In Crimson Desert, it is not possible to adjust the difficulty level. The enemies certainly don’t make it easy, and there are often powerful hits coming your way. MyMMO editor Alex thinks: That’s a good thing!
Oh, Crimson Desert, how much I cursed at first. Because of your controls, because of your sometimes strange physics, or because of things you simply do not explain or only explain minimally. However, the most frustration came from one point: the difficulty level.
Bosses whose attacks sometimes reached further than the animation suggested. Hordes of enemies relentlessly pounding on you, pulling even more from their holes. Attacks that devoured 2/3 of the health bar with no way to escape. The difficulty in Crimson Desert is quite unforgiving and hits you in the face multiple times, especially during the main story – without a way to adjust it through the options.
Don’t get me wrong, I am used to tough games with difficult fights and have played through many Soulslikes with patience and a steep learning curve. However, Crimson Desert raises the bar quite high due to powerful enemies in combination with unintuitive controls and often hard-to-recognize hitboxes. As a result, I felt while playing that especially players who only want to play the game for the open world might find themselves hitting a wall due to the difficulty level.
I would be lying if I claimed that at some point I didn’t wish I could at least reduce the difficulty level a little. At least to continue with the story and not get hit so hard by the same boss for the umpteenth time that even strong opponents from Elden Ring could only laugh tiredly.
But what I didn’t know at the beginning: I would later be very grateful to the game for that, and I believe you will be too.
The difficulty in Crimson Desert – for me a love-hate relationship
Because at some point during the story, I reached a point where I no longer wanted to continue. Even though I had the moveset down after several attempts and knew how to circumvent the squishy hitbox, I kept biting the dust. I almost managed to defeat the boss, only to get hit right before the end so hard that I bit the dust.
And I’m honest: To spend my hard-earned revival points, I was too stingy. Because who knew what awaited me afterwards and whether I would need them more urgently? So I set off tired into the open world and thought about how I could prepare better to make the difficulty a little easier in other ways.
Just to find out if casual players could also enjoy the story and the game, I wanted to see what was possible. And don’t worry, if you count yourselves among them: You can do it, I am firmly convinced of that! For there are ways and means to make use of the game’s possibilities and make it easier for yourself.
If you are interested in what is possible, you can find the appropriate guide here:
And while I was wandering through Pywel and exploring the various possibilities, I realized something: The high difficulty actually benefits the game – no matter how skilled you are as a player.
Because: It ensures that you take your time. Time to engage with the world that has so much to offer. Therefore, a thought occurred to me: If one could breeze through the story and the bosses, would one still want to spend so much time with it? In most games, many lose interest once they are through with the story, and that would be unfortunate here.
So if you encounter difficult opponents that cannot be defeated with a few tries right away, the game automatically invites you to look around, experiment, perhaps complete other quests beforehand, or explore other corners of the truly vast open world before trying again.
Thus, Crimson Desert also strengthens itself in a way and at least for me, it ensured that I appreciated the strengths of the open world and all the things that convey an MMO feel much more and automatically spent more time with them than I might have otherwise, had the fights in the story been easy to manage.
Additionally, the difficulty also enhances another aspect: It invites experimentation in many ways and rewards players who take it on immensely. Be it because you find the one trick that lets you melt that specific boss away, the secret in a previously unseen corner of a forest, or the riddle behind which new teleporters and valuable artifacts hide.
The high difficulty level led to my already great spirit of exploration being ignited even more, and I learned to truly appreciate the sheer depth of the open world and all its content.
Crimson Desert is therefore also suitable for players who are primarily interested in the open world or the MMO-like experience. If you remain persistent and seek out opportunities in Pywel to overcome your difficulties, you will also manage to blow your opponents away. Because as an MMORPG fan, you are certainly used to grinding anyway, right?
MyMMO editor Jasmin Beverungen tried Crimson Desert at gamescom 2025 and thought she had found her perfect single-player MMO, but it is precisely the difficulty that worries her: Crimson Desert would be the perfect single MMORPG for me, but it repeats the biggest mistake of Dark Souls
