How to beat the Crimson Nightmare in Crimson Desert

The Crimson Nightmare boss fight in Crimson Desert is one of the game's weirdest, especially in the early stages. It comes during the House Roberts storyline, when he asks you to investigate the strange red smoke at Fort Perwin. That's southwest of Hernand, directly west of the small village of Senia, and home to an unfathomable number of Bleed Bandits.

Once you eventually get through the Bleed Bandits though, you must take on the Crimson Nightmare boss fight. Here's a complete guide on how to beat the Crimson Nightmare in Crimson Desert, including how to prepare and the rewards you get upon completion.

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How to prepare for the Crimson Nightmare in Crimson Desert

As mentioned, immediately before you fight the Crimson Nightmare, you'll need to battle your way through hordes of Bleed Bandits, spread across Perwin Watchtower, Perwin Quarry, Perwin Gate, and eventually, Fort Perwin. Make sure you're looting as many of these as you can though, because you can find a Scarlet Blade Gas Mask.

More than any other tip, this is the most important, because it protects you against the passive damage inflicted by the Crimson Nightmare when you get too close. If you don't want to loot each corpse individually, make sure you have a pet dog or cat at 100% trust and they will loot bodies for you.

Our next tip is to level Focus up at least twice. At level two, you'll unlock Focused Repulsion, which allows you to emit a blast of energy in an area around you while using Focus. For reasons we'll explain shortly, this move is the best way to cheese the Crimson Nightmare.

Alongside those two, general Crimson Desert tips apply here: make sure you have at least four points in stamina, so your total is 200, as that is enough to allow for plenty of moves and combos without running out. By this point, you'll likely have defeated Hornsplitter, so the Sword of the Lord is a great weapon to use if so. Lastly, bring a ton of food with you.

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How to beat the Crimson Nightmare in Crimson Desert

The Crimson Nightmare is a floating octahedron shrouded in a red poison mist. Most of the time, it's above your head, so dealing melee damage as you would in a normal boss fight is tough. However, there are ways to deal with it.

Firstly, whenever the Crimson Nightmare slams down to deal melee damage against you, you'll want to dodge out of the way because this can't be parried. However, it will leave itself stunned for a moment or two on the floor, opening itself up to a few hits. This is slow progress though, because you can't deal much damage until you break its stamina, indicated by the bar below its health at the top of the screen.

You can deplete that bar with one hit though, thanks to the aforementioned Focused Repulsion, although there is one enormous caveat. If you perform Focused Repulsion within range of Crimson Nightmare, it will be knocked out cold, but there's also a high chance that you just yeet it completely out of the playable area, and you must wait for it to recover and return before you can resume the fight. Sometimes, you'll send it halfway to the moon before coming back, but other times it will just drop to the ground.

You can also position yourself between the Crimson Nightmare and the wooden tower next to the arena, because if you use Focused Repulsion here, the boss may ricochet off the wall and land back within the arena. This is tricky to pull off though, so your best bet may be to rinse and repeat this method until it just drops to the ground.

Alternatively, you can use Axiom Force. This is a little more difficult than Focused Repulsion, but, if you can land the grapple, you can slam the Crimson Nightmare down on the ground. This will have the same effect, knocking it out cold for a few moments so you can deal increased damage. Alternatively, and quite possibly the most difficult, you can get above the boss and use Force Palm in midair to have the same outcome.

You'll receive a plethora of rewards for defeating the Crimson Nightmare, including three types of elixir, each offering different stat boosts, and three different abyss gears to insert into your equipment. You'll also receive a power core, but there's some confusion around which you'll get. I received the Gate of Collapse, but others have received the Spire of Defiance. Either way, whichever you get will be added to your camp.

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Just starting out in Crimson Desert? We have guides to help you learn the basics and refresh your memory on how some of its systems work. The world of Pywel is huge, so you might have a hard time deciding where to go first, but you can make your journey a little easier with the help of our interactive map. Along the way, make sure to learn a few life skills like fishing, logging, cooking, and mining, all of which can help you make money.

We also have walkthroughs for puzzles in the Abyss like the Root's End and Precipice of Truth, as well as ancient ruins like the Dragon's Stone Chamber.