bdo.md

1. Having multiple characters is good. Later on for energy, but until you find your favorite class you need to try many different classes. Once you find a class you're content with, then go crazy on your gear. I recommend awakening all the classes (eventually). Awakening a character with decent gear takes only 1-2 days, and will permanently increase your house fame fund which can really add up over time.
2. 90% of the time Grunil is what you want until you can start replacing each piece for Boss Gear. Use gathering to collect hide and workers to get black crystals so you can start making Grunil yourself if you think it's too expensive. You can also farm it at Manes, Helms, Abandoned Iron Mine, and Sausans, all around level 50-55.
3. You can swap armor between characters. Meaning if you have many different characters that you like to play, you can maintain one set of armor, and simply work on their weapons. It's a pain in the ass to swap out the armor, but super cheap in the long run.
4. You can rent a main weapon (~+13) for 50 contribution in Calpheon. This will allow you to work on your main hand (to +15). You get the 50 contribution back when you hand in the weapon. It also makes it easier for players with low funds to work on a Liverto or Kzarka. This is really only a good idea for a very few people--but worth knowing about.
5. Using #3 and #4 together, you can start a new character and simply run them to Calpheon and have a +13 weapon and decent armor (that you transfered from another character) at level 1. Using them together there's no reason not to try new classes and will really only take you a full 6-12 hours of grinding (depending on the gear level) to get to 56 and awaken that character.
6. You gain skill points faster when you're not in a party.
7. Fail stacking properly is very easy and isn't scary at all. I usually grab 3x of any kind of armor, and 1-2x of any low level weapon and start popping stones in to gain failstacks. Using the new Blacksmith books makes it easy to failstack on a single character and to save stacks for a specific purpose. I recomend getting a bunch (3-4 of each) of 15, 20, 25, 30, and 30+ stacks. Once you see how easy it is, upgrading armor and weapons is really not scary at all.
8. PvP is part of the game, and isn't scary at all. It's also really fun (when you're geared). If you're scared of PvP spend some time in the arena for penalty free and fun PvP. You can also Duel people for no penalty anywhere that's not a safe zone. Higher level players will eventually try to take rotations from you. It's just part of the game. Game ettequite is that if that player kills you easily, then don't even bother with that spot anymore. This really sucks starting out, but once you're able to push people out of spots you'll see the advantages of it.
9. Learn how workers work, and start making some beer. The important thing is to start doing workers now. Even if you're level 1. Every town on the map (blue town node) gives you 1 free workers slot that you don't need to purchase via contribution points. No matter what level you are, no matter how much contribution you have. Start collecting Potato, Wheat, and Cooking Honey (in that order). From Velia get Potato (for Beer), Wheat from Heidel (for Beer), and Cooking Honey from Heidel (for Artisan Honey Wine Boxes).
10. AFK fishing or AFK processing are both really good passive income (see #9 first). If you don't like to leave your PC on all night, then you can easily dedicate a few hours while you sleep by hitting {Windows-Key}+R (on windows) and typing shutdown -s -t XXX where X is time in seconds. E.g 1 hour is 3600. To cancel, simply shutdown -a. This will automatically (force) shutdown your PC in 1 hour. So you can go AFK sending BDO to the tray and sleep without worrying about your PC being on all night.
11. Unless you're specifically saving money for something, you should be broke. That means you're working on your armor and weapons at a good rate. The same can be said for blackstones. If you're not saving the blackstones for a specific purpose, then make failstacks with them.
12. Energy and Contribution are actually important. Once you get high enough you'll be spending energy at the night vendor to RNG some good armors or weapons (boss armor). Contribution is for your worker empire. Start grinding quests for contribution until you can start making a lot of beer (one of the trash loots for cooking gives you contribution exp). Ensure you "talk" to every "?" on the map to get energy. Knowledge is power!
13. The maximum energy your character has is account wide--but each character will passively recover energy at a relatively slow rate vs the character that you're logged into. E.g. if you have 100 energy, and 5 characters, you have 500 energy capital (when all your energy is full). Night vendor costs 50 energy per roll, so you can roll night vendor using all of your characters a total of 10 times.
14. Do the Black Spirit quest line on every character you make. They give a ton of blackstones, and inventory expansions for free. Some questlines also give 2nd best and best in slot gems for your offhand weapon, and some even give you PRI equipment equivalent accessories.
15. The Media quest line gives a black spirit crystal (8-9m) which you can do on every character and is 2nd BIS sub-weapon crystal. (#14)
16. Valencia I and Valencia II give +7 AP rings (PRI/DUO equiv) which are pretty good. Valencia II gives you an Awakened Black Spirit Crystal which is BIS sub-weapon crystal. (both of these quest lines are super gay, though) (#14)
17. The Special Deals tab of the market place is your best friend for item parts, blackstones, and if you're fail stacking (dunno why, but either way) on garbage armor or weapons. Special Deals is a party mode which sends drops (set by the party) to the special deals tab to be sold. Once sold, the money is split between the party members. It's the most fair way to party with other people because everyone gets a cut from the sale of any given item. Special Deals items will decrease in price by 5% every tick. So if someone has been there for a while, you can usually get it for way cheaper than from the regular marketplace.
18. Once you get to level 50+ (starting with Mansha's) the Node Managers (or NPCs near by) near mobs have kill quests that will give you either silver, or contribution exp. Valencia kill quests give you gold bars (100k and 1m bars) and the Bashim Node Manager will even give you Concentrated Magical Black Stone Armor (2-3m).
19. RNG is literally everywhere. No use getting salty over it. One day the Black Spirit will grace you with TRI at 15 stacks, and the next day the Black Spirit will require a blow job and 40 stacks for +15. That's just how the game is.
20. Everything you'll ever read about this game is from someone's personal experience. Don't take it as dogma. Including tests with thousands of results. E.g there's no such thing as "best grind spot in the game," there are tens of factors which come into the decision of the best grind spot for you. Including your gear score, what day it is (weekend 200% exp), what time it is (nighttime is +40% exp), how tanky the mobs are (more kills faster = better exp), is it populated (fighting over grind spots = shit exp), are you grinding for money or for experience, sometimes even the guild you're in can affect your grind sessions (most people won't fuck with page 1 seige guilds). It's worth it to keep all that in mind when someone says "XXXX is the best XXXX in the game!"
21. You can bind skills which can be slotted to any key--including mouse thumb buttons and G-Keys. Difficult at first to figure out, but once you do ultra useful. E.g, AOE heals (witch/wiz). You can be in awakening and hit the thumb button and immediately start healing yourself and friendlies (depending on the skill) in node wars. It's incredibly useful.
22. Travelers maps cost 500,000 silver and are crazy useful. I make it a point to carry one at all times. They will immediatly fast travel you to any town in your current region--including desert areas. E.g. Ride to Desert Fogans, grind and get incumbered. Pop your map and be at Valencia City (a 3-8 minute ride) in 5 seconds.
23. A good food rotation is important. Under the "P" menu you'll see "Health" every time you eat food it adds health exp which, once leveled up, increases your maximum HP. It starts out small, however at level 32 I get +320 HP which is substantial--all for clicking a single button every 30 minutes.
24. Boss gear can be obtained via the marketplace, night vendor, or by going to world bosses. World bosses are very hard and the droprate is very low.
25. Pets are extremely useful. Playing the game without them is pretty hard. They cost $9/ea and they're the only thing I really recomend you buy. If you got the game for $5 and buy 4x pets (max) you spent $41 on BDO which you can easily get 10,000 hours of fun out of.
26. If you can't afford AP, then Accuracy is second best.
27. Until you hit 56 (including level 55 99.99%) you can change your skills up at any time, anywhere. Don't be afraid to play with skills to find what works and what doesn't. Just make sure you figure it out before you hit level 56--at which time you need to pay USD to get a skill reset to change up your skills. In addition to this, ensure that you remove any skill you're not using before you hit level 56 so you can dedicate those skill points to awakening skills. Even if you don't plan on using them, you should always get every awakening skill, but the same is not true for non-awakening skills.
28. There are two different "awakening" mechanics in this game. One is awakening abilities, and then awakened skills. Awakening abilities are skills which you can unlock at level 56+ and require an awakening weapon (which you get by doing the quest) to use. They are also many times more powerful than unawakened skills. Awakened skills are just any skill which you currently have unlocked which you can choose up to 2 "effects" once per two levels starting at level 50 (50, 52, 54, etc). E.g. You can choose to get +1 MP per hit and deal 20 pain damage per 3 seconds for 15 seconds upon using a skill. (you probably can't get this exact combo, but just as an example)
29. Many skills have animation cancels if used in a certain order or in a certain way. Some allow you to execute combos faster which allows you to increase DPS, and some allow you to remove character animations allowing you to execute more skills much quicker. They're important and different for every class. It's very worth it to learn them. Two equally geared players, even of the same class; the one who is canceling animations consistently will win almost every time.

For any other questions as to who an NPC is, what quests they give, what can I make with XXXX, what's the recipe for beer again, how can I make liquid reagents, etc: http://bddatabase.net/us/ the information there is outdated sometimes, but it's basically 95% correct the rest of the time.