Kailok the Hornsplitter in Crimson Desert is one of the game’s first major boss fights, a corrupt merchant king with an arcane sword he uses to fire lines of damage with his strikes. This represents a serious escalation of challenge in Crimson Desert, with players having to battle the Hornsplitter to victory. This is a boss fight where evasion and carefully chosen moments to strike are essential, as playing too aggressively is liable to get Kliff killed. We’ll go into more detail as we explain how to beat Kailok the Hornsplitter in Crimson Desert, as well as the rewards you can get for victory.
Kailok the Hornsplitter boss fight guide and strategy
The key to beating the Hornsplitter is to use horizontal evasion, dodging to the sides to avoid the long reach on many of Kailok’s sword attacks. Blocking against Kailok has limited effect unless you can time a parry, and his longer-ranged weapons can’t be dodged by going backwards.
Beyond that, the key is to play largely defensively. The essential three-part strategy goes like this:
- Play evasively, dodging magic beams or parrying sword strikes.
- When the chance opens, land two or three heavy attacks or Force Palm strikes. Trying to do more than these will leave you highly vulnerable to Kailok hitting you back.
- Repeat this process until you can hit Kailok with a finisher for major damage.
There are other methods beyond this (for example, Kailok can be interrupted in some of his moves by Blinding Flash), but this is the most reliable and beginner-friendly one in Crimson Desert. You’ll also want to have put at least one upgrade each into health and stamina, for the sake of basic survivability, and ideally to have upgraded your weapons and armor at the Smithy in Hernand.
Beyond that, here are some early Crimson Desert skills that can help you:
- Focus / Focused Insight: Not only can you get back Spirit for your charges, but this basically gives you a free parry against the Hornsplitter’s melee attacks.
- Turning Slash / Proficiency: Being able to quickly swap into your most powerful attack is a good way to stack damage on Kailok.
- Force Palm Pulse: Emphasising the strength of Force Palm is a really good investment not just for Kailok, but any number of boss fights to come.
Kailok can actually be observed during this fight to learn the skill Evasive Roll, which is useful, but shouldn’t be a gamechanger for this fight, so don’t exhaust yourself trying to learn it.
Kailok the Hornsplitter rewards
Defeating Kailok will bring you to Chapter 3 of Crimson Desert, and grant you the following rewards (after a cutscene):
- Sword of the Lord
- Seal of Greed (Goldleaf Merchant Guild)
- Iron Ore (x7)
The Sword of the Lord is one of the best Crimson Desert weapons for the early game, as it actually has, built in, the “Wind Slash,” aka extended ripples of damage that the Hornsplitter was using in his fight. This power is granted by an embedded Crimson Desert Abyss Gear, which you can extract with any of the Witches.
The Seal of Greed specifically gives a 20% increase to any trade goods sold to the Goldleaf merchants when used, but the buff only lasts for two hours. Make sure you sell everything you have in that time!
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