Silver is the foundation and primary currency in Black Desert. Everything you do will require silver—buying mounts, armor, and weapons, repairing gear, and purchasing other commodities on the market. It is earned from basically everything. However, one glance at the marketplace and you’ll realize just how lengthy the grind for silver can be.
In this guide, I will show the 10 best ways to generate silver; for new and veteran players!
1. [For New Players] - Main Story
Getting the initial gear needed to begin grinding is seemingly complicated for many new players as they’re introduced to numerous aspects of the game at once with no walkthroughs.
I recommend playing through the main questline; finishing quests will give out enhancement materials, weapons, and gold bars. Although the gear given throughout the story isn’t the best—you can exchange the gold bars for silver by talking to any storage keeper and proceed from there.
As a byproduct of completing the main story, you will receive contribution points which aids in long-term investments and profits. Investing in worker nodes for materials will increase passive income substantially, furthermore; yielding resources for life skills like cooking, alchemy, etc..
Turning Profits:
- Save gold and exchange for silver.
- Use silver to buy necessary gear.
- Use contribution points to invest in worker nodes.
- Hire workers using energy via Work Supervisors.
- Finish up to “[Lv. 56 Valencia] Eastern Sands Valencia Story].”
The story will naturally assist in leveling your character to 56. You can then start looking for awakening weapons via the marketplace.
If you have time to pass, you should also look at your suggested quests. These give permanent items, pets, and expansions that will further assist in future silver income and open up otherwise locked content throughout the game.
2. [Weekly] - Dark Rifts
Every week, Dark Rifts open back up for another round at earning some cold hard mullah. There are a total of six rifts to attend, but, if you stick around long enough—Pearl Abyss occasionally releases rift events allowing you to take part in twice as many rifts, further increasing your income.
Rifts are solo activities and require a minimum of +15 Naru gear (Obtained from completing main quests). You don’t have to worry about your AP/DP as they will scale alongside your gear. However, eating a Simple Cron Meal beforehand is suggested.
This activity drops Ancient Spirit Dust, Loot Boxes, Black Stones, Remnants of The Rift, Mythical Feathers, and more. There is also no death penalty when fighting a rift boss!
Turning Profits:
- Turn Ancient Spirit Dust into Caphras Stones for profit.
- Open Loot Boxes for a chance at receiving expensive accessories.
- Sell Remnants of The Rift for money, or save it for Blackstar.
(Optional) Sell Mythical Feathers
As for Mythical Feathers, they can be sold, if you’re brave enough to do so..They are worth 40 million a piece on the NA marketplace. Although I recommend keeping them, they are highly sought after and time-gated behind weekly quests. You may find your time more valuable than silver in this case.
3. [Mapping Nodes] - Worker Empire
Having a Worker Empire early on in Black Desert can help structure a profitable long-term path. There are nodes on the world map that can be invested in using contribution points. You can assign a worker onto these nodes which will passively make you silver and bring in materials for life skilling.
I have invested mine into almost all nodes yielding cooking and alchemy ingredients to further benefit my life-skilling. You can choose any node that applies to your life-skilling interests like lumbering or mining. Eventually, you’ll be able to buy most of the nodes across the map anyway through continuous questing.
Make sure to grab the initial nodes around Velia and Heidel, they are close by and give you access to many main resources.
Turning Profits:
- Crafting meals/elixirs to increase mastery, which further increases product yield.
- Processing ore or lumber and using the product to craft useful items via workshops.
- Packaging products to sell for imperial deliveries.
- Exchange by-products for EXP or extra ingredients.
- Sell your products on the central marketplace.
4. [Life Skills] Cooking, Fishing, Hunting..
There are many life skills within the game—almost too many to cover! The most lucrative life skills would be cooking, hunting, alchemy, and fishing. Cooking is great for mass-producing meals for yourself or selling on the market.
Fishing is perfect for those who can’t play all day long. Grab a fishing rod, cast it into the water, and wait. You don’t have to be at your keyboard to fish, there is a timer in place that automatically fishes for you. It’s a great passive silver income, especially for those who have to work all day.
You can increase your mastery with life gear such as Loggia and Manos, which further increase product yields—or lessen the crafting time with Embroidered clothes. Loggia is exceptional for building mastery at an affordable price, although if you feel the need for an extra boost—Manos will be there for you, albeit a tad pricey.
Turning Profits:
- Sell caught fish to Trade Managers.
- Sell Alchemy/Cooking yields to the marketplace.
- Package Alchemy/Cooking yields for imperial delivery.
- Hunt animals for their meat, craft meals, or sell.
- Sell caphras, naturally found when lumbering or mining.
5. World Bosses
Every day there are World Bosses you can attend for a chance at boss gear amidst other loot. You don’t need the best gear to attend either, as long as you tag the boss a few times, you’re ensured to get its loot. They are on set timers so you can always plan ahead of your schedule!
For the most accurate times, check out www.garmoth.com! Just be sure to set what region you’re based in, as EU will have different spawn times than NA servers. Alternatively, you will receive alerts in-game before they spawn. It’s best to put an alternate character at the designated world boss so you don’t have to run across the map all the time. Instead, you can simply swap characters.
Turning Profits:
- Exchange Latent Aura dropped from the boss for memory fragments then sell.
- Open Loot Boxes for boss gear to use, enhance, and sell!
- Save Old Moon Boss Seals to later trade for valuable rewards.
- Convert Gold Bars to liquid silver.
6. Seasonal Servers
Seasonal servers have been around for a while, but only recently have been made into “permanent” seasons. This means you can always create a season character as long as you have a seasonal ticket. In contrast to normal characters, seasonal characters receive exclusive rewards with supplementary drops via grinding.
One of the best ways to make silver on a seasonal server is to grind in your preferred monster zone and simply gather their drops. Seasonal loot offers a by-product—Time-Filled Blackstones—that can be sold for extra silver. Various other methods include—quests, season pass, converting Tuvala to Boss gear, etc.
Turning Profits:
- Grinding then selling seasonal loot: Time-filled Blackstones or Tuvala Ore.
- Complete the main story for seasonal rewards.
- Season pass rewards can be sold or used.
- Graduate a season character
- Grab your free PEN Capotia accessory from Fughar.
- Trade in Tuvala gear for TET Boss Gear.
7. [Weekly] Black Shrines
In the Land of The Morning Light, Black Shrines are miniature bosses that can be killed five times per week. Shrines consist of boss battles with a new elemental AP/DP that correlates to the aura of the boss you fight. This is a new and unique feature to BDO as the rest of the map is filled with normal monster zones.
I suggest saving the dropped embers until you have enough to craft a Flame of Hongik. Depending on the market’s economy, it can be sold on the marketplace for 500 million to 1 billion silver. Alternatively, it can be saved to craft a Dahn’s Glove to sell!
Turning Profits:
- Selling the Flame of Hongik.
- Crafting/Selling a Dahn’s Glove.
- Listing rewarded crystals on the marketplace.
- First completions will gift you an extra boss shrine reward.
8. [Join a Guild] Guild Bosses, Payouts, & Node Wars
Joining a guild comes with significant perks like daily payouts, node wars, and weekly guild bosses for a guaranteed one-billion silver! It also brings various buffs to life skills, grinding, and general PVE content to further push that profit margin.
Taking part in guild bosses ensures around one billion silver if not more. That is assuming you do ALL the bosses! As a substitute, participating in node wars allows for guild payouts and access to node war shops.
Turning Profits:
- Node War payouts
- Daily payments for being in a guild.
- Defeating Guild Bosses.
- Flipping Node War shop items.
- Enable passive buffs to increase loot yield when grinding and life-skilling.
9. [Most Lucrative] Grinding
One of the most obvious ways of making silver is grinding. Love it or hate it, it is your best bet at making that pretty penny. Put on a podcast, listen to music, or watch a movie—it’s going to be a while.
If you don’t already, you must enhance your pets to Tier 4. The tier of your pets dictates the silver you make an hour. If your pets are under Tier 3, your looting time will be significantly lower and it might even halt your grind speed.
Turning Profits:
- Sell trash loot.
- Enhance or sell dropped accessories.
- Sell other drops via the marketplace.
You can check what monster zones make the most silver an hour using the previously mentioned site (www.garmoth.com). Just take the information with a grain of salt, most players like to cherry-pick their best runs rather than average.
10. [Gambling] Enhancing
. Are you feeling confident that RNJesus is on your side? You can always try enhancing for profits. Just look at that fail stack you have, it’s a 10% success rate. What if it goes through? Imagine the profits! You won’t know unless you click enhance…
Just kidding, don’t enhance unless you feel comfortable doing so; when and if you’re not afraid of losing progress, click away. Otherwise, use cron stones as a safe haven.
View recommended enhancement chances by clicking “Another Adventurer’s Choice.” Adhere to the listed fail stacks other adventurers use as you don’t want to waste a 300+ fail stack on a PEN Heve.
If you have a fail stack you want to increase, use the devour function in the enhancement tab to increase it by devouring unneeded gear or Origins of Dark Hunger.
Turning Profits:
- If successful, sell enhanced accessories for profit!
- Even if you failed, keep the failstack to enhance any superior items - Blackstars, Deborekas, Distortions.
- Watch the market, and look for cheap base accessories with multiplicative outcomes for every enhancement level.
- Repeat.
However, in the coming weeks, Black Desert is supposed to release an update that adds a pity system to enhancements. Meaning, you can officially guarantee a PEN item after a set amount of failures. Enhancing has always been a gamble, but with this update, you’ll be sure to make something of value.
Find this guide helpful? Check out our other guides:
- Black Desert Guide – 25 Tips & Tricks
- Black Desert PvE Class Tier List [Strongest and Weakest Classes Revealed]
- Black Desert Fairy Guide - Everything You Need To Know About Fairies!
- [Top 10] Black Desert Best PvP Classes (Ranked)
