Black Desert How Did You Get to Master Trading

Jon has been playing "Black Desert Online" and roaming the lands between Calpheon and Valencia since its initial release in NA.

Crafting Calpheon Timber Crates

In Black Desert Online, a Calpheon timber crate is a trade item that can be highly profitable to produce and sell. The very first thing you need to decide is which town you are going to produce the timber crates in. As Calpheon holds the timber nodes that supply the raw materials these crates are best produced either at the town of Calpheon or Trent.

How to Choose Between Calpheon and Trent: Trade Bonus

As the timber crates are trade items you get a bonus to the selling price of the crate depending on the distance between the node where they are produced and the node where you sell them. Remember that you need to have every node connected between the town in which you produce the timber crates and the node that has the trader you intend to sell the crates to.

As an example, the trade bonus from Trent to Altinova is 49% and the trade bonus from Calpheon to Altinova is 38%. But if you just have a single node missing between these towns you will only get 30% of the base trade price.

Are the Extra Profits Worth the Extra Travel?

When you choose the town you need to decide if the added profits from the increased trading distance bonus from Trent is worth the extra effort and contribution point investment needed. If you have the extra contribution points for setting up shop in Trent instead of Calpheon and the added effort from transporting the timber from Calpheon to Trent is worth the added 11% to you then Trent is definitely the better choice.

The Goblin trader in Calpheon. This guy will buy your crates if you can't be bothered to move them to another trader for the distance bonus.

In game screenshot

Getting the Raw Materials for the Timber Crate

To produce a single Calpheon timber crate, you need:

• 5 fir plywoods
• 5 birch plywoods
• 5 cedar plywoods
• 1 black stone powder

The raw materials for this are fir, birch and cedar timber, which can all be bought, logged or gathered by workers, and rough stones which need to be bought or mined from rocks.

Investing Contribution Points

The fastest way to get the needed raw materials is by investing contribution points to get at least one each of the available fir, birch and cedar nodes and have workers gather timber from each of those. If you can get two or three of each that will be even better but you might not have the necessary contribution points as some are rather isolated.

When you have invested in the nodes you need to have your workers gather on those nodes. I prefer using human workers as they have the greatest chance of getting secondary items from the nodes.

Here are the locations of the fir timber nodes, the birch timber nodes and the cedar timber nodes in Calpheon. Three of each.

In game screenshot

What Else You Need

You also need access to a timber workshop, at least 11 empty storage slots where you intend to produce the crates and lodgings for the workers which will produce the crates and gather the raw materials.

Required Workers

You should use workers at the highest skill level, preferably professional or artisan for timber gathering and you will need a single worker for each node you want to gather from. So if you want to gather timber from two of each of these nodes, you need to have six workers.

Lodgings

Before you can get workers you need to get lodgings for them. Each town gives you one free lodging for a worker but you need to invest contribution points to get more. The best lodgings for workers in Calpheon are the Calpheon South Gate No.1 and No 2. houses, as you can get lodgings for 7 workers there for only 4 contribution points. The lodgings at Trent are far worse. You can manage to get 3 workers and the wood workbench for 10 contribution points thereby investing in houses No.1, No.2, No.3 and No. 5.

How to Get Workers

To get workers you need to talk to the local work contractor in each town. The first worker does not need lodgings but every one after that needs a single lodging slot. You also must remember that workers need beer (or other worker food) to maintain their energy which you have to supply them with yourself at regular intervals. You can almost always buy beer from the marketplace or learn to make your own.

Turning Timber Into Plywood

The next step in this production chain is to turn the timber into plywood. While you can have workers do this for you it is so much better to process the timber yourself as you will gain far more plywood from the timber as you get higher processing skill levels. A worker will always need 50 timber for each plywood, while a player with artisan 1 or higher processing might need on average 10 timber for each plywood.

To turn timber into plywood you first need to process the timber with chopping into planks. Then you process the planks by chopping them into plywood. By pressing the L button you open up the processing screen.

Recommended Gear

• Silver Embroidered Craftsman Clothes: If you intend to produce Calpheon timber crates a lot or do a lot of processing you should invest in Silver Embroidered Craftsman Clothes and try to enhance it to +3 or at least +2. These clothes increase the experience gained from processing and give a boost to the success chance, thus reducing the processing time needed.
• Venecil Dress Set: You might also consider buying the Venecil dress set costume (Maid's Outfit) from the Pearl Store if you expect to have long processing sessions while afk, as the Venecil dress set allows you to work directly from the storage window instead of your inventory.

The Venecil dress set (AKA maid's outfit). Extremely useful for processing a large amount of material.

In game screenshot

Read More From Levelskip

Turning Rough Stone Into Black Stone Powder

There are two ways to produce black stone powder:

1. Grinding magic crystals which is both the simpler and faster choice as you can see from the video below.
2. Having a worker refine it in a refinery from rough stones.

Refineries can be found everywhere, but there are fewer refineries that can be upgraded to level 2 or level 3. A level 1 refinery can turn 2 rough stones into a single black powder each working cycle, at level 2 the refinery can turn 10 rough stone into 5 black stone powder and at level 3 the refinery turns 30 rough stones into 15 black stone powders each work cycle.

You need to man the refinery with a worker, either a goblin worker or, if you are often afk, a human or even giant worker for the extra stamina.

Finding a Wood Workbench

When you have gotten the required amount of plywood you need to find a wood workbench to start producing the Calpheon timber crates.

There are a few wood workbenches in Calpheon and the surrounding farms, you should choose those that only costs a single contribution point. If you are producing in Trent there are three wood workbenches available. The one in Trent, the one in Longleaf Tree sentry and the one in Behr. These all count as being in Trent as the produced crates end up in the Trent storage. You can only use one worker at once at each workshop so for faster production you need to invest in several wood workbenches.

You should man the wood workbenches with either goblin or human workers. The goblins are fastest and the added luck from humans has no effect in crate production. If you are, however, going to be afk a lot, you should use human or maybe even giant workers due to the extra stamina they have. You will of course also need lodgings for these workers.

If you manage to get lucky and have an artisan worker with the skill Timber Packing you should definitely use him to make your crates as he will make extra crates in the same time depending on the bonus. As an example a human worker with Adv, Timber Packing (+3) will make four crates in the time it takes to make one. The three extra crates still require the same amount of plywood and black stone powder.

The required materials and time needed to produce a single Calpheon timber crate.

In game screenshot.

Produced Calpheon Timber Crates.

Finally, you get the Calpheon Timber Crates in your storage after they have been made in the wood workshop and you can sell them to a trade manager. Remember that the distance bonus you get increases the further you take the crate. You can also sell it in the same town you made it but then you will not get any distance bonus. Below you can see how much you can get for a single crate if you sell it in the town it was produced in at 130% trade price.

Before you decide if and where you will sell your crates you should take a look at the prices of plywood and compare the profits from selling them to the profits of selling the crate. Remember to take into account the 35% tax when selling in the marketplace and the effect of the value pack if you have that active.

The trading price of a single Calpheon timber crate at 130%. On top of this a distance trade bonus can be applied.

In game screenshot

So there you have it. Everything you need to know to be able to produce your very own Calpheon timber crates. If you found this guide useful then by all means share it with the people you play Black Desert Online with. If you feel there's something missing then please drop a comment.

© 2017 Jon Sigurdsson

Diaspro on October 21, 2019:

Thank you so much for this! :3

3 on September 03, 2018:

Still possible too ask u things?

Jon Sigurdsson (author) from Iceland on October 26, 2017:

Thanks for pointing that out. I will change the text accordingly.

Kurozake on October 26, 2017:

"The only way to produce black stone powder is by having a worker refine it in a refinery from rough stones."

You can produce black stone powder by grinding magic crystal. Using rough stones on it is kinda wasted in my opinion.

Jiellith on August 26, 2017:

Botched that taxes math should had been 195k I think.

Jielith on August 26, 2017:

I've setup my calpheon crate nodes like week ago and today I was checking where to sell them for best profit. Arcade pays 132k. Arehaza 145k and Valencia city 198k if you have master 2 for desert bonus. Around 156k in Port ratt.

Compare to 210k market price for 1 crate at current time. Selling plywood for 136k w/o value pack or 146k w/. Might be more profitable.

Jon Sigurdsson (author) from Iceland on July 31, 2017:

It just depends on your play style. I tend to hang around Calpheon and Mediah so I don't have an alt for processing. But if you are often in Valencia, Margoria or the Pirate Island, then an alt makes perfect sense.

Winter on July 30, 2017:

Thanks for the reply! Just wondering, is it better to have an alt to do the processing so I wouldn't have to run back to Calpheon every day just to process? Since I set up my workers and workshops solely in Calpheon.

Jon Sigurdsson (author) from Iceland on July 30, 2017:

Hi Winter.

I didn't really want to go into detail on the trading part in this guide. But I think Ancado gives a higher trade bonus than Valencia so a wagon or some means of moving the stuff to a trader in Ancado is all you need at this point.

You should also google and read about the benefits of trade master 2 and the desert buff.

Winter on July 30, 2017:

Thank you so much for this guide! It made understanding the finer details of the calpheon crate setup so much easier as I have been looking all over the place. Quick questions: Is it better to be using alts for the processing? Since I play on my main, I'd rather not have to run all the way to calpheon each time just to process some planks.

Also, what happens once the crates are created? I know I should use the storage-transport function to bring them all the way to Ancado Inner Harbour, but then what? Have an alt ready there with a wagon to bring into Valencia? Thanks again! :)

theo on July 19, 2017:

hey lev! just to let you know i have been following your guide and setting it up for about the last week. finaly got all my nodes done today. just a big thank you for the amazing guide and the effort you put in to share this! - NA server / Exobow

Jon Sigurdsson (author) from Iceland on July 19, 2017:

Hi Fabi.

Thanks for this comment. I however fail to see where I mention that luck does something.

The only place I mention luck is were I say that luck has no effect on the amount of crates produced.

Fabi on July 19, 2017:

You shouldnt state things as a fact that arent one. Humans getting more secondary ressources is an assumption at best - and statistics have proven this assumption wrong. We have absolutely NO idea whatsoever what luck does lol. For all we know it's completely meaningless. It doesnt increase secondary drops from nodes. It doesnt give you more lucky tools. It does.. nothing. Or maybe something. But we dont know.

Sure, all statistics are based on a limited sample size, but since from a couple thousand gathering cycles the average returns for low luck goblins/giants, and high luck humans was close to identical, the luck does either play no role at all, or such a low role that being there faster with a goblin would be the much better choice. Just sayin.

Lilith on June 05, 2017:

Awesome guide thanks!

Kostis on April 13, 2017:

Thank you!!

Black Desert How Did You Get to Master Trading

Source: https://levelskip.com/mmorpgs/Black-Desert-Online-How-to-make-Calpheon-Timber-Crates

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