In Crimson Desert you can fully experience your power fantasy as an overpowered warrior, stomping giant hordes of enemies and tough bosses into the ground. How? We will reveal that in this guide.
How do I become overwhelmingly strong in Crimson Desert? It is important that you
- avoid mistakes that harm your build rather than your enemies
- make good use of the Abyss gear feature
- acquire gear and weapons that allow you to socket enough Abyss gear
- also consider the important little things
Let’s take a closer look at each point below – you can jump to the relevant topics via the table of contents.
These mistakes harm your build
Error number 1: If you have attack power or other offensive values on your gloves or boots, they only apply to punches or kicks. This is great for unarmed builds. When fighting with a weapon in hand, these bonuses do not count toward your weapon damage.
So avoid putting Abyss gear in your glove or boot slots that increase attack power, critical hit rate, and similar values. Better to use Abyss gear that increases your movement speed or reduces incoming damage.
Error number 2: Just because you are fighting with a two-handed weapon or two one-handed weapons doesn’t mean you should swap Kliff’s shield for a tool, for example. Kliff benefits from the defense value of the shield even if he doesn’t hold it in hand, but has it equipped in the selection menu. Accordingly, use a shield that provides you with decent defense.
You can find many tips for starting in Crimson Desert on our YouTube channel MeinMMO – check it out!
Error number 3: Accessories such as necklaces, rings, and earrings may not seem like the big values at first. However, upgrading these at the blacksmith eventually grants exciting (and progressively increasing) bonuses like more attack power, critical hit rate, attack speed, spirit regeneration, and more. It’s worth upgrading accessories that fit your playstyle.
Error number 4: Do not overlook the special key items in your inventory that you receive as rewards from certain quests. These usable items grant you permanent bonuses to certain values, which become immediately noticeable – for example, increasing your spirit maximum by 20 points in one hit or your stamina maximum by 40 points.
How to get the most out of Abyss gear
How do I unlock Abyss gear? In order to use Abyss gear, you first need to unlock the feature through the witches. At the release, you had to play the main campaign up to Act 5 for that. However, by now you should have already received a notification from a white carrier pigeon guiding you to the first witch in the north of Hernand City.
Once the unlocking has occurred, you need the following:
- Weapons and pieces of equipment with as many socketed slots as possible
- Abyss gear
- Enough silver for socketing, unlocking socket slots, and unsocketing – you can quickly get 500 silver with this tip
How do I farm Abyss gear the best way? On one hand, you can farm the Abyss creatures in the game world. They are fully overgrown with grass on their backs and drop Abyss spheres (for crafting Abyss gear) and Abyss gear upon their death.
A good farming spot can be found in Hernand, west of your camp and northwest of the Witchwoods. Tip: With your power strike, you can take out the small versions of the creatures in one hit. Tip 2: If you let the last enemy defeat you, you will respawn nearby and can immediately launch back into a full respawn.
You can also obtain a lot of Abyss gear by keeping an eye out for hidden chests in the game world or in the Abyss. For example, there is a hidden cave behind almost every waterfall in Pywel that contains a chest with a piece of equipment. There is also such a chest concealed in every ruin you need to cleanse for the witches.
By defeating the many bosses of Crimson Desert, you can earn countless additional weapons and outfits with exciting Abyss gear. So it is worth facing the challenges.
While the Abyss creatures usually drop Abyss gear with simple value improvements, many of the hidden pieces of equipment and boss loot often provide Abyss gear with special effects and activatable abilities.
Since you can extract each Abyss gear from an item at a witch, you can also combine several actively usable skills of the small spheres into a single weapon. A two-handed sword that provides you with 5 activatable skills? That’s no problem!
Tip: Skills that you trigger with keys you frequently use in battle work best here. Through the quest line “Lunar Judgment” from House Elemore in Demeniss, you receive 3 spears with different Abyss gear that you can activate with simple strikes. With these effects in your weapons, you can deal lightning, fire, and frost damage at the push of a button, so you won’t have to worry about the resistances of enemies anymore.
Can Abyss gear be upgraded? Almost. You can use synthesis to combine several versions of an Abyss gear to create a variant with a higher level. For example, two units that grant critical hit rate level 1 yield one unit that provides critical hit rate level 2. The higher the level of the Abyss gear in your items, the better.
Important: You can only upgrade Abyss gear through synthesis once you have purchased and learned the respective blueprint. Each witch sells different blueprints. It is worth visiting all the witches in the game world. An interactive map of Pywel can help you with that.
Tip: Through special synthesis, you can craft even better Abyss gear at witches, but the chance here is only 4 percent. Invest the resources only if you have more than enough of the normal Abyss gear units or if you don’t need them at all. Such a “Greater” variant truly provides more, such as critical hit rate at level 10 instead of level 3.
How to choose the right gear for you
Which weapon to choose? In general, the weapon type should match your preferred playstyle. Whether a spear or a two-handed sword is better depends on other factors:
- Does the weapon provide only attack power or a mix of values like attack power, critical hit rate, or attack speed?
- How much Abyss gear can I socket into the weapon?
Weapons that focus only on attack have a higher attack value at maximum level than weapons with mixed values, but they lack critical damage and increased attack speed.
However, we recommend this value mix for weapons. The reason: Attack power can also be increased through other sources. Furthermore, values like critical damage and attack speed scale more efficiently with your increasingly better equipment and the extremely strong effects of Abyss gear.
By the way: The more Abyss gear you can socket into your weapon, the better. Two-handed weapons with 5 slots or two one-handed weapons with 3 slots each are an excellent choice.
Below you will find our previous guides for recommended gear:
How to prepare for strong bosses
The following steps will make every boss fight easier:
- Increase your health, stamina, and spirit as high as possible through the talent tree. At a certain point, you must conduct the corresponding research to further raise the maximum of the 3 values. You will find the research at the Scholastein Institute (Health), in Pororin (Spirit), and at the Great Gate of Urdavah in Crimson Desert (Stamina).
- Before a fight, visit a whetstone (for more attack power) and an anvil (for more defense). It’s worth it!
- Keep equipment pieces that provide fire, lightning, or frost resistance in your collection so you can switch to them if needed. Enemies that focus on a particular element can often be easily tackled with corresponding resistance gear and suitable food. By the way, this article is about 2 armor sets that provide a lot of fire and frost resistance.
- Before a fight, stock up not only on good healing items but also on resurrection pills. You can find the recipe for the normal pills with the witch north of Hernand City (you need water and herbs for crafting). The improved resurrection pills can be found in the caves behind the waterfalls, for example.
- Anyone who has trouble reliably countering enemy attacks can use the focus talent Concentration – Insight to significantly slow down time, making countering much easier.
- Another helpful talent is Storm Strike in the blue tree. By reflecting your weapon, you can also briefly interrupt many bosses. After learning Storm Strike, you go directly into the attack.
If you want to invest much more in your character’s strength, you can unlock the prerequisites for the elemental powers of the red talent tree in the Abyss through long chains of puzzles. It starts at the Abyss access in the Scholastein Institute. The further path is so elaborate that we will address this topic in another guide. By the way: You can find more help for Crimson Desert in our extensive guide overview.
