Essential Tips and Tricks

Overview

Crimson Desert is a sprawling open-world action RPG with dozens of interconnected systems that are never fully explained by the game itself. Whether you are just stepping into the continent of Pywel for the first time or already deep into the mid-game chapters, these tips and tricks will help you make the most of every mechanic at your disposal. This article complements the Beginner's Guide by focusing on specific, actionable advice rather than broad overviews.

Inventory Management

There are no storage boxes or banks for general items in Crimson Desert. Everything you pick up has to be carried on your person, which means your limited starting inventory fills up fast. Managing that space is one of the most important habits you can build early on.

Expanding Your Inventory

You gain permanent inventory slots by completing certain quests, particularly Hernand Commission quests. Each completed commission typically rewards a few extra slots. You can also buy individual inventory slots from vendors for 50 copper each. Medium Bag quest rewards are especially valuable, so prioritize quests that offer bag upgrades whenever they appear on a job board.

Keeping Your Bags Clean

• Sell read documents and books. Once you have read a document, it no longer serves any gameplay purpose. Selling it frees up a slot and earns you a little copper.

• Open currency pouches immediately. Pouches of copper you pick up in the world do not automatically add coins to your wallet. You need to go into your inventory and "use" them. Doing so adds the coins and frees the inventory slot.

• Use the sort feature. Pressing the sort button in your inventory groups items by type, making it much easier to spot duplicates and junk you can safely sell.

• Sell recipe scrolls after reading. Recipes are permanently learned once read. The scroll itself can then be sold for extra silver.

Equipment Refinement

Crimson Desert has no traditional character leveling system. Your combat stats are determined almost entirely by the upgrade level of your gear and by spending Abyss Artifacts on passive stats. This means that if you are struggling with a boss or a region of enemies, the single most impactful thing you can do is visit the blacksmith and refine your equipment.

How Refinement Works

At the blacksmith in Hernand Town (or any other major settlement), select an equipped weapon or armor piece and choose to refine it. Each refinement level increases the item's Attack or Defense stat. Early refinement levels cost only copper ore and iron ore, both of which are abundant across the Hernand region. Higher levels also require bones, hides, and rarer materials.

Refinement Tips

• Refine your default weapons first. Your starting weapons cannot be sold and are always available, so upgrading them early is never a waste.

• Use grindstones and anvils before boss fights. Interacting with these environmental objects maximizes the "Reinforcement" stat on your currently equipped items, giving you a temporary edge in Attack and Defense.

• Keep unique boss weapons. Drops from major bosses often have unique movesets. For example, the Sword of the Lord from Kailok is excellent for fast attacks, while the Tauria Curved Sword from the Crowcaller shines in heavy attacks and crowd control.

Skill Tree and Abyss Artifacts

Abyss Artifacts serve as the game's skill points. You earn them by defeating enemies (filling the yellow Artifact Gauge on your HUD), completing quests, winning boss battles, and discovering hidden locations. Because the Artifact Gauge can be filled infinitely by fighting enemies, you are never permanently locked out of any skill.

Early Priorities

• Raise Health and Stamina to level 4 or 5 first. Higher Health helps you survive heavy boss hits, while higher Stamina gives you more dodges, swings, and exploration actions like gliding, swimming, and climbing.

• Invest in Kliff. Kliff is your primary character for the vast majority of the game. Focus all skill points and upgrades on him before branching out to Damiane or Oongka.

• Unlock core combat skills early. Basic dodge upgrades and your primary weapon's combo extensions should take priority over flashy abilities.

• Save some Artifacts in reserve. Certain skills require you to observe an NPC performing the technique before the skill can be unlocked. You cannot brute-force a skill you have not observed, so keep a few Artifacts aside for newly discovered moves.

Resetting Skills

Skills can be reset at any time using Faded Abyss Artifacts. This lets you experiment freely with different builds without permanent consequences.

Bell Towers and Unfogging the Map

The world map of Pywel starts almost entirely covered in fog of war. There are 8 Bell Towers hidden across the continent. Climbing to the top of each tower and ringing its bell triggers a panoramic camera sweep and summons a Shai child who magically clears the fog for the surrounding region. Ringing all 8 bells unfogs the entire world map automatically.

This should be one of your highest priorities whenever you enter a new region. An unfogged map reveals roads, topography, points of interest, and Mysterious Energy zones, making navigation significantly easier and preventing you from wandering into areas you are not prepared for.

Fast Travel

Fast travel in Crimson Desert requires activating Abyss Nexus and Abyss Cresset points scattered across the map. The large question-mark circles on your map often hide one of these two types of fast travel locations.

Activating Fast Travel Points

• Abyss Nexus: Look for ruins that seem out of place. Step on the pressure plate on the floor and hold your position for a few seconds to activate the fast travel point.

• Abyss Cresset: These are smaller waypoints often found near roads and points of interest.

• Guiding Light: Your sword's Guiding Light ability (L1+R1 on controller) marks nearby fast travel points with blue glints, making them easier to spot in the field.

Fast Travel Tips

• Dismount before teleporting. You cannot fast travel while mounted. Get off your horse first.

• Activate the Hernand fast travel point immediately. The Abyss Nexus north of Hernand is a location you will return to constantly. Activate it as soon as possible.

• Activate the Greymane Camp waypoint. After Chapter 4, when you obtain Focus Force Palm, head to Karin Quarry to grab the Transporter and activate the fast travel point near your camp.

• Use the sky map. Press R3 to access the sky map and skydive between locations. This is sometimes faster than traditional fast travel for nearby destinations.

Crime System

Crimson Desert has a detailed crime and bounty system that punishes theft, assault, and murder. Understanding how it works can save you from serious setbacks.

How Crime Works

When you commit a crime, you immediately lose Contribution points for that region, regardless of whether anyone sees you. A red zone also appears around your character. If any NPC spots you within that red zone, your crime is reported and you receive a bounty. More severe crimes generate higher bounties.

Bounties and Jail

If your bounty climbs high enough, guards will actively pursue you. If a guard tackles you to the ground, a quick-time event triggers where you must time button presses precisely to break free. Failing the QTE results in Kliff being knocked unconscious and thrown in jail. Upon release, your bounty is forcibly deducted from your wallet, and you suffer a significant overall penalty.

Staying out of Trouble

• Avoid crime in regions where you are building Contribution. The Contribution loss from criminal activity directly reduces the points you can spend at the Contribution Shop.

• Wear a mask before stealing. Masks conceal your identity and prevent your reputation from being permanently damaged. You can obtain masks from bandits or black market vendors.

• Do not commit crime early. Getting jailed in the early game is devastating because you likely lack the silver to cover the fines, and the Contribution loss is hard to recover.

Contribution Shop

The Contribution Shop is a special vendor found in Hernand Castle and other major settlements. It sells exclusive gear and items that can only be purchased with Contribution points, not silver or copper.

Earning Contribution

You earn Contribution by doing good deeds and completing tasks for the community in each region. This includes finishing quests and bounties, fulfilling request board commissions, and performing small acts of kindness like giving money to beggars. Almost everything you do that helps a community raises your Contribution for that area.

Spending Contribution

The Contribution Shop stocks armor, accessories, and other useful items that are often better than what regular merchants offer at the same stage of the game. Check the shop's inventory whenever your Contribution rank increases, as new items unlock at higher ranks. Prioritize spending on gear upgrades that complement your current build.

Food and Cooking

There are no traditional healing potions in Crimson Desert. Food is your primary means of restoring health, and you can eat during combat. Hold D-pad Right (or F3 on keyboard) to open the consumable wheel and tap it to eat the selected food. This means carrying a large stock of cooked meals is essential for surviving boss fights and dungeon runs.

Best Early Food

The most cost-effective early food is Hearty Grilled Meat. To make it, buy Tough Meat from the butcher in Hernand (it is very cheap), then use any Bonfire and Cooking Pot to cook it. Hearty Grilled Meat restores over 200 health per serving and costs almost nothing to produce in bulk. Aim to carry at least 100 portions before any major boss encounter.

Cooking Tips

• Always cook raw food before eating it. Cooked food provides significantly more healing than raw ingredients, and cooking is free.

• Merchants restock at midnight. When the in-game clock hits 0:00, vendor inventories reset. You can rest at cooking pots to advance time and restock vendors.

• Cooking buffs matter. Certain meals temporarily increase your stamina cap or speed up stamina recovery. Cook buffing food before tackling difficult encounters.

• Fish for ingredients and silver. Fishing restores Stamina and HP while providing ingredients that cook into high-value meals you can sell for a good price.

Lantern Usage

The lantern is a simple tool that many players overlook, but it has several important uses beyond lighting dark areas. Hold the lantern button to pull it out, and it will highlight interactive objects in your environment, including collectibles, hidden items, and lootable containers that you might otherwise walk past.

• Spotting steal targets: While holding the lantern, characters carrying valuables will have their purses glow gold, letting you identify worthwhile pickpocket targets.

• Finding hidden loot: The lantern reveals chest and shelf interaction prompts that are not visible without it. If you see a container in a building, hold out the lantern to check if you can loot it.

• Abyss discovery: The lantern can highlight certain Abyss-related objects and environmental clues that are otherwise invisible.

Character Switching: Damiane and Oongka

Crimson Desert has three playable characters: Kliff (your main protagonist), Damiane (unlocked in Chapter 3), and Oongka (unlocked after Chapter 7). Each character has their own combat style, skill tree, and set of abilities.

How to Switch

Press F1 on keyboard or hold Up on the D-pad to open the character wheel. Move the cursor to the character you want and select them. The camera zooms out and swaps to the chosen character at their current location, similar to how character switching works in GTA V.

Unlock Details

Switching Tips

• Focus upgrades on Kliff first. He is your primary character for most of the game. Other characters become more important later.

• Experiment with different playstyles. Each character handles differently. Switching mid-exploration lets you approach combat encounters from a fresh angle.

• Check quest availability. Some quests and interactions are character-specific. Switching characters in a town may reveal new dialogue options or side quests.

Pet System

Stray dogs and cats found throughout Pywel can be tamed as pets. Once tamed, a pet follows you everywhere, including into battle, and automatically loots defeated enemies on your behalf. This saves a significant amount of time when clearing bandit camps and enemy encounters.

How to Tame a Pet

• Build trust by petting. Approach a stray animal and pet it. Each interaction grants 25 trust points per in-game day.

• Reach 100 trust to tame. Once you hit 100 trust with an animal, it becomes your companion and starts following you.

• Pet daily. Return to the same animal each in-game day to keep building trust. It takes a minimum of four in-game days to fully tame one animal.

There is a challenge that requires collecting 30 unique pets, so consider taming animals whenever you encounter them during your travels.

Horse Catching and Taming

Your first horse is obtained through the story when you visit Deepfog Basin early in the game. After that, you can catch and tame wild horses found running through open fields and riverbanks, particularly east and south of Hernand.

The Taming Minigame

When you mount a wild horse, a taming minigame begins. The horse will buck and spin, and you must counter its movements by pulling the left stick in the opposite direction. If the horse pulls forward, you pull back; if it pulls left, you pull right. A yellow circle gradually fills as you maintain control. When the circle fills completely, the horse is tamed. The catch is that you must succeed before your stamina runs out, because getting bucked off means you failed. You cannot eat food while taming a horse, so stamina-boosting meals need to be consumed beforehand.

Horse Taming Tips

• Keep your camera behind the horse. Keeping the camera locked onto the horse's tail makes it easier to read its movements and react quickly.

• Have at least Stamina level 6 for legendary horses. Legendary horses buck harder and drain your stamina much faster than regular wild horses. High stamina is essential.

• Wear heat-resistant clothes for Camora. The red legendary horse Camora is found in a hot region. Heat-resistant gear reduces stamina drain from the environment, giving you more stamina to spend on the taming minigame itself.

• Heal your horse with Healing Palm. Convert Force Palm into Healing Palm by holding R3 then pressing L3 (Tab on PC). You can monitor your horse's health from the inventory screen.

Combat Tips

Master Perfect Parry and Dodge

Button mashing does not work in Crimson Desert. Enemies have shields, super-armor attacks, and unblockable moves. Learning the timing for perfect parries and perfect dodges is mandatory. A perfect dodge, timed at the exact moment an attack lands, actually restores a small amount of stamina instead of consuming it. A successful parry negates all damage and staggers the enemy, opening them to a counterattack.

Recognize Super Armor

When an enemy attack produces a blue splash effect, that means the attack has super-armor properties and cannot be interrupted by normal strikes. Counter these attacks with super armor-breaking abilities or simply dodge out of the way.

Use Bleed and Stabs Early

Stab attacks inflict bleed damage, which is one of the most effective damage-over-time strategies in the early game. Incorporate stabs into your combos to steadily chip away at enemy health pools.

Palmar Pills for Tough Bosses

Craft Palmar Pills from basic alchemy materials (water and insects). When consumed during a fight, a Palmar Pill allows you to revive with 30% of your HP if you are knocked out, preventing you from having to restart a multi-phase boss encounter from the beginning. The recipe is found at Shadow's Whisper Cave in northern Hernand.

Exploration Tips

Do Not Over-Explore Too Early

Many important mechanics and traversal abilities, including Focus Palm Force and Flight, are only unlocked by progressing through the main story. If you branch off to explore side content too early, you will run into areas and puzzles you simply cannot complete yet. The recommended point to start exploring freely is after finishing Chapter 3, when the foundations of the Greymane Camp are established and your core abilities are available.

Collect Sealed Abyss Artifacts Early

Sealed Abyss Artifacts are collectibles found along roads and near points of interest. Your sword's Guiding Light ability marks them with a blue glint. Collecting these artifacts unlocks challenges and grants skill points. The critical detail is that challenge progress only counts after you have collected the corresponding Sealed Abyss Artifact. Progress does not count retroactively, so pick them up as soon as you find them.

Watch Your Fall Damage

Gravity in Crimson Desert is realistic and lethal. Always reserve some stamina for gliding before hitting the ground. If you are free-falling, dip in and out of your glide by canceling it briefly to let stamina regenerate, then resuming the glide before impact. As a backup, horses ignore fall damage entirely, so mounting up before a big drop can save your life.

Loot the Witch of Wisdom Sanctums Early

Three Witch of Wisdom Sanctums in the Hernand area contain chests with high-quality Abyss Gear. The enemies inside these sanctums only spawn once their respective questline is active, so you can loot the chests safely by visiting before you start the questline.

Resource Gathering Tips

Get Your Gathering Tools

Purchase a pickaxe and logging axe from the Provisioner's Shop in Hernand. Equip them via D-pad Left to mine ore deposits and fell trees for crafting materials. Alternatively, you can use Force Palm (R3) to destroy ore deposits or Turning Slash (R1+R2) to fell trees if you do not have the tools handy.

Complete the Mining Knuckledrill Quest

Complete House Roberts's questline, starting with the "Troubled Count" quest, to earn the Mining Knuckledrill. This tool is required for extracting ore from deposits. Without it, you cannot mine the materials needed for weapon and armor refinements.

Visit the Hernand Highlands Cavern

Located southeast of Greymane Camp in the Howling Hill area, this cavern allows you to mine diamonds from the very start of the game. Diamonds are a key material for crafting Abyss Gear, making this an extremely valuable early stop.

Merchant and Economy Tips

• Vendors restock at midnight. When the in-game clock reaches 0:00, all merchant inventories reset. Rest at a cooking pot to skip time quickly.

• Collect bounties for silver. Apprehending bounty targets marked on your map is one of the easiest and most reliable ways to earn silver.

• Buy ore from weapon merchants. If you need copper or iron ore for refinements, weapon merchants in Hernand sell both at reasonable prices.

• Check the supply chest at camp. Items you miss during exploration are automatically sent to the supply chest at Greymane Camp. Check it periodically to avoid losing loot.

Miscellaneous Quick Tips

• Sheathe your weapon to interact. Many actions require you to have your weapon put away. Press D-pad Left (T on PC) to sheathe or unsheathe your weapon.

• Enemies can disarm you. If an enemy knocks your weapon out of your hands, you can pick it back up mid-fight. Do not panic.

• Use the Knowledge System menu. This menu tracks everything you have observed, including people, territories, creatures, and lore. Check it regularly to monitor your progress.

• Talk to tavern NPCs for rumors. Some rumors lead to valuable side quests, hidden locations, and unique rewards.

• Grab every quest from job boards. When you enter a new region, visit the local job board immediately and accept every faction quest and request available. The game rewards this MMO-style approach to questing.

• There is no difficulty setting. If a boss is too hard, leave and explore elsewhere to collect more Abyss Artifacts and refine your gear, then return later.

• Use targeted aiming (LB) in crowds. Pressing the left bumper locks your focus onto a specific NPC, item, or enemy. This prevents accidentally stealing from a merchant or targeting the wrong foe in a crowded fight.

• Equipment has no weight penalty. Heavy plate armor does not slow you down. Always equip the highest-defense gear you have available without worrying about weight.