Crimson Desert Update 1.04.00 Out Now — Check Out the Patch Notes - IGN

It’s worth digging into the details here. Hard difficulty makes it so food item effects won’t be applied immediately, and will only take effect after the consumption animation is complete. This will make it impossible to recover health by spamming food. Instead, you're going to have to carve out the space and time to do so. In hard difficulty you also take more damage, and the maximum health, aggressiveness, and overall speed of opponents is increased. You also get a reduced timing window for parry and dodge, reduced invincibility duration for roll, and increased frequency of bosses attempting to counterattack or escape when hit. And be warned: Pearl Abyss said it had added additional combat patterns for certain bosses. Hard difficulty will pair well with the upcoming boss rematch feature, which will let you face off against bosses of your choice.

Easy difficulty, on the other hand, reduces the damage taken by the player, reduces the maximum health, aggressiveness, and overall speed of opponents, and extends the timing windows for parry and dodge. Normal is the difficulty we’ve all been playing so far.

There’s a lot more to like about this patch. It adds the Sturdy Gatherables Chest, which can be set up with the housing system. It has 1,000 slots and can be purchased from furniture shops. This is crucial: materials stored in the Sturdy Gatherables Chest can be used for crafting or refinement even if they are not carried in your inventory. That’s going to save a lot of time for players!

Similarly, the Kuku Cooler and Enhanced Kuku Cooler items are added to the game, and can be placed with the housing system. The Kuku Cooler can be obtained through a quest, while the Enhanced Kuku Cooler can be crafted. Both can be used to store food items and ingredients. Ingredients stored in either cooler can be used for cooking even if they are not carried in your inventory. Again, a welcome time saver.

Moving on, Pearl Abyss has added birds as pets, which will give those who are building their animal armies a lot more to do. Elsewhere, there are five new types of cat pets, and you can change the names of horses and pets. Pets have a new slot for new items that gives them new abilities and behaviors, too.

And this is brilliant: Pearl Abyss has made yet another bug an actual feature:

- Fixed an issue where cats could remain on the player's shoulder indefinitely, contrary to the intended design. However, considering that many Greymanes actually liked these cats' behavior, we have added an item that allows cats to stay on the shoulder for a longer period of time.

There are big changes to combat, too. Bosses are no longer immune to player attacks while performing powerful attacks, which should make them easier overall. Kliff, Damiane, and Oongka have new skills to play around with, too.

As expected, there’s a lot in this patch that Pearl Abyss hadn’t announced was on the way, and players are digging into it to find out what’s new. It looks like the biggest update yet for Crimson Desert, which has enjoyed enormous success since going on sale in March. These updates have drastically changed the game, and the pace of their release is remarkable for a triple-A, single-player open world action adventure.

We’ve got plenty more on Crimson Desert, including praise from the director of The Witcher 3, a hidden food consequence system that a modder has restored, and an impressive character creator mod. We recommend you take a look at our guide to Things to Do First in Crimson Desert, plus Things Crimson Desert Doesn’t Tell You (we’ve got 28 and counting!). We’ve also got a guide to the Best Early Weapons we recommend picking up, the Best Skills to Get First (including a handy explainer of the skills system), and 34 Essential Tips and Tricks to help you succeed in Pywel.

The patch notes, courtesy of Pearl Abyss, are below:

Crimson Desert update 1.04.00 patch notes:

- Easy / Normal / Hard difficulty options have been added to Settings > Play. For experienced Greymanes looking for more intense and thrilling combat, Hard difficulty offers a more challenging journey.