8 Tips and Tricks For Crimson Desert We Wish We Knew Sooner

18 hours ago 3

Crimson Desert 8 Tips and Tricks We Wish We Knew Sooner

Published Mar 31, 2026, 8:30 AM EDT

Adam is a lifelong gamer who enjoys RPGs, action adventure games and a healthy helping of VR to boot. He has written for countless sites in the gaming medium, and you can find him playing the newest souls-like or JRPG.

I've been waiting a long time to get my hands on Crimson Desert, and thankfully, it has not disappointed one bit. Despite the rough edges, it's a one-of-a-kind experience that, in many ways, sets a new standard for open-world games.

However, the learning curve is absolutely brutal. You are told very little from the start of the game, aside from arm wrestle this guy or clear that chimney. And while those initial missions undoubtedly suck, they are very much a welcome to the world type of thing, but unfortunately, so much else is left to find out for yourself.

Crimson Desert Best Skills to Unlock First

Crimson Desert: 8 Best Skills to Unlock First

Here are the skills you should unlock as soon as possible in Crimson Desert.

But that's what we're here for, and we're going to check out a bunch of tips for getting you started in this big, weird, and beautiful new world.

8 Upgrade Everything

Prepare For the Fight

You will need your equipment to be consistently up to snuff if you want to survive some of Crimson Desert's tougher challenges. This doesn't just go for bosses, as the various strongholds you'll be taking on can absolutely test every bit of your armor and weapon stats. In order to make sure you're strong enough to survive these encounters, you need to scavenge for materials in the wild as much as possible. That means taking some time to cut down a tree, mining some ore, digging for materials, and any other resource gathering technique you have will generally go a long way.

Your weapons, in particular, should always be approved at a grindstone before a big fight, so you get a temporary boost, and you should improve anything you feel will be crucial to the upcoming fight right before it, because if you go hours without improving your equipment, you're going to find yourself getting wreck often in this dangerous world.

7 Stamina Is Everything

The Fuel For Your Fire

Before you can access some of the cooler powers in the game, you're going to need the stamina levels in order to pull them off. It's a bit of a roadblock for sure, but if you're like me and go "me see cool moves must get", then you likely wasted a lot of your early points on the coolest-looking moves without considering what they might cost to get.

This left me with an awesome Axiom Force ability that let me slingshot across the map, but guess what? I literally couldn't pull it off because my stamina wasn't high enough. Not only that, but so many massive cliffs can't be scaled without that stamina in your back pocket. It may seem counter-intuitive at first as you want the cool-looking moves, but if you've got no way to actually use them, what good are they? Put a few levels into your stamina to start, and you'll be smooth sailing from then out.

6 Hooded Cloaks Have Two Looks

Cool is the Rule

crimson-desert-kliff-shakatu-1725975076438 (1)

Looking cool is always a crucial part of any third-person, open-world game, and luckily, Crimson Desert has some of the best looking armor pieces of any game in a long time. One piece of armor you can wear for various effects is cloaks. These come in all shapes and sizes, and some of them have hoods for that extra badass effect you might be looking for.

However, what about your helmets? Do you have to take them off? Nope! You can wear the helmet under the hood if you so choose, but there is also a hidden mechanic that is again not told to you at any point involving the hooded cloaks. You can actually wear them down or up depending on your preference.

To do this, go to the armor menu and just select hover the cursor or point the controller toward the hood and let go. Kliff will automatically remove the hood or put it back up. It's a cool little feature and one that open world fashionistas will appreciate and another thing that the game just does not tell you.

5 Creativity Kills

The Answer to a Boss Fight Isn't Always Clear

Creativity is the name of the game when it comes to fighting in Crimson Desert, and some bosses really make you go into the giant bag of tricks you've got to play with. Some bosses can't just be brute forced, you really need to think. One boss early on is the Crimson Nightmare, who you can find in a side quest, and can be a brutal experience if you're not sure what to do. Beyond just your weapons, the various magical abilities can be a huge help here.

There are a few bosses like this, so it's a good thing to know early on. Your Axiom Force ability is so valuable in fights where the enemy is flying around because, much of the time, you can wrangle them down like a fish, which is both fun and strategic. Once they're out of the air, you can wail away on them no problem.

But if you can't get a grasp on the aim here, that's okay, because Force Palm can work in fights like this too. If you jump in the air, you can blast yourself up to crazy heights, and, in fights like this one, it can get you high enough to melee the boss right out of the sky. You'll be happy you learned these early because later in the game, you'll be utilizing them more and more during the big fights.

4 You Can Cook Anywhere

You are the Fire

You get some pretty cool techniques in the first few hours playing, but you don't really get told what you can with them. That part is largely on your creativity to unlock, but one that is absolutely valuable is the Blinding Flash ability, which is generally used for blinding enemies and completing puzzles. Well, in addition to this, you can use it to cook food anywhere in the open world, no bonfire required.

Crimson Desert Player in Focus and Skill Tree

In order to do it, simply discard your food, then aim your flash right at the food, and within seconds, that food will be cooked, which generally gives you some better boosts than the raw versions would give you. In addition to that, you can even use the ability to set fires to trees to make for some unique obstacles to put between you and enemies, or just to decimate a forest, your choice.

3 This Isn't Dynasty Warriors

Take 'em Down Step by Step

You will come across a healthy number of bandit camps throughout the game, and a bunch of side missions will require you to take these out. At first glance, it seems a bit impossible, as their numbers are just outrageous, but there is a secret to doing it much more concisely. At the bottom left of your screen, you will see a list of structures for the area, such as Barracks or infirmaries. If you take these out, that pesky progress bar that goes does by small amounts with each enemy you kill will suddenly be getting huge chunks taken off.

If you take out all the encampments in an area, and I do mean take out because you have to physically destroy them, that's generally enough to complete whatever mission you're on. You can clean up the bandits around there if you'd like, but what you don't have to do is go nuts fighting hundreds of enemies because as long as these structures stand, you'll have to do just that until they're all dead. The Quarry is a mission early on that you should definitely be practicing this tactic early on.

2 The Abyss Is Available and Important

Map Time

After the initial segment in The Abyss, you're thrown into the open world with a pair of wings and told to just go get em' pretty much. It might leave you wondering, as it did me, how you get back up there? There is no real immediate mission to find someone who guides you up there, so was that a one-time thing? The answer is absolutely not, as The Abyss is a massive section of the game that can be straight up missed if you're not paying attention, aka me for the first 30 hours of this game.

On your map, you can find an option to look at The Abyss map, and initially, you might be like, "Well, so what, still can't get there." And that's because, for some reason, the map seems to be always defaulted to quests. If you switch this to the all option, you will see you have the ability to teleport up there. If you do, you will find a whole other world to explore with all kinds of amazing rewards, including the game's magic system. It's a game in and of itself up there.

1 Let Them Cook

Food is Sustenance

You know how, in reality, you need food to survive? Well, Crimson Desert follows that ideology in a big way. Your food is your health source here, and while you can find it from time to time in the open world, if you want to survive some of the game's toughest fights, it's absolutely paramount to carry this into battle with you. Early on, I was getting destroyed in fights because I was waiting for some type of health potion to appear or trying to heal with Nature's Grasp. You can guess how well that went.

I'd find myself getting destroyed by some of these bosses and that's because I didn't embrace the cooking mechanic in the game. You can cook various different meals that all have different benefits, from massive health boosts to spirit-restoring food, and they're all incredibly important to bring with you in battle. If you're not walking into a boss fight with at least 8-ish good food items, you're really handicapping yourself for no reason. Is it a cheap method? Sure, but unless you want to waste all your Palmar pills early on or want to get stuck in a fight you just can't win, the most important thing to do is bring as much cooked food as you can.