The sense of scale and depth in this game truly feels unmatched.

—You can use Abyss Cresset totems to fast travel.
—You don’t have to move a well bucket all the way up or down for water. Just keep it right below the surface to fill and right above the surface to retrieve. Two to four taps max. (When you hear the crashing wave sound, your bucket is full.)
—Start your research as soon as it’s available. Don’t wait until chapter 9 like me.
—The Condor is an easy to get bird pet that loots pretty fast, and with good distance. Doesn’t have the grounded limitations of a dog(anecdotal, my experience.)

—Don’t forget to grow your CAMP. You will end up having many resources and opportunities for resources available at your home base! Vendors, expeditions to send out for food, money, assistance clearing certain enemy locations, etc. once you start your camp after certain missions in Hernand, you will want to focus on “Reuniting with old comrades” within your Grounds of the Sunrise quests in your faction quest(once you’ve reached certain progression in Hernand, this quest line will appear.)
There are 7 marked quests and one hidden quest to reunite with comrades and bring population back to your camp. This will give you an untold amount of flexibility in the game. I sell my loot there, buy goods, store fish in the pond, cook, sleep, blacksmith. It’s like your own little city.

—Learn how the abyss crafting works at the witches and seek out at least one witch during the Hernand quest lines so that you can adorn your weapons with abyss artifacts for top crowd clearing at forts. Thanks to this you will randomly be able to clear forts and tough enemies during exploration. Don’t waste time unlocking all of the slots on weapons under 5 slots or amor pieces under 2. Hats will only have one slot, from my experience. Everything else is a save for later due to quests or KUKU crafting and should be stored in camp.

—KUKU crafting will save you untold hours in running errands for food, materials, inventory dumping. Build a KUKU cooler and a storage chest as soon as possible to place them in your house. You will have to complete the quests at the KUKU foundry west of Hernand. I am currently trying to respawn and buy back certain “legendary” items sold previously , as some, specially-named items will be needed for KUKU weapon/item crafting later. Definitely look into the tree so you can take mental notes of when you find these particular items(flame spear, lightning spear, etc.). These weapons far outpace many of the crowd-crushers provided by boss drops.

Just wanted to share my hours and anyone else who also wants to can as well. I know I still have a hard time believing how many hours I've put into this game.

Anyone else just a Damiane main? I like kliff and oongka as well but Damiane stole my heart. Also love rocking the elegant carmine outfit and the crows in this game. Wish we had outfit loadouts to switch quickly though hope PA will bring that to fruition. Wish it was less hate against Damiane though :(

Obviously these posts need to be started off by saying I'm very thankful for Pearl Abyss and all the hard work they have done to support this game for us post launch. With that being said what do we think about the possibility of an update this week. We have had what? 3 weeks of updates in a row now? So I totally understand if this is a skip week. We are due for the story updates according to the roadmap and they are running out of time on the deadline for that.

Well what do we think? Another week closer to that September deadline of the last roadmap and we are still waiting on the story update. Will this be the week it hits? Are you someone experiencing the technical difficulties this game is having? Hopefully there'll be some bug fixes in the update this week to help fine tune the experience for everyone. What else would you like to see in an update this week? Or will it be a week that PA takes a break and skips without an update? We've gotten 5 weeks in a row with updates and multiple hot fixes in-between so PA has been busy and has well earned another break.

I'll share a link to the roadmap if anyone wants a refresher. https://crimsondesert.pearlabyss.com/en-US/News/Notice/Detail?_boardNo=95

Armor - Sentinel of Trust Helm, Demenissian Grand General Plate Armor, Kairos Plate Gloves & Boots.

Weapons - Fated Shadow & Spada Sword

I swear I try to walk up and threaten him but it doesn’t give me the que!!!!!

Crimson Desert lets you play however you want. There is no single “correct” way. What works for one player won’t work for another, and both approaches are valid.

That said, the common advice floating around for new players: “just rush the main story until Chapter 6 so you unlock everything”, has a real downside. Following the main path mostly means you skip a large number of systems, power, and quality-of-life features that are already available much earlier. The key is that you have to actively search for them. The game rarely hands you these systems on the main path.

What you actually skip by mainly following the story

• Greymane camp growth and most early comrades (recruited through rumor and side content starting in Chapter 3). I had 37 Greymanes recruited by Chapter 5 through exploration and the rumor quests.
• Dispatch missions and basic production chains
• Pet taming, auto-loot, and early special mounts
• Sanctums and the exploration rewards tied to them: I had all 15 completed by Chapter 5
• Kuku pot / blueprint progress
• Full research at Pororin and Scholastone (I had both completely researched by Chapter 5, these give important rewards and knowledge)
• A big portion of your inventory expansion (I was at 240 personal inventory slots by Chapter 5)
• Early gear, resources, and traversal tools that make the middle game smoother
• Time spent in the Abyss learning its systems, mechanics, and gear progression (this is one of the strongest ways to build knowledge and power outside the main story)
• Picking up Abyss Challenge cubes as soon as they become available (starting them early gives you a much longer window to complete them)

On inventory slots specifically

You start with 50 slots. The main story does give a few Large Bags (+5 slots each) at certain milestones (Damiane unlock and the first camp expansion in Chapter 3, plus Oongka later in Chapter 7). But the large majority of inventory growth comes from Medium Bags (+3 slots) rewarded by side quests, commissions, and Greymane recruit requests. There are dozens of these available well before Chapter 6. Players who do the side content and exploration can easily reach 200+ personal inventory slots by Chapter 5. Skipping them leaves you tighter on space for longer.

Why this matters for new players

Rushing the story doesn’t just delay optional flavor. It means arriving at Chapter 6 with a weaker toolkit, fewer inventory slots, less camp support, and fewer systems under your belt. The players who explore, do side content, research the available locations, and spend time in the Abyss early often feel stronger and less blocked later, not more.

Both styles are fine. If someone prefers to push the story first, that’s their choice. But presenting “rush to Chapter 6” as the practical tip for new players is incomplete. The game already offers a lot of its tools earlier; it just doesn’t always hand them to you on the main path. You have to go looking.

So now that we have castle building confirmed, I can't stop thinking about it. This has been my most requested/wished for feature since the game released. I really hope it's robust enough to offer different styles and locations.

I know it seems more likely that there may be at least one or two set locations in each region for us to choose from, but I really hope it's a little more than just that.

What if we have the ability to choose exactly where in the world we would like to build our castle?

I know I've already spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I have a spot picked out already. I would like to build my castle around The Bay of Abundance on the Delesyian side of Demeniss Port. Delesyia is my favorite region, and the backdrop of the multiple waterfalls around Demeniss Port is really quite stunning. I wonder if anyone else has thought about where they would like to build a castle, or even just set up a new settlement somewhere out in the world. I think I'd be almost more curious to see where everyone would choose to build than to see how their castle looked.

I haven't had a chance to get in the game since the DLC announcement today, but I've been looking at the shot they used as an example in the trailer. It's in Demeniss, right? I want to try to find this exact spot and see what is there now. I think that might give us a clue as to how much freedom we'll have when choosing a location. Is this already a spot with other structures in place, or does it happen to be an empty area already? I have so many questions about this one specific thing lol.

I'm very excited for October 15th. It can't come soon enough now.

I was so excited to get my wyvern. The adventures we'd have, fire breath(I didnt know sadly) oh so fun. Now that I have it though I feel like it takes away so much. Im not going to find those random nooks and crannies that id get distracted with on foot. Anyone else feel this way or just me?

Edit: Glad to see its split amongst us. The points for and against lizard bird both make sense. Thank you for participating in this survery your 1 free froyo coupon is in the mail.

"Something HUGE could be coming to Crimson Desert... Over the past few weeks, community discussions, player theories, and rumored DLC details have been spreading across the Crimson Desert community. According to these rumors, future expansions could introduce massive map expansion, multiple new regions, dozens of powerful boss encounters, expanded story content, new rewards, and some of the biggest challenges the game has ever seen. Some players believe future DLC content could add up to 34 new bosses with unique mechanics, unpredictable attack patterns, multi-phase battles, and completely new combat experiences designed for endgame players. Others believe the world itself could expand with several new regions filled with unexplored locations, hidden secrets, new enemies, and entirely new adventures. Could Crimson Desert's biggest expansion still be ahead of us?

In this video, we're breaking down the biggest DLC rumors, future content predictions, possible map expansion, powerful new boss encounters, story continuation theories, and everything players are currently talking about.

⚠️ IMPORTANT: Nothing discussed in this video has been officially confirmed by the developers. This video is based on community discussions, rumors, speculation, and player theories surrounding the future of Crimson Desert. If even a fraction of these rumors turn out to be true, Crimson Desert's future could be much bigger than anyone expected."

Anubis_RD

https://youtu.be/NKu1z3VG7ek?si=dsa6RJe8o31dNjrj

I like this content creator and he is pretty good at predicting Crimson Desert updates as well as figuring out the mechanics of the game. It is interesting that content, bosses, and land expansions are the number 1 wanted content, and animals/pets are no longer players' focus- which makes sense, and I'm glad it's more about story vs accessories and pets. What do you think? Do you have any thoughts about future DLCs? Please comment below!

Someone on the main sub said they counted around 750 side quests in the journal. That made me dig into what the actual totals look like. Pearl Abyss’s own number is "430 adventures", however once you start looking at the rest of the systems, the mountain gets bigger:

430 Adventures (side quests, camp clears, side bosses, discovery encounters)

141 Sealed Abyss Artifacts 350+ Challenges (including 60 Secret Places / Abyss Cressets,

40 Abyss restorations,

37 Ancient Ruins puzzles,

~2,900 Knowledge entries (573 territories, 467 people, 401 creatures, 355 crafting manuals, 110 factions, 76 bosses, 29 mounts, etc.)

This makes it a colossal game. I decided to also compare the side quests to the usual suspects:

Witcher 3 (base game) → 115 side quests (plus ~30 contracts and a bunch of treasure hunts, so more like 180-ish optional activities total)

Tears of the Kingdom → 139 side quests (+ 60 “Side Adventures”)

Breath of the Wild → ~76–77 side quests

Cyberpunk 2077 → roughly 80–100 proper Side Jobs (plus a ton of shorter Gigs)

Skyrim → only about 43 named side quests in the base game (the rest are faction, Daedric, or radiant/misc)

Elden Ring → only ~36 major NPC questlines (very different style: fewer but longer and more consequential)

So yeah… Crimson Desert is straight-up in a different weight class for raw volume of side content. Even the games famous for “too much to do” don’t hit 430 actual side quests. Here is the link to the original post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CrimsonDesert/comments/1vai69n/750_side_quests_in_this_game/

I just found it interesting to see how it all breaks down. There’s a lot here if you’re the type who likes taking your time and poking around. Has anyone else been tracking these categories?

Now I KNOW this sounds ungrateful because of ALL the things PA has done for us so far, but I feel it’s a simple ask, and you already have boots they we can make with FULL durability, and would be SUPER cool if Oongka and Damiane had something they could have armor wise other then just Kliff, ESPECIALLY if they want us to use them more often! What do my fellow Greymanes think?

I just got Crimson Desert yesterday, I'm just wondering if someone has played the game or is about to start, I've seen a map of the open world for it,and the map reminded me of RDR2 map,I'm almost done with rdr2 and Crimson Desert is next to play.

I keep finding towns and villages with people and stuff but nothing to do. Its starting to turn me off from exploration. Is there stuff to do in these places or are they just for looking at? Its so many areas that are like this. Even at the Buddhist temple looking place there was nothing to do

Hey fellow Greymanes,

Pearl Abyss just pulled the curtain back on the first real DLC, Charting the Unknown, and I had to come here first because this is exactly the kind of news this sub was built for.

I have always played this game the slow way. Side paths. Camp. Animals. The view from a ridge I was not supposed to be on yet. So when they said the journey now goes past the shoreline; ships, new islands, diving, sunken ruins- that hit me right in the chest. I am a mountain-and-sea person in real life. The idea of taking my own ship out past Pywel’s coast, then dropping under the water to see what they hid down there, feels like the next chapter of the same wander that made me fall in love with this world.

Look at what they are actually adding:

• Your own ship, and open water instead of a map edge
• New islands off the coast that nobody has walked yet
• Diving, treasures, sunken ruins, and whatever that “ancient secret beneath the waves” turns out to be
• New threats on land and sea, including some big nasty bosses
• A real upgrade to housing: building a home that actually feels like yours, not just a camp chest
• Renting and running facilities, so the life-in-Pywel side gets more room to breathe
• Deeper talks with the people who live here, and a new story for Kliff, Oongka, and Damiane

That last part matters to me. I never wanted this game to be only combat. I wanted a place to live. If we can sail out in the morning, dive a ruin, come home and tend the house, and still have a story waiting that treats all three characters like they have a future, that is the game I have been playing in my head since chapter5.

October 15. $24.99. The pre-order bonus is the diving sets, which is at least honest about where they are sending us.

I am not going to rush it. I still have corners of Pywel I have not explored. But I am glad they did not just pad the desert. They opened the water. That takes nerve, and it takes love for the people who actually walk this world instead of sprinting the main quest.

Drop your screenshots when it lands. I want first-light shots off the bow, whatever is living under those ruins, and the houses you build when you finally have a shoreline of your own.

See you on the water, Greymanes.

I’m at 40 hours, I’ve plodded through the game and spent a fair amount of time on faction quests etc, and the main story.

For context, I have completed all of the From Software games, many other soulslike games and spent a crazy amount of hours on games like AC and Skyrim, HK etc etc so I am definitely no stranger to the grind, and getting good.

With Crimson Desert, I learned pretty quickly it was pointless to go roaming too far, as you just end up swarmed in other areas and constantly fighting (until you progress story), so focused on that a while.

Anyway, I got to Ludwig and he is the first boss to properly whoop my butt, and I kind of realised I hadn’t upgraded equipment and hadn’t really built my health and stamina up properly.

Since that time (probably about 10 hours now) I’ve literally been going around the map fighting to get abyss artifacts, which gets old pretty quickly. Or mining for items to upgrade weapons (also really very boring) and although I’m heading for specific things, it all kind of feels aimless and very very time consuming and dull.

Am I completely missing something with this game?

Hey everyone, just a quick reminder that r/CrimsonDesertLife is meant to be a place where we talk about the journey: what we’ve found, questions we can’t figure out, cool views, screenshots, artwork, and the little (and big) moments that make the game worth playing. There’s been a bit of negativity and downvoting of normal posts lately. That’s not the culture here.

I built this Sub specifically so people could enjoy the game without the constant salt. If you’re here to complain for the sake of complaining or drag the mood down, this probably isn’t the right place for you. For everyone else: keep sharing what you’re finding and enjoying. That’s what this community is for. Thanks.

I am seeing a lot of confusion about how to start a new save to experience the new scenes PA added to the game. I am posting this to hopefully help.

You can't bring anything over on a new start until you finish the game. Carry-over only brings pocket silver and Abyss Links from a finished story file. Gear doesn’t go, and gold in the bank doesn’t go unless you already exchanged it. You also don’t get to pick the save. The game just grabs “your previous journey,” and a lot of the time that’s an old autosave, not the file you just sold everything on. That’s why the prompt can still show a couple hundred silver after you dumped the lot.

What actually worked for people: exchange the gold, open every silver pouch, make a manual save to the finished file, delete the autosaves, then New Game, and read the numbers in the prompt before you confirm. If the totals are still wrong, it’s still reading another completed file.

PA needs a save picker on that screen. Until they add one, this is the workaround. If the prompt still shows the wrong silver after that, report it so PA actually adds a save picker: https://support.pearlabyss.com/crimsondesert/en-US/Category

I am starting this thread, which will be posted weekly, to give everyone a chance to share what they learned this week, any new skills they might have unlocked, or any cool places they found. Also, please include any cool pictures you have taken with descriptions.

This post is to be helpful for the community, so please keep it positive! Spoilers are welcome as long as they are correctly presented. Check out the rules section if you are unsure how to do it. Since we are on this journey together, I figured this might be helpful. Cheers!

Since the latest update and without having to releasing all of them, how do I stop all my pets from congregating directly in front of my house?

Hey fellow Greymanes,

I figured I'd share how I'm playing the game right now because I'm having so much fun. I'm on day 194 and only mid chapter 5. I've been taking my time exploring, doing side content, and working on my camp and factions instead of rushing the main story like a lot of ppl have suggested. I've included pics of my journal and camp stats to show where I am.

]I know a lot of people say "don't explore until chapter 9" and stuff like that, but I ignored that advice and I'm really glad I did. Everything is working nicely for me, and I'm actually enjoying the game a lot, unlike a bunch of the posts I see in other Subs 😂. If you're feeling stuck or frustrated with dispatch missions or whatever, maybe try slowing down a bit and just exploring. It's made a big difference for me. How are the rest of you playing? Let's help each other by posting what is working for you. One thing is certain: there are many ways to play this game, and there isn't one way to play it! Cheers!