Setting Sail: What Is the Great Ocean?
Black Desert Online Great Ocean Guide will help you quickly establish a strong foundation for your journey. Let’s dive in & get you on the right track!
Ahoy, adventurer. You’re standing at the edge of something vast and mysterious—the Great Ocean in Black Desert Mobile. Imagine the shoreline slipping away behind you as your ship creaks and groans beneath your feet, wind in your sails and unknown waters ahead. The Great Ocean is more than a new zone—it’s an entire expansion of gameplay, offering adventures and systems that reward exploration, combat, trading, and strategy.
The ocean is divided into four distinct regions: the Arsha Sea, Ross Sea, Margoria Sea, and the Juur Sea. Each area increases in difficulty and offers unique challenges. You can’t venture into the deepest waters right away. Access is gated by your ship’s level, meaning progression is tied to your ability to craft, enhance, and command increasingly powerful vessels. Within these waters lie hidden islands, monsters that would make land-dwellers faint, valuable knowledge, and PvP zones where danger is as constant as the tide.
Why Brave the Waters?
Sailing the Great Ocean isn’t just for show. Players are drawn to these waters for several compelling reasons. One of the main incentives is the Great Ocean Collection. As you fish, fight, and explore, you collect items that fill this book, offering rewards and progression.
Engaging in ocean content also boosts your Combat Power. As you enhance your ship and participate in activities like sea monster hunting and exploration, your overall strength increases, benefiting your Family as a whole. The ocean is rich in rewards—silver, crafting materials, Oquilla Coins (a special currency exclusive to ocean content), and essential items for shipbuilding and enhancement.
How to Begin the Adventure
To gain access to the Great Ocean, you need to complete the main quest titled “Cadry Gatekeeper.” Once that’s done, the “Off to Sea!” story questline becomes available, beginning with a mission called “My Very Own Ship.” Completing this series unlocks your first ship and opens the path to the Great Ocean.
With this questline completed and your Town Hall at Tier 4 or higher, you’ll be able to construct the Statue of Sylvia in your camp. This statue, which you can upgrade using Tears of the Goddess, provides valuable boosts to your Family’s AP and DP stats.
Learning to Navigate the Waters
Your first ship, the Fishing Boat, is a humble one-sail vessel suitable for learning the ropes. Movement is either manual or through Auto-Forward Mode. Wind Direction and Speed are critical—align your course with the wind for faster travel. Occasionally, Whirlwinds will boost your speed, and recognizing their swirling patterns is key to efficient navigation.
Understanding the ship interface is vital. Your compass and mini-map show your position and surroundings. Your stamina gauge tells you how far you can push your vessel, and your action buttons allow for cannon fire and more advanced maneuvers later on.
The Long Road of Ship Progression
You won’t stay on that Fishing Boat for long. Upgrading your ship is a central part of Great Ocean gameplay. After the Fishing Boat, you’ll move to the Epheria Watch Boat, then onto more serious ships like the Guard Ship and Refined Guard Ship.
Real naval progression starts with the Bartali Sailboat, a vessel that opens the gateway to high-tier ocean gameplay.
The Bartali Sailboat is obtainable for 10 million silver or through a questline starting with “Vigorous Velia.” This questline also increases your maximum sailor slots. From there, you must decide between upgrading to an Epheria Sailboat or an Epheria Frigate. Your choice will determine the Carrack you can eventually build: Balance or Advance (bartering) for the Sailboat path, and Valor or Volante (combat/speed) for the Frigate path.
Before reaching the Carracks, you’ll upgrade to an Epheria Caravel or Epheria Galleass. Caravels are trade-focused;
Galleasses are designed for combat. You can also improve these ships to gain extra sailing skills like Volley and Focus Fire.
Upgrading Ships and Managing Equipment
Ship upgrades require access to a Dock, blueprints, and crafting materials such as Steel, Timber Squares, and Plywood. Certain conditions must be met before you can upgrade: ship equipment must be at max durability, no items can be in the ship’s inventory, and sailors must disembark.
Fittings, or ship equipment, play a major role. These include Cannons, Figureheads, Plating, Sails, and Bow Frames. They’re obtained from quests, ocean rewards, appraisals, or through crafting using Oquilla Coins at Shakatu’s Shop. Enhancing equipment consumes Enhance Limit—each attempt, successful or not, reduces this stat. Focus on enhancing high-durability fittings to maximize your progress.
Higher-grade equipment for Epheria Carracks requires Tidal Black Stones, and you’ll need Cannonballs for combat. To craft these, supply your Cannonball Vault with materials like Rugged Boulder and various ores.
The Role of Sailors and Repairs
Assigning Camp workers as Sailors boosts your ship’s stats. Choose wisely, especially if those workers are needed elsewhere in your camp. Over time, your ship will take damage from sea monsters and general sailing.
Repairs are necessary to avoid full destruction. If your ship’s durability reaches zero, it becomes wrecked. You lose Sailing EXP and will need to retrieve it via a Rescue Ship or pay in-game currency for a remote retrieval.
Exploring the Ocean
Exploration is core to ocean gameplay. Uncovering the fog from islands reveals the world map and allows smoother navigation. You gain Knowledge from main quests and hidden content, which improves your stats.
For example, defeating the Cursed Phantom Ship grants Madman John Knowledge, boosting your AP.
Fishing is another major activity. Cast your net in Hot Spots marked by circling seagulls. Fishing here costs stamina but yields better results. Completing the Great Ocean: Fish Collection is a rewarding long-term goal, requiring a Level 5 ship to access all areas. Fish can be sold or processed via Fish Delivery for materials like steel and plywood.
Hunting the Beasts of the Deep
Combat-focused players can engage in sea monster hunting. Various foes inhabit the waters: Pirate Ships, the Gold Nineshark, Phantom Ships, and the fearsome Cursed Phantom Ship. Wanted monsters are of particular interest due to their guaranteed ship part drops.
Violent monsters, marked with red stars, offer significant EXP. Use a circling strategy in combat to keep your cannons on target. Defeated foes drop useful items like Coral Chests, Phantom Fragments, and Deepsea Safes.
Recovering Treasure and Bartering
Treasure Recovery is an exciting but stamina-consuming activity. Some believe the loot isn’t always worth the cost, and suggest hunting Violent monsters instead. Bartering involves trading goods across islands, eventually exchanging them for materials needed for Carrack upgrades.
PvP and Dangerous Waters
Some parts of the ocean are PvP zones. The West Margoria and Ross Seas are Outlaw Waters, open for combat. Pirate Island, located in the Ross Sea, is a notable hotspot. You’ll need ten invitations to enter its dungeon, which are earned from killing sea monsters and opening chests. The dungeon offers silver and rare items.
Missions and Questlines
Quests are your guiding star through the ocean’s many systems. Main quests teach mechanics and provide materials. Wanted Missions, found at ports, can be refreshed daily and offer Oquilla Coins and upgrade components. Exploration Logs act as weekly missions focused on defeating monsters.
Ravinia’s Ship Upgrade Log, a seven-day series from Crow’s Nest, gives you essential upgrade materials. These missions reward time and dedication with real progress.
Understanding Ocean Resources
Ocean gameplay introduces a variety of resources and currencies.
Oquilla Coins are the primary means of buying gear and ship items, earned through almost all activities.
Crow Coins are exchanged through bartering vouchers or quests. Silver remains a universal currency, with Pirate Island being a major source. Stamina, used for fishing and treasure recovery, resets weekly, while Endurance is consumed by combat actions like cannon firing.
You’ll also need crafting materials like Timber, Steel, and Jade Coral Ingot. These are needed for almost every upgrade or crafting recipe in the ocean.
Enhancing Family and Character Power
Your Sailing Level affects your ship’s performance and unlocks more features. The Statue of Sylvia in your camp also boosts your Family’s AP and DP. Level it up with Tears of the Goddess. The best way to gain EXP is by defeating high-level sea monsters, particularly Violent ones.
Important Locations to Remember
Ports are your lifeline—safe havens where you dock, repair, and manage missions. Crow’s Nest is where Ravinia awaits with her valuable questlines. Pirate Island holds lucrative dungeons and silver rewards. Oquilla’s Eye is a daily quest hub and trade center.
Practical Tips and Strategy
New sailors should follow the story before venturing into monster hunting. When enhancing fittings, go for those with full durability. Focus on Wanted monsters to farm ship parts efficiently. Hold onto valuable resources until you reach Tier V or higher ships to avoid wasting materials on temporary upgrades. Monitor your stamina closely since it resets weekly and is needed for key activities.
While some players feel the Great Ocean is not essential for progression, its unique systems, rewards, and power boosts make it a worthwhile endeavor. It’s a different pace of gameplay—less about grinding mobs and more about charting your own course on the high seas.
The Final Word Before the Wind Takes You
The Great Ocean is vast, mysterious, and teeming with rewards for those willing to brave its depths. With shipbuilding, combat, fishing, exploration, and trading systems,
it offers one of the most diverse experiences in Black Desert Mobile. Whether you’re chasing CP, riches, or just the thrill of the horizon, there’s a place for you out here.
So hoist your sail, check your compass, and steer into the unknown. Adventure awaits.
Conclusion: Embracing the Endless Horizon
As the sun sets over the open sea and your ship glides across waters once foreign and foreboding, you may find yourself reflecting on how far you’ve come. What began as a simple story quest and a modest Fishing Boat has now transformed into a full-blown odyssey across one of the most ambitious expansions in Black Desert Mobile. The Great Ocean is not just another region—it’s a living, breathing world in its own right, one that rewards the bold, the patient, and the endlessly curious.
The ocean doesn’t rush you. It doesn’t force your hand like many other parts of the game. Instead, it beckons with the allure of discovery and the slow, satisfying pace of progress. There’s something poetic about leaving behind the clutter of mainland life—the crowds, the grinding spots, the siege wars—and venturing into the serene, unpredictable vastness of the sea. Out here, it’s just you, your ship, your crew, and the promise of something new waiting just beyond the fog.
The Great Ocean content is a long-term commitment. It’s not for the faint of heart or those seeking immediate gratification. It’s a layered system where every piece—from upgrading ship fittings to bartering across distant ports—intertwines with the next. It teaches you patience. It teaches you resource management. And it most certainly teaches you perseverance. The path to building a top-tier Epheria Carrack, for instance, isn’t something you’ll complete in a week. It takes planning, grinding, smart trading, and knowing when to push forward and when to hold back and regroup.
Yet within that slow-burn style of content lies its greatest strength. The ocean gives you room to breathe. It allows you to set your own pace. Want to spend an evening fishing in peaceful hot spots under a starlit sky, far from PvP and marketplace drama? You can do that. Want to test your mettle against cursed ghost ships or sea monsters twice your size? Go ahead. Want to fill your hold with goods, chart trade routes, and make your fortune through bartering? That’s an entire lifestyle you can adopt on the water.
It’s easy to underestimate how much the Great Ocean contributes to your overall strength. Many adventurers obsess over the flashy CP boosts from gear, pets, and relics, but ocean content boosts your family’s AP and DP in a way that complements other progression systems. Leveling your Statue of Sylvia is one of the most effective Family-wide buffs in the game, and sailing also feeds into your Life Skill growth, which offers additional stat increases and bonuses that influence every character on your account.
Beyond stats and systems, the Great Ocean is also a story—the story of your journey, your growth, your decisions. The choice between the Sailboat and Frigate isn’t just mechanical. It reflects the kind of sailor you want to be. Do you value the independence and economic reward of bartering? Or does the call of combat and the thrill of cannonfire in the Ross Sea appeal to your spirit? These decisions shape the way you experience this content and define your path forward.
And then there’s the camaraderie. While much of the ocean can be experienced solo, there’s something special about seeing another player’s ship on the horizon, exchanging a friendly nod—or a barrage of cannonballs in PvP zones. The Great Ocean fosters a kind of shared adventure that isn’t always present on land. When you and a guildmate sail together, tracking down sea monsters or tackling the weekly Exploration Log, it transforms into something more than content—it becomes memory-making.
Let’s not forget the artistic beauty of it all. The way the light dances on the water at dawn. The eerie stillness of fog-covered seas. The haunting silhouette of the Cursed Phantom Ship slowly emerging from the mist. Black Desert Mobile has always been praised for its visuals, but the Great Ocean elevates that with wide-open vistas, atmospheric effects, and a sense of scale that no land-based region can match. It’s not just impressive—it’s immersive.
For all its depth, the Great Ocean isn’t perfect. It still has room to grow. Certain systems, like Treasure Recovery or advanced bartering chains, may feel underdeveloped or lacking incentives. Some players will rightly point out that the time investment isn’t always proportional to the rewards, especially when compared to high-yield land content like Hadum or Chaos Zones. But to judge the Great Ocean by pure efficiency is to miss the point.
The ocean is not about min-maxing. It’s about mastery. It’s about becoming not just a character with high CP, but a seasoned sailor who knows the sea’s moods, who understands the intricate economy of ship parts and materials, and who can turn the tide of battle with a well-placed broadside.
If you walk away from the Great Ocean having learned anything, let it be this: Progress isn’t always measured in power alone. Sometimes it’s measured in understanding. In experience. In the quiet satisfaction of finally reaching that distant island you saw weeks ago. In the triumphant roar of cannons sinking a foe you’ve clashed with many times. In turning your once-rickety Bartali Sailboat into a majestic Carrack that sails like a dream and dominates every zone it enters.
So what now? What lies beyond the current map? The future of the Great Ocean in Black Desert Mobile holds promise. New seas may open. New quests, dungeons, and even naval events could roll in. Perhaps guild-based fleet battles or expanded trading empires are on the horizon. What’s certain is that the developers have laid the foundation for something that can continue to grow and evolve for years to come.
Until then, the sea is yours. You’ve unlocked its secrets, battled its monsters, charted its currents, and claimed its treasures. But as every sailor knows, the sea is never truly conquered. It shifts, it changes, it calls. There’s always one more island to find, one more monster to hunt, one more haul to deliver.
So keep your sails trimmed, your cannons loaded, and your eyes on the stars. For in the world of Black Desert Mobile, the greatest adventures are still out there—just beyond the next wave.
And when someone asks you what the Great Ocean is really about, you’ll smile and say, “It’s not just a place—it’s a voyage.”
Safe travels, adventurer.
