Black Desert has launched it’s Mediah part 2 expansion, which adds new locations the map and provides new features. New content includes, but is not limited to:
- 12 new islands located in the ocean to the North, of which includes a new leveling spot that players can utilize to reach up to level 60
- 3 new open world dungeons, which contain tougher monsters intended for a group
- A new armor set that drops from various bosses, that acts as the new best in slot armor piece
- New costumes added to the cash shop
- 3 new events, 2 of which are pirate themed, and one mother’s day event
The ability to enchant gear to levels greater than +15 was not included in this update, a feature that was included in the same update in other regions. This is likely in response to player concerns that the improved gear will create imbalance in PVP, taking away from Black Desert’s action-based combat. Daum Games has stated that they intend to make adjustments ti +16-20 gear for the North American and European version, but don’t intend to change the mechanics on how the system works. This likely means that they’re open to adjusting variables such as probability of success, stats gained per enchant, etc, but will not change how the system functions logically.
Interestingly enough, the update was not announced beforehand, other than a responding to a tweet that asked when it’s coming out, to which they replied to expect it “very very soon”. Generally MMORPG publishers, or game publishers in general, tend to announce updates/expansions/DLC weeks or even months beforehand, and proceed to hype it up with intense marketing leading up to the date of launch. Daum contrasts this practice, and has a record for communicating very little as to when to expect an update, and what to expect. Today’s maintenance was disguised as a regular maintenance, with no indication that it would be a major update. Patch notes were not released until roughly 2 hours before the servers came up.
On top of this, their patch notes are often quite vague and miss certain changes/additions entirely. While many criticize them for this, I personally like it, as it encourages users to explore and discover things for themselves, rather than knowing exactly what to expect before they even play it. I do think things such as balance changes need to be communicated more clearly, however I enjoy the fact that new content generally isn’t described in great detail, and left for players to discover by themselves, rather than spoiling it all in order to generate hype and publicity.
Servers are down until 8 AM PDT. The size of the patch is roughly 2 GB, and is available for download now.
View the trailer here:
The trailer is made up of entirely in game footage captured in real time with the game’s cinematic camera, which is available to players. It is not a pre-rendered cinematic. it shows off some of the new areas available to players in the expansion, running at maximum graphics settings.
The update is available for free to all players that have purchased the game already.
You can read the full patch notes
