Crimson Desert: 8 Best Skills to Unlock First

When you first step foot on Pywell in Crimson Desert, it's easy to become overwhelmed by the game's many systems and mechanics. The game throws a lot at you, such as the basics of mining for materials, upgrading weapons, exploring, etc. However, the game doesn't tell you the most essential skills to unlock.

Unlocking the wrong skills at the start of your playthrough of Crimson Desert will make the intro of the game way harder than it needs to be. On the flip side, acquiring the best early game skills will make your first hours in Pywell much more manageable and enjoyable.

If you're overwhelmed by the massive skill tree in the game, and can't decide which ones to spend your Abyss Artifacts on, we have the answers for you here. Read further to learn of the eight best skills to unlock early in your playthrough of Crimson Desert.

8 Flight

Glide Away

Exploration is important in Crimson Desert and is actually one of the main ways to upgrade your character. Without thoroughly exploring the world, you won't find enough Abyss Artifacts to upgrade weapons, increase health, stamina, and spirit, and unlock new skills. In this case, you want to be able to explore as quickly as possible, which you can do by unlocking the Flight ability in the skill tree.

Flight unlocks gliding in Crimson Desert, allowing you to jump off cliffs and reach the ground safely, removing the need to climb down manually. This opens the opportunity to explore faster, leading to easier traversal, discovering secrets, finding hidden items, etc. You will be using Flight constantly throughout your playthrough of Crimson Desert, so it's recommended to unlock it immediately.

7 Forward Slash

Strong Starting Attack

During combat encounters, you have a standard attack and a heavy attack. In order to utilize your heavy attack to the fullest, you want to unlock the Forward Slash ability, which completely transforms it into a Spirit attack that deals a ton of damage. There are three upgrades available for Forward Slash and I recommend claiming all those upgrades by raising it to level 3, which makes it have more range, and makes it overall much more efficient.

Throughout my 100-hour journey in Crimson Desert, I used Forward Slash more than any other attack in the game. It deals a ton of damage, it's great at stunning group of enemies, and is easy to pull off, since you can just hold down the heavy attack button, without needing to do multiple inputs like other attacks. If you're looking for a headstart in combat, unlock Forward Slash right away.

6 Force Palm: Proficiency

One, Two, Three Punches

More often than not, you will get overwhelmed by waves of enemies during combat encounters in Crimson Desert. To counter this, you need to get good at crowd control, which can be done through the use of Force Palm: Proficiency. While the standard Force Palm is unlocked naturally through main story progression, players will have to manually unlock the Proficiency node attached to Force Palm in the skill tree.

Force Palm: Proficiency allows you to use Force Palm three times in a row, with the last punch shooting out a laser and knocking away all enemies nearby. I can't stress enough how helpful this has been for crowd control, allowing me to keep my distance and take control of the battlefield. This does require a good amount of Spirit, though, so make sure you bring consumables to replenish Spirit.

5 Aerial Force Palm

Reach Greater Heights

The most important skill in the entire game is Aerial Force Palm, and it's not even up for debate. This ability allows you to use Force Palm while in the air, shooting Kliff farther into the sky to reach higher ground. This is extremely helpful in traversal, allowing you to reach the top of mountains quicker, jump over high fences, and even deal damage to enemies below you.

Aerial Force Palm is essential if you're a player who likes to see everything a game has to offer. If you don't have Aerial Force Palm unlocked, then you will have to rely on your stamina bar when climbing, which drains exponentially and takes awhile to upgrade. Since progression is tied to exploring and finding Abyss Artifacts, you want Aerial Force Palm to get you to places faster.

4 Nature's Echo

Add an Additional Attack

Nature's Echo is a valuable skill to unlock early in your playthrough of Crimson Desert, as it essentially adds additional damage to all of your attacks. The way it works is that it creates a replica of your Forward Slash, and other moves when you upgrade the skill, that makes each attack turn into two attacks. This means double the damage, making it significantly easier to kill individual enemies.

Nature's Echo is very helpful throughout the entire game, especially when it comes to clearing out bandit camps and draining the boss's health bars. It becomes even more helpful when you unlock certain boss Abyss Cores, items that can be slotted into your equipment. Some Abyss Cores will add another attack with each swing of your sword, meaning that Nature's Echo will total it up to three attacks for maximum damage.

3 Keen Senses (Parry, Dodge, Counter)

Cover All Defenses

If you want to succeed against the game's challenging bosses, you'll need to unlock Keen Senses and upgrade it to level 3. After upgrading it to level 3, you will have the ability to parry, dodge, and counter enemy attacks. All three of these defensive maneuvers are crucial to avoid taking damage, but they also just make the combat 10x better.

Dodge is essentially a perfect dodge, the parry is similar to deflecting in Soulslikes, and the counter allows you to follow up a parry with a devastating blow. These three mechanics will become your best friend in Crimson Desert and mastering them is key to becoming a good player in combat. If it wasn't for Keen Senses, I wouldn't have been able to progress far into the game.

2 Blinding Flash

Stun The Enemy

Blinding Flash is a useful combat ability that stuns your opponents for a brief moment, opening up a window to deal damage. The greatest part about Blinding Flash is that it's surprisingly easy to pull off, doesn't require any Spirit or Stamina, and can save you from being surrounded and bombarded by a ton of enemies at once.

My favorite part about Blinding Flash, however, is the fact that there is a Blinding Flash Finisher ability on the skill tree that results in Kliff dealing a ton of damage to enemies immediately after blinding them. Using Blinding Flash and then Blinding Flash Finisher in quick succession will cause a shockwave that knocks all surrounding enemies back, giving you some breathing room.

1 Stab

A Necessity for Puzzles

The Stab ability is one of the best skills to unlock early, not because it can deal good damage in combat, but because it's mandatory for some puzzles. There are plenty of puzzles in Crimson Desert that require the Stab ability to move or rotate large objects in order to come up with the solution. If you don't have the Stab ability, you will lose out on the rewards for these puzzles, which are usually Abyss Artifacts that can be used to upgrade your character.

Additionally, Stab can be helpful in combat encounters due to the high amount of damage it does. However, it isn't the best for crowd control and knocking enemies back, unless you follow it up with a Turning Slash or Sweeping Slash. Still, if you're one on one against a challenging boss, Stab may be a good move to execute for draining its health bar.