BDO Beginners Guide to Gear and Stats

Coming from a traditional western mmo, BDO’s gearing system may seem a bit strange at first but it isnt all too bad once you dive into things. The goal with today’s video is to just give you guys a solid overview of the gear that exists in the game, where you can get it, and what the stats on the gear actually mean.

Gear Info

Gear in Black Desert Online, like most things in the game, works a lot different than other MMORPGs. Gear has no level, which means it can be put on your character at any time, and with most gear being account wide, this is extremely helpful for alts. In addition, while some gear is family bound (aka account bound), most gear can be bought and sold to players. So, for example, if you’re using a piece of gear and eventually get an upgrade, you can sell the piece of gear you’ve been wearing on the marketplace to recuperate some of your original investment!

Gear in BDO isn’t class specific nor does it have any gear weights like it does in other MMOs. Most gear is usable across all classes. The biggest difference between the classes gearing wise comes with the weapons, as each class uses a different main weapon, sub, weapon and awakening weapon. There are 13 total gear slots: Helmet, Armor, Gloves, Boots, Main Weapon, Sub Weapon, Awakening Weapon, Belt, Necklace, 2 earrings and 2 ring slots.

Gear also has different enhancement values on them, and the higher the enhancement value of a piece of gear, the better the stats. These enhancements are (from lowest to highest):

• 1-15
• PRI (I)
• DUO (II)
• TRI (III)
• TET (IV)
• PEN (V)

In addition, gear also has Caphra’s Levels, with these Caphra’s stones being able to add some additional stats to a piece of gear the mode you add. In general, these are used on higher tiered PEN gear to push them to their limits, and are ways to upgrade a piece of gear outside of the enhancement system. You can see a chart with how many caphras you need per caphra level here.

BDO does also feature set bonuses. Gear sets that come from a common source, like gear that comes from bosses or from Star’s End, have set bonuses that reward you for wearing multiple pieces of an armor type. How to activate these set bonuses can be seen on the gear tooltips, and the more pieces you wear, the more bonuses you’ll unlock.

Gear also does have rarity values like other MMOs do, with generally higher rarity pieces being a bit stronger and offering better bonuses. The rarity order goes (from lowest to highest):

• White
• Green
• Blue
• Yellow
• Orange

How to get gear

Gear in BDO comes from a wide variety of sources; you can get pieces from level up rewards, questing, mob drops, boss drops, world objectives and more. For example, the world boss Kutum drops a variety of “Kutum” weapons for a variety of classes. This differs from say a Nouver weapon based on the bonuses that it provides. Generally, bosses drop a specific piece of gear who’s name is associated with the boss. I plan on making a second video to follow this one up that discusses a generic and easy-to-acquire build for new players, so definitely check that out once it’s out!

Stats

• Health – How much health your character has. When it reaches 0, you die.
• MP – Stat used to cast abilities. Certain skills and potions can restore this.
• Stamina – Stamina increases how long you can sprint and how often you can use certain movement abilities such as dodges and jumps, and things like block abilities.
• Accuracy – Offensive Stat; Increases a chance for your attack to successfully land, countered by Evasion.
• Evasion – Defensive Stat; increases your chance to dodge an attack, countered by Accuracy
• AP – Offensive stat; increases how much damage your attacks deal.
• Damage Reduction – Defensive stat; decreases the amount of damage taken when you are hit.
• DP – Defensive stat; decreases the amount of damage taken when you are hit.
• Critical Hit Rate – how often you deal critical damage, which gives 100% bonus damage. This bonus damage can be increased by certain modifiers.

Outside of these stats on the pieces themselves, you can also get them in different ways from bonus effects. Sometimes they’ll apply to humans aka players, sometimes they’ll apply to monsters only, but keep in mind that these extra stats you get from the item effect do NOT apply to your sheet stats. That’s why, often times, you’ll see people reference they’re AP as “241 kutum”, or “241 Nouver”. It’s so that the person knows that they have, using the Kutum example, 241 sheet ap, with the bonus Monster AP from the Kutum Item effect.

Hidden AP and DP Brackets

Now believe it or not, you actually have stats on your character besides what appears on your gear pane. The stats there are known as your “sheet stats”, and are the bonuses you get directly from your gear. There’s also a form of hidden stats called “ap brackets” and “dp brackets”, which are extra stats you get from getting your sheet AP and DP to certain thresholds. These thresholds are VERY important because you can gain an INSANE amount of bonus stats from these. For example, having a difference of even just 1 AP around a bracket jump could mean that your opponent with that extra AP, actually has 22 more AP than you because they jumped up an AP bracket. You can find a list of AP & DP brackets here.