Black Desert Online Adds New Shai Support Class and Plans Future Content

This is actually something I completely overlooked earlier this month – Black Desert Online’s new large expansion.
I’d gone to sleep before the Black Desert stream, so, imagine my surprise waking up Saturday morning, ready to post the weekend news video and seeing hundreds of messages on Discord, Twitter and Youtube saying “did you see the new BDO update?”
Curious, I replied to a few of them and then went ahead and Googled Black Desert to see exactly what update they were all referring to.
Apparently, it was large enough that it warranted hundreds of messages so my was interest was piqued. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s jump right in.

Pearl Abyss have announced the newest expansion to Black Desert Online – The Great Expedition.
The expansion brings with it what could be the largest cumulative total of updates ever included in its history to date.
This will cover both the expansion content and future content going forward.

First is the update to buffs. They have plans of reworking them all together, reducing the cooldown on foods while simultaneously improving both meals and elixirs so you won’t be required to use as many items.

Next is a small quality of life change that honestly always irked me a little in-game, and that is player-to-NPC-interaction. Their goal? Remove the need to dismount to actually interact with NPCs.
I don’t know why this took such a long time to get around to fixing but it’s a quality of life change I desperately need.

They then went on to touch on upgrading and enhancing.
While they agree that the method with which we go about enhancing with is definitely flawed, they wanted to assure players that “when you played other games you got frustrated, but you enjoyed them.”
So, while it’s an imperfect system, other than some small tweaks, they don’t want to do away with how you go about enhancing currently.

Then was class balance. I don’t play BDO actively enough to know which class is most powerful during what time but they touched on how they actively listen to the playerbase and their concerns, buffing and nerfing accordingly.
Which admittedly is a little difficult to believe considering I’ve never seen a developer or publisher buff or nerf classes at the whim of the community.

Territory Wars are currently being put on hold even after the major framework for Territory Wars was, for the most part, complete.
This is because they want to make adjustments to the Conquest Wars and Node Wars. Currently, everything is under development and has an undisclosed release window.

They made some small tweaks to things like life skills, buffing the AP of rare monsters to make encounters more difficult for players, a rework of Polly’s Forest because according to Pearl Abyss it has long since been avoided, a rework for Ash Forest to add to the available list of areas you can grind, a large, undisclosed rework of the Conquest War feature to accommodate the decrease in guilds, an improved UI, and most importantly.. yes, this is the part you’ve all been waiting for, the new class, Shai.
Shai is bringing a brand new combat type into Black Desert – a support class.
Every class up to this point has been able to self-sustain. Tank, heal and DPS all in one. However, the Shai class is none of the above, instead falling back onto the healer-support archetype prevalent in most MMOs.
This is probably the most interesting addition to the game I’ve seen yet as this could mean in the future we get more dedicated tanking and healing roles to fill out people’s want for varied class types.
The Shai utilize giant boomerangs to fight that are roughly the size of their body. Think a generic loli warrior in most fantasy Anime series.
Interestingly, they’re capable of revealing stealthed enemies in the immediate area, while offering allies the ability to heal them.
They also begin with a professional level in both gathering and alchemy giving them an advantage over other classes.
According to Pearl Abyss, the class is not built for combat, the Shai class itself being fairly weak however they also state that it doesn’t fall far behind in terms of DPS.. which is a contradictory statement made in the same sentence.
How can a class be both very weak but simultaneously not much weaker than the other classes? I guess we’ll have to see.
The Shai are perhaps the most adorable thing I’ve seen in-game yet and, admittedly, I was wondering how long Black Desert could go without pandering to the people infatuated with lolis.
With TERA on the brink of collapse, why not encapsulate what players loved about it? The Elin? Thankfully the Shai aren’t going to be OP lest we be overrun by them.

While the Shai will be available to create and test on the test servers from the 12th, no confirmed release date has been given for when they, or most of this content will hit the live servers.
Pearl Abyss stated that regardles of whether or not the Shai are popular, they have plans of releasing a brand new type of class every year as opposed to the same cookie cutter classes we’ve gotten thus far.
Several other classes are already under development based off of in-game races like Demibeasts, Rhutum, Fadus, Dwarves and more so if new classes are your thing, and you’re sick of normal Human’s.. get ready.
Then The Great Expedition will take you back onto the ocean with remodelable ships, the ability to hire a crew and sailing the seas, conquering the ocean and plundering new islands that they plan on adding.
Each custom island will have its own unique content and theme along with story and NPCs.

Seriously, there was just so freakin’ much included in this update and future updates that I can’t really cover it all in one video.
I’m not an active Black Desert player. I have a few late level 50 characters. I play the new classes when they launch purely because I’m curious what they’re like.
I have fun running around killing things and enjoying what the game has to offer but then stop shortly after I run out of things to do.
Seeing so much added is reassuring for existing players, and whether or not Pearl Abyss deliver on what they’ve promised remains to be seen, but I’m excited.