Discover everything you need to know about the 12 best beginner tips and tricks for Crimson Desert, including how to progress.
Crimson Desert takes place in a large fantasy world called Pywel, filled with wars, factions, monsters, and exploration. The game focuses more on real-time combat and player skill than stat grinding. The combat success depends on timing, dodging, and reading enemies.
Unlike most RPGs, Crimson Desert has no leveling system. You don’t level up by killing enemies, but the progression is based on Abyss Artifacts. The game is very open and non-linear, or may feel confusing or overwhelming at first, so we bring the best beginner tips and tricks to help you get started.
Table of contents
Increase Your Inventory Size
As you start completing those quests and exploring the world, one thing that will quickly become very important to you is your inventory space. This is because you’re going to start collecting a lot of things, and it will fill up very fast.
Completing those faction quests is super important here because they will actually reward you with inventory expansions. This means progressing through the side content increases how many items you can actually carry at one time.
This alone makes them very worthwhile doing, especially early, because having those extra inventory slots makes a big difference. This is especially true when it comes to gathering materials, crafting, and collecting gear.
Buy Small Bag For Inventory Space
On top of that, many vendors also sell one-time bag upgrades that will permanently increase your bag space. These are actually quite cheap, so it’s always worth checking any new merchants whenever you arrive in a new town or area, and buy that upgrade whenever you see it.
It’s a small investment, but it all adds up, and it’s very important later. Another useful tip for inventory management is to sell things that you’ve already learned about your character. For example, if you pick up a cooking or crafting recipe and learn it, that recipe is then permanently unlocked for your character.
Upgrade Your Gear
Early in the game, crafting entirely new gear isn’t really the most important thing because you find gear so easily, and the contribution system just gives you better stuff. However, upgrading your gear is extremely important.
Metal weapons typically require materials such as iron ore and, eventually, iron and copper ore. So, whenever you see those ore nodes while exploring, it’s always worth picking up. Cloaks usually need some cloth, and shields usually require wood, and you get those from chopping trees and just killing enemies.
You can actually buy some of these materials from the vendors. The vendors will restock over time. So, for example, the equipment vendor outside the smithy in Hernand will sell iron and copper ore. So, a really good habit to get into is to buy those materials every time you see them in a vendor’s shop. They usually aren’t too expensive and will replenish over time.
Save the Game Manually
This is really important if you’re a player who, once in a while, likes to return to an old load point. In Crimson Desert, if you do this and you just hang out on that past load point for more than 45 minutes, all three of your recent auto saves will be overwritten as they go off roughly every 15 minutes automatically.
I highly recommend getting into the habit of simply using maybe the top manual save slot to do one manual save after every session. This allows you to have one easy-to-access load point that is current, and it’s in a spot that isn’t confusing for you.
I also recommend manually saving if you did something really important or accomplished something really hard.
Focus on the Main Story
Play the game the way that you want to play the game, but do keep in mind that the main story in this game is somewhat of a never-ending tutorial. This constantly introduces you to new mechanics and sometimes even gives you skills for free. At the very least, I must consider doing chapters one and two fairly early on in your run before you get too lost in the open world.
These two chapters will unlock and introduce you to features such as Axiom Force, Force Palm, and the ability to fly, making navigating the environment so much easier. Do not rush the main story, but doing the first couple of chapters before you get too lost in the world is going to save you so many headaches.
Prepare Healing for Boss Fights
Eating the cooked food allows you to gain temporary buffs and bonuses for your character. These are very crucial while fighting with the tougher enemies or bosses. In Crimson Desert, when you die, unless you use a Palmer pill to resurrect, you don’t actually lose the food that you cooked.
You spawn back in with that food so you can attempt the encounter prepared once again. You can mix the ingredients to make the recipes and gain unique bonuses. Cooking any dish for 3 times lets you earn the recipe.
Remove the Bounties
Sometimes you have to traverse large distances while carrying big things. You can actually ride your horse with people and also some creatures on your back. You can even stow bounties on your horse, allowing you to get off and do things until you’re ready to ride again.
Use Lantern
Your lantern can actually be super helpful when solving puzzles. When you hold your lantern up during certain puzzles, it can actually reveal clues and information for you to aid in your puzzle-solving journey.
For example, aiming your lantern at a power line or conduit reveals if there’s energy flowing through it. So, if it’s blue, it means yes, there’s energy flowing. If it’s yellow, it means no. That yellow indicates that there’s a problem for you to investigate. This goes for other aspects of puzzles as well.
Use Supply Chest
You remember that chest in the tent right after the prologue of the game? Now, this is not technically a storage chest for you to put items in. It’s rather a chest that picks up and stores items that you might miss being able to pick up due to a cutscene in the game, etc.
For example, when you liberate a stronghold, there are a million bodies that are dead on the ground, but you end up getting a cut scene, and the camp all of a sudden changes factions, and the bodies are gone. You’ll find that lost loot here in your supply chest.
If you can remember to check on it every once in a while, especially when you go out and liberate bandit camps, you can find some nice loot. You can now store items in the supply chest, which is now called the storage chest.
Get the Best Early Skills
Choosing the best early skills is crucial to eliminating the enemy quickly in Crimson Desert. Below are the best skills to choose while diving into the action.
- Armed Combat: Press R1 to perform a basic attack with your melee weapon. Further investment in Armed Combat increases the damage of your melee weapon attacks.
- Blinding Flash Finisher: Press R2 while enemies are blinded by Blinding Flash to rush in and deliver a rapid flurry of strikes.
- Marksmanship: Press L2 to perform a basic attack with your ranged weapon. Further investment in Marksmanship increases the damage of your ranged weapon attacks.
- Forward Slash: Press R2 to take a strong step forward and deliver a powerful slash.
- Keen Senses: Increases swift actions with the power of nature.
- Stamina: Energy consumed when performing actions such as dodging or moving.
- Health: Endure damage taken during the combat.
Reinforce your Armor and your Weapons
The weapons vendor next to the blacksmith shop in the starting town has a grindstone. If you use this grindstone, the icon will be unlocked on your mini map. What using a grindstone does is it reinforces all of your melee weapons, including the ones that you don’t actually have equipped on your character, and it gives them a nice boost to attack.
This will slowly go down the more combat that you participate in. This is great to have before you go into a boss battle or before you head out. Now, another thing you can reinforce is your armor.
On the cliff that overlooks the Hernand starting town, there is a torchlight beacon. You should be able to see it. And just climb up that cliff and come around to the backside. What you’re going to find is an anvil. But for some reason, the anvil in the starting town, you can’t actually use it.
It’s in the blacksmith shop, but it doesn’t allow you to use it. Your armor is now going to be reinforced with a bonus just like your weapons were.
Use your Horse to Traverse
Don’t be afraid to use your horse. Using your horse actually levels up its trust level, which gives you access to not only increased stats with the horse. You also get some interesting abilities that you can do, such as a back kick, a double jump, and a really quick start when you’re running, all sorts of great stuff. There are legendary horses in this game if you can find them.
To see your horse’s level, just go into your inventory and scroll over to your horse. Then, in the bottom left, you can see trust. You can tame the horse by getting on its back and then moving the camera in the opposite direction of the horse’s movement.
Your stamina depletes quickly while mounted on the horse while taming it. Make sure to invest some points in the Stamina skill before trying to get any house.
Parry the Enemy Attacks
The timing window is very tight, and if done too early, it counts as a regular block in Crimson Desert. Parrying is found in the Keen Senses skill tree and may require unlocking via Abyss Artifacts. You need to follow a successful parry with a quick attack to execute a counterattack.
Red-glowing attacks cannot be parried and must be avoided with a dodge or backstep. Parrying is essential for managing stamina and opening up boss defenses.
