Crimson Desert Trophy Guide & Roadmap

March 19, 2026 by PowerPyx 103 Comments

Crimson Desert Trophy Roadmap

Estimated trophy difficulty: 7/10 (some difficult bosses, many puzzles, lots of challenges, minigames)
Approximate amount of time to platinum: 200-300+ hours (lengthy story, many time-consuming challenges, huge map, lots of side content)
Offline Trophies: 35 (1, 4, 10, 20)
Online Trophies: 0
Number of missable trophies: Currently 5 because of missable challenge requirements: Shadowlord, Battlefield Conqueror, Grand Collector of Arms, Unvanquished Strategist, Brilliant Tactician. See Missables List in Roadmap for a detailed breakdown of all missable challenges. In general, do all challenges as early as possible. Don’t liberate enemy camps until done with challenges, so you don’t run out of spots for challenges. Don’t sell/discard/break the 10 Special Weapons as they are needed for challenges (simply keep all weapons).
Glitched trophies: 0
Does difficulty affect trophies?: No, there are no difficulty settings, it’s the same difficulty for everyone. Difficulty is largely dependent on the upgrade level of your gear and how many healing items you carry into battle.
Hardest Trophy: Expert Storyteller (beating the story, includes many boss fights), Expert Explorer (requires the most effort of the challenge trophies, must solve all puzzles)
Minimum Playthroughs: 1
PS4/PS5 Autopop, Save Transfer, Crossbuy: No, game doesn’t have a PS4 version
Free-Roam / Level Select after Story?: Yes, there is still free-roam after the story, but no quest replay.
Supports Manual Saves?: Yes, 9 manual save slots and 3 autosave slots
Release Date: March 19, 2026

Introduction

Welcome to the Crimson Desert Trophy Guide! The trophy list is pretty straightforward: finish the story, relocate the camp, and complete all challenges. That’s it. All challenges must be 100% completed for trophies. Each Challenge category unlocks a trophy.

Step 1: Unfog Map, Activate Fast Travel, Upgrade Gear, Find Sealed Abyss Artifacts to unlock Challenges

It’s best to unfog the map first by activating the 8 Hidden Bells, except Pailune Bell which requires story progress. Along the way activate some Fast Travel Points. Having everything unfogged makes it easier to locate the collectibles on the map. Having fast travel points in each region will save time for the rest of the game and you can quickly reach any collectible or crafting material. The map is huge, plan in 5+ hours to activate bells and fast travel points.

Next, spend some time gathering Upgrade Materials to enhance your gear at the blacksmith and sell excess materials for money – this will make progression easier. Also see How to Get Money Fast to get enough money in a few minutes, then you won’t have to worry about it for the rest of the game. It’s more efficient to invest time upfront into upgrades than to struggle throughout the game. Get your gear to at least Refinement Level 5-6. To fell trees and mine ores, buy the Logging Axe & Pickaxe from the Provisoner’s Shop in Hernand, across from the blacksmith.

Next, you should grab all Sealed Abyss Artifacts to unlock Challenges. Each challenge category unlocks a trophy and the prerequisite to start making trophy progress is to find the Sealed Abyss Artifacts. There are 141 Sealed Abyss Artifacts total. They aren’t marked on the map. You should grab these early because Challenge progress only counts after you find them. Anything you do prior to unlocking the Challenges will NOT count. If you were to spend hundreds of hours doing the story and side content first, you’d miss out on all the challenges progress. One exception is cumulative challenges which sometimes track retroactively, but one-off combat requirements won’t count retroactively. You have to finish 100% all challenges for Platinum.

The Artifacts are found along roads. You can shine the sword’s Guiding Light with + to mark nearby Sealed Abyss Artifacts with a blue glimmer. When you explore the map you will often find white search area with a “?” icon. These are exploration challenges or fast travel points, always explore them carefully. All of these have to be completed for challenges too.

Plan in 25+ hours just to finish these prerequisites before you can start making any trophy progress.

Related Guides:

Step 2: Finish Story & Complete Challenges as you play

After unlocking all Challenges, proceed through the story and work on any faction quests as you like, especially the ones that upgrade the Inventory Size (can view rewards in Faction Quests menu and do the ones that give Medium Bags).

If you get stuck at any point, refer to the Crimson Desert Walkthrough. While many quests are short and simple, others involve complex puzzles and tricky objectives that can be confusing.

Also check out the Crimson Desert Tips & Tricks. The game doesn’t explain everything and leaves you to figure it out for yourself, so reading the tips will teach you the good stuff that the game doesn’t tell you.

Be sure to work on the time-intensive cumulative Challenges throughout the game. Basically, you need to find one of each item, so whenever you walk over something marked as “???” pick it up.

Cumulative Challenges to do throughout the game:

Life 4: Tiny Citizens of Grasslands – Acquire all insects and arthropod knowledge (collect one of each).
Life 12: Cave Exploration Log – Acquire 100 Caves knowledge (explore 100 caves).

Missable & Semi-Missable Challenges

The following Challenges and their associated trophies are currently missable, so pay special attention to them. In general, do all challenges as early as possible, after collecting all Sealed Abyss Artifacts at the start of the game. Anything you can’t do right away, keep it in mind and do it at the earliest opportunity. Don’t clear out enemy camps as there’s no way to reset them and you could run out of specific enemy types needed for challenges. Don’t discard the 10 Special Weapons, they are needed for challenges, some of them can be obtained again through Expeditions, but others have no known way to get another copy.

MISSABLE:

Operation 7: Disruption – Needs enemies of the “Jackals” faction in Pailune. The Jackals appear at some enemy camps and during some faction quests in Pailune, but if you clear all enemy camps and faction quests in Pailune then they don’t appear anywhere ever again. So get this done before clearing out enemy camps in Pailune. However, the developers announced a future patch will make it so enemy camps can be reset, after which it will no longer be missable.
Special Weapon 8: Marni Laser Helm – If helmet is turned into the Kuku version it doesn’t count toward the challenge. Currently no known way to get another.
Special Weapon 10: Vessel of Dark Pursuit – Weapon can be sold or donated accidentally, currently no known way to get another.
Above the Law 4: Back Alley Cleanup – If you were to complete all bounties before doing the challenge, you’d run out of bounties to turn in and it doesn’t count retroactively. There are lots of bounties across multiple regions so you have many opportunities for it.

SEMI-MISSABLE:

Battle 6: Into the Barrage – For hitting 5 enemies with 1 Cannon Shot, has limited opportunities and is best done in Chapter 8 – Main Quest: Rebel Suppression. There are still a few other places to get it but it would be harder to do.

Useful Tips, Tricks and Guides: