The first Crimson Desert update makes bosses less punishing, and I can hear the sighs of relief

The first Crimson Desert update is tackling one of its most frustrating aspects as players start to wrangle with Pearl Abyss’ mammoth open-world game. Crimson Desert is a vast and often unwieldy beast, and its boss battles are particularly so, acting as serious difficulty spikes that can catch you off guard. Making it worse, many of them are relentless, giving you little time to get your bearings. Fortunately, the developer is already responding quickly with some welcome changes, along with additional tutorials, new moves, and more fast-travel points.

The most important changes in the new Crimson Desert patch notes are adjustment to bosses, with combat balance tweaked for several encounters. In particular, Pearl Abyss calls out the Reed Devil, an early fight that Paul described as having an “unbelievably frustrating moveset” in our Crimson Desert review. Even more welcome is that bosses will no longer attack and potentially stunlock you while you’re trying to revive. One particular encounter in chapter four no longer requires you to redo a pre-fight puzzle if you die, but if you’ve already made it that far then you likely don’t need my advice.

One thing not mentioned in the notes that we’ve already spotted in game is the introduction of some additional fast-travel points, including one in the first main town, and another that shows up in the Greymane camp once you’ve established it. While skydiving all the way down to your base every time you want to go home feels great the first couple of times, it quickly wears out its welcome.

Pearl Abyss has also introduced a new tutorial that you’ll find at the start of chapter three, designed to better explain Abyss Gears, which are used to upgrade your weapons and armor. The skills menu has been given an overhaul to separate each entry out by weapon type, along with improved descriptions and videos. ‘Watch and Learn,’ the feature where you can obtain new moves by seeing enemies use them, has been made easier to execute.

You’ll also find a few more skills across the trio of protagonists. Main man Kliff gets a new finishing blow at the end of his Flurry of Blows, Damiane’s greatsword stab and uppercut get a follow-up skill, and you can chain Oongka’s dual-wield stab into another attack. The instant-kill damage of the bear has been taken away, and escape QTE’s will gradually get harder to complete if you are captured multiple times in quick succession.

Elsewhere, Pearl Abyss has deployed a few more fixes for quests not progressing properly, improved the usability of the housing mode, polished up some localization, and is continuing to adjust NPC dialogue, voices, and reactions “to feel more natural and better fit their situations.” It’s also increased how quickly you can fast-forward recently viewed cutscenes, although the option for a skip on at least those you’ve seen before remains absent for now.

Crimson Desert patch 1.00.02 is live now on Steam and the Epic Games Store. There’s plenty more work to be done, with highly requested features such as controller rebinding still missing. Given that it’s one of the most frequent callouts among its early mixed reviews, I would be shocked if it doesn’t make the cut as soon as possible.