Worker Management

There were some good questions about hiring workers guild chat last night.    Some of the basic essentials of workers are not at all obvious in this game.

Here's a quick list of things that every player needs to know.

1.) Hire workers and put them to work immediately.  It is as necessary as leveling.  Get started as soon as you have two or more contribution points.

2.) Workers do not use your energy points to gather.  Much more efficient than do-it-yourself.

3.) Workers level up and get bonuses and promotions as they work.  This is another important reason to not wait until endgame to hire a full task force.  Hire them and deploy them early and frequently, and keep leveling them all.

4.) A worker lives in the town in which he is hired.  You can send him on a long commute to work elsewhere, but he'll spend more time commuting back and forth, then, and will always put his harvests in his hometown warehouse.  You cannot relocate him.  This can work to your advantage, though, if you prefer to have products far away delivered to your base of operations.  

5.) To deploy a worker, you need to put a contribution point into the node, and then you need to put another point into a field or mine inside that node.  If you put one point into Casta Farm, you cannot deploy a worker there.  However, if you put one point into Casta Farm and then one more point into the grape orchard inside Casta Farm, then you can deploy a worker there.

6.) If you havent made up your mind about where to start, get the Bartelli Farm potato field south of Velia, and put a worker from Velia or Olvia in it to harvest potatos at all times.  No matter what your strategy is, you will always need potatos.  Bartelli is a good choice because it will also serve as a critical node link that you will keep forever.

7.)  Buy houses that, when used as "lodging", give you better than a 1:1 ratio of additional workers per contribution point.

Good info Kale. I know many will find it helpful. I can't agree more about the potato's. You gotta have that beer. :)

I keep dumping my spare energy points in Bartelli's field every time I accumulate 10 points.   Might as well make it my first level 10.

My understanding is that higher investment levels only help increase drops from mobs you kill in that node's area of influence, so it really only matters in areas you plan to do a lot of combat farming. Does anyone have other info?

That was me asking the worker questions.  I have OCD and this game... well, you can imagine the hell I go through with it, sometimes.  Thank you for this tip post.

Since it's related, does anyone have any good Housing Intro/Guide links handy?  Note I say "good" which means concise and easy to understand, because google can bring up... well, anything and it's not always easy to filter out the crap.

Honestly, are workers necessary?

I have zero right now.

Informative write-up though.

That depends on how you want to play the game.

There are things that only workers can craft; you cannot do-it-yourself.

I think workers will turn out to be a core essential for everyone in this game.  

Leveling up a node increases the stats of the houses you own in that node, without costing more contribution points.  If you raise Velia to level 2, the three lodging houses allow you two extra workers each instead of one each.

Raising the level of a node, like Bartali's farm, and raising the level of a field in the node, like the potato field, have different benefits.

Benefits of node levels

http://forum.blackdesertonline.com/index.php?/topic/17928-node-levelsinvestment/

http://forum.blackdesertonline.com/index.php?/topic/23132-node-investing/

http://forum.blackdesertonline.com/index.php?/topic/20772-question-about-putting-energy-into-gathering-node/ 

Am I wrong in assuming that buying up houses for workers and investing in gathering nodes is primarily for if you want to do a lot of crafting? I'm more interested in the non crafting and gathering professions (fishing, trading, hunting etc.) so should I be concentrating my contribution more on expanding my node network rather than building up cities?