During my recent six-hour play session of Crimson Desert, I was able to check out many of the game systems, including the very in-depth skill menu. So, I want to share everything I learned, including footage of all the skills, some of which you've not seen before. And this will really help you go in prepared.
Some skills are immediately unlocked from the beginning, like armed combat to use your regular attacks. But cool is that you can also upgrade that skill to unlock brand new moves like evasive slash for a backst step or a charge to push enemies while having your guard up. With rush, you do a forward evasion and also push enemies with your shield.
And after spending four abyss artifacts in this skill, you can do that quick swap ability that I showed in a previous video. So then with one move, you switch from your one-handed weapon to your two-handed weapon that you have equipped or the other way around. Stab is also unlocked from the start.
You can charge this move as well to impill enemies. You can upgrade it to make the charged stab better with a follow-up attack. And you can also move enemies around with this step attack.
With another upgrade, you can also do this stab attack from the air. And if you really like it, you want to get the final upgrade because this lets you ignore the enemies their defense. You got a special spinning attack that you can upgrade with additional spins.
Very early on, you learn to blind enemies with your sword. And with the blinding flash finisher, you can then combine that with heavy attacks for some nice extra damage. Those R2 or right trigger attacks are called forward slashes that you can also upgrade to improve the damage and make sure that they don't miss.
You also have a shield dash from the start with L1 and R2. Turning slash is really strong. It lets you charge up your attack and then the first upgrade lets you do the attack while performing another skill as a combo.
You can also add an additional slash by holding R1 and R2 with the final upgrade making sure you ignore the enemy's armor. If you prefer a more ranged play style, then this certainly possible. While a head shot is not really a thing in this game, there are archery moves that make this a more powerful way to play.
I love evasive shot, which lets you by pressing the dodge button teleport away, and if you then upgrade it, you shoot a couple of arrows at the enemy. You can also do a special leap backwards by fully upgrading this skill. You got multi-shot where you fire 10 arrows in front of you to push enemies away.
There's a regular archery skill to just improve firing a bow. And you got a charged shot that cost spirit and deals one powerful blow to the enemy. And there are some upgrades to this, but I will touch on that a bit later.
And we know that Cliff is capable of some wrestling moves. Well, you already have multiple attacks from the start, like a throw, but also restrain where you take an enemy hostage. And the crazy part is that you will not know about this move if you do not like inspect this skill.
So now you know, upgrade this grabble skill to be able to slam an enemy into the ground. You can also hold on to what seems to be a bigger enemy to attack or escape danger. And I love the giant swing where you grab someone and throw them even further.
And with the fully upgraded grabble skill, you can do multiple lariat follow-ups. Charge into an enemy Upgrade the unarmed skill once and they can while crouching wrap your legs around an enemy to bring them down. And then the fun starts because by further upgrading you improve the unarmed combat.
You get access to heavy fist attacks and you also with the final upgrade have this charged attack. You then do a ton of rapid punches and then you push the enemy away. There's also a flying kick that I tried, but just like with the body slam, it wasn't that strong.
Although the meteor kick variant does look a bit better. Do not spend an abyss artifact on pumpkick because you can learn this skill early on from Matias the knight that you fight during act two of the main story. This lets you push enemies away.
It's pretty strong. There's also a drop kick. Doesn't look that strong.
Also wasn't able to try it, unlock the skills and there are multiple ways to get them. So, you have a bar next to your mini map that fills by killing enemies. If it's full, then you get one abyss artifact.
But I also found these sealed abyss artifacts that have a challenge like defeat three enemies with a shield, complete that, and then you also get an abyss artifact. After reaching act two in the main story, I got a faded abyss artifact, and this lets you reset all your skills. So, you get all your abyss artifacts back, but the skills that you learned by observing an NPC or an enemy will always remain.
airborne to launch yourself higher. And there's a healing variant as well to restore health of NPCs, it seems. Upgrading the skill let you do an additional palm strike, and it also lets you launch yourself even higher into the air.
There's also a force palm pulse. If you use the unarmed combat button, which is triangle or Y on Xbox, you follow up with a powerful strike with this skill. Another skill you will learn early on during the main story is called Nature's Grasp that you can use to lift things.
left button just before the enemy strikes to parry them. You can also time your dodge perfectly with the upgrade for this skill. And there's a counter.
If you attack just before getting hit, you do this counter. There's also a regular evasive roll as a separate skill that you can unlock and a simple double jump which will likely be useful. You can block incoming projectiles and even send them back at enemies, which looks kind of powerful.
You do this with the upgrade. It can summon a phantom clone early on is the Axiom Force, your grabble hook, and you can upgrade the skill to use it to launch yourself across a wall, for example, or for that aerial swing that I also showed you in an earlier video. You can then also combine it with the light falling palm skill to destroy a watchtowwer, it seems, which pretty wild.
And there's a spirit skill that lets you grab an enemy with the grapple hook to perform a long ranged unarmed combat attack or in this case to drop a tree. There's also the winch skill that lets you pull an enemy in and then slam them into the ground. as you know, there are multiple elements that you can use to enhance attacks.
So, how it works is that you can then upgrade the skill to enhance multiple abilities with a preferred element. Meteor kick in combination with these attacks looks pretty sick. So, we have fire, ice, shock, and also fog that lets you deploy smoke, which can be very nice in groups.
