Kill 10 Rats and then Kill 50 more
Black desert is definitely interesting. In most MMO's you flow through the game at least in the early levels by questing. Black desert is very similar in that you get a bunch quests that you can move through but you have to approach things a bit differently.
While quests give you experience in BDO, the big question is what kind of EXP.
There seem to be 3 main types of experience in BDO and technically a 4th:
Skill EXP
Contribution EXP
Energy/life EXP
Combat/leveling EXP
Basically what I see is that quests seem to give out one or more of the 3 main types of experience – skill, contribution, and energy when you turn them in. The 4th type of experience – combat experience seems to be based on fighting monsters and it directly influences your level.
From what I can tell, you level independently of the experience you gain in skill, contribution, or energy, but your level is only one factor in what abilities you can use. In order to learn a skill, you need to be a certain level AND have the proper amount of skill points gained from skill experience. This results in a situation where if you perform quests like in most MMOs, you will have plenty of skill points to spend, but you'll find that you are not high enough level to actually spend all those points.
So…you need to earn combat experience by killing mobs in order to get your level up.
I've found the best way, so far, for this to happen is to kill everything to and from the quest areas that I am working on. This lets you complete quests AND gain enough combat experience to keep your level appropriate to the skill points you get from the quests.
As for the contribution and energy/life experience, I'm still trying to figure these out…it seems contribution has something to do with nodes and housing while energy/life has more to do with crafting. I'll figure more out as I go, I'm sure.
It's fun trying to figure all this stuff out – there aren't many MMOs around these days where you need to learn something new in order to progress – so I think Black Desrt Online is a success if just for that.
Morning Ramble 2.32