Contribution Points

Contribution Points Guide [BDO]

In BDO, contribution points (CP for short) have important roles such as investing in nodes and workshops and renting equipment from NPCs. In this Black Desert Online contribution points guide, I will go over how to gain contribution points and where to invest them.

What are Contribution Points?

You can think of contribution points as a pool of resources you have available at any time. The beauty of contribution points is that you cannot really spend them. What you do is invest them in certain aspects of the game and you can regain them by withdrawing your investment.

These stats are at the right top of your screen. The number 2/291 shows your contribution points, where 2 points are free from a total of 291.

For example, let’s say that you have invested 3 contribution points for a particular workshop. A few weeks later you get either bored with producing whatever the workshop makes or it is no longer profitable. To regain the contribution points you simply need to withdraw the CP as shown in the image below and you have them back in your contribution points pool.

You can withdraw contribution points here. If you cannot see this screen it means that some other node is blocking you from removing the node.

Keeping that in mind, it is clear that you cannot go wrong with how you use your contribution points. If you are unhappy with your choices it is very easy to reverse them. So go ahead and experiment with different uses of your contribution points.

Contribution Points gain

Quests - Most quests will offer contribution as a reward. Some of these are repeatable and typically require you kill a set number of monsters in the vicinity. Crafting/Gathering Byproducts - Cooking, alchemy and farming produce byproducts, which can be turned in, to specific NPC’s, for contribution exp. Local Guardian - When monsters attack towns at night you can kill them and collect tokens as proof of your work defending the area. Turning in these tokens will consume energy, but they also reward contribution.

At the start of the game, the only reasonable way to gain contribution experience is by completing quests. Almost every quest in Black Desert Online rewards a certain amount of contribution experience. The Black Spirit quests are particularly good for this as you also gain a decent amount of combat experience in addition to inventory slots when going through them.

When you reach level 20 you can start doing daily contribution quests which are reset each day. These quests are generally easy and can be completed quickly. As such they are the fastest way to gain contribution experience through questing. Heidel and Calpheon have a nice availability of daily quests for CP that can be completed rather fast.

The number of byproducts made seems to be independent of what you are making. For cooking, it is therefore probably easiest to make beer to get those by-products. Besides, beer is used as fuel for your workers if you have any. For alchemy, it is probably easiest to make clear liquid reagents or pure powder reagents to get those by-products. This, of course, depends on what herbs you have in your storage. Also, you want to reduce the time you spend cooking and doing alchemy to get as much CP as possible. When you have reached the lowest times this becomes the fastest way to get CP points.

What can I use Contribution Points for?

The most common use of contribution points in Black Desert Online is to invest in nodes. The little circles that are spread across your map are these nodes. They are used to connect trade routes and worker nodes to the cities. You should also consider connecting your grinding spots to a town and invest some energy into the node.

To invest in a node you need to visit the node manager of each node and speak with him. Select invest in nodes and you have now invested in this node. To withdraw your investment you just need to open up your map, select the node and press the withdraw button. Note that you can only withdraw investment from nodes that are free of other connections.

If you have an active value pack you don‘t need to travel to the node managers. You can invest contribution points in nodes directly from the map at the cost of 10 energy.

Another use for contribution points is to invest in workshops. These are the houses in the cities, towns, and farms. By investing CP into them you can for example gain more space in your storage, get lodgings for workers and invest in workshops where your workers can produce weapons, armor, and other equipment.

A third and final use of CP is to rent items from NPC‘s. Storage keepers have items that allow you to access the storage from your home, some NPC‘s have special items needed to complete quests and so forth.

So that’s about it for contribution points in BDO.