Overview
Crafting in Crimson Desert is tied to exploration. You find blueprints in the world, gather materials, and build gear. Producer Will Powers was specific about what this is not: "It is not a Diablo-style loot game where you're getting different rolls off of enemies."
Instead, gear comes from deliberate sources. You find a blueprint in a dungeon. You mine copper from a hillside deposit. You bring both to a crafting station and make the weapon. That loop, combined with boss drops and quest rewards, is how you acquire equipment.
How gear acquisition works
Will Powers listed the main ways to get gear in his Save State interview:
Blueprints Found throughout the world. These are crafting recipes that you discover through exploration, hidden passages, and dungeon chests.
Boss drops Defeated bosses drop specific armor, weapons, or abilities tied to that encounter. Not random rolls.
Hidden chests "You went into a fort and found a hidden passage within a dungeon and there was a hidden chest that had this specific weapon or armor piece."
Quest rewards "You did an entire quest line and that was your reward from the lord of that house at the end of it."
Merchants Buy gear from vendors in towns and liberated settlements. Faction reputation unlocks additional vendors.
Because gear determines your power level (see Skill Trees), these acquisition methods are the primary way you get stronger. Powers said it clearly: "Your power level is gear based... gear is a very important thing in terms of how you stack up against the difficulty."
Resource gathering
Gathering starts manual. Early in the game, you pick up individual pieces of wood or gather lavender with Hubert during a story quest. As you progress, you unlock ways to collect resources in bulk.
Gathering activities include:
Mining Ore deposits are found in hillsides throughout Pywel. Will Powers described a typical play session where he set out to find copper deposits in a hillside to upgrade a weapon.
Herbalism Picking flowers and gathering plants. Powers joked about "the alchemy route" as a valid play style, which suggests plant-based crafting feeds into alchemy.
Hunting Wildlife provides meat for cooking and materials for gear crafting.
Different regions of Pywel offer different materials. The five regions each have their own landscapes and ecosystems, so a resource common in Hernand's mountains may not appear in the Crimson Desert's arid wastes.
Equipment crafting
Crafting covers both weapons and armor. The system uses blueprints as recipes and gathered materials as inputs. There is a gear rarity system, though the specific tiers have not been detailed. You can also customize the appearance of unique gear. See Weapons & Equipment and Armor Sets for equipment details.
Alchemy
Alchemy lets players imbue weapons with additional abilities. Will Powers listed alchemy as a distinct play-style route alongside combat and stealth specialization. The specific recipes and effects have not been fully detailed yet.
Cooking
Cooking uses ingredients gathered from herbalism and hunting. Food items likely provide buffs. The cooking system is part of a broader set of life skills that also includes fishing, horse taming, and trading.
Camp construction
The Greymanes are rebuilding a camp after losing their homeland. Will Powers mentioned that this requires "a lot of resources" and that liberating territory and aligning with factions unlocks resource nodes to support the rebuild. It is not clear yet whether camp construction is a full building system or a story-driven progression mechanic.