Black Desert Online Remastered gets a new class, lands, and an expansion

Developer Pearl Abyss and Kakao Games doesn’t want their popular MMO, Black Desert Online Remastered to miss the E3 hype train.  Today they announced an expansion entitled “The Great Expedition” in their livestream.  We’ve got the goods, but before we get to that, let’s talk about the new character class — Shai:

Perhaps the most exciting reveal was the 18th new character class. The ‘Shai’ is a mischievous halfling from the forest near Florin, which lies north-east of Calpheon. Using her Boomerang and a variety of skills focused on both evading danger and aiding her friends, the Shai is quite unique compared to other classes. This is further emphasized by the fact that the Shai is the only class to start at ‘professional’ levels in the Alchemy and Gathering life skills.

Due to her small stature, the Shai prefers to ride smaller mounts such as the Donkey on her adventures.
Her unique class skills further offer new gameplay and tactical options. The Shai can fool enemy players by ‘Playing Dead’ but is also a very effective counter to other stealthy foes. Using her Lantern sub-weapon, a Shai can reveal hidden enemies around her, sneaking up on her should prove difficult. Another unique ability allows the Shai to create a protective barrier around her and her allies, making it an effective support class.

Aside from the new class, The Great Expedition a few new mechanics, as well as some fresh PvE content:

The Great Expedition will see the introduction of new wind and current mechanics to the ocean of Black Desert Online. Traversing the high seas will now become more rewarding to players that can skillfully utilize the winds and current to reach their destination more quickly.

The addition of new islands to the ocean and new ships will give players even more reasons to explore this new content. The new islands will have special trade mechanics and players can use one of the new trading-focused ships to transport goods between islands, making a nice profit in the process. The new islands are easily distinguishable by their unique themes, but finding the correct one will require navigations mastery within the new current and wind mechanics.

A new PvE experience: The Altar of Blood

For players that are more concerned with the content on land, a new PvE experience will be added in the form of the ‘Altar of Blood’. This content will see three players defending their ‘sacrament’ from increasingly strong groups of monsters. The ‘Altar of Blood’ demonstrates similarities with ‘Savage Rift’ but with the groups being smaller and players being able to utilize their class-skills. This new challenge will require solid tactics and cooperation to conquer the foes in the ‘Altar of Blood’. Thematically, ‘Altar of Blood’ is linked to the recently added ‘Star’s End’ update that was launched last week.

Balance Improvements

The producer of the game, Jae Hee Kim, also touched on more general improvements that are being planned for the game. The various grind spots in the Black Desert Online will receive a new balancing pass to make monsters more challenging. Furthermore, improvements to the Life Skills are currently in the works to make these systems more rewarding and engaging.
Improvements are also being made towards the user interface with the goal of reaching a more cohesive experience between the console and PC-versions of the game. These updates are currently scheduled to be released somewhere in summer.

There was also some news about earlier announced content. The O’dyllita region has been postponed to give the developers time to create a more unique spin on this expansion. The Territory War content is also nearing completion but it was the opinion of Pearl Abyss that further improvements should first be made to the existing Conquest and Node War content before it could be fully released.

No word on a release date for the expansion, but events leading up to the release of the Shai class begins today, with a “pre-creation event” hitting on June 19th leading up to the official launch.

See below for our list of partners and affiliates: