Crimson Desert Patch 1.04.02 Drops as Pearl Abyss Keeps Up Its Relentless Update Pace

Three patches in two days. That's where Crimson Desert is right now, and honestly, Pearl Abyss doesn't seem to be slowing down.

Hotfix 1.04.02 landed on April 24 as the game's third patch in two days, appearing on consoles as update 1.000.234. It follows the major 1.04.00 update that brought difficulty settings and a substantial inventory overhaul, plus the 1.04.01 emergency fix that came hours later when that update broke a few things it shouldn't have.

This one's smaller in scope. Fixes, polish, a few camp changes. But when you stack it next to everything Pearl Abyss has pushed since March 19, the picture is one of a studio that's genuinely paying attention.

What's Actually Fixed

The patch addresses a fade-out slowdown during certain shop cutscenes, a keyboard/mouse issue where HDR key inputs stopped working, and a pet naming bug where changing a pet's name would accidentally rename untamed animals in trust level notifications. The fishing dock vendor and tanner shop UI also had display issues that have now been corrected.

The difficulty bug is worth singling out. Difficulty settings in Crimson Desert were only added on April 23, 2026, so discovering that starting a new game with an existing save file applied the wrong difficulty setting within hours of launch says a lot about how quickly Pearl Abyss is catching and squashing issues.

On the gameplay side, horse gear can now be dyed, which had previously been broken, and the character movement speed has received a slight increase.

PS5 Pro players were dealing with unstable screen brightness when using the PSSR Sharpness setting, and that's been corrected too.

Camp Changes

The Greymane Camp now has a Contribution Shop with Carl. Furniture no longer gets auto-retrieved when you expand the camp, which was an annoying one. And if you relocate the camp to Pailune, furniture placed in the house will carry over, provided you haven't changed the house layout.

Small stuff, sure. But the kind of quality-of-life detail that makes a base feel like an actual base rather than something you're constantly fighting against.

Known Issues Still Outstanding

Not everything is sorted. Intel Arc A770 GPU users are still experiencing crashes when using XeSS, and the game screen doesn't display properly with Intel XeSS 3.0 or Frame Generation enabled on Arc A-series cards. NVIDIA GTX 1060 owners enabling FSR Upscaling and Frame Generation are seeing white screens. ROG Xbox Ally X users on the latest driver version are also reporting launch failures, with Microsoft and AMD investigating. Pearl Abyss recommends rolling back to the previous driver version in the meantime.

The Intel Arc situation, in particular, has been a persistent headache. If you want more context on how that whole mess started, we covered the original launch fallout back when Pearl Abyss initially told Arc owners to seek refunds.

Where the Game Stands

Crimson Desert has sold over five million copies, with Pearl Abyss working on near-weekly updates since the March 19 launch, consistently pulling from player feedback and applying it fast. The Steam reviews have reflected that effort. The game launched to a rocky Mixed rating at launch, driven largely by frustrations with UI and controls, but has since climbed to Very Positive as patches have addressed the bulk of those complaints.

The one area where community sentiment hasn't fully turned is boss fight design. Players have been vocal about boss encounters feeling underwhelming, and Pearl Abyss has noted that a boss rematch feature is coming in a future update, letting players revisit fights on demand. That's promising, though it doesn't address the underlying critique that some of those fights need reworking, not just replaying.

The full patch is live now on Steam and PlayStation, with Xbox, Mac, and Epic Games Store versions arriving at a later time according to Pearl Abyss.