Beginners Guide to Horses in BDO

April 24, 2023

Beginners Guide to Horses in BDO

At it’s surface, horses are a simple thing in BDO – they’re your mount. They take you from point A to point B. However, like most things in BDO, the horse system has a ton of depth to it and there’s a lot of different facets to it. So today, I’m going to explain how the system works in detail, so you can start working on getting the best mount possible. Horses do also have an associated life skill known as training. The better this skill, the better you’re able to do a variety of activities related to horses that I’m going to discuss here in this guide. Training is going to be a skill that you do want to level on your main, as getting your training to professional 1 will allow your horse to automatically sprint while you have auto path on. I’ll explain an easy way to level up your horse training here in this guide as well so you can get to professional 1 as quickly as possible!

Acquiring a horse

Catching

Taming a horse is a great way to level your training skill. In order to do this, youll need a capturing rope as well as lumps of sugar. You can buy capturing rope from the stable keeper, and lumps of sugar can be created by combining 10 sugar with 1 mineral water via heating in the processing window. These can be purchased from general merchants in an inn. With your rope and sugar, head out into the world and look for a wild horse. Mediah is a great place to find horses and is somewhere i recommend looking to find your horses. With your Capturing Rope and Sugar Lumps bound to hotbar keys, approach a horse and use the capturing rope with your crosshairs on the horse. Press LMB and youll enter the horse mini game. Youll want to approach the horse and hit the spacebar as fast as you can. As you win the mini game, slowly approach the horse. You may have to complete the mini game multiple times. As you get to the horse, use the lumps of sugar which will increase your probability to successfully mount the horse, and then try and get on. At this point, bring the horse back to the stables, and you can register it there, and then you’ll get your training XP! We will get more into how to level this horse up and get a ton more training exp in the skills section.

Horse Market

Another way that you can get a horse is through the horse market. Talk to a stable keeper, click stable, horse market, and then youll see a variety of horses for sale. You can purchase a horse here if you so choose, or even list one for sale yourself.

Horse Quest

You can get a very good starting horse from a quest pretty early on in the game. Once you have completed the Balenos quest line, youll find a quest under the Suggested Tab called “[Horse Emblem] Seal of the Secret Guards” that will give you a t5 horse with sprint and instant acceleration, two skills that are extremely important for traveling on your horse. I’ll explain more about horse Tiers and Skills in a bit, but this is a very solid starting horse and will serve you extremely well early in your adventures.

Stable Keeper Shop

You can buy a beginner horse emblem from a stable keeper as well really cheaply for some silver out of their shop, and then the horse can be registered at the same NPC when you click stable. Generally i wouldnt recommend this as the horse isnt t he best, and the horse you get from the horse quest is significantly better.

Shakatu Seals

You get Shining Shakatu seals from events and log-in rewards. When you get 50 of these, you are able to exchange them for a T8 horse Emblem. Just right click the seal and have it bring you to the exchange NPC, and then bring the emblem to a stable and you can register your horse.

Horse Tier & Skills

Horses in black desert online have tiers, starting at tier 1 and going all the way up to tier 10, with tier 1 being the lowest and tier 10 being the highest. The higher your horse tier, the more skills it can learn, and the better stats it can have. “Normal” horses are tier 1 through tier 8, while dream horses are tier 9 and tier 10 and are the best horses in the game. I will go more into dream horses in a bit.

Horses in Black Desert Online have a wide variety of active skills that they have at their disposal. Skills for the horse fall into 2 categories: courser skills and non courser skills. A courser is a type of horse that’s learned a set of specific skills, and a horse’s courser status can be seen by a gold horse icon when you open the horse window (which is F7 when youre near your horse). Courser’s are worth more on the market due to their skills being desirable, and t8 coursers can be awakened into dream horses. I’ll discuss this more later in the guide. But, the 3 most important skills for your horse to have are sprint, drift, and instant acceleration, as these will allow you to travel around the map as quickly as possible by utilizing drift cancelling. While holding shift to sprint on your mount, prss A+S or S+D to enter a drift, and then press F to quickly instant acceleration. At the end of the instant acceleration, drift again, and again press F to quickly instant acceleration. Shift should also be held down the entire time during this process. The reason we do this is because the drift resets the CD on instant acceleration, allowing us to move at bursts of speed around the map.

Now that we’ve discussed some of the basics with horse tiers and skills, I want to explain how you guys can get a great horse very cheaply. If you look for a T8 non-courser that has drift, sprint and instant acceleration, youll get all the benefits of being able to drift cancel, without having to pay the courser price tag. You can then get a t8 courser later on when you’re ready to try for your dream horse.

Horse Stats

Horses in BDO have a wide variety of stats, which include the following:

Speed – Increases AFK and Sprint speed
Acceleration – Improves top speed for Instant Acceleration
Turn – Determines how sharply a horse can turn
Brake – How quickly your horse stops. This is very important for stability during Drift + Instant Accel animation canceling, as brake can reduce Drift animation significantly.
Health – Increases your horse max health.
Stamina – Consumed when you use horse skills and determines how far a horse can travel before being fed with carrots, which I’d recommend carrying on you. Carrots will also restore your mount’s health if it’s damaged.
Horse Inventory & Weight – The size of your horses inventory and how much weight it can carry. You can actually use the horse’s weight to do a neat little trick when youre grinding where you basically bounce the over-encumbered status between you and your horse. When you reach your weight limit while grinding, stick your trash loot as one big stack onto your horse. Then, when you reach your weight limit a second time, go back to the horse, remove the trash loot from the horse to make it one big stack again in your inventory, and then put that big stack back onto the horse. Repeat this over and over during your grinding session. When you’re done, put the giant stack of trash loot onto your character which will make you heavily overencumbered, but, you can then mount your horse, who will take you back to town at normal speed, allowing you to sell your goods.

Horse Gear

Horses in black desert online can have outfits on just like players. These can be purchased from the pearl shop or the marketplace and give your horse some great passive bonuses, as well as make them look a lot cooler. In addition, you can equip gear to your horse that gives it a wide variety of bonuses, such as increased speed, acceleration, health, armor, etc. This gear can be purchased off of the marketplace or crafted in a variety of ways, which will vary based on the type of armor you’re looking for. Early on, simply using some basic gear that you can purchase on the marketplace, or from a stablekeeper, will serve you well. Eventually, you’ll want to aim for a type of armor for your horse known as Krogdalo’s gear. This not only gives your horse some amazing buffs, but it allows you to give yourself and party members some temporary buffs to increase your stats depending on the type of armor. There is a guide to Krogdalo’s armor linked here.

Horse Training

The next thing that i want to cover is actually training your horse. The following method I am going to go over is one of the best ways to get training experience, and what i personally recommend as an amazing way to power level your training to professional 1 for afk auto sprint. You want to catch and train your own horses. So, with a caught horse registered, simply remove it from the stable and setup and auto-looped riding path. By holding alt and right clicking, you can set a path for yourself on the map, and if you have the path end where it started, itll create an auto looped path, which will be indicated by the path turning green. You can also do it in a straight line by clicking one spot and pressing set auto looped path. When you create an auto-looped path youll also have the option to save it, and then you can re-load the path later by clicking the icon of the man at the bottom right. Now, you simply can have your character ride afk and as you ride the horse and it gains experience. As it levels, itll learn skills, and every time it does itll grant you training experience. Horses gain experience by how fast they’re going, so having a good riding crop and a nice set of horse shoes on the horse will make the horse move faster and therefore gain more experience. Another way to augment your experience is with celerity draught, increasing how much training and mount expereince is gained. You can also buy and use a trainer’s outfit from the luxury vendor once you’ve achieved skilled 10 training, which will also make this process faster. Then, once your horse is leveled up to 20 or so, you can either sell it on the horse market if it learned a good set of skills, or simply turn it in with Imperial Horse delivery to get some silver and imperial horse delivery invoices, which can be exchanged for a wide variety of items at a stable keeper. Now if youre trying to turn a horse into a courser or level your skills on your dream horse but youre getting skills you dont want, you can use mount exchange coupons from the pearl shop to change them. Generally, it’s recommended to have a training skill of Artisan 1 or above, and to change fore chop for regular horses and courser’s spirit for dream horses to attempt to get a courser skill, as you can learn this skill back pretty easily and re-roll it again and again until you get the skills you want.

Riding Crops

This is an item that can go in the tool slot on your character, which makes your horse’s auto run much faster. You can get a blue or green quality riding crop from the shop at the stable keeper, or you can get a much stronger Manos riding crop off of the marketplace. I personally used the blue quality riding crop from the stable keeper for a long time before i had the extra silver, and then i purchased the manos riding crop which i found to be worth it!

Horse Whistle

By clicking the horse icon at the top left of your screen, you can call your horse to come to you. However, the base range on this is incredibly short. It can be augmented by 2 items out of the pearl shop: the Trainer’s flute and the celestial horn. The trainer’s flute extends the range of your call to be a much bigger distance, while the Celestial Horn make your horse call range infinite. The trainer’s flute can also be purchased off of the MP while the celestial horn cannot, but you could also do a quest in the game to turn your trainer’s flute into a celestial horn without spending extra pearls, which I will link here.

Dream horses

Dream horses are a type of special horse that can be awoken from a t8 courser. A tier 8 courser is a horse that’s learned the Charge, Drift, Sprint, Instant Accel, Sideways, S:Instant Accel, and S:Sideways skills. These dream horses have special skills and characteristics unique to them, making them some of the best horses in the game. There are 3 types of T9 dream horses:
Arduanatt: Best dream horse for mobility and speed, excluding desert and water. You also get the ability to air glide after double jump, giving you some unique travel routes not available to others.
Dine: Best for desert travel and defense, receiving no slow debuff in Valencia.
Doom: Best for offensive PVP and combat. It has the ability to carry 2 passengers, has a fast Active Travel, but the slowest AFK travel of the 3 dream horses.

To actually get a dream horse, you need to bring your t8 courser to stonetail ranch and put it in the stables there. From there, you can start your courser awakening. Courser awakening is like enhancement, but for horses. To awaken your courser from t8 to a dream horse, you need to invest a certain amount of materials in order to try and tap for the dream horse. When you try to awaken the horse youll see this window. These 3 categories you see here determine the likliehood that your horse awakens as a Arduanatt, a Dine or a Doom. You can use the following materials, which are acquired in a variety of ways, to increase the liklihood that his happens:

Skill (Arduanatt): Rainbow Gem Fruit, Stonetail Fodder
Elegance (Dine): Breezy Conch Seaweed, Spirit Pouch of the Ferocious Beast
Strength (Doom): Deep Blue Hoof Root, Pure Forest Breath

Those materials I listed above give a 1% chance increase that your horse awakens as that type. There are also materials that you can get from events that give a 2% chance towards horse awakening types and are also worth saving. These are the Fruit of Yinaros for Arduanatt, the Myserious Blue Conch for Dine and the Crimson Fire Flower for Doom. Now, the total percentage chance that these three categories needs to add up to 200%, with no single category being over 100%. The reason for this is that any materials added that increase the percentage past 100% are only half as effective, so you’re essentially wasting half your materials at this point.

Now, with 100 crons stones to make sure you get half your mats back after tapping, as well as a Krogdalo’s Origin stone which can be purchased off of the MP or created using 25 Rumbling Earth Shards and 25 Swaying Wind Shards, you can attempt to awaken your courser and obtain a dream horse! Every time you fail you’ll receive a failstack which will increase the likliehood that you are successful the next time.

Once you have a t9 dream horse, you can take them even further to make them t10.
Mythical Arduanatt: Best mobility and speed of all dream horses.
Mythical Dine: Can travel on water and has a skill to prevent fall damage after jumping.
Doom: not yet available, but planned for the future.
T10 horses and how to acquire them are out of the scope of this guide. But, I’ll link guides to them for the Dine here, and the Arduanatt here.

Horse Breeding

You can also breed horses in BDO. I’m not going to cover it in depth today but just give you a top down view of how the system works. You need to have 1 male and 1 female horse at your stables, as well as one empty stable slot for the new horse that will be created. You click the male horse and then click the “Register at Breeding Market” button on the menu that pops up. Then, click your female horse, and then click Breeding Market at the bottom. You’ll then click the tab that shows your horses at the breeding market. You’ll then click the male horse you just registered and then apply. After 2 hours, youll be able to receive your new horse! You can find a more in depth guide here.

Transporting Horses

You can also transport horses from one stable to another by going to the stable keeper, hitting stable and then clicking transport mount. Youll then be able to transport mounts from other stables to the one you’re at assuming you have an eligible slot. In addition, if you lose your mount and need to collect it, you can go to a stable keeper, click remote collection, and your mount will be transported to the stable you’re currently at.