BDO has A LOT of content, however for the first few days much of it can be ignored as many activities need to be unlocked from the main questline/reaching level 60, require starting capital to perform continuously or not worth the time considering events give plenty of silver.

Gear before level 61 if you don't like grinding (refer back here when you're level 57)
The fastest way to level up 57 to 61 is through doing side quests. Press "O", select ALL quests and only do quests with a solid yellow border. Only start doing these quests at level 57 as these quests are not repeatable on the same character. Get the Chenga Tome (level 53 quest) to get +30% exp from side quests.
Chenga tome quest guide[grumpygreen.cricket]
Following playlist shows a general guide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWCJd6y_eNc&list=PLKMRiZuSgt-5NGSDbnQdy0V993pwoV39W
Exp gain per quest per region at specific level
Beginner & Mid-Level Zones: Balenos, Serendia, Calpheon, Mediah, Valencia
Level 56: 1.3% EXP = 273m
Level 57: 1.3% EXP = 683m
Level 58: 1.04% EXP = 1092m
Level 59+: 0.13% EXP = 273m << Not worth questing
Newest High AP Zones: Kamasylvia, Drieghan, and Star’s End
Level 59: 1.3% EXP = 2730m
Level 60: 1.3% EXP = 8190m
Level 61+: 0.021% EXP = 264m << Not worth questing

Enhancement/Fail stacking/Transfusion
Most low level gear is not worth enhancing yourself and typically drops pre-enhanced at higher level regions, these can be bought off the Marketplace to take you through the early game.

Nodes/Workers
Form of passive income, requires a lot of Contribution points and Energy to setup which you don't have at the start of the game.

Daily/repeatable side quests
If the quest reward is only a bit of Contribution exp and junk, you can skip until later. There may be some repeatable event quests worth doing.

Life skills (Fishing, gathering, cooking, alchemy)
Most lifeskills require at least a bit of starting cash/unlocking energy to perform continuously, otherwise you'll be forced to micromanage your resources constantly.

Horses
Main quest gives a huge speed buff at regular intervals to help you autopath faster than a low level horse. You will get a free Tier 5 horse during the main questline.

Forced PVP
Will only matter when you're competing for the best spots in the endgame grind during peak hours, but general consensus is PVP can be easily avoided.

CLASS SELECTION
Choose whatever looks the best to you, classes are constantly updated so there isn't a "best" class, FOTM (flavor of the month) is a term you may come across when choosing a class.
For class specific resources including build orders, Beauty album templates, Discord is your best bet
https://www.reddit.com/r/blackdesertonline/wiki/discord_channels

TRIAL CHARACTERS
Instant level 60 with maxed skills.
You can trial up to 3 characters at once to test out their moves. Deleting to try another class takes a day to delete.

CHARACTER CREATION
BDO is known for its in-depth character creation. For ideas, use the ingame template explorer to view regional templates or download premade ones and place in Documents\Black Desert\Customization folder.

Horoscope basically doesn't matter, helps in a stupid minigame (Amity minigame) that has an alternate method which ignores horoscope.

Follow the main questline. Press "O", sort by "Type", Black spirit quests. Continue until level ~56 to complete your introduction to the game.

Unlocks
Inventory space
Free T5 horse
Free pets (used for auto-looting)
Contribution points (used for setting up nodes/workers)
Quest armor/accessories

Useful NPCs
Marketplace - Buy all your gear and food, transfer marketable gear to alts
Storage - Transfer non-marketable gear to alts
Stable - Recover your horse

Gear
Main quest provides most gear you'll need.

While auto-travelling, you can view the Marketplace or look at other guides.

List of events
https://bdonexus.info/events/

Season servers
Acts as a "catch up" event for newer players. Faster levelling, all mobs drop upgrade stones, season specific gear with easier upgrading. Make gear that's worth ~20 billion silver within weeks which would otherwise take months.

Free stuff events
Events ♥♥♥♥ out upgrade stones like candy because endgame takes billions of silver and years to achieve. Sell enough of the rewards and you can buy decent gear to take you through all beginner content.

What to look for
Example 1
Talk to NPC, goose ♥♥♥♥♥ out rewards, over 10m per day. Useful to have an alt sitting near NPC.


Example 2
Fishing event, 100x the profit from fishing by fishing in a certain area.


Example 3
Reach level to get bonus reward, worth over 100m each.

Everything from free premium items to tonnes of silver

Redeemable coupons (BDO Twitter, Esc -> Community -> Redeem)
https://grumpygreen.cricket/bdo-coupons/

Attendance/daily reward (Esc -> Rewards -> Attendance reward)



Black Spirit's Adventure (Esc -> Rewards -> Black Spirit's Adventure)
Every 30 minutes, roll the dice to receive rewards.
Main board order of priority, use your arcana cards/extra dice to land on these spaces.

• Enter special board
  
• Extra dice
  
• Extra cards

Special board order of priority, use your arcana cards/extra dice to land on these spaces. If you can use dice to land on a caphras bundle, you can double your rewards with the Nice Fluke! arcana.

• Caphras bundle II (30~90m)
  
• Caphras bundle I (30~60m)
  
• Caphras 10 (~30m)
  
• Cron stones 20 (~20m)
  
• Advice of Valks +30 (~15m)

530% Combat/Skill 1 hour buff (Pearl shop -> Loyalties)
53 scrolls per account, so 53 hours worth of stackable 530% EXP. Other players say to save it for when you need the skill exp but realistically if you only play 1 main just use them if it saves you time.

Guild payouts (Join any guild)
Free silver every day and guild buffs, primarily for +3 fishing/gathering

Daily 200% EXP Mercenary experience scrolls -> 600% EXP scroll (P -> Challenges -> Rewards)
Combine 3 200% scrolls via the Inventory -> Process -> Simple Alchemy to make 600% exp scrolls

Energy potions (convert Energy into potions to sell on Marketplace)
When your energy reaches 50/100/150/200 (requires increasing max energy by gaining Knowledge), you can ask Alustin (use NPC navigate to find nearest Alustin located in Keplan, Calpheon, Epheria, Velia, Fazenda Alejandro, Glish) to help you piss your energy into an Energy Potion that can be sold on the Marketplace.
Energy is gained 1 every 3 minutes when logged in and 1 every hour on all characters logged off, with the largest potion variant at 5.75m, each character earns 28,750 silver per hour completely AFK.

If you choose to buy Pearl items, this would be a typical order of priority from top to bottom.
Keep in mind almost every pearl item has been given for free/up to 50% discount at some point excluding the tent.

$49 Tent
Never given for free. Remote repair and villa buff station, helps immensely for late game when grind areas are far from towns/villas. Consider buying if on discount.

$12 Maids
Access storage/marketplace anywhere, can be used on all characters.

$22 Costume (can buy off Marketplace for silver)
$5 Underwear
Outfit for useful passive bonuses. Character bound so choose wisely.

$15 Value packs/Blessing of Kamasylve/Secret book of old moon (can be bought VERY SLOWLY off marketplace)
BDO's "subscription" purchase, Value pack being the most useful

$9~11 Pets (can buy off Marketplace for silver, a few given free from quests)
Merge multiple together to tier up for faster automatic looting.

$6+ Weight increase (has free Loyalty alternative)
Can be skipped if playing Shai

$6+ Inventory increase (has free Loyalty alternative, plenty given free from quests)

Check this table to see if the current sale is good or not. Sometimes discount coupons are given at the same time, a coupon and a sale can be used together.

If you choose to go F2P knowing what's worth the most is useful to ration your supply.

Value packs
Save until you need to claim sold items on the marketplace.
Primary use is to reduce Marketplace tax from 35% to 15.5%.
Example - Selling an item for 100k, With value pack: 84.5k return. Without value pack: 65k return.
Benefit is only realised on claiming the silver, not when selling. Sell up to 30 items waiting to be claimed, activate Value Pack, claim items.
1 Day Value Packs can also be bought for 1400 loyalty points, or 2 weeks of logging in daily.

Pets
Register any time, non-character bound. After you have 5 pets, start exchanging spare Tier 1 pets together to attempt to get T3 pets.
Has 2 forms of "levels", tiers and levels. Tiers only obtained by exchanging 2 or more same type (classic, rare, event etc.). Levels increase by feeding after pet is hungry max level 10.
Most efficient way to tier up is exchanging T1 with another T1 for 55% chance to get T3.

Inventory slots
Use on main or fishing alt. If received from login rewards, can transfer to other characters via storage.

Maids
Register immediately whenever you get. Prioritise Marketplace maids over Storage (from my own experience)

Blessing of Kamasylvia
Save until you start grinding rare items.

Secret book of Old Moon
If planning to buy tent later, save. Otherwise use whenever.

Elion's Tear (resurrect when dead, restore lost exp)
Save until level 61+ when experience is harder to get

Advice of Valks
Save anything above 70 until later.
Used for enhancement, essentially translates to silver. The higher + value, the more its worth since they cannot be stacked on top of each other i.e. 2 +30 Advice of Valks is worth much less than a single +60.
Estimate of value spreadsheet[docs.google.com]

Destruction Spirit stone (damage buff) - 810k~2.5m
https://bddatabase.net/us/item/45298/
All AP +6
All Accuracy +8
Attack Speed +4%
Casting Speed +4%
Unlike potions, can be auto used. Lasts 4 hours 10 minutes in 5 minute intervals. When at 0 durability, open Processing window and grind it.

Serendia meal (damage buff) - 30k
All AP +5
All Accuracy +10
Critical Hit +1
Lasts 90 minutes on 30 minute cooldown. Different meal type stacking is common, but don't need to get mixed up in all that.

Armor/Weapon crystals (max your passive skillz) - 10k~10m
https://www.blackdesertfoundry.com/crystal-sockets-guide/
Can be destroyed anytime to free up the slot, so insert cheap useful ones to begin with.
Skills up to +5 (critical, attack/cast speed, movement) > AP > Accuracy > Combat exp > everything else

Cheap T5-7 horse (travel speed) - 5~50m
If just autopathing, skills don't matter, just focus on speeeeeeed.

Izaro/Manos riding crop (horse zooom) - 9m/260m
Cheapest way to speed up your horse (make sure to get horse shoe as well)

Potions are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, they last the least duration (requiring constant reuse) and are generally expensive for beginners.

Find knowledge
https://bdocodex.com/us/knowledge/
https://www.somethinglovely.net/bdo/
For topology, visiting the area will complete most of it
For characters, talking with npcs will complete most of it
For ecology, killing monsters will randomly grant knowledge
Increases maximum energy, energy is used in

• Convert into energy potions through Alustin (can sell for silver)
  
• Farming and gathering lifeskills
  
• Interacting with objects to gain more knowledge
  
• Amity game with NPCS to access special items (or use Greet interaction, 3 energy for 3 amity)

Complete the adventure log bookself
Takes you around the world doing specific tasks. Book of Margahan, Bartali's Adventure log, Deves Encyclopedia are the best ones to complete first.
Bonus stats, most notably AP

Increase inventory space
More space good
https://grumpygreen.cricket/inventory/

Get a good horse
You'll be using it ALOT. Most important skill for increasing travel speed is Instant Acceleration (IA) and Drift. Drift will cancel the cooldown of IA allowing very fast travel.
Buy a T8 courser ~800m or waiting for an event to give a free T8 will last you a long time.

Complete main questlines
Every region has a questline to follow with various rewards.

Reach 56 and complete awakening questline
Unlock new skills for your character

Level up alt characters
Switch between characters to quickly access location specific tasks
Increase combat fame for daily silver bonus

Lifeskills/alt tasks can be grouped by their location, energy, inventory and weight considerations.
Feel free to do all these on a single character.

Alt 1
Processing/Cooking/Alchemy alt - Make stuff at a residence. Fixed location, requires inventory/weight. AFKing for long periods builds energy, useful for gathering/hiring workers.
Gathering alt - Chop trees, collect blood/meat. Requires energy, weight and inventory.
Hiring workers - Must be done at town you want to hire workers in. Requires energy.

Alt 2
Fishing alt - May be in a distant location. Requires inventory. Also gains energy while AFKing.

Alt 3+
Boss alts - To get rewards from a boss, you just need to hit it. Camp alts next to bosses and hit them in populated servers, free stuff when it dies.

Alt classes
TOP CLASSES
Shai - Professional 1 Gathering/Alchemy from level 1, passive weight gain boost. Not very good movement so typically used for standing tasks (processing, cooking, alchemy)

Musa/Maehwa - Spammable dash for gathering

Alternatives

Ranger - Passive movement speed boost

Valkyrie - Strong vacuum skill for meat/blood gathering

Lahn - For bartering, can fly from boat to wharf easily

For proper gearing for your class, consult the related class Discord.
This is just a bunch of tips.

Season Tuvala gear
Play season servers, game throws Tuvala gear at you.
Season Tuvala gear has made many gear sets outdated for early game.
With this gear you will be able to make 200-300m/hr silver at Valencia grinding spots (e.g. Centaurs, Cadrys, Bashims)
Will be a long time before you have enough gear for any other spots with higher silver/hr (Valencia has been recently buffed)

Common gear to aim for after Tuvala
+ values are compared to PEN Tuvala


Notes on armor type
Dim tree typically better than Red nose because +Max HP better, however upgrading to Fallen God armor, Dim tree costs more caphras (1036 caphras, ~3b)
Most choose DR (Bheg>Leebur, Urugon>Muskan) unless going for a specific evasion build on certain classes


Crystals
PvE focus is accuracy, crit damage and damage reduction on crystals. AP is primarily gained through sheet AP to hit brackets, so crystals make up for every other important stat.
Mobs will also start to knockdown/stun, so crystals in boots/chest are typically used to mitigate such effects.

Mainhand

Awakening (requires 9b Inverted Garmoth's Heart to unlock slots)

Sub
WIP

Guaranteed pen accessory
https://grumpygreen.cricket/pen-accessory/
Pick Crescent guardian ring, accept daily kill quest then spend X amount of silver for upgraded accessory.
Does not always save you money, accessory also cannot be resold. At current prices, it's only worth to shoot for PEN once you have all the materials.

• PRI 200m loss
  
• DUO 1b loss
  
• TRI 1.5b loss
  
• TET break even
  
• PEN save 32b

Google

This reddit post

Zero to hero Gearing guide
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jL-U4O4gA0d4e5OdO6v7stmZi_2NDTy-FXdXkR7huv4/view

Beginner Youtube guides
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTaFPwRL4Bjip0Gb_DAT1KQ
https://www.youtube.com/user/EvilDoUsHarm