Crimson Desert Abyss Gears Guide: Types, Tiers, and Sources

Everything you need to know about Abyss Gears in Crimson Desert, including socketing, embedding restrictions and strategies, Witchcraft, tiers, and where to find them.

Gear Normalization

Equipment (armor, weapons, and accessories) offers mostly the same stats with just a few small variations regardless of when you get them.

This fixes the problem where everyone looks the same at every point in the game with optimal gear and eliminates much of the need for a transmog system.

However, it also makes finding new gear and optimizing stats less exciting. Who cares if you get a new armor piece if it’s not better than what you’re currently wearing? If you don’t care about fashion, then yeah, finding new equipment is pointless.

That’s where Abyss Gears come in. Abyss Gears are the main way to customize your gear and enables new equipment to have unique, modular effects, but if you don’t like the appearance, that modularity means you can rip out the unique effect and stick it in your current armor.

Sockets on Gear Pieces

Each type of equipment has a standard number of sockets (slots) for Abyss Gears as shown in the table below.

Sometimes, these sockets are locked and you have to pay a witch some silver to unlock them. Each socket you unlock on a given piece of equipment gets progressively more expensive (i.e. the last socket costs more to unlock than the first).

Equipment that you find with some Abyss Gears embedded are nice not only because you get free Abyss Gears but also because those sockets are pre-unlocked.

Abyss Gear Types and Restrictions

Abyss Gears always have restrictions on the types of equipment they can be socketed into, and these restrictions are based on the kinds of effects the specific Abyss Gear provides. Effects are only active while the socketed equipment is in use and only applies to said equipment.

Weapon Skills

Weapon Skills always enhance a specific button input used by a specific weapon type. For example, an Abyss Gear might make it so your Stab attack (RB + Y | R1 + △ | LSHIFT + RMB) does some extra bit of damage with its own VFX, like Piercing Bloom.

These are always one-of-a-kind and usually drop from weapons with lore and appearance that match the VFX, like the Crowcaller’s sword, Tauria Curved Sword, comes with an Abyss Gear called Crow Pursuit for those of you who want to channel your inner Alfred Hitchcock and conjure crows with each heavy attack.

They are only ever restricted to whatever weapon types can do the associated attack type. For example, you can’t Stab with a Bow or Unarmed, so Piercing Bloom can only go on Melee Weapons.

Weapon Skill Abyss Gears are the most particular about the types of equipment you can socket them into and provide the greatest boost, so prioritize embedding them before everything else.

We recommend specializing or diversifying your abyss gear installations by buffing single specific attacks with multiple Abyss Gears that work on the same attack type or embedding one for each type of attack.

You might want to specialize a Two-Handed Spear or Rapier to have only Abyss Gears that add effects to Stab, or perhaps an Axe or Mace with Abyss Gears that add effects to the Heavy Attack.

You could instead diversify a Sword, so you have one Abyss Gear that buffs the Stab, another that buffs the Heavy Attack, and one that buffs the Spinning Slash.

Which approach you choose depends on your available Gears and whether you value seeing the heaviest hit possible or general versatility.

Stat Boosts

Stat Boosts are generic buffs that come in offensive, defensive, and non-combat flavors. You can embed offensive boosts in all Weapons, Gloves, and Footwear, whereas you can embed defensive and non-combat boosts on Armor and Shields.

Offensive buffs include things that buff raw Attack, Attack Speed, or increase damage against specific enemy types. Defensive buffs boost Defense, Damage Reduction, and Elemental Resistance.

You can enlist the help of a Witch to craft and synthesize upgrades for these kinds of Abyss Gears, assuming you have the Recipe. Each Witch sells a couple of recipes for specific Gears.

Since they are more generic, stat boosting Abyss Gears are necessarily weaker than the unique effects from other categories.

Non-Combat Boosts

Non-Combat boosts improve things like climb or swim speed, increase yields for gathering materials, or accelerate the rate at which you earn EXP/Trust.

In their current form, I don’t believe that utility boosts are worth using, at least not on a “main” set for combat. Stick to offensive and defensive buffs and prioritize using non-Combat boosts for Synthesis.

Unfortunately, the devs opted to make what could have been unique non-combat Abyss Gears as permanent effects on specific non-upgradeable pieces of gear. They also don’t let you embed boosts to material yields into the superior gathering tools, like the Mining Drill and Chainsaw.

These restrictions make it pointless to spend money unlocking and embedding Abyss Gears in superior tools.

Passive Effects

You can only embed Abyss Gears with Passive Effects can only in Armor and come in both unique and generic flavors.

Unique passives tend to buff the raw damage dealt by a specific attack, like +35% Turning Slash damage, or add additional components to elemental attacks. Since sockets are limited, we recommend specializing gears that buff only a single element.

Generic passives offer regeneration for health, spirit, or stamina. These blur the line between the stat and passive distinction being made here, as they are generic and upgradeable.

Socketing Priority and Tips

Socketing Abyss Gears is a lot like making change (with physical money) where you do larger denominations first. Start with socketing the most restrictive and most powerful Abyss Gears, then fill in the gaps with the weaker, generic effects.

1. Unique Weapon Skills and Passive Effects
2. Generic Passive Effects
3. Generic Stat Boosts

If an Abyss Gear can slot into any Armor, don’t prioritize putting it in Headgear or chest Armor so you can reserve space for Glove or Footwear-only gears. Don’t feel obligated to embed Glove or Footwear-only Gears in said pieces, though.

Be thoughtful of both literal and figurative overkill. Enemies only have so much health. You don’t need to stack 5 effects that boost your Stab attack on one weapon if most enemies wouldn’t survive the damage from 3. Many stats have caps as well, which you can see on the Inventory > Status screen.

Tiers and Witches

Generic Abyss Gears come in 4 tiers I, II, III, and Greater. The higher the tier, the stronger the effect. Greater Abyss Gears are much stronger than the other Tiers but they have durability and break after a certain amount of use.

Since they’re rare and destructible, we recommend saving Greater Abyss Gears for Overwhelming Beings, like Ator, the Archon of Antumbra, or Beloth, the Darksworn.

There is a Witch in each region that can help you change out your Abyss Gears. It costs money to unlock sockets in a given piece of equipment, but it is free to move them around and craft them.

Since it’s free, if you’re short on storage, you can socket Abyss Gears into unused equipment and store 3-5 Gears per piece of gear. Yes, I worded it that way on purpose.

Crafting and Recipes

Witches can craft tier I Abyss Gears for you if you give them the requisite materials and know the recipe. There’s no improvisation with Abyss Gear crafting, so you have to obtain the recipe.

You can find Abyss Gear recipes out in the field or get them as quest rewards, but the more reliable way is to buy them from the Witches. Each Witch sells a select few recipes around a specific theme, along with Alchemy recipes and an Abyss Artifact.

Icon	Recipe	Witch Name	Region
	Vigor I	Elowen, the Red Witch of Wisdom	Hernand
	Vitality I	Elowen, the Red Witch of Wisdom	Hernand
	Composure I	Elowen, the Red Witch of Wisdom	Hernand
	Fortification I	Lyselia, the Green Witch of Humility	Demeniss
	Aegis I	Lyselia, the Green Witch of Humility	Demeniss
	Fortitude I	Lyselia, the Green Witch of Humility	Demeniss
	Haste I	Bari, the Blue Witch of Kindness	Pailune
	Swift I	Bari, the Blue Witch of Kindness	Pailune
	Ascent I	Bari, the Blue Witch of Kindness	Pailune
	Destruction I	Areciel, the Brown Witch of Strength	Crimson Desert
	Insight I	Areciel, the Brown Witch of Strength	Crimson Desert

Synthesis

Once you have the recipe, you can conduct Synthesis between 2 Abyss Gears of the same name and tier to combine them into one of the next tier. For example, if you have the recipe for Haste, you can combine Haste I x2 into 1 Haste II x1. It’s always better to do this if you can rather than waste space in your inventory.

Special Synthesis (Fusion)

Special Synthesis allows you to combine 2 Abyss Gears of the same tier and arbitrary category to get a new one.

The first Abyss Gear is all the ones that the Witches can teach you to craft, along with the Elemental Resistance “Ward” Gears, Surge, and Ascent. The second Abyss Gear is all recipes you can’t learn from the Witches, including the Banes, Crit vs Armor, EXP/Trust/Yield boosts, and a few orphan generics.

I prioritize fusing non-combat and situational Abyss Gears because I don’t have a gathering set and prefer consistency and reliability in combat. The only “Bane” I keep is Bloodbane, which works against Humanoids, the most numerous enemy type in the game by far.

Tier I Fusion

Tier I Fusion allows you to reroll 2 Tier II Abyss Gears into a single random Tier I, II, or Greater Abyss Gear. The chance at getting an upgrade (Tier II or Greater) is the same as the chance of getting a Tier I, so it is very worthwhile to reroll Tier I’s you don’t plan to use or can’t Synthesize yet.

Tier II Fusion

Tier II Fusion allows you to reroll 2 Tier II Abyss Gears into a single random Tier II, III, or Greater Abyss Gear. The chance at getting an upgrade (Tier III or Greater) is the same as the chance of getting a Tier II, so it is very worthwhile to reroll Tier II’s you don’t plan to use or can’t Synthesize yet.

Tier III Fusion

Since Tier III is the highest you can go for normal use, Tier III Fusion is really just for rerolling Abyss Gears you happen to get and know you’ll never use. Keep in mind that you can also just sell these if you’re short on cash.

Do not use Tier III Fusion to get Greater Abyss Gears, the chance to get one is not higher than it is for Tier I and II Fusion but the opportunity cost is much higher since Tier III’s are more valuable.

Abyss Gear Sources

The main source of Abyss Gears is in unique weapons and armor you find in the world or get as quest rewards. Typically, they are associated with boss fights.

You can also find Abyss Gears in treasure chests in the Abyss. These tend to have Banes and such from the list of Gears that Witches don’t teach you how to craft.

Many Back Alley Shops also sell a unique Abyss Gear for a pretty penny, so it’s always worth checking out what they have in store.

If you want your character to look stylish while wearing the best Abyss Gear, check out what unique armor sets and fitting weapons are available in Crimson Desert.