Camps and homes are often optional features that you can choose to ignore in most mobile MMORPGs, but this is not the case in Black Desert Mobile. The Camp you build and upgrade in BDM is your gateway to important activities such as the Ancient Ruins or Boss Rushes, as well as the spot where you can craft potions, crystals, and unique gear.

As such, any serious BDM adventurer should tend to their camp as much as they do to their character. To this end, we’ve put together all the essential details about camp life and development in the guide below. You’ll find out how to prioritize between different buildings, how to gather more resources, but also how to keep your workers in top shape and use your base for its maximum potential.

Camp Buildings and Upgrades

At present, there are 12 buildings that you can place and upgrade inside your BDM Camp. One of the most important is the Town Hall, which determines how much Silver you get for free every day, as well as which other features of the base you can unlock.

Aside from the Town Hall, you’ll want to pay close attention to the Pub, where you can hire new workers using Contribution Points. Once in a while, the selection of workers is refreshed and you have a chance to land a person of unique or higher rarity. The Lodging building(s) ensures that your workers have a place to live and determines how many of the latter you can hire at a time.

Craft buildings are equally important. These include the Refinery, Alchemy Lab, and Blacksmith, where you can make Armorand Weapon Upgrade Stones, potions, crystals, and armor, respectively. The Blacksmith is a particularly lucrative building that allows you to create items of unique rarity and fuse them into even rarer pieces of gear. Even if you decide to overlook fusing, you can still make a handsome fortune selling purple items on the Marketplace.

Although the Decorations and Dye Workshops can also be classified as craft buildings, their contribution is more aesthetic, rather than practical. Finally, the Stables allows you to house wild horses that you’ve tamed during your adventures, while the Ranch and Gardens give you the ability to generate large amounts of Food. The Storage is often an overlooked facility, but it becomes indispensable during the mid- and late-game, when you will sometimes need to switch gear sets between characters of the same family.

Camp Resources

In Black Desert Mobile, there are four main types of Camp resources: Food, Wood, Stone, and Reagents (or Herbs). Except for Food, each of these are divided into different sub-types and obtained in unique ways. They also serve very different purposes.

Wood, for example, comes in the shape of simple Logs, Light Timber, Sturdy Timber, and Pale Softwood. Its main purpose is to help you upgrade buildings around Camp, which is also the reason why you should prioritize this resource for the better part of your gathering. To maximize your Camp potential, you’ll need thousands of wood units, most of which you’ll obtain during the early- and mid-game.

Stone, on the other hand, is split into Rugged Boulders, Iron Ore, Copper Ore, and Tin Ore. Although you will use a bit of stone to upgrade your Camp, most of it will go towards crafting gear at the Blacksmith. Stone will become your priority during the late-game, when all of your buildings are upgraded and your main focus is to create better items.

Reagents or Herbs (Wild Grass, Cotton Wool, Herb Grass, and Silk Balls) are mainly used to craft potions at the Alchemy Lab. Due to the fact that the blue HP potions can only be obtained in this manner, they sell for a handsome fee on the marketplace. However, gathering Herbs is not nearly as advantageous or necessary as Wood or Stone, which is why we recommend you only spend a small amount of your daily Stamina on them.

Food is slightly different than other camp resources, though no less important than the latter. It is used to maintain workers, but also to fuel any activity you might wish them to complete, such as building something or gathering resources. Food can be obtained in the Garden, by planting seeds and harvesting crops, in the Ranch, or by fishing with your character.

Worker and Character Gathering

For the most part, Workers take care of tasks that happen inside the Camp. They help you construct and upgrade buildings, as well as gather the resources you use throughout the day. Workers have three stats that grow according to their level and rarity. These are:

Vitality, which decreases gathering time and food cost,

Strength, which increases construction speed, and

Dexterity, which increases the speed of crafting various items.

Although Workers can be promoted to increase their rarity, it is often better to hire only purple ones to begin with. You might have to hire a couple of fillers during the early-game, but you needn’t worry about firing them for a better worker. All the Contribution Points you spent to hire a Worker are returned to you when you fire them.

To properly develop your base, you’ll have to do plenty of gathering, especially for wood. Your character can gather wood, stone, and herbs from the game world, but they are limited by your Stamina reserves. Each gathering action costs up to 5 Stamina, so you should prioritize between different nodes according to your current needs. For most of the mid-game, you should spend up to 80% of your Stamina on wood, while during the late-game, you’ll likely spend all of your Stamina on stone for crafting gear.

Since your character alone cannot possibly gather enough resources to keep the camp going, you also have the option to send your workers into the world for the same reason. The higher the worker’s stats, the more they will gather in a smaller amount of time, which is one of the main reasons why you should only keep workers of unique or higher rarity.

All in all, this will give you a solid foundation for your Camp to grow. In turn, the buildings you upgrade will help you obtain better gear, crystals, potions, and more, which is precisely why no one should ignore the Camp while playing Black Desert Mobile. Remember that where farming is concerned, playing BDM on your PC with BlueStacks can cut the grind significantly! You can read all about it here.