Crimson Desert Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Written by Eric Hauter on 3/19/2026 for PC   PS5   XSX  

Crimson Desert is a jaw-droppingly original game. While it appears on the surface to be another open world fantasy epic, developer Pearl Abyss's gargantuan new creation marches to its own drummer, resolutely refusing to follow the established "rules" of the genre. This feeling of originality is what makes Crimson Desert so exciting to play, but it also means that you won't just pick up the controller and start bashing your way through the game the way you would, say, a new Assassin's Creed game.

Pearl Abyss isn't huge on tutorials, so the best way to learn the game is simply to play it and mess around with stuff. Half of the fun in Crimson Desert is learning how everything works and the various mechanics fit together. Still, a little help never hurt anybody, right? There are some unique features to be explored here, and after spending 40 hours with the game, these are a few that I figured might help new players out. 

Investigate the opening town of Hernand thoroughly

After a few short tutorial sections and a bit of stage setting, the player is dropped into the open world of Crimson Desert fairly close to the opening town of Hernand. While you might be tempted to go stomping off into the wilderness, this would be a major mistake. For the first 10 hours or so of the game, Hernand is going to be your home away from home. You should absolutely make a beeline into town and then spend an hour or two carefully exploring.

In Hernand, you will find a number of different important starting vendors, piled with gear and other goodies that will make your life much easier. Several of them offer beginner "favor" quests, which are easy-to-complete missions that will push you slowly out into the world. They will reward the player with some supplies—and more importantly, additional inventory slots. That's right, if you want to carry more stuff, you've got to help out the townsfolk. Luckily, these quests are interesting, and they also teach you the basics of gathering materials and crafting, both of which become vitally important as the game progresses.

Talk to every vendor you see

Even if you don't really need anything, make sure you check in with every vendor you see. Many of them carry Small Bags for 50 coppers, which give you an additional inventory slot for a pittance. This is well worth the five seconds it takes to stop off and chat.

Keep your tools in your inventory

One of the reasons you need more inventory slots is the fact that each of your tools takes up one slot, and they don't disappear from your inventory when you equip them. You can only have one tool equipped at a time. So, if you are using your pickaxe, your shovel, mallet, broom, axe, supplemental weapons like spears, and all the other stuff you need will sit in your inventory taking up space. Do not ditch this stuff to free up inventory slots, as it is a total pain in the neck to run around and find new tools when you need them. Fast travel is limited, and you don't want to have to go baja-ing across the continent to find a pickaxe if you happen to stumble across a cave full of diamonds. 

It took me forever to figure out fast travel

If you are hoping that fast travel will work like it does in Diablo IV, where you end up with handy travel points in every town, I've got some bad news for you. Starting out Crimson Desert is a lot like starting Dragon's Dogma II. Get used to running or riding your horse everywhere you go for the opening hours. I was literally 25 hours into the game before I found my first fast travel point.

Here's how it works: As you explore the world, you will eventually uncover areas that are clouded out on the map. If you hover your cursor over them, you will see a line of text that reads something like "Some crazy energy is emanating from this spot. You should check this out. It might be a secret!" Spoiler: You should totally go check those spots out. They are totally secrets. The good news is that about 40% of these secrets turn out to be fast travel points. If you see an area carved into the ground that looks like a miniature model of a modern city with a big circle in the middle, congratulations, you've found one. Stand in the circle and hold up your lantern (L1) to activate it. After that, you can teleport back to that point whenever you want. There is a fast travel point on a hillside just north of the opening city of Hernand. Go find it. Like, now. 

Take out archers first

This might seem like a no brainer, but it actually is really helpful in combat. The battles in Crimson Desert aren't hard, exactly, but they can become overwhelming quickly. What starts as a fight with three dudes can spiral out of control as more baddies notice you and join the fray. The next thing you know, you are surrounded by 20 bandits, all swinging at you at once. Do yourself a favor. Roll/evade to the edges of the fray, and run in a circle around the group slaughtering the archers. Archers almost immediately run to the edges of the battlefield, and taking them out early will allow you to concentrate on the more difficult melee guys without worrying that a stray arrow will take you down.

Be careful with doors and keys

When it comes to "WTF design decisions," here is one of the biggest in Crimson Desert. Early in the game you will notice that there are a lot of locked doors all over the place. Outer doors to home, interior doors in castles, basement doors, just doors, doors, doors. When they are locked, your dude will struggle with them for a moment, then a prompt will appear that says, "A key is needed for entry." Here's the thing: there is something behind every single one of those doors. Pearl Abyss allows the player to go anywhere in the game, if they have a key. Is there something worthwhile inside? Often no, there isn't a damn thing worth your time inside. But here's the kicker: If you have keys in your inventory, your dude will automatically just use them to open doors. No lockpicking game, no prompt to use a key, no need to go into your inventory to select a key to use. Nope. Homie will just walk through the door and your key will be gone forever. So, uh, be careful around doors if you want to keep your keys.

Pet your horse as frequently as possible

Another thing that seems obvious but is a little difficult to parse when you start. Petting your horse will build trust, opening up some special moves like horse drifting and better speed. But you might not quite know how to do it. Approaching your horse only gives you the prompt to mount it. There is no button to pet your horse. Hold down the L1 button while approaching your horse. This will reveal the button prompt to pet it. 

Palmer Pills are more important than they appear

Occasionally while out in the world exploring, you will come across Palmer Pills, little black spirally-looking things that take up a slot in your inventory. Do not discard these, and do not sell them. Palmer Pills allow you to resurrect on the spot when you are defeated in battle, with 30 percent of your original health. The UI does not inform you that resurrecting uses up a Palmer Pill, so it is entirely possible to use them all up without realizing it is happening, which is a bummer. Now you know, so you'll be in better shape than I was. 

In boss battles, you can select "Try Again," which starts the battle over and replenishes all of the heals you might have used during the melee. But if you have a boss down to the wire and just need a little push to put him in the ground, use a Palmer Pill.

Watch quest givers flip out

This one is more for fun than an actual tip. But if you are tempted to fast forward through the animation and dialogue when you are receiving quest info from some rando that is sitting in the mud, maybe hold off. Some of these animations are hysterical. The quest givers are deep in emotional turmoil, and watching them flip out and roll around in the dirt is just...the best.

Create and deliver precisely what the quest giver asks for

If the quest giver asks for three portions of Fish Porridge, give her three portions of Fish Porridge. Don't get all sassy, thinking that you might get an extra reward for giving her Filling Fish Porridge or something even better for Satisfying Fish Porridge. She doesn't want that, and all you'll end up doing is using up the precious ingredients she provided you to cook Fish Porridge. Give her exactly what she ask for so you don't end up like me, circling back 10 hours later to knock the stupid Fish Porridge quest off of your backlog.

Tap Left on the D-pad to sheathe your weapon

Further, hold down Left on the D-pad to open an inventory wheel. This is where you change weapons and other handheld items. Tapping the RB and LB buttons while that wheel is open will pivot to your armor inventory, where you can toggle through various gear pieces on the fly. You're welcome.

Don't use your Abyss Artifacts for crafting

Every piece of gear you pick up can be enhanced at the Smithy. Doing this takes resources—so you can probably plan on spending a fair amount of time out in the wilds mining for minerals and logging for timber (don't worry, it's actually pretty fun). But eventually you will hit a point where resources no longer do the trick.

Crimson Desert starts asking players to use their Abyss Artifacts, which are the same objects that are used to increase health, stamina, and skills. Whatever, Crimson Desert. Are you out of your mind? Don't do that. When you hit the point where you need to start sacrificing your character growth to enhance a single piece of gear, it's probably time to buy new gear. It takes a bit of judgement to determine which pieces you should buy, as most gear starts with stats below what you currently have equipped. But before long, you'll get a feel for what you can quickly enhance to surpass the stuff you are currently rocking. 

Throw a couple of points in Stamina, and you can climb almost anything

Climbing in Crimson Desert works a lot like it does in the modern Legend of Zelda games. You have a stamina meter that appears in the center of the screen, and you can climb as far as that stamina meter will take you, then you drop like a rock. There are two ways to extend how far you can go: drop a few points into Stamina, and unlock Double Jump in the Spirit tree as quickly as possible. You'll quickly find that the cliffs and mountains in Crimson Desert are designed with plenty of ledges to rest on if you have enough stamina to reach them. The Double Jump helps with that enormously. If you plan accordingly, you can be scampering up mountains with the best of them just a few hours into the game.

Running away from bosses is totally cool

The combat system in Crimson Desert is deep and varied, and you can continuously unlock new skills on the skill tree that improve your abilities. Just make sure you take the time to learn the button presses, and maybe practice a bit out in the woods. But you will quickly find that boss fights are a different proposition. You can mow down literally hundreds of regular enemies, and still get completely hammered by the boss at the end of the mission. Don't worry. You can always run away and come back later.

Once you have unlocked the boss, you can breeze around the world building up your skills and gear for as long as you like, then come directly back to that boss when you are all powered up and hand that loser his lunch on a platter. You don't need to fight through all the minions again—though you might want to. Fighting guys builds up a little meter to the left of your minimap, which rewards you with an Abyss Artifact every time it fills.

The only exception to this dynamic are raids. There is an early one where you have to free a quarry overrun by bandits then fight a super robot dude. If you leave the quarry for a while, the bandits will slowly repopulate the area. You can still go directly back and fight the robot dude, but you will likely need to re-clear a fair amount of normie bandits from the area as well. 

This guy. I had to run away from this guy.

You can't save over your autosaves

The game keeps three rotating autosaves active in the save menu. For the longest, I was stymied as to why I couldn't save at will. The Save button just wouldn't light up. Scroll down past your three autosaves to an open save slot and save there. It turns out that you can save whenever you want. And yes, this one made me feel like an idiot. 

And that's it. Crimson Desert is an enormous game, and you can easily spend weeks wandering around and picking at it from different angles. This game is something we don't often see in video games—something that feels fresh and new. Savor it. Just remember to relax and have fun.