Beginners Sailing Guide - Black Desert Online [BDO] - Saarith.com (2023)

The Great Expedition patch introduced a lot of new and interesting aspects to life at sea in Black Desert Online. In this BDO sailing guide, I will explain how to get your first ship, how shipbuilding changed, how the new barter system works, sailors and the new sailing skill, and more.

Getting Your First Ship

Before you start sailing you need something to sail. In the old days, we only had rafts, rowboats, and fishing boats. And while those boats are still slightly useful, the first ship you should now get is the Bartali Sailboat.

The best way to get the Bartali Sailboat is by starting the “[The Great Expedition] Oquilla’s Eye” quest chain. This quest chain can be started with the Black Spirit at level 50 with the quest “Vigorous Velia”. After a few quests, you get a free “Ship License: Bartali Sailboat” item. You can also buy the “Ship License: Bartali Sailboat” item from Proix in Velia for 10 million silver if you want to have more than one ship.

Once you have gotten your hands on a ship license you need to go to a Wharf Manager, such as Croix (they’re brothers) in Velia, where you use the license to get your ship. After you’ve registered the ship you can take it out. Try it and see how you like it.

Sailing Your Ship

Controlling your ship is pretty straightforward. You steer it with the WSAD buttons or with your mouse like normally. The only thing you need to keep in mind is whether your sails are folded or not. If you are sailing against the wind you want to have your sails folded, but when you have the wind in the back you want to have your sails unfolded. There’s not much you can do about the sea current, but going against it will slow your ship down.

Ship Info Screen

On the ship info screen, you get all the information you need to see how your ship is doing. To access the screen you can either use the F5 button or the R button depending on where you are standing on your ship.

Ship Stats

• DP: The ships armor class
• Durability: The ship’s hit points.
• Weight: How much weight the ship can have and how much weight it is carrying, including sailors.
• Cabin Status: The number of free cabins you have and how many are being used.
• Accumulated Barter: The number of Barter deals you have made on that ship in total.
• Rations: The number of rations you have and the maximum number you can carry. Rations are used up regularly while sailing and doing “Bartering” actions.
• Sea Current Resistance: How affected your ship is to sea currents.
• Sea Strom Resistance: How affected your ship is to sea storms.
• Speed: The base speed of your ship.
• Accel.: How fast your ships can accelerate.
• Turn: How maneuverable your ship is.
• Brake: How quickly your ship can decelerate.
• Damage: Any damage bonus that is applied to your ship’s cannons (and maybe ramming??).
• Ration Efficiency: How efficient your rations are, a higher number means fewer rations used.
• Resilience: Not sure.

Ship Gear and Their Benefits

You can also equip ship gear on this screen. There are five types of ship gear with two tiers, green and blue. As usual, the blue grade is more expensive but gives somewhat better stats. There are also two versions of each blue grade gear and then there is separate gear for sailboats and frigates.

The Bartali Sailboat uses the Epheria Sailboat gear so be sure to buy that from the Wharf Manager.

Types of the Epheria Sailboat Gear and the Basic Stats They Give

Green grade gear is purchasable from Croix the Wharf Manager NPC in Velia. To get your hands on blue grade gear you will either need to make it yourself or buy it from the central market. To craft blue ship gear you need to have a level 4 ship gear workshop. There is one like that in Port Epheria.

Ship Abilities

Finally, you can see the extra abilities you get with your ship once your sailing skill reaches a certain point. A lot of players aim for skilled 1 as that lets them use the Breezy Sail skill which increases the ship’s speed.

The next thing we need to know is how sailors work.

Sailors

To hire your good sailor you need to buy a “Sailor Contract Certificate”. You can buy them from Philaberto Falasi in Epheria, Islin Bartali at Velia’s Inn, and Criox at Velia docks. Once you have a certificate you need to find and talk to a sailor looking for a job and hire them through the chat interface.

To find the location of sailors looking for a job you can talk to Philaberto, Croix or Islin and ask them about hiring sailors. This will show you the location of sailors looking for a job, which is the beach in Epheria, inside Velia’s Inn (not the one at the docks) and at the harbor in Iliya.

Sailors looking for a job have a tag above their head which tells you what type of sailor he is. The table below has all the starting stats on each type of sailor you can get so you should refer to it when you are getting yourself a new sailor. Now as your sailors gain experience these stats will also improve to some extent.

Which type of sailor is best depends entirely on what you intend to do with your ship. If you are going to use it for trading and bartering then sailors with speed boosts and low weight are best, such as innocent and ambitious types, while if you intend to use your ship for combat situations of some sort then sailors which give your ship better turn, break and acceleration become more important.

Sailor Stats Explained

In the image above you can see the sailor interface. The first stat is the sailor’s appetite which is the number of rations the sailor consumes each cycle and cabin cost is the cabin space the sailor needs. Weight is also important as this number is redacted from the total carrying capacity of your ship. So having a heavy crewmember reduces the weight of goods you can carry without slowing down.

Next are the sailor’s abilities. The first four abilities of the sailor are Endurance (Speed), Wits (Acceleration), Awareness (Turn), and Strength (Brake). The sailor’s ability with these skills is added directly to the respective ship’s stat.

The later four abilities are only gained when the sailor reaches level 10. Seasoned Sailor reduces the negative effects of sea currents, Son of the Wind reduces the effect of sea storms, Abstain reduces the number of rations needed each cycle and Natural Born Soldier gives your ship extra resilience.

Sailor Condition and When Sailors Get Sick

A sailor’s condition can become worsened, for example, if you run out of rations while out on the sea. You need to feed your sailor with raisin bread to restore his condition. You can buy raisin bread from the same NPC’s that sell you a sailor contract or in the central market. If a sailors condition reaches 0 he becomes sick. To cure him you need to give him an Elixir of Regeneration.

How Sailors Get Experience

You sailor can get experience in the following ways:

• From bartering
• Randomly while sailing

Getting More Sailors

You start out with a single slot for sailors. To get more sailors you need to get “Sailor Oath’s” which are items that grant you extra sailor slots when used. The “best” way to get them is by continuing the Great Expedition questline mentioned before. The one that started with the Black Spirit at level 50 with the quest “Vigorous Velia”. This questline will, after you get Bartali’s Sailboat, also give you in total five sailor’s oaths. You can then use those oaths to expand your sailor slots.

Quests for a Sailing Career

There are a couple of quest chains that are great to complete if you intend on a life at sea. These are the [ADV] Exploring the Balenos Sea and [ADV] Exploring the Calpheon Sea. You can find them in your quest tab which opens by pressing the “O” button. Once you have completed these chains you will have discovered all the islands north of the area between Velia and Epheria.

After completing those two chains you could also bark upon “The Uncharted Sea, History of Margoria” questline and “Call of the Ocean: Journey to the Deep Sea.

Getting Sailing Experience

Now once you are familiar with your ship and perhaps even gotten yourself an Epheria sailboat it is time to start increasing your sailing skill to at least skilled 1.

To do this you sort of need to complete a few daily quests. You can just sail around in the Margoria sea, but that is a really slow way to get sailing experience.

Daily Quests which Increase Sailing Experience

• In Velia from Miya
  • Delivering Goods – You will need to deliver goods to a specific island (Tinberra or Narvo or Baremi)
  • For a Wider Trade Route – Barter successfully three times.
• In Velia from Proix
  • Wanted: Hungry Sea Creatures – Kill three Ocean Stalkers or Hekaru
  • Wanted: Cox Scouts in Disguise – Kill in total 20 of Drunk Snipers, Barracks or Pirate Flags.
  • [Daily] How to Recover Sailors – Cook 3 Chowder and give to Proix
• In Velia from Croix
  • A Treasure Swimming in the Ocean – Kill Hekaru or Ocean Stalker
  • Outlaws in the Ocean – Kill Goldmont Large Battleship
  • Stay Sharp – Kill Goldmont Small Battleship
• In Port Epheria
  • A Treasure Swimming in the Ocean – Kill Hekaru or Ocean Stalker
  • Outlaws in the Ocean – Kill Goldmont Large Battleship
  • Stay Sharp – Kill Goldmont Small Battleship
• In Port Ratt from Sihuram
  • Through the Rough Tides – Deliver goods to one of four locations.

The quests in bold are quests that you can easily do solo. The others are doable solo, but much harder than with a group.

Upgrading your Bartali Sailboat

The next step you can take is to upgrade your Bartali Sailboat to either an Epheria Sailboat or an Epheria Frigate. This step is important as it decides which ship path you take from thereon. The image here below shows you the upgrade path you can take from the Bartali Sailboat.

As a rule of thumb, if you want to emphasize bartering you go for a sailboat, but if you want to go sea monster hunting or take part in combat, then the Epheria frigate is a better choice.

Now to upgrade your ship you first need to get all of the ship’s green gear to enhancement level +10 (see my bdo enhancement guide). You also need to collect the required materials which are:

Materials Needed for an Epheria Sailboat

• 800 x Standardized Timber Squares
• 1500 x Pine Plywood
• 600 x Steel Ingots
• 300 x Flax Fabric
• 100 x Hard Pillar
• Ship Upgrade Permit: Epheria Sailboat

Materials Needed for an Epheria Frigate

• 1000 x Standardized Timber Squares
• 1000 x Pine Coated Plywood
• 800 x Jade Coral Ingots
• 450 x Enhanced Flax Fabric
• 100 x Hard Pillar
• Ship Upgrade Permit: Epheria Frigate

Once you have then in storage at a town with a wharf you can bring your Bartali Sailboat there and use the wharf manager to upgrade your ship into either an Epheria frigate or Epheria sailboat.

The same method is then used to upgrade your ships even further, which means that you don’t need to constantly buy new ships, you can just concentrate on upgrading one or two of them.

Bartering

The bartering system is an interesting add-on for those of us that enjoy playing on the sea. In simple terms, it is a way to turn land-based resources into bartering items step-by-step from level 1 to level 5 and then turn the level 5 items into sea coins.

Why Bother With Bartering

Because bartering is the only way you can get some of the materials needed for the higher grade ships and ship gear. And unless you have no interest in Black Deserts Ocean content then you sort of need to get the better ships and ship gear.

Bartering can also be a way to earn some silver and even a decent way once you reach the higher tiers of bartering.

And finally, in my opinion, bartering is the best way to level up your sailors.

How to Barter

To be able to barter you will need to use a Bartali’s Sailboat or any higher-tiered ship. You cannot barter in a fishing boat or rowboat. You will also need to have the materials you intend to use for the barter in the ship’s cargo hold. You can load and unload a ship’s cargo hold at the wharf manager NPC.

To see what materials you need to start your bartering chain you can open up the bartering interface. There you will see all the bartering options you have available, regardless of wither you have discovered the island with the bartering option.

Completing a Bartering Chain

When you first start bartering you will only see a single bartering chain. My first one was 30 Clown’s Blood –> Golden Sand –> Cron Castle Gold Coins –> Old Hourglass –> Solidified Lava –> Azure Quarts –> Sea coins. Each step of the chain gives you either the same amount as the bartered item or more. This means that once you complete a bartering chain you will be left with surplus materials.

For this chain, I had the following items left once I completed the chain: 4 golden sand, 2 Cron castle gold coins, 6 old hourglasses, 8 solidified lava and four azure crystals. I could sell the higher tiered items for 44 million silver or keep them in the hopes of using them to complete another bartering chain faster.

Once you have completed a chain, you need to open the “Barter Information” screen to refresh the possible barters you can perform. You can refresh this earlier, but for your first run, I suggest completing the chain. As your bartering continues you will get access to more chains and a wider availability of bartering options.

So that’s about all you need to know to successfully start your sailing career. If you found this guide useful then please share it with your friends and allies in BDO. So good luck on the seas and by the way, I also have a few other guides you might find useful.