A list filled with helpful and (sometimes) niche and obscure beginner and more advanced tips to help you through your Crimson Desert playthrough. Learn about secret tricks and little-known mechanics that will grow your character faster and smoother.
Use the Table of Contents, located in the left panel (top left button on the mobile menu) to navigate through this long guide more easily and quickly.
Early Game
In this segment, we share our key tips and recommendations for every new player who is looking to make their first few hours with the game easier.
Pay a visit to Lioncrest Manor
Lioncrest Manor is close to the Hernand Castle. Inside it, you will find (steal) valuable items, including the Brass Wardens Plate, the Rhonid Large Shield, and a gold bar that can be sold to the bank for 500 Silver.
Craft your own Palmar Pills
Palmar Pills let you revive with 30% of your total health. They are your best friend when it comes to facing difficult situations like bosses, especially when you are limited in terms of gear and learned skills. In order to craft Palmar Pills, you need to get the recipe from a witch who is located in a cave very close to the bridge that you cross the first time you get to Hernand.
The witch does not sell the recipe. It is located on a nearby table. Just take it. This is accessible from the very start, so I suggest you get it as soon as possible.
Pet the dawg
Aside from being very cute, pets automatically loot the enemies you kill. To get a pet, you must earn 100 affection with it. This can be done by petting them and dropping meat in front of them. The better meat you give them, the more affection you get. You can get a pet within two in-game days.
You can only summon one pet at a time, but don’t worry. When they’re not with you, they’ll be hanging out at your camp. There are lots of cats of a wide variety of colors and dogs from different breeds, like Beagles, Shepherds, and Bulldogs. You can have up to 30 pets!
The lantern is your best friend
Your lantern reveals valuable items, walls you can move, points of interest, and clues about how to solve puzzles. Get used to using it as much as possible whenever you enter a new area.
Call for reinforcements
You can summon Damiane to fight alongside you. This should make clearing large groups of enemies a lot easier. However, I’d advise you not to rely too much on her since she is locked away for a considerable amount of time due to reasons related to the main story.
Loot everything
Weapons, shiny minerals, and cool capes are very appealing to get, particularly in the early game. However, you should definitely grab some of the more “boring” stuff, like animals and plants. These items will be needed when you try to craft items.
Sure, getting a few is not a big hassle, but that number will increase the further you are into the game, as the better items require a higher amount of materials. If you already have a pet, it will automatically loot enemies.
Check your Journal
The first hours of Crimson Desert can be very overwhelming with the huge amount of systems, characters, and mechanics that are briefly introduced every few minutes. It’s very easy to miss or forget something useful.
Take the time to learn the structure and information inside it. As you progress, the information will only increase significantly, so it’s better if you get used to it in the first 5-15 hours.
Cook everywhere!
You can use your Blinding Flash to cook your meat. Simply drop the meat on the ground by pressing Discard in your inventory, and then reflect the light into it.
Sell that paper
Recipes and some books become useless after you read them. Sell them to a vendor since they are only occupying space in your inventory. Their content is already stored in your journal. If you are not sure about it being there already, open your inventory and select the document. The phrase “Knowledge acquired” should appear under the description in grey letters.
Don’t fight hungry
The only way to heal during a battle is by consuming food. It’s very important that you have as much food as possible before heading to do a big quest like liberating a Fort or fighting a boss. Every time you return to Hernand, go to the food vendors and then cook as many Grilled Meat and Clear Soup as possible.
Learn skills from NPCs early
As you know, some of the learnable skills can be learned just by observing it. This might not look like much, but any Abyss Artifact you can save for different skills is very helpful in the long run. Head to the training grounds of the Hernand Castle and look at the guards. You will be able to learn the Proficiency skill. You can also do this with the guards at Lioncrest Manor for Counter, and the archer for the Charged Shot.
Make room in your inventory
With the absurd amount of items in the game, it’s easy to end up without any slots in the inventory early on. Storage items that you aren’t going to use at the moment, sell used documents, and cook recipes.
You must increase your inventory’s size by buying small bags from vendors and doing side quests. Some of them are boring, but it’s more than worth it. To see which quests grant Medium Bags, check your Journal. Rewards for each mission appear at the bottom of the description.
You are able to send stuff from your inventory into your personal storage (while in the Graymane camp). Items you did not loot during a mass battle (like liberating a fort or castle) are autmatically sent to your private storage too. This makes things a lot easier, but since the storage room is limited, you still need to manage it efficiently.
Temporary stat boost
Grindstones and Anvils grant stat boosts for a limited time. Use them whenever possible to increase your chance of success. Grindstones increase your weapon’s attack, while the Anvil gives more defense to your armor.
Pinpoint important locations
Use Blinding Flash whenever you are at the top of a mountain or high building to reveal nearby points of interest. This will be especially useful in areas you are visiting for the first time.
Buy the Writ of Absolution
Having a whole region highlighted in red because there is a bounty on your head is annoying to say the least. To remove your bounty, you need to buy the Writ of Absolution. It can be bought at every church. Just keep in mind that the price is equivalent to the bounty.
Try different settings
Crimson Desert offers a wide variety of settings that can be tweaked to your preferences. Some people want better performance over great visuals, others the opposite, and there are also those who like a balance between these aspects.
Don’t be afraid to change the settings and see how it performs. If you don’t like it, simply revert it to the default setting. The game scales relatively well on a wide range of hardware.
Exploration
Pywel is absurdly large and there are secrets within secrets hidden in every cave, ruin, and sometimes they are well hidden right in front of your eyes. Don’t skip on exploration! This is the best part of Crimson Desert.
Identifying Waterfall Caves
If you see a little stacked rock tower in front of a waterfall, that means there’s treasure behind it, and that this is a good place to pass through the waterfall.
There’s usually either a treasure chest with a unique piece of equipment or some rare ore, so it’s always worth checking out.
How to pass through waterfalls
In every other game ever made, waterfalls are nice, warm luxury resort showers you saunter through to find treasure. In Crimson Desert, they’re gushing torrents of violence that will knock you back if you so much as dip your toe in, but there is a way to get through them.
To get through Crimson Desert’s waterfalls, you have to use Stab (RB + Y / R1 + △ / LSHIFT + RMB) right in front of the waterfall and you’ll pass through it, using your blade to part the water.
Bell Towers Reveal the Map
Each city in Pywel has a bell tower. If you climb up and ring it, a massive portion of the map will get revealed.
Eat your Stamina-food
If you ever find yourself climbing or flying and your stamina runs out, look in your inventory for any food that restores stamina. It will immediately refill your stamina, and you can continue with your flight/climb.
Jump high without using Stamina
Use double jump + three Aerial Force Palms to reach a considerable height without using any Stamina. This can be the difference when trying to reach a difficult spot.
Be creative with puzzles
Puzzles are a huge part of Crimson Desert. You will encounter them throughout the main story, as well as on dozens of side quests and ruins across Pywel.
Some are straightforward, while others can take hours to solve. If you get stuck, try doing something different.
Example: Some objects can only be moved by using Stab to insert your blade into what looks like a strange lock.
Use the Abyss to reach places faster
Even with Fast Travel points, it gets tedious having to cover long distances fairly often. To make things more fun (and faster), you can get up to the Abyss, jump, and fly to your destination. Obviously, the more Abyss travel points you have, the more territory you will be able to cover.
Light the braziers to reach the treasure
Braziers are a common indicator that there is something valuable nearby. Many times it is a locked chamber that’s in front of you, but other times it’s not that obvious. Regardless of whether the treasure is visible or not, always light up the braziers.
Take your time to explore
Crimson Desert is absurdly big. You could probably spend hours just going from one edge of the map to the other. At least, with a regular horse*.
It has every environment you could think of and hundreds of secrets. Even the most boring place might have something unique hidden there.
I highly suggest that you go out there and see how many things you can discover. Even if you don’t find a great item, you’ll still enjoy the beautiful views this game has to offer.
Gear and Objects
Making your character more powerful is key to progression. And this aspect of the game is quite complex with several systems working together to form a cohesive progression loop, balancing gear optimization, skill tree development, and stat allocation to ensure your character feels truly unique and powerful.
Upgrade Common Gear
Unless you found a really good one, it’s often better to equip and use the most common gear you find because it’s easy to upgrade. For example, I use the Tarnished Necklace because it drops frequently, so I can use the copies I get to upgrade the one I have equipped.
Abyss Gear and Best Equipment
You can just rip the Abyss Gears (mods) out of the equipment you get and stick them in whatever stuff you actually like (or that has baked-in passives). Focus on creating new slots in that gear rather than everything you come across.
The best equipment has a lot of slots for Abyss Gears and baked-in passives. It also needs to look cool.
Quick timber
Chopping a tree down becomes tedious after doing it for a few minutes. To make things easier, use Force Palm to take it down. Then use Force Palm again to divide it into three pieces.
Return to vendors
Some vendors’ inventories become “outdated” when you have gathered nice gear. You should still return to see if they have something different every now and then.
Example: I went to the blacksmith after progressing the main story, and he could craft me this funny Bunny Mask.
Don’t sell your weapon duplicates
You can upgrade your equipped weapon by using duplicates of it instead of resources. This is a better alternative than selling them for little money.
Resistances only count at specific levels
Elemental resistances only work on multiples of five (5, 10, 15, 20). Example: cold places will still debuff your Stamina if you have 4 or less Ice Resistance. You need to eat food or equip an additional armor piece to reach that minimum threshold of 5. The next images show the difference between me having 3 Ice Resistance versus having 5.
Skills and combat
Gear is half of the equation when it comes to progress. Unlocking new skills and learning new abilities will expand your character’s moveset and arsenal of available combat techniques. Here are tips for speeding up and improving this process.
Using Abyss Artifacts
Focus on spending skill points on talents that only require 1 Abyss Artifact before getting too many that costs 2 or, especially, 3, unless you really want it and use it a lot. You’ll also need to spend Abyss Artifacts for equipment upgrades past +4.
Abyss Artifacts from Combat
There’s a little gold meter that curves around the left side of the minimap in the bottom left of your screen.
The bar fills up as you defeat more enemies, and once it fills up completely, you get an Abyss Artifact!
Use Aerial Maneuver
While Health and Spirit might be more appealing stats for combat, Stamina really shines when exploring the world of Pearl Abyss. Specifically, the Aerial Maneuver skill, which lets you get to higher terrain in a few seconds. I’ve lost count of how many times Kliff has been able to reach points that he normally wouldn’t be able to reach through climbing.
Prioritize your Stamina
This is linked to the previous point. Climbing, gliding, and Aerial Maneuver are key to exploring every corner of this game; you will not be able to reach some points without a good reserve of them. Don’t neglect it over Health or Spirit, at least during the early game.
Hide from your enemies
Crimson Desert has a stealth mechanic that is not explained to the player. You can hide in thick bushes, at the top of a tree, or in anything that can block the view of the enemy. You will know when it happens because the lighting is reduced significantly. This is more visible on the edges of your screen.
Fight smarter, not harder
Taking down a powerful boss has to be one of the most satisfying things in this game. As you progress through the game, you will start noticing that the new bosses can’t be defeated with brute force.
Overaggression and slopiness are punished, and if you have developed the habit of just smashing buttons until the enemy is dead, then you are in for a rude awakening.
Before running into your enemy, take a few minutes to observe it and answer these 5 questions:
- What type of attacks am I against?
- Do I have to worry about the environment?
- Do I have a time window big enough to hit with stronger attacks, or should I prioritize quick strikes?
- Is there an area that I should avoid at all costs?
- Is it better to dodge or block/parry?
With all of this in mind, fighting enemies like Kearush the Slayer will be relatively easy.
Adapt to your enemy
You will inevitably find different enemies. In some cases, you will not be able to defeat them through traditional means. When you are in this position, try looking for something in the environment that can be used in battle or use abilities that aren’t normally used for battle, like Axiom Force.
Activities
When you have had enough of liberating forts and castles, and want a distraction that still yields benefits to your character, check these activity recommendations.
Use Poison Arrows for Hunting
The lingering puddle is enough to kill little critters who walk into it and is far more effective at killing larger beasts. It does not affect meat quality. You can learn how to craft them, but you’ll need to harvest poison from venomous snakes (someone at PA doesn’t know the difference…)
Focus on Efficiency with Cooking
Don’t bother cooking meals that heal for more than your max HP, like if you have 500 HP and you cook a meal that heals for 600 HP, you just wasted ingredients. Likewise, try to clear out as many inventory slots as possible when cooking stuff so you have more space for loot later.
Others
A few random tips that we wanted to share, but could not find a suitable place in the other segments above.
Use Kliff
Damiane and Oonkga are the two other playable characters of Crimson Desert. Sadly, some parts of the story can only be completed with Kliff. The problem is that, aside from Stamina, Health, and Spirit, skill points are not shared between characters.
If you invest everything into Damiane, you will have a hard time when you are forced to play Kliff exclusively during multiple chapters of the story.
Take a break
As fun as it can be, Crimson Desert can also be very frustrating. Puzzles can take hours to figure out on your own, and boss fights can be very challenging if the boss counters your playstyle.
When you start feeling “dumb” or “bad”, just spend some time away from the game. I can’t express how much this helps, not only with Crimson Desert but with challenging games.
