Pearl Abyss has released a monster of an update for Crimson Desert, just over a month after the game hit the market and made immense waves. In response to a vast portion of the community stressing that the game’s difficulty was hit or miss, the team has introduced settings to deliberately amend your challenge level.
When you install the 1.04.00 update today, which is live now, you’ll notice that there are new settings in the main menu that allow you to tweak how tough your experience in Pywel is, influencing everything from boss combat to consuming healing items.
Crimson Desert Difficulty Levels Introduced
When Crimson Desert was released midway through March, some players relished the intense challenge offered by some of the game’s tougher bosses. It’s not a Soulslike game, but some of the more complex combat sequences were giving the average player a really hard time.
Fortunately, it’s the kind of game wherein you can go away, level up, get better gear, and come back later to try again.
Despite that, Pearl Abyss has felt it necessary to add new difficulty levels in Crimson Desert, allowing players to pick from three ratings at will:
- Easy
- Normal (what you have been playing all along)
- Hard
There’s a huge difference between Easy and Hard, the two newly introduced ratings.
Crimson Desert Difficulty Levels Explained
In the gargantuan patch notes for the massive 1.04.00 update, Pearl Abyss explained how Crimson Desert’s new difficulty levels work.
Easy:
- Reduced damage taken by the player.
- Reduced maximum health, aggressiveness, and overall speed of opponents.
- Extended timing windows for Parry and Dodge.
- Reduced the frequency of bosses attempting to counterattack or escape when hit.
Hard:
- Food item effects won’t be applied immediately and will only take effect after the consumption animation is complete.
- Increased damage taken by the player.
- Increased maximum health, aggressiveness, and overall speed of opponents.
- Reduced the timing window for Parry and Dodge.
- Reduced the invincibility duration for Roll.
- Increased the frequency of bosses attempting to counterattack or escape when hit.
- Added additional combat patterns for certain bosses.
Players have already marvelled at how well delivered Hard is in Crimson Desert. It’s not just a scaling rating that makes enemies tougher and gives them larger health pools, but it addresses all the aspects of what you’d naturally imagine to be a tougher difficulty level. It’s good to see that some thought actually went into this.
But as we’ve learned so far, that’s typical of Pearl Abyss.
Soon, the team will also add a new feature that allows users to replay bosses, which means you can crank up the difficulty and face off against a tougher enemy, just because.
Let us know on the Insider Gaming Discord server if you’re impressed by this change in Crimson Desert.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out what Tarkov’s head said about ARC Raiders
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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