Whether it’s Roach from the Witcher franchise or Epona from Ocarina of Time, horses are a major component of any sandbox RPG.
Black Desert is certainly no exception, and with a game world as large as Black Desert Online, they are definitely critical with no fast travel to get around.
So, with horses being an essential part of traveling in Black Desert Online, how do you find and acquire them?
There are three different ways to obtain a horse in Black Desert Online: taming, breeding, and purchasing.
Depending on whether you want to save the silver, go in search of a stable master, or breed your very own, here are the three different ways to get a horse in Black Desert Online.
Table of contents
Where to start
Before you set out to tame a horse in Black Desert Online, keep in mind that players must reach training level 5 first.
You can achieve this by riding either a horse or a donkey until they level up your training experience.
How do you find a horse or donkey? You can acquire a donkey from the town chief in Velia after completing the Black Spirit quest ‘Big Fish in a Small Pond’.
However, you will need to reach level 10 before you can access this quest.
The alternative option is buying a horse from a stable keeper.
You will have two base options to choose from when you first access the stable keeper’s inventory: Horse Emblem: Beginner’s Brown or Gray Horse.
These horses are relatively slow and devoid of any major skills but will level you up nonetheless to reach training level 5.
Taming
Now that you’ve reached training level 5, you can go out and tame a horse, but what will you need?
Where will you go, and how do you do it? To capture a horse, you will need two different items before you set out on your journey.
To capture and tame a horse in Black Desert Online, you’ll need a capturing rope and lumps of sugar.
Typically, players should have at least 3 lumps of sugar.
However, the safest number to bring is 4 to 5.
Players can purchase rope from any stable keeper, but they will need to craft the sugar lumps themselves.
To get the ingredients needed, go to the nearest cooking NPC.
Cooking vendors are located in all the game’s cities.
Once you find one, you will need to buy raw sugar and mineral water to craft the sugar lumps.
Each one will require 10 raw sugar and one mineral water to craft.
Once the sugar lumps have been crafted, you can go in search of horses to tame.
Keep in mind there are no specific places to find them in the world of Black Desert.
They spawn all over the game’s world, but once you find a horse, what happens next? You have to tame it, of course.
Here are the steps to taming a horse in the game:
- Move your sugar lumps and capture rope from your inventory to your hot bar.
- Sneak up on the horse slowly without spooking it.
- Equip the capturing rope from the hot bar, and aim at the horse. Keep in mind that you move slower with the rope equipped.
- Similar to the fishing game in BDO, left click to throw the rope when you’re fully lined up. Then press the spacebar when your meter reaches ‘good’.
- Move towards the horse. Each time it lifts its front hooves, you will need to rapidly press the spacebar for 10 seconds to keep it within the ‘win’ section.
- Once you get close enough to the horse, a circle menu will appear above its head. At this point, you can choose to either try mounting it or feed it sugar lumps.
- Feed the horse between 3 to 5 lumps to calm it. 4 to 5 is the recommended amount.
- Once this is done, you can mount the horse and take it back to the nearest stable to register. Keep in mind that you won’t be able to gallop back to the stable, so try picking a location close to a stable to make things quicker.
Taming horses is by far the cheapest way to get a horse in Black Desert Online.
The one downside to taming is that you can only tame horses that are tier 5 or lower.
The upsides? Taming allows players to pick their horse’s color and even its tier as long as they know what to look for.
Purchasing
Purchasing a horse in Black Desert Online is by far the quickest way to acquire one.
Furthermore, it’s arguably the most efficient way if you are looking for a higher-tiered horse with a specific set of skills.
Purchasing does cost quite a bit of silver and pearls, but if you’re not tight on cash, it may be your best bet.
Where can you find horses to buy?
Players can buy a horse from stable keepers, which can be found by clicking the hourglass in the top right of the game’s menu.
Once you click the stable icon, the game will place a waypoint on your map showing where the nearest stable keeper is.
To unlock the entire horse market, players will have to reach training level 5 first.
Before doing this, you will only have access to two horses:
- Beginner’s Brown Horse
- Beginner’s Gray Horse
Both of these horses are relatively slow and primarily for leveling up your training level to unlock taming and the full horse market.
Once you reach training level 5 and open up the entire horse market menu, you can search by tier (1 through 8), specific skills, and gender, depending on what you’re looking for.
Upon purchasing a horse, it will appear in your inventory.
From there, you can click on it and navigate to your stable tab.
Once this is done, register the horse to ride and begin ranking up.
Breeding
Currently, in Black Desert Online, the highest tier horse you can tame is a tier 5, with some exceptions during special events to tame tier 6 horses.
Past those special events, there are only two ways to obtain a horse that is tier 6 to tier 8.
Firstly, by purchasing one from other players in the stable keeper’s horse market, which will cost quite a bit of silver.
Or secondly, through breeding.
You can only breed horses in Black Desert’s capital cities and Keplan.
Before breeding a horse in Black Desert Online, you need to make sure that you have an open slot in your stable.
Players also need to check their horses’ specs to see what their breedability is.
As long as the breedability of a horse is above 0, you can begin the breeding process.
To begin breeding, players will need to open up their stable menu and select a male horse to register for breeding.
Before moving forward, click into the horse sub-menu and select the recover button to ensure that its stamina is full (make sure to do this with all the horses you will be breeding).
At this point, players must go into the breeding market and maneuver over to their horse list and to a female horse to breed with.
You can also breed with another player’s horse in the breeding market. However, there is an extra fee to do this.
The final step is to request breeding.
Breeding can take between two and six hours to complete depending on your horses’ tiers.
Players can choose to bypass this by spending pearls upfront.
The final result of the breeding depends on the male and female horses you’ve selected.
From tiers and levels to the colors of the bred horse, everything is ultimately decided by the parents when configuring the final results.
The higher you rank up your horse’s tiers prior to breeding, the better odds you’ll have of breeding a horse with a higher tier.
This can get somewhat confusing, but luckily there is a calculator that players can use to determine the best horses to use to maximize their breeding results.
One last thing to keep in mind if you don’t want to tame, breed, or even purchase a horse is there is one other option to avoid all three.
Once you have fully completed the game’s main questline, you will receive a free tier 5 horse with decent skill specs making it a viable fourth option.
That’s how to get a horse in Black Desert Online!
Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
