Just a day after Pearl Abyss’ announcement of the various improvements it said were coming soon to Crimson Desert, we have a new patch that adds many of them already — and even a few changes fans hadn’t expected.
The highlights of the patch, as detailed on the Crimson Desert website, are a new weapons display option, which means you can hide weapons from the back of your character (so long, shield!), the addition of skills for the secondary playable characters, which makes them more viable to play, and various user interface improvements.
But there’s a lot in the update (patch notes below) that Pearl Abyss hadn’t mentioned. For example, Pearl Abyss has improved the usability of the Greymane camp (I won’t say how exactly, to avoid spoilers), made the Abyss puzzles easier by adding more hints and making it easier to recognize when certain gimmicks are available to be attached by using Force Palm, and gave Kliff an entirely new ability called Focused Aerial Roll.
For me, the highlight of the patch is the improvements to Damiane and Oongka, who I’ve pretty much ignored up to this point because of their limited functionality. Now they have pretty much the same abilities as Kliff, so you’ll be able to use them to complete much of the open-world gameplay. The main story still revolves around Kliff and you’ll need to use him for the majority of it, but clearly Damiane and Oongka are more viable now.
The patch also improves fast travel so it can be used while mounted, falling, swimming, or climbing walls, which means you can pretty much fast travel at any non combat point now. And there are some welcome quality of life improvements, too, such as icons for treasure chests already obtained now being displayed differently, visited and unvisited caves are now displayed with different icons, and restored and unrestored Abyss locations are now displayed with different icons.
So, plenty to dig into with this latest patch, while there are still many improvements to come, as outlined this week. We can expect new pets and mounts, new outfits, and significant changes to storage, ‘re-blockading,’ and new difficulty options, too.
As I’ve said before, the pace of these game-changing updates is so quick, you do wonder how Pearl Abyss is managing it. Crimson Desert has sold 4 million copies so far, making it a big hit for the developer, and it’s showing remarkable staying power in terms of Steam concurrents. So players are sticking with it, pumping hundreds of hours into its open world, and it continues to sell. A big part of that success is down to the updates released over the last few weeks, which have all have made significant improvements, helping to shift the mixed reception at launch.
Clearly, there are even more to come.
Crimson Desert update 1.03.00 patch notes:
Content
- Improved the usability of the Greymane camp.
- Fixed issues that occurred when completing certain requests while being in the ‘wanted’ status.
- Improved standard dialogue scenes without letterboxing so that fast-forwarding is now available.
- Added a Fast Forward Speed option under Other > Language & Gameplay, allowing players to adjust fast-forward speed.
- Improved Abyss Nexuses so that they are easier to discover.
- Improved convenience for certain Abyss puzzles.
- Improved clarity so that it is easier to recognize when certain gimmicks are available to be attached by using ‘Force Palm’.
- Improved lanterns and ‘Blinding Flash’ so that they provide more hints.
- Improved the entrance path to the Spire of Soaring.
- Improved terrain in certain Abyss locations.
- Changed bank functionality while being in the ‘wanted’ status so that bank services remain available, but depositing gold bars and updating investment funds are no longer possible.
- Fixed an issue where requests could not be completed at a certain step when destroying the totems after completing Chapter 9, ‘Sanctum of Mortification’.
- Fixed an issue where certain requests could not be completed if related quest items were obtained before the request was activated.
- Fixed an issue where Gunter (Equipment vendor), Harry (Blacksmith), Bronton (Stablekeep), and Lola (Seamstress) in Pailune would be replaced by different NPCs after a certain quest.
- Added 3 new base music tracks across the continent of Pywel during combat (The Crimson Desert and certain other regions excluded) during [Patch 1.01.00].
- Added 1 new loading screen music track.
Controls & Combat
- Improved teleportation via the Abyss Nexus so that it can now be used while mounted, falling, swimming, or climbing walls.
- Improved the lock-on mechanism during boss battles.
- Improved the hard lock-on against bosses so that it is maintained from further distances.
- Changed the lock-on mechanism so that it no longer applies to certain larger bosses.
- Added the new ability, ‘Focused Aerial Roll’ for Kliff.
- Prerequisite abilities: ‘Focus Lv. 3’, ‘Flight Lv. 2’, and ‘Aerial Roll’.
- The skill can be activated by using ‘Focus’ during flight and then pressing the dodge key.
- Improved Damiane and Oongka so that they have more abilities useful for open-world gameplay.
- Added ‘Axiom Force’, ‘Nature’s Snare’ and related abilities for Damiane and Oongka.
- Improved Damiane’s ‘Shield Toss’ and Oongka’s ‘Scatter Shot’ ability so that they have the same effect as Kliff’s ‘Force Palm’.
- Changed the control inputs for Damiane’s ‘Skystep’ and Oongka’s ‘Vertical Flight’ ability.
- Fixed an issue where the character would occasionally move at an abnormally fast speed during certain ability chained combos.
- Fixed an issue where the ‘Blinding Flash’ ability would not remain active while moving on a mount.
- Improved interactions with devices such as walls, buttons, and cranks so that a dedicated animation now plays when they can no longer be pushed.
- [Keyboard/Mouse] Improved the controls for ‘Axiom Force’.
- [Controller] Fixed an issue where ‘Nature’s Snare’ ability would activate during ‘Focus’ by tilting the right stick in one direction.
UI Fixes & Improvements
- Changed the color of faction quest icons.
- Improved the list of Memory Fragments of the Visione so that it only shows the list of currently obtained Fragments.
- Added a function that processes all items at once when grouping or ungrouping items in the bag.
- Improved the UI so that item details can now be viewed in the storage section as well.
- Improved the comrade list UI so that a check icon is now displayed on the selected comrade.
- Fixed an issue where the Attack and Critical Rate of certain equipment, such as necklaces and cloaks, were displayed as doubled when viewing character stat details from the inventory or Quick Slots.
- Improved the world map and minimap so that icons for treasure chests already obtained are now displayed differently.
- Improved the world map so that visited and unvisited caves are now displayed with different icons.
- Improved the world map so that restored and unrestored Abyss locations are now displayed with different icons.
- Fixed an issue where markers set on the world map would not be retained upon the first reconnection.
Graphics & Settings
- [PC] Added support for Intel Arc GPUs. Compatibility and performance across various Intel GPUs will continue to be improved over time.
- [PC] Added the ‘Intel XeSS 3.0’ option under Settings > Video > Upscale Mode.
- [PC] Added the ‘Intel XeSS Frame Generation’ option under Settings > Video.
- On Intel Arc A-series GPUs, the screen may not display properly when using ‘Intel XeSS 3.0’ or ‘Intel XeSS Frame Generation’.
- [PC] Added the ‘AMD Radeon™ Anti-Lag 2’ option under Settings > Video.
- [PC] Added the ‘Displacement Scale’ option under Settings > Graphics.
- [PC] Added the ‘Detail Decorative Mesh’ option under Settings > Graphics.
- [PC] Fixed noise that occurred in screen distortion effects when using DLSS-RR.
- [PlayStation 5 Base / Xbox Series X] Added the ‘Enhanced Raytracing’ option under Settings > Video.
- [PlayStation 5 Pro] Added the ‘PSSR Sharpness’ option under Settings > Video.
- [All Platforms] Improved lighting quality in indoor environments.
- [All Platforms] Improved water surface reflections.
- [All Platforms] Fixed an issue where rain appeared excessively bright from certain angles.
- Added the ‘Weapon Display’ option under Others > Language & Gameplay.
- Display Melee Weapons
- All
- Selected Only
- Display Ranged Weapons
- Always
- Only When Used
- Added the ‘Minimum Font Size’ option under Others > Accessibility.
- This option will take effect after restarting the game.
- Added the ‘Fast Forward Speed’ option under Others > Language & Gameplay.
- Fast Forward speed can be set up to 4x.
- Added the following options under Others > Accessibility.
- Camera Visual Range
- Camera Vertical Offset
- Camera Horizontal Offset
- Camera Auto-follow
- Camera Lookahead
- Display Melee Weapons
Performance, Stability, Gameplay
- Fixed several stability, performance optimization, and crash issues across PC, console, and Mac.
Localization
- Fixed various localization errors and improved localization quality (game advice, etc.) across all languages.
Others
- Fixed an issue where the game would crash when using the Helm of Knowledge as Damiane or Oongka.
- Fixed an issue where corn had no maximum purchase limit at certain vendors.
- Fixed various other in-game issues.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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