NPCs Intimacy and Relations

NPCs in Black Desert are not just for making world more interactive and friendly. They don’t just give quests and trade with you. They have their personal relations with your character and the level of your relations with definite NPC affects gameplay.

If you have good relations with a definite NPC you may get extra quests with great reward, items, buffs, information or even access to special assortment in a shop. Alchemists will sell you stronger potions , you will be able to get better horses in stable and so on. It’s great to have good relations because you get access to extra opportunities.

When you speak with NPC you can see the level of your relations in the bottom-left corner of the screen. The intimacy scale is a round area with number in the center. This number represents the quantity of intimacy points you have earned with this character. There are also special icons around the scale that demonstrate what extra opportunities can be unlocked if you increase the relations more and how much efforts are required for this.

NOTE: not all NPCs will reward you if you boost relations with them. You can look through the list of available rewards by hovering special icons near the intimacy scale. If there are no icons there you will get nothing and it’s not the best idea to boost your relations with this current NPC.

You can boost your relations by special social actions like greetings or by a special mini-game. Social actions don’t give great result but if you repeat them pretty often you will see the result. Mini Game is a much better way to increase intimacy level.

Mini Game

Mini Game is the best and fastest way to increase the level of trust of a certain non-playable character. But there are 2 main requirements you need to meet before you start:

• First of all you need to have enough “conversation points”. One mini game usually requires 3 points. The number of intimacy points is limited but it can be increased by exploring the world and by playing mini-game with different NPCs. These points recover automatically – 10 per hour.
• Different NPCs have different interests. You need also to have enough “knowledge” in the area NPC is interested in. You can see all the information about interests and available knowledge near the NPC. You can get the required knowledge buy exploring the world and talking with other NPCs. The amount of knowledge affect the difficulty of mini game: the more knowledge you have the higher chances to win are.

If you have all the required you can start playing the game by clicking special button when you talk to the NPC. You will see game interface. You need to reach a randomly set goal in order to win. This goal is displayed in the top part of the screen.

You can see current statistics on the left and all available knowledge in the bottom right corner of the screen.

For example there may be a task to get 2 successful combos. You need to look through the list of your knowledge and choose combos with the highest chance of success. Drag and drop these combos into the central part of the screen. After you finish this process you will see “Start” button.

If you complete the task successfully you get certain amount of intimacy points. You will be asked if you want to continue the mini-game or quit and take won points. If you quit, the points you have just won will be added to the intimacy scale of this NPC and he will trust you more.

Basically, the system is not difficult: you need to collect enough knowledge in the area of NPC’s interests and then play the mini game. More knowledge gives better chances to win. If you fail the game you lose your “conversation points” which will then be recovered, and if you win you get more trust from this current NPC. Very often you will have to play such game several times with one NPC in order to unlock special bonuses.

As you see Black Desert contains very interesting social mechanics. You can have friends and enemies among non-playable characters and this will affect your gameplay. It’s interesting and you will not find such system in other MMO games.