Expectation and Reality
When I first launched Crimson Desert, I expected a single-player fantasy adventure in a gigantic and unbelievably beautiful open world. Instead, I got... a dream job for people obsessed with grinding. In the first hours, quests were thrown at me haphazardly, the controls twisted my arms, and, as the cherry on top, the game buried me under dozens of mechanics usually found in MMORPGs. And not as background flavor, but as a mandatory part of the gameplay loop.
After almost every chapter, I ran into a so-called "grindwall": the game literally demanded that I go mine ore, chop trees, and hunt animals. At the same time, it offered no worthwhile alternative — you had to comply, otherwise you simply would not be able to kill the next boss.
Jumping ahead, I should note that the developers reacted quickly to criticism from reviews and early player feedback. They simplified traversal, made bosses a bit easier, increased the amount of health restored by food, and fixed many other unpleasant little things. But let me clarify: I played a pre-release version and judged that specific build. Back then, not everything worked the way the developers likely intended it to work (I will return to that later). Yes, after release it became easier to "survive," but the MMO routine itself did not go anywhere and continued to bother me.
It bothered me because... actually, I love MMORPGs. I spent about half of my gaming life in multiplayer fantasy worlds: leveling up, going on raids, taking part in castle sieges. But about ten years ago, I quit MMOs on PC, and then spent a few more years playing mobile MMOs — Black Desert Mobile among them. They allowed you to progress in AFK mode thanks to auto-battle, while tackling interesting content in "manual" mode. But eventually I quit those too.
Why? My priorities changed. I had less time, and higher standards for how I spent my leisure time. I realized that the overall efficiency of my gaming time in MMOs was noticeably lower than in a good single-player game. Simply put, for every hour spent, I got more emotions and impressions from single-player experiences.
So when I launched Crimson Desert and discovered what was essentially a single-player game operating by MMO rules, I experienced unpleasant deja vu. It demanded from me exactly what I had consciously rejected — the meaningless waste of time on repetitive tasks. Especially since many of these mechanics are implemented imperfectly. In some places they are overcomplicated and inconvenient; in others, on the contrary, they are simplified compared with the original (and even the mobile) Black Desert. I felt no balance, and one question kept spinning in my head: why does a single-player adventure need all this tinsel with resource grinding and management?
The Main Mistake Is Trying to Finish Crimson Desert
The turning point came on release day. By then I had already submitted my review, but I still felt a stubborn need to reach the finale — if only to understand what all this would amount to and, eventually, fly a dragon. Then I thought: maybe the problem was not the game, but my approach?
I was trying to "finish" Crimson Desert.
I treated it like a conventional story-driven adventure. Run through missions, clear activities, gather loot, upgrade gear, aim for the ending while cleaning up as much content as possible along the way. And that is exactly the trap. You do not need to try to complete Crimson Desert one hundred percent. In fact, you should not think about "completion" here in the usual sense at all. The game is huge, cyclical, and not designed for total map-clearing. Trying to squeeze everything out of it, I ended up squeezing myself dry.
I decided: enough playing the way its systems demand. I would play the way I wanted to. Put simply, I would stop doing the things I found uninteresting, even if the game considered them important. And you know what? The world did not collapse. On the contrary, it became easier to breathe.
As soon as I abandoned the idea of "finishing" Crimson Desert in the usual sense, the game began to transform. And what is especially frustrating is that this could have happened much earlier. But the quality of the pre-release version got in the way.
After release, I discovered that my camp had suddenly become much more developed. A ranch and a garden had appeared, additional functions had unlocked — even though I had done nothing for that to happen. The day-one patch had kicked in. When I started figuring out the "new additions," something clicked in my head. I understood how to "beat" Crimson Desert, and found a simple way to turn this offline MMO into a normal open-world adventure.
Everything above was just the introduction. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to repeat my path and fall in love with Crimson Desert.
My Camp — My Rules
Step one: build up your starting capital.
It will help you get through the early chapters "in comfort" without trouble. To do that, use a simple way to earn money at the very beginning of the game. Head northwest of the starting city of Hernand to The Witchwoods. Right near the Witch's House and in the surrounding area grow flowers called "red croton." In 10 minutes of gathering, you can collect several hundred of these flowers. Every 50 of them will bring in 7 silver — and that is a very solid amount at the start.
You can replenish your wallet this way every in-game week, but over time the following steps will provide your cash flow:
- Progress the story to Chapter Three, where your camp will unlock.
- Focus on the quests of the Greymanes faction. Forget about the main story for a while and complete everything available. Do absolutely everything they assign you, even the most tedious work. These quests will give you new hirelings, unlock the ranch, the garden, and merchants, expand your inventory, and thoroughly teach you nearly all of the game's mechanics, including the least obvious ones. Once they are complete, you will have a full-fledged base and an understanding of how to use it.
- Set up a task cycle for your hirelings. Send workers to gather provisions — meat, fish, vegetables — and make sure to maintain several guard missions. They bring money into the camp treasury, and you will need a lot of funds. At first, only parsley or cabbage gathering tasks may be available, but send them on those too in order to stockpile plant-based food supplies. A little later, more valuable missions will open up, for example gathering fatty meat at the Svinkholt Ranch, as soon as you visit that area.
Step two: take care of business at the base.
- Try farming (optional). Plant vegetables and fruits on the farm. Seeds can be bought from the nearest merchant or in towns. But from my observations, the "return" does not justify the time spent harvesting manually.
- Take up animal husbandry. As soon as the ranch unlocks, find sheep nearby and bring at least one ram (a male with horns) and one ewe (without horns) to the camp — breeding requires a pair. A suitable place exists, for example, on the way to the Golden Leaf Guild House, not far from Wolf Hill.
- Feed and breed the animals. The animals on your ranch will start breeding, but hungry lambs will remain small and useless. Take note: there is a feeder in the center of the pen. Put wheat, cabbage, or any other plant-based feed there that your hirelings gather. Well-fed sheep will level up and yield more resources, while the offspring will grow into adults and continue breeding. Excess animals can be sold through the ranch management interface (the money will go to the camp treasury) or slaughtered, which is more profitable. In the end, you will get a stable flow of meat, hides, wool, horns, and other livestock resources. If you want, you can also keep chickens or goats to obtain eggs and milk.
Step three: put camp operations on autopilot.
- Keep the game running in the background. This is the key step if you want to eliminate manual grinding and develop your character without leaving the camp. Hireling tasks, crop growth, and livestock development all happen in real time, so when you exit the game, every process stops. For example, a fatty meat gathering task takes 18 in-game hours — roughly an hour and a half of real time. During a standard three-hour session, you will get around 100 pieces of meat, and if you leave the game running for a full day, you will get about 800, all from just one task. That is reason enough to leave Crimson Desert working in the background and collecting resources. To reduce the load on your PC, switch the game to windowed mode, lower the graphics settings to the minimum, and, if necessary, lower the screen refresh rate and enable vertical sync.
- Use manual acceleration. The processes can be sped up even further. If possible, periodically (about once an hour) open the game and use the "Wait" function by a campfire or bed to quickly fast-forward 12 hours. That way tasks will finish more often, and you will get significantly more resources in the same amount of real time.
Rob your own camp. In every tent and little house at the base, there are items lying around: food, materials, utensils. You can collect them into your inventory without punishment and immediately sell them to a merchant. For example, near the blacksmith you can pick up boxes with 90 arrows, in the ranch stalls there is meat, and next to your personal chest there are grains. After some time, all these items, right down to the plates, reappear in their places, and the procedure can be repeated. Essentially, you get an endless source of modest income and supplies.
And here are a couple more tricks that I managed to discover through my own experience.
- Use your meat sparingly (optional). When your first stockpiles appear, it is tempting to cook "generous portions of grilled meat," which restore 280 health. But in most situations, it is more profitable to stock up on regular "grilled meat," which restores 140 health. The math is simple: 100 pieces of meat become 100 portions worth 140 HP each — that is 14,000 points of healing. But "generous" portions at 10 pieces each will give only 2,800 HP. The difference is obvious.
- Eliminate manual grinding. Try to cover the hero's needs through the camp and sell excess resources. For example, your flock will produce so much wool that there will simply be nowhere to use it all in crafting — feel free to sell the surplus to merchants. With the money you earn, buy up ore and other materials for upgrading equipment. If the camp's assortment is exhausted, head to town — goods refresh daily at midnight, so there will be no shortage.
- Go on an adventure! Your task now is not to be afraid of skipping things. You can safely ignore boring side quests, difficult puzzles, and routine activities. None of that is mandatory anymore. Focus on what is genuinely interesting: the story, side tales, exploration of locations, boss battles. Your hero will be supplied with food, armor, and weapons, so you will not have to spend hours preparing. Turn the game into a chain of interesting events and focus on the main thing. Let the camp handle the routine, and you handle the game.
Who Was All This Even Designed For?
These tips are not about playing less, but about removing the drawn-out and boring elements and increasing the concentration of the adventure itself. Because pounding ore or hunting harmless deer for hours for meat and hides is, excuse me, not an adventure.
If you want hardcore survival and grinding, there are other games where it is done better. Crimson Desert is good for other reasons — atmosphere, a picturesque world, action, and exploration. When the routine stops pressing on you, you start to see what the game really offers. It has its own "budget Game of Thrones," but it truly opened up to me only when I stopped getting distracted by what did not interest me.
In the end, the game did not change — my approach did. Now it is a concentrated adventure in the boundless expanses of Crimson Desert, one that you can enjoy even when you only have a couple of hours to play. And that is exactly what I recommend to you.