I wouldn’t ordinarily celebrate every time a new patch goes live, but there’s something special about Crimson Desert (if you couldn’t already tell). The last major update offered some much-needed quality of life on top of the five permanent mounts, Refinement Tokens, “Make Now” to speed up crafting and cooking, auto-collecting ores with the Mining Knuckledrill, and so on.
To that end, Patch 1.02.00, which is now live, isn’t as loaded with improvements and new features, but it’s still a close second. Let’s dive into all the major changes and how they’ll affect your experience, starting with the biggest addition…
More Storage Chest Slots
The addition of a Storage Chest is one that fans (and reviewers) craved, and the development team answered in kind just a few days later. It even had the courtesy to move it to Kliff’s tent so that you’re not awkwardly maneuvering past Karl to access it, but soon enough, everyone came to the same realization – 240 slots were nowhere near enough.
Thankfully, the developer agreed and decided to up the maximum amount not by double or triple but almost quadruple. That’s right – you can now have 1000 slots in the Storage Chest, which means even more room for all those armor sets, weapons, ingredients, trading goods that you swear you’ll sell off, ores, stolen items, and whatnot.
But there is a slight caveat – it’s tied to your expansion of the Howling Hill Camp. You’ll now start with 240 slots, which increases by 100 slots for each expansion, culminating in the final upgrade, giving you a whopping 360 additional slots. A good way to incentivize pursuing more space and retroactively reward those who paid attention to their camp.
Basic and Classic Controls
Personally, I liked the addition of holding the sprint button instead of constantly tapping it, but it created some issues with mounts. Instead of periodically pressing it for a short burst of speed, after which it would recover, the stamina meter drained to zero by simply holding the button for a bit. Some preferred tapping to sprint for the additional control.
Thus, a compromise was born with this update, adding Basic and Classic movement. The former is your hold-to-sprint option while the latter involves repeatedly pressing the button. However, the best part is when using mounts. Holding sprint with Basic controls will now consume stamina at set intervals instead of all in one go, but if you want to dictate those intervals, then Classic consumes it every time you press the sprint key. It’s truly a brave new world.
And that doesn’t even go into all the other little movement improvements. You can now fast travel to an Abyss Nexus plate while moving “slightly.” Granted, it still doesn’t work when mounted or gliding, but it’s a start, and the developer plans to expand this to allow fast traveling on “certain mounts.”
However, all of that pales in comparison, at least for me, to the gliding change. Instead of tapping the jump button again in mid-air and holding it, you can keep it pressed to activate a glide. No more awkwardly trying to activate glide after a triple Force Palm jump, wondering why you even bothered, and I couldn’t be happier.
Headgear Visibility
The fashion game is just as important as any other endgame activity, especially in an experience as dense as this. Unfortunately, there’s still no transmog system, so you can’t have the look of certain armor sets and clothing while retaining the stats of another underneath, but there’s a meaningful step forward: Headgear visibility.
I’ll be honest: As much as I like the Blackwing Mask, sometimes going “caw” while conversing with the townsfolk (they never say it back), I wanted an option to hide it, if only to remember what the top half of Kliff’s head looked like. Lo and behold, it’s finally here, and you can choose between having headgear always show, stay hidden in cutscenes, only show up in combat or always remain concealed.
There’s even more to come, with the developer planning to add a feature to hide the weapons on a character’s back, which should make for less awkward running about with a Banner Pike on your back.
More Graphical Improvements and Features
All platforms have seen improved quality in FSR Frame Generation and upscaling quality. Meanwhile, DLSS RR users should no longer see their GPU memory usage increasing when it’s enabled. It also doesn’t hurt that certain elements, such as foliage, which looked off with ray-traced reflections while using FSR-RR or DLSS-RR, have been fixed, and there should be less stuttering overall.
On the console side, Xbox Series X players can now enable 4K upscaling in Performance Mode. Meanwhile, PS5 Pro owners can take advantage of Upgraded PSR Sharpen and Upgraded PSSR Native AA in Quality Mode. This is in addition to several other improvements to stability and performance, including a fix for a bug that caused V-Sync to change when hitting the Home button on Xbox.
Even More Little Touches
There are several other bug fixes worth mentioning, such as Double Boost, a horse ability, now working properly, or bosses no longer teleporting to Narnia in the middle of a battle. You should also find jumping to be more responsive after an attack, and viewing details of Abyss nodes in the map screen should no longer reset a puzzle – something I didn’t know could happen and am now thankful that I never had to learn about the hard way.
However, there’s even more to look forward to, such as a new armor set and helmet for cats – a much-welcome feature for those focused on feline fashion sense. Pailune also now has a dedicated Abyss Nexus. You don’t have to choose between teleporting to the Abyss Cresset to the north or south anymore, and while it requires activation, you can’t miss it. The UI has seen further improvements, such as sellable items in shops now being prioritized on display, and the minimap’s scale no longer resetting when sprinting at full speed on a mount.
There are even separate menus for Save Game and Load Game. In answer to mishaps where players meant to load instead of save while, say, rerolling for the perfect Abyss Gear or bank investment? Who can say but you also have labels for slots. This is especially great when loading saves, since you can now clearly distinguish between auto and manual saves. Again, it’s a little thing, but one that’s still appreciated.
Some features are still a mystery – I don’t know what changing the “designs of certain gimmick monsters” necessarily entails, though I’m sure more detailed comparisons will become available. I’m also not the biggest fan of Aerial Roll now canceling Focus during Flight, because Unleash doesn’t give the speed boost that I so dearly enjoyed. I’m also still keen to see what it does with the dragon mount timers (an option to at least unsummon Blackstar, rather than waiting for the timer to expire, would go a long way).
But just like previous updates, this one reaffirms the development team’s commitment to improving Crimson Desert as quickly as possible. With four million copies sold thus far, it certainly has enough pressure to keep up the momentum. Lest we forget, the global launch was over two weeks ago, and the team has been working seemingly around the clock to address any issues, while also responding to feedback and fitting in numerous suggestions. Heck, it even looked at feedback from those who didn’t like the sprinting changes and addressed that as well.
That kind of approach doesn’t just show its ability to cater to those praising the game but also to players critical of it. Where it could go next with updates remains to be seen, but for now, it’s a heck of a ride.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
