Crimson Desert

Beginner's Guide: Best Tips and Tricks

Crimson Desert Walkthrough Team

Last updated on: March 20, 2026 06:11 AM

Crimson Desert - Beginner

This is a beginner's guide to Crimson Desert. Check out our complete guide for beginners, as well as additional combat tips right here.

List of Contents

Beginner's Guide
Combat Tips
Related Guides

Beginner's Guide to Crimson Desert

Often Upgrade Your Equipment

Invest in Health and Stamina Early

Reveal Items with Blinding Flash or Lantern

Farm Contribution Points To Get Gear

Do Bounties or Hernand Commissions

Unlock Fast Travel Points

Avoid Getting Jailed Early On

Group Items in Your Inventory

Sell Unnecessary Items

Cook Food Before Heading Into Combat

Grab Uncollected Loot in the Supply Chest

Check Notifications via the Notifications Tab

Ring Bells at Bell Towers to Clear Fog of War

Take in a Pet to Receive Loot

Often Upgrade Your Equipment

Upgrade Armor

Copper and Iron Ores are both abundant in the game. It is therefore recommended that you upgrade your weapons at the earliest opportunity.

It is recommended that you always seek to upgrade your weapons, as this can be highly advantageous. If you are uncertain about which weapons to upgrade, you can upgrade the default weapons first, as these cannot be sold and you have them with you at all times.

Refinement Guide: How to Upgrade Equipment

Invest in Health and Stamina Early

Invest in Health and Stamina

Investing in Health and Stamina is beneficial as these are valuable resources in combat. Higher Health allows you to withstand more hits, and higher Stamina lets you perform more weapon swings and dodges.

Stamina also helps with exploration because it improves your ability to traverse and perform certain actions for longer periods of time, such as gliding, swimming and climbing.

Ideally, you should aim to level up both Health and Stamina to 4-5 as soon as possible, as these attributes make progression much easier.

Reveal Items With the Lantern or Blinding Flash

Blinding Light

You can use the Lantern or the Blinding Flash skill to highlight important items and unlockables in the overworld. This makes it easier to see which items are of interest in each area, so you won't miss anything.

Farm Contribution Points To Get Gear

Contribution Points vendor

Early in the game, it's adbisable to earn Contribution Points whenever you get the oppurtunity to do so. These points can then be exchanged for decent gear via a vendor, which is helpful when you're just starting out.

How to Farm Contribution Points

Do Bounties or Hernand Commissions

Do Bounties to earn Contribution Points

Complete bounties and Hernand Commissions (also called Requests) as soon as they appear on your map. This is one of the best ways to unlock additional inventory slots and earn coins, which can be used to purchase various items.

List of Faction Quests (Side Quests)

Unlock Fast Travel Points

Abyss Nexus Fast Travel

Unlocking Fast Travel points early in the game can be quite handy. This minimizes the amount of backtracking you have to do when going back and forth between different areas.

Most importantly, you should unlock the Abyss Cresset and Abyss Nexus fast travel points early on since you will visit these areas quite often. For areas that have large ? markers, they are usually an indicator of a fast travel point.

Pywel Interactive Map and Locations

Avoid Getting Jailed Early On

Avoid getting jailed

Getting jailed early on can be quite detrimental because it will significantly reduce your contribution points and silver. If you don't have enough Silver to pay for the crimes you've committed, getting jailed can easily put you in the negative.

Wanted System Explained: How to Clear Bounty

Group Items in Your Inventory

Sort items

You can group items your inventory by type, which makes inventory management quite easy. Make it a habit to use the sort feature often, as it lets you find items much more easily.

Sell Unnecessary Items

Sell Unnecessary items

Sell unnecessary items as soon as you can, such as old books, documents, and posters. They take up space in your inventory and aren't required for any quests or progression, so it's fine to sell them to make space for other items.

Additionally, the absence of storage boxes or facilities means items cannot be stored, so getting rid of unwanted items becomes a regular occurrence.

Best Items to Keep, Buy, and Sell

Cook Food Before Heading Into Combat

Cook Food first

Consuming food heals you. Consuming raw food won't have negative effects, but it won't be as effective as consuming cooked food. Cooking doesn't cost anything, and cooked food provides more healing than raw food, so take the time to cook first.

List of All Food

Grab Uncollected Loot in the Supply Chest

Supply Chest

You can collect Uncollected loot that you missed via the supply chest inside the camp. This allows you to focus more on certain aspects of the game, such as combat, and then collect the loot you missed later on.

Check Notifications via the Notifications Tab

Notifacations Tab

You can view past notifications via the Notifications tab. You can access this tab by selecting Others from the menu screen during gameplay. Use this tab to view any pop-up notifications you might have missed during major events.

Ring Bells at Bell Towers to Clear Fog of War

Instead of manually clearing the map by exploring on foot, find bell towers and ring the bells at the top to clear large patches of land in a region. Bell towers are usually found in towns and cities, marked by a bell icon on the map.

How to Clear Fog of War

Take in a Pet to Receive Loot

Take In Dog with Max Trust
Getting a pet early is helpful as they loot items for you. To get a pet, you need to raise its trust to maximum level by feeding them meat or petting them.

How to Unlock and Get Pets

Combat Tips

Blue Splashes Indicate That the Attack Has Super Armor

Use Blinding Flash to Stun Targets

Take Advantage of Stab Early On

Blue Splashes Indicate That the Attack Has Super Armor

Super Armor

If you see a blue splash when you hit the enemy with an attack, it means that the enemy's attack has super-armor properties and cannot normally be interrupted.

Disrupt blue attacks by using an attack with super armor-breaking properties, such as Kliff's fully upgraded Stab skill. If you don't have attacks that can deal with blue attacks just yet, simply dodge or block them.

List of All Skills

Use Blinding Flash to Stun Targets

Blinding Flash is quite handy when you're in a bind, as it can stun enemies briefly. It works against multiple enemies, so use it when you're surrounded by several targets.

Take Advantage of Stab Early On

Use stab to inflict bleed

Bleed damage is potent early on, and you can induce bleed by performing stab attacks. If you haven't decided on a build yet, you can rely on stab attacks to induce bleed in the meantime.

Best Builds

Crimson Desert Related Guides

Crimson Desert - Wiki and Guides

Crimson Desert Guides

Meta Guides

Best Ways to Farm Money	Best Skills to Get Early	Best Places to Visit Early
Best Abyss Gears	Best Ways to Farm Abyss Artifacts	Best Armor
Best Weapons	-	-

Beginner Guides

Beginner's Guide	Early Progression Guide	Is There Transmog?
How to Fast Travel	Where to Store Items	Can You Skip Cutscenes
How to Steal Items	How to Pass Time	How to Log Trees
Can You Hide Your Helmet?	Death Penalty Explained	Trust System Explained
How Long Is Crimson Desert?	How to Heal Your Horse	How to Equip Abyss Cores
All Missables and One-Time Events	How to Play Duo	How to Infiltrate Guarded Areas
Best Items to Keep, Buy, and Sell	Wanted System Explained	Best Side Quests to Complete
What Are Mysterious Energies?	How to Unlock and Get Pets	List of Trophies and Achievements
How to Fish	How to Clear Fog of War	How to Deal with Cold and Hot Climates
How to Respec Skills	How to Find the Room the Key Opens	Refinement Guide
How to Craft Equipment	How to in Win Arm Wrestling	How to Change Characters
How to Save	How to Sheathe Your Weapon	Camp Features
How to Enter Waterfalls	Do Enemies and Gatherables Respawn?	List of Puzzles
How to Burn Vines	How to Make Fire Arrows	How to Cook Food
Story Explained	How to Mine Ores	Mouse and Keyboard or Controller?
How to Dye Armor	Trading System Explained	Why Does Your Lantern Glow Blue?
Where to Turn In Bounties	Supply Chests Locations	HUD Explained
Is There New Game Plus?	How to Slide	What Are Unequippable Equipment?
How to Tame Horses	-	-

Character Progression Guides

How to Unlock Core Slot	Leveling System Explained	How Many Skill Points Can You Get?
How to Equip Abyss Cores	How to Increase Health	How to Increase Spirit
How to Increase Stamina	How to Unlock Elemental Skills	-

Combat Tips

How to Beat Flying Enemies	How to Heal	Can You Defeat Myurdin? (Tutorial Boss)
How to Perfect Dodge	How to Parry Attacks	How to Lock On Targets

Settings Guides

List of All Controls

Best Settings

Difficulty Explained

Comment

Post (0 Comments)

Author

Crimson Desert Walkthrough Team

This article was created by Game8's elite team of writers and gamers.

Crimson Desert Walkthrough & Guides Wiki
Beginner's Guide: Best Tips and Tricks

Tell Us More About You!

Rankings

Gaming News

Popular Games

Recommended Games

© Pearl Abyss Corp. All Rights Reserved.

The copyrights of videos of games used in our content and other intellectual property rights belong to the provider of the game.
The contents we provide on this site were created personally by members of the Game8 editorial department.
We refuse the right to reuse or repost content taken without our permission such as data or images to other sites.

Beginner's Guide: Best Tips and Tricks

Beginner's Guide to Crimson Desert

Often Upgrade Your Equipment

Invest in Health and Stamina Early

Reveal Items With the Lantern or Blinding Flash

Farm Contribution Points To Get Gear

Do Bounties or Hernand Commissions

Unlock Fast Travel Points

Avoid Getting Jailed Early On

Group Items in Your Inventory

Sell Unnecessary Items

Cook Food Before Heading Into Combat

Grab Uncollected Loot in the Supply Chest

Check Notifications via the Notifications Tab

Ring Bells at Bell Towers to Clear Fog of War

Take in a Pet to Receive Loot

Combat Tips

Blue Splashes Indicate That the Attack Has Super Armor

Use Blinding Flash to Stun Targets

Take Advantage of Stab Early On