Greetings Adventurers !

The following guide will inform you about the Worker Empire setup for 2020. My main interest is to provide useful information for beginner players on how to start assigning workers and which nodes is more suitable for new players.

Basically, assigning workers in Black Desert is a method to collect resources without having you to spend your own energy, a great method to earn passive income while logging in with your character. There are a lot of resources you can gather with workers such as ores, lumber, herbs, food, or even end game enhancing material (mass of pure magic).. but we'll get into there later on since this guide is focused on the "starter" worker setup for new players. With a good worker setup, you can have all the resources you need to grow your character's life skills such as cooking or alchemy, more profit everytime you go afk doing something else.

About Workers

You can hire workers by talking to Work Supervisor in the city, contracting a worker will cost you 5 energy and some silver depending on the worker's grade. The hiring process is a random roll, which means there is a small chance you can get a worker with the highest grade (Artisan).

But for starter, don't use too much energy on finding Professional or Artisan Workers.. having a Skilled workers is good enough.

There are different type of workers wich are suitable for your own playstyle, each of them have different status and function.

Giant Workers for example, are good for all day work since they got a lot of stamina, you only have to give them food once or twice a day during your playtime (very few maintenance). Unlike the Goblin Workers, they are fast workers which is suitable for active player who can maintain their food consumption every couple of hours.

Here is the example of workers you can hire on early stage of the game

Worker Status : - Work Speed  Determines how fast your worker can finish the task - Movement Speed Your worker movement speed, affects the work speed depends on the node location you assign - Luck The likeliness of getting rare resources while gathering - Stamina Determines how many times your worker can finish a repeatable task until it needs to be replenished   Worker Skills : Worker also have skills that are randomly learned everytime they gain 5 levels. The total skills a worker can learn is 7, with 1 basic skills learned at lvl 1.

If you are an active player with high amount of playtime, i suggest getting Goblin Workers since they have the fastest speed to gather resources.

If you enjoy afk gaming and don't have time to check on your workers regularly, i suggest getting Giant Workers since they have the highest energy. Human is in the middle between Goblins and Giants, with better luck stats.

Restoring your worker Stamina

When you assign your workers to do a certain task, it will consume 1 worker energy each time they complete the task, to recover worker's energy, you need to cook or buy food that restores worker stamina.

The easiest food you can craft for worker needs is Beer.

To craft beer, you need 5 Grains (Wheat, Barley, Corn, Potato, Sweet Potato), 2 Leavening Agent, 1 Sugar, and 6 Mineral Water.

you can get grains from gathering (for example, near Bartali Farm node - Velia), or you can buy from Marketplace, as for the rest of ingredients can be bought from cook/inn vendor.

Later on, you can just assign your workers to gather the grains.

There are many locations to gather grains, but as you progress throughout the game, you won't need to gather manually for basic grains. You can just assign workers to stack the resources for you :)

As you can see.. people are buying these since it's one of the most demanded resources that are used for many purposes.

After providing all the ingredients needed, you can start cooking your own beer.

To cook something, you need to rent a residence in a town or village and put a cooking utensil inside your residence.

You can get the cooking utensil from the cook / inn vendor.

Now that you understand how the basic of worker task, it is time for you to learn about the nodes.

Node Investments

You might be wondering how to put your workers to work, first you have to invest your Contribution Points into a node. To activate a node, talk to the node manager, choose the desired node to invest, then click Invest Contribution at top left corner.

here are the brief example on investing in Loggia Farm near Velia.

Different nodes have different Contribution Points requirements, you can withdraw the Contribution points if you no longer want to invest. So.. don't be afraid to invest Contribution Points, since it won't be totally consumed, you can always get it back later.

In an active node with resources, you can assign your worker to start performing a task.

Notes : 1. These are the list of available workers you can assign to perform the task 2. Determines the number of times your worker will perform the task 3. Start Assigning your worker   *To hire more workers, you need to purchase lodging in the connected city. You can do this by opening the world map and clicking on the desired town, same on how you purchase residence, just different function. *Workers can work intercity if you connect the nodes between those cities.  *Workers always store their collected resources in their origin city.

There you go ! now you can just sit back and relax while your worker do the job.

Choosing your Starting Nodes

- Balenos

There are many resource nodes you can invest even when you just start the game, for example egg at Bartali Farm (near Velia) is always on demand.

Other resources such as potato, sunrise herbs, or chicken meat can surely be useful when you start to level your lifeskills (cooking and alchemy), so i recommend to assign your worker there. Here are the list of starter resource nodes you can invest in Balenos.

For starter you can invest in Bartali Farm 1 and Finto Farm 1 for Chicken Meat and Egg (these are good for your cooking ingredients supply later on, Chicken Meat is really good substitute for Grains since it can be cooked into Grilled Bird Meat to recover worker's stamina)

you can also invest in Bartali Farm 2 and Finto Farm 2 for Potatoes, with these you can get your reliable resource to make Beers for replenishing worker's stamina.

Balenos Forest can also be a good choice to stack up Sunrise Herbs if you don't feel like buying it from the Marketplace, but this is optional.

Another optional node for grains are Toscani Farm 1 and 2 for extra corns, if you decide to invest on Ancient Stone Chamber, might be a good idea to invest here since you need to connect these nodes.

The luxury resource here is the Trace of Ascension and Trace of the Earth at Ancient Stone Chamber which is currently 24k pre orders on the Marketplace (for Trace of the Earth).

You will need this to craft end game items later on, so if you have enough Contribution to spare, might be a good idea to invest some in this node.

So the basic setup is :

Bartali Farm 1 and Finto Farm 1 (Chickens) - 6 CP (3 each)

Toscani Farm 1 and 2 (Corns) - 4 CP

Forest of Seclusion (connection node) - 2 CP

Ancient Stone Chamber (Trace of the Earth and Trace of Ascension) - 2 CP

Worker Lodging (Velia 1 - Rm.1 and Rm.2)  - 2 CP for 4 extra workers

so the Setup cost is 16 CP in total, not bad xD

- Serandia

After you move to the next city (Heidel), you can continue investing on other nodes to stack up your needs.

There are plenty of basic materials you can gather with workers in Serandia, and no need to worry about worker lodging since Heidel got a lot room for it.

These are the basic node list you can invest to stack materials you need later on when you start crafting.

The first one is Alejandro Farm 1, here you can invest your CP for Cooking Honey. This material is used for cooking and there is a lot of cooking recipe that require you to add cooking honey in it.. so, it's a good idea to have your own stock of honey :)

At Costa Farm 1 and Moretti Plantation 1, you can invest your CP for Flax and Flax Thread. These are also a crafting materials, but most of adventurers use it to afk-leveling your processing skills, since it give high processing exp. Not a bad choice to stack this up and process it later when you're afk.

The next one is Lynch Farm Ruins 1 and 2. This node can give you alchemy materials for a cheap amount of CP.

Next is one of the most needed crafting material in the game, Red Tree Lump. It can be used for various purpose such as furniture crafting, alchemy, etc. The current pre order for Red Tree Lump is over 1000k on the Central Market, so make sure you invest in Northern Plain of Serandia 1 to start gathering this material with your worker.

So the basic setup is :

Alejandro Farm 1 and Costa Farm 1 (Cooking Honey and Flax) - 5 CP

Lynch Farm Ruins 1 and 2 (Silver Azalea, Trace of Hunting and Trace of Savagery) - 3CP

Moretti Plantation 1 (Flax) - 2 CP

Northern Plain of Serandia 1 and 2 (Red Tree Lump and Silver Azalea) - 3 CP

Worker Lodging (Heidel 8-1. Rm. 1,2,3) - 5 CP

the Setup cost is 18 CP total. 

With this setup is done, you can either start crafting and pump your lifeskills mastery with the materials you gather or you can continue leveling up your character, or you can just do whatever you want.. like afk-fishing, horse training, or anything.. (i'm not gonna type everything since it's soooo many options you can do in this game)

Your workers will keep on gathering the resources while your character is online. I suggest you level up your character until it hits 56 and start to do Daily Quests for Contribution Points EXP. The more CP you have, the more node you can invest.. which means more passive income. But don't burn yourself out with Dailies, take it slow and enjoy the game :)

Please note that this is just a guideline to new players, you can always invest your Contribution Points in any node you choose if you meet the requirements. I hope this guide can be useful for those who want to start their own worker empire. As the time being, i will update this guide so it can always be relevant in the future. (videos about the guide in on the way - uploading.. :D)

there you go... ~to be continued

Really helpful guide..  Nice !

Updated

- added  simple CP cost calculations

- added Serandia Node Recommendation List

- shortened Node list on Balenos

actually, these are just basic guidelines..

if you guys want to play super efficient, i suggest you choose your focus on lifeskill so you can invest on nodes that will surely be useful for your lifeskill purpose

Cheers~