We covered the controversial plan to overhaul the Node War and Conquest systems in Black Desert Online a little bit ago, well now the patch has gone live, or least it’s attempting to. As of writing, the servers have had sporadic bugs and outages that are potentially a result of failed patch implementations.
As far as the changes themselves, here’s the relevant patch notes:
Node War
- Now nodes will be classified into Normal Nodes and Conquest Nodes.
- The Conquest Nodes will be classified into 3 different tiers with the higher tier giving more taxes to collect. Normal Nodes will give less amount of tax than Conquest Nodes. Conquest Nodes and Normal Nodes cannot be occupied at the same time.
- Node Wars will now be available daily for guilds to participate in so that adventurers can enjoy large-scale battles more regularly. As a result, the maximum number of nodes that one guild can occupy will be extended from 2 to 6 nodes.
- Instead, Guild Members who can participate in the Node Wars will be decided by the number of nodes occupied by the Guild.
- To summarize the revisions and additions, please read on below:
- At max, a total of 6 nodes will be allowed for occupancy by a single Guild.
- Guild Masters can assign a ‘Chance to Occupy’ to the Guild Members through Guild window (G).
- The Chance to Occupy will decide how many Node Wars the relevant Guild Members will be allowed to participate in the relevant week.
- The Chance to Occupy for Guild Members will reset at the end of Conquest War on Saturdays.
- Normal Nodes and Conquest Nodes cannot be occupied at the same time by the same Guild.
- You cannot participate in a Conquest Node after conquering a Normal Node. And you cannot participate in a Normal Node after conquesting a Conquest Node.
Conquest War
- Conquest Wars have received new rules.
- From the number of Conquest Nodes excluding the Normal Nodes, Guilds with 2 or more nodes occupied can build Fort/Command Posts and participate in the Conquest Wars.
- In order to construct Fort/Command Post/Field HQ, you need to occupy 2 or more Conquest Nodes excluding the Normal Nodes. You can start constructing a day after occupying 2 Conquest Nodes.
- In order to cut down on resurrection cooldown and time needed to move to the relevant areas, a new Castle Gate resurrection points have been added to Calpheon, Mediah, and Valencia Conquest Wars to bring the action faster to you.
- Castle Gate resurrection point for Offensive and Defensive are located in different locations.
- The Offensive Guild must have destroyed the Castle Gate in order to resurrect near the Castle Gate.
- It has been changed so that Cannons cannot be installed inside the castle in Conquest Wars.
- If a Guild with more than 2 nodes occupied is participating in the Conquest War, 2% of the tax from the territory can be collected every 10 minutes the Fort/Command post is successfully defended.
- Forts/Command Posts/Field HQs needed to participate in Conquest Wars can be built on the day of the Conquest War.
- The tax obtainable at this point equals 2% of the amount expected to be collected excluding Security Budget.
- This tax will be collected at the end of the Conquest War when the opposing side’s Fort/Command Post is destroyed.
- Offensive side can obtain at max 20% of the territory tax.
- If the Offensive side ultimately wins in the Conquest War, the tax obtained for successfully defending Fort/Command Post will not be counted in the calculation. Same as before, amount excluding Security Budget will be collected.
- If the Defensive side ultimately wins in the Conquest War, total amount of tax excluding the tax already collected by the Offensive side and Security Budget will be given as the winning reward.
- If there are several Guilds participating in the Offensive side, at max 20% of the tax collected for the Offensive side will be allocated by number of Guilds participating.
- For example if there are 3 Guilds participating in the Offensive side, about 6.66% (of the 20%) will be given to each Guild. Please be informed that the max 20% tax collected for the Offensive side is given only in the case where the Offensive side loses and the Defensive side wins.
- If there is a Guild who defeats other remaining Guilds in the Offensive side after the Fort/Command Post/Field HQ of the Defensive Guild is destroyed, the single Guild remaining will be declared the winner and take all the tax of the territory.
- Other participating Guilds in the Offensive side who loses to this single Guild cannot be given a share of the 20% tax collectable during the Conquest War.
- If there is no Guild declared as the winner of the Conquest War even after the Fort/Command Post/Field HQ of the Defensive Guild is destroyed and the Conquest War time ends, the territory will be liberated and no Offensive Guild will be able to obtain the tax.
- Other/Conquest War Balance
- Damage of the Basic Attack, Horn Attack, Fore Chop, and Charge of the Elephant used on Castle Gates has been increased by 30%.
- The number of target hits inflicted from Charge skill of the Elephant used on Castle Gate, Fort, Command Post, annexes and installments has decreased from 16 to 8 target hits.
- Damage of the Basic Attack, Horn Attack, Fore Chop, and Charge of the Elephant used on other adventurers has been increased by 20%.
- Damage of the Basic Attack, Horn Attack, Fore Chop, and Charge of the Elephant will now be applied on Cannons as well.
- Damage from Cannons used on Castle Gates has been increased by 300%.
- Damage from Cannons used on other adventurers has been increased by 400%.
- Cannon’s DP has increased by 100%, and Durability has increased by 900%.
- Cannons can be destroyed with ease if you utilize horses and Elephants.
- Damage from horses used on Cannons has been increased by 700%.
- Damage from horses used on Command Post/annexes and installments has been increased by 500%.
- Siege Defense Tower’s DP has increased by 50% and Durability has increased by 900%.
- Siege Defense Towers can be destroyed with ease if you utilize horses and Elephants.
- Durability of Calpheon Castle’s, Mediah Castle’s, Valencia Castle’s Outer Gate and Inner Gate has decreased by 50%.
- Wooden Fences and and Medium Siege Towers used in Conquest Wars has increased in height by 40%.
- Moving Speed of Medium/Large Siege Towers has increased by 50%.
- Medium/Large Siege Towers can be destroyed with ease if you utilize horses and Elephants.
- Damage from Flame Towers used on other adventurers has been increased by 50%, and damage from Hwachas used on other adventurers has been increased by 20%.
- Production time for the following items usable in Node/Conquest Wars has been reduced.
- Medium Siege Tower Workshop 15 mins. → 10 mins.
- Large Siege Tower Workshop 20 mins. → 15 mins.
- Indomitable Flag Factory 30 mins. → 15 mins.
- If the adventurer dies during Node/Conquest Wars, the corpse will disappear right away and Medical Kit or Resurrection skills will no longer be applicable.
- In addition, a new view mode where you can observe the Node/Conquest War from the allies’ point-of-view called ‘Ally Viewpoint’ has been added. While using this function, press F5 to switch views amongst allies.
- Due to the balance changes applied to Node/Conquest Wars, the price of the items sold by the Guild Military Supply has been changed.
- [Guild] Siege Defense Tower 150,000 Silvers → 500,000 Silvers
- [Guild] Wooden Fence 100,000 Silvers → 500,000 Silvers
- [Guild] Barricade 25,000 Silvers → 50,000 Silvers
- Node/Conquest War Schedule
- The same as before:
- [EU]
- Sunday~Friday: Node War from 20:00 CEST until up to 22:00 CEST
- Saturday: Conquest War from 20:00 CEST until up to 24:00 CEST
- [NA]
- Saturday: Conquest War from 21:00 EDT until up to 01:00 EDT
- Sunday~Friday: Node War from 21:00 EDT until up to 23:00 EDT
- Tax Collection
- There will not be a separate process of collecting taxes and the tax stacked up for a week will be instantly sent as Guild Funds to the winning guild who successfully conquers and occupies a node/territory. Security Budget rules will remain the same.
- Taxes will be classified among Normal Node < Conquest (Tier 1) < Conquest (Tier 2) < Conquest (Tier 3).
- Node Classification
- Normal Nodes, Conquest Nodes
- Conquest (Tier 3)
- Conquest (Tier 2)
- Conquest (Tier 1)
- Normal
- In all territories of Balenos, Serendia, Calpheon, Mediah, and Valencia, nodes will be divided up into Normal Nodes and Conquest Nodes (in 3 different Tiers).
- The total number of nodes are 154 however, same as before.
- Normal Nodes = 54
- Conquest (Tier 1) = 65 Nodes
- Conquest (Tier 2) = 20 Nodes
- Conquest (Tier 3) = 15 Nodes
- As there are tiers placed among Conquest Nodes now, you will obtain different amount of taxes depending on the tier of the Conquest Nodes.
- Normal Nodes, Conquest Nodes
The choice of allowing the top-tier (meaning those with the most Nodes occupied) means that the best-equipped and most-skilled players should be the ones competing for the most valuable Nodes. Although I’d expect plenty of monopolistic Node camping and “punching down”, with stronger guilds dominating weaker ones, to occur as a result of this change. We’ll just have to keep an eye on the situation to see if that prediction holds true.
The Conquest War changes do appear to be making an attempt to nerf the force projection of Castles, while buffing various other units like Cannons, but it may not be enough to discourage negative behavior.
The number of Conquest Nodes remains at 154, so no ability to spread out over larger areas in order to defuse concentration of forces, at least not yet.
These were just a snippet of the full patch notes by the way, you need to read this massive tome for yourself to wrap your head around all of the changes. Better grab a cup of coffee and settle in.
A new event is also kicking off today and running into August; players will be chopping down trees (and performing other soft gathering skills) to collect Serbianca’s Vouchers, which they can then exchange for logs to construct the Epheria frigate. This event joins the rotation as the other major event event for the Summer. Terrmian Waterpark will now run another week, until July 25. Rewards for completion of certain milestones, and overall production output, are also being handed out today for those who have taken part in Mysteries of Summer event thus far.
Other aspects like bugs with abilities, as well as general class balance, have been adjusted as well. Some random enemies that were either too weak or strong have had their stats shifted around too.
Whatever your opinion of these changes, it looks like Black Desert Online is about to get a lot more interesting for the next little while.