Black Desert Online - How to connect Nodes + How to get Knowledge with NPCs (GUIDE) by vitor210

Hey everyone, so after 24h of game played on this beta, I'm loving it and decided to create this guide to help others about the node's connection and how to get knowledge (and unlock MOAR QUESTZZZZ) from NPCS. After today's maintenance I'll edit this and add a new guide about how to trade with NPCS (Yes you can be your own merchant, buying things from one town and sell it for profit on another town).

1) How to Connect Nodes.
First of all, Nodes are all the big Icons you see on your map; they are towns, settlements, simple connection points like bridges, or just 1 NPC.

So this is my world map so far:

http://imgur.com/SvNwHHr

as you can see, I have a golden link from Heidel in the south, all the way up north to Velia, and a bit to west aswell.

Here's a close up of Velia:

http://imgur.com/5tXSyWv

But how do we connect Nodes?

So, imagine you are like me, and want to use the farms on Bartalia Farm (the node exactly south of Velia). You first need to go there and locate the Node Manager npc

http://imgur.com/u1WT2N8

Talk to the NPC and select the Node Management option, it will open a new world map window

http://imgur.com/U767O3s

To connect 2 or more nodes you need to Invest your "hard earned" Contribution Points (If you don't know yet, through questing you don't get the usual XP, but only Contribution XP, that's the third bar on the left side of your screen, when you have a full bar you'll earn 1 contribuition point, this can be spent to connect nodes, rent items from NPCS, buy houses/workshops etc.

http://imgur.com/6ZLxixw

on my case, I've already spent my CP investing on this node so it doesn't show, but if you don't have this connected it will show on the left side a button to invest your CPs. This can range from 1 to 3 CPs, depending on how big a node is (for some reason, a node bridge costs 3 CP whereas this farm costs 2). So since this node is close to Velia, it will show a golden link between those AND also shows a white link to other nodes nearby indicating what nodes it can link to.

So now that we have this node connected, we want to use the farms so we can send our workers here. In this case, Bartali has 2 farms (some nodes can have a forest for lumber, or a mine to.. well. mine :P). We choose one of the two farms (or both, if you have plenty of CP to spent, in this guide I chose the second farm since I've already invested on the left farm (shown here by a golden symbol).

When you click on a particular farm it shows another button to invest CP in there

http://imgur.com/ifzLg22

Voila! You click Contribution invest and if you have a idle worker it will appear a new window asking if you want to send your worker there, you click "yes"!

(here's something interesting that I realy find it cool about this game. You can see on the map the icon for your worker coming from the town to your farm, but you can also see it IN THE GAME WORLD!! Farming or Mining, watever you sent him to, that is realy cool)

Here's another example:

http://imgur.com/QwPW5jz

I have a refinery in Heidel where my worker uses Rough Stone to make items. So I required stone for that and since I don't want to mine all day, I've looked on my map to see where could I find a mining node. It turns out the closest one is west of Velia (here shown by the #6) and as you can see I had to go around the map to reach it because the node to the left of Velia that I haven't invested didn't had a white link to #6 so no point in investing my CPs there; instead I had to connect 5 nodes before reaching the #6 node. This way I have a worker from Velia mining in #6; he then sends the items to the warehouse in Velia and I just go to the Storage Manager in Velia and transport my items through a carriage all the way south to Heidel where my refinery is :) pretty simple.

2) How to unlock Quests through Knowledge
Let's say you're in Heidel and you already traded your Beginner Potions for Small Potions through this cute Shai here

http://imgur.com/VdPPtsY

when you talk to her, check out the left side. It shows your Amity towards the NPC. Amity is the amount of.. uhm.. "friendliness" I guess you could call it that. Some NPCS like this one give you something when you achieve a certain amity with them. This case it's a quest, shown here by a golden square with a ? in it. If you mouseover that icon, it says you require an amity of 30 (red triangle and a number 30 after that) so what do you do to increase your amity with her? You click on Conversation (Note: Some NPCS don't have the Conversation unlocked until you talk to a particular NPC that they mention, pay close atention to what they say to understand where to find that NPC).

http://imgur.com/2XkjCEi

When you talk to her this new window appears:

http://imgur.com/QhyVKpw

this is where a fun and unique mini game begins. You increase your amity by talking to the NPC about other NPCs that you've encountered; those are the icons below the screen, the NPCS that you know that Lara has interests with (so if you have few NPCs, try to explore the zone to uncover more of them). You also want to have NPCs that have 100% or close of Sparking Interest. Just right click them and they'll be sent to the circles above:

http://imgur.com/j6BxGCi

after that click Conversation:

when its done it shows how much amity you've earned:

http://imgur.com/bAICliP

in this case I've only earned 17; since I require 30, I need to quit this window and redo all the steps, this time with a new combination of NPCs until I have the 30 amity to unlock the quest.

(Note: Not sure if it's a bug due to this game being in beta right now but when you unlock a quest, it won't immediately show on your screen, you have to exit the conversation with the NPC, walk around her or just take a couple steps back until you see the NPC icon above her head and it will show that she has a quest, just go talk to her and this time it shows a quest).

Not all NPCs give quests though, some of them like the Furniture salesman in southern Heidel, give you more furniture if you have a higher amity with him; others give you knowledge about mobs, nodes or other NPCs :)

Hope you guys understand my little guide, ask anything you want and if you want a particular guide I can edit this and add the new part :)

EDIT: Here's my other guide about how to be a merchant https://www.reddit.com/r/blackdesertonline/comments/46q8tz/how_to_be_a_merchant_guide/, how to get workers https://www.reddit.com/r/blackdesertonline/comments/46qoxe/how_to_get_workers_guide , and how to Cook https://www.reddit.com/r/blackdesertonline/comments/46rq6g/how_to_cook_guide/

EDIT 2: Tip by Echowing442:

One trick when talking to NPCs: There will be a "Requirement" at the top. This can be anything from "earn a favor level of 28" or "Fail to spark the interest of X 4 consecutive times." If you successfully complete this challenge, you can select to do "Continuous Interaction," which lets you have another conversation without spending energy.

EDIT 3: Tip by xLenan:

You're missing something important in the conversation minigame. Hover over the npc symbols to see their spark interest chance and how much favor they give IF it sparks. Hope this helps someone :)

EDIT 4: Tip by nastybadger

Top guide. Don't forget amin it is account wide so you can keep building it up with other characters and that when you purchase something say that took 100 it knocks it off and you have to build up again for a second item.

SOURCE