u/Aaron44886

I wasted a lot of time in game going through a lot of content before ever visiting the witch for upgrading. I hoarded tons of gears for hundreds of hours and I thought I'd give a tip for players to save them some time now that I've figured out just how much time I could have saved when doing Carls missions and such.

Have an entire armor set entirely for resource gathering and stack them with the abyss gears specific to that resource. I have the Grey wolf set with my gloves stacked with logging gears, gloves with gathering and chest with mining gears. 3 30% mining gears plus a helmet with another 10% one guarantees every node I crack gives 4 ore. So large cave deposits give 80-120 depending on how many nodes. Usually 20-30. For Carls missions, gathering logs, ores, or random meats early on would have been a LOT less time consuming had I invested in this early on. So if you happen to get the crafting recipe or enough of the same resource gathering gears, I HIGHLY recommend you slot them as soon as possible so whenever you happen across that specific resource you want, simply switching one armor piece can increase your yield by up to ×4. Helps tremendously when upgrading armor and weapons early on too unless you want to constantly be looking for copper.

Not a big one, but I noticed for the Bordig Ruins Exploration mission that also randomly gives platinum bars every now and then, be advised that if you don't move them feom your personal chest to your inventory or gatherables chest, it stops awarding them after 10. So make sure you transfer them or you'll eventually stop getting them as random rewards if you run this mission 24/7 like I do. I noticed this after a long time of having 10 wondering why it wasn't giving me more. Moved them and sure enough I'm back to getting them often.

If you're having issues finding the specific fish you want in a river, floating above helps visibility a ton. If you have a few stamina potions (probably won't even need them) pull a random core out of your Kuku pot and hover it in the air. Then get some air and grapple it. When you axiom grapple it while gliding, your character won't lose altitude as long as you have stamina potions to keep your bar up. So you can hover nice and close to the water and drop right on the fish and instantly catch it without accidentally falling in and scaring it away. Works for any situation where hovering without wanting to lose altitude helps. You can use it to glide entirely across the abyss with enough height and stamina to discover locations up there without needing skybrides if you haven't unlocked the area yet. If you leave the core behind, it's recovered by Carl so it's never wasted.

Midway in the game, when you get the contribution workers, you can easily max out every rare dispatch mission and more than enough resource missions going at the same time. I have the big 5 exploration missions, 7 trade good crafting, 3 defense, 5 food, 3 timber, 4 mining, and 3 smithing missions all going simultaneously 24/7 with my materials all well in the millions. 30 total missions with only two that have more than 1 greymane comrade on. 24 million copper and going and going. Without any mech workers. Max out contribution points, buy circlets and armor, max out contribution points again by doing more faction quests, helping people, etc. When you buy the armor pieces early on, the game still gives you more contribution points. So later on, send out as many dispatches as you can with only the bare minumum greymane comrades, and then go back and sell the gear you bought from the office. You'll have a fast influx of more contribution workers to spend. Just don't cancel all the missions at once because 100 is the max you can have at once. All others will simply vanish and you'll have to do it all again. Thanks to this, I was able to max out all characters (except stamina) and have full gear sets for each with all the abyss artifacts before chapter 10. I'm also only missing 13 abyss gear blueprints because of how long I've had this going. This let me stop the campaign and focus entirely on challenges, exploration and such while my camp just rakes in every possible thing I could use in the mean time. If you like doing everything before moving on, this helps you not really care about the mechs and helps hault the campaign for a bit with no real reason to continue except to get the mech.

So they put out new items that require hundreds of gold bars each to purchase, and the only way to make gold is to farm the hell out of some hedgehogs, farm duos, or take a loooooong time doing the investment shit. But at the same time, I have 36 different dispatch missions going all giving me hundreds of thousands more materials than I need, and you're telling me you guys couldn't give us a conversion rate for copper to silver? Or sell camp materials for silver? I can convert silver to copper for the camp, why not the other way around? Why in the ever loving hell do I need to get 50,000 provisions from a single mission, yet it still awards 16 wheat to me? I can't even package the entire amount of a single mission into one wagon to sell and, by chapter 4 if you're hurting for camp funds, you have other issues. So what is the point of giving us so many materials so fast and so easily if we literally can't do anything with it? I need, at most a few thousand food to have all of my missions running constantly, and yet I make more than 180,000 just gathering apples and some wheat. Same for stones and logs. Why gives us THAT much for absolutely no reason? And I haven't even unlocked the mech guys yet. I have no idea what I could possibly use them for at this point.

I did a count and I've done 561 quests out of 815 according to the log without looking up but 2-3 guides for some puzzles and such. But at this point I have to. Lol Posters no longer spawn and the only way to find quests is to visit every single tiny little town and every road in between and every random hilltop, basically every single spot on the map, hoping to come across some lone stranger in need of help. And half of them are locked until you complete some other random series of quests. Otherwise the NPC won't even be there. I love the log that lets me keep easy, organized track of how much I have left, but it's mocking me with it's incomplete lists and it's taking so long just to find anything without resorting to Google. Thank god I did. I randomly came across the Friut of Life and broke down and Googled, only to find out I had to reload a save because I locked myself out of a quest just by picking it up. How many other quests have I done that to? Give me an option to turn off exploration mode to just mark NPCs with available quests as I progress. Let me be a little lazier. I love the game but 63 NPCs need a ride back to town or for me to deliver some apples 23 feet away? In ONE region? But ONLY if I have already done so for 4 other NPCs and cleared 2 strongholds and 4 camps? And I'll never know the quest is even there unless I happen to visit that little cabin way up in the mountains for some unknown reason. Otherwise it never gets marked. Rant over.

The smaller abyss cells from the crab things and such can be planted in your farm and harvested. I think each tree with max water and fertilizer each day gives 5 cells. Just obtain the seed from a few the same way you do any other seed. I've seen more than a few comments about where to farm some.

Today I learned that Sanctums are incomplete even after clearing and speaking to the witch. For special parts like the Kuku Frostspitter, you need the NEXT part of the sanctum. On one of the sanctoms sides at eye level, there is a dial with little button looking things. Different from the power nodes that power it. Soooo use blinding light on that and do NOT hold the button that actually torches things with blinding light (L1 for PS5), but tap it to activate the dial. As the ring passes around the gray squares, tap it when they line up one by one with the top circle. Again, do not hold, just tap the button while in blinding light. Once you've tapped them all (13 each) the top will collapse and another core will fly out of the top. Do that at all the Sanctums. It took me forever to back track to all of them when I found that out. Bright side, now I finally have the kuku frostspitter and have mined SO much mercury. In hindsight, now that I realize all of the cores are actually named after the sanctums, I realize how idiotic I was to leave without trying everything. But I assumed it would just come later down the road.

No particular order. A lot of videos have plenty of tutorials, but I figured I'd give some more simple ones that I see a lot of people skipping over. Some pretty obvious. Things that make gameplay either more efficient or less tedious later on.

EDIT: Added a few more at the bottom

1. for easy money, head up to Crimson Desert on the map for a town called Tashkalp and play duos there. Just keep losing hands until one of the players cheat. Look up exactly how to spot cheaters, it's really easy and it's guaranteed at some point. As soon as you clear all players, you'll get an easy 1200+ silver. Fast travel to the spot right next to it and walk back in. The players will have reset. Keep doing it until at least 2 or preferably 3 players are there. Buy in is 300 silver so make sure you have that. This reduces the need to sell damn near anything. You can maximize all items to camp provisions to complete the quests for Carl quicky. Whenever you're low on money, just head up there and do 2-3 hands for 20 minutes and you'll never have to cook again. Buy any desired meal or ores, special books or armor whenever you want and head back to Duos to refill money.

2. Easy provisions for Carl quest. Just get your ranch set up and have the pigs maxed out in there. Milk, eggs and all that are kind of useless. Sheep are great for fleece though. But the pigs when butchered give you tons of marbled meat, donate a bunch of that and you'll have the provisions quest knocked out in no time. Make sure you constantly refill the food dispenser in the middle with whatever usless food you don't want to save. Get 2 females of each type except pigs and just keep making out the rest of the space with pigs. You'll generate constant flow of other resources and maximize your profits with a ton of butchered pigs.

3. maximize dispatch missions by maximizing contributions. Look up where to find churches and start donating the funds you make off of Duos. The church contributions increase the conversion rate up to 200% for missions in that area. So you can send 1 fishing mission for a measly 600 copper and get up to 5k+ food in return so you can use other guys for other missions. Same with any other dispatch mission. Maximize the money ones, always to maximize camp donations to churches quickly. You can also leave the game running in a safe spot to let missions play out over night.

4. Farming. Once you get the farm unlocked make sure you head over to Demeniss to find a farmer using a water sprayer. Get the blueprint and craft it at the smithy. You'll need rubber from a rubber tree. Easiest way to get it is to buy seeds from a vendor in Varnia and just farm it. Find the fertilizer sprayer as well. Very useful for early crafting because you maximize your yield and speed for farming. So instead of 3 rubber per tree, you get 10-12 and end up with 150+ rubber from one batch of 16 rubber trees. Do it twice for some of the rarer plants and you'll never have to go scavenge for them again. Just have a constant supply of at least 16 seeds to restock the farm if needed. Also, magic scthye works wonders on the farm. Everything but skyroot. You have to physically dig the root up. Sucks. Last tip, the fertilizer sprayer runs out quick but you need one quick trigger pull to effectively spray it. So you should be able to do the entire plot with one spray without having to wait for a reload.

5. Easy early(ish) game spear. As soon as you unlock the Kuku workshop, head over to Ashclaw Keep above the I in Pailune and grab the flame spear from there. Head back to the kuku workshop and work towards the kuku flame spear and upgrade that as best you can. Incredibly powerful spear easy to get early in the game without needing to defeat a boss or waste resources upgrading another spear that won't last you to endgame. This will.

6. Also with the Kuku workshop, get the Kuku watcher pack as soon as possible. It makes combat much much easier and you can get it very early. It stuns enemies from a distance with its drones so arrow heavy enemy factions are less of an issue for constantly ripping your health down. For the clockwork bugs required, head over the Delesyia and use the base pack to snatch the little bugs out of the air. Those are the clockwork bugs you need for the watcher pack.

7. Wyverns. You can get a Wyvern very early to make exploration very easy. Head over to the Three Brothers Cliff innthe bottom left island of Delesyia and explore the area until you find the hatchery. You can find random eggs scattered around the area. All you need to do is find one and place it from your inventory onto one of the marked nests. Should be obvious which one it is and then wait. Do NOT leave the area. I learned this through trial and error. Just sit there for about 5 minutes real time and it will ask you to hatch it. Boom, Wyvern. Feed it marbled meat 3 times daily for 3 days and you can grow it full size for an early game Wyvern. Fine meat will take 4 days. As fast as you can get there is as fast as you can unlock it.

8. Focused Aerial Roll. I see a lot of gameplay with people exploring and never using this skill which tells me it is heavily slept on. If you're tired of pulling trees for extra height or always having to fly a wyvern/ride a horse, get this skill. Lol with a few honey teas in your inventory, you can travel 1000s of meters with enough space. Get enough height, enter focus mode and press dodge to fling yourself forward far faster and much further than a regular roll. It uses spirit instead of stamina and it keeps you level for the first bit so you can gain more distance before losing altitude. As SOON as you hit the roll, reenter focus and refill two bars and do it again before you slow down. Rinse and repeat. This allows you to travel 1000m+ easily with enough height and with some honey teas for stamina, you can go very far very fast without ever needing a horse. I literally never ride my horse anymore because it's just too slow.

9. don't skip out on mining in the beginning. Iron and copper are going to be in high demand for most weapon upgrades. The 9th upgrade requires 30 copper so that tells you how much you'll need if you want a few swords, spears and shields maxed out. Mine any ore you see and buy any you can from the vendors you come across.

10. easy trust maxing. Save all extra copper purses and blueprints/books and always have some hide and ore in your inventory. Most vendors will accept copper pouches, some only ores and some only hides or more special items like books. So if you're like me and you like collecting one of each copy in the storage container they give you for books and such, keep any extras so you can save the copper pouches for other vendors who only accept the pouches. Greymane buddies will accept pretty much any cooked food or beer so use those items for them.

11. Use markers. If you pass a vendor that has an item you want you can't buy yet and aren't able to max out trust, place a marker. If you pass by a puzzle you can't figure out yet or that you're too early for, marker. Random item on map with no explanation? Marker for now. As you go, more of these locations will become either unlockable at some point or you'll realize later that there was a treasure chest or something behind a wall requiring the focused force palm technique that you may not have unlocked yet. Like I did. Markers helped me backtrack all across the map to these locations so I never missed one once I unlocked the appropriate skill. And it saves you time from constantly rechecking the map to make sure you aren't missing something.

12. Recruitment. My advice is to do as many Greymane missions as possible as they come. They more or less serve as the tutorial missions and unlock more recruiting missions from Merrick. Once you get as many comrades as you can for as far as you are, mix that with the maxed out church donations and constant repeating dispatches generating 200% more materials, you will have tons of materials very fast and, if you want, you can package those up and sell them for big copper payouts. Although the time spent loading and transporting wagons is incredibly inefficient for what you get from them.

13. Kill everything special as you explore. Bushes that drop cores, abyss cells, etc. Even if you don't have the pot yet, all of these will be held by Carl to recover later. So always kill any special enemy that drops one of these. Later on you'll need lots of them to upgrade at the kuku workshop so it was very nice having hundreds before I even unlocked it.

14. Prestige. As far as I know, nowhere in the game does it tell you how to unlock prestige for the vendors. You have to buy the circlet from the contribution office inside the respective castle. Having that in your inventory, not even worn, grants you prestige status and lets you go buy the vendors' special items. Just sell it back for a full refund when you're done with it.

15. Stronghold protection. Not really a big deal, but if you get annoyed with the occasional dispatch mission being canceled over an area undergoing a battle, just place Stronghold protection. You can get more contribution points as you go, just never more than 100 stocked at a time. So as you explore and clear camps and strongholds, just head over to the contribution office and place protection. You'll get your 15 points back in 15 minutes clearing 2 or 3 camps.

16. Again, not specified anywhere as far as I know, but use blinding light on your Wyvern or horse to see notable locations such as fast travel points. I also see a lot of gameplay of guys hopping off the Wyvern onto a tall mountain and then pulling out the lantern to scout the area. Waste of time. Blinding light while riding your Wyvern still illuminates those locations. CONSTANTLY be checking for the sealed challenge artifacts found on the side of roads while you're riding around that way you don't need to ever look up a guide.

17. For bossing early. If you're like me and explore too far too fast before upgrading, you'll encounter a few bosses that way outmatch you. The way I figured to beat them with the basic gear you start with is to spam the weapon switch power move. With 2 decent swords and a spear, you can spam this attack on most bosses and, most of their attacks will be negated during the animation of your dude flipping around. So, a few light attacks to fill the bar and when a heavy attack is coming, don't dodge, just hit the weapon switch power attack. Upgrade spirit and stamina primarily and a few in health to avoid one shots and you'll be able to take down supposedly endgame bosses with ease. For flying bosses, nature's snare/retribution. Just back up and refill spirit when able and as soon as their guard is broken, unleash the power attacks to speed up the kill. A regular power attack will get you hit a lot. Mist bosses will be flat out stunlocked. You'll just keep knocking them on their ass and they literally won't stand up the entire fight if you have enough dps. No dodging needed.

18. don't waste time investing. The return you get on it is not worth it and, unless you save scum when doing the risky investment, you'll lose a lot more than you gain. Money from Duos or packaging goods is the only efficient way. Duos if you want easy, no traveling money and wagons if you want bigger amounts but more time consuming.

19. enter focus mode while gliding to refill spirit. Again, another obvious one that a lot of gameplay shows isn't so obvious. You can enter focus mode while gliding. So instead of stopping every 200ft to refocus, just get height and glide and get your spirit back while acrively moving. It took me longer than I'd care to admit to find out that was possible.

20. Easy logging. Later on you'll need a special axe to get flawless logs for upgrades. Other than randomly getting flawless logs from pouches, NPCs or finding them randomly in the world, this is the only way to get them. Look up the axe location and, with some rubber you will hopefully farm and some ivory from Crimson Desert rhinos or elephants, you'll be able to craft the axe you need. For quick logging, use your power attacks to knock down trees and break them into bigger logs. But for the logs you have to finish them with the axe. If you just power attack them until they're timber, you won't get any flawless, only normal and fine. Instead of walking around logging every tree slowly, just slam them all down with a power attack and finish them with the axe. Your pet will loot as you go so you can log much quicker this way without staring at that slow ass animation too long.

21. Palisades gates. Stupid one but just so you know, for the challenge that requires you to destroy these, be advised you have to burn them first until they're gray, and then either charged shot or power attack them.

22. Charged shot can break ores. If you see some ore too high to get or while flying a dragon, windshot from the dragon or charged shot from the ground breaks the ores so your pet can loot them while you shoot the next one.

23. weapon tournaments. Some of these tournaments are a bit harder than a boss fight with how much health they take in one hit. Weapon switch power attack. Same concept as explained in #16. Animation negates most damage types and just puts the dude on the ground repeatedly. Back up to refill sprit and reengage.

Just curious to see how many people play similar to me. I'm only starting chapter 6 and I have done nearly every possible quest, challenge, maxed every possible stat, research, gear, legendary animal, bounty, etc that are available to me. Nearly the entire map is discovered. I've got hundreds of materials stocked up and everything I need to get all of them whenever I need. I've already got half the upgrades for the mech, which I only found out I'd get because I unlocked the dispatch missions for some of the upgrades. Lol Y'all get lost in the sauce of exploration or do you play it a bit straighter and actually show a little urgency to the missions for later gear?