The Polly’s Forest that was added as part of the Kamasylvia Part 2 update in Black Desert Online (BDO) is an appropriate grinding place for players whose level is in the early-mid 50s. It requires around 90 to 100 AP with a difficulty similar to that of Helms Post in Mediah, and Thief Imp Philum with a backplate and various mushrooms in the area.

The biggest merit of this area is that it’s close to a village. To the east is the capital city Grana, which makes it much easier to sort your inventory and repair gear while grinding. Most ingredients such as mushrooms and flowers used for elixirs and food added in the Kamasylvia Part 2 update also appear in Polly’s Forest, and mushroom type monsters can be harvested using a hoe.

On the other hand, the exp and gold efficiency is not as good. Most monsters in the area are more robust than Sausan or Bashim, and the grinding speed is also slow due to ranged monsters and location-fixed monsters. The Mushroom Hypha is dropped as a resellable item, but it does not cost much - 1,000 silver - even though the weight is only 0.1LT. Therefore, the popularity itself is not that high among players even if it is easy for low-leveled players to manage their HP due to the high concentration of monsters with low AP.

Polly’s Forest, located to the west of Grana, is a very wide grinding spot. Thief Imp Philums and various mushrooms appear on the inside, and a player needs to continuously fight as soon as the grinding begins, because many monsters are grouped and their awareness range is quite wide as well.

Thief Imp Philum is relatively more threatening than mushrooms during the grind phase. This has various attack patterns such as spraying poison in a fan shape to the front, throwing a poisonous bomb from a distance, or dealing AoE damage by crouching down, charging up its energy and exploding. Not only does it stack the poison effect, it also increases DP while charging energy, making it more difficult to be killed as a result.

The key point when grinding the Thief Imp Philum is stiffness. The monster is immune to knockdown, thus it is hard to interrupt the charging pattern. However, it does not have any immunity against stiffness, and the chance of getting debuffs is quite high as well, allowing much more rapid grinding with stiffness skills in between the combo.

It is important to change the spot on a regular basis when new monsters are gathered around, as there are many location-fixed monsters that deal ranged attacks. When a group of monsters is killed and the new group recognizes you, you need to change the spot to another location-fixed monster. This allows you to sweep away all monsters without missing one in a single combo.

The resellable item that is dropped in the Polly’s Forest is a Mushroom Hypha. This is sold for 1,000 silver each and the weight is only 0.1LT. As the type of resellable item is only one, making it easy to manage your inventory space, and you can even stack items almost infinitely if you have a mount as well.

You can also harvest all types of dead mushroom monsters with a hoe in the Polly’s Forest. You always get more than one Mushroom Hypha upon harvesting, and you can also harvest the following items that are used for food and alchemy: Rainbow Button Mushroom, White Umbrella Mushroom, Volcanic Umbrella Mushroom, Blue Umbrella Mushroom, Pink Trumpet Mushroom, Green Pendulous Mushroom, and White Flower Mushroom.

Of course, you need to avoid harvesting as this causes slower grinding, if you focus more on exp. However, you need to consider harvesting at the same time if you are looking for both exp and ingredients. In particular, the yellow harvesting tool at level 5 provides a much faster harvesting process, and you always get at least one Mushroom Hypha, thus there’s no financial loss compared to the grinding without any harvesting.

If you focus more on harvesting, it is recommended to harvest either mushrooms or moss trees after killing groups of monsters. Mushrooms harvested from the corpses of mushrooms in Polly’s Forest can also be retrieved from mushroom objects in the field. Moreover, the Dried Moss Tree is rarely spawned in the forest, and you can get Dead Tree Essence by chance upon harvesting the tree. This item is the core ingredient for Elixir of Spirit's Fragrance, the new high-tier elixir of the Kamasylvia Part 2, and is thus traded at an extremely high price. Do not miss out and log the tree if you find one.

The view of grinding spots in the Polly’s Forest