Introduction

New and Returning players may feel overwhelmed and confused when playing BDO for the first time. The game is very in-depth and has a lot of complicated systems to get to grips with. There are lots of catch-up mechanics designed specifically for new and returning players, but the game does not advertise the help very well!

Following this guide will help you to find your way through your BDO journey and give you the best start towards endgame gear and content.

The first objective is to make a season character so that we can play on the season servers.

What are Season Servers?

• Season Servers are special servers that only Season Characters can join. Season Characters can connect to regular servers as well.
• They are designed for new and returning players, but anyone can participate in Season by making a Season character.
• Season servers will give you catchup gear and introduce you to the game.
• The current Season lasts around 3 months, before a new Season will start, you can have 1 character per season.
• You keep your Season character and your gear at the end of the Season, and it becomes a “normal” character – losing access to the Season servers.

Why should I play Season?

• You can end the season with a full set of gear equal to TET boss gear. This is really good gear to get you started in the game and trying to get it without season is much harder.
• Lots of other rewards you don’t get on normal characters, such as extra inventory space and skill points.
• Season servers have a permanent Combat EXP +100% and Skill EXP 20% buff
• PVP is disabled – except Guild Wars (unless you join the specific channel), so you can enjoy the game without any worries!

How to get started!

Make sure you select the “Season Character” button when you create a character

Your Journey through Season

Level 1 to 55

• After creating your season character, follow the main story quests to level up. If you get confused at any point, open the quest log (by pressing O) and follow the quests under the “Main” tab. Completing each part of the story quest will give you [Season] Secret Book of the Misty Breeze. Just hold onto these for now and don’t use them yet.
• You will have a Season Pass to complete as well. The tasks on the Season Pass are important to complete and most of them don’t require any extra work
• At level 10, you will get your first reward from the Season Pass, which is a Leveling Aid box. You can open this at certain levels for rewards and a temporary EXP buff.

• Around level 25 – 30, you will start to get Naru Gear and Beginner Blackstones from the main story questline.
• Right-click the Beginner Blackstones to open the enhancing window. Enhance your Naru gear as much as you can. You can do this by just spamming the Enhance button, don’t worry about failstacks, the gear is easy to enhance.
• Your Naru gear will go up to +15, after that, it goes PRI, DUO, TRI, TET and finally PEN.
• You can exchange your PEN Naru gear for PRI Tuvala gear straight away, by clicking the convert button in the enhancing window (see image below).
• Keep following the questline and complete the Mediah main story questline – this should get you to around level 55.

Level 55 to 61

• You should have PRI Tuvala gear, so it’s time to enhance again!
• Tuvala gear is enhanced using Time-Filled Black Stones. Enhancing Tuvala gear up to PEN is a little more difficult and will take a while. Depending on how much time you have, it might even take a few weeks for you to get everything up to PEN
• Go speak to Fughar and collect the Enhancing quest rewards for some materials to help you enhance.
• I recommend checking our Basics of Enhancing Guide to help you get started. Failstacking can also be a complicated system to get your head around, so it’s best to look up some Youtube guides to help you with this.
• After enhancing your gear a little bit, it’s time to grind to push for 56! Remember those [Season] Secret Book of the Misty Breeze we told you about at the start? Well just before you go grind, pop as much Skill EXP buffs as possible and then use all of your Misty Breeze books as well for a big skill points boost.
• At level 56 you get your class Awakening/Succession. These are questlines you need to complete to unlock the full potential of your class. You can find the start of the quest in your questlog (O) under Suggested.
• Now it’s back to the grind again! Grind up to 58 and keep enhancing your gear as you get more Time-Filled Black Stones. If you aren’t sure where to grind, start doing the Weekly quests and Regional quests for their rewards.
• Once you hit level 58, follow our 58 – 59 leveling guide and 59 – 60 guide 
• Speak to your Black Spirit to get the quest [Season] To Greater Heights! – for this quest you need to kill 5,000 monsters. Complete the quest to obtain “Fughar’s Precious Necklace”. Take the next quest from the Black Spirit, but don’t complete it just yet.
• The [Season] To Greater Heights! quest gives you a large amount of combat EXP. If you are level 60, it will give you 30%, so you can choose to hand in the quest at 70% to quickly get to level 61. The other option is to wait until you are level 60 with 97 – 99%, if you hand the quest in it will get you to level 61 with around 15% EXP. If you hand in the quest after you already reach level 61, you will only get around 3% from the quest EXP.
• It is recommended to follow our 60 – 61 guide UNTIL YOU REACH 97 – 99%.
• Then go to Fughar and give him the necklace to complete the previous quest. This will get you to level 61 and will give you the most EXP towards 62.

Level 61+

• Now that you’ve reached 61, you have just a few more things to complete the season!
• Finish your Season Pass tasks and take all the rewards.
• Use the Frozen Tides Black Stone to enhance your Tuvala gear from TET > PEN with 100% chance.
• Complete your daily Red Battlefield quests, weekly quests and regional quests for more Time-Filled Blackstones if you need them.
• Get all your Tuvala gear to PEN.
• Start going to World Bosses in preparation for PEN Boss Gear once you graduate.
• Start working towards the “Free” PEN accessory. This is time-gated so it’s better to start early!
• Graduate the season to progress your gear further, or keep grinding on season for the EXP benefits.

Deleting your Season Character – Fughar’s Timepiece

If you aren’t enjoying your current season character and want to try a different class, you may be wondering whether you should delete your character and start again.
Before you do this, DONT!

Instead it is much better to use Fughar’s Timepiece.
This way you will keep your current character and progress, but can convert the season status and gear to another character.

Fughar’s Timepiece is an item that lets you COPY your season characters combat/skill exp and season status.

• Your EXP and skill EXP will be COPIED to the normal character.
• Your new character will become your season character and your original season character will become a normal character. The normal character can equip normal gear now and can’t wear your Tuvala gear.
• You will get Tuvala exchange coupons to change the weapons to the new class.
• You will have to do the main story quest again on the new character. If you completed the main story on your other character, you can do the simplified one on your new character.

To get started, you need your season character to be level 25 or higher and your normal character to be level under level 25. Go to Fughar and complete the quest ‘[Season] Fugar’s Special Timepiece’ to obtain the special timepiece item, then use the item in your inventory to start the switch. You will then see a screen that allows you to choose the character you want to swap. You will be given exchange coupons to swap the Tuvala weapons to the weapons needed for the other class. You can also buy new Tuvala weapon exchange coupons using your Sunset Maple Leaf items from the season pass rewards.

The Magnus (Free PEN Boss Armor)

After reaching level 61, it is recommended to complete the Magnus questline to receive one PEN boss armor of your choice completely free. You cannot wear this armor yet as a season character, but as soon as you graduate you will be able to equip this armor.

• This questline takes around 3-4 hours to complete, but does not have any gear requirements and can be easily completed by a new or returning player. The only requirement is that you have completed the main story quest up to and including Calpheon.
• It is highly recommended to do the Magnus questline as early as possible because it gives several rewards including a new skill for your class and unlocking the ability to fast travel.
• To get started, talk to your Black Spirit to obtain the quest “[The Magnus] Nostalgic for Velia”

• Follow our complete walkthrough guide to help you with the different challenges

Adventure Logs

Adventure Logs/Journals are once per family content/challenges you have to complete to unlock permanent stats and bonuses for your account. Some adventure journals give permanent AP and DP and are very important to complete as early as possible. There are several Adventure Logs in the game, and some can take a very long time to complete, so start to tackle these early on and work at them slowly over time.

Click the titles to view our guides on them.

How to Graduate (Early Graduation)

Graduating sounds really complicated and can be a daunting task, but don’t worry, we’re going to take you through it step by step.

The current season is ending on 7th December 2022. All characters will automatically graduate and obtain the graduation rewards on this date. You then have 1 week to convert all your gear. If you miss or forget to convert your gear, the highest enhanced Tuvala gear will be converted automatically.

• To graduate early, you simply go to Fughar and tell him “I want to convert my season character to a regular character”.
• Follow his directions to Leyla. She will have a quest for you called [Season Server Graduation] At the Crossroad
• Go back to Fughar to complete the quest. He will then have the quest [Season Server Graduation] Into the Big Wide World.
• You will be given an item called “Honorable Adventurer’s Certificate”.
  
• You must move to a regular channel and use the Honorable Adventure’s Certificate. This will convert your season character to a regular character (this cannot be undone).
  
• After you have converted to a regular character,you can go back to Fughar again and speak with him to complete the quest. He will then give you your season rewards.

Now that you are a normal character and no longer a season character, you need to convert your Tuvala gear so that you can wear it.

You will get Conversion stones from the Graduation rewards.

• Right-click a conversion stone to open the window automatically, or speak to your Black Spirit and choose the “Upgrade Gear” option.
• Use Conversion Stones on each piece of Tuvala gear you would like to keep.
• There is 1 conversion stone for each Weapon/Armor, 1 for necklace and belt, and then 2 for your rings and earrings, meaning you can convert one full set of gear.
• Make sure to select the correct piece of gear! If you do select the wrong piece of gear, send a ticket and they will help you get it sorted out, but will only do this once per account.
• The converted Tuvala gear will be changed to Family bound and can now be used by any of your characters.
• Check the next section of the guide for information about the Boss Gear Exchange coupon and your next gear options.

Exchanging Tuvala Gear for Boss Gear

After completing season, you have 2 options and will want to take advantage of both of them.

Option 1: Boss Exchange Coupon

• You will be given a [Season] Boss Gear Exchange Coupon when you graduate each season.
• This can be used to change ONE PEN Tuvala gear into TET boss gear.
• The TET boss gear can be enhanced and you can put caphras into it.
• You are limited to which gear it will exchange to (Eg. Kutum only).
• You cannot sell it on the central market.
• You can exchange this gear at Jetina later on if you want to.

Option 2: Jetina Boss Exchange

• Jetina Boss Exchange is can be done ONCE per account.
• You can exchange ONE FULL SET of boss gear.
• You can choose between the different boss gear options (eg. Kutum or Nouver)
• You CANNOT enhance this gear or put caphras into it.
• You can only turn this gear into PEN using the guarenteed PEN boss gear method.
• You cannot sell it the central market.

Use the coupon on the gear piece that you want to try to enhance straight away. A good piece to choose is the Kutum weapon, because then you can also get the Nouver from Jetina at a later date if you want to for a PVP offhand option. You may also want to choose the Dandelion or Kzarka.

The only thing I would recommend is that you acquire the Red Nose armor from Jetina instead of Dim Tree. This is because you will eventually be turning it into Fallen God Armor (BiS), and this is much cheaper with Red Nose.

To use the Boss Exchange Coupon, you must first make sure you have graduated and converted the tuvala gear to regular gear using the Conversion Stones. You cannot exchange Tuvala gear with a crystal inserted into Boss gear and must remove the crystal first by going to your Black Spirit > Transfusion > RMB the crystal.

Then go to Fughar and accept the quest for the gear piece you would like to exchange:

• [Season] Even Sharper Weapon: Main Weapon – Converts your Tuvala Main Hand Weapon to a Kzarka weapon box (you can open this on any class)
• [Season] Even Sharper Weapon: Sub-Weapon – Converts your Tuvala Offhand Weapon to a Kutum weapon box (you can open this on any class)
• [Season] Even Sharper Weapon: Awakening Weapon – Converts your Tuvala Awakening Weapon to a Dandelion weapon box (you can open this on any class)
• [Season] Even Sturdier Armor: Helmet – Converts your Tuvala Helmet to Giath’s Helmet
• [Season] Even Sturdier Armor: Armor – Converts your Tuvala Armor to Dim Tree Spirit’s Armor
• [Season] Even Sturdier Armor: Gloves – Converts your Tuvala Gloves to Bheg’s Gloves
• [Season] Even Sturdier Armor: Shoes – Converts your Tuvala Shoes to Muskan’s Shoes

After accepting the correct quest, go to Tranan Underfoe (the blacksmith in Velia) and use the “Chat” option. He will exchange your gear for you.

Then follow our guarenteed PEN boss gear guide to exchange the rest of your gear and begin the journey to full boss gear!

Season Special Reward

When you graduate, or when the season ends, you will be able to go and collect a special season reward.

You can choose from any of the rewards below, as long as you have not already claimed them.

The only requirement for obtaining this reward is that you had a level 20 or higher character at the end of the season. So if you are a new player, it is worth creating a season character each season to collect all 3 Capotia accessories. These accessories are equal to TET accessories and will not be replaced for a long time.