Hello, this is 月光Celina and I've played Black Desert Mobile for more than a year as a F2P and I'll share my tips and tricks on how to play this game efficiently and be competitive in some aspects by strategizing effectively.

- General - 

1. BDM has a wide array of classes to choose from and for newbies they might find it hard to choose which suits best. The game currently has an option upon first character creation to help players to narrow down in selecting their class based upon their given preferences. Most of the classes has their pros and cons. Some excel at PVE, some excel at 1v1 PvP and some excel at mass PvP. My personal suggestion is that explore it yourself or choose an all-rounder class (ex: Berserker) because in the long run some players might find it tiresome to jump from one class to another based on current metas where several classes receives buffs/nerfs, thus wasting you precious Black Pearls to enable Class Changing ingame.

2. Prioritize moving forward with the Main Storyquests on your first period of the game as it will unlock more and more features ingame. The game has an immense of "Knowledge" to complete (Topography, Academics, Ecology, Adventure, Character) and some of them are auto-obtained when progressing thru Story Line - the rest can wait and are not necessary to complete right away as it takes time. There are some NPCs which offers sidequests but give miniscule/irrelevant rewards so I don't recommend doing them. 

3. Weekly things to prioritize doing are Black Sun, Battlefield of the Sun, Chaos Rift, Atumach and Cursed Pirate Island and Path of Glory. All of them helps to speed up pushing your character CP. Black Sun and BotS are both sometimes frustrating especially to low CP players. I recommend to just prioritize farming Blackened Sunstones than points in Black Sun since the stones can be appraised for Edana Coins and Root of Sorcery which is needed to craft/enhance Primal Totem. If you get killed by another player in Black Sun, they steal some of your points but not your stones!

- Hadum/Chaos Farming - 

1. Farming in Hadum/Chaos maps are way much better in Elion maps (better exp gains and you can afk farm for longer periods of time since there's no need to worry about LT problem with loots). Hadum can be accessed by completing a certain questline when you reach South Mediah while Chaos demands you to move forward to West Valencia.

2. Stack up with Holy Vials of Light early on by crafting Lightstones since these 2 modes requires to do so. Personal suggestion is to keep farming at T3 Blessing, and go down to T1 when your vials is at 1k or lower. T3 Blessing lets you earn EXP and Mob Knowledge fastest compared to T2 and T1 but also burns Vials the fastest.

3. Both T1, T2 and T3 Blessings both share the base Spoils Drop Cooldown which is 2 minutes. However, it can be further reduced by using Stone of Luck (and by upgrading it), using Fortune scrolls and farming in Outlaw Zones. Doing altogether the 3 ways mentioned is the best possible since their effect stacks.

4. Never forget to do Chaos Rift in weekly basis. The main goal why not to miss farming here is to get important drops such as Akhrams 50% and 100% needed for Awakened Enhancement and materials to craft pink accessories (Lapiz Lazuli and Caphras Book Pages). Hot Time (scrolls,bells) doesn't work here but fortune scrolls, normal and advanced soups do so use them for maximum efficiency.

- Desert Farming - 

1. First thing to do after unlocking Great Desert is to explore all locations with teleporters to travel next time anywhere quickly without wasting much Purified water and go to all NPCs marked with "?" in the minimap for additional knowledge. The game gives 20minutes of Purified water that needs to be collected daily so don't miss it out! When your water runs out, you cannot do any action aside from staying inside an oasis.

2. Main goal why farm Great Desert is to earn Edana Coins to offer on Black Rock Shrines to earn Boss Stamps, Tablets, Chaos Crystals and etc. Ideal way to farm is to equip Brave Stone of Hunter (and by upgrading it) and look for location with mobs with 1k-2k less CP than your character with nearby Black Rock Altars. Clear mobs until the nearby Black Rock Altar glows and click it to earn additional Edana coins and other rewards - go to another horde of mobs while waiting for the previous mobs to respawn. Rinse and repeat.

3. Black Rock Shrines offers different batch of rewards depending on your current needs. My personal preference are Tablets+Valks and Stamps+Dark Energy. Max time to offer is 30mins and shortens to 10mins when the best reward is claimed by a player. Never forget to setup your tent first before offering since it lasts for 10minutes. When your tent expires, you can still offer but it will spend your remaining water.

4. Since Black Rock Shrines can last for 30mins while tent only last for 10min (provided you hoarded alot of Edana Coins), one trick is to next time do:
    - mobs farming and stop when your water reaches 1-2minutes left
    - Get some Jumbo HP Potions and set your HP Potion Auto-Use in settings to 90% and proceed to offer on Black Rock Shrine
    - Spend all your Edana coins until you have no more water and your character dies. Just respawn at nearby oasis. In this way, you maximize time in offering                 while not wasting much water after your tent expires!

5. Last thing to note is to never forget doing Temples and Great Temples. They reset in a monthly basis and their locations are randomized. However, you can get a help/guide about the locations from your guildmates or in Official BDM Discord.

- Merchantry - 

1. Merchantry is one of the important features that help players in many ways (obtain camp resources, earn Black Pearls, etc.). For this, maximize upgrading your camp until you unlock Merchantry and build the best possible wagon you can. The better the wagon, the faster you progress with your merchantry! 

2. The main things to do during merchantry is to travel from town to town (from Balenos to North Mediah) and do "Buy and Sell" goods from every Trader and then finish Events found alongside the roads when you travel to the next town until you burn your Daily Food Supply. By doing so, you increase your Rapport on respective Trader everytime you buy goods from them. Higher Rapport = Better trades they will offer to you at a cost (Tower of Trials passes, Resource A for Resource B, Black Pearls, and etc.) Also, you increase your Merchantry EXP by selling goods on Traders and by doing Events. The higher Merchantry level, the more Daily Food Supply limit you have!

3. Get the highest tier of workers and set it up on your Trading Post. The better the workers, the better the rewards everytime you bump to Events doing merchantry! Finishing Events gives either resources or yellow/orange chests (orange chests have low chance to obtain Black Pearls).

4. For more Merchantry EXP, auto-craft all Orange Lightstones and/or Crystals under Craft Tab > Material > Special Trade Goods. Add them to your wagon in camp and sell it to Wandering Merchant during Merchantry which randomly appears when you travel alongside the roads.

- Others - 
1. Ways to obtain Silver (depending on how bad you need it) 
    - doing Cursed Pirate Island Passes ( 10 tickets nets you 50b per week, 5x for doing 1hr desert and 5x for killing 50k mobs )
    - crafting Black Pearl Chest and selling them in market
    - spending extra Alyaelli Fragments to craft red gears and selling them in market

    - selling valuable loots to Vendors in towns.

2. Pets Setup - Currently the game lets you preset 3 groups of pets which has 3 pets in each group. 
                        Recommended presets will be : 
                        Preset A : 3x CP Pets or 2x CP Pets + 1x Crit DMG Pets ( For afk farming )
                        Preset B : 3x Dark Energy Pets ( For Black Spirit Level gained from shakatu coins and doing boss rushes )
                        Preset C : 3x PvP Pets ( self explanatory )

3. How to Spend Black Pearls wisely as a F2P ? Prioritize getting Double Daily Restoration (2.5k BP) + Double Daily Box of Wonders (3k BP) in a monthly basis, Path of Glory x3 tickets per week (900 BP) and daily normal soups for more EXP Gain. Also you can spend BP on Golden Crate for restoration scrolls, hadum runes or T6 pets and lastly you can try your luck on Lucky Shop.

4. As you continue further, you'll eventually find it harder to push your CP further. Keep in mind to prioritize "Guaranteed CP" over "RNG CP". Guaranteed CP are doing boss rushes, ancient ruins, constellations, knowledge, etc while RNG CP examples are mostly from enhancing ( relic, totem, gear awakened enhancements, etc. ).  Unless you're willing to lose some CP should the enhancement fail, then go for it! 

Last thing is play at your own pace - avoid comparing your progression to other players. Some players spend money, some invest more time into the game while some chose to be a casual and some are competitive. I hope my fellow adventurers find this post helpful in some way. Goodluck and happy gaming! 

- 月光Celina / Asia / Hexe