BDO rewards you for being away: workers are NPCs you hire to farm nodes — ore, logs, herbs, grain, fish — on a schedule, delivering to the nearest city warehouse automatically. A worker empire is the classic passive-income engine: set it up once, check it occasionally, and the materials (or the silver from selling them) accumulate while you live your life. It is the best 'set and forget' system the game has.
What workers do
Each worker is assigned to a node that you have invested contribution points (CP) to connect to a city. The worker farms that node on a cycle, produces materials into the city warehouse, and costs beer to keep working. That is the whole loop — invest CP, assign workers, feed beer.
Worker types and grades
- Types: workers specialize by terrain — goblins are fast, humans are balanced, giants carry the most. Match the type to the node: goblins for quick ore/log cycles, giants for long haul routes.
- Grades: Professional, Artisan, Skilled and beyond — higher grades work faster and proc bonus yields. Artisan+ is the sweet spot for serious income.
- Getting better workers: hire from a city's worker manager, or promote/reroll via the worker UI once you have spares.
The practical upgrade path: hire a few goblins and humans first, get the empire running, then replace the worst workers with Artisan+ as your lodging and budget grow.
The one-afternoon setup
- Pick a home city (Heidel or Calpheon are the classic hubs) and buy lodging beds so you can house more workers.
- Invest contribution points to connect a chain of nodes from your city out to the resources you want.
- Hire 3-5 workers from the worker manager and assign them to the connected nodes.
- Keep beer stocked — workers stop without it. Set a cheap grain route or buy beer in bulk.
- Check the warehouse occasionally, process or sell the accumulation, and reinvest CP into more nodes as it grows.
An afternoon gets the first few nodes running; a week of reinvestment turns it into a real engine. The empire grows by compounding CP and workers, exactly like silver does.
Which nodes to take first
The best first nodes are the ones that feed your actual plans: if you cook, grain and meat nodes; if you process, ore and timber; if you gather, herb and sap nodes. Selling raw material from a node you do not use is fine short-term, but the silver multiplies when the material feeds your own life-skill loop.
| Node type | Feeds | First? |
|---|---|---|
| Grain/wheat | Cooking, beer for workers | Always — beer keeps the empire alive |
| Ore/timber | Processing, imperial turn-ins | Yes — steady market value |
| Herbs/sap | Alchemy | Yes if you alchemy |
| Meat/fish | Cooking, imperial boxes | High demand, slightly pricier CP |
The 2026 family-wide life-skill gear update and November's Family Dispatch both push harder in this direction — one worker empire feeding every alt is the intended end state.
Turning materials into silver
Workers produce materials, not silver — the conversion is up to you. Three exits, best to worst: feed the materials into your own cooking/alchemy/processing (the imperial loop multiplies value), sell processed ingots on the market, or sell raw materials (the least efficient — same trap as selling silver ore raw).
The rule from the silver-ore guide applies here too: the silver is in the processed and boxed form, never the raw node dump.
The bottom line
A worker empire is free passive income that compounds — spend one afternoon on the first nodes, reinvest CP and workers weekly, and the materials (or the silver) accumulate while you are away. Feed the output into your life skills rather than dumping raw, and the empire funds everything else on this site.
The empire does not replace active grinding — it runs underneath it, which is exactly why every efficient account has one.