Crimson Desert

Pearl Abyss

Pearl Abyss previously gave us a roadmap for what’s coming to Crimson Desert from this month through June, a far cry from their instantly-released patches for—oh wait, they already did one right after that.

The last patch added new moves for all three characters, the ability to hide shields and weapons on Kliff and markers on the map to show what caves and treasure chests you cleared. But we are now hearing about the next patch, which is not live yet, but soon, and Pearl Abyss has told us the next batch of upgrades the game is getting next. “Soon,” definitely means soon when we’re talking about Crimson Desert here, and it’s supposed to be here next week. So, what’s coming?

• A keyboard and mouse + controller preset, allowing for more options for controls
• Category tabs for your inventory/storage so you can separate out materials and gear better
• Improvements to distant scenery quality, which Pearl Abyss says will make this a larger patch than normal
• The addition of easy/medium/hard difficulty settings for the game.

There are no doubt going to be more additions, and possibly substantive ones, given how much Pearl Abyss jams into these patches and the surprises past ones have contained. The biggest add here is the difficulty options tab, though I do think there’s a bit of a problem with that idea. Not that it shouldn’t exist necessarily (I truly do not care if people want to play a single-player game on easy), but I feel like one of the main issues with the game is that in time, battles against even a ton of rank-and-file enemies get too easy, while many bosses get too hard and turn into a food-chugging fest.

While I may want normal enemies to be harder, I would not really be interested in bosses with more HP and more ability to one-shot me. I suppose you can flip difficulty back and forth there, but it’s a bit weird. I think bosses need more balancing than they’ve gotten.

It’s possible that a few other items may show up as surprises, but at least from that initial list, here are the main “roadmap” items that are not coming yet:

• Re-blockading, where groups of enemies will take over old, conquered zones.
• Boss re-fighting, where those bosses respawn to be taken on again (not sure if it’s all of them or just some)
• The addition of more clothing items
• The addition of more mounts and mount armor for the new animal mounts

That’s not even that much more stuff that needs to happen, and we are going to probably be two weeks into that two-month-long roadmap, and half of the announced items will already be completed. The speed of Pearl Abyss’s Crimson Desert updates remains unmatched. And plenty of players will be there to play them, given that this single-player game is still putting up well over 100,000 concurrent players a night on Steam alone, a month after release, given its sheer scope and how much fun people are having with it.

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