Crimson Desert Tips & Tricks

This page contains Beginner Tips & Tricks for Crimson Desert.

These are all the basics and time-savers you should know before getting started with Crimson Desert.

Basic Must-Know Gameplay Features

• Use Food to Heal: Eating food is how you heal during combat. Raw food ingredients can be cooked at cooking pots and at campfires. Always cook your food ingredients for more health restoration. You can eat food to heal infinitely during combat. Select food by holding D-Pad right, eat by tapping D-Pad Right (on PC hold/click ‘F3’ key).
• Repair your Weapons/Armor: Sharpen Weapons and repair Armor to bring the “Reinforcement” stat to the max (visible when hovering over equipped gear). This can be done at the Grindstone and Anvil in the small bandit camp you visit during Chapter 2 – Main Mission: Trial after Trial. It will increase your Attack/Defense (visible on left side of inventory). Do this before boss fights.
  
• Keep boss weapons: Keep the unique boss weapons, don’t sell/discard them. Some of them have special effects that make them vastly superior to other weapons. Especially good are “Sword of the Lord” (from Boss #2 – Kailok, The Hornsplitter) & “Tauria Curved Sword” (from Boss #6 – Crowcaller). The first is great for quick attacks, the second is great for heavy attacks and crowd control.
• Get Pickaxe & Logging Axe for Ore & Wood: Buy the Pickaxe and Logging Axe from the Provisioner’s Shop in Hernand. You equip them by holding D-Pad Left (‘F3’ on PC). They are used to mine ore at mountains, and to fell trees for Wood. These materials are needed to upgrade your gear. You can also use Force Palm to destroy Ore (R3 / Mouse Wheel on PC), and Turning Slash to fell Trees (R1+R2/RB+RT).
  
• Upgrade your gear: You find a blacksmith in the middle of Hernand town (the starting town from Chapter 1). He’s marked with a “?” icon on the map. The best choice is heavy plate armor for more defense. Leather and linen armor have less defense. There’s no equipment weight so having heavy plate armor doesn’t slow you down. You can buy plate armor from the merchant next to the blacksmith. Then use the smithy to upgrade it as much as possible. All ore comes from using a pickaxe on ore deposits found along mountains. Bones/Hides come from hunting animals. See Upgrade Material Locations.
  
• Expand your inventory: You increase the inventory size by obtaining Small Bags, Medium Bags, Large Bags. They are rewards from faction quests and bought from merchants. In the Faction Quest menu you can see what reward each quest gives. Prioritize quests that give Medium Bags.
• Sheathe your Weapon: Press D-Pad Left (‘T’ on PC) to sheathe your weapon. Many actions can’t be performed while holding a weapon.
• Merchants restock every midnight: When the in-game time hits 0:00 midnight, vendors restock their inventories. Particularly helpful for the butcher to buy more food, and the Provisioner’s Shop/Tannery to buy more crafting materials. You can rest at the cooking pot to the right of the butcher in Hernand to skip time.
• There is no traditional Leveling System: Your stats are determined solely by the upgrade level of your gear and by spending Artifacts (Skill Points) on passive stats. That’s why prioritizing these is important.
• Focus Skill Points & Upgrades on Kliff (Main Character): It’s best to focus all your skill points and gear upgrades on Kliff, the main character. The other characters are unavailable for most of the story, so don’t waste too many resources on them.
• Recipes & Letters can be sold once read: After reading a recipe, it’s permanently learned and there’s no point holding on to it. You can sell them after reading.
• How to Get Money Fast: Picking hundreds of flowers or mining hundreds of high-priced Ores is surprisingly efficient to get rich early on. Get 100 silver coins, then you don’t need to worry about money for a long time. See How to Get Money Fast.
• How to Store Items (Storage Chest): The Storage Chest is unlocked after completing story chapter 3. You find it at the Greymane Camp in Hernand Region, inside the black tent. You can store items from the inventory in it.

Hidden Gameplay Features

• Yellow Bar left of Minimap = Artifact Gauge: The yellow bar left of the HUD fills up when you kill enemies, each time it fills up you get 1 Artifact = 1 Skill Point. This lets you farm Artifacts infinitely. Artifacts are used to buy skills and to craft higher level gear upgrades.
• You can climb great heights using Force Palm: You can use Force Palm (after unlocking it in Chapter 1) in midair 3 times in a row to catapult yourself up high walls. Jump and press R3 (Mouse Wheel on PC) 3 times in a row in to catapult yourself up! You can even combine it with the double jump skill to gain even more height. Using this costs Spirit which you can recharge by pressing L3+R3 (‘X’ key on PC).
• You can heal your horse: Force Palm can be turned into Healing Palm to heal your horse! Hold R3 (Mouse Wheel on PC) and then L3 (“Tab” key on PC). You can see your horse’s health in the inventory screen when it’s nearby.
• Shoot Ore Deposits in high places with Charged Shot or Force Palm: Ore is often high up on walls where you can’t use the pickaxe. Buy the “Charged Shot” (blue skill), press R2/RT while aiming to charge a shot. You can also climb to the ore and destroy it with Force Palm (R3/Right Stick).
• Don’t fall down when using Force Palm on Walls: You will often need to punch objects or ores on walls while hanging onto them. Hold L2/LT/Q to ‘Resist’ while hanging onto walls so you don’t get pushed back when using Force Palm.
• You can get pets: Once you reach 100 trust with an animal it will follow you around and loot enemies automatically. You can repeatedly pet the same dog/cat in towns for 25 trust per in-game day. Do this daily until 100 trust is reached (you need 30 unique pets for a life challenge). You can speed it up by dropping them food. Dogs especially like Small Bones (obtained from hunting) which can be dropped 3 times in a row for 75 trust, then pet the dog 3 times to reach 100 trust instantly in one day. Cats like Grilled Fish/Meat for 20 Trust which you can drop them 3 times in a row.

Open World Tricks

• There’s a Hidden Way to Unfog the entire Map: There are 8 bells hidden in the world. Ringing them unfogs the region around them. By ringing all 8 bells you will automatically unfog the whole map. They aren’t marked on the map. See Bell Locations.
• There’s Semi-Hidden Fast Travel – investigate the white “?” areas: In the open world you will find pressure plates on the floor, standing on them for a few seconds activates a fast travel point. They are indicated by white question mark search areas on the map (“?” icons). Use the sword’s Guiding Light ability with L1+R1 / LB+RB / CTRL + Left Click to mark these with a blue glint when nearby. Combine it with ringing all bells, then you have fast travel available in every region. Activated fast travel points have blue icons on the map and are used from the map screen. See All Fast Travel Locations.
• Hernand Fast Travel: Activate the fast travel point in the middle of Hernand town as soon as possible, you travel back and forth from there a lot.
  
• Unlock Challenges early from Sealed Abyss Artifacts: Challenges are unlocked by collecting Sealed Abyss Artifacts. They aren’t marked on the map, but just like fast travel points they have a blue glint when using the sword’s Guiding Light ability. They are found along roads. All challenges are required for trophies/achievements, and you also get a skill point from each. Challenge progress only counts AFTER collecting the Sealed Abyss Artifact (they DON’T count retroactively), which is why you should get them early. See Sealed Abyss Artifact Locations.
• You can skydive from sky islands: On the map press R3 (On PC press Mouse Wheel) to view the sky map. Can dive down from the nearest fast travel point in the sky to reach any nearby point on the ground quickly. This is faster than riding/walking and is great to reach frequently visited locations that don’t have fast travel on the ground.

Combat

• Always Bring 100+ Grilled Meat to Boss Fights: Buy the cheapest “Tough Meat” from the butcher in Hernand and cook the cheapest Grilled Meat that restores 140 health. The meat vendor restocks every midnight at 0:00 ingame time. You can also get meat by hunting animals in the woods, especially groups of deer (each animal gives 3-4 meat). Bring 100+ Grilled Meat to difficult boss fights to heal constantly.
   
• Universal boss strategy: The bosses are designed in a way that you WILL take damage and the difficulty depends on how much meat/healing items you brought. You’ll want to heal WHILE attacking with R1/RB quick attacks, or if at low health keep dodging while you heal back to full health. You can eat a meat every 2 seconds, infinitely. You can tank through any incoming damage by healing while you attack. Also spend time early on to upgrade your gear which makes everything easier.
• For bosses that use blockable attacks (typically humans): You’ll want to parry with L1/LB to interrupt their attack, then follow up with a quick R1/RB combo.
• For bosses that use shields/block: You’ll want to use R2/RT heavy attacks to break their guard. Note that heavy attacks consume stamina and light attacks do not.
• For bosses that use unblockable attacks (typically monsters): You’ll want to dodge the attacks, after the boss misses a combo you have a brief moment to land some hits, rinse and repeat.
• Recommended Skills: Start out by reaching Health Level 4 & Stamina Level 4. The stat upgrades carry over to all playable characters. Then buy Kliff’s skill “Nature’s Echo” (green skill tree), it duplicates your heavy attacks. This is especially powerful in combination with Tauria’s Curved Sword, which you get from Boss #6 – Crowcaller. It requires buying all 3 Forward Slash skills (blue) & all 3 Keen Senses skills (green).

More Guides:

• Crimson Desert Wiki
• Walkthrough
• Boss Guide – All Bosses
• Challenges
• Crafting Materials
• Fast Travel Points
• Bells (Unfog Map)
• Sealed Abyss Artifacts (Challenge Unlocks)
• World Map
• How To Get Money Fast
• How To Sheathe Weapon
• How to Get Food Healing Items & Grilled Meat
• How To Skip Time & Sleep
• How to Upgrade Weapons/Armor
• How To Tame Horses
• How to Increase Inventory Size