Knowledge and Energy are incredibly important aspects of Black Desert Online. They are tied together because as you gain knowledge, your maximum Energy pool increases. This guide will explain to you the basic concepts of Knowledge and Energy, their uses and importance, and how to increase them.
Knowledge
Knowledge represents information that you have learned throughout your travels in the World of Black Desert Online. Knowledge falls into different categories, including (but not limited to) knowledge of characters (NPCs), Topography, Resources, and Ecology (the knowledge of the beasts and creatures that inhabit the world). You will gain knowledge from meeting people, interacting with objects throughout the world, traveling, and killing monsters. You can access the knowledge interface at any time by pressing the “H” key in game.
Gaining Knowledge
Anytime you see a “?” on your minimap, go over to it and interact with who/what is there to gain knowledge about the subject. In addition, some NPCs will offer you knowledge through gossip by exchanging a small amount of energy, and some NPCs offer knowledge as a quest reward, or from reaching a high enough Amity with them by playing the Social Interaction minigame (this may also require a quest to perform first, but you will gain the knowledge once it is completed).
Knowledge can be obtained out in the world by interacting with interesting objects, such as statues, paintings, carvings, and wall murals. You can also gain knowledge by gathering resources. If you dig up enough potatoes, you will gain knowledge on them. As you fish, you will slowly gain the knowledge of the different types of fish you will catch.
Finally, knowledge is gained by slaying monsters. Ecology knowledge can take a while to gain, as you will normally need to kill a random number of mobs, and it is graded in 5 tiers from C to S. Depending on the grade you receive, you will receive bonuses when fighting these creatures in the future. Here is a list of the different ratings with their benefits (all benefits are cumulative):
C
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See the creatures full health bar
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B
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Defense bonus against the creature
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A
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Attack bonus against the creature
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A+
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Larger attack bonus
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S
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Increased chance of dropping loot
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When you gain rated knowledge, its value is completely random and is not based on criticals, number of mobs grinded out, or any other factors. The good thing is, if you are unhappy with your result, you can go to the Librarian in Calpheon to reset it. As this can be somewhat inconvenient when you are grinding, I suggest keeping an NPC logged near the librarian that you can hop over to so you can quickly reset the knowledge of the creature you want to get a higher score on. I wouldn’t worry too much about having a good rating until you are fighting level 50+ creatures where you will benefit the most from the higher grade.
Energy
Energy is a resource that is expended temporarily to do many things in the game, including social interaction (that includes speaking in channel chat–which is BTW a great way to keep spammers out of it), gathering and processing resources, investing in nodes, and hiring workers. Your energy maximum is account based (as it is tied to knowledge, which is also account based), but each character keeps their own energy total. This means that if you do not have enough energy to complete a task on your main character, you can always log onto an alt to spend his energy.
Speaking with NPCs
When interacting with an NPC you can gain Affinity with, you can press F1 to exchange 3 Energy for 3 Amity. You can also pay an amount of energy listed to the left of the conversation button (the right side is your maximum energy), to play the Social mini-game. If you meet the requirements in a round (top right of screen), you will be able to play again, and if the requirements are met again, a third time. If you are successful, you will increase your Amity with the NPC by a substantial amount (hopefully). You will need to possess sufficient knowledge that the NPC is interested in to attempt the Social minigame.
When you speak to the NPC and you don’t have the prerequisites, they will tell you what interests them and how many additional pieces of knowledge you will need to gain in order to interact with them. As an example, one NPC might be interested in the merchants in a particular town, while another might like talking about different types of fish. We are writing a Social Interaction guide that will explain more on how to play the minigame, which should be out prior to the game’s Western release.
Node Investment
You can spend your energy to invest in a node you have already invested Contribution in. You must invest 10 energy at a time, which will slowly increase the node’s level, to a maximum of 5. As you gain levels of node investment, you will need more energy to increase its rank to the next level, and so on. The higher you have ranked up a node the more benefits you will reap from it, including increases to materials harvested by your workers and to drops gained while farming mobs nearby. If you are ever near your energy cap and don’t know what to do to spend it, I suggest spending 10 points into a node that is valuable to you. As a warning, if you release the node to regain the Contribution and then reinvest it back later, your previous energy investment is lost (the node resets to level 1).
Gathering and Processing Resources
You will spend a small amount of energy each time you gather or process (a change from the Korean version) a resource yourself. You will also spend a small amount of energy when crafting food and potions at your residence crafting stations (another change from the Korean version of the game).
Energy Regeneration
Energy regenerates naturally at the rate of 1 point every three minutes your character is logged into the server, and 1 point every hour he is not. Therefore if you play your main for 6 hours straight, each alt will regenerate 6 points of energy during this time (Pro tip: Make your alts early on, you can always delete them later and create another character). In addition many quests, including dailies will as a reward regenerate a certain amount of energy (make sure your energy is not capped before you select the reward). If you are at your residence, sleeping in your bed will recover additional energy. A crafted bed restores 1 point of energy every 2 minutes, while a bed purchased in the cash shop will regenerate 1 point per minute sleeping in it.
You can also create potions of energy by draining your own. Currently, the tradeoff is that you must spend 100 energy to make a potion yielding 10 energy, which can then be sold on the Auction house. These numbers are currently under review at Daum, and could change to a more favorable value (hopefully) in the future.
Increasing your Energy
Your energy maximum will increase as you gain knowledge in specific categories. The total amount of energy can vary per category, depending on how large it is. I suggest occasionally pressing “H” to open the knowledge interface to access the categories, which will not only tell you your learned knowledge but also what must be sought out to further increase your energy total. Gain the missing knowledge in the category and increase the cap.
