Crimson Desert update has a few surprise improvements, like finally letting you teleport on your horse and a new ability

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I'm of two minds about Crimson Desert 's patches—on one hand, Pearl Abyss has been shaving off some of the friction that made its bizarre, madcap action game interesting.

On the other, there were a lot of really irritating quirks that needed to be sanded down, and it's downright impressive how dedicated the studio's been to patching it.

So dedicated, in fact, that late last week, Pearl Abyss dropped a big ol' preview on what it'd be fixing, and while a lot of those things have made their way into today's update—which you can see on the game's website —there've been some surprise additions, too.

For starters, you can now set your cutscene fast forward speed to 4x.

I assume there's no skip for technical reasons, but ramping up the pace at which you can scrub through all the overdramatic peasant arm-waving seems a good compromise for now.

Lock-ons during boss combat should be improved, Abyss Puzzles should be less inscrutable, and there's a whole new ability called Focused Aerial Roll, which lets you turbo-boost while you're flying over Pywel .

While Pearl Abyss is indeed making Crimson Desert a more approachable game with every update, I can't say that these improvements aren't welcome.

At the very least, I didn't feel a sense of texture or richness while futzing around with the teleportation feature, and the Focused Aerial Roll looks sick as hell for when I get the Stamina and Spirit to support it.

You can read the full notes for version 1.03.00 below.

Crimson Desert patch notes version 1.03.00
Performance, Stability, Gameplay
Crimson Desert characters : Unlock each Crimson Desert Abyss Artifacts : Level up Crimson Desert respec : Swap your skills How to steal in Crimson Desert : Pilfer some loot How to find keys in Crimson Desert : Open doors How to fast travel in Crimson Desert : Going places
Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia.

He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer.

He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles.

He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time.

Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

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