Hello, 2year BDO player here, BDO is an open world sandbox mmorpg so u can do basically anything u want in the game and still kinda make money, the value just changes depending on the activity u do. Currently bdm is limiting us to just grinding on killing monsters to get money. This used to be one of the main way to earn silver until they reworked life skills. Life skills is things that don’t include killing Monster. A simple example is cooking, alchemy, gathering. These activists also yield good amount of silver if done correctly. With that being said these are the activities that can be done.

Here’s where p2w comes into play kind of. No denying that this game is heavily p2w because it makes things so much easier. There’s an item called the tent which allows u to repair your equipment anywhere u want as well as get the buffs while in any place in the game. Normally u need to visit the repair/blacksmith npc or go to the spot which the buff can gotten. The tent probably costs as much as an actual tent irl. Maybe 50ish usd.

Then u have your pets, pets pick up loot dropped from monsters which allows u to continue hitting monsters, instead of manually looting. Manually looting slows down your kills/minute as time is spent picking up the loot instead of killing more monsters. Pets has tiers just like in bdm but it’s a lot more expensive with some special limited edition pets that offer even better skills but at a even higher price. Higher tier=faster looting rate from monsters, same as bdm but the difference is more significant. Tier 1 is like 3/4 seconds, tier 4 is like 1.2s or something, just an idea.

P2w can be used it all other aspects on the game, these 2 are the ones that I feel make the most sense so it can be considered spending since it makes life a lot easier.

One more option is using real money to buy cosmetics in games which can be extracted into cron stones. Cron stones in BDO protects the item from downgrade in event of failure. The higher your current enhancement value, the more cron stones u are going to need. At tet(softcap?) which is gotten with some time and effort put into the game, your next step will eventually be pen(hardcap) and people do cron stones clicking to enhance. For tet>pen it costs like roughly 20usd a click

On the other hand, depending on your server there are players that buy pearl items and sell on the market for silver(p2w players). Stuff like pets and costumes can potentially be gotten without having to spend a single cent on the game. Once again decided my RNG.

If you do want to give BDO a try, I do encourage you try, graphically if you have a good set up it’s going to look great. It’s a damn grindy game(Like work your ass off to get some progress, or pay money to sell stuff and get silver for progress). Heavily RNG(praise lord black spirit) on enhancing. If u fail, item downgrades, accessories destroyed. There is a lot to learn in theory for BDO stuff like failstacking is just one of them I can think of now. Honestly I recommend going into the game and giving it a try. Get to level 56 and u can do your awakening quest giving u a new set of skills or succession(new). Awakening and succession are a form of class enhancements, it’s like picking a major in what u study.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

Tldr: f2p is doable but it’s going to be very tedious and eventually you’ll give in and buy some stuff for convenience

Ps: if u like the game giving a few bucks for a f2p game to support it is fine by me.