instead of through quests, etc. The main puprose is to remove the “R spam” and make meaningful stories that players can enjoy.
• The “Independant Story System” is an experiment they are currently working on, which will include other adventurers for a more immersive story enviroment. The example they gave was that in the Calpheon questline there is a scene where the NPC leads an army to invade Calpheon, in the new system, players would be able to join the invasion as a participant.
• Thornwood Castle PvEvP content will be coming after the rework to conquest wars as they focus on PVP updates in the upcoming months.
• Season content will be focused on getting new players into the game and helping them transition once they have graduated. More season exclusive content is coming with a focus on group play.
• The new dungeon mentioned earlier in the stream will have a large focus on co-op play and will require challenging tactical choices to defeat the boss. The dungeon will not have the traditional “trinity” system from other MMOs and will be open to all classes. More guild content was also requested and the new dungeon may become guild content. Either way they hope the content will be worth waiting for.
• Existing content has been renewed in the last few months, with updates to the Old Moon Grand Prix, world bosses, field bosses, etc. The plan is to continue to improve and renew more existing content in 2021.
• The Trading lifeskill will be reworked in later 2021. Simply updating the rewards will not make a big enough impact and there are plans to add more advanced trading content, such as joining an NPC merchant guild and competing against other guilds. All ideas are simply concepts at the moment and may change.
• Older content such as Savage Rift, Altar of Training and Altar of Blood are going to be grouped into a category with the same rewards so that players can choose which they would like to participate in without the need to do both. Content rewards are also going to be updated but in a way where players who don’t have a lot of time can still benefit just as much as players who can play all day.
• Papua Crinea was planned as fun content and was not made to be too rewarding or essential to progressing your character. The developers would like to keep it this way but will be updating the rewards to make them more meaningful for the players who do enjoy the content.
• New larger ships were designed, however, since the current ships are faithfully performing in their roles, the new designs will probably not be released as brand new ships and will instead be an upgrade from the existing ships.
• Pearl Abyss would like to apologise for the delay with Great Expedition Part 2 and explained that the direction they wanted to take with Naval Arena completely changed and some of their other plans have been moved to a new project. The Naval Arena was initially designed as a team vs team battlefield (similar to Red Battlefield) and players would capture specific spots and protect them. After internal testing, they found the content was not enjoyable due to ship movement and cannon limitations. Therefore, cannon use was improved and the pirate system was introduced instead with the vision of changing the entire ocean into a naval battlefield. In the future, more content updates will be added, such as the addition of limited quanties of trade goods at sea nodes, to create a competitive enviroment. The stance still remains that pirate adventurers should not have any additional benefits and the thrill of interfering with other players is enough content for these players.
• An Old Moon Supply Ship will be added to add more convience while sea monster hunting. You will be able to call the supply ship at any time to resupply your ship. This will be more expensive than going to a port.
• More high end Shai instruments are planned to be added with better quality sound and new effects.
• Pearl Abyss are completely willing to add a Dwarf and Papu class in the future, however, this can’t be promised right now and will arrive “one day”. More customization, such as hairstyles are also in their thoughts but there are no plans as of now to add these in the first half of 2021
• The next class was hinted at in this image and will be arriving next year. Future classes will be based on what players want and based on feedback.

Items and Mounts

• New treasure items will be added over time, however it is difficult to say what will be added and they are looking for ideas and suggestions from the community.
• Caphras stones will become more easily obtainable and will become a basic reward for PVP content.
• Enhancing is really difficult and frustrating but is something that they believe should not be changed too much. They will be updating and improving in ways to help players prepare for enhancement and make enhancing more convenient (such as adding Nader’s Band)
• There were lots of mount suggestions but the developers are thinking of experimenting with new mounts that are already in-game as NPCs. Some examples are snow bears and giant wolves. Once the developers have tested and are satisfied with the results we will know straight away.
• “Tier 10” horses, airships, hot air balloons and water mounts are not planned for the first half of 2021. However, a fantasy version of Dine and Doom are planned for release soon. Dine will be able to run on water and a small preview of this was shown. Players will not be able to use Dine to run all the way to Port Ratt on the water but will be able to cross some bodies of water.
• New costumes were shown as concept art and will be coming next year. Image 1 – Image 2 – Image 3 – Image 4

Service

• Removing the usage of unauthorized program and macros are an ongoing task and Pearl Abyss have been trying to combat these problems with the use of security program, 24 hour monitoring, report functions and developing their own macro detection system. More improvements will be made in the future to help detect these occurances more carefully and quickly.
• During the past 2 years, Pearl Abyss has been focusing on providing better translations with their localization center. Many changes have been made in the company to ensure localized content is better quality. Their localization center is always hard at work translating past and present game content for all regions. Localization is very time consuming and Pearl Abyss thanks players for being patient as they continue to work on providing a better service.
• Player feedback indicated that they would like more variety in events with rewarding prizes. This year some of the holiday events such as Thanksgiving and Halloween were changed to be a little different from the past years, but creating unique events each time is something that will take time and not come all at once. Events are an important factor and they hope to add more events that all players can enjoy and take part in.
• Pearl Abyss also addressed the fact that players feel there is a lack in communication or that only certain regions or voices are being heard. In response, the developers said they are constantly listening to feedback and use patch notes to communicate back to their players. Starting from next year there will be a new channel of communication where developers will share their ideas and thoughts in a more open enviroment. They also assured us again that they do listen and are very active on forums, discord, etc.
• Global Labs will also be updated to create a more seamless way of gathering feedback on upcoming content.
• Pearl Abyss explained that content which arrives to Korean live servers is usually updated globally as soon as possible but sometimes there are issues that arise and require a reschedule. Due to their weekly update there is a lot of time pressure and a tight schedule to maintain with weekly deadlines they must meet. The goal is always to ship out content that is polished and on time

Thank you for reading our Calphe:ON Ball Notes!