Desert Oasis: A guide to some of Black Desert’s world bosses and their weapons

You know what I want to be when I grow up? A boss. Not the kind that starts a business living in a car and builds it into a successful juggernaut of industry through sheer effort and savvy business strategies. That’s boring. I want to be the type that needs a raid of at least 40 people to take me down. A backstory is optional, but dropping a best-in-slot (BiS) weapon upon my defeat is a non-negotiable for me.

Until that happens, I’ll have to be content with slaying them in my favorite MMO, Black Desert. And these bosses are very important if you want to level up your gear and make some money. Many of their items are BiS, so I recommend rolling a character just for bosses and taking them on. In today’s Desert Oasis, I want to put a spotlight on some of the important bosses, the weapons they drop, an a little insight into how itemization is in this game. For now, I’ll focus on the weapons.

Black Desert does not depend on dungeons or instanced raids for bosses. You have to go on their schedule. Specific bosses spawn every three hours, and there are plenty of calendars on the internet to keep track of their spawn times. For example, Karanda will always spawn at 7 a.m. on Wednesdays. If you’re a busy person, I recommend having a plan to hit up these bosses.

Kzarka, the lord of corruption

Everyone knows about Kzarka. Located south of Heidel in scenic Serendia, this boss is a giant monster with tentacle hair and massive AoEs. While I would recommend 200DP to survive a few hits, higher is always better. Bring plenty of potions too; he hits like a truck, so you’ll be consuming a whole lot throughout the fight. He’s got a 15-minute timer, meaning he’ll despawn after the allotted time has passed, no matter what. On the bright side, the boss HP is shared across the entire world, so that means a person fighting it on the Calpheon server contributes to damaging it on the Velia servers.

He drops one of the most important weapons in the game: The Kzarka weapon is something every class will use at one point. When I started playing, the big question was whether or not his drop was better than Liverto, another weapon that occupied that slot. But since this weapon enchants so well, it is now the weapon many adventurers will use until level 61 and 62, when Offin Tet and Blackstar weapons, becomes the main focus. You’ll have this for a long time.

Karanda

Before I played Black Desert, whenever I heard the word “dandelion,” I thought about the dainty flower. Today, I think about the best awakening weapon in the game. Named after the kingdom of Dandelion, these weapons command some of the highest prices on the central market and mark a milestone in your character’s development. Awakening weapons and their skills are much more powerful than pre-awakening weapons, so your character will be using her weapon most of the time.

Karanda perches herself high up on a mountain range full of harpies. She isn’t really difficult to fight, especially today, since so many people come visit her when she arrives. I still recommend bringing plenty of healing potions and to be careful when you fire off your DPS rotation. All those players ripping her to shreds make it difficult to see what her next move will be, so heads up!

Nouver

What’s worse: getting lost in the desert or fighting a dragon? Trick question. It’s fighting a dragon while lost in the desert.

I would argue that he’s the most difficult boss because of how difficult it is to get to him. He’s in the middle of the desert. Since the radar does not work in the desert, players will find themselves lost the first few times until they learn exactly where to go. Also, the desert procs a different debuff depending on the time: hypothermia at night, heat stroke during the day. They’re both health degen, but each requires a different item to cure it. Because he shares hitpoints throughout the servers, he usually goes down, but there have been a few times when he emerges victorious. In fact, as I type this, Nouver just landed on the PS4 version of Black Desert!

The real fun comes from the weapon he drops. It’s an off-hand weapon also called the Nouver. Every time players enchant this weapon, it gets a pretty big boost to its damage. Normally, this is a pretty straightforward thing — just use the offhand that gives the most damage. But this is Black Desert, so something needs to throw players in for a loop. And that’s its sister item, the Kutum offhand.

Kutum

Kutum is an ancient weapon. As we all know, all fantasy stories need some amazingly advanced but long-lost civilization whose hubris led to its downfall. Located deep in a cave on the western edge of the Black Desert, Kutum lies in wait, holding an offhand powerful enough to rip a community in two.

Kutum also drops an offhand. Since it’s physically impossible for a humanoid creature to have two offhands, players will have to choose one. For the longest time, Nouver was the the weapon of choice for most players. Let’s look at the Tamer’s Nouver and Kutum trinket. A TRI (+18) Nouver gives 40 AP and 3 extra AP against monsters. The TRI kutum gives 29 AP but provides a massive 43 extra AP against monsters. This was a major gamechanger. Kutum suddenly became way more popular because of the amount of damage it provided when grinding.

So which is the better item? The short answer is both are effective today in 2019. The long (and very confusing) answer depends on your character’s AP bracket. After players reach a certain point in AP, they get a bonus chunk of AP. For example, at 235 AP, players get an extra 30 AP. At 236, players get an extra 40 AP. That extra 40 AP makes the bonus damage provided by Kutum even more potent, but after building your character up to the 260+ AP range, the damage gained from Nouver and the extra AP bonus makes it the truly superior pick. But then after a certain threshold, it’ll be mathematically sound to go back to Kutum.

There’s a lot of nuance behind it, but that’s what I appreciate about Black Desert. Actually, any MMO that provides lively discussion about itemization gets me excited. The passion players share over bosses and drops is infectious.