Farming Lifeskill Guide

This Farming Lifeskill consists of renting fences and installing them in the area you want, creating gardens. This will allow you to plant seeds inside and harvest what you’ve grown. What’s more, you can obtain better quality seeds through plant breeding and replant them, obtaining better results, or for example you can obtain haystacks to raise cows and produce milk.

How to obtain Farming Fences

To run a garden, the most important thing you’ll need to prepare is contribution points. Since fences are an absolute necessity for this life skill, they aren’t items that can be purchased, and instead need to be rented through NPCs. These tend to be farm owners, material vendors, and Old Moon Guild managers.

You can type fence on the “Find NPC” to look where you can rent a fence.

There are different types of fences, and each costs a different amount of contribution points. As with all items obtained with contribution points, fences can be returned to get the contribution points back.

The following table shows the different types of fences available, and how to obtain them.

Item Name	Maximum Crop Yield	NPC You Can Rent From / How to Obtain
Shabby Fence	1	Reward from quest [Farming] Because I Like You, given by NPC Jemkas Wyrmsbane once you reach the beginner 7 level in the gathering life skill
Small Fence	4	[3 contribution points needed] Martina Finto (Finto Farm), Mael Costa (Costa Farm), Enzo (Dias Farm), Difry Hussey (Altinova)
Plain Fence	7	[6 contribution points needed] Paola Toscani (Toscani Farm), Mercianne Moretti (Moretti Plantation), Norma Leight (Northern Wheat Plantation), Goolie Gianin (Gianin Farm), Mayeri (Trent), Finlin (Tarif)
Strong Fence	10	[10 contribution points needed] Zaaira (Velia), Flaviano (Heidel), Geranoa (Calpheon City), Lashir (Altinova), Purajin (Valencia City), Kara (Grána), Derjeen (Duvencrune), Jorjua (O’draxxia), Tulga (Eilton)
Old Moon Fence	10	[Farming level master 1 & 10 contribution points needed] Klau (Velia), Stee (Heidel), Lajee (Calpheon City), Jak (Altinova), Sahin (Valencia City), Zya (Grána), Taya (Duvencrune), Mene (O’draxxia), Ploux (Eilton)
Finto’s Strong Fence	10	Reward from quest [Farming] Master of Farming, given by NPC Martina Finto, from questline [Life] Finto Family’s Fence Support starting at NPC Liana once you’re Lv. 20 or above. Reward from quest Booze Side Dishes, given by NPC Klau in a questline after you’ve completed [Farming] Master of Farming.
Klau’s Old Moon Fence	10	Reward from quest New Fence, Worn Fence, given by NPC Klau once you’ve completed [Farming] Master of Farming and are at farming level master 1 or above. Reward from quest New Fence, Worn Fence II, given by NPC Klau once you’ve completed Booze Side Dishes and are at farming level master 1 or above.

❗ For my recommendation, you can go for Strong Fence and Old Moon Fence when you reach master 1 farming.

What is the difference between a strong fence and an Old Moon fence?

The more plants one can put in a fenced garden, the larger this one is, and thus the more space it takes. You can have a maximum of 10 fenced gardens, and it is suggested to have all of them together in the same area. Due to this, you might find yourself without the necessary space to install all your fences together, one next to the other. That’s where the Old Moon fences come into play. They cost the same as a strong fence, allow you to have the same number of plants in them, and take much less space than a strong fence.

However, keep in mind that while you can rent an Old Moon fence at any point, you won’t be able to install and use them until your character has reached farming master 1.

Placing your fences

After you rent fences, you can install them in non-safe zone areas. These make up most of the world of Black Desert.

In order to install a fence, right-click the fence in your character’s inventory. This will take you to the Place Mode view. There, you can place fences in the location you want with your cursor.
Avoid obstacles like rocks and trees when you install a fence. Additionally, it is more convenient to place fences close to an area you visit frequently to speed up harvesting.

In the Place Mode view, you can place fences only in areas where the (install) box pops up in green.

Once your farm is placed it can be found using this icon on your map. Farms expire if you do not interact with them for 14 full real-time days.

Where to place your Farms

How to efficiently place your Farms

Planting Seeds

How to get seeds

There are a few different ways you can get seeds:

• Gathering – seeds can be gathered from bushes or thickets using your bare hands or a hoe.  It is completely random which seeds you will get so the method can be very slow and take up a lot of energy, but it is the only way of getting free seeds.

• Seed Vendors – there are seed vendors at Loggia Farm, Olvia, Glish,  Heidel, Calpheon, Kasula Farm, Altinova, Sand Grain Bazaar, and Valencia. They do have a poor selection of seeds and don’t offer higher quality seeds, but these are good starting points if you are looking to begin farming. You can use the NPC button in the top right (next to your mini-map) and then search for “seed” to quickly find all the seed merchants you have discovered.

• Central Market – the central market is where you want to go for your seeds if you’re looking to get top-quality crops straight away. Sometimes you can’t find the seeds you want but you can often find cheaper seeds here than from the vendors.

I recommend buying your seeds from the central market.

Start Planting

You can mainly plant / install seeds (Vegetables / Fruits), hyphae (Mushrooms), haystacks (Milk, Meat and Hide) and Mag. Chicken Feed (Egg) in your gardens.

Planting seeds is similar to installing furniture in a house. At the top left corner of the screen, you will see the available slots for planting. Select a seed from the window to the right and then click the area of the garden you want it planted in.

Note that there is a limited total number of slots when you plant seeds in a garden. These depend on the type of fence you have, as detailed in the previous section.
Each seed type’s item description will let you know how many slots they take up. You’ll need to take this into account when you are planting.

As seen in the picture above, it will depends on what seed on how many grind it take on your garden.

Once a seed has been placed it will begin to grow. Exit the installation screen by pressing Esc and clicking yes.

Crop Management

If you’re done planting, now it’s time to manage your crops. Crops are sensitive to humidity and temperature. They are also vulnerable to attacks from pests, blights, and birds. You will periodically need to prune your crops, and make sure that they have enough water. Using fertilizer will speed up the growth rate as well.

Pest blights and the need for pruning your crops will appear randomly with a fixed chance. If you run into these problems, the crop’s growth rate drops significantly, so you need to make sure to resolve these issues quickly or the crop will suffer from halted growth.

Pruning and killing insects will reward farming EXP. Additionally, you may randomly obtain valuable items such as black crystal shards.

If your fence icon turns red in the World Map screen (hotkey: M), it indicates that there is a problem you need to attend to in your garden.

If the yellow growth bar turns red, it indicates there is a problem with the plant, such as a pest infection caused by blight, or entangled branches.

In these cases, approach the crop, and interact with it (hotkey: R) to prune or kill the insects in it. These actions consume 1 energy.

❗ If you are new in farming, it is recommended to prune or kill the insects on your own. This is the best way to level up your farming mastery faster. Your target would be until Artisan 1

You can view your crop’s progress by hovering your mouse over the icon on your map, once the crops reach 100% they are ready to be harvested.

Harvesting and Breeding

When your crops have reached 100% growth, you can go to your crops and press R to “Harvest”. You also have the choice of “Breeding” the crops. If you choose to breed the crops you have a chance to get more seeds back, as well as increase the quality of the seeds, and obtaining fruits.

On the left, with general harvesting you can obtain, for example, onions. On the right, with plant breeding you can obtain the same or better quality seeds of the crop you planted.

When you breed your crops, you may obtain blush leaves. This is one of the items that are considered to be byproducts from life skill activities. You can exchange them for other useful items at the designated NPC.

Mysterious Seed

Mysterious seeds can be obtained with a low chance through plant breeding. If you process a mysterious seed and special or magical crop seeds together through shaking, you can obtain mysterious crop seeds, which can yield more crops when harvested.

Mysterious crop seeds will take up 5 times the normal amount of slots needed when planting in a garden. However the yield is that much greater, so it has the same effect as planting many crops. However, keep in mind that plant breeding will not result in further mysterious crop seeds. As such, mysterious seeds are not a renewable resource, but one time use only.

Since it takes up more slots in your garden, it can reduce the time you have to spend on maintaining your garden. When breeding mysterious crop seeds, you can gain a sizable amount of fruits with a fixed chance. If you’re looking for ingredients needed in alchemy, it can be a good option to use the mysterious seeds you obtain.

Magical Seed

Magical seeds are precious seeds only obtainable by those that are at farming level of artisan 1 or higher.

If you have reached this level and do crop breeding to improve the quality of seeds you have, you can obtain its magical variant. Similar to mysterious seeds, magical seeds take up 5 times the normal slots required in your garden, meaning that harvesting magical seed crops is equivalent to planting 5 normal seeds.

Mysterious seeds can only be obtained with a low chance randomly by breeding, so it is hard to sustain long cycles of farming with only them.
On the other hand, 1 or more magical seeds can be obtained by breeding with a fixed chance, so they’re self-sustainable.

If you’ve reached the artisan 1 level of farming and want to take less time planting, harvesting, and breeding, then we recommend the use of magical seeds.

Fence Workers

You can use your workers to tend to your farms while you are busy. They will prune weeds and remove bugs until they run out of action points but you can only have one worker on each fence at a time.

To set up your workers, click on the farm icon in the top right, You can then select which worker you would like to send to your farm.

If the Worker icon is white, meaning it doesn’t have a worker assign to it. Click the worker icon to select a worker.

• It is recommended to use Giant Worker, because of the high stamina.
• You have 1 free worker every town.
• You don’t have to connect node to be able to use your worker in the other town.
• Grilled Bird Meat is the best worker recovery item

Old Moon Fence

If you have reached the master 1 farming level, it will become even easier to farm by making use of a convenient new fence that has been introduced earlier in this page.

You can talk to the Old Moon Manager NPC in each major town and rent an Old Moon fence with contribution points. Like the strong fence, the Old Moon fence allows 10 slots for your crops. However, its size is much smaller, so installing it and maintaining your garden is more convenient.

To rent an Old Moon fence, you will need 10 contribution points.
Since it still counts towards your fence rental limit, if you’re already using 10 strong fences, you must return them before you can rent any Old Moon fence.

You can talk to the Old Moon managers in each town to rent this type of fence. If you don’t know the location of any of these NPCs, please search it by using the Find the NPC feature, the looking glass icon you can find to the left of your minimap.

The Old Moon fence is only about half the size of the strong fence, but allows you to plant the same amount of crops!

Below image is the example size comparison. In this way, you only need 1 water and 1 fertilizer for the whole farm

Free Fences

There is a once-per-family questline you can complete. The quests reward you with Finto’s Strong Fence x2 and later in the questline, these can be exchanged for Klau’s Old Moon Fence x2

• Finto’s Strong Fence has no level restriction, and has 10 slots (the same as a rented Strong Fence).
• Klau’s Old Moon Fence requires Farming Master 1 to use, and has 10 slots (the same as a rented Old Moon Fence).
  • The Old Moon Fence is a smaller farm, which means you don’t need to use as much fertilizer and water for your crops.

The questline can be found in your quest log (O) under “Suggested” > “[Life] Finto Family’s Fence Support”.

Scarecrows & Waterway

Scarecrows and Waterways are used to decrease the amount of time you need to spend tending to your farm and increase the quality of your crops.

Scarecrows reduce the chance of bird attacks, while waterways decrease the amount of water consumption. If your farm runs out of water your crops will either be lower quality or you will get far less crops than usual from the harvest. Waterways will make the natural groundwater last longer, but if you water your plants when you first plant them you shouldn’t need to come back to tend them for a much longer time.

To craft these items for your farm you will need a woodworking workshop. Once these items are placed on your farm they will take up a slot each so you will not be able to plant as many seeds but you won’t have to tend to them as often.

❗ Scarecrows & Waterway are actually not recommended since it doesn’t give a significant benefits.

Fertilizer/Water

Fertilizer can decrease the amount of time it takes your crops to grow by up to 20%.
There are 3 different Fertilizer items, the higher quality fertilizer, the longer it will last:

• Inorganic Fertilizer increases the crop’s fertilizer bar by approximately 50%.
  • To craft Inorganic Fertilizer you will need either Wheat x5, Barley x5, Corn x5, Potato x5, OR Sweet Potato x5 (high-quality x3 products can be used or special x1 product – For example, Wheat x5, High-Quality Wheat x3 or Special Wheat x1). Pick which type of grain you’d like to use then press “L” to open the crafting window. Select the “Drying” option to turn the grain into Inorganic Fertilizer.
• Byproduct Fertilizer increases the crop’s fertilizer bar by approximately 65%.
  • To craft a Fertilizer Byproduct you will need Inorganic Fertilizer x3 and Leavening Agent x2. Leavening Agent can be bought from a cooking merchant or innkeeper. Once you have the ingredients, press “L” to open the crafting window and select the “Shaking and Maxing” option.
• Organic Fertilizer increases the crop’s fertilizer bar by approximately 85%.
  • To craft Organic Fertilizer you will need Byproduct Fertilizer x1 and Distilled Water x2 (you can also use River/Sea/Turbid/Clean Water x3 or Purified Water x2). To obtain Distilled Water, buy an “empty bottle” from a materials merchant, collect river water, then heat the river water. Once you have the ingredients, press “L” to open the crafting window and select the “Shaking and Mixing” option to craft Organic Fertilizer.

Watering your crops can increase the water deposit on your farm for up to 1 hour and reduce the rate at which the moisture will decrease.
You can use 4 different types of water:

• Purified Water is obtained by filtering a bottle of water or bag of muddy water. It is also sold by some general goods NPCs in Valencia. Purified water increases crop growth rate by Rain 15.
• Distilled Water is obtained by heating a bottle of river water. Distilled water increases crop growth rate by Precipitation 15.
• Mineral Water can be bought from cooking merchants. Mineral water increases crop growth rate by Precipitation 5.
• Bag of Muddy Water is obtained by shoveling in the desert or collecting water in the desert using workers. Bag of Muddy Water increases crop growth rate by Precipitation 5.

You do not need to use fertilizer/water on each farm and can actually use far less by placing your farms efficiently. The squares show how you should place your farms (leave no spaces), while the red dot shows where you should stand when using the fertilizer or water, and the red circle shows the range the fertilizer will reach.

Crop Information

Powerleveling Farming

It’s possible to quickly level your farming all the way to Artisan 1 in just a few days. You will need to rent as many farms as possible, and then place them outside the south of Heidel along the river. Ideally, you will want to get x10 of the Strong Fences for 100 CP so you have the maximum amount of crops you can plant. The fewer farms you have the longer it will take to reach Artisan 1.

Buy Special Purple Mushroom seeds from the Central Market, and plant them on your farms.

You will notice that the Humidity and Temperature in Heidel is not suitable for these crops. This means you will need to prune and kill pests much more often. Tend to the farms as often as possible then breed the seeds once they are 200% and repeat.

You may run out of energy if you have all 10 Strong Fences, so a Kamaslyvia Blessing and using a bed for extra energy will be very useful. More ways to regen your energy can be found in our Energy Guide.

To make it more faster, use Seafood Cron Meal, Silver Embroidered Farmer’s Clothes, and Verdure Draught to boost your EXP gains since they are cheap to obtain. Other life skill EXP buffs.

What to farm?

What you want?	How to farm	Recommended Crops	Fruit	Growth Time	Where
Stonetail Fodder / Contribution Points / Fruits for Alchemy	- Breed all crops - Vendor excess seeds - Blush leaves for stonetail fodder / CP Low growth time + The fruit you want + Low growth time	Dry Mane Grass	Fruit of Enchantment	2hr 22m	Mediah/Val
		Hump Mushroom	Fruit of Magic Power	2hr 40m	Velia
		Purple Mushroom	Fruit of Nature	2hr 46m	Velia
		Sunflower	Fruit of Abundance	3hr 12m	Velia
		Citron	Fruit of the Sun	2hr 53m	Velia
		Pumpkin	Fruit of Crimson Flame	3hr 1m	Velia
		Amanita Mushroom	Fruit of Destruction	3hr 20m	Velia
		Bluffer Mushroom	Fruit of Perfection	3hr 44m	Velia
Cooking	- Plant whatever you need - Breed until you have enough seeds for a full re-plant - Harvest the rest	Onion	Fruit of Abundance	3hr 42m	Velia
		Pepper	Fruit of Crimson Flame	4hr 6m	Velia
		Hot Pepper	Fruit of Crimson Flame	4hr 13m	Velia
		Garlic	Fruit of Crimson Flame	3hr 42m	Velia
Alchemy	- Plant whatever you need - Breed until you have enough seeds for a full re-plant - Harvest the rest	Amanita Mushroom	Fruit of Destruction	3hr 20m	Velia
		Bluffer Mushroom	Fruit of Perfection	3hr 44m	Velia
		Hump Mushroom	Fruit of Magic Power	2hr 40m	Velia
		Dwarf Mushroom	Fruit of Destruction	4hr 45m	Velia
Trade Crates	- Breed until you have enough seeds for a full re-plant - Harvest the rest High crate profit + low growth time	Purple Mushroom	Fruit of Nature	2hr 46m	Velia
		Sunflower	Fruit of Abundance	3hr 12m	Velia
Alch Stones	- Breed until you have enough seeds for a full re-plant - Harvest the rest Polish EXP + gr. time	Purple Mushroom	Fruit of Nature	2hr 46m	Velia
Farming EXP	Plant seeds → Prune → Breed → Repeat High blight %	Dry Mane Grass	Fruit of Enchantment	2hr 22m	Heidel
		Purple Mushroom	Fruit of Nature	2hr 46m	Heidel

Pit-A-Pat Moles

When tending to your farm, there is a chance that you can loot a  “Mole’s Feed“. This item will appear in your gathering window, but will cosume when you loot it, and spawn a mole.

• A light beam will appear where the mole spawns
• Killing the mole will drop various loot: Blush Leaf, Spirit Pouch of Ferocious Beast, and Black Stones.

There are different rarities of moles that can spawn:

The Pit-A-Pat Mole is the rarest mole and will drop one  Pit-A-Pat Petal each time you kill them. You can exchange 10 petals at Jemkas Wyrmsbane for a permanent mole pet.

Crop Exchange (Cooking Lifeskill)

If you are using your farms to obtain ingredients for the Cooking Lifeskill, you can swap certain Special grade crops for a lower-grade version.

This is done so that you don’t waste Special grade ingredients on Cooking recipes that only require a small amount of the ingredient. For example, the Grilled Sausage recipe only needs x1 white-grade Onion, a Special Onion can be substituted as 3-5 white-grade Onions, so you wouldn’t want to waste a Special Onion for each recipe craft.

You can exchange it to any “Seed Vendor”, Search for the “Seed Vendor”

You cannot exchange anytype of mushrooms

Haystacks & Chicken Feed

Haystacks can be placed on your farm to feed cows. They take up 4 grid spaces in the garden but once a cow is fully grown, it can be harvested for milk, beef, and ox hide.

Haystacks are obtainable by going to the Processing window (L) and then selecting “Drying” to dry 50 Weeds. They are also available as quest rewards in the farming quest line.

Just like all other seeds, there are 2 additional grades of Haystacks: High-Quality and Special. These are obtainable when harvesting a Haystack.

Normal Haystacks give 12 – 20 milk, High Quality gives 25 – 40 milk and Special Haystacks can give an average of 50-60 milk each time. There is also a chance of gaining beef or ox hide and a special haystack gives an average of 15-20 beef or ox hide.

Chicken Feed can be placed on your farm to feed chickens. They take up 3 grid spaces in the garden but once a chicken is fully grown, it can be harvested for chicken meat and eggs.

Chicken Feed is obtainable by going to the Processing window (L) and then selecting “Grinding” to grind 20 Rough Stone and 100 Barley.

Just like all other seeds, there are 2 additional grades of Chicken Feed: Good and Special.

These are obtainable when harvesting Chicken Feed. Normal Chicken Feed give 15 – 30 eggs with 0 – 10 chicken meat and on average take around 8 hours to grow.

Summary on how to start Farming

• Pre-order Special Purple Mushroom Hypha First before you start atleast 50 Pcs.
• You should have 50 Contribution Points Up (80 CP would be recommended).
• Rent Strong Fence (Just Search “Fence” on Find NPC).
• Place Fence on the Heidel near the river.
• Plant Special Purple Mushroom Hypha.
• Power Leveling ( plant, prune, kill insect, breed and harvest ) until you reach artisan 1.
• You can start farming anything you want or need.
• Place Giant or Human Worker on your farm. 1 worker on each fence.
• Use Fertilizer to decrease time.
• Harvest or Breed