Crimson Desert

Pearl Abyss

Crimson Desert has been a bit all over the place this past week, with its biggest patch yet adding everything from difficulty levels to bird pets, but also breaking many portions of the game that needed a pair of hotfixes to correct.

However, there is one addition to the game that is better than anything else, considering it will change your entire experience. It’s a buff that was not announced, but players have figured out that it happened almost as soon as they got into any prolonged combat or traversal segment.

Crimson Desert appears to have buffed the rate of spirit generation when you focus, making it refill three times as fast as before. I’ve tested it, and I do believe it’s 3x, not 2x, given how fast it rockets up now. It used to take three ticks to get one full “leaf” below, now it takes one.

Why is this so important? Because it took forever to replenish spirit before this, and it’s used for practically everything in the game. In traversal, you are constantly using the triple jump spirit palm to reach high places. In combat, there are a host of spirit-based moves that will drain it quickly, including even basic things like last-second dodges, but then recharging that takes forever and breaks the flow of combat for way too long. This is particularly noticeable in boss fights, where you have to find spaces to breathe to regenerate that spirit. You’ll still have to do that, but it will increase 3x as fast now, which will result in huge changes to the types of fights you’ll be able to have without 20-second breaks to refill your meter. I’m not even exaggerating, it was around that.

There are so many valuable moves that use spirit that a buff like that will really transform combat in what I would argue could be the most significant way, since they “fixed” controls so fighting in general felt better and more responsive. The one related spirit buff that was actually announced with this last patch was that Force Palm was now faster than it was before. So, faster force palm (a great interrupt for bosses, especially) plus faster recharge equals great synergy. And that’s before all the other key moves that use it (bow focus shot and power shot were immensely strong even before this).

I don’t know why this wasn’t in the patch notes when it was one of its biggest changes, but in this and other games, it’s not an uncommon occurrence. I think the patch did make a few things worse with combat in terms of combo timing and especially dealing with bosses in hard mode, but the spirit generation is huge. Go try it out.

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