Black Desert Online is notoriously complex making it difficult for new comers to the game to understand. I sought to solve this problem by creating a tool that would help guide users to better understand the game - a gaming buddy you might say.


What to build was the key question. To get a wholistic perspective and understand the appetite for an AI tool, I researched what AI tools were already doing in this space and conducted some guerrilla research on Reddit. With 25,000 views within the first week, I knew I had something worth pursuing.

With clarity around players wanting an AI gaming companion, the next question became how I might create a tool that was more helpful than the other generative AI tools out there.

A core pain point for many users was that other AI tools had outdated and inaccurate guidance because they didn’t have context about new updates. This was the main pain point to solve. How might I create an AI model that was trained off of the latest updates without the necessary resources to create my own LLM.

After extensive research into the space, I discovered Retrieval Augmented Generation(a.k.a. RAG). RAG would allow me to have an external database housing updated information about the game and retrieve documents to inform the responses from the LLM.

Now that I knew it was technically feasible, I dove into considering what the designs would look like.

The site went through many iterations before I landed on a shippable candidate. I also had a healthy base of beta customers that would be able to test the prototype that I had put together earlier so I had people testing that as I continued to refine the behavior of the site along.

Having increased the NPS score of testers from 6.2 to 9.1 doing weekly updates and surveys, I was ready to release the site.

On November 24th, I launched the full release of the site. Within a 2 hours we had 100 people visit the site and ask BDO Buddy a question.

As of right now, the site gets a few hundred visitors every month.

The work that goes into creating a successful product is immense, and being a solo founder, really taught me the value of each component in a product. From marketing to community engagement to product teams, everyone plays an integral role in the success of the product.

The constraints of LLMs became readily apparent as context windows and cost efficiency became core parts of the later pieces of this project.

This project taught me a considerable amount about React, creating frictionless user experiences, and designing an interface around an API.