Life skills are an important part of Black Desert. They allow players who want to live the quiet life a way to become professionals and earn their wages in silver. Whether it’s crafting or gathering, life skills bring a more immersive Black Desert experience.

Fishing

Fishing is a core life skill in Black Desert. After you purchase or craft a fishing rod, you can cast a line in rivers, lakes, and seas across the Black Desert world. Fish can be sold to NPCs for silver or used in recipes to give you buffs. In order to fish, walk up to a body of water with a fishing rod equipped and press the ‘A/X’ to cast a line. 

Cooking

Cooking is an invaluable life skill. Simple cooking can be done anywhere, and just requires a few basic materials in order to process. More advanced recipes require a cooking utensil, which needs to be placed inside a residence. Cooking utensils can be purchased from any Chef NPC. Once you have the cooking utensil and a place to cook, you can work on transforming materials into delicious dishes. 

Materials used in cooking can either be purchased from the chef, the marketplace or gathered by yourself or your workers.

Tip: One of the first things you will need to cook that is essential to building your worker empire is Beer.

In order to cook beer, you will need:

• Five potatoes or grain
• Six mineral waters
• One sugar
• Two leavening agents

Place these ingredients in the cooking utensil that you have installed in your residence and you can start making beer. 

Alchemy

Alchemy is the process of turning seemingly innocuous materials into useful elixirs and potions. Simple alchemy can be performed anywhere, however more difficult recipes require an alchemy tool, which can be purchased from any general vendor and needs to be placed inside a residence

By combining gathered items together, you can create basic healing salves or elixirs that boost certain stats for a limited period of time. 

Gathering

Gathering allows you to collect materials from places across the world. Gathering uses energy, but in return gives experience and levels up your gathering skill. Materials gained in this way can then be used for other life skills such as alchemy and crafting. The following tools are all used for gathering: 

Lumbering Axe: Used to gather wood from trees

Fluid Collector: Used to collect resin from trees or blood from animals

Hoe: Used to harvest plants

Butcher Knife: Used to collect meat from animals

Tanning Knife: Used to collect hide from animals

Pickaxe: Used for mining

Empty Bottle: Used to collect water

In order to gather, walk up to the desired material and hold ‘Y/△’.

Farming

Farming is the process of growing crops used in cooking and alchemy. By placing a wooden fence on the ground, you can plant seeds and cultivate them. Once they have grown, you have a choice of harvesting or using the seeds to breed a better crop. Farmers can also choose to use fertilizer to increase the rates in which their plants grow. 

To find the best places to grow your fruit and vegetables, check the world map to check out temperature, humidity, water levels and more. 

Processing

Processing is the process of turning collected materials and turning them into something new. Shaking, Grinding, Chopping, Drying, Thinning, Heating, Simple Alchemy and Simple Cooking are all processing skills, which can be done anywhere on the map. In order to access the processing menu you will need to add it to a ring menu and access it from there. 

Crafting

Crafting is where processed materials are transformed into usable items. In order to start crafting you will need to purchase a workshop, and send workers to craft items related to the workshop. 

Woodworking Workshop: All items made from wood (wooden weapons, furniture, tools) can be crafted here

Blacksmithing Workshop: All items made from steel (armor, steel weapons and tools) can be smithed here. 

Jewel Crafting Workshop: Allows the crafting of jewelry and weapon upgrades

Trading Workshop: All items regarding trading can be manufactured here

Please note that in Black Desert, you do not craft items yourself, and instead employ workers who can be specialists in crafting certain types of goods. To send your workers here, go to the World Map window, enter the city or town, find your workshop, then select manage work. Assuming you have the materials in storage, you will be able to start crafting items. 

Trading

Trading can be a very profitable way of generating income in Black Desert. The idea behind trading is that you can purchase items from Trade Manager’s in one city, and then transport them to another city to generate profit. Buying low and selling high is key to making a profit on the trade scene. 

You may want to snag a wagon or a horse though, trade goods are incredibly heavy. 

5 steps to trading

1. Find a Trade Manager in any town or city and check out the goods they have for sale.
2. Use energy to find out the buying prices for traders from other cities
3. Purchase the goods and transport them to the other Trade Manager.
4. Purchase more items from the Trade Manager
5. Repeat. 

You will find that as your level increases, so do your opportunities and the amount of silver you can earn from trading also increases! 

Training

To gain exp in training, you will need to tame, train and breed horses. Taming is the process of catching horses (see:Transportation. To train a horse, you will need to level it up by using it. Some players may do this passively by just using their horse, others may set a looped path and auto move.)

To breed horses, you will need to have tamed or purchased a male and female horse. Male horses can breed twice, whereas female horses can breed once. You will then need to go to a stables and select the male horse and press ‘Register at Breeding’ and make sure to select the ‘Show only me’ selection. Then find the female horse that you want to breed the male with, and press breeding market. You should be able to see your male horse in the list, and then press apply. After a period of time, the two horses will create a baby foal which is collectible from the female horses window. 

The foal that is born will start at level 1, but its tier may be different than it’s parents tier. It may also be gifted with different skills than its parents too.