Black Desert Carrack + Bartering Complete Guide (August 2026): Which Ship, How Much Material, What It Pays
Update 2026-09-06: Another patch landed August 27, adding the top-tier yellow ship gear, Falasi. Nothing here got overturned: for bartering it's still Advance, and you still want Chiro maxed to +10 first. One thing did change: a +10 Chiro piece is now a crafting material for Falasi, so the blue gear covered in section 3 does more than finish the ship now; it also gets you into the next tier. Whether that tier is worth chasing, I ran the numbers separately: Is Falasi yellow gear worth it?
The April 16, 2026 patch turned bartering upside down. It added T6 (50M) and T7 (100M) goods, banned the Transport system for moving barter cargo, and standardized parley costs. The Carrack stopped being a nice-to-have and became the thing that directly decides how much silver you make in a day, because weight is the ceiling now, not luck.
Most guides floating around are still stuck at T1–T5 with material tables showing prices from before the cut. This one uses current, post-patch numbers only.
TL;DR
| Your situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| Want to run bartering for profit | Advance: carries the most weight, don't bother looking at the other three |
| You already have a Sailboat | You're on the right line: Sailboat → Caravel → Advance / Balance |
| You already have a Frigate | Wrong line: Frigate → Galleass → Valor / Volante. You cannot upgrade into Advance from here |
| Stuck on materials | Usually the 4 pieces of +10 blue gear; flax and timber barely slow you down |
| Ship's built | Target 22,000 LT empty weight: that's the line between fitting a full 10-piece T7 load and not |
This ship is a tool, not a collectible. Run bartering, build Advance. Not enough weight? Doesn't matter how well you built it.
Where the Numbers Come From
Material counts and Crow Coin prices come from the official NA/EU Adventurer's Guide, Ship Upgrading (I built the full set following it myself). Bartering mechanics follow the official April 16, 2026 patch notes and the official Sailing & Bartering page. Tagged "tested" means a number off my own account: 90,009 cumulative barters, Guru-tier mastery, so my parley runs lower than yours will. Tagged "community" means Korean and Japanese forums and videos, and I'll say whether that's one source or several people landing on the same number independently.
One pricing note: the official May 2026 patch cut Crow Coin prices for ship materials across the board (Moon Vein Flax Fabric 50→40, Deep Tide-Dyed Standardized Timber Square 100→80, the Brilliant materials and Tear of the Ocean 500→400). That's roughly 20% cheaper than what guides written in early 2026 will tell you. If you see the old numbers somewhere, don't trust them.
1. The Four Carracks Split Into Two Lines, and Picking Wrong Means Starting Over
This is the trap most people fall into: the four Carracks aren't on one upgrade path (full progression on the official Ship Upgrading page; GrumpyG's stat comparison puts all four side by side). Players loosely call the whole line T1/T2/T3, whether they mean Sailboat or Carrack.
| Starting ship | Mid ship | Carracks you can reach | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Epheria Sailboat | Epheria Caravel | Advance / Balance | Weight |
| Epheria Frigate | Epheria Galleass | Valor / Volante | Firepower / speed |
| Ship | Wins on | Loses on |
|---|---|---|
| Advance | Biggest weight: +10 green gear alone clears 20,000 LT | Mediocre speed |
| Balance | Decent speed, solid all-round | Weight only catches up once you've paid for blue gear (community figure: roughly 21,000 LT with it) |
| Volante | 120% base speed, fastest of the four | Worst weight of the four: bartering on it means cash-shop items and maxed stacking just to make it usable |
| Valor | Strongest firepower, built for sea monsters and naval fights | No advantage for bartering at all |
If your goal is bartering, there's nothing to think about: build Advance. +10 green gear alone is enough to start working. Japanese guides say roughly the same thing, putting +10-green-gear Advance at around 20,900 LT and calling it the best entry-level pick around. Balance only catches up once you've sunk money into blue gear, and Volante and Valor are built for a different job entirely.
I built a Volante myself later, purely because I wanted something fast: nothing to do with hauling cargo. Different goal, different ship.
If bartering's the goal, build Advance. If you're already deep in the Frigate line and don't want to start over, run whatever Galleass-line ship you have for now: you'll take a weight hit, but at least you're earning while you save for an Advance.
2. The Full Material List for Advance
Getting to Advance takes two things: consumable materials, and 4 pieces of +10 Caravel blue gear.
| Material | Qty | How to get it | Crow Coin price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moon Vein Flax Fabric | 180 | Drying Khan's Tendon, farming Khan (Ocean's Eye), dailies, Crow Coin Shop | 40 |
| Deep Tide-Dyed Standardized Timber Square | 144 | Chopping firewood on Usable Pirate Ship's Remains, farming the Cox Pirates, dailies, Crow Coin Shop | 80 |
| Brilliant Rock Salt Ingot | 35 | Tier 5 Sea Trade Goods bartering, Crow Coin Shop | 400 |
| Brilliant Pearl Shard | 35 | Tier 5 Sea Trade Goods bartering, Crow Coin Shop | 400 |
| Tear of the Ocean | 42 | Tier 5 bartering, [Great Ocean] Margoria's Star, Wandering Merchant's ship, dailies, weeklies, fishing, alchemy | 400 |
| +10 Caravel blue gear | 4 pieces | +10 green gear → craft blue gear at the workshop → +10 again | See next section |
Note: the permit ("Ship Expansion License: Epheria Caravel," roughly) is bought from Falasi at Port Epheria. The blue gear has to be crafted at the level-4 Ship Part Workshop, Epheria 1-4, 2F: see the official Ship Upgrading guide.
Here's what the other two Carracks cost at final expansion, so you can compare (both also need 4 pieces of +10 Galleass blue gear):
| Material | Advance | Valor | Volante |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moon Vein Flax Fabric | 180 | 180 | 210 |
| Deep Tide-Dyed Standardized Timber Square | 144 | 170 | 144 |
| Brilliant Rock Salt Ingot | 35 | 30 | 30 |
| Brilliant Pearl Shard | 35 | 30 | 30 |
| Tear of the Ocean | 42 | 42 | 42 |
3. The Real Bottleneck Is the Blue Gear, Not the Consumables
Most people assume flax fabric and timber squares are what slow them down. They're not: those build up fine off dailies. The blue gear is the actual money pit.
Here's why: one piece of blue gear eats hundreds of materials, not a handful, and it needs a base of +10 green gear before you can even start on it. Completely different scale than the consumables.
| Step | What it involves | Tidal Black Stone cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Buy 4 green gear pieces | From Falasi at Port Epheria, paid in silver | n/a |
| 2. Enhance green gear to +10 | 1 stone per attempt at +0–5, 2 per attempt at +6–10 | About 220 stones total for all 4 |
| 3. Craft 4 blue gear pieces at the workshop | Hundreds of materials per piece | n/a |
| 4. Enhance blue gear to +10 | Same stone rule as above | Roughly 200 stones (varies) |
For a success-rate reference, BDO Codex's item pages, confirmed by BDFoundry's Carrack guide, put Galleass green gear (White Horn Figurehead) at 70% and blue gear (Black Dragon Figurehead) at 30%. Failure doesn't downgrade the piece; it just eats durability.
Carrack blue gear (the piece everyone calls "Chiro gear") is worse: each attempt burns 50 Tidal Black Stones, and the success rate falls from 10% at +1 all the way to 0.5% at +10. Don't go in bare at this stage: stack whatever enhancement buffs you have.
Since the August 27, 2026 patch, those same 4 pieces of +10 Chiro gear also double as a crafting material for Falasi. Even if yellow gear is your eventual goal, this step isn't optional.
I ended up buying the whole material set outright with Crow Coins, then did the math afterward and realized paying to skip the grind cost more than I expected. Don't buy the blue gear stage outright. Buy the consumables instead and craft the gear yourself.
4. What It Costs to Buy Everything With Crow Coins
Three scenarios, all at the post-May-2026 prices:
| Scenario | Crow Coins needed |
|---|---|
| Already have 4 pieces of +10 blue gear, buying only the final expansion materials (Valor) | 61,600 |
| Same, for Volante | 60,720 |
| Only have green gear, buying every material for all 4 blue gear pieces too | roughly 231,000–232,000 |
| Above, plus Tidal Black Stones and repairs for the enhancement runs | Budget 234,000–237,000 in practice |
So where's the money actually going? Just the crafting materials for the 4 blue gear pieces run about 170,500 coins on their own, over 70% of the total.
Translation: you're not buying blue gear, you're paying coins to skip the time it takes to make it, and the exchange rate on that is bad. If you already have a ship earning coins from bartering, dumping months of that income into a second ship's blue gear materials doesn't pay off.
My advice: buy the consumables (flax fabric, timber squares, the Brilliant materials, Tear of the Ocean) and craft the blue gear yourself. The first is pure time savings. The second hurts to buy outright.
The best split: buy Brilliant Rock Salt Ingot, Brilliant Pearl Shard, and Tear of the Ocean with coins (400 each, which skips the most painful part: grinding out the barter counts yourself), grind flax fabric and timber squares from dailies, and just craft the blue gear the honest way.
5. How Many Days If You Only Run Dailies
Zero coins spent, relying entirely on daily quests:
| Material | Needed (Advance) | Daily yield | Days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moon Vein Flax Fabric | 180 | 3 | 60 days |
| Deep Tide-Dyed Standardized Timber Square | 144 | 3–4 | 43–48 days |
| Tear of the Ocean | 42 | 3 (+2 from weeklies) | 13–14 days |
| Brilliant Rock Salt Ingot / Pearl Shard | 35 each | From Tier 5 bartering | Depends on how much you barter |
These run in parallel, not stacked. Your real finish date is set by the slowest one, and that's the 60 days for flax fabric.
Speed it up with coins: 180 flax fabric costs just 7,200 to skip all 60 days, the single best-value line in this whole table.
Daily checklist, don't skip these:
- [Daily] Old Moon Guild's Young Sea Monster Hunter → Tear of the Ocean / Moon Vein Flax Fabric / Moon Scale Plywood
- [Daily] Win-win Situation → Deep Tide-Dyed Standardized Timber Square
- Ravinia's 7-day questline (Crow's Nest) → your main source of ship materials
- Weekly Old Moon Guild sea monster quest → Tidal Black Stones
6. Building the Ship Is Only Step One: Weight Caps Your Income
Most people underrate this part. T6/T7 goods weigh 2,000 LT each, so a full two-port run of 10 pieces is 20,000 LT (each ship's cap is listed on the official Sailing & Bartering page).
But cargo isn't the only thing eating your weight:
| What eats your weight | Per unit |
|---|---|
| T6/T7 trade goods | 2,000 LT |
| Sailor (each) | 200 LT |
| First mate | 200 LT |
So if you want to carry a full crew and 10 high-tier goods at once, the real threshold is roughly 22,000 LT empty weight, which is what post-patch Korean beginner guides recommend.
Two community examples make the point:
| Case | Empty weight | Result |
|---|---|---|
| German guide author | 21,250 LT | Could only crew 6 sailors |
| Korean tester | 18,500 LT | Could only fit 8 T7 goods: a straight 20% income loss |
How to add weight:
| Source | Bonus |
|---|---|
| +10 green gear | About +4,400 |
| Advance blue gear on top | +8,000 |
| Sea Crystal | Rusalka Sea Crystal fixed at 1,350 (the strongest), a regular roll can reach 900 |
| Ship skin | +600 |
| Pet | +50–200 per tier |
Max out +10 green gear first, worry about blue gear later. +10 green gear on Advance already clears 20,000 LT on its own. Blue gear is what takes you from "can run" to "runs comfortably": it doesn't gate whether you can start.
When a T5 good converts into T6, the weight doubles from 1,000 to 2,000 LT, and a lot of people miss that. Leave room for what comes back when you're loading, or you'll reach port and find yourself overweight with no way to complete the trade.
Roughly in this order: max out green gear to +10, keep your crew count sane, grab a Sea Crystal (Rusalka first if you can get it), and only then start thinking about blue gear.
7. What Bartering Actually Looks Like After the Patch
| Tier | Weight | Sells to NPC for | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| T4 | 1,000 LT | 2M | Your main source of Crow Coins |
| T5 (Coastal) | 1,000 LT | 10M | Post-patch, its main job is feeding T6 |
| T5 (Great Ocean) | 1,000 LT | 25M | Renamed with a "[Great Ocean]" prefix |
| T6 | 2,000 LT | 50M | T5→T6, 1:1 |
| T7 | 2,000 LT | 100M | T6→T7, 1:1 |
The key changes, straight from the patch notes (for the full mechanics writeup, see BDFoundry's bartering guide and GrumpyG's Barter & Sailing page):
- Barter goods can no longer move through the Transport system. Once you're holding T6/T7, even Magnus and character-to-character transport are blocked, so the old trick of stockpiling goods at another port is dead
- T2 weight dropped from 800 to 400 LT; the minimum T1→T2 and T2→T3 conversion rate is now 2–3, no more clean 1:1
- Parley got standardized: Crow Coin exchange is a flat 21,650, Great Ocean goods a flat 14,286
- Bulk Crow Coin exchange moved from Hakoven to Crow's Nest. If a guide still says Hakoven, it's outdated
- Special Barter now wants a Gold Bar or T4 goods instead of T5, and the coin reward went up to 4,000–5,000
What about the August 27, 2026 patch? That one added yellow gear and a new sea monster, but it didn't really change bartering itself. I read through the official English patch notes line by line, and the only new thing here is a fresh exchange channel: turn in Lyngbakr bone, scale, or fluid to the Crow Coin exchange NPC for Tidal Black Stones. Everything below still holds.
The actual run rhythm (plan by the loop, not the island):
- 3 sets of T6 two-port routes paired against 3 sets of T7, re-paired every refresh. One loop = 10 T7 goods = 1B silver
- Parley break-even: 26k or under per trade, run 1 loop; 13k or under, 2 loops; 8,695 or under, 3 loops
- My own numbers, tested 2026-08-20 at 90,009 cumulative barters / Guru mastery: T5→T6 costs 11,347 parley per trade, 5 T6 trades per island per refresh. Already discounted for my mastery level, so yours will run higher
- Three independent community creators all land on roughly 9–10B silver a day. Nobody's shown their math, so treat it as a ballpark, not a promise (more on this in the FAQ)
8. Common Mistakes
- Overweight ship gets blocked from trading. The most common trigger is the weight doubling the moment T5 converts to T6
- Remote-docking destroys your cargo. T6/T7 goods have a higher destruction chance if the ship sinks, so avoid red-name waters and sea monsters on long routes
- Trying to move barter goods with Transport or Magnus: it's blocked. Holding T6/T7 even locks out character-to-character transport
- Not re-scouting the map after maintenance. Every maintenance resets Barter Information
- Skipping Special Barter. The coin reward is worth it now, so take it if it's on your route
- Refresh Points don't apply until you re-log (resets daily at 06:00 UTC)
- Skipping Ravinia's dailies: they're your main source of ship materials
September 2026 patches: the September 17 patch fixed a bug where overweight warnings fired incorrectly when a ship's empty weight exactly matched the cap, plus a bug where T4→T5→T6 goods at Dallae Pier occasionally failed to pair up after a refresh. The September 23 patch let you resupply, load cargo, and manage sailors from the ship as long as you're near a Wharf Manager, and added distance display plus a one-click navigation button to Barter Information. The old complaint about Special Barter's unhelpful navigation is largely moot now. Full breakdown: Bartering After the September 23 Patch.
FAQ
Q: I only have a Sailboat. What's the fastest I can get to Advance? From zero materials and zero coins spent: about 60 days, bottlenecked by the flax fabric. Spend roughly 7,200 coins to skip that grind and you're down to around 40 days, though your actual timeline depends on how fast your blue gear progresses.
Q: How much does Advance actually beat Balance by? Tested side-by-side, both at +10 green gear with 11 crew: Balance fits 17 pieces, Advance fits 18, about 700 LT of extra headroom. One T7 good is worth 100M, so that gap adds up fast over a lot of runs.
Q: Can I just buy everything with Crow Coins? You can, but don't. Buying every material including blue gear runs past 230,000 coins, and 170,000 of that is the blue gear alone. Buy the consumables, craft the blue gear yourself: that's the sane split.
Q: Can you really make 9–10B a day? Three independent creators all cite this figure, but none of them show an hour-by-hour breakdown, and I haven't verified it myself. What I can confirm: one loop is 1B silver, and the rest comes down to how many loops you can physically run in a day, which depends on your weight, your parley cost, and your patience. Korean players report clearing three T7 chains in as fast as 80 minutes, tested.
Q: Will the numbers in this guide go stale? Yes. Bartering has already changed twice in 2026, the April 16 overhaul and the May 21 follow-up. Material counts tend to hold steady; Crow Coin prices and route thresholds are what move most often, so check the current patch notes before you commit to anything.
Material data is current as of 2026-08-23; bartering mechanics follow the official April 16, 2026 patch, including the May 21, 2026 follow-up. I've since folded in full source links throughout (2026-09-13) and the September 17/23 bartering UI and bug-fix notes (2026-10-01).
Sources
Official (directly verifiable)
- Official NA/EU Adventurer's Guide, Ship Upgrading: material lists, how to obtain, Crow Coin Shop prices, workshop location (cross-checked against the current table after the May 2026 price cut)
- Official NA/EU Adventurer's Guide, Sailing & Bartering: ship-line split, weight caps, bartering tiers, parley, per-island NPCs
- Official August 27, 2026 patch notes: yellow gear (Falasi), the Lyngbakr → Tidal Black Stone exchange (the part relevant here)
- Official April 16, 2026 patch notes: T6/T7 routes, parley standardization, transport restrictions
- Official May 21, 2026 follow-up: route thresholds rounded to whole numbers, route cap raised to 12, ship-material coin prices cut roughly 20%, daily limits changed to weekly
Third-party databases and English guides (cross-checked against the above)
- BDO Codex: gear-enhancement success-rate item pages
- BDFoundry: Epheria Carrack guide: four-ship comparison, green/blue gear enhancement rates
- BDFoundry: Bartering guide: full bartering mechanics
- GrumpyG: Barter & Sailing: bartering and sailing mastery
- GrumpyG: Caravel Upgrade / Ship Stat Comparison: upgrade paths and weight numbers
Community claims (I'm flagging these as community, not an official number)
- Korean/Japanese community guides: recommended empty weight, how two-port reshuffles feel in practice, roughly 80 minutes for three T7 chains
- 8 English-language gameplay-tested videos: parley break-even math, two-port structure, ship-weight minmaxing
- "Roughly 9–10B silver a day" is three independent creators landing on the same figure independently: no hour-by-hour breakdown, and I haven't verified it myself
My own testing
- 2026-08-20, 90,009 cumulative barters, Guru mastery: T5→T6 at 11,347 parley per trade, 5 T6 trades per island per refresh. My mastery gets a discount: your numbers will run higher.